Peter Whiffle/Chapter 9
In September, 1913, I found myself on the Paris-Milan Express on my way to Venice to meet Edith Dale. I have travelled across Switzerland many times and I hope to do so again (the view from the car-windows is magnificent), but I shall never visit that country. God keep me from lingering in the mountains or by the shores of the sea. Such immensities of nature strangle talent and even dwarf genius. No great creative work has ever been composed by the sea or in the shadow of a mountain. In the presence of the perpetual mysteries of nature, man feels his smallness. There are those who may say that the sky-scrapers of the city evoke a similar feeling, but man's relation to these is not the same; he knows that man built these monster structures and that man will tear them down again. Mountains and the sea are eternal. Does this explain why so much that passes for art in America comes from Indiana and Illinois, the flat, unimposing, monotonous Middle West?
All journeys, I suppose, have their memorable incidents and episodes, however unimportant. My sole memory of this particular hegira is trifling. While I was dining, the train gave a lurch or a swerve, hurling me with my plate in my lap to the farthest corner of the car. The soup which the plate contained was in my lap, too, and elsewhere. Fortunately, the soup was not too hot. The accident recalled how once in a French drawing-room I had spilled a cup of calid coffee on my leg, scorching it painfully. The hostess was concerned about her carpet. I do hope, she was saying, that you haven't spilled your coffee on my carpet. I had not, but my leg was burned so badly and I felt so outraged by her lack of sympathy, that I took occasion later to make good the omission. Another night, another year, and certainly another place, a celebrated lady, next to whom I was sitting at supper, whisperingly adjured me to upset my coffee into her lap. She was wearing a new and elaborate frock and, astonished by her unreasonable request, I was dilatory in obeying. She whispered again, this time more sharply, Do as I tell you! At last I obeyed her, but the attempt at carelessness must have seemed very clumsy. I am a poor actor. Apologize, was her next command. Meekly, I followed instructions. Now she spoke aloud. It doesn't matter at all, she said. It's only an old rag. The other gentlemen present condoled with her, but she smilingly put them off, Don't make the boy feel bad. It wasn't his fault. Next day, while I lunched with her, a great many boxes arrived from Bendel's and Hickson's. Every man who had attended the supper had bought her a new dress, as she had been sure they would!
Towards nightfall, we approached the Italian border and after we had passed into Italy, the compartment, which had been crowded all day, was empty but for me and another man. As he was a Roumanian, who spoke neither French nor English, we did not converse. About 8 o'clock, we lay down on our respective seats and tried to sleep. It was nearly midnight when we arrived at Milan and I was glad to descend from the train, after the long journey, to take a few hours repose at a hotel near the station. Early in the morning, which was bright and sunny, I departed for Venice.
In the evening of that day, I was sitting at a table in the garden of Bonvecchiati's with Edith, who had motored down from Florence. Since the night I had taken Peter to her house in Washington Square, I had seen her only for fleeting moments, but she bridged the months immediately. Peter had been correct in his assumption that she would remember him. In fact, one of the first questions she asked was:
Where is that boy you brought to my house the other night?
It was "the other night" to Edith; months and even years meant nothing to her.
Peter Whiffle?
Yes, a nice boy. I liked him. Where is he? Let's take him back to Florence with us.
I don't know where he is.
Then I told her the story of how Peter did not get married.
I knew he was amusing. Let's get in touch with his vibrations and find him.
Edith, indeed, had invented her own kind of wireless long before Marconi came along with his. Distances, as a matter of fact, circumscribed her even less than time.
Just then, she saw Constant Lounsberry, or some one else, at a table in the corner of the garden where we were dining and she strolled over to talk with her. Sipping my coffee and smoking my cigarette, I recognized a familiar voice and turned to see Peter, with his mother, about to claim an adjacent table from which the occupants were rising. He looked two years younger than he had four months before and his rather pretty mother helped to confirm the illusion. Of course, I joined them at once and soon we were discussing the Italian futurists, the comparative merits of spaghetti and risotto, Lydia Borelli, the moving pictures, and the Marchesa Casati, who had given a magnificent festa the evening previous, when, clad in a leopard's pelt, she had stood on the steps of her palace, and greeted her guests as they approached by gondola on the Canale Grande. Peter, I noted, was wearing his amethyst intaglio of Leda and the Swan on the little finger of his left hand. After a time, during which, for a brief few moments, the conversation drifted towards Toledo and the small affairs of Mrs. Whiffle, he told me his story.
