Part 26 (1/2)
FAIR CRITICISM
Few things can be worse for a very young woman than to want to be led by somebody, and yet find n.o.body fit to do it. Or at any rate, through superior quickness and the knowledge of it, to regard old friends and relatives of experience as very slow coaches, and prigs or prudes, who cannot enter into quick young feelings, but deal in old saws which grate upon them.
Not to moralise about it--for if young ladies hate anything, it is such moralising--Miss Dolly Darling was now in that uncomfortable frame of mind when advice is most needed, yet most certain to be spurned. She looked upon her loving and sensible sister as one who was fated to be an old maid, and was meant perhaps by nature for that condition, which appeared to herself the most abject in the world. And even without that conclusion about Faith she would have been loth to seek counsel from her, having always resented most unduly what she called her ”superior air of wisdom.” Dolly knew that she was quicker of wit than her sister--as shallow waters run more rapidly--and she fancied that she possessed a world of lively feelings into which the slower intellect could not enter. For instance, their elder brother Frank had just published a volume of poems, very n.o.ble in their way, and glowing with ardour for freedom, democracy, and the like, as well as exhibiting fine perception of sound, and great boldness in matters beyond sounding, yet largely ungifted with knowledge of nature, whether human or superior.
”Better stick to his law-books,” the Admiral had said, after singing out some of the rhyme of it to the tune of ”Billy Benbow”; ”never sit on the wool-sack by spewing oak.u.m this way.”
Faith had tried, as a matter of duty, to peruse this book to its cover; but she found it beyond even her good-will, and mild sympathy with everything, to do so. There was not the touch of nature in it which makes humble people feel, and tickles even the very highest with desire to enter into it. So Faith declared that it must be very clever, and no doubt very beautiful, but she herself was so stupid that she could not make out very clearly what it was all about.
”Well, I understand every word of it,” Miss Dolly cried, with a literary look. ”I don't see how you can help doing that, when you know all about Frank, who wrote it. Whenever it is not quite clear, it is because he wants us to think that he knows too much, or else because he is not quite certain what he wants to mean himself. And as for his talk about freedom, and all that, I don't see why you should object to it. It is quite the fas.h.i.+on with all clever people now, and it stops them from doing any mischief. And n.o.body pays much attention to them, after the cruel things done in France when I was seven or eight years old. If I see Frank, I shall tell him that I like it.”
”And I shall tell him that I don't,” said Faith. ”It cannot do anybody any good. And what they call 'freedom' seems to mean making free with other people's property.”
These poems were issued in one volume, and under one t.i.tle--The Harmodiad--although there must have been some half-hundred of them, and not more than nine odes to freedom in the lot. Some were almost tolerable, and others lofty rubbish, and the critics (not knowing the author) spoke their bright opinions freely. The poet, though shy as a mouse in his preface, expected a mountain of inquiry as to the ident.i.ty of this new bard, and modestly signed himself ”Asteroid,” which made his own father stare and swear. Growing sore prematurely from much keelhauling--for the reviewers of the period were patriotic, and the English public anti-Gallic--Frank quitted his chambers at Lincoln's Inn, and came home to be comforted for Christmas. This was the wisest thing that he could do, though he felt that it was not Harmodian. In spite of all crotchets, he was not a bad fellow, and not likely to make a good lawyer.
As the fates would have it (being naturally hostile to poets who defy them), by the same coach to Stonnington came Master Johnny, in high feather for his Christmas holidays. Now these two brothers were as different of nature as their sisters were, or more so; and unlike the gentler pair, each of these cherished lofty disdain for the other. Frank looked down upon the school-boy as an unlicked cub without two ideas; the bodily defect he endeavoured to cure by frequent outward applications, but the mental shortcoming was beneath his efforts. Johnny meanwhile, who was as hard as nails, no sooner recovered from a thumping than he renewed and redoubled his loud contempt for a great lout over six feet high, who had never drawn a sword or pulled a trigger. And now for the winter this book would be a perpetual s...o...b..ll for him to pelt his big brother with, and yet (like a critic) be scarcely fair object for a hiding. In season out of season, upstairs down-stairs, even in the breakfast and the dinner chambers, this young imp poked clumsy splinters--worse than thorns, because so dull--into the tender poetic side; and people, who laugh at the less wit the better, laughed very kindly, to please the boy, without asking whether they vexed the man.
And the worst of it was that the author too must laugh.
All this might be looked down at by a soul well hoisted upon the guy-ropes of contempt; and now and then a very solid drubbing given handsomely (upon other grounds) to the chief tormentor solaced the mind of unacknowledged merit. But as the most vindictive measure to the man who has written an abusive letter is to vouchsafe him no reply, so to the poet who rebukes the age the bitterest answer it can give is none.
Frank Darling could retaliate upon his brother Johnny, and did so whenever he could lay hold of him alone; but the stedfast silence of his sister Faith (to whom one of his loftiest odes was addressed), and of his lively father, irked him far more than a thousand low parodies.
Dolly alone was some comfort to him, some little vindication of true insight; and he was surprised to find how quickly her intelligence (which until now he had despised) had strengthened, deepened, and enlarged itself. Still he wanted some one older, bigger, more capable of shutting up the mouth, and nodding (instead of showing such a lot of red tongue and white teeth), before he could be half as snug as a true poet should be, upon the hobs of his own fire. And happily he found his Anti-Zoilus ere long.
