Part 10 (1/2)
I address from the Rectory (_Vicarage_it ought to be) of Crabbe, the ”Radiator,” whose mind is now greatly exercised with Dr. Whewell's ”Plurality of Worlds.” Crabbe, who is a good deal in the secrets of Providence, admires the work beyond measure, but most indignantly rejects the doctrine as unworthy of G.o.d. I have not read the book, contented to hear Crabbe's commentaries. I have been staying with him off and on for two months, and, as I say, give his address because any letter thither directed will find me sooner or later in my little wanderings. I am at present staying with a farmer in a very pleasant house near Woodbridge, inhabiting such a room as even you, I think, would sleep composedly in; my host a taciturn, cautious, honest, active man whom I have known all my life. He and his wife, a capital housewife, and his son, who would carry me on his shoulders to Ipswich, and a maid-servant, who, as she curtsies of a morning, lets fall the teapot, etc., const.i.tute the household. Farming greatly prospers, farming materials fetching an exorbitant price at the Michaelmas auctions--all in defiance of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who got returned for Suffolk on the strength of denouncing Corn Law Repeal as the ruin of the country. He has bought a fine house near Ipswich, with great gilded gates before it, and, by dint of good dinners and soft sawder, finally draws the country gentry to him....
Please to look at the September Number of Fraser's Magazine, where there are some prose translations of Hafiz by Cowell which may interest you a little. I think Cowell (as he is apt to do) gives Hafiz rather too much credit for a mystical wine-cup, and cup-bearer; I mean, taking him on the whole. The few odes he quotes have certainly a deep and pious feeling, such as the Man of Mirth will feel at times: none perhaps more strongly.
Some one by chance read out to me the other day at the seaside your account of poor old Naseby village from ”Cromwell,” quoted in Knight's ”Half-Hours,” etc. It is now twelve years ago, at this very season, I was ransacking for you; you promising to come down, and never coming. I hope very much you are soon going to give us something: else Jerrold and Tupper carry all before them.
TO ”LYDIA LANGUISH”
[Sidenote: _Austin Dobson_]
”Il me faut des emotions”--_Blanche Amory_
You ask me, Lydia, ”whether I, If you refuse my suit, shall die.”
(Now pray don't let this hurt you!) Although the time be out of joint, I should not think a bodkin's point The sole resource of virtue; Nor shall I, though your mood endure, Attempt a final Water-cure Except against my wishes; For I respectfully decline To dignify the Serpentine, And make _hors-d'oeuvres_ for fishes; But if you ask me whether I Composedly can go, Without a look, without a sigh, Why, then I answer--No.
”You are a.s.sured,” you sadly say (If in this most considerate way To treat my suit your will is), That I shall ”quickly find as fair Some new Neaera's tangled hair-- Some easier Amaryllis.”
I cannot promise to be cold If smiles are kind as yours of old On lips of later beauties; Nor can I, if I would, forget The homage that is Nature's debt, While man has social duties; But if you ask shall I prefer To you I honour so, A somewhat visionary Her, I answer truly--No.
You fear, you frankly add, ”to find In me too late the altered mind That altering Time estranges.”
To this I make response that we (As physiologists agree) Must have septennial changes; This is a thing beyond control, And it were best upon the whole To try and find out whether We could not, by some means, arrange This not-to-be-avoided change So as to change together: But had you asked me to allow That you could ever grow Less amiable than you are now,-- Emphatically--No.
But--to be serious--if you care To know how I shall really bear This much-discussed rejection, I answer you. As feeling men Behave, in best romances, when You outrage their affection;-- With that gesticulatory woe, By which, as melodramas show, Despair is indicated; Enforced by all the liquid grief Which hugest pocket-handkerchief Has ever simulated; And when, arrived so far, you say In tragic accents, ”Go,”
Then, Lydia, then ... I still shall stay, And firmly answer--No.
MARK'S BABY [Sidenote: _Mark Twain_]
”Mark, one day, was found at home, in his library, dandling upon his knee, with every appearance of fond 'parientness,' the young Twain--so young as not yet to be able to 'walk upright and make bargains.' Mrs.
Twain, on showing the visitor into the sanctum, and finding her spouse thus engaged, said:
”'Now, Mark, you _know_ you love that baby--don't you?'
”'Well,' replied Mark, in his slow, drawling kind of way, 'I--can't--exactly--say--I--love it,--_but--I--respect--it!_'”
THE WISDOM OF G.K.C.
[Sidenote: _G.K. Chesterton_]
Jesus Christ made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts because life is not joyful; he revels because he is not glad. ”Drink,” he says, ”for you know not whence you come nor why. Drink, for you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars are cruel and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for. Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and an evil peace.” So he stands offering us the cup in his hands. And in the high altar of Christianity stands another figure in whose hand also is the cup of the vine. ”Drink,” he says, ”for the whole world is as red as this wine with the crimson of the love and wrath of G.o.d. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle, and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this is My blood of the New Testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know whence you come and why. Drink, for I know when you go and where.”--”Heretics.”
[Sidenote: _G.K. Chesterton_]
Everything is military in the sense that everything depends upon obedience. There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness; but we are glad that the net-maker did not make the net in a fit of divine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke; but we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued for a joke.--”Heretics.”
[Sidenote: _G.K. Chesterton_]