I came near dying in Africa, Carl, surrounded by niggers and fleas! It was horrible. Hot as a New York roof-garden and nearly as uncomfortable. There I lay, rotting with a nameless fever, no one with me but an incompetent Dutch doctor, who was more ignorant of the nature of my complaint than I was myself, and a half-naked aboriginal, who wanted to call in the witch-doctor and who, when burked in this direction, attempted a few amateur charms, which at least had the merit of awakening my interest. There I lay in a rude thatched hut with a roof of caked cow-dung; I couldn't eat, drink, or speak. I thought it was the end. Funny, but the only sound that reached my ears, after a few days, was the chattering of monkeys, and later they told me there were no monkeys about at all.
Over my head on the wall, hung a dirty thonged whip. Whether its purpose was to beat women or oxen, I don't know, but, you will remember, perhaps, that sometimes, when I awaken from sleep in the middle of the night, I have a strange habit of holding one arm straight up in the air, at right angles with my body. Well, while I was ill, there it was, most of the time, straight up! One night, when my strength was fast ebbing away, I reached higher and grasped the whip. Then I grew drowsy; everything seemed to turn blood-red, even the palm-leaves that waved across the opening made by the doorway of the hut, and it was very hot, unspeakably roasting. Now, through this same doorway, walked a woman in a rusty black robe and, although I knew it must be Death, the figure confused itself in my mind with Kathleen-ni-Houlihan and (will you believe it?) Sara Allgood! Fancy the appearance of Death in the middle of Africa suggesting to me the character of an Irish play and the actress I had seen in it! There followed a slight pause, during which Death stood perfectly still. Then two more figures entered the tiny hut. One was the Devil, Ahriman, Abaddon, what you will; I recognized him at once, he was so likable and, besides, he was lame. The other, I gathered after a little conversation, was an emissary from heaven. Eblis seated himself on one side of my cot, resting his crutches against the wall, and Gabriel's ambassador stood on the other side. Now these two droll fellows began to describe the climates and amusements of heaven and hell to me, each speaking in his turn, and continually interrupting themselves to beg me to decide speedily where I wanted to go. They stated frankly that they had not any too much time, as they had several other visits to make before dinner in various parts of the world. The Angel polished his feathers with a small hatbrush and the Devil seemed to be taking good care of his nails, in default of the opportunity to visit a manicure. Death stood immovable, inexorable. Imagine, even in her presence, I had to make up my mind where I wanted to go. It was a terrible experience, I can tell you! It was as if—she were saying, Hurry now, hurry now! Nine minutes more. Only, of course, she did not utter a single word. The Angel and the Devil were too silly. Had they been silent, it would have been so much easier for me to decide. My mind would just be wavering in a certain direction, when one of the supernatural visitors would put me completely out with a warning about his rival's domain and a word of enthusiasm for his own. Never have I suffered such agony. I could not decide whether to go to Paradise or Pandemonium. My perplexity grew as they argued. Meantime, it was obvious that I was keeping Death from other bedsides. I could see that she was becoming nervous and irritable, shifting first on one foot, then on the other. It was evidently very irksome to her that she had taken a vow of silence, In life, it is so easy; there is always something else to do. But, in death, Carl, there is a single alternative; at least, it seemed so to me for an unconscionable space of time. Suddenly, however, two ideas occurred to me: I remembered that I had read somewhere that demon and deity were originally derived from the game root: in that case, one place would be as bad or as good as the other; and I remembered my solution of the Bermuda problem: I could stay where I was. I was not compelled to go anywhere. Stretching up my hands, I pulled hard on the whip, which must have broken loose from the nail, because when I came out of my coma, the thongs were gripped tightly in my hand, lying on the blanket.
Peter concluded his story and, suddenly, with that delightful inconsequence, which contributed so definite a charm to his manner, he pointed to a woman in the crowd.
She resembles an ostrich and she is dressed like a peacock, he said.
Peter, I wish you wouldn't jest about death and holy things, interjected Mrs. Whiffle, on whose literal mind the tale had evidently clawed as an eagle claws the brain of a cat.
But, mother, Peter tried to mollify her, I am not jesting. I am telling you something that happened.
