by George Moore
Full of shadow, full of light.
Lady, unwreath thy hair,
That is so long and fair.
“Lady, unwreath thy hair,
That is so long and fair,
And weave a web of gold
Of thy enchanted hair,
Till all be in its hold.
Lady, unwreath thy hair,
That is so long and fair.”
“Do let me see your poem.... It is charming. But what do you mean by ‘enchanted hair’? Is it that my hair has enchanted you? ‘And weave a web of gold.’... ‘Unwreath’ — do you mean unloose my hair?”
“Dames, tressez vos cheveux blonds
Qui sont si lourds et si longs.
“How well it goes with French!”
“I don’t understand French, but I like your poem in English. Do you know, I like it very much!”
It is easy to obtain appreciation for poetry in such circumstances. Horace’s best ode would not please a young woman as much as the mediocre verses of the young man she is in love with. It is well that it should be so, and this is the dreamer’s criticism of life as he sits lost in shadow, lit up here and there by the blaze. He remembers the warmth of the grass and the scanty bushes; there was hardly sufficient cover that spring day for lovers in Vincennes, and he tries to remember if he put his hand on her white ankle while she was reading the poem. So far as he can remember he did, and she checked him and was rather cross, declaring just like the puss-cat that he must not do such things, that she would not have come out with him had she thought he was going to misbehave himself in that way. But she is not really angry with him. How can she be? Was it not he who wrote that her hair was enchanted? And what concern is it of hers that the phrase was borrowed from another poet? Her concern is that he should think her hair enchanted, and her hands go up to it. The young man prays to unloose it, to let it fall about her shoulders. He must be paid for his poem, and the only payment he will accept is to see her hair unwreathed.
“But I cannot undo my hair on the common. Is there no other payment?” and she leans a little forward, her eyes fixed upon him. The dreamer can see her eyes, clear young eyes, but he cannot remember her mouth, how full the lips were or how thin; ah, but he remembers kissing her! On such a day a young man kisses his young woman, and it may be doubted if the young woman would ever go out with him again if he refrained, the circumstances being as I describe. But the lovers of Vincennes have to be careful. The lady with the enchanted hair has just spied a middle-aged gentleman with his two sons sitting on a bench at a little distance.
“Do be quiet, I beg of you. I assure you, he saw us.”
“If he did it would matter little; he would remember his young days, before his children were born. Moreover, he looks kindly disposed.”
Later on the lovers address themselves to him, for time wears away even with lovers, and the desire of breakfast has come upon them both. The kindly disposed gentleman tells them the way to the restaurant. He insists even on walking part of the way with them, and they learn from him that the restaurant has only just been opened for the season; the season is not yet fairly begun, but no doubt they will be able to get something to eat, an omelette and a cutlet.
Now the accomplished story-teller would look forward to this restaurant; already his thoughts would fix themselves on a cabinet particulier, and his fancy, if he were a naturalistic writer, would rejoice in recording the fact that the mirror was scrawled over with names of lovers, and he would select the ugliest names. But, dear reader, if you are expecting a cabinet particulier in this story, and an amorous encounter to take place therein, turn the page at once — you will be disappointed if you do not; this story contains nothing that will shock your — shall I say your “prudish susceptibilities”? When the auburn-haired poet and the corn-coloured American lunched at Vincennes they chose a table by the window in the great long salle lined with tables, and they were attended by an army of waiters weary of their leisure.
There was a lake at Vincennes then, I am sure, with an island upon it and tall saplings, through which the morning sun was shining. The eyes of the lovers admired the scene, and they admired too the pretty reflections, and the swans moving about the island. The accomplished story-teller cries, “But if there is to be no scene in the restaurant, how is the story to finish?” Why should stories finish? And would a sensual dénouement be a better end than, let us say, that the lovers are caught in a shower as they leave the restaurant? Such an accident might have happened: nothing is more likely than a shower at the end of April or the beginning of May, and I can imagine the lovers of Vincennes rushing into one of the concierge’s lodges at the gates of the villas.
“For a few minutes,” they say; “the rain will be over soon.”
But they are not long there when a servant appears carrying three umbrellas; she gives one to Marie, one to me; she keeps one for herself.
“But who is she? You told me you knew no one at Vincennes.”
