Part 13

Henley was a master of the vainglorious phrase. He was Pistol with a style. He wrote in order to be overheard. His words were sturdy vagabonds, bawling and swaggering. “Let us be drunk,” he cried in one of his _rondeaux_, and he made his words exultant as with wine.

He saw everywhere in Nature the images of the lewd population of midnight streets. For him even the moon over the sea was like some old hag out of a Villon ballade:

Flaunting, tawdry and grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk.

Similarly, the cat breaking in upon the exquisite dawn that wakes the “little twitter-and-cheep” of the birds in a London Park becomes a picturesque and obscene figure:

Behold A rakehell cat--how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance-- Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade!

Or, again, take the description of the East Wind in _London Voluntaries_:

Out of the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent influence released From the most squalid cellarage of hell, The Wind-fiend, the abominable-- The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light-- Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; And in a cloud unclean Of excremental humours, roused to strife By the operation of some ruinous change, Wherever his evil mandate run and range, Into a dire intensity of life, A craftsman at his bench, he settles down To the grim job of throttling London Town.

This is, of its kind, remarkable writing. It may not reflect a poetic view of life, but it reflects a romantic and humorous view. Henley’s humour is seldom good humour: it is, rather, a sort of boisterous invective. His phrases delight us like the oaths of some old sea-captain if we put ourselves in the mood of delight. And how extravagantly he flings them down, like a pocketful of money on the counter of a bar! He may only be a pauper, behaving like a rich man, but we, who are his guests for an hour, submit to the illusion and become happy echoes of his wild talk.

For he has the gift of language. It is not the loud-sounding sea but loud-sounding words that are his passion. Compared to Henley, even Tennyson was modest in his use of large Latin negatives. His eloquence is sonorous with the music of “immemorial,” “intolerable,” “immitigable,” “inexorable,” “unimaginable,” and the kindred train of words. He is equally in love with “wonderful,” “magnificent,” “miraculous,” “immortal,” and all the flock of adjectival enthusiasm.

Here in this radiant and immortal street,

he cries, as he stands on a spring day in Piccadilly. He did not use sounding adjectives without meaning, however. His adjectives express effectively that lust of life that distinguishes him from other writers. For it is lust of life, in contradistinction to love, that is the note of Henley’s work. He himself lets us into this secret in the poem that begins:

Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.

Again, when he writes of Piccadilly in spring, he cries:

Look how the liberal and transfiguring air Washes this inn of memorable meetings, This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, Till, through its jocund loveliness of length A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, Some vision multitudinous and agleam, Of happiness as it shall be evermore!

The spectacle of life produced in Henley an almost exclusively physical excitement. He did not wish to see things transfigured by the light that never was on sea or land. He preferred the light on the wheels of a hansom cab or, at best, the light that falls on the Thames as it flows through London. His attitude to life, in other words, was sensual. He could escape out of circumstances into the sensual enchantments of the _Arabian Nights_, but there was no escape for him, as there is for the great poets, into the general universe of the imagination. This physical obsession may be put down in a measure to his long years of ill-health and struggle. But even a healthy and prosperous Henley, I fancy, would have been restless, dissatisfied, embittered. For him most seas were Dead Seas, and most shores were desolate. The sensualist’s “Dust and Ashes!” breaks in, not always mournfully, but at times angrily, upon the high noon of his raptures. He longs for death as few poets have longed:

Of art and drink I have had my fill,

he declares, and the conclusion of the whole matter is:

For the end I know is the best of all.

To his mother, to his sister, to Stevenson he writes this recurrent message--the glad tidings of death to come. Man’s life is for him but a child’s wanderings among the shows of a fair:

Till at last, Tired of experience he turns To the friendly and comforting breast Of the old nurse, Death.

And in most of his poems on this theme it seems to be the peace of the grave he desires, not an immortality of new experiences. There is one moving poem, however, dedicating the “windlestraws” of his verse to his wife in which a reference to their dead child suggests that he, too, may have felt the hunger for immortality:

Poor windlestraws On the great, sullen, roaring pool of Time And Chance and Change, I know! But they are yours, as I am, till we attain That end for which we make, we two that are one: A little exquisite Ghost Between us, smiling with the serenest eyes Seen in this world, and calling, calling still In that clear voice whose infinite subtleties Of sweetness, thrilling back across the grave, Break the poor heart to hear:

“_Come, Dadsie, come? Mama, how long--how long?_”

Sufferer and sensualist, Henley found in the affections some relief from his savage unrest. It was affection that painted that masterly sonnet-portrait of Stevenson in _Apparition_, and there is affection, too, in that song in praise of England, _Pro Rege Nostro_, though much of his praise of England, like his praise of life, is but poetry of lust. Lust in action, unfortunately, has a way of being absurd, and Henley is often absurd in his lustful--by which one does not mean lascivious--poems. His _Song of the Sword_ and his _Song of Speed_ are both a little absurd in their sheer lustfulness. Here we have a mere extravagance of physical exultation, with a great deal of talk about “the Lord,” who is--to the ruin of the verse--a figure of rhetoric and phrase of excitement, and not at all the Holy Spirit of the religious.

