Part 27 (2/2)
Walter Pater, reading the _Odyssey_, was brought up (as we say) 'with a round turn' by a pa.s.sage wherein Homer describes briefly and with accuracy how some mariners came to harbour, took down sail, and stepped ash.o.r.e.
It filled him with wonder that so simple an incident--nor to say ordinary --could be made so poetical; and, having pondered it, he divided the credit between the poet and his fortunate age--a time (said he) in which one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without making a picture 'in the great style'
against a sky charged with marvels.
You will discover, when you reach the river-mouth of which I am telling, and are swept over the rolling bar into quiet water--you will discover (and with ease, being a G.o.d) that Mr. Pater was entirely mistaken, and the credit belongs neither to Homer nor to his fortunate age. For here are woods with woodlanders, and fields with ploughmen, and beaches with fishermen hauling nets; and all these men, as they go about their work, contrive to make pictures 'in the great style' against a sky charged with marvels, obviously without any a.s.sistance from Homer, and quite as if nothing had happened for, say, the last three thousand years. That the immemorial craft of seafaring has no specially 'heroic age'--or that, if it have, that age is yours--you will discover by watching your own yachtsman as he moves about lowering foresail and preparing to drop anchor.
It is a river of gradual golden sunsets, such as Wilson painted--a broad-bosomed flood between deep and tranquil woods, the main banks holding here and there a village as in an arm maternally crook'd, but opening into creeks where the oaks dip their branches in the high tides, where the stars are gla.s.sed all night long without a ripple, and where you may spend whole days with no company but herons and sandpipers. Even by the main river each separate figure--the fisherman on the sh.o.r.e, the ploughman on the upland, the ferryman crossing between them--moves slowly upon a large landscape, while, permeating all, 'the essential silence cheers and blesses.' After a week at anchor in the heart of this silence Cynthia and I compared notes, and set down the total population at fifty souls; and even so she would have it that I had included the owls.
Lo! the next morning an unaccustomed rocking awoke us in our berths, and, raising the flap of our dew-drenched awning, we 'descried at sunrise an emerging prow' of a peculiarly hideous excursion steamboat. She blew no whistle, and we were preparing to laugh at her grotesque temerity when we became aware of a score of boats putting out towards her from the shadowy banks. Like spectres they approached, reached her, and discharged their complements, until at last a hundred and fifty pa.s.sengers crowded her deck. In silence--or in such silence as a paddle-boat can achieve--she backed, turned, and bore them away: on what festal errand we never discovered. We never saw them return. For aught I know they may never have returned. They raised no cheer; no band accompanied them; they pa.s.sed without even the faint hum of conversation. In five minutes at most the apparition had vanished around the river-bend seawards and out of sight. We stared at the gently heaving water, turned, and caught sight of Euergetes, his head and red cap above the forecastle hatch. (I call our yachtsman Euergetes because it is so unlike his real name that neither he nor his family will recognise it.) ”Why, Euergetes,” exclaimed Cynthia, ”wherever did they all come from?” ”I'm sure I can't tell you, ma'am,” he answered, ”unless 'twas from the woods,”--giving us to picture these ardent holiday-makers roosting all night in the trees while we slumbered.
But the odd thing was that the labourers manned the fields that day, the fishermen the beach that evening, in un-diminished numbers. We landed, and could detect no depletion in the village. We landed on subsequent days, and discovered no increase. And the inference, though easy, was startling.
I suppose that 'in the great style' could hardly be predicated of our housekeeping on these excursions; and yet it achieves, in our enthusiastic opinion, a primitive elegance not often recaptured by mortals since the pa.s.sing of the Golden Age. We cook for ourselves, but bring a fine spirit of emulation both to _cuisine_ and service. We dine frugally, but the claret is sound. From the moment when Euergetes awakes us by was.h.i.+ng down the deck, and the sound of water rus.h.i.+ng through the scuppers calls me forth to discuss the weather with him, method rules the early hours, that we may be free to use the later as we list. First the c.o.c.kpit beneath the awning must be prepared as a dressing-room for Cynthia; next Euergetes summoned on deck to valet me with the simple bucket. And when I am dressed and tingling from the _douche_, and sit me down on the cabin top, barefooted and whistling, to clean the boots, and Euergetes has been sent ash.o.r.e for milk and eggs, bread and clotted cream, there follows a peaceful half-hour until Cynthia flings back a corner of the awning and, emerging, confirms the dawn. Then begins the business, orderly and thorough, of redding up the cabin, stowing the beds, was.h.i.+ng out the lower deck, folding away the awning, and transforming the c.o.c.kpit into a breakfast-room, with table neatly set forth. Meanwhile Euergetes has returned, and from the forecastle comes the sputter of red mullet cooking.
Cynthia clatters the cups and saucers, while in the well by the cabin door I perform some acquired tricks with the new-laid eggs. There is plenty to be done on board a small boat, but it is all simple enough. Only, you must not let it overtake you. Woe to you if it fall into arrears!
By ten o'clock or thereabouts we have breakfasted, my pipe is lit, and a free day lies before us--
”All the wood to ransack, All the wave explore.”
