Lore of Proserpine

by Maurice Hewlett

  HARKNESS'S FANCY

  I may have been a precocious child, but I cannot tell within a year ortwo how soon it was that I attained manhood. There must have been amoment of time when I clothed myself in skins, like Adam; when I knewwhat this world calls good and evil--by which this world means nothingmore nor less than men and women, and chiefly women, I think. Savagepeoples initiate their young and teach them the taboos of society bystripes. We allow our issue to gash themselves. By stripes, then, uponmy young flesh, I scored up this lesson for myself. Certain things werenever to be spoken of, certain things never to be looked at in certainways, certain things never to be done consciously, or for the pleasureto be got out of them. One stepped out of childish conventions intomannish conventions, and did so, certainly, without any instruction fromoutside. I remember, for instance, that, as children, it was a rigidpart of our belief that our father was the handsomest man in theworld--handsome was the word. In the same way our mother was byprerogative the most beautiful woman. If some hero flashed upon ourscene--Garibaldi, Lancelot of the Lake, or another--the greatest praisewe could possibly have given him for beauty, excellence, courage, ormanly worth would have put him second to our father. So also Helen ofSparta and Beatrice of Florence gave way. That was the law of thenursery, rigid and never to be questioned until unconsciously I grew outof it, and becoming a man, put upon me the panoply of manly eyes. I nowaccepted it that to kiss my sister was nothing, but that to kiss herfriend would be very wicked. I discovered that there were two ways oflooking at a young woman, and two ways of thinking about her. Idiscovered that it was lawful to have some kinds of appetite, and totake pleasure in food, exercise, sleep, warmth, cold water, hot water,the smell of flowers, and quite unlawful so much as to think of, or toadmit to myself the existence of other kinds of appetite. I discovered,in fact, that love was a shameful thing, that if one was in love oneconcealed it from the world, and, above all the world, from the objectof one's love. The conviction was probably instinctive, for one is notthe descendant of puritans for nothing; but the discovery of it isanother matter. Attendance at school and the continuous reading ofromance were partly responsible for that; physical development clinchedthe affair, I was in all respects mature at thirteen, though my courage(to use the word in Chaucer's sense) was not equal to my ability. I hadmore than usual diffidence against me, more than usual reserve; andself-consciousness, from which I have only lately escaped, grew upon mehand in hand with experience.

  But being now become a day-scholar at the Grammar School, and thrownwhether I would or not among other boys of my own age, I sank myrecondite self deeply under the folds of my quickened senses. I becameaware of a world which was not his world at all. I watched, I heard, Ijudged, I studied intently my comrades; and while in secret I sharedtheir own hardy lives, I was more than content to appear a cipheramong them. I had no friends and made none. All my comradeship with myschool-mates took place in my head, for however salient in mood orinclination I may have been I was a laggard in action. In company Iwas lower than the least of them; in my solitude, at their head Icaptured the universe. Daily, to and fro, for two or three years Ijourneyed between my home and this school, with a couple of two-milewalks and a couple of train journeys to be got through in all weathersand all conditions of light. I saw little or nothing of myschool-fellows out of hours, and lived all my play-time, if you can socall it, intensely alone with the people of my imagination--to whosenumber I could now add gleanings from the Grammar School.

  I don't claim objective reality for any of these; I am sure that theywere of my own making. Though unseen beings throng round us all,though as a child I had been conscious of them, though I had actuallyseen one, in these first school years of mine the machinery I had forseeing the usually unseen was eclipsed; my recondite self was fast inhis _cachot_--and I didn't know that he was there! But one may imaginefairies enough out of one's reading, and going beyond that, using itas a spring-board, advance in the work of creation from realising tobegetting. So it was with me. The _Faerie Queen_ was as familiar asthe Latin Primer ought to have been. I had much of Mallory by heart--abook full of magic. Forth of his pages stepped men-at-arms and damselsthe moment I was alone, and held me company for as long as I would.The persons of Homer's music came next to them. I was Hector and heldAndromache to my heart. I kissed her farewell when I went forth toschool, and hurried home at night from the station, impatient for herarms. I was never Paris, and had only awe of Helen. Even then I dimlyguessed her divinity, that godhead which the supremest beauty reallyis. But I was often Odysseus the much-enduring, and very wellacquainted with the wiles of Calypso. Next in power of enchantmentcame certainly Don Quixote, in whose lank bones I was often encased.Dulcinea's charm was very real to me. I revelled in her honeyed name.I was Don Juan too, and I was Tom Jones; but my most naturalimpersonation in those years was Tristram. The luxury of thatchampion's sorrows had a swooning sweetness of their own of which Inever tired. Iseult meant nothing. I cared nothing for her. I wasenamoured of the hero, and saw myself drenched in his passion. LikeNarcissus in the fable, I loved myself, and saw myself, in Tristram'sform, the most beautiful and the most beloved of beings.