Something that you thought had happened, Mrs. Whiffle corrected, but we should only think good thoughts. We should keep the dark ones out of our minds, especially when they interfere and conflict with the powerful words of Almighty God, our Creator.
I'm sorry, mother, I won't tell it again, he said, simply. Then, after a nibble or two at a lobster, he turned to me, Mother is going to America tomorrow. I shall be alone. Have you been to the Austrian Tyrol? There's Russia, of course, and Spain, and those islands where Synge used to go. Where are they? And Bucharest. Carlo, will you go with me tomorrow to Buenos Ayres or Helsingfors?
You are not to be told where you are going, I replied, but you are going with me.
Experience has taught me that people with principles are invariably unreasonable. Peter had no principles and therefore he was reasonable. So the next day, he really did drive back with us to Florence, through, the pleasant olive groves and vineyards. A jeroboam of chianti enlivened the journey, and Edith adored the story of Peter's encounter with Death, the Devil, and the Angel.
The Villa Allegra is set on the hills of Arcetri, high above the long cypress-bordered avenue called the Stradone del Poggio Imperiale. The villa is so artfully concealed amongst the cunningly-grouped, gnarled olive trees, eucalypti, myrtles, plane-trees, laurels, pepper-trees, and rows of cypresses, that, until you are in the very courtyard, you are unaware of its propinquity, although, by some curious paradox, the view from the loggia commands the surrounding country. The lovely curve of the façade has been attributed to the hand of Raphæl, and Brunelleschi is said to have designed the cortile, for the physician of the Medici once inhabited this country house, but the completely successful loggia and the great salone were added by Chester Dale.
Peter had never been in Florence before; no more had I; so the romantic charm of this lovely old house in the mountains served to occupy us for several days. We inspected the sunken Roman bath and were thrilled by the rope-ladder, which, when lowered through a trap-door, connected a chamber on the second storey with a room on the first. We were satisfied to sit in the evening under the red brocaded walls, illuminated by wax tapers set in girandoles of green and rose faience, to stroll in the gardens, to gaze off towards the distant hills from the loggia. Edith entertained us with long accounts of the visits of the spectre, the dame blanche who haunted the house. It was, if the servants who swore they had seen her were to be believed, the spirit of an elderly maiden lady who had died there. In life, it seems, she had been of a jealous disposition and had tried to make the villa uncomfortable for other guests. She was not successful in this effort until she died, and not altogether successful even then, for there were those who refused to be terrified by the persistent presence of this spinster eidolon, which manifested itself in various ways. Others, however, resembled Madame de Staël, who did not believe in ghosts but was afraid of them.
In the mornings, Peter and I breakfasted together in the garden, whither was borne us by the cynical butler a tray with individual coffee percolators, a plate of fresh rolls, and a bowl of honey. The peacocks strutted the terrace and the breeze blew the branches of the fragrant gardenias across our noses. In the distance, the bells of Florence softly tolled. In the afternoon, the distant hills became purple and, in the evening, the atmosphere was tinged with green. The peasants sang in the road below and the nightingales sang in the olive copse. Roman lamps flickered on the tables and Strega, the golden witch-liquid, stood in our tiny crumpled Venetian tumblers, their distorted little bellies flecked with specks of gold. There were occasional callers but no other resident guests than ourselves at the villa and Edith, as was her custom, left us a good deal alone. On the day of our arrival, indeed, she disappeared after luncheon and only returned two days later, when she explained that she had gone to visit a friend at Pisa. We usually met her at dinner when she came out to the garden-table, floating in white crepe de chine, with a turban of turquoise blue or some vivid brilliant green, but during the day she was seldom visible. She ate her breakfast alone on the balcony above our bedroom, then read for an hour or two. What she did after, one never knew, save as she told of it.
Meanwhile, Peter and I wandered about, inspecting the shops on the Ponte Vecchio, tramping through the old palaces and galleries. Several times Peter paused; he hesitated for the longest time, I think, before the David of Donatello, that exquisite soft bronze of the Biblical lad, nude but for his wreathed helmet, standing in his adolescent slender beauty with one foot on the head of the decapitated giant. He carries a sword and over his face flutters a quizzical expression. Indeed, what Walter Pater said of the face of Monna Lisa might equally well apply to the face of David. So remarked Peter, explaining that the quality of both the David and Leonardo's darling was the same, both possessed a compelling charm, and it was the charm of David which had slain the ugly giant, just as charm always kills ugliness. And he swore that this was the most beautiful object that the hand of man had yet created, an art expression which reached its emotional and intellectual zenith, and then he spoke of the advantage that sculpture enjoyed over painting.
