A Writer's Notebook (Vintage International) Page 7

  But the great charm of Holy Dying lies in the general atmosphere of the book, scented and formal, calm and urbane like an old-world garden; and still more in the beautiful poetry of stray phrases. One cannot turn a page without finding some felicitous expression, some new order of simple words which seems to give them a new value; and often enough some picturesque passage, overladen, like that earliest charming rococo in which decoration was exuberant, but notwithstanding kept within the bounds of perfect taste.

  Nowadays in looking for an epithet the conscientious writer searches (generally in vain!) for one which shall put the thing to be described in a new light, disclosing some characteristic which has never before been revealed; but Jeremy Taylor never even tries to do anything of the kind. The adjective which comes first to his mind is the one he uses. There are a thousand epithets with which you may describe the sea, the only one which, if you fancy yourself as a stylist, you will scrupulously avoid is blue; yet it is that which most satisfies Jeremy Taylor. He has not the incisive phrase of Milton, the poetic power of putting together nouns and adjectives, adverbs and verbs, in a conjunction which has never been used before. He never surprises. His imagination is without violence or daring. He is content to walk the old road, using phrases and expressions as he finds them; and the chief peculiarity of his style consists in his mild, bucolic outlook upon life. He sees the world amiably and transcribes it exactly, without great art; but with a pleasing desire to put things as picturesquely as he can.

  The rising sun coloured the mist variously, till it was iridescent as the chalcedony, purple and rosy and green.

  Terracotta Statuettes. I was enchanted by the facile motion of the little figures, by their bold gestures and nonchalant attitudes. In the folds of their drapery, in their arrested movements, there was all the spirit of that civilisation of the fresh air which was perhaps the chief part of Hellenic existence. A row of figurines from Tanagra fills the imaginative mind with an ardent longing for that freer, simple life of ancient times.

  The sad, stormy night of eternal damnation.

  And occasionally, in a break of the rapid clouds, appeared a pale star shivering in the cold.

  An azure more profound than the rich enamel of an old French jewel.

  The ploughed fields gaining in the sunshine the manifold colours of the jasper.

  The foliage of the elm trees more sombre than jade.

  In the sun the wet leaves glistened like emeralds, meretricious stones which might fitly deck the pompous depravity of a royal courtesan.

  Rich with an artificial, elaborate richness like those old gorgeous jewels incrusted with precious stones.

  A green like that of the old enamelled jewels which is more translucent than emerald.

  The rich profundity of the garnet.

  It had the transparent, coloured richness of a scale of agate.

  The sky more luminously blue than the lapis lazuli.

  Under the dying sun, after the rain, the colours of the country assumed a new, an almost laboured richness, resembling for a moment the opulent hues of Limoges enamel.

  Like a Limoges plate sparkling with opulent colours.

  The water, in the deep translucent shadow, had the dark, heavy richness of jade.

  The reader may well ask himself what these enamels, what these stones, precious and semi-precious, are doing here. I will tell him. At that time, still impressed by the exuberant prose that was fashionable in the nineties and aware that my own was flat, plain and pedestrian, I thought I should try to give it more colour and more ornament. That is why I read Milton and Jeremy Taylor with laborious zeal. One day, my mind upon a florid passage in Oscar Wilde’s Salome, I took pencil and paper and went to the British Museum where, hoping they would come in handy, I made these notes.

  Piccadilly before dawn. After the stir and ceaseless traffic of the day, the silence of Piccadilly early in the morning, in the small hours, seems barely credible. It is unnatural and rather ghostly. The great street in its emptiness has a sort of solemn broadness, descending in a majestic sweep with the assured and stately ease of a placid river. The air is pure and limpid, but resonant, so that a solitary cab suddenly sends the whole street ringing, and the emphatic trot of the horse resounds with long reverberations. Impressive by reason of their regularity, the electric lights, self-assertive and brazen, flood the surroundings with a harsh and snowy brilliance; with a kind of indifferent violence they cast their glare upon the huge silent houses, and lower down throw into distinctness the long evenness of the park railings and the nearer trees. And between, outshone, like an uneven string of discoloured gems, twinkles the yellow flicker of the gas jets.

  There is silence everywhere, but the houses are quiet and still, with a different silence from the rest, standing very white but for the black gaping of the many windows. In their sleep, closed and bolted, they line the pavement, helplessly as it were, disordered and undignified, having lost all significance without the busy hum of human voices and the hurrying noise of persons passing in and out.

  The autumn too has its flowers, but they are little loved and little praised.

  This is such nonsense that I cannot believe it was meant literally, and I have wondered whether this conceit occurred to me because a woman somewhat advanced in years had made a pass on the shy young man I was then.