Henley, indeed, was for the most part not a religious man but an egoist. He saw his own shadow everywhere on the universe, like the shadow of a crippled but undefeated lion. He saw himself sometimes with pity, oftener with pride. One day he found his image in an “old, black rotter of a boat” that lay stranded at Shoreham:

With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, That makes me think of legs and a broken spine.

But he preferred to think, as in the most famous of his poems, of his “unconquerable soul,” and to enjoy the raree-show of life heroically under the promise of death. To call this attitude vainglorious is not to belittle it. Henley was a master in his own school of literature, and his works live after him. His commixture of rude and civil phrase may be a dangerous model for other writers, but with what skill he achieves the right emphasis and witty magniloquence of effect! He did not guess (or guess at) the secrets of life, but he watched the pageant with a greedy eye, sketched one or two figures that amused or attracted him, and cheered till his pen ought to have been hoarse. He also cursed, and, part of the time, he played with rhymes, as if in an interchange of railleries. But, in all circumstances, he was a valiant figure--valiant not only in words but in the service of words. We need not count him among the sages, but literature has also room for the sightseers, and Henley will have a place among them for many years to come.

VII

LORD ROSEBERY

Lord Rosebery’s oratory is the port at a banquet. It is a little somnolent in its charm. Mr. Birrell has a better cellar of the livelier French wines. But the Rosebery port is a wine without which no memorial dinner can come to a perfect end. It is essentially the wine of memory. It is used to moisten monumental effigies as champagne is used to christen ships. As you read his two volumes of _Miscellanies_, you get the impression that, wherever there is an effigy to be unveiled, you will find Lord Rosebery present with his noble aspersion of words. I do not know whether Lord Rosebery himself chooses what effigies he will talk about or whether he has them chosen for him. It is difficult to imagine a statue on which he would not talk admirably. He is the greatest living showman of statues. Even when there is no statue to be unveiled, but only a centenary to be commemorated, he usually sees the great man in the posture of a statue--a little larger than life, and with the sins and scandals discreetly slurred over. Hence it would be in vain to look in his commemoration addresses for great character studies or critical interpretations of genius. They are compliments, not criticisms. They are spoken on behalf of all present. Lord Rosebery’s art is the art of the funeral speech blended with the art of the speech at a distribution of prizes. Of this difficult though minor art he is an accomplished practitioner.

Hence it would be ridiculous to judge his addresses on Burns by the same standards by which we judge the studies of Carlyle and Stevenson and Henley on the same subject. Lord Rosebery’s speeches belong to the literature of formalities, and it is their chief virtue that they express the common view with brightness of emphasis, humour of anecdote, and at times with a charming sentimental music of speech. They say what everyone present would regard as the right thing to say, and they say it very much better than anybody else on the platform could say it. He is a spokesman, not a discoverer. His freshness is that of a man who furnishes what is already known rather than of one who adds to the stock of knowledge. That he has also the gifts of the writer who can add to the stock of knowledge is shown by his humorous, fascinating and amiable portrait of Lord Randolph Churchill. Here he speaks for himself, not for the meeting. Lord Randolph is as real to him as a character in fiction, with his spell, his impudence and his disaster. As we read this story we feel that, if he cared, Lord Rosebery might write a book of reminiscences, telling with detached frankness the whole truth about himself and his great associates, which would have an immortal place in English biographical literature. For the present, however, we must be content that there should be someone who can speak the general mind on Burns and Burke, on Oliver Cromwell and Dr. Johnson, with a hint of majesty and a lulling charm.

