Part 8 (1/2)
He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded of a show I once saw at the Museum,-the Sleeping Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sudden breaking out in this way turned every face towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high-shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,-the waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy footfall.
Bridget, const.i.tuted for action, not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when I saw the coa.r.s.e arm stretched by my shoulder arrested,-motionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't set the plate down while the old gentleman was speaking!
He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever _were_ there, they _are_ there still!
By and by we got talking again.-Does a poet love the verses written through him, do you think, Sir?-said the divinity-student.
So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal heat about them, _I know_ he loves them,-I answered. When they have had time to cool, he is more indifferent.
A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes,-said the young fellow whom they call John.
The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized female in black bombazine.-Buckwheat is skerce and high,-she remarked.
[Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady,-pays nothing,-so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel boarders.]
I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again.-I don't think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state.
-You don't know what I mean by the _green state_? Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they have been long kept and _used_. Of the first, wine is the ill.u.s.trious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and used I will name three,-meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without complexion or flavor,-born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as _pallida Mors_ herself. The fire is lighted in its central shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are diffused through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to her old brown autumnal hue, you see,-as true in the fire of the meerschaum as in the suns.h.i.+ne of October! And then the c.u.mulative wealth of its fragrant reminiscences! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that hang around it as the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina!
[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for _I do not_, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check.
On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box-wood Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth; I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's ”Triumph of Galatea.” It came to me in an ancient s.h.a.green case,-how old it is I do not know,-but it must have been made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. If you are curious, you shall see it any day.
Neither will I pretend that I am so unused to the more perishable smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incombustibles, the _cigar_, so called, of the shops,-which to ”draw”
asks the suction-power of a nursling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, even if my ill.u.s.tration strike your fancy, to consecrate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me a.s.sure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.]
Violins, too,-the sweet old Amati!-the divine Stradivarius! Played on by ancient _maestros_ until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the pa.s.sionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Pa.s.sed from his dying hand to the cold _virtuoso_, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his h.o.a.rd was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rus.h.i.+ng bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle _dilettante_ who calmed it down with easy melodies until it answered him softly as in the days of the old _maestros_. And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled and faded on its strings.
Now I tell you a poem must be kept _and used_, like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;-the more porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,-its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate.
Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's hands? Now you know very well that there are no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a century, more or less, to make them thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule which had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant.
Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a violin. The poet has forced all these words together, and fastened them, and they don't understand it at first. But let the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in the mind's m.u.f.fled whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit together in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a syllable without the whole world's crying out against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its hundredth birthday,-(Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,)-the sap is pretty well out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom Neaera cheated.-
”Nox erat, et clo fulgebat Luna sereno Inter minora sidera, c.u.m tu magnorum numen laesura deorum In verba jurabas mea.”
Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead Latin phrases? Now I tell you that, every word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a certain succulence; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the ”Pactolian,” in which, as I told you, I sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus that held those words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly judge of my performances, and that, if made of the true stuff, they will ring better after a while.
[There was silence for a brief s.p.a.ce, after my somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident a.n.a.logies. Presently _a person_ turned towards me-I do not choose to designate the individual-and said that he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good ”sahtisfahction.”-I had, up to this moment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually accompanied by a small pecuniary testimonial, have acquired a certain relish for this moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of enthusiasm. But as a reward for gratuitous services, I confess I thought it a little below that blood-heat standard which a man's breath ought to have, whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for a favorable opportunity, however, before making the remarks which follow.]
-There are single expressions, as I have told you already, that fix a man's position for you before you have done shaking hands with him.
Allow me to expand a little. There are several things, very slight in themselves, yet implying other things not so unimportant. Thus, your French servant has _devalise_ your premises and got caught. _Excusez_, says the _sergent-de-ville_, as he politely relieves him of his upper garments and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good shoulders enough,-a little marked,-traces of smallpox, perhaps,-but white. . . . .
_Crac_! from the _sergent-de-ville's_ broad palm on the white shoulder!
Now look! _Vogue la galere_! Out comes the big red V-mark of the hot iron;-he had blistered it out pretty nearly,-hadn't he?-the old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Ma.r.s.eilles! [Don't! What if he has got something like this?-n.o.body supposes I _invented_ such a story.]
My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females which I told you I had owned,-for, look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, I am one that has been driven in his ”kerridge,”-not using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any battered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle _with a pole_,-my man John, I say, was a retired soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many of Her Majesty's modest servants have done before and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really been in the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, ”Strap!” If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes through his muscles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the place where the strap used to be.
[I was all the time preparing for my grand _coup_, you understand; but I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued,-always in ill.u.s.tration of the general principle I had laid down.]
Yes, odd things come out in ways that n.o.body thinks of. There was a legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the English coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape of Saxons, who would not let them go,-on the contrary, insisted on their staying, and, to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or an Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his t.i.tle-page, and, having divested them of the one essential and perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest climates, nailed the same on the church-door as we do the banns of marriage, _in terrorem_.
[There was a laugh at this among some of the young folks; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw that ”the water stood in her eyes,” as it did in Christiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spider, and I fancied, but wasn't quite sure that the schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same conversation, as you remember.]