Part 1 (1/2)
Limbo and Other Essays.
by Vernon Lee.
LIMBO
Perocche gente di molto valore Con.o.bbi che in quel _Limbo_ eran sospesi.
I
It may seem curious to begin with Dante and pa.s.s on to the Children's Rabbits' House; but I require both to explain what it is I mean by Limbo; no such easy matter on trying. For this discourse is not about the Pious Pagans whom the poet found in honourable confinement at the Gate of h.e.l.l, nor of their neighbours the Unchristened Babies; but I am glad of Dante's authority for the existence of a place holding such creatures as have just missed a necessary rite, or come too soon for thorough salvation. And I am glad, moreover, that the poet has insisted on the importance--”gente di molto valore”--of the beings thus enclosed; because it is just with the superior quality of the things in what I mean by Limbo that we are peculiarly concerned.
And now for the other half of my preliminary ill.u.s.tration of the subject, to wit, the Children's Rabbits' House. The little gardens which the children played at cultivating have long since disappeared, taken insensibly back into that corner of the formal but slackly kept garden which looks towards the steep hill dotted with cows and sheep. But in that corner, behind the shapeless Portugal laurels and the patches of seeding gra.s.s, there still remains, beneath big trees, what the children used to call the ”Rabbits' Villa.” 'Tis merely a wooden toy house, with green moss-eaten roof, standing, like the lake dwellings of prehistoric times, on wooden posts, with the tall foxgloves, crimson and white, growing all round it. There is something ludicrous in this superannuated toy, this Noah's ark on stilts among the gra.s.s and bushes; but when you look into the thing, finding the empty plates and cups ”for having tea with the rabbits,” and when you look into it spiritually also, it grows oddly pathetic. We walked up and down between the high hornbeam hedges, the sunlight lying low on the armies of tall daisies and seeding gra.s.ses, and falling in narrow glints among the white boles and hanging boughs of the beeches, where the wooden benches stand unused in the deep gra.s.s, and the old swing hangs crazily crooked. Yes, the Rabbits' Villa and the surrounding overgrown beds are quite pathetic. Is it because they are, in a way, the graves of children long dead, as dead--despite the grown-up folk who may come and say ”It was I”--as the rabbits and guinea-pigs with whom they once had tea? That is it; and that explains my meaning: the Rabbits' Villa is, to the eye of the initiate, one of many little branch establishments of Limbo surrounding us on all sides. Another poet, more versed in similar matters than Dante (one feels sure that Dante knew his own mind, and always had his own way, even when exiled), Rossetti, in a sonnet, has given us the terrible little speech which would issue from the small Limbos of this kind:
Look in my face: My name is _Might-have-been_.
II
Of all the things that Limbo might contain, there is one about which some persons, very notably Churchyard Gray, have led us into error. I do not believe there is much genius to be found in Limbo. The world, although it takes a lot of dunning, offers a fair price for this article, which it requires as much as water-power and coal, nay even as much as food and clothes (bread for its soul and raiment for its thought); so that what genius there is will surely be brought into market. But even were it wholly otherwise, genius, like murder, _would out_; for genius is one of the liveliest forces of nature; not to be quelled or quenched, adaptable, protean, expansive, nay explosive; of all things in the world the most able to take care of itself; which accounts for so much public expenditure to foster and encourage it: foster the sun's chemistry, the force of gravitation, encourage atomic affinity and natural selection, magnificent Maecenas and judicious Parliamentary Board, they are sure to do you credit!
Hence, to my mind, there are _no mute inglorious Miltons_, or none worth taking into account. Our sentimental surmises about them grow from the notion that human power is something like the wheels or cylinder of a watch, a neat numbered sc.r.a.p of mechanism, stamped at a blow by a creative _fiat_, or hand-hammered by evolution, and fitting just exactly into one little plan, serving exactly one little purpose, indispensable for that particular machine, and otherwise fit for the dust-heap.
Happily for us, it is certainly not so. The very greatest men have always been the most versatile: Lionardo, Goethe, Napoleon; the next greatest can still be imagined under different circ.u.mstances as turning their energy to very different tasks; and I am tempted to think that the hobbies by which many of them have laid much store, while the world merely laughed at the statesman's trashy verses or the musician's third-rate sketches, may have been of the nature of rudimentary organs, which, given a different environment, might have developed, become the creature's chief _raison d'etre_, leaving that which has actually chanced to be his talent to become atrophied, perhaps invisible.
Be this last as it may--and I commend it to those who believe in genius as a form of monomania--it is quite certain that genius has nothing in common with machinery. It is the most organic and alive of living organisms; the most adaptable therefore, and least easily killed; and for this reason, and despite Gray's _Elegy_, there is no chance of much of it in Limbo.
This is no excuse for the optimistic extermination of distinguished men.
It is indeed most difficult to kill genius, but there are a hundred ways of killing its possessors; and with them as much of their work as they have left undone. What pictures might Giorgione not have painted but for the lady, the rival, or the plague, whichever it was that killed him!
