And God said to the Man, “Wherefore can I not send thee unto Heaven, and for what reason?”
“Because never, and in no place, have I been able to imagine it,” answered the Man.
And there was silence in the House of Judgment.
VERNON LEE was the pseudonym of Violet Paget (1856-1935), who was born in France and lived most of her life in voluntary exile, but who was English nevertheless. She was the half-sister of the poet Eugene Lee-Hamilton, who spent most of his life as a chronic invalid but eventually recovered his health by mysterious means (only to be accused by some of his friends of having been a hypochondriac all along). Violet also became a habitual sufferer of nervous breakdowns, and her life was further complicated by her ill-concealed lesbianism.
Lee’s supernatural fiction includes some vivid horror stories as well as several notable fantasies. She makes extensive use of the figure of the femme fatale, which is featured in the intense “Amour Dure” and “Dionea” (both in Hauntings, 1890), the flamboyant extravaganza “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” (written in 1889), and the bitterly sentimental Yellow Book fantasy “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” (1896; reprinted in Pope Jacynth and Other Fantastic Tales, 1904). She also wrote an excellent comic fantasy, “The Gods and Ritter Tanhuser” (1913), which - like “The Virgin of the Seven Daggers” - was belatedly reprinted in a book dedicated to Maurice Baring (who was himself a writer of some delicately ironic fantasies), For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories (1927).
“St. Eudaemon and his Orange-Tree” is one of a small group of sarcastic fantasies by Lee which make subtle mockery of Christian mythology in order to support a more liberal morality; the others are “Pope Jacynth” and “Marsyas in Flanders”. These, together with certain stories by Richard Garnett, belong to a curious fin de siècle sub-genre first popularised by Anatole France in stories collected in Mother of Pearl (1892; tr. 1908) and The Well of St. Clare (1895; tr. 1909).
ST. EUDAEMON AND HIS ORANGE-TREE
By Vernon Lee
Here is the story of St. Eudaemon’s Orange-Tree. It is not among the Lives of the Blessed Fathers, by Brother Dominick Cavalca of Vico Pisano, still less in the Golden Legend compiled by James of Voragine; nor, very likely, in any other work of hagiography. I learned it on the spot of the miracle, and in the presence of its ever-blossoming witness, the orange-tree. The orchards of the Caelian and the Aventine spread all round, with their criss-cross of reeds carrying young vines, and you see on all sides great arches and vague ruins: Colosseum, Circus Maximus, House of Nero, and the rest; with, far beyond, modern Rome, St. Peter’s dome and the blue Sabine Mountains. There is a little church - one of a dozen like it - with chipped Ionic columns, and a tesselated pavement lilac and russet like a worn-out precious rug, and a great cactus, like a python, winding round the apse. The orange-tree stands there, shedding its petals over vines and salads, immense and incredibly venerable; what seems the trunk, in reality merely the one surviving branch, the real trunk being hidden deep below the level of the garden. Here did I learn the legend; but from whom, and how, I must leave you to guess. Suffice that it be true.
Long, long ago, before the church was built, which has stood, however, over twelve hundred years, there settled on the Caelian slopes a certain saint, by name Eudaemon. The old Pagan Rome was buried under ground, great boulders and groups of columns only protruding; and the new Christian Rome was being built far off, of stones and brick quarried and carted from the ruins. Weeds and bushes, and great ilexes and elms, had grown up above the former city, and it was haunted of demons. Men never came near it, save to quarry for stone or seek for treasure with dreadful incantation; and it became a wilderness, surrounded, at uneven distances, by the long walls, and the storied square belfries of many monasteries.
The place to which this Eudaemon came - and no one can tell whence he came, nor anything of him save that he had a bride, who died the eve of their wedding - the place to which Eudaemon came was in the heart of the ruins and the wilderness, very far from the abode of men; and indeed he had but two neighbouring saints like himself, a theologian who inhabited a ruined bath to avoid the noise of bell-ringing; and a stylite, who had contrived a platform of planks roofed over with reeds on the top of the column of the Emperor Philip.