  Chivalry and Romance chained me at that time and not the supernatural.The fairy adventures of the heroes of my love swept by me untouched.Morgan le Fay, Britomart, Vivien, Nimue, Merlin did not convince me;they were picturesque conventions whose decorative quality I felt,while so far as I was concerned they were garniture or apparatus. Andyet the fruitful meadows through which I took my daily way were asforests to me; the grass-stems spired up to my fired fancy like greattrees. Among them I used to minish myself to the size of an ant andbecome a pioneer hewing out a pathway through virgin thickets. I hadmy ears alert for the sound of a horn, of a galloping horse, of theQuesting Beast and hounds in full cry. But I never looked to encountera fairy in these most fairy solitudes. Beleaguered ladies,knights-errant, dwarfs, churls, fiends of hell, leaping like flamesout of pits in the ground: all these, but no fairies. It's very oddthat having seen the reality and devoured the fictitious, I shouldhave had zest for neither, but so it is.

  As for my school-mates, though I had very little to say to them, orthey to me, I used to watch them very closely, and, as I have said,came to weave them into my dreams. Some figured as heroes, some asmagnanimous allies, some as malignant enemies, some who struck me asbeautiful received of me the kind of idolatry, the insensateself-surrender which creatures of my sort have always offered up tobeauty of any sort. I remember T----e, a very shapely anddistinguished youth. I worshipped him as a god, and have seen himsince--alas! I remember B---- also, a tall, lean, loose-limbed youngman. He was a great cricketer, a good-natured, sleepy giant, perfectlystupid (I am sure) but with marks of breed about him which I could notpossibly mistake. Him, too, I enthroned upon my temple-frieze; hewould have figured there as Meleager had I been a few years older. Asit was, he rode a blazoned charger, all black, and feutred his lancewith the Knights of King Arthur's court. Then there was H----n, agood-looking, good-natured boy, and T----r, another. Many and many aday did they ride forth with me adventuring--that is, spiritually theydid so; physically speaking, I had no scot or lot with them. We werein plate armour, visored and beplumed. We slung our storied shieldsbehind us; we had our spears at rest; we laughed, told tales, sang aswe went through the glades of the forest, down the ruttedcharcoal-burner's track, and came to the black mere, where there lay abarge with oars among the reeds. I can see, now, H----n throw up hishead, bared to the sky and slanting sun. He had thick and dark curlyhair and a very white neck. His name of chivalry was Sagramor. T----rwas of stouter build and less salient humour. He was Bors, a brotherof Lancelot's. I, who was moody, here as in waking life, was Tristram,more often Tramtris.

  Of other more sinister figures I remember two. R----s, who bullied meuntil I was provoked at last into facing him; a greedy, pale,lecherous boy, graceless, a liar, but extremely clever. I had a horrorof him which endures now. If he, as I have, had a dweller in the
deepsof him, his must have been a satyr. I cannot doubt it now. Disastrousally for mortal man! Vice sat upon his face like a grease; vice madehis fingers quick. He had a lickorous tongue and a taste for sweetthings which even then made me sick. So repulsive was he to me, soimpressed upon my fancy, that it was curious he did not haunt my innerlife. But I never met him there. No shape of his ever encountered mein the wilds and solitary places. In the manifest world he afflictedme to an extent which the rogue-fairy in the wood could never haveapproached. Perhaps it was that all my being was forearmed againsthim, and that I fought him off. At any rate he never trespassed in mypreserves.

  The other was R----d, a bleared and diseased creature, a thing of pityand terror to the wholesome, one of those outcasts of the world whichevery school has to know and reckon with. A furtive, nail-bitten,pick-nose wretch with an unholy hunger for ink, earth-worms and thelike. What terrible tenant do the likes of these carry about withthem! He, too, haunted me, but not fearfully; but he, too, I nowunderstand too well, was haunted and ridden to doom. I pitied him,tried to be kind to him, tried to treat him as the human thing whichin some sort he was. I discovered that when he was interested heforgot his loathsome cravings, and became almost lovable. I went homewith him once, to a mean house in ----. He took me into the backyardand showed me his treasury--half a dozen rabbits, as many guinea-pigs,and a raven with a bald head. He was all kindness to these prisoners,fondled them with hands and voice, spoke a kind of inarticulate babylanguage to them, and gave them pet names. He forgot his misery, hispoverty--I remember that he never had a handkerchief and always wantedone, that his jacket-sleeves were near his elbow, and that his wristbones were red and broken. But now there shone a clear light in hiseye; he could face the world as he spoke to me of the habits of hisfriends. We got upon some sort of terms by these means, and I alwayshad a kind of affection for poor R----d. In a sense we were bothoutcasts, and might have warmed the world for each other. If I had notbeen so entirely absorbed in my private life as to grudge any momentof it unnecessarily spent I should have asked him home. But boys areexorbitant in their own affairs, and I had no time to spare him.