“No more I do.”
“But you must know the people who live here; the servant says that Monsieur (meaning her master) knows Monsieur (meaning you).”
“I swear to you I don’t know anybody here; but let’s go — it will be rather fun.”
“But what shall we say in explanation? Shall we say we’re cousins?”
“Nobody believes in cousins; shall we say we’re husband and wife?”
The dreamer sees two figures; memory reflects them like a convex mirror, reducing them to a tenth their original size, but he sees them clearly, and he follows them through the rain up the steps of the villa to the perron — an explicit word that the English language lacks. The young man continues to protest that he never was at Vincennes before, that he knows no one living there, and they are both a little excited by the adventure. Who can be the owner of the house? A man of ordinary tastes, it would seem, and while waiting for their host the lovers examine the Turkey carpet, the richly upholstered sofas and chairs.
A pretty little situation from which an accomplished story-teller could evolve some playful imaginings. The accomplished story-teller would see at once that le bon bourgeois et sa dame and the children are learning English, and here is an occasion of practice for the whole family. The accomplished story-teller would see at once that the family must take a fancy to the young couple, and in his story the rain must continue to fall in torrents; these would prevent the lovers from returning to Paris. Why should they not stay to dinner? After dinner the accomplished story-teller would bring in a number of neighbours, and set them dancing and singing. What easier to suppose than that it was la bourgeoise’s evening at home? The young couple would sit in a distant corner oblivious to all but their own sweet selves. Le bourgeois et sa dame would watch them with kindly interest, deeming it a kindness not to tell them that there were no trains after twelve; and when the lovers at last determined that they must depart, le bourgeois and la bourgeoise would tell them that their room was quite ready, that there was no possibility of returning to Paris that night. A pretty little situation that might with advantage be placed on the stage — on the French stage. A pretty, although a painful, dilemma for a young woman to find herself in, particularly when she is passionately in love with the young man. “Bitterly,” the accomplished story-teller would say, “did the young widow regret the sacrifice to propriety she had made in allowing her young man to pass her off as his wife!” The accomplished story-teller would then assure his reader that the pretty American had acted precisely as a lady should act under the circumstances. But not being myself an accomplished story-teller, I will not attempt to say how a lady should act in such a situation, and it would be a fatuous thing for me to suggest that the lady was passionately in love. The situation that my fancy creates is ingenious; and I regret it did not happen. Nature spins her romances differently; and I feel sure that the lovers returned from Vincennes merely a little fluttered by their adventure. The reader would like to know if any appointment was made to meet again; if one was made it mus
t have been for the next day or the next, for have we not imagined the young widow’s passage already taken? Did she not tell that she was going back to America at the end of the week? He had said: “In a few days the Atlantic will be between us,” and this fact had made them feel very sad, for the Atlantic is a big thing and cannot be ignored, particularly in love affairs. It would have been better for the poet if he had accepted the bourgeois’ invitation to dinner; friends, as I suggested, might have come in, an impromptu dance might have been arranged, or the rain might have begun again; something would certainly have happened to make them miss the train; and they would have been asked to stay the night. The widow did not speak French, the young man did; he might have arranged it all with the bourgeois et sa dame, and the dear little widow might never have known her fate — O happy fate! — until the time came for them to go to their room. But he, foolish fellow, missed the chance the rain gave him, and all that came of this outing was a promise to come back next year, and to dance the Boston with him again; meanwhile he must wear her garter upon his arm. Did the suggestion that she should give him her garter come from her or from him? Was the garter given in the cab when they returned from Vincennes, or was it given the next time they met in Paris? To answer these questions would not help the story; suffice it to say that she said that the elastic would last a year, and when she took his arm and found it upon it she would know that he had been faithful to her. There was the little handkerchief which she had given him, and this he must keep in a drawer. Perhaps some of the scent would survive this long year of separation. I am sure that she charged him to write a letter to the steamer she had taken her passage in, and, careless fellow! instead of doing so he wrote verses, and the end of all this love affair, which began so well, was an angry letter bidding him good-bye for ever, saying he was not worthy because he had missed the post. All this happened twenty years ago; perhaps the earth is over her charming little personality, and it will be over me before long. Nothing endures; life is but change. What we call death is only change. Death and life always overlapping, mixed inextricably, and no meaning in anything, merely a stream of change in which things happen. Sometimes the happenings are pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, and in neither the pleasant nor the unpleasant can we detect any purpose. Twenty long years ago, and there is no hope, not a particle.
