Part 5 (1/2)

Ulysses now begins with the most judicious apology that his unaided imagination can suggest. ”I beg your ladys.h.i.+p's pardon,” he exclaims, ”but are you G.o.ddess or are you a mortal woman? If you are a G.o.ddess and live in heaven, there can be no doubt but you are Jove's daughter Diana, for your face and figure are exactly like hers,” and so on in a long speech which I need not further quote from.

”Stranger,” replied Nausicaa, as soon as the speech was ended, ”you seem to be a very sensible well-disposed person. There is no accounting for luck; Jove gives good or ill to every man, just as he chooses, so you must take your lot, and make the best of it.” She then tells him she will give him clothes and everything else that a foreigner in distress can reasonably expect. She calls back her maids, scolds them for running away, and tells them to take Ulysses and wash him in the river after giving him something to eat and drink. So the maids give him the little gold cruse of oil and tell him to go and wash himself, and as they seem to have completely recovered from their alarm, Ulysses is compelled to say, ”Young ladies, please stand a little on one side, that I may wash the brine from off my shoulders and anoint myself with oil; for it is long enough since my skin has had a drop of oil upon it. I cannot wash as long as you keep standing there. I have no clothes on, and it makes me very uncomfortable.”

So they stood aside and went and told Nausicaa. Meanwhile (I am translating closely), ”Minerva made him look taller and stronger than before; she gave him some more hair on the top of his head, and made it flow down in curls most beautifully; in fact she glorified him about the head and shoulders as a cunning workman who has studied under Vulcan or Minerva enriches a fine piece of plate by gilding it.”

Again I argue that I am reading a description of as it were a prehistoric Mr. Knightley by a not less prehistoric Jane Austen-- with this difference that I believe Nausicaa is quietly laughing at her hero and sees through him, whereas Jane Austen takes Mr.

Knightley seriously.

”Hush, my pretty maids,” exclaimed Nausicaa as soon as she saw Ulysses coming back with his hair curled, ”hush, for I want to say something. I believe the G.o.ds in heaven have sent this man here.

There is something very remarkable about him. When I first saw him I thought him quite plain and commonplace, and now I consider him one of the handsomest men I ever saw in my life. I should like my future husband [who, it is plain, then, is not yet decided upon] to be just such another as he is, if he would only stay here, and not want to go away. However, give him something to eat and drink.”

Nausicaa now says they must be starting homeward; so she tells Ulysses that she will drive on first herself, but that he is to follow after her with the maids. She does not want to be seen coming into the town with him; and then follows another pa.s.sage which clearly shows that for all the talk she has made about getting married she has no present intention of changing her name.

”'I am afraid,' she says, 'of the gossip and scandal which may be set on foot about me behind my back, for there are some very ill- natured people in the town, and some low fellow, if he met us, might say, 'Who is this fine-looking stranger who is going about with Nausicaa? Where did she pick him up? I suppose she is going to marry him, or perhaps he is some s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor from foreign parts; or has some G.o.d come down from heaven in answer to her prayers, and she is going to live with him? It would be a good thing if she would take herself off and find a husband somewhere else, for she will not look at one of the many excellent young Phaeacians who are in love with her'; and I could not complain, for I should myself think ill of any girl whom I saw going about with men unknown to her father and mother, and without having been married to him in the face of all the world.'”

This pa.s.sage could never have been written by the local bard, who was in great measure dependent on Nausicaa's family; he would never speak thus of his patron's daughter; either the pa.s.sage is Nausicaa's apology for herself, written by herself, or it is pure invention, and this last, considering the close adherence to the actual topography of Trapani on the Sicilian Coast, and a great deal else that I cannot lay before you here, appears to me improbable.

Nausicaa then gives Ulysses directions by which he can find her father's house. ”When you have got past the courtyard,” she says, ”go straight through the main hall, till you come to my mother's room. You will find her sitting by the fire and spinning her purple wool by firelight. She will make a lovely picture as she leans back against a column with her maids ranged behind her. Facing her stands my father's seat in which he sits and topes like an immortal G.o.d. Never mind him, but go up to my mother and lay your hands upon her knees, if you would be forwarded on your homeward voyage.” From which I conclude that Arete ruled Alcinous, and Nausicaa ruled Arete.

Ulysses follows his instructions aided by Minerva, who makes him invisible as he pa.s.ses through the town and through the crowds of Phaeacian guests who are feasting in the king's palace. When he has reached the queen, the cloak of thick darkness falls off, and he is revealed to all present, kneeling at the feet of Queen Arete, to whom he makes his appeal. It has already been made apparent in a pa.s.sage extolling her virtue at some length, but which I have not been able to quote, that Queen Arete is, in the eyes of the writer, a much more important person than her husband Alcinous.