  I was a year at ---- before I got so far with any schoolfellow of minethere; but just about the time of my visit to R----d I fell in withanother boy, called Harkness, who, for some reason of his own, desiredmy closer acquaintance and got as much of it as I was able to give toanybody, and a good deal more than he deserved or I was the better of.He, too, was a day-boy, whose people lived in a suburb of the townwhich lay upon my road. We scraped acquaintance by occasionallytravelling together so much of the way as he had to traverse; fromthis point onward all the advances were his. I had no liking for him,and, in fact, some of his customs shocked me. But he was older than I,very friendly, and very interesting. He evidently liked me; he askedme to tea with him; he used to wait for me, going and returning. I hadno means of refusing his acquaintance, and did not; but I got no goodout of him.

  As he was older, so he was much more competent. Not so much vicious ascurious and enterprising, he knew a great many things which I onlyguessed at, and could do much--or said that he could--which I onlydreamed about. He put a good deal of heart into my instruction, andleft me finally with my lesson learned. I never saw nor heard of himafter I left the school. We did not correspond, and he left no markupon me of any kind. The lesson learned, I used the knowledgecertainly; but it did not take me into the region which he knew best.His grove of philosophy was close to the school, in K---- Park, whichis a fine enclosure of forest trees, glades, brake-fern and deer.Here, in complete solitude, for we never saw a soul, my sentimentaleducation was begun by this self-appointed professor. As I remember,he was a good-looking lad enough, with a round and merry face, highcolour, bright eyes, a moist and laughing mouth. Had he known the wayin he would have been at home in the Garden of Priapus, where perhapshe is now. He was hardy in address, a ready speaker, rather eloquentupon the theme that he loved, and I dare say he may have been asfortunate as he said, or very nearly. Certainly what he had to tell meof love and women opened my understanding. I believe that I envied himhis ease of attainment more than what he said he had attained. I mighthave been stimulated by his adventures to be adventurous on my ownaccount, but I never was, neither at that time nor at any other. I amquite certain that never in my life have I gone forth conquering andto conquer in affairs of the heart. You need to be a Casanova--whichHarkness was in his little way--and I have had no aptitude for thepart. But as I said just now I absorbed his teachings and made use ofthem. So far as he gave me food for reflection I ate it, andassimilated it in my own manner. Neither by him nor by any person farmore considerable than himself has my imagination been moved in thedirection of the mover of it. Let great poet, great musician, greatpainter stir me ever so deeply, I have never been able to follow himan inch. I was excited by pictures to see new pictures of my own, bypoems to make poems--of my own, not of theirs. In these, no doubt,were elements of theirs; there was a borrowed something, a quality, anaccent, a spirit of attack. But the forms were mine, and the settingalways so. All my life I have used other men's art and wisdom as aspring-board. I suppose every poet can say the same. This was to bethe use to me of the lessons of the precocious, affectionate, andphiloprogenitive Harkness.

  I remember very well one golden summer evening when he and I laytalking under a great oak--he expounding and I plucking at the grassas I listened, or let my mind go free--how, quite suddenly, the meshhe was weaving about my groping mind parted in the midst and showed mefor an appreciable moment a possibility of something--it was nomore--which he could never have seen.