  K. I think you can often get to know a good deal about a man by discovering what books he reads. In the quiet life which falls to the share of most of us, the spirit of adventure is with difficulty able to satisfy itself in any way other than by reading. In the perusal of books men are able to lead artificial lives which are often truer than those circumstances have forced upon them. If you asked K. which books had chiefly influenced him, he would have perhaps been at a loss for an answer; it is a question often asked, and it is not really so silly as at first sight it seems. The answer generally given is the Bible and Shakespeare, sometimes from mere hypocritical foolishness, but often for fear of being thought pretentious if the reply is more original than was expected. I do not think K. would name the books which have most occupied his mind, which have given him the most vivid sensations, without some complacency. The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter would be on the list along with Newman’s Apologia, Apuleius along with Walter Pater; George Meredith, the Judicious Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne and Gibbon. What takes his fancy most is gorgeousness of style. He likes the precious. Of course, he’s rather an ass; an intelligent, well-read ass.

  He felt like a man in a deep chasm who sees at midday the stars which those that live in daylight cannot perceive.

  It seemed to himself that his burning thirst could be assuaged by nothing less than the collected force of all the currents which make up life.

  A sound and well-advised judgment.

  The Canon. He avoided all religious questions, almost as though they were improprieties; but when pressed, spoke in a tentative, deprecatory way. He was always saying that evolution must take place in religion as in everything else. He took his stand on the boundary line between knowledge and ignorance. “Here human reason can go no further,” he said, and straightway proceeded to appropriate that dark and undiscovered country. But when science, like a tongue of the sea, forced its way in and showed that the reason of man was at home in yet another region, he fell back quickly. Like a defeated general who colours his despatches, he called his reverse a tactical move to the rear. He put his faith in the unknowable. He staked his all upon the limitations of reason, but, like a spendthrift watching the usurer gather his estate acre by acre, he watched the progress of science with difficultly concealed anxiety.

  He read from his lectern, knowing that part of his congregation accepted them as literally true, while part took them as manifestly false, passages of the Bible which he himself knew were legends which no sensible man could believe. Sometimes doubts assailed him with regard to his justification for so doing, but mentally he shrugged his shoulders. “After all,” he said, “it’s good that
the ignorant should believe these things. It’s always dangerous to tamper with people’s beliefs.” Sometimes, however, he went so far as to arrange that his curate should read what he himself could scarcely bring himself to. He preferred his curates rather stupid.

  When he flew into a passion he called it righteous anger; and when someone did a thing he didn’t like he called his own state of mind virtuous indignation.

  Matthew Arnold’s style. It is an admirable instrument for the presentation of thought. It is clear, simple and precise. It runs like a smooth, limpid river—with almost too tranquil a stream. If style resembles the clothes of a well-dressed man, which attract no attention, but when by chance examined are found seemly, then Arnold’s style is perfect. It is never obtrusive, never by a vivid phrase or a picturesque epithet distracts attention from the matter; but when one scrutinises it, one discovers how carefully balanced are the sentences, how harmonious, graceful and elegant is the rhythm. One perceives the felicity with which the words are put together and is a little astonished that so great an effect can be obtained by the use of words which are quite homely and in common use. Arnold gives distinction to everything he touches. His style reminds one of a very well-bred and cultured lady, somewhat advanced in years so that the passions of life are more than half forgotten, and of such exquisite manners as to suggest a bygone day, yet with humour and vivacity such that the thought never occurs to one that she belongs to an older generation. But this style, so well suited to irony and wit, to exposition, so apt for pointing out the weakness of an argument, makes tremendous demands upon the matter. It discovers weakness of reasoning or commonplace of thought without pity; it has then a sort of ghastly bareness which is disconcerting. It is a method rather than an art. No one more than I can realise what immense labour it must have needed to acquire that mellifluous cold brilliance. It is a platitude that simplicity is the latest acquired of all qualities, and one can see sometimes in passages of Matthew Arnold traces of the constant effort, of the constraint he must have put upon himself, before the fashion of writing he had adopted became a habit. I do not mean by this any disparagement; but I cannot help thinking that after the long toil necessary to attain it, Arnold’s style was almost automatic. We know that Pater’s never became so; and indeed it is obvious that the picturesqueness, the wealth of imagery, the varied metaphors by which he got his effects required constant invention. But in all these Arnold’s style is lacking; his vocabulary is small and his turns of phrase constantly recur; the simplicity he aimed at allowed little scope to the imagination. Whatever he writes about, his style is the same. And it is to this, perhaps, as much as to his classicism, that is due the frequent reproach of impersonality. But to me Arnold’s style is just as personal as that of Pater or of Carlyle. Indeed it seems to express very clearly his character, slightly feminine, pettish, a little magisterial, cold, but redeemed by a wonderful grace, agility of thought and unfailing elegance.

  I’m glad I don’t believe in God. When I look at the misery of the world and its bitterness I think that no belief can be more ignoble.