Every one, of course, is very much surprised at seeing Ulysses, but after a little discussion, from which it appears that the writer considers Alcinous to be a person who requires a good deal of keeping straight in other matters besides clean linen, it is settled that Ulysses shall be feted on the following day and then escorted home. Ulysses now has supper and remains with Alcinous and Arete after the other guests are gone away for the night. So the three sit by the fire while the servants take away the things, and Arete is the first to speak. She has been uneasy for some time about Ulysses' clothes, which she recognized as her own make, and at last she says, ”Stranger, there is a question or two that I should like to put to you myself. Who in the world are you? And who gave you those clothes? Did you not say you had come here from beyond the seas?”

Ulysses explains matters, but still withholds his name, nevertheless Alcinous (who seems to have shared in the general opinion that it was high time his daughter got married, and that, provided she married somebody, it did not much matter who the bridegroom might be) exclaimed, ”By Father Jove, Minerva, and Apollo, now that I see what kind of a person you are and how exactly our opinions coincide upon every subject, I should so like it if you would stay with us always, marry Nausicaa, and become my son-in-law.” Ulysses turns the conversation immediately, and meanwhile Queen Arete told her maids to put a bed in the corridor, and make it with red blankets, and it was to have at least one counterpane. They were also to put a woollen nightgown for Ulysses. ”The maids took a torch, and made the bed as fast as they could: when they had done so they came up to Ulysses and said, 'This way, sir, if you please, your room is quite ready'; and Ulysses was very glad to hear them say so.”

On the following day Alcinous holds a meeting of the Phaeacians and proposes that Ulysses should have a s.h.i.+p got ready to take him home at once: this being settled he invites all the leading people, and the fifty-two sailors who are to man Ulysses' s.h.i.+p, to come up to his own house, and he will give them a banquet--for which he kills a dozen sheep, eight pigs, and two oxen. Immediately after gorging themselves at the banquet they have a series of athletic compet.i.tions, and from this I gather the poem to have been written by one who saw nothing very odd in letting people compete in sports requiring very violent exercise immediately after a heavy meal.

Such a course may have been usual in those days, but certainly is not generally adopted in our own.

At the games Alcinous makes himself as ridiculous as he always does, and Ulysses behaves much as the hero of the preceding afternoon might be expected to do--but on his praising the Phaeacians towards the close of the proceedings Alcinous says he is a person of such singular judgment that they really must all of them make him a very handsome present. ”Twelve of you,” he exclaims, ”are magistrates, and there is myself--that makes thirteen; suppose we give him each one of us a clean cloak, a tunic, and a talent of gold,”--which in those days was worth about two hundred and fifty pounds.

This is unanimously agreed to, and in the evening, towards sundown, the presents began to make their appearance at the palace of King Alcinous, and the king's sons, perhaps prudently as you will presently see, place them in the keeping of their mother Arete.

When the presents have all arrived, Alcinous says to Arete, ”Wife, go and fetch the best chest we have, and put a clean cloak and a tunic in it. In the meantime Ulysses will take a bath.”

Arete orders the maids to heat a bath, brings the chest, packs up the raiment and gold which the Phaeacians have brought, and adds a cloak and a good tunic as King Alcinous's own contribution.

Yes, but where--and that is what we are never told--is the 250 pounds which he ought to have contributed as well as the cloak and tunic? And where is the beautiful gold goblet which he had also promised?

”See to the fastening yourself,” says Queen Arete to Ulysses, ”for fear anyone should rob you while you are asleep in the s.h.i.+p.”

Ulysses, we may be sure, was well aware that Alcinous's 250 pounds was not in the box, nor yet the goblet, but he took the hint at once and made the chest fast without the delay of a moment, with a bond which the cunning G.o.ddess Circe had taught him.

He does not seem to have thought his chance of getting the 250 pounds and the goblet, and having to unpack his box again, was so great as his chance of having his box tampered with before he got it away, if he neglected to double-lock it at once and put the key in his pocket. He has always a keen eye to money; indeed the whole Odyssey turns on what is substantially a money quarrel, so this time without the prompting of Minerva he does one of the very few sensible things which he does, on his own account, throughout the whole poem.

Supper is now served, and when it is over, Ulysses, pressed by Alcinous, announces his name and begins the story of his adventures.

It is with profound regret that I find myself unable to quote any of the fascinating episodes with which his narrative abounds, but I have said I was going to lecture on the humour of Homer--that is to say of the Iliad and the Odyssey--and must not be diverted from my subject. I cannot, however, resist the account which Ulysses gives of his meeting with his mother in Hades, the place of departed spirits, which he has visited by the advice of Circe. His mother comes up to him and asks him how he managed to get into Hades, being still alive. I will translate freely, but quite closely, from Ulysses' own words, as spoken to the Phaeacians.