One tires of a painting. It is always the same. There is never anything new in it. But with a statue, every different light gives it a novel value, and it can be turned around. When you tire of one aspect, you try another. That is why statues belong in houses and pictures belong in museums. You can visit the museum when you wish to look at a picture, but it is impossible to live with a picture, because it is always the same. You can kill any picture, even a picture by Velázquez, by hanging it on your own wall, for in a few days it becomes a commonplace to you, a habit, and at last one day you do not look at it any more, you scarcely are aware that it is there at all, and you are surprised when your friends speak of it, speak of it admiringly. Yes, you say, unconvinced, it is beautiful. But you do not believe it. On the other hand, a statue is new every day. Every passing cloud in the sky, every shifting of the location of a lamp, gives a new value to a statue, and when you tire of seeing it in the house, you can transfer it to the garden where it begins another avatar.
Leaving David behind us, we walked down the long, marble, fourteenth century stairway of the Palazzo del Podesta, into the magnificent court embellished with the armorial bearings of the old chief magistrates, out to the Via del Procónsolo, on through the winding streets to the Palazzo Riccardi, where Peter again paused before the frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli. The Gifts of the Magi is the general title but Gozzoli, according to a pleasant custom of his epoch, has painted the Medici on a hunting expedition, the great Lorenzo on a white charger, with a spotted leopard at its heels, falcons on the wrists of his brilliant attendants, a long train of lovely boys, in purple and mulberry and blue and green and gold, the colours as fresh, perhaps, as the day they were painted. The most beautiful room in the world, Peter exclaimed, this little oratory about the size of a cubicle at Oxford, painted by candlelight, for until recently, there was no window in the room, and I believed him. I am not sure but, belike, I believe him still. Then Peter loved the walk in that gallery which connects the Pitti Palace with the Uffizi, a long narrow gallery which runs over the shops of the Ponte Vecchio (was ever another bridge so richly endowed with artistic and commercial interest?), where hang the old portraits of the families who have reigned in Florence, and some others. Quaint old canvases, they are, by artists long forgotten and of people no longer remembered, but more interesting to Peter and me than the famous Botticellis and Bellinis and Giorgiones which crowded the walls of the galleries. As we stood before them, Peter imagined tales af adventure and romance to suit the subjects, pinning his narratives to the expression of a face, the style of a sleeve, the embroidery of a doublet, or to some accompanying puppet or pet, some ill-featured hunch-back dwarf.
Thus the days passed and Peter became dreamy and wistful and the charm of his spirit, I believe, was never before so poignant, for his chameleon soul had taken on the hue of the renaissance and its accompanying spirituality, the spirituality of the artist, the happy working artist contriving works of genius. He could have perfectly donned the costume of the cinquecento, for the revolutionary Peter of New York, the gay, faun-like Peter of Paris, had disappeared, and a Peter of reveries and dreams had usurped their place.
Never have I been so happy, he said to me on one of these days, as I am now. This is true beauty, the beauty of spirit, art which has nothing to do with life, which, indeed, makes you forget the existence of life. Of course, however, this is of no help to the contemporary artist. Confronted, on every hand, with perfection, he must lay down his chisel or his brush or his pen. Great art can never flourish here again. That is why Browning's poetry about Florence is so bad; why Ouida, perhaps a lesser artist, succeeded where Browning failed. This is the ideal spot in which to idle, to dream, even to think, but no work is possible here and that, perhaps, is why I love Florence so much. I feel that I could remain here always and, if I did I should do nothing, nothing, that is, but drink my coffee and eat my rolls and honey in the morning, gaze across to the hills and dream, stroll over the wondrous Ponte Santa Trinità, which connects us so gracefully with the Via Tornabuoni, wonder how Ghirlandaio achieved the naïve charm of the frescoes in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, nothing else but these things. And, of course, I should always avoid the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.