We take the dinghy and quest after adventures. The nearest railway lies six miles off, and is likely to deposit no one in whom we have the least concern. The woods are deep, we carry our lunch-basket and may roam independent of taverns. If the wind invite, we can hoist our small sail; if not, we can recline and drift and stare at the heavens, or land and bathe, or search in vain for curlews' or kingfishers' nests, or in more energetic moods seek out a fisherman and hire him to shoot his seine.
Seventy red mullet have I seen fetched at one haul out of those delectable waters, remote and enchanted as the lake whence the fisherman at the genie's orders drew fish for the young king of the Black Isles. But such days as these require no filling, and why should I teach you how to fill them?
Best hour of all perhaps is that before bed-time, when the awning has been spread once more, and after long hours in the open our world narrows to the circle of the reading-lamp in the c.o.c.kpit. Our cabin is prepared.
Through the open door we see its red curtain warm in the light of the swinging lamp, the beds laid, the white sheets turned back. Still we grudge these moments to sleep. Outside we hear the tide streaming seawards, light airs play beneath the awning, above it rides the host of heaven. And here, gathered into a few square feet, we have home--larder, cellar, library, tables, and cupboards; life's small appliances with the human comrades.h.i.+p they serve, chosen for their service after severely practical discussion, yet ultimately by the heart's true nesting-instinct.
We are isolated, bound even to this strange river-bed by a few fathoms of chain only. To-morrow we can lift anchor and spread wing; but we carry home with us.
”I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-s.h.i.+ne at night; I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.”
”I will make my kitchen and you shall keep your room Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom; And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.”
You see now what memories we lay up with the boat. Will you think it ridiculous that after such royal days of summer, her inconspicuous obsequies have before now put me in mind of Turner's '_Fighting Temeraire_'? I declare, at any rate, that the fault lies not with me, but with our country's painters and poets for providing no work of art nearer to my mood. We English have a great seafaring and a great poetical past.
Yet the magic of the sea and s.h.i.+pping has rarely touched our poetry, and for its finest expression we must still turn to an art in which as a race we are less expert, and stand before that picture of Turner's in the National Gallery. The late Mr. Froude believed in a good time coming when the sea-captains of Elizabeth are to find their bard and sit enshrined in 'great English national epic as grand as the _Odyssey_' It may be, but as yet our poets have achieved but a few sea-fights, marine adventures, and occasional pieces, which wear a spirited but accidental look, and suggest the excursionist. On me, at any rate, no poem in our language--not even _The Ancient Mariner_--binds as that picture binds, the--
”Mystic spell, Which none but sailors know or feel, And none but they can tell--”
If indeed they _can_ tell. In it Turner seized and rolled together in one triumphant moment the emotional effect of n.o.ble s.h.i.+pping and a sentiment as ancient and profound as the sea itself--human regret for transitory human glory. The great wars.h.i.+p, glimmering in her Mediterranean fighting-paint, moving like a queen to execution; the pert and ign.o.ble tug, itself an emblem of the new order, eager, pus.h.i.+ng, ugly, and impatient of the slow loveliness it supersedes; the sunset hour, closing man's labour; the fading river-reach--you may call these things obvious, but all art's greatest effects are obvious when once genius has discovered them. I should know well enough by this time what is coming when I draw near that picture, and yet my heart never fails to leap with the old wild wonder. There are usually one or two men standing before it--I observe that it affects women less--and I glance at them furtively to see how _they_ take it. If ever I surprise one with tears in his eyes, I believe we shall shake hands. And why not? For the moment we are not strangers, but men subdued by the wonder and sadness of our common destiny: ”we feel that we are greater than we know.” We are two Englishmen, in one moment realising the glories of our blood and state. We are alone together, gazing upon a new Pacific, 'silent, upon a peak in Darien.'
For--and here lies his subtlety--in the very flush of amazement the painter flatters you by whispering that for _you_ has his full meaning been reserved. The _Temeraire_ goes to her doom unattended, twilit, obscure, with no pause in the dingy bustle of the river. You alone have eyes for the pa.s.sing of greatness, and a heart to feel it.
”There's a far bell ringing,”
But you alone hear it tolling to evensong, to the close of day, the end of deeds.
So, as we near the beach where she is to lie, a sense of proud exclusiveness mingles with our high regret. Astern the jettymen and stevedores are wrangling over their latest job; trains are shunting, cranes working, trucks discharging their cargoes amid clouds of dust.
We and we only a.s.sist at the pa.s.sing of a G.o.ddess. Euergetes rests on his oars, the tow-rope slackens, she glides into the deep shadow of the sh.o.r.e, and with a soft grating noise--ah, the eloquence of it!--takes ground.
Silently we carry her chain out and noose it about a monster elm; silently we slip the legs under her channels, lift and make fast her stern moorings, lash the tiller for the last time, tie the coverings over cabintop and well; anxiously, with closed lips, praetermitting no due rite. An hour, perhaps, pa.s.ses, and November darkness has settled on the river ere we push off our boat, in a last farewell committing her--our treasure 'locked up, not lost'--to a winter over which Jove shall reign genially.
”Et fratres Helenae, lucida sidera.”
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