Diversions of the Echo Club: Night the Second
THE friends came together again in the Lions’ Den, a little earlier than their wont; but they did not immediately take up the chief diversion of the evening. In intellectual, as in physical acrobatics, the joints must be gradually made flexible, and the muscles warm and elastic, by lighter feats ; so the conversation began as mere skylarking and mutual chaffing, as empty and evanescent, when you attempt to catch it, as the foam-ripples on a swift stream. But Galahad had something on his mind ; he had again read portions of the “ Earthly Paradise,” and insisted that the atmosphere of the poems was not gray and overcast, but charged with a golden, luminous mist, like that of the Indian summer. Finally, he asked the Ancient, — “ Granting the force of your impression, might not much of it come from some want of harmony between your mood or temper of mind and the author’s ? In that case, it would not be abstractly just.
THE ANCIENT. I don’t think that we often can be “ abstractly just ” towards contemporary poets ; we either exalt or abase them too much. For we and they breathe either the same or opposite currents in the intellectual atmosphere of the time, and there can be no impartial estimate until those winds have blown over. This is precisely the reason why you sometimes think me indifferent, when I am only trying to shove myself as far off as the next generation ; at least, to get a little outside of the fashions and whims and prejudices of this day. American authors, and also their publishers, are often charged with an over-concern for the opinion of the English literary journals. I think their interest quite natural —
ZOÏLUS (with energy). Now, you surely are not going to justify that sycophantic respect for the judgment of men who know so much less than we do of our own literature !
THE ANCIENT. I condemn all sycophancy, even to the great, triumphant, overwhelming American spirit ! But, until we have literary criticism of a more purely objective character in this country, — until our critics learn to separate their personal tastes and theories from their estimate of the executive and artistic quality of the author ; or, which amounts to the same thing, to set this quality, this creative principle, higher than the range of themes and opinions, — the author will look to the judgment of critics, whose distance and whose very want of acquaintance with our prejudices and passions assure him of a certain amount of impartiality. The feeling is reciprocal ; I venture to say that an intelligent American criticism has more weight with an English author than that of one of his own Reviews.
ZOÏLUS. DO you mean to say that we have no genuine criticism ?
THE ANCIENT. By no means; we have some that is admirable. But it is only recognized at its true value by a very small class ; the great reading public is blissfully ignorant of its existence. It adds to the confusion, that many of our writers have no definite ideas of literary excellence apart from the effect which immediately follows their work ; and readers are thus actually misled by those who should guide them. Why, a year ago, the most popular book in the whole country was one which does not even belong to literature ; and the most popular poem of late years was written, not from a poetic, but from a high moral, inspiration ! Somebody must set up a true æsthetic standard ; it is high time this were done, and a better criticism must be the first step.
THE GANNET. Why don’t you undertake it yourself?
THE ANCIENT. I 'm too fond of comfort. Think what a hornet’s-nest I should thrust my hand into ! Moreover, I doubt whether one could force such interests beyond their natural growth ; we are still suffering from the intellectual demoralization which the war left behind it. But, where’s the hat ? We are spoiling ourselves by all this serious prose. Let us throw in a few more names, and try our luck again.
(They draw the lots as before.)
THE GANNET. John Keats ! How shall I wear his mantle ?
ZOÏLUS. I’m crushed, buried under an avalanche of, — well, not much, after all. Don’t ask me who it is, until I try my hand. You would confuse me with your laughter.
THE ANCIENT. I shall keep mine specially for you, Zoïlus.
GALAHAD. I have drawn one of the names I wrote myself; but you have already so demoralized me, that I will try to parody him as heartily as if I did n’t like his poetry.
THE ANCIENT. You are getting on. But I think the Gannet ought to draw another name ; it is best not to go back of our own day and generation. I propose that we limit ourselves to the poets who stand nearer to our own minds, under whom, or beside whom, or above whom (as each chooses to estimate himself), we have grown and are now growing. The further we withdraw from this atmosphere, the more artificial must our imitations be.
THE GANNET. Let it pass this once, I pray thee, for I have caught my idea ! But, even taking your limitation, who is nearer us than Keats ? Not alone in his own person, though there he stands among us ; he is in Tennyson, in Morris, in Swinburne, and, more remotely, in the earlier poems of Browning and Lowell, besides a host of small rhymers. He still approaches us, while Shelley and Byron withdraw. I think it’s a fair exception ; and if you won’t admit it, I ’ll take the sense of the company.
OMNES. Go on !
(All write busily for fifteen minutes, except THE ANCIENT, who talks in a lower tone with THE CHORUS.)
THE GANNET (looking up). Zoïlus, you were ready first.
ZOÏLUS. Could you guess whom I represent ?
THE GANNET. Tupper ?
