Chapter IX

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That railway journey to Lawrence, Kansas, is as vivid to me now as if it had taken place yesterday yet it all happened more than fifty years ago. It was a blazing hot day and in the seat opposite to me was an old grey-haired man who appeared to be much troubled by the heat: he moved about restlessly, mopped his forehead, took off his vest and finally went out probably to the open observation platform, leaving a couple of books on his seat. I took one of them up heedlessly—it was “The Life and Death of Jason”, by William Morris. I read a page or two, was surprised by the easy flow of the verse; but not gripped, so I picked up the other volume:—“Laus Veneris: Poems and Ballads” by Algernon Charles Swinburne. It opened at the Anactoria and in a moment, I was carried away entranced as no poetry before or since has ever entranced me. Venus, herself, spoke in the lines:

“Alas! that neither rain nor snow nor dew Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through, Assuage me nor allay me, nor appease, Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease, Till Time wax faint in all her periods, Till Fate undo the bondage of the Gods To lay and slake and satiate me all through, Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew, And shed around and over and under me Thick darkness and the insuperable sea.”

I haven’t seen the poem since and there may be verbal inaccuracies in my version; but the music and passion of the verses enthralled me and when I came to “The Leper”, the last stanzas brought hot tears to my eyes and in the “Garden of Proserpine”, I heard my own soul speaking with divine if hopeless assurance. Was there ever such poetry? Even the lighter verses were charming:

“Remembrance may recover And time bring back to time The name of your first lover, The ring of my first rhyme: But rose-leaves of December, The storms of June shall fret; The day that you remember, The day that I forget.

And then the gay defiance:

In the teeth of the glad salt weather, In the blown wet face of the sea; While three men hold together, Their Kingdoms are less by three.

And the divine songs to Hugo and to Whitman and the superb “Dedication”: the last verse of it a miracle:

Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the Heavens have one; Though the stars be discrowned of the sunlight; And the earth dispossessed of the Sun: They have moonlight and sleep for repayment; When refreshed as a bride and set free; With stars and sea-winds in her raiment Night sinks on the sea.”

My very soul was taken: I had no need to read them twice: I’ve never seen them since: I shall not forget them so long as this machine lasts. They flooded my eyes with tears, my heart with passionate admiration. In this state the old gentlemen came back and found me, a cowboy to all appearance, lost, tear-drowned in Swinburne.

“I think that’s my book”, he said calling me back to dull reality. “Surely”, I replied bowing; “but what magnificent poetry and I never heard of Swinburne before.” “This is his first book I believe”, said the old gentleman, “but I’m glad you like his verses.” “Like”, I cried, “who could help adoring them!” and I let myself go to recite the Proserpine:

“From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever Gods may be That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.”

“Why you’ve learned it by heart!”, cried the old man in wonder; “learned”, I repeated, “I know half the book by heart: if you had stayed away another half hour, I’d have known it all” and I went on reciting for the next ten minutes.

“I never heard of such a thing in my life”, he cried: “fancy a cowboy who learns Swinburne by merely reading him. It’s astounding! Where are you going?” “To Lawrence,” I replied. “We’re almost there,” he added and then, “I wish you would let me give you the book. I can easily get another copy and I think it ought to be yours.”

I thanked him with all my heart and in a few minutes more got down at Lawrence station then as now far outside the little town clasping my Swinburne in my hand.

I record this story not to brag of my memory for all gifts are handicaps in life; but to show how kind Western Americans were to young folk and because the irresistible, unique appeal of Swinburne to youth has never been set forth before, so far as I know.

In a comfortable room at the Eldridge House, in the chief street of Lawrence, I met my brother: Willie seemed woefully surprised by my appearance: “You’re as yellow as a guinea; but how you’ve grown”, he cried. “You may be tall yet but you look ill, very ill!”

He was the picture of health and even better-looking than I had remembered him: a man of five feet ten or so with good figure and very handsome dark face: hair, small moustache and goatee beard jet black, straight thin nose and superb long hazel eyes with black lashes: he might have stood for the model of a Greek god were it not that his forehead was narrow and his eyes set close.

In three months he had become enthusiastically American, “America is the greatest country in the world”, he assured me from an abysmal ignorance; “any young man who works can make money here; if I had a little capital I’d be a rich man in a very few years; it’s some capital I need, nothing more.” Having drawn my story out of me especially the last phase when I divided up with the boys, he declared I must be mad. “With five thousand dollars”, he cried, “I could be rich in three years, a millionaire in ten. You must be mad; don’t you know that everyone is for himself in this world: good gracious! I never heard of such insanity: if I had only known!”

For some days I watched him closely and came to believe that he was perfectly suited to his surroundings, eminently fitted to succeed in them. He was an earnest Christian, I found, who had been converted and baptised in the Baptist Church; he had a fair tenor voice and led the choir; he swallowed all the idiocies of the incredible creed; but drew some valuable moral sanctions from it; he was a teetotaler and didn’t smoke; a Nazarene, too, determined to keep chaste as he called a state of abstinence from women, and weekly indulgence in self-abuse which he tried to justify as inevitable.

The teaching of Jesus himself had little or no practical effect on him; he classed it all together as counsels of an impossible perfection, and like the vast majority of Americans, accepted a childish Pauline-German morality while despising the duty of forgiveness and scorning the Gospel of Love.

A few days after our first meeting, Willie proposed to me that I should lend him a thousand dollars and he would give me twenty-five per cent for the use of the money. When I exclaimed against the usurious rate, twelve per cent being the State limit, he told me he could lend a million dollars if he had it, at from three to five per cent a month on perfect security. “So you see,” he wound up, “that I can easily afford to give you two hundred and fifty dollars a year for the use of your thousand: one can buy real estate here to pay fifty per cent a year; the country is only just beginning to be developed”, and so forth and so on in wildest optimism: the end of it being that he got my thousand dollars, leaving me with barely five hundred, but as I could live in a good boardinghouse for four dollars a week, I reckoned that at the worst I had one carefree year before me and if Willie kept his promise, I would be free to do whatever I wanted to do for years to come.

It was written that I was to have another experience in Lawrence much more important than anything to do with my brother. “Coming events cast their shadows before”, is a poetic proverb, singularly inept: great events arrive unheralded, were truer.

One evening I went to a political meeting at Liberty Hall near my hotel. Senator Ingalls was going to speak and a Congressman on the Granger movement, the first attempt of the Western farmers to react politically against the exploitation of Wall Street. The hall was packed: just behind me sat a man between two pretty grey-eyed girls. The man’s face attracted me even at first sight: I should be able to picture him for even as I write his face comes before me as vividly as if the many long years that separate us, were but the momentary closing of my eyes.

At the end of this