I have come to the end of my mood; an ache in my heart brings me to my feet, and looking round I cry out: “How dark is the room! Why is there no light? Bring in the lamp!”
CHAPTER XII
SUNDAY EVENING IN LONDON
MARRIED FOLK ALWAYS know, only the bachelor asks, “Where shall I dine? Shall I spend two shillings in a chop-house, or five in my club, or ten at the Café Royal?” For two or three more shillings one may sit on the balcony of the Savoy, facing the spectacle of evening darkening on the river, with lights of bridge and wharf and warehouse afloat in the tide. Married folk know their bedfellows; bachelors, and perhaps spinsters, are not so sure of theirs: this is a side issue which we will not pursue; an allusion to it will suffice to bring before the reader the radical difference between the lives of the married and the unmarried. O married ones, from breakfast to six, only, do our lives resemble yours! At that hour we begin to experience a sense of freedom and, I confess it, of loneliness. Perhaps life is essentially a lonely thing, and the married and the unmarried differ only in this, that we are lonely when we are by ourselves, and they are lonely when they are together.
At half-past six the bachelor has to tidy up after the day’s work, to put his picture away if he be a painter, to put his writings away if he be a writer, and then the very serious question arises, with whom shall he dine? His thoughts fly through Belgravia and Mayfair, and after whisking round Portman Square, and some other square in the northern neighbourhood, they soar and go away northward to Regent’s Park, seeking out somebody living in one of those stately terraces who will ask him to stay to dinner. At So-and-So’s there is always a round of beef and cold chicken-pie, whereas What-do-you-call-them’s begin with soup. But really the food is not of much consequence; it is interesting company he seeks.
It was last week that I realised, and for the first time, how different was the life of the married from the unmarried. The day was Sunday, and I had been writing all day, and in the hush that begins about six o’clock I remembered I had no dinner engagement that evening. The cup of tea I generally take about half-past four had enabled me to do another hour’s work, but a little after six sentences refused to form themselves, a little dizziness began in the brain, and the question not only “Where shall I dine?” but “Where shall I pass the hour before dinner?” presented itself. The first thing to do was to dress, and while dressing I remembered that I had not wandered in St. James’s Park for some time, and that that park since boyhood had fascinated me. St. James’s Park and the Green Park have never been divided in my admiration of their beauty. The trees that grow along the Piccadilly railings are more beautiful in St. James’s Park, or seem so, for the dells are well designed. The art of landscape-gardening is more akin to the art of a musician than to that of a painter; it is a sort of architecture with colour added. The formal landscape-gardening of Versailles reminds one of a tragedy by Racine, but the romantic modulations of the green hills along the Piccadilly areas are as enchanting as Haydn. There was a time when a boy used to walk from Brompton to Piccadilly to see, not the dells, but the women going home from the Argyle Rooms and the Alhambra, but after a slight hesitation he often crossed from the frequented to the silent side, to stand in admiration of the white rays of moonlight stealing between the trunks of the trees, allowing him to perceive the shapes of the hollows through the darkness. The trees grow so beautifully about these mounds, and upon the mounds, that it is easy to fill the interspaces with figures from Gainsborough’s pictures, ladies in hoops and powdered hair, elegant gentlemen wearing buckled shoes, tail-coats, and the swords which made them gentlemen. Gainsborough did not make his gentlemen plead — that was his fault; but Watteau’s ladies put their fans to their lips so archly, asking the pleading lover if he believes all he says, knowing well that his vows are only part of the gracious entertainment. But why did not the great designer of St. James’s Park build little Greek temples — those pillared and domed temples which give such grace to English parks? Perhaps the great artist who laid out the Green Park was a moralist and a seer, and divining the stream of ladies that come up from Brompton to Piccadilly he thought — well, well, his thoughts were his own, and now the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say.