But he had scarcely uttered the name before he determined that he must drink some beer and so we strolled across the Piazza, on which he had just placed a malison, into the Giubbe Rosse, full of Americans writing letters, and Swedes and Germans, reading their native papers. We sat down at a table just outside the door and asked one of the red-coats, whose scarlet jackets give this place its cant name, to bring us two steins of Münchener. Then came an anachronism, one of those anachronisms so unusual in Florence which, more than any other city, is all of a piece. A stage-coach, such a coach as one sees in old England, drawn by four horses, drove gaily through the square. The interior seemed empty but on the top sat several English girls in sprigged muslins, a few pale youths, and a hatless man with very long hair, who was clad in olive-green velvet.
Who is it? I asked a man at a neighbouring table.
And the reply came. That is Gordon Craig and his school.
A few days later, Peter encountered Papini, that strange and very ugly youth, who mingled his dreams and his politics, mixing mysticism and propaganda until one became uncertain whether he was seer or socialist, and Marinetti. He read Mafarka le Futuriste and Marinetti talked to him about war and vaudeville, noise and overthrow, excitement and destruction. Bomb the palaces and build factories where they stood! So Marinetti enjoined his followers. Whatever is today is art; whatever was yesterday is nothing, worse than nothing, refuse, manure. Peter was especially amused by Marinetti's war cry, Méprisez la femme! his banishment of the nude and adultery from art, which was to become entirely male. So, indeed, was life, for Marinetti exhorted his male disciples to bear their own children! All these ideas, Peter repeated to me in a dreamy, veiled voice, noting at the same-time that one of Marinetti's arms was longer than the other. It did not seem quite the proper environment to carry on in this respect, but the words of the Italian futurist had indubitably made an impression. I could see that it was quite likely that Peter would become a Marinettist when he went back to New York.
At dinner, one night, it became apparent that Peter once more was considering his life work. One of the guests, a contessa with a florid face and an ample bosom, began to fulminate:
Art is magic. Artis a formula. Once master a formula and you can succeed in expressing yourself. Barrie has a formula. Shaw has a formula. Even George Cohan has a formula. Black magic, negromancy, that's what it is: the eye of a newt, the beak of a raven, herbs gathered at certain hours, the heart of a black cat, boiled in a pot together, call up the bright devils to do your bidding.
Art is a protest, corrected Mina Loy. Each artist is protesting against something: Hardy, against life itself; Shaw, against shams; Flaubert, against slipshod workmanship; George Moore, against prudery; Cunninghame Graham, against civilization; Arthur Machen, against reality; Theodore Dreiser, against style. . . .
Never did I feel less sure of the meaning of art than I do here, surrounded by it, began Peter, although I have never been more conscious of it, more susceptible to real beauty, more lulled by its magic. Yet I do not understand its meaning. It does not help me to work out my own problems. The trails cross. For instance, here is Edith leading her own life; here are we all leading our own lives, as remote as possible from Donatello and Gozzoli. Here is Gordon Craig, dressed like Bunthorne, driving a stage-coach and sending out arcane but thundering manifestos against a theatre in which his mother and Eleanora Duse are such conspicuous examples; here is Papini working and dreaming; here is Marinetti shooting off fire-crackers; here are the Braggiottis, teaching young Americans the elements of music in that modern music-room with bas-relief portraits of the great composers, Beethoven, Bach, Verdi, Mozart, Wagner, Rossini . . . and Sebastian B. Schlesinger, moulded in the frieze. Here is Loeser, always building new houses and never completing them; here is Arthur Acton, with a chauffeur who sings tenor arias in the drawing-room after dinner; here is Leo Stein, collecting Renoirs and Cézannes for his villa at Settignano. What does it all mean, unless it means that everything should be scrambled together? I think a great book might be written if everything the hero thought and felt and observed could be put into it. You know how, in the old novel, only what is obviously essential to the plot or the development of character is selected. But a man, crossing a street to commit a murder, does not continuously think of the murder. The cry of Buns! hot cross buns! the smell of onions or dead fish, the sight of a pretty woman, impress his senses and remind him of still other things. These ideas, impressions, objects, should all be set down. Nothing should be omitted, nothing! One might write a whole book of two hundred thousand words about the events of an hour. And what a book! What a book!