Mozart could a.s.suredly have given us a half-dozen more _Don Giovannis_ if he had had fewer lessons, fewer worries, better food; nay, by his miserable death the world has lost, methinks, more even than that--a commanding influence which would have kept music, for a score of years, earnest and masterly but joyful: Rossini would not have run to seed, and Beethoven's ninth symphony might have been a genuine ”Hymn to Joy” if only Mozart, the Apollo of musicians, had, for a few years more, flooded men's souls with radiance. A similar thing is said of Rafael; but his followers were mediocre, and he himself lacked personality, so that many a better example might be brought.
These are not useless speculations; it is as well we realise that, although genius be immortal, poor men of genius are not. Quite an extraordinary small amount of draughts and microbes, of starvation bodily and spiritual, of pin-p.r.i.c.ks of various kinds, will do for them; we can all have a hand in their killing; the killing also of their peace, kindliness, and justice, sending these qualities to Limbo, which is full of such. And now, dear reader, I perceive that we have at last got Limbo well in sight and, in another minute, we may begin to discern some of its real contents.
III
The Paladin Astolfo, as Ariosto relates, was sent on a winged horse up to the moon; where, under the cicerones.h.i.+p of John the Evangelist, he saw most of the things which had been lost on earth, among others the wits of many persons in bottles, his cousin Orlando's which he had come on purpose to fetch, and, curiously enough, his own, which he had never missed.
The moon does well as storehouse for such brilliant, romantic things.
The Limbo whose contents and branches I would speak of is far less glorious, a trifle humdrum; sometimes such as makes one smile, like that Villa of the Rabbits in the neglected garden. 'Twas for this reason, indeed, that I preferred to clear away at once the question of the Mute Inglorious Miltons, and of such solemn public loss as comes of the untimely death of ill.u.s.trious men. Do you remember, by the way, reader, a certain hasty sketch by Cazin, which hangs in a corner of the Luxembourg? The bedroom of Gambetta after his death: the white bed neatly made, empty, with laurel garlands replacing him; the tricolor flag, half-furled, leaned against the chair, and on the table vague heaped-up papers; a thing quite modest and heroic, suitable to all similar occasions--Mirabeau say, and Stevenson on his far-off island--and with whose image we can fitly close our talk of genius wasted by early death.
I have alluded to _happiness_ as filling up much s.p.a.ce in Limbo; and I think that the amount of it lying in that kingdom of Might-have-been is probably out of all proportion with that which must do that duty in this actual life. Browning's _Last Ride Together_--one has to be perpetually referring to poets on this matter, for philosophers and moralists consider happiness in its _causal connection_ or as a fine snare to virtue--Browning's _Last Ride Together_ expresses, indeed, a view of the subject commending itself to active and cheerful persons, which comes to many just after their salad days; to wit, what a mercy that we don't often get what we want most. The objects of our recent ardent longings reveal themselves, most luridly sometimes, as dangers, deadlocks, fetters, hopeless labyrinths, from which we have barely escaped. This is the house I wanted to buy, the employment I fretted to obtain, the lady I pined to marry, the friend with whom I projected to share lodgings.
With such sudden chill recognitions comes belief in a special providence, some fine Greek-sounding G.o.ddess, thwarting one's dearest wishes from tender solicitude that we shouldn't get what we want. In such a crisis the n.o.bler of us feel like the Riding Lover, and learn ideal philosophy and manly acquiescence; the meaner sn.i.g.g.e.r ungenerously about those youthful escapes; and know not that they have gained safety at the price, very often, of the little good--ideality, faith and dash--there ever was about them: safe, smug individuals, whose safety is mere loss to the cosmos. But later on, when our characters have settled, when repeated changes have taught us which is our unchangeable ego, we begin to let go that optimist creed, and to suspect (suspicion turning to certainty) that, as all things which _have_ happened to us have not been always advantageous, so likewise things longed for in vain need not necessarily have been curses. As we grow less attached to theories, and more to our neighbours, we recognise every day that loss, refusal of the desired, has not by any means always braced or chastened the lives we look into; we admit that the Powers That Be showed considerable judgment in disregarding the teachings of asceticism, and inspiring mankind with innate repugnance to having a bad time. And, to return to the question of Limbo, as we watch the best powers, the whole usefulness and sweetness starved out of certain lives for lack of the love, the liberty, or the special activities they prayed for; as regards the question of Limbo, I repeat, we grow (or try to grow) a little more cautious about sending so much more happiness--ours and other folk's--to the place of Might-have-been.
Some of it certainly does seem beyond our control, a fatal matter of const.i.tution. I am not speaking of the results of vice or stupidity; this talk of Limbo is exclusively addressed to the very nicest people.
A deal of the world's sound happiness is lost through Shyness. We have all of us seen instances. They often occur between members of the same family, the very similarity of nature, which might make mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, into closest companions, merely doubling the dose of that terrible reserve, timidity, horror of human contact, paralysis of speech, which keeps the most loving hearts asunder. It is useless to console ourselves by saying that each has its own love of the other. And thus they walk, sometimes side by side, never looking in one another's eyes, never saying the word, till death steps in, death sometimes unable to loosen the tongue of the mourner.