ZOÏLUS. He ? he is his own best parody. No ; it is a lyrical inanity, which once was tolerably famous. The Ancient’s rule as to what is properly parodiable does n’t apply here ; for it is neither excellent nor imbecile. I think I had the right to reject the name, but I have tried to see whether a respectable jingle of words, expressing ordinary and highly proper feelings, can be so imitated as to be recognized. Here it is. (Reads.)
OBITUARY.
ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. ELIJAH W. BATEY.
Ye mourners, but be calm !
Instead of dirge and sable crest,
Raise ye thanksgiving psalm !
For he was old and full of years,
The grandsire of your souls :
Then check ye now your heaving tears,
And quench the sigh that rolls !
For sixty years and more.
Still battering with unwearied speech
The ceiling, pews, and floor ;
As, hour by hour, his periods fell,
Your pious hopes arose,
And each one murmured, “All is well,”
Long ere the sermon’s close.
Can anywhere be dumb ?
Before him went a goodly throng,
And wait for him to come.
He preaches still, in other spheres,
To saved and patient souls;
Then, mouers, check your heaving tears,
And queneh the sigh that rolls !
OMNES (shouting). Mrs. Sigourney!
ZOÏLUS. I have succeeded, then ! But, O my friends, is the success a thing over which I should rejoice ? Do not, I beg of you, do not congratulate me !
GALAHAD. Come, now, don’t abuse good old Mother Sigourney! For a long time she was almost our only woman-poet ; and I insist that she was not a mere echo of Felicia Hemans.
ZOÏLUS (ironically). Of course not ! None but herself could ever have written that exquisite original poem, “ On Finding a Shred of Linen.” One passage I can never forget: —
“ Methinks I scan
A defunct pillow-case.”
GALAHAD. YOU are incorrigible ; but we wait for the Gannet and the idea he has caught.
THE GANNET. It was better in anticipation than it seems after execution. However, Keats is too dainty a spirit to be possessed in a few minutes. (Reads.)
ODE ON A JAR OF PICKLES.
I.
Pervades my sense : I seem to see or hear
The lushy garden-grounds of Greenwich Hill
In autumn, when the crispy leaves are sere ;
And odors haunt me of remotest spice
From the Levant or musky-aired Cathay,
Or from the saffron-fields of Jericho,
Where everything is nice :
The more I sniff, the more I swoon away,
And what else mortal palate craves, forego.
II.
Are keener ; wherefore let me sniff again !
Enticing walnuts, I have known ye well
In youth, when pickles were a passing pain ;
Unwitting youth, that craves the candy stem,
And sugar-plums to olives doth prefer,
And even licks the pots of marmalade
When sweetness clings to them :
But now I dream of ambergris and myrrh,
Tasting these walnuts in the poplar shade.
III.
Plucked with its dew, the cucumber is here,
As to the Dryad’s parching lips a boon,
And crescent bean-pods, unto Bacchus dear ;
And, last of all, the pepper’s pungent globe,
The scarlet dwelling of the sylph of fire,
Provoking purple draughts ; and, surfeited,
I cast my trailing robe
O’er my pale feet, touch up my tuneless lyre,
And twist the Delphic Wreath to suit my head.
IV.
Than fretful men’s in parched and palsied days;
And, by the mid-May’s dusky leaves embowered,
Forget the fruitful blame, the scanty praise.
No sweets to them who sweet themselves were born,
Whose natures ooze with lucent saccharine ;
Who, with sad repetition soothly cloyed,
The lemon-tinted morn
Enjoy, and find acetic twilight fine :
Wake I, or sleep? The pickle-jar is void.
ZOÏLUS. Not to be mistaken ; but you have almost stepped over the bounds of our plan. Those two odes of Keats are too immediately suggested, though I find that only two lines are actually parodied. I agree with the Ancient; let us stick to the authors of our own day ! Galahad, you look mysterious ; are we to guess your singer from the echo ?
GALAHAD. Are you all ready to hear me chant, in rare and rhythmic redundancy, the viciousness of virtue ?
THE CHORUS. O, Swinburne! chant away !
GALAHAD (reads): —
THE LAY OF MACARONI.
From creek to cove of the curving shore,
Buffeted, blown, and broken before me,
Scattered and spread to its sunlit core ;
As a dove that dips in the dark of maples
To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade,
I kneel in thy nimbus, O noon of Naples,
I bathe in thine beauty, by thee embayed !
The queen of the flashes and flames that were !
Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her,
The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her !
I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters,
I have danced her dances of dizzy delight,
I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her altars,
Between the nightingale’s song and the night !
What is it now I should ask at thine hands?
Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee?
Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands?
Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leoni,
And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold,
She gives me mellifluous, mild macaroni,
The choice of her children when cheeses are old !
Frayed in the furnace by flame that is fleet.