One day he was walking in a melancholy mood along the beach towards Pebbleridge, doubting deeply in his honest mind whether he ever should do any good, in versification, or anything else. He said to himself that he had been too sanguine, eager, self-confident, ardent, impetuous, and, if the nasty word must be faced, even too self-conceited. Only yesterday he had tried, by delicate setting of little word-traps, to lead Mr. Twemlow towards the subject, and obtain that kind-hearted man's comforting opinion. But no; the gentle Rector would not be brought to book, or at any rate not to that book; and the author had sense enough to know without a wink that his volume had won volumes of dislike.
Parna.s.sus could never have lived till now without two heads--one to carry on with, while the other is being thumped to pieces. While the critics demolish one peak, the poet withdraws to the other, and a.s.sures himself that the general public, the larger voice of the nation, will salute him there. But alas, Frank Darling had just discovered that even that eminence was not his, except as a desert out of human sight. For he had in his pocket a letter from his publishers, received that dreary morning, announcing a great many copies gone gratis, six sold to the trade at a frightful discount, and six to the enterprising public. All these facts combined to make him feel uncommonly sad and sore to-day.
A man of experience could have told him that this disappointment was for his good; but he failed to see it in that light, and did not bless the blessing. Slowly and heavily he went on, without much heed of anything, swinging his clouded cane now and then, as some slas.h.i.+ng reviews occurred to him, yet becoming more peaceful and impartial of mind under the long monotonous cadence and quiet repet.i.tions of the soothing sea.
For now he was beyond the Haven head--the bulwark that makes the bay a pond in all common westerly weather--and waves that were worthy of the name flowed towards him, with a gentle breeze stepping over them.
The brisk air was like a fresh beverage to him, and the fall of the waves sweet music. He took off his hat, and stopped, and listened, and his eyes grew brighter. Although the waves had nothing very distinct to say in dying, yet no two (if you hearkened well), or at any rate no two in succession, died with exactly the same expression, or vanished with precisely the same farewell. Continual s.h.i.+fts went on among them, and momentary changes; each in proper sequence marching, and allowed its proper time, yet at any angle traversed, even in its crowning curl, not only by the wind its father, but by the penitent return and white contrition of its shattered elder brother. And if this were not enough to make a samely man take interest in perpetually flowing changes, the sun and clouds, at every look and breath, varied variety.
Frank Darling thought how small his griefs were, and how vain his vanity. Of all the bubbly clots of froth, or frayed and shattered dabs of drift, flying beside him or falling at his feet, every one was as good as his ideas, and as valuable as his labours. And of all the unreckoned waves advancing, lifting their fugitive crests, and roaring, there certainly was not one that fell with weight so futile as his own. Who cared even to hear his sound? What ear was soothed by his long rhythm, or what mind solaced by the magnitude of his rolling?
Suddenly he found that some mind was so. For when he had been standing a long while thus, chewing the salt cud of marine reflections, he seemed to hear something more intelligible than the sea. With more surprise than interest he walked towards the sound, and stood behind the corner of a jutting rock to listen. In another second his interest overpowered his surprise, for he knew every word of the lines brought to his ears, for the very simple reason that they were his own. Round the corner of that rock, so absorbed in admiration that he could hear no footstep, a very fine young man of the highest order was reading aloud in a powerful voice, and with extremely ardent gesticulation, a fine pa.s.sage from that greatly undervalued poem, the Harmodiad, of and concerning the beauties of Freedom--
”No crown upon her comely head she bore, No wreath her affluent tresses to restrain; A smile the only ornament she wore, Her only gem a tear for others' pain.
Herself did not her own mishaps deplore, Because she lives immortal as the dew, Which falling from the stars soon mounts again; And in this wise all s.p.a.ce she travels through, Beneficent as heaven, and to the earth more true.
”Her blessings all may win who seek the prize, If only they be faithful, meek, and strong, And crave not that which others' right denies, But march against the citadel of wrong.
A glorious army this, that finds allies Wherever G.o.d hath built the heart of man With attributes that to Himself belong; By Him ordained to crown what He began, And shatter despotism, which is the foul fiend's ban.”
Frank thought that he had never heard n.o.bler reading, sonorous, clear, well timed, well poised, and of harmonious cadence. The curved rock gave a melodious ring, and the husky waves a fine contrast to it, while the reader was so engrossed with grandeur--the grandeur of Frank's own mind!--that his hat could evidently not contain his head, but was flung at the mercy of his feet. What a fine, expressive, and commanding face!
If Frank Darling had been a Frenchman--which he sometimes longed to be, for the sake of that fair Liberty--the scene, instead of being awkward, would have been elegant, rapturous, enn.o.bling. But being of the clumsy English race, he was quite at a loss what to do with himself. On paper he could be effusive, ardent, eloquent, sentimental; but not a bit of that to meet the world in his own waistcoat. He gave a swing to his stick, and walked across the opening as if he were looking at sea-gulls.
And on he would have walked without further notice, except a big gulp in his throat, if it had not been for a trifling accident.