Certainly, he reveals no secrets that are not open secrets about his heroes. He is continually asking “What is his secret?” and the answer is usually a little disappointing, a little exiguous in surprise, when it comes. Thus he tells us that the secret of Burns “lies in two words--inspiration and sympathy.” That is true, but it leaves Burns smooth as a statue. Burns appeals to us surely, not only through his inspiration and sympathy, but as the spirit of man fluttering rebelliously, songfully, satirically, against the bars of orthodoxy. Scotsmen revere him as the champion of human nature against the Levites. His errors, no doubt, were as gross as those of the Levites, but human nature turns affectionately to those who protest on its behalf against tyranny, and Burns with all his sins, was a liberator. When he comes to Burke, Lord Rosebery again asks, “What is his secret?” “The secret of Burke’s character,” he says, “is this, in my judgment--that he loved reform and hated revolution.” This, again, leaves Burke with the eyes of a statue. We shall understand the secret of Burke much better if we see him as a man who had far more passionate convictions about the duties than about the rights of human beings. He believed in good government and in good citizenship, but he was never even touched by the Utopian dream of the perfectibility of man. Lord Rosebery, indeed, brings the figures of the dead to life, not in his interpretation of their secrets, but usually in some anecdote that reminds us of their profound humanity.

His happiest speeches, as a result, are about great men whose private lives have already been laid bare to all the world. When he has to speak on Thackeray, whose life still remains half a secret, he devotes more space to literary criticism, and Thackeray remains for the most part an effigy hung with wreaths of compliments. It is the fashion nowadays to speak ill of Thackeray, and Lord Rosebery’s extravagances on the other side would tempt even a moderate man into disparagement. He refers to Thackeray as “the giant whom we discuss to-day.” There could not be a more inappropriate word for Thackeray than “giant.” One might almost as well call Jane Austen a “giantess.” Charlotte Brontë, as a young author coming under Thackeray’s spell, might legitimately feel that she was in the presence of a Titan. But a man may be a Titan to his contemporaries and yet be no Titan in the long line of great authors. Thackeray, I am convinced, is greatly underestimated to-day, but he will come back into his own only if we are prepared to welcome him on a level considerably below that of the Titans--below Dickens and Tolstoy, below even Sterne. Not that Lord Rosebery finds nothing to censure in Thackeray. Though he remarks that _Vanity Fair_ “appears to many of us the most full and various novel in the English language,” he has no praise for “the limp Amelia and the shadowy Dobbin.” At the same time, he turns aside his censures with a compliment. “The blemishes of _Vanity Fair_ exalt the book,” he declares; “for what must be the merits of a work which absolutely eclipse such defects?” It is one of the perils of oratory that it leads men to utter sentences of this kind. They mean little or nothing, but they have the ring of amiability. On the other hand, Lord Rosebery makes no concession to amiability in his criticism of _Esmond_. “The plot to me,” he says, “is simply repulsive. The transformation of Lady Castlewood from a mother to a wife is unnatural and distasteful to the highest degree. Thackeray himself declared that he could not help it. This, I think, only means that he saw no other than this desperate means of extricating the story. I cannot help it, too. One likes what one likes, and one dislikes what one dislikes.” An occasional reservation of this kind helps to give flavour to Lord Rosebery’s compliments. It gives them the air of being the utterances, not of a professional panegyrist, but of a detached and impartial mind. Thus he begins his eulogy of Dr. Johnson with a confession that Johnson’s own writings are dead for him apart from “two poems and some pleasing biographies.” “Speaking as an individual and illiterate Briton”--so he makes his confession. It is as though the tide withdrew in order to come in with all the more surprising volume.

One thing that must strike many readers with astonishment while reading these speeches and studies is that an orator so famous for his delicate wit should reveal so little delight in the wit of authors. His enthusiasm is largely moral enthusiasm. We think of Lord Rosebery as a _dilettante_, and yet the _dilettanti_ of literature and public life make only a feeble appeal to him. He is interested in few but men of strong character and men of action. His heroes are such men as Cromwell and Mr. Gladstone. Is it that he is an ethical _dilettante_, or is it that he is seeking in these vehement natures a strength of which he feels the lack in himself? Certainly, as we read him, he casts the shadow of a man who has almost all the elements of greatness except this strength. He has been Prime Minister, he has won the Derby, he has achievements behind him sufficient (one would imagine) to fill three lives with success, and yet somehow we picture him as a brilliant failure as we picture the young man who had great possessions. These very _Miscellanies_ bear the stamp of failure. They are the praises of famous men spoken from a balcony in the Castle of Indolence. They are graceful and delightful. But they are haunted by a curious pathos, for the eyes of the speaker gaze wistfully from where he stands towards the path that leads to the Hill Difficulty and the pilgrims who advance along it under heavy burdens to their perils and rewards.