  From the dense shade in which we lay there stretched out an avenue oftimber trees, whereunder the bracken, breast high, had been cut tomake a ride. Upon this bracken, and upon this smooth channel in themidst the late sun streamed toward us, a soft wash of gold. Behind allthis the sky, pale to whiteness immediately overhead, deepened to thesplendid orange of the sunset. Each tree cast his shadow upon hisneighbour, so that only the topmost branches burned in the light.Over and above us floated the drowsy hum of the insect world; rarelywe heard the moaning of a wood-dove, more rarely still the stirring ofdeer hidden in the thicket shade. This was a magical evening, primedwith wonders, in the glamour of which Master Harkness could findnothing better for him to rehearse than the progress of his amourswith his mother's housemaid. Yet something of the evening glow,something of the opulence of summer smouldered in his words. Hepainted his mistress with the colour of the sunset, he borrowed of itburnt gold to deck her clay. He hymned the whiteness of her neck, herslender waist, her whispers, the kisses of her mouth. The scamp wasluxuriating in his own imaginings or reminiscences, much less of alover and far more of a rhapsodist than he suspected. As such his paeanof precocious love stirred my senses and fired my imagination, but notin the direction of his own. For the glow which he cast upon hisaffair was a borrowed one. He had dipped without knowing into thelanguid glory of the evening, which like a pool of wealth lay ready tomy hand also. I gave him faint attention from the first. After he hadstarted my thoughts he might sing rapture after rapture of his youngand ardent sense. For me the spirit of a world not his whispered, "_Ate convien tenere altro viaggio_," and little as I knew it, in myvague exploration of that scene of beauty, of those scarcely stirring,stilly burning trees, of that shimmering-fronded fern, of that mistysplendour, I was hunting for the soul of it all, for the informingspirit of it all. Harkness's erotics gave ardour to my search, but noclew. I lost him, left him behind, and never found him again. He fellinto the Garden of Priapus, I doubt. As for me, I believed that I wasnow looking upon a Dryad. I was looking certainly at a spiritinformed. A being, irradiate and quivering with life and joy of life,stood dipt to the breast in the brake; stood so, bathing in the light;stood so, preening herself like a pigeon on the roof-edge, and saw meand took no heed.

  She had appeared, or had been manifest to me, quite suddenly. At onemoment I saw the avenue of lit green, at another she was dipt in it. Icoul
d describe her now, at this distance of time--a radiant youngfemale thing, fiercely favoured, smiling with a fierce joy, with agleam of fierce light in her narrowed eyes. Upon her body and face wasthe hue of the sun's red beam; her hair, loose and fanned out behindher head, was of the colour of natural silk, but diaphanous as well asburnished, so that while the surfaces glittered like spun glass thedeeps of it were translucent and showed the fire behind. Her garmentwas thin and grey, and it clung to her like a bark, seemed to growupon her as a creeping stone-weed grows. Harkness would have admiredthe audacity of her shape, as I did; but I found nothing provocativein it. As well might a boy have enamoured himself of a slim tree as ofthat unearthly shaft of beauty.

  I said that she preened herself; the word is inexact. She rather stoodbathing in the light, motionless but for the lifting of her face intoit that she might dip, or for the bending of her head that the warmthbehind her might strike upon the nape of her neck. Those were all hermovements, slowly rehearsed, and again and again rehearsed. With eachof them she thrilled anew; she thrilled and glowed responsive to theplay of the light. I don't know whether she saw me, though it seemedto me that our looks had encountered. If her eyes had taken me in Ishould have known it, I think; and if I had known it I should havequailed and looked at her no more. So shamefaced was I, soself-conscious, that I can be positive about that; for far fromavoiding her I watched her intently, studied her in all her parts, andfound out some curious things.

  Looking at her beside the oaks, for instance, whence she must haveemanated, I could judge why it was that I had not seen her come out.Her colouring was precisely that of her background. Her garment, smockor frock or vest as you will, was grey-green like the oak stems, herwhites were those of the sky-gleams, her roses those of the sun'srays. The maze of her hair could hardly be told from the photosphere.I tested this simply and summarily. Shutting my eyes for a second,when I opened them she was gone. Shutting them again and opening,there she was, sunning herself, breathing deep and long, watching herown beauties as the light played with them. I tried this many timesand it did not fail me. I could, with her assistance, bring her uponmy retina or take her off it, as if I had worked a shutter across myeyes. But as I watched her so I got very excited. Her business was somysterious, her pleasure in it so absorbing; she was visible and yetsecret; I was visible, and yet she could be ignorant of it. I got thesame throbbing sort of interest out of her as many and many a time Ihave got since out of watching other wild creatures at their affairs,crouching hidden where they could not discern me by any of theirsenses. Few things enthral me more than that--and here I had my firsttaste of it. I remember that my heart beat, I remember that Itrembled. Nothing could have torn me from the spot but what preciselydid, an alien intervention. The besotted Harkness stopped short inhis recital and asked me what I was staring at.