Eudaemon, as above stated, was a saint; persons who did not molest their neighbours were mostly saints in those days; and so, of course, he could work miracles. Only, his miracles, in the opinion of other saints, particularly of the Theologian and the Stylite (whose names were Carpophorus and Ursicinus), were nothing special, in fact, just barely within the limits of the miraculous. Eudaemon had planted a garden round about the ruins of the circular temple of Venus; and vines and lettuces, roses and peaches had replaced within a very few years the scrub of ilex and myrtle, and the mad vegetation of wild fennel and oats and wallflower which matted over the masonry; and this, of course, since he was a saint, must be a miracle. He had cleared out, also, the innermost cell of the temple, and turned it into a chapel, with a fair carved tomb of the pagans for an altar, and pictures of the Blessed Virgin and the Saviour, with big eyes and purple clothes, painted on the whitewash. And he had erected alongside a belfry, three stories high, circular and open with pillars quarried from the temple, and stuck about with discs of porphyry (out of the temple floor), and green Cretan bowls for ornament; which, of course, was also a miracle. Moreover, at the end of the orchard he had erected wattled huts for poor folk, to whom he taught gardening and other useful arts; also sheds for cows and goats, and a pigeon-cot; and he had constructed out of osier a cart, and broken in a donkey’s foal, in order to send his vegetables to distribute in Rome to the indigent, together with cans of milk and rounds of goats’ cheese. And to the wives of the poor whom he lodged he taught how to weave and cure skins, and to the children he taught the abacus and the singing of hymns. And for the poor folk he made, near their wattled huts, a bowling-green, and instructed them to play at that game. And indeed the matter of the orange-tree arose out of the making of the bowling-green; all of which were plainly miracles. Meanwhile Eudaemon lived all alone in a shed closed with reeds, and roofed by one of the vaultings of that temple of the Pagans; and he was a laborious man, and abstemious, and possessed a knowledge of medicine, and was able, though but little, to read in the Scriptures; and Eudaemon was a saint, though but a small one.
But Carpophorus the theologian, and Ursicinus the stylite, did not think much of Eudaemon and his saintlings, nay, each thought even less of him than of the other. For Carpophorus, who had translated the books of Deuteronomy from the Hebrew, and the gospels of Nicodemus and of Enoch into Latin, and written six treatises against the Gnostics and Paulicians, and a book on the marriage of the Sons of God; and who, moreover, had a servant to wash his clothes and dust his rolls of manuscript, and cook his dinner, thought Ursicinus both ignorant and rustic, living untidily on that platform on the column, as shaggy and black as a bear, and constantly fixing his eyes on his own navel; while Ursicinus the stylite, who had not changed his tunic or touched cooked food for five years, and had frequently risen to the contemplation of the One, looked down upon the pedantry and luxurious habits of Carpophorus, and esteemed him a man of fleshly vanities.
But Carpophorus and Ursicinus agreed in having a very poor opinion of Eudaemon; and often met in brotherly discourse upon the likelihood of his being given over by Heaven to the Evil One. And this opinion they made freely manifest to himself, on the occasions when he would invite them to dinner in his orchard, regaling them on fruit, milk, wine, and the honey of his bees; and whenever either came singly to borrow a wax taper, or a piece of fair linen, or a basket, or a penn’orth of nails, he made it a point to warn Eudaemon very seriously against his dangerous ways of thinking and proceeding, and to promise intercession with the Powers above.
The two saints would have liked a fine theological set to. But Eudaemon only smiled. Eudaemon was always smiling; and that was one of the worst signs about him: for a man
, let alone a saint, who smiles, expresses thereby satisfaction with this world and confidence in his salvation, both of which are slights to Heaven. Moreover, Eudaemon talked in a profane manner; and there was far too much marrying and giving in marriage among the poor folk he had gathered round him. He showed unseemly interest in women in labour, even assisting them with physic, and advising them on the rearing of infants; he rarely chastised young children, and allowed the lads and maidens to tell him their love-affairs, never exhorting either to a life of abstinence and celibacy. He attended to the ailments of animals, and was frequently heard to address speech to them as if they had been possessed of an immortal soul, and as if their likings and dislikings should be considered; thus he made brooding nests for the doves, and placed dishes of water for the swallows, and was surrounded by birds, allowing them to perch on his shoulders and hands, and calling them by name. Various things he said might almost have led you to suspect - had such suspicion not been too uncharitable - that he considered birds and beasts as the creatures of God and brethren to man; nay, that plants also had life, and recognised the Creator; but when he came to speak of such matters, calling the sun and moon brother and sister, and attributing Christian virtues, as humility, chastity, joyousness, to water, and fire, and clouds, and winds, his discourses were such that it was more charitable to consider them as ravings, and himself as one of the half-witted; and this, indeed, Eudaemon probably was, and not utterly damned, otherwise Carpophorus could scarcely have borrowed his altar clothes and tapers, or Ursicinus accepted his lettuces and honeycomb.