The curious coils and the strenuous strings of it,
Dropping, diminishing down, as I eat :
Lo ! and the beautiful Queen, as she brings of it,
Lifts me the links of the limitless chain,
Bidding mine mouth chant the splendidest things of it,
Out of the wealth of my wonderful hram !
With sweets of the surfeit her hands have unrolled.
Italia, mine cheeks with thine kisses are bitten :
I am broken with beauty, stabbed, slaughtered, and sold !
No man of thy millions is more macaronied,
Save mighty Mazzini, than musical Me :
The souls of the Ages shall stand as astonied,
And faint in the flame I am fanning for thee !
THE ANCIENT (laughing). O Galahad, I can fancy your later remorse.
It is not a year since you were absolutely Swinburne-mad, and I hardly dared, in your presence, to object even to “ Anactoria ” and “ Dolores.” I would not encourage you, then, for I saw you were carried away by the wild rush of the rhythm, and the sparkle of epithets which were partly new and seemed wholly splendid ; but now I will confess to you that as a purely rhythmical genius I look on Swinburne as a phenomenon in literature.
GALAHAD (eagerly). Then you admit that he is great ?
THE ANCIENT. Not as you mean. I have been waiting for his ferment to settle, as in the case of Keats and Shelley ; but there are no signs of it in his last volume. How splendidly the mind of Keats precipitated its crudity and redundancy, and clarified into the pure wine of “Hyperion”! In Shelley’s case the process was slower, but it was steadily going on ; you will find the same thing in Schiller, in Dryden, and many other poets, therefore I mean to reserve my judgment in Swinburne’s case, and wait, at least until his next work is published. Meanwhile, I grant that he has enriched our English lyric poetry with some new and admirable forms.
THE GANNET. He has certainly made a “sensation” in the literary world ; does that indicate nothing ?
THE ANCIENT. That depends. I declare it seems to me as if the general taste were not quite healthy. To a very large class reading has become a form of lazy luxury, and such readers are not satisfied without a new great poet, every four or five years. Then, too, there has been an amazing deal of trash written about the coming authors, —what they should be, how they must write, and the like ; and so those luxurious readers are all the time believing they have discovered one of the tribe. Why, let a man take a thought as old as Confucius, and put it into some strange, jerky, convulsed form, and you will immediately hear the cry, “ How wonderful! how original ! ” You all remember the case of Alexander Smith ; it seems incredible, now, that the simulated passion and forced sentiment of his “ Life-Drama ” should have been accepted as real, yet, because of this book, he was hailed as a second Shakespeare. This hunger of the luxurious reader for new flavors is a dangerous thing for young poets.
ZIÏLUS. I almost think I hear my own voice. We don’t often agree so thoroughly.
THE ANCIENT. SO much the better, I wonder if you ’ll be as well satisfied with the task I have in store for you ; here is the name. (Giving him the slip of paper.)
ZOÏLUS. Emerson ! I think I can guess why.
THE ANCIENT. Yes, I remember what you wrote when " Brahma ” was first published, and what you said to Galahad the other evening. I confess I was amazed, at the time, that the newspapers should so innocently betray their ignorance. There was a universal cry of “ incomprehensible ! ” when the meaning of the poem was perfectly plain. In fact, there are few authors so transparently clear, barring a few idiosyncrasies of expression, which one soon learns, as just Emerson.
ZOÏLUS. Then explain to me those lines from “ Alphonso of Castile”: —
Fits not to be over-zealous ;
Steads not to work on the clean jump,
And wine and brains perpetual pump ! ”
THE ANCIENT. That is simply baldness oflanguage (which Emerson sometimes mistakes for humor), not obscurity. I will not explain it! Read the whole poem over again, and I 'm sure you will not need to ask me. But now, to your work ! Who will draw again ?
THE GANNET (drawing). Ha! A friend, this time ; and I wish he were here with us. Nobody would take more kindly to our fun than he.
GALAHAD. I shall try no more, tonight. My imitation of Swinburne has exhausted me. I felt, while writing, as Zoïlus did when he was imitating Browning, — as if I could have gone on and on forever! Really there is some sort of possession or demoniac influence in these experiments. They fascinate me, and yet I feel as if a spirit, foreign to my own, had seized me.
THE ANCIENT. Take another cigar ! I wish we had the Meleager, or the Farnese torso, here ; five minutes of either would surround you with a different atmosphere. I know precisely how it affects you. Thirty years ago, O Tempus Edax, must I say thirty ? when I dreamed hot dreams of fame, and walked the streets in a mild delirium, pondering over the great and godlike powers pent within me, I had the same chills and fevers. I ’m not laughing at you, my dear Galahad; God forbid ! I only pray that there may be more vitality in the seeds which your dreams cover, than in mine. Waiter ! Our glasses are empty.