Five-and-twenty years ago the white rays slanted between the tree-trunks, and the interspaces lengthened out, disappearing in illusive lights and shades, and, ascending the hill, the boy used to look over the empty plain, wondering at the lights of the Horse Guards shining far away like a village. Perhaps to-night, about midnight, I may find myself in Piccadilly again, for we change very little; what interested us in our youth interests us almost to the end. St. James’s Park is perhaps more beautiful in the sunset — there is the lake, and, led by remembrance of some sunsets I had seen on it, I turned out of Victoria Street last Sunday, taking the eastern gate, my thoughts occupied with beautiful Nature, seeing in imagination the shapes of the trees designing themselves grandly against the sky, and the little life of the ponds — the ducks going hither and thither, every duck intent upon its own business and its own desire. I was extremely fortunate, for the effect of light in the Green Park was more beautiful last Sunday than anything I had ever seen; the branches of the tall plane trees hung over the greensward, the deciduous foliage hardly stirring in the pale sunshine, and my heart went out to the ceremonious and cynical garden, artificial as eighteenth-century couplets. Wild Nature repels me; and I thought how interesting it was to consider one’s self, to ponder one’s sympathies. Our antipathies are not quite so interesting to consider, but they are interesting, too, in a way, for they belong to one’s self, and self is man’s main business: all outside of self is unce
rtain; all comes from self, all returns to self. The reason I desired St. James’s Park last Sunday was surely because it was part of me — not that part known to my friends; our friends understand only those margins of themselves which they discover in us. Never did I meet one who discovered for himself or herself that I loved trees better than flowers, or was deeply interested in the fact when attention was called to it....
I watch the trees and never weary of their swaying — solemnly silent and strangely green they are in the long, rainy days, excited when a breeze is blowing; in fine weather they gossip like frivolous girls! In their tremulous decline they are more beautiful than ever, far more beautiful than flowers. Now, I am telling myself, the very subconscious soul is speaking. And with what extraordinary loveliness did the long branches hang out of the tall, stately plane trees like plumes; in the hush of sound and decline of light the droop of the deciduous foliage spoke like a memory. I seemed to have known the park for centuries; yon glade I recognised as one that Watteau had painted. But in what picture? It is difficult to say, so easily do his pictures flow one into the other, always the same melancholy, the melancholy of festival, that pain in the heart, that yearning for the beyond which all suffer whose business in life is to wear painted or embroidered dresses, and to listen or to plead, with this for sole variation, that they who listen to-day will plead to-morrow. Watteau divined the sorrow of those who sit under colonnades always playing some part, great or small, in love’s comedy, listening to the murmur of the fountain, watching a gentleman and lady advancing and bowing, bowing and retiring, dancing a pavane on a richly coloured carpet. Pierrot, the white, sensual animal, the eighteenth-century modification of the satyr, of the faun, plays a guitar; the pipe of Pan has been exchanged for a guitar.
As the twilight gathered under the plane trees my vision became more mixed and morbid, and I hardly knew if the picture I saw was the picture in the Dulwich Gallery or the exquisite picture in the Louvre, “Une Assemblée dans la Parc.” We all know that picture, the gallants and the ladies by the water-side, and the blue evening showing through the tall trees. The picture before me was like that picture, only the placing of the trees and the slope of the greensward did not admit of so extended a composition. A rough tree-trunk, from which a great branch had been broken or lopped off, stood out suddenly in very nineteenth-century naturalness, awaking the ghost of a picture which I recognised at once as Corot. Behind the tree a tender, evanescent sky, pure and transparent as the very heart of a flower, rose up, filling the park with romance, and as the sunset drooped upon the water, my soul said, “The Lake!” Ah, the pensive shadow that falls from the hills on either side of “The Lake,” leaving the middle of the picture suffused with a long stream of light, narrowing as it approached the low horizon. But the line of the trees on the hither side of this London lake was heavier than the spiritual trees in the picture entitled “By the Water-side,” and there was not anywhere the beauty of the broken birch that leans over the lake in “Le Lac de Garde.” Then I thought of “The Ravine,” for the darkening island reminded me of the hillside in the picture. But the St. James’s Park sky lacked the refined concentration of light in “The Ravine,” so beautifully placed, low down in the picture, behind some dark branches jutting from the right. The difference between Nature and Corot is as great as the difference between a true and a false Corot. Not that there is anything untrue in Nature, only Nature lacks humanity — self! Therefore not quite so interesting as a good Corot.
