Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Citronella and Stegomyia
CITRONELLA AND STEGOMYIA
WE were talking about famous love affairs the other evening, and Fothergil Finch said he was thinking of writing a ballad about Citronella and Stegomyia.
And, of course, everybody pretended they knew who Citronella and Stegomyia were. Mrs. Voke Easeley—you've heard about Voke Easeley and his New Art, haven't you?—Mrs. Voke Easeley said:
"But don't you think those old Italian love affairs have been done to death?"
"Italian?" said Fothy, raising his eyebrows at Mrs. Voke Easeley.
You know, really, there wasn't a one of them knew who Citronella and Stegomyia were; but they were all pretending, and they saw Mrs. Voke Easeley was in bad. And she saw it, too, and tried to save herself.
"Of course," she said, "Citronella and Stegomyia weren't Italian lovers themselves. But so many of the old Italian poets have written about them that I always think of them as glowing stars in that wonderful, wonderful galaxy of Italian romance!"
Fothy can be very mean when he wants to. So he said:
"I don't read Italian, Mrs. Easeley. I have been forced to get all my information about Citronella and Stegomyia from English writers. Maybe you would be good enough to tell me what Italian poet it is who has turned out the most recent version of Citronella and Stegomyia?"
Mrs. Voke Easeley answered without a moment's hesitation: "Why, D'Annunzio, of course."
That made everybody waver again. And Aurelia Dart said—she's that girl with the beautiful arms, you know, who plays the harp and always has a man or two to carry it about wherever she goes—somebody else's husband, if she can manage it—Aurelia said:
"D Annunzio, of course! Passages of it have been set to music."
"Won't you play some of it?" asked Fothy, very politely.
"It has never been arranged for the harp," said Aurelia. "But if Mrs. Easeley can remember some of the lines, and will be good enough to repeat them, I will improvise for it."
That put it up to Mrs. Easeley again, you know. She hates Aurelia, and Aurelia knows it. Voke Easeley carried Aurelia's harp around almost all last winter. And the only way Mrs. Easeley could break Voke of it was to bring their little girl along—the one that has convulsions so easily, you know. And then when Yoke was getting Aurelia's harp ready for her the little girl would have a convulsion, and Mrs. Easeley would turn her over to Voke, and Voke would have to take the little girl home, and Mrs. Easeley would stay and say what a family man and what a devoted husband Voke was, for an artist.
Well, Mrs. Easeley wasn't stumped at all. She got up and repeated something. I took up Italian poetry one winter, and we made a special study of D'Annunzio; but I didn't remember what Mrs. Easeley recited. But Aurelia harped to it. Improvising is one of the best things she does.
And everybody said how lovely it was and how much soul there was in it, and, "Poor Stegomyia! Poor Citronella!"
The Swami said it reminded him of some passages in Tagore that hadn't been translated into English yet.
Voke Easeley said: "The plaint of Citronella is full of a passion of dream that only the Italian poets have found the language for."
Fothy winked at me and I made an excuse and slipped into the library and looked them up—and, well, would you believe it!—they weren't lovers at all! And I might have known it from the first, for I always use citronella for mosquitoes in the country.
They were still pretending when I got back, all of them, and Aurelia was saying: "Citronella differs psychologically from Juliet—she is more like poor, dear Francesca in her feeling of the cosmic inevitability of tragedy. But Stegomyia had a strain of Hamlet in him."
"Yes, a strain of Hamlet," said Voke Easeley. "A strain of Hamlet in his nature, Aurelia—and more than a strain of Tristram!"
"It is a thing that Maeterlinck should have written, in his earlier manner," said Mrs. Voke Easeley.
"The story has its Irish counterpart, too," said Leila Brown, who rather specializes, you know, on all those lovely Lady Gregory things. "I have always wondered why Yeats or Synge hasn't used it."
"The essential story is older than Ireland," said the Swami. "It is older than Buddha. There are three versions of it in Sanskrit, and the young men sing it to this day in Benares."
Affectation! Affectation! Oh, how I abhor affectation!
It was perfectly horrid of Fothy just the same.
Anyone might have been fooled.
I might have been myself, if I were not too intellectually honest, and Fothy hadn't tipped me the wink.