The two saints were devoured by curiosity to know what might be the secret relations of their fellow saint with the world of devils. For these delicate matters gave a saint his position; and on these it was customary to show a subtle mixture of reticence and bragging. Had Eudaemon ever had encounters with the Prince of Darkness? Had he been tempted? Had lovely ladies burst in upon his visions, or large stones been rained down through his roof? Carpophorus, feigning to speak of a third person, made some extraordinary statements concerning himself; and Ursicinus led to even more marvellous suppositions by refusal to go into details. But Eudaemon showed no interest in these discourses, neither courting nor evading them. He stated drily that he had undergone no temptations of an unusual sort, and no persecutions worth considering. As to encounters with devils, and with heathen divinities, upon which his fellow-saints insisted upon explicit answers, he had nothing to report that concerned anyone. He had, indeed, on the coast of Syria once come across a creature who was half man, half horse, of the sort which the pagans called Centaur, of whom he had asked his way in the sand and grass, and who had answered with difficulty, making whinnying noises, and pawing, and cocking his ears; and some years later, among the oakwoods round the lake of Nemi, he had met a Faun, a rustic creature shaped like a man, but with goat’s horns and legs, who had entertained him pleasantly in a cool brake of reeds, and given him nuts and very succulent roots for a midday meal; and it was his opinion that such creatures, although denied human speech, were aware of the goodness of God, and possessed some way of their own, however different from ours, of expressing their joy therein. Indeed, was there aught in the Scriptures which affirmed or suggested that any one of God’s creatures was destitute of such sense of His loving-kindness? As regards the gods of the heathens, what manner of harm could they do to a Christian? Can false gods hurt any except their believers? Nay, Eudaemon actually seemed to hint that these Pagan divinities were deserving of compassion, and that they also, like the sun and moon, the wolves and the lambs, the grass and the trees, were God’s children and our brethren, if only they knew it…
Of course, however, Carpophorus and Ursicinus never allowed Eudaemon to become quite explicit on this point of doctrine, lest they should have to consider him damned beyond remission, and therefore, unfit for their society. As things stood, the two saints were comfortably persuaded that those little visits, with accompanying loans and gifts, were probably poor Eudaemon’s one chance of salvation.
And now for the miracle.
It happened that in digging the ground for a fresh piece of vineyard, a spade struck upon an uncommonly large round stone, which being uncovered, disclosed itself to be a full-length woman, carved in marble, and embedded in the clay, face upwards. The peasants fled in terror, some crying out that they had found an embalmed Pagan, and some, a sleeping female devil. But Eudaemon merely smiled, and wiped the earth off the figure, which was exceedingly comely, and mended one of its arms with cement, and set it up on a carved tombstone of the ancients, at the end of the grass walk through the orchard, and close to the beehives.
Carpophorus and Ursicinus heard the news, and hastening to the spot, instantly offered Eudaemon their help in breaking the figure to bits and conveying it to a limekiln by the Tiber. For it was evidently an image of the goddess Venus, by far the wickedest of all the devils. The two saints examined the statue with holy curiosity, and quoted, respectively, several passages of Athenagoras, and Lactantius, and many anecdotes of the Hermit St. Paul, and of other anchorites of the Thebais. But Eudaemon merely thanked them very sweetly for their exhortations, and sent them away with a pair of new sandals and a flask of oil as a gift. After this, the two saints did not consider themselves free to call upon him any longer, and took no notice of the presents he continued to send. They would greatly have liked to behold that idol again, not on account of its comeliness, which neither recognised, but from intense curiosity to see devils a little closer. But having preached openly against it, and tried to stir the peasants to knock it down and break it, they were ashamed of entering the orchard; and merely sought for opportunities of looking across the narrow valley, and seeing the figure of the goddess, shining white among the criss-cross reeds and the big fig-trees of Eudaemon’s vineyard.