This was before the day of Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. The contessa snorted. Mina Loy, at the other end of the table, looked interested in Peter for the first time, I thought. The white Persian cat, one of Edith's cats, with his superb porcelain-blue eyes, sauntered into the room, his tail raised proudly. Edith spoke:
The great artists put themselves into their work; the cat never does. Men like Stieglitz and de Meyer put themselves into their cameras, that is why their photographs are wonderful, but the cat never puts himself into a camera. The great conquerors put themselves into their actions; the cat never does. Lovers put themselves into the selves of their loved ones, seeking identity; the cat never does. Mystics try to lose themselves in union with their gods; the cat never does. Musicians put themselves into their instruments; the cat never does. Indian men, working in the ground, put themselves in the earth, in order to get themselves back in the forms of wheat or maize to nourish their bodies; the cat never does. Navajo women, when they weave blankets, go so completely into the blanket while they are working on it, that they always leave a path in the weaving that comes out at the last corner for their souls to get out of the blanket; otherwise they would be imprisoned in it. The cat never does things like this!
So every one really centres his self somewhere outside of himself; every one gets out of his body. The cat never does. Every one has a false centre. Only the cat—the feline—has a true centredness inside himself. Dogs and other animals centre themselves in people and are therefore open to influence. The cat stays at home inside his body and can never be influenced.
Every one has always worked magic through these false centres—doing things to himself—seeking outlets, seeking expression, seeking power, all of which are only temporarily satisfactory like a movement of the bowels, which is all it amounts to on the psychic plane. The cat is magic, is himself, is power. The cat knows how to live, staying as he does inside his own body, for that is the only place where he can live! That is the only place where he can experience being here and now.
Of course, all the false-centred people have a kind of magic power, for any centredness is power, but it doesn't last and it doesn't satisfy them. Art has been the greatest deceiver of all—the better the art, the greater the deception. It isn't necessary to objectify or express experience. What IS necessary IS to be. The cat knows this. May be, that is why the cat has been an object of worship; may be, the ancients felt intuitively that the cat had the truth in him.
Do you see where these reflections lead? The whole world is wildly pursuing a mirage; only the cat is at home, so to speak.
Actors understand this. They only get a sense of reality when they throw themselves into a part. . . . a false centre.
The cat understands pure being, which is all we need to know and which it takes us a lifetime to learn. It is both subject and object. It is its own outlet and its own material. It is. All the rest of us are divided bits of self, some here, some there. The cat has a complete subjective unity. Being its own centre, it radiates electricity in all directions. It is magnetic and impervious. I have known people to keep a cat so that they could stroke the electricity out of it. Why didn't they know how to be electric as the cat IS? The cat is the fine specimen of the I am. Who of us is so fully the I am that I am?
Look around the world! Everybody putting himself out in some form or another! Why? It doesn't do any good. At the end you exhaust the possibilities of the outside world—geographically and spiritually. You can use up the external. You can come to the end of objectifying and objectives, and then what? In the end, only what we started with—the Self in the body, the Self at home, where it was all the time while bits of it were wandering outside.
Peter applauded with sundry bravos and benisons and divers amens, but was moved to ask, Does the cat know this? Has the cat got a conscious being? Does he appreciate his advantage?
But no one answered these questions, least of all the haughty white Persian.
Apparently unreasonably (this biography was as far from my mind as anything well could be), following a habit which I never could explain to myself until I became a professional writer and the reason became clear, before going to bed, I made notes on this and several subsequent evenings and it is upon these notes that I am drawing now, to refresh my memory. A few nights later, when Edith and Peter and I were sitting alone on the loggia, Peter talked to us about the critics.
The trouble with the critics, he was saying, is that they are not contradictory enough. They stick to a theory for better or worse, as unwise men stick to an unwise marriage. Once they have exploited a postulate about art or about an artist, they make all his work conform to this postulate, if they ad mire it. On the other hand, if the work of an artist displeases them, they use the postulate as a hammer. I think it is Oscar Wilde who has written, Only mediocre minds are consistent. There is something very profound in this aphorism.