  An interesting question is whether more than a certain degree of civilisation is not harmful to the race. In antiquity degeneration has invariably followed upon a high state of culture; and the history of ancient times is a history of the decline and fall of one great nation after another. The explanation appears to be that more than a certain amount of civilisation renders the nation unfit for the struggle of life; and its people are conquered by others, hardier and more courageous, who have attained to no such exquisiteness of cultivation. Just as the Greeks were destroyed by the barbarous power of Rome, France, cultivated, highly civilised, refined and sensitive, was defeated by the rough and brutal might of Germany. The artist is overthrown by the philistine and the man of culture ousted by the boor. The conclusion appears to be that coarseness of taste and want of delicacy are advantageous rather than the reverse.

  Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders have the same pre-eminence over the English that the Scotch have long been observed to have. Bred under harder conditions, so that natural selection has greater play, they are better adapted to the struggle for life than are the members of the older civilisation. They look upon existence with a less analytic eye, their grosser instincts are more powerful; less civilised than we, less concerned with the graces of life, they are more robust. Their morality, their view of life is directed (unconsciously, of course) to the good of the race rather than to the benefit of the individual; they produce fewer men of mark, but on the other hand their race-character is stronger and more distinctive.

  After all, the only means of improving the race is by natural selection; and this can only be done by elimination of the unfit. All methods which tend to their preservation—education of the blind and of deaf-mutes, care of the organically diseased, of the criminal and of the alcoholic—can only cause degeneration.

  Reason must act eventually on the side of Natural Selection. Admitting the conflict between selfishness supported by reason and altruism supported by religion, it is, after all, as the history of Evolution shows, the individual advantage which has occasioned progress; and it seems illogical to suppose that in human society it should be different.

  Goodness originated in human instincts, and those characteristics which have been peculiar to a tribe have always been dignified as virtues. Just as the ideal of beauty in any tribe has always been its average appearance carried to a rather higher degree, so the instincts which it has found in itself it has called good.

  All this effort of natural selection, wherefore? What is the good of all this social activity beyond helping unessential creatures to feed and propagate?

  The ethical standard is as ephemeral as all else in the world. Good is nothing more than the conduct which is fittest to the circumstances of the moment; and the result of further evolution may be to dethrone the present ethical ideal and overthrow all that we now regard as virtue. Failure or success in the struggle for existence is the sole moral standard. Good is what survives.

  Morality is the weapon which society in the struggle for existence uses in its dealings with the individual. Society rewards those actions and praises those qualities which are necessary to its survival. The office of morality is to persuade the individual that what is of benefit to society is of benefit to him.

  There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

  Put, for the sake of argument, the End in Itself of Kant in Truth, Beauty, Goodness; what answer will you make to the simple observation that Truth, Beauty and Goodness are scarcely less ephemeral than the flowers of the field? Even in the short period of recorded history the connotation of these three concepts has radically changed. Why should you presumptuously assume that the ideas of the present day on these subjects are absolute? How then can you take as the End in Itself what is purely relative? Before you talk to us of the End in Itself tell us what is the Absolute.

  It is the fashion to despise the palate and its pleasures; but in point of fact the sense of taste is more important than the æsthetic instinct. A man can get through life more easily without an æsthetic sense than without a sense of taste. If, as seems reasonable, the various faculties of man are ranked according to their necessity for his preservation, the digestive apparatus, with the sexual, is the highest and the most important.

  It is obvious that the hedonic element is very present to the mind of the religious man, and influences his action as profoundly as it influences that of the hedonist pure and simple—only he puts a future happiness as the reward of his deed rather than an immediate one. In fact, hedonism is nowhere more conspicuous than in those who choose a certain course because they will enjoy eternal bliss; and if their idea of this future happy state be examined, it will gener
ally be found so grossly material that many a professed hedonist would be ashamed to acknowledge it.

  But by a curious refinement of emotion some deeply religious persons persuade themselves that they act with no hope of reward, but merely for the love of God. Yet here too, if the feeling is analysed, a hedonic element will be discovered; the reward is in the intimate self-satisfaction of virtuous action, in the pleasant consciousness of having done right; and this for emotional natures can be more satisfying than any grosser, more obvious benefits.

  What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.

  Human beauty is determined by sexual attractiveness. It is an intensification of traits common to a certain people at a certain time, but a slight one, for too great a departure from the normal excites aversion rather than admiration. Sexually the aim both of men and women is to distinguish themselves from others and thus call attention to themselves. This they do by accentuating the characteristics of their race. So the Chinese compress their naturally small feet and the Europeans constrict their naturally slim waists. And when the characteristics of a people change, their ideal of beauty changes too. English women have added to their stature during the last hundred years; the heroines of the older novels were far from tall, and literature had to wait for Tennyson to learn that inches added to beauty.