This being the case, judge of the joy of the two holy men when one June evening - and it was the vigil of the Birth of John Baptist - the news was brought that Eudaemon had at last been caught hold of by the Devil! All other considerations vanished, for brotherly charity required that they should fly to the spot and behold the catastrophe.
The two saints were rather disappointed. The Devil had not carried off Eudaemon, whom, indeed, they found peaceably watering some clove-pinks; but he had carried off, or a least appropriated, a notable piece of Eudaemon’s property. For Eudaemon, of all the worldly goods he had once enjoyed, had retained one only, but that surely the most sinful, a wedding-ring. It was quite useless to his neighbours, and a token of earthly affections, having been bought by him to stick on the hand of the girl he had been about to marry. The ring had been a subject of scandal to Carpophorus and Ursicinus, the more so that Eudaemon had flown into a rage (the only time in their experience), when they suggested he should exchange it in the city against a chapel bell; and it was highly satisfactory that the Devil should have opened his campaign by seizing this object above all others.
The way it had happened was this. It being the vigil of the Birth of John Baptist, Eudaemon had, according to a habit of his, which was far from commendable, allowed his peasant folk to make merry, nay, had spread tables for them in the vineyard, and arranged games for young and old; a way of celebrating the occasion the less desirable, that it was said that the vigil of John Baptist happened to coincide with the old feast of the devil Venus, and that the rustics still celebrated it with ceremonies connected with that evil spirit, and in themselves worthy of blame, such as picking bundles of lavender for their linen lockers, making garlands of clove-pinks and lighting bonfires, all of which were countenanced by Eudaemon. On this occasion Eudaemon thought fit to open the bowling-green, which he had just finished building up of green sods, carefully jointed and beaten, with planks to keep the balls from straying. He was showing the rustics how to bowl their balls, and had, for this purpose, girt up his white woollen smock above his knees, when he was stung by a wasp, a creature, no doubt of the Devil. Seeing his finger begin to swell and unwilling to be prevented from
continuing the game, he had, for the first time on record, removed that gold wedding-ring, and, after a minute’s hesitation how to dispose of it, stuck it on the extended right annular figure of the marble statue of the devil Venus; and then gone on playing. But that rash action, so unworthy of a Christian saint, and in which so many blameable acts culminated - for there should have been neither ring to remove nor idol to stick it on - that altogether reprehensible action was punished as it deserved. After a few rounds of the game, Eudaemon bade the peasants fall to on the dinner he had provided for them, while he himself retired to say his prayers. So doing, he sought his ring. But - O prodigy! O terror! it was in vain. The marble she-devil had bent her finger and closed her hand. She had accepted the ring (and with it, doubtless, his wretched sinful soul) and refused to relinquish it. No sooner had a single one of the rustics found out what had happened, than the whole crew of them, men, women, and children, fled in confusion, muttering prayers and shrieking exorcisms, and carrying away what victuals they could.
It was only when Carpophorus and Ursicinus arrived, armed with missals and holy-water brushes, that a few of the boldest rustics consented to return to the scene of the wonder. They found, as I have already mentioned, Eudaemon placidly watering some pots of clove-pinks, which he had prepared as gifts for the maidens. The tables were upset, the bunches of lavender lying about; the lettuces and rosebushes had been trampled. The frogs had begun to wail in the reed-brakes, and the crickets to lament in the ripe corn; bats were circling about and swallows, and the sun was sinking. The last rays fell upon the marble statue at the end of the bowling-green, making the ring glimmer on her finger; and suddenly, just as the two saints entered, reddening and gilding her nakedness into a semblance of life. Carpophorus and Ursicinus gave a yell of terror and nearly fell flat on the ground. Eudaemon looked up from his clove-pinks at them, and at the statue. He understood. “Foolish brothers,” he said, “did you not know that Brother Sun can make all things alive?”
The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy Page 39