  That was the end of it. I had rather have died than tell him. PerhapsI was afraid of his mockery, perhaps I dared not risk his unbelief,perhaps I felt ashamed that I had been prying, perhaps I grudged himthe sight of her moulded beauty and keen wild face. "What am I staringat? Why, nothing," I said. I got up and put the strap of my schoolsatchel over my head. I never looked for her again before I walkedaway. Whether she left when I left, whether she was really there or aprojection of my mind, whether my inner self, my prisoner, had seenher, or my schoolboy self through his agency, whether it was a trickof the senses, a dream, or the like I can't tell you. I only know thatI have now recalled exactly what I seemed to see, and that I have seenher since--her or her co-mate--once or twice.

  I can account for her now easily enough. I can assure myself that shewas really there, that she, or the like of her, pervades, haunts,indwells all such places; but it seems that there must be a rightrelation between the seer and the object before the unseen can becomethe seen. Put it like this, that form is a necessary convention of ourbeing, a mode of consciousness just as space is, just as time, justas rhythm are; then it is clear enough that the spirits of naturalfact must take on form and sensible body before we can apprehend them.They take on such form for us or such body through our means; that iswhat I mean by a right relation between them and ourselves. Now somepersons have the faculty of discerning spirits, that is, of clothingthem in bodily form, and others have not; but of those who have it alldo not discern them in the same form, or clothe them in the same body.The form will be rhythmical to some, to other some audible, to othersyet again odorous, "aromatic pain," or bliss. These modes are nomatter, they are accidents of our state. They cause the form to berelative, just as the conception of God is; but the substance isconstant. I have seen innumerable spirits, but always in bodily form.I have never perceived them by means of any other sense, such ashearing, though sight has occasionally been assisted by hearing. Ifduring an orchestral symphony you look steadily enough at one musicianor another you can always hear his instrument above the rest andfollow his part in the symphony. In the same way when I look at fairythrongs I can hear them sing. If I single out one of them forobservation I hear him or her sing--not words, never words; they havenone. I saw once, like a driven cloud, the spirits of the North-westwind sweep down the sky over the bare ridge of a chalk down, wingedand shrouded, eager creatures, embattled like a host. They were greyand dun-coloured, pale in the face. Their hair swept forward, notback; for it seemed as if the wind in gusts went faster thanthemselves, and was driving them faster than they could go. Anothermight well have heard these beings like a terrible, rushing music, ascries of havoc or desolation, wild peals of laughter, fury andexultation. But to me they were inaudible. I heard the volleying ofthe wind, but them I saw. So in the still ecstasy of that Dryadbathing in light I saw, beyond doubt, what the Greeks called by thatname, what some of them saw; and I saw it in their mode, although atthe time of seeing I knew nothing of them or their modes, because ithappened to be also my mode. But so far I did not more than see her,for though I haunted the place where she had been she never came thereagain, nor never showed herself. It became to me sacred ground, wherewith awed breath I could say, "Here indeed she stood and bathedherself. Here I really saw her, and she me;" and I encompassed it witha fantastic cult of my own invention. It may have been very comic, orvery foolish, but I don't myself think it was either, because it wasso sincere, and because the impulse to do it came so naturally. I usedto bare my head; I made a point of saving some of my luncheon (whichI took with me to school) that I might leave it there. It was realsacrifice that, because I had a fine appetite, and it was pureworship. In my solitary hours, which were many, I walked with her ofcourse, talked and played with her. But that was another thing,imagination, or fancy, and I don't remember anything of what we saidor did. It needs to be carefully distinguished from the firstapparition with which imagination, having nothing whatever to proceedupon, had nothing whatever to do. One thing, however, I do remember,that our relations were entirely sexless; and, as I write, anothercomes into mind. I saw no affinity between her and the creature of myfirst discovery. It never occurred to me to connect the two eitherpositively, as being inhabitants of a world of their own, ornegatively, as not being of my world. I was not a reflective boy, butmy mind proceeded upon flashes, by leaps of intuition. When I wasmoved I could conceive anything, everything; when I was unmoved I wasas dull as a clod. It was idle to tell me to think. I could only thinkwhen I was moved from within to think. That made me the despair of myfather and the vessel of my schoolmaster's wrath. So here I saw norelationship whatsoever between the two appearances. Now, of course, Ido. I see now that both were fairies, informed spirits of certaintimes or places. For time has a spirit as well as space. But more ofthis in due season. I am not synthesising now but recording. One hadbeen merely curious, the other for a time enthralled me. The first hadbeen made when I was too young to be interested. The second found memore prepared, and seeded in my brain for many a day. Gradually,however, it too faded as fancy began to develop within me. I took towriting, I began to fall in love; and at fifteen I went to aboarding-school. Farewell, then, to
rewards and fairies!