Consider Frank Harris's Shakespeare theory, for example. It is good enough as an idea, as a casual inspiration it is almost a masterpiece. It would make a fine essay; if it had been used as a passing reference in a book, it probably would have been quoted for years. Harris, however, has spun it out into two thick volumes and made it fit into crevices and crannies where it cannot very well feel at home. Certainly, it is true that any artist creates his characters out of his own virtues and weaknesses; all of a novelists' characters, to a certain extent, reflect phases of himself. The mistake Harris has made lies in identifying Shakespeare only with his weak, unsuccessful, sentimental, disappointed, unhappy characters, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, Orsino, Antonio, and Romeo. Shakespeare probably was just as much Sir Toby Belch and Falstaff. Curiously, this theory of identification fits the critic himself, the intellectual creator, more snugly than it does the romancer, the emotional creator. Remy de Gourmont has pointed this out. He says, Criticism is perhaps the most suggestive of literary forms; it is a perpetual confession; believing to analyze the works of others, the critic unveils and exposes himself to the public. So from these books we may learn more about Frank Harris than we do about Shakespeare.[1] This, of course, has its value.
But that is why Shakespeare is greater than his critics, that is greater than the critics who cling to one theory. Shakespeare speaks only through his characters and he can say, or make some one say,
but on the next page another character may deny this sentiment, for this is not Shakespeare's opinion, it is that of an incensed lover. So Richard III remarks:
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
But Hamlet replies:
Both are true, both good philosophy, and so from the playwright, the great poet, the novelist, you get a rounded view of life which a critic usually denies you.
Occasionally a critic does contradict himself and really becomes human and delightful and we take him to our hearts, but the next day all the doctors and professors and pundits are excoriating him, assuring us that he is not consistent, that he is a loose writer, etc. Good critics, I should like to believe, are always loose writers; they perpetually contradict themselves; their work is invariably palinodal. How, otherwise, can they strive for vision, and how can they inspire vision in the reader without striving for vision themselves? Good critics should grope and, if they must define, they should constantly contradict their own definitions. In this way, in time, a certain understanding might be reached. For instance, how delightful of Anatole France to describe criticism as a soul's adventures among masterpieces, and then to devote his critical pen to minor poets and unimportant eighteenth century figures.
But, asked Edith, does not the reader in his own mind contradict the consistent critic? Does not this answer your purpose?
By no means. What you say is quite true. A dogmatic writer rouses a spirit of contradiction in the reader, but this is often a spirit of ire, of deep resentment. That is in itself, assuredly, something, but it is not the whole purpose of criticism to arouse anger, whatever the prima donna who reads the papers the morning after her début at the Opera may think. Criticism should open channels of thought and not close them; it should stimulate the soul and not revolt it. And criticism can only be wholesome and sane and spiritually stimulating when it is contradictory. I do not mean to say that a critic should never dogmatize— I suppose at this moment I myself appear to be dogmatizing! He may be as dogmatic as he pleases for a page or two pages, but it is unsafe to base an entire book on a single idea and it is still more unsafe to reflect this idea in one's next book. It is better to turn the leaf and begin afresh on a new page. Artists are never consistent. Ibsen apparently wrote A Doll's House to prove that the truth should always be told to one's nearest and dearest and, apparently, he wrote The Wild Duck to prove that it should not. Ibsen, you see, was a poet an he knew that both his theses were true. In his at tempt to explain the revolutionary doctrines which he found inherent in Wagner's Ring, Bernard Shaw ran across many snags. He swam through the Rheingold, rode triumphantly through Die Walküre, even clambered gaily through Siegfried, by making the hero a protestant, but when he reached Götterdämmerung, his hobby-horse bucked and threw him. Shaw was forced to admit that Götterdämmerung was pure opera, and he attempted to evade the difficulty by explaining that Wagner wrote the book for this work before he wrote the other three, quite forgetting that, if Wagner's intention had been the creation of a revolutionary cycle, it would have been entirely possible for him to rewrite the last drama to fit the thesis. The fact is that the work is inconsistent from any point of view except the point of view of art. Any critic who is an artist will be equally inconsistent.
Truth! Truth! Peter cried in scorn. Forsooth, what is truth? Voltaire was right: error also has its merits.
And yet . . . I began.
And yet! he interrupted, still more scornfully. No, there is no such thing as truth. Truth is impossible. Truth is incredible. The most impossible and incredible physical, spiritual, or mental form or idea or conception in the cosmos is the cult of truth. Truth implies permanence and nothing is permanent. Truth implies omniscience and no one is omniscient. Truth implies community of feeling and no two human beings feel alike about anything, except perhaps for a few shifting seconds. Truth, well if there is such a thing as truth, we may at least say that it is beyond human power to recognize it.