VIII

MR. VACHEL LINDSAY

Mr. Lindsay objects to being called a “jazz poet”; and, if the name implied that he did nothing in verse but make a loud, facetious, and hysterical noise, his objection would be reasonable. It is possible to call him a “jazz poet,” however, for the purpose not of belittling him, but of defining one of his leading qualities. He is essentially the poet of a worked-up audience. He relies on the company for the success of his effects, like a Negro evangelist. The poet, as a rule, is a solitary in his inspiration. He is more likely to address a star than a crowded room. Mr. Lindsay is too sociable to write like that. He invites his readers to a party, and the world for him is a round game. To read “The Skylark” or the “Ode to a Nightingale” in the hunt-the-slipper mood in which one enjoys “The Daniel Jazz” would be disastrous. Shelley and Keats give us the ecstasy of a communion, not the excitement of a party. The noise of the world, the glare, and the jostling crowds fade as we read. The audience of Shelley or Keats is as still as the audience in a cathedral. Mr. Lindsay, on the other hand, calls for a chorus, like a singer at a smoking-concert. That is the spirit in which he has written his best work. He is part entertainer and part evangelist, but in either capacity he seems to demand not an appreciative hush, but an appreciative noise.

It is clear that he is unusually susceptible to crowd excitement. His two best poems, “Bryan, Bryan” and “The Congo,” are born of it. “Bryan, Bryan” is an amazing attempt to recapture and communicate a boy’s emotions as he mingled in the scrimmage of the Presidential election of 1896. Mr. Lindsay becomes all but inarticulate as he recalls the thrill and tumult of the marching West when Bryan called on it to advance against the Plutocrats. He seems to be shouting like a student when students hire a bus and go forth in masks and fancy dress to make a noise in the streets. Luckily, he makes an original noise. He knows that his excitement is more than he can express in intelligible speech, and so he wisely and humorously calls in the aid of nonsense, which he uses with such skill and vehemence that everybody is forced to turn round and stare at him:

Oh, the long-horns from Texas, The jay hawks from Kansas, The plop-eyed bungaroo and giant giassicus, The varmint, chipmunk, bugaboo, The horned toad, prairie-dog, and ballyhoo, From all the new-born states arow, Bidding the eagles of the West fly on, Bidding the eagles of the West fly on. The fawn, prodactyl, and thing-a-ma-jig, The rakeboor, the hellangone, The whangdoodle, batfowl and pig, The coyote, wild-cat, and grizzly in a glow, In a miracle of health and speed, the whole breed abreast, They leaped the Mississippi, blue border of the West. From the Gulf to Canada, two thousand miles long-- Against the towns of Tubal Cain, Ah--sharp was their song. Against the ways of Tubal Cain, too cunning for the young, The long-horn calf, the buffalo, and wampus gave tongue.

In such a passage as this Mr. Lindsay pours decorative nonsense out of a horn of plenty. But his aim is not to talk nonsense: it is to use nonsense as the language of reality. As paragraph follows paragraph, we see with what sureness he is piling colour on colour and crash on crash in order that we may respond almost physically to the sensations of those magnificent and tumultuous days. He has discovered a new sort of rhetoric which enables him to hurry us through mood after mood of comic, pugnacious and sentimental excitement. Addressed to a religious meeting, rhetoric of this kind would be interrupted by cries of “Glory, Hallelujah!” and “Praise de Lord!” Unless you are rhetoric-proof, you cannot escape its spell. Isolated from its context, the passage I have quoted may be subjected to cold criticism. It is only when it keeps its place in the living body of the poem and becomes part of the general attack on our nerves that it is irresistibly effective.

In “The Congo,” it is the excitement of Negroes--in their dances and their religion--that Mr. Lindsay has set to words. As he watches their revels, the picture suggests a companion-picture of Negroes orgiastic in Africa, in the true Kingdom of Mumbo-Jumbo--a Negro’s fairy-tale of a magic land:

Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes, Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats, Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine, And tall silk hats that were red as wine. And they pranced with their butterfly partners there, Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair, Knee-skirts trimmed with the jessamine sweet, And bells on their ankles and little black feet.

But it is the grotesque comedy of the American Negro, not the fantasia on Africa, that makes “The Congo” so entertaining a poem. The description of the “fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room” has often been quoted. There is the same feeling of “racket” in the picture of a religious camp meeting:

A good old negro in the slums of the town Preached at a sister for her velvet gown; Howled at a brother for his low-down ways, His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days; Beat on the Bible till he wore it out Starting the jubilee revival shout. And some had visions as they stood on chairs, And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs. And they all repented, a thousand strong, From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong, And slammed on their hymn books till they shook the room With “glory, glory, glory,” And “Boom, boom, _Boom_.”