(ZOÏLUS and the GANNET continue to write : meantime, fresh glasses of beer are brought, and there is a brief silence)
ZOÏLUS. I suspect the Ancient will want to knock me on the head for this. (Reads.)
ALL OR NOTHING.
Knoweth more than me ;
Hunger is but knowledge
In a less degree :
Prophet, priest, and poet
Oft prevaricate,
And the surest sentence
Hath the greatest weight.
Drops the morning dew,
Somewhat of Life’s riddle
Soaks my spirit through.
I am buskined by the goddess
Of Monadnock’s crest,
And my wings extended
Touch the East and West.
In the cells of earth,
Or flowed the founts of Bourbon,
Lo ! I had my birth.
I am crowned coeval
With the Saurian eggs,
And my fancy firmly
Stands on its own legs.
Of the barberry-bush,
Catch the slippery whistle
Of the moulting thrush,
Dance upon the mushrooms,
Dive beneath the sea,
Or anything else remarkable,
Thou must follow me !
THE ANCIENT. Well, you have read somewhat more than I imagined, Zoïlus. This is a fair imitation of the manner of some of Emerson’s earlier poems ; but you may take heart, Galahad, if you fear the power of association, for not one of the inimitable, imperishable passages has been suggested.
ZOÏLUS. NOW, seriously, do you mean to say that there are such ?
THE ANCIENT.
The rose of beauty burns;
Through times that wear, and forms that fade,
Immortal youth returns.”
GALAHAD (drawing a long breath). How beautiful !
THE ANCIENT.
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of Beauty there,
And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake.”
ZOÏLUS. Peccavi !
THE ANCIENT. Then I will lock up my half-unbolted thunders. The Master does not need my vindication ; and I should do him a poor service by trying to drive any one towards the recognition of his deserts, when all who think for themselves must come, sooner or later, to know him.
THE GANNET. But I never saw those stanzas !
THE ANCIENT. Yet they are printed for all the world. The secret is simply this : Emerson cut from his limbs, long ago, the old theological fetters, as every independent thinker must. Those who run along in the ruts made by their grandfathers, unable to appreciate the exquisite fibre of his intellect, the broad and grand eclecticism of his taste, suspect a heresy in every sentence which they are too coarsely textured to understand. No man of our day habitually lives in a purer region of thought.
ZOÏLUS (looking at his match). Now, we must know what the Gannet has been doing.
THE GANNET. My name was Edmund Clarence Stedman.
THE ANCIENT. One of the younger tribes, with some of whom I’m not so familiar. I have caught several of his “ fugitives,” in their flight, finding them of the kind that catch and hang somewhere, instead of being blown quietly on until they pass forever out of the world. There’s a fine masculine vibration in his lines : he sings in the major key, which young poets generally do not. I’d be willing to bet that your imitation has a sportive, not a solemn, character.
THE GANNET. Why, in spite of your disclaimer, you 're not so ignorant. Your guess is right : therefore, listen ! (Reads.)
THE GOLD-ROOM.
AN IDYL.
And from their country villas,
And some, Charybdis’ gulf whirls down,
And some fall into Scylla’s.
Lo ! here young Paris climbs the stairs
As if their slope were Ida’s,
And here his golden touch declares
The ass’s ears of Midas.
To every business-scorner,
But such, methinks, must be an “out,”
Or has not made a “corner.”
In me the rhythmic gush revives;
I feel a classic passion :
We, also, lead Arcadian lives,
Though in a Broad-Street fashion.
And Diomed a bear is,
And near them, shearing bankers’ wool,
Strides the Tiltonian Charis ;
And Atys, there, has gone to smash,
His every bill protested,
While Cleon’s eyes with comfort flash, —
I have his funds invested !
As in the days of Pindar :
The Isthmian race, the dust and sweat,
The prize — why, what’s to hinder?
And if I twang my lyre at times,
They did so then, I reckon ;
That man’s the best at modern rhymes
Whom you can draw a check on !
OMNES (clapping their hands). Bravo!
THE ANCIENT. TO think of Stedman’s being the only voice in our literature which comes out of the business crowds of the whole country ! The man who can spend his days in a purely material atmosphere, and sing at night, has genuine pluck in him. It’s enough to make any green poet, who wails about the cruel world, and the harsh realities of life, and the beautiful realm of the ideal, ashamed of himself!
GALAHAD (annoyed). You don’t mean as much as you say! Every poet, green or not, must have faith in an ideal.
THE ANCIENT (gently). Ay, but if it make him
as Coleridge translates Schiller, it is a deceit and a snare to him. Your Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes,Goethe, were made of different clay.
ZOÏLUS. Here’s to their sublime Shades, wherever they may be wandering ! Out, to the last drop ! We are in the small hours ; the Donnerwetters ! are all silent in the saloon, and Karl Schäfer is probably snoring over his counter, waiting for us. Come! I [Exeunt.