But it is not impossible to approach Truth, to play around her, to almost catch her, to vision her, so to speak. No, that is not impossible. Natheless, the artist, the writer, the critic who most nearly approaches Truth is he who contradicts himself the oftenest and the loudest. One of the very best books James Huneker has written is a work purporting to come from the pen of a certain Old Fogy, in which that one opposes all of James's avowed opinions. It is probable, indeed, that we can get the clearest view of Huneker's ideas from this book.
Then truth is not an essential of art? I asked.
It has, of course, nothing whatever to do with art. No more has form. Life has so much form that art, which should never imitate life, should be utterly lacking in form. Criticism appears to be a case apart. Criticism is an attempt, at its worst at least, to define art and definition implies truth and error. But what the critics do not realize in their abortive efforts to capture her, is that Truth is elusive. She slips away if you try to pin her down. You must, as Matthew Arnold has said much better than I can, approach her from all sides. Even then she will elude you, for the reason I have elucidated, because she does not exist!
Why do we read the old critics? For ideas? Seldom. Style? More often. Anecdote? Always, when there is any. Spirit? We delight in it. Facts? Never. No, you will never find facts—at least about such a metaphysical concept as art—correctly stated in books, because there is no way of stating them correctly. And the evasion of facts is an exact science which has yet to become popular with the critics, although it is always popular with readers, as the continued success of Berlioz's Mémoires goes to show. We read the old critics to find out about the critics, not about the subjects on which they are writing. Consequently, it is only the critics who have been interesting personalities who are read through many generations.
As an addendum, I might state that interest in art is fatal. An enthusiastic essay will kill anything. Spontaneity and freshness do not withstand praise. Art must be devoid of self-consciousness. A certain famous actress once told me that she never liked to have people particularize in their enthusiasm about one of her performances. When, she said, they tell me that such and such a gesture, such and such a tone of voice, is the important moment in one of my interpretations, I can never repeat it without remembering their praise, and, involuntarily, something of the original freshness has departed.
I remember another occasion on which Peter talked about the subject that most interested him.
It is the pleasant custom of present day publishers of books, he was saying, to prelude the real publication of a volume by what is technically known as a dummy. The dummy, the sample from which orders are taken, to all outward inspection, appears to be precisely like the finished book. The covers, the labels, the painted top, and the uncut edges give one every reason to hope for a meaty interior. Once opened, however, the book offers the browser a succession of blank pages. Sheet after sheet of clean white paper slips through his fingers, unless, by some chance, he has opened the volume at the beginning, for the title-page and table of contents are printed (the dedication is missing), and so are the first thirteen pages of the text.
Such dummies are irresistible to me. Coming warm, hot even, from the binder, they palpitate with a suggestion which no perusal of their contents can disturb. How much better than the finished book! I exclaim, and there are days when I feel that I will never write a book; I will write only dummies. I would write a title-page, a table of contents, and thirteen pages of some ghost essay, breaking off in the middle of a curious phrase, leaving the reader sweetly bewildered in this maze of tender thought. And, to give this dummy over-value, to heighten its charm and its mystery, I would add an index to the blank pages, wherein one could learn that on empty page 76 hovered the spirits of Heliogabalus and Gertrude Atherton. It would further inform one that Joe Jackson, George Augustus Sala, and fireless cookers were discussed on page 129. Fancy the reader's delight in learning that he might cull passages dealing with the breeding of white mice on unbegotten pages 67, 134, 185 et seq., 210, 347!
I have it in mind to call my first dummy, Shelling Peas for Shillings. The binding will be of magenta boards with a pistachio-green label, printed in magenta ink. The top will be stained pistachio-green and the edges will be unopened. On the title-page, I shall set an appropriate motto and a plausible table of contents might include:
The Incredible History of Ambrose Gwinett
Inkstains and Stoppage
Purcell, Polko, and Things Beginning with a P
Folk-Dancing at Coney Island
Carnegie Hall as a Cure for Insomnia
Many Blue Objects and One Black One
Ouida's Italy
Erasmus Darwin's Biographer
Etc.
You see how the subjects present images and ideas which will make it possible for the reader, in his mind's eye, to write the papers himself. Shelling Peas for Shillings, Peter rolled the name over. It's a good title. I shouldn't wonder if sometime that dummy would be much sought after by collectors.
- ↑ In a later book, his biography of Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris tells us more about himself than he does about Wilde. C. V. V.