Diversions of the Echo Club: Night the Third
WHEN the sportive tilting with light lances, the reciprocal, good-natured chaffing, in which the members of the Club were wont to indulge on coming together, had subsided, the conversation took the following turn :
ZOÏLUS (tc THE ANCIENT). I’ve been considering what you said the last time, about the prevalent literary taste not being entirely healthy. How far would you apply that verdict to the authors ? Their relative popularity is your only gauge for the character of the readers.
THE ANCIENT. I don’t think I had any individual authors in my mind, at the time. But a great deal of all modern literature is ephemeral, created from day to day to supply a certain definite demand, and sinking out of sight, sooner or later. Nine readers out of ten make no distinction between this ephemeral material and the few works which really belong to our literary history ; that is, they confound the transitory with the permanent authors.
ZOILUS. SO far, I agree with you. Now the inference would be that those nine readers, who lack the finer judgment, and who, of course, represent the prevalent taste, are responsible for the success of the transitory authors. But they do not make the latter ; they do not even dictate the character of their works : hence the school, no matter how temporary it may be, must be founded by the authors,—which obliges us to admit a certain degree of originality and power
THE ANCIENT I see where you are going; let us have no reasoning in a ring, I pray you ! If you admit the two classes of authors, it is enough. I have already seen one generation forgotten, and I fancy I now see the second slipping the cables of their craft, 2nd making ready to drop down stream with the ebb-tide. I remember, for instance, that in 1840 there were many well - known and tolerably popular names, which are never heard now. Byron and Mrs. Hemans then gave the tone to poetry, and Scott, Bulwer, and Cooper to fiction. Willis was, by all odds, the most popular Ameriican author ; Longfellow was not known by the multitude, Emerson was only “ that Transcendentalist,” and Whittier “ that Abolitionist.” We young men used to talk of Rufus Dawes, and Charles Fenno Hoffman, and Grenville Mellen, and Brainard, and Sands. Why, we even had a hope that something wonderful would come out of Chivers !
OMNES. Chivers ?
THE ANCIENT. Have you never heard of Chivers ? He is a phenomenon !
THE GANNET. Does n’t Poe speak of him somewhere ?
THE ANCIENT. TO be sure. Poe finished the ruin of him which Shelley began. Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, of Georgia, author of “ Virginalia,” “The Lost Pleiad,” “Facets of Diamond,” and “ Eonchs of Ruby ! ”
ZOILUS. What! Come, now, this is only a ben trovato.
THE ANCIENT. Also of “ Nacoochee, the Beautiful Star” ; and there was still another volume, — six in all ! The British Museum has the only complete set of his works. I speak the sober truth, Zoilus ; a friend of mine has three of the volumes, and I can show them to you. One of the finest images in modern poetry is in his “ Apollo ” : —
Making oceans metropolitan, for the splendor of the dawn ! ”
ZOÏLUS. Incredible!
THE ANCIENT. I remember also a stanza of his “ Rosalie Lee ” : —
Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine,
From the ruby-rimmed beryliue buckets,
Star-gemmed, lily-shaped, hyaline ;
Like the sweet golden goblet found growing
On the wild emerald cucumber-tree,
Rich, brilliant, like chrysoprase glowing,
Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee ! ”
ZOÏLUS. Hold, hold ! I can endure no more.
THE ANCIENT. YOU see what comes of a fashion in literature. There was many a youth in those days who made attempts just as idiotic, in the columns of country papers ; and perhaps the most singular circumstance was, that very few readers laughed at them. Why, there are expressions, epithets, images, which run all over the land, and sometimes last for a generation. I once discovered that with both the English and German poets of a hundred years ago, evening is always called brown, and morning either rosy or purple. Just now the fashion runs to jewelry ; we have ruby lips, and topaz light, and sapphire seas, and diamond air. Mrs. Browning even says : —
“ Her cheek’s pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark !”
What sort of a cheek must that be ? Then we have such a wealth of gorgeous color as never was seen before, — no quiet Half-tints, but pure pigments, laid on with a pallet-knife. Really, I sometimes feel a distinct sense of fatigue at the base of the optic nerve, after reading a magazine story. The besetting sin of the popular—not the best — authors is the intense.
ZOILUS. Why do you call intensity of expression a sin ?
THE ANCIENT. I meant intensity of epithet} the strongest expression is generally the briefest and barest. Take the old ballads of any people, and you will find few adjectives. The singer says : “ He laughed ; she wept.” Perhaps the poet of a more civilised age might say : “ He laughed in scorn ; she turned away and shed tears of disappointment.” But nowadays, the ambitious young writer must produce something like this : “ A hard, fiendish laugh, scornful and pitiless, forced its passage from his throat through the lips that curled in mockery of her appeal ; she covered her despairing face, and a gust and whirlwind of sorrowing agony burst forth in her irresistible tears ! ”
OMNES {clapping their hands). Go on ! Go on!
THE ANCIENT. It is enough of the Bowery, for to-night.
GALAIHAD. O, you forget the intenser life of our day ! 1 see the exaggeration of which you speak, but I believe something of it comes from the struggle to express more. All our senses have grown keener, our natures respond more delicately, and to a greater range of influences, than those of the generations before us. There is a finer moral development ; our aims in life have become spiritualized ; we may have less power, less energy of genius, but we move towards higher and purer goals.
ZOÏLUS. The writers of Queen Anne’s time might have compared themselves in the same way with their predecessors in Charles II.’s. What if your own poems should be considered coarse and immoral a hundred years hence ?
GALAHAD {bewildered). What has that to do with the question ?
THE ANCIENT. Only this ; that there are eternal laws of Art, to which the moral and spiritual aspirations of the author, which are generally relative to his own or the preceding age, must conform, if they would also become eternal.
THE GANNET. Very fine, indeed ; but you are all forgetting our business.
ZOILUS. Let us first add a fresh supply of names.
THE GANNET. Write them yourself’ we shall otherwise repeat.
(ZOILUS writes a dozen or more slips, •whereupon they draw.)
GALAHAD. Dante Rossetti !
ZOILUS. I have Barry Cornwall.
THE GANNET. And I — Whittier.
OMNES. Whittier must not be parodied.
GALAHAD {earnestly). Draw another name!
THE ANCIENT. Why ?
GALAHAD. There is at once an evidence of what I said ! Where are your jewelry and colors ? On the other side, where will you find an intenser faith, a more ardent aspiration lor truth and good ? The moral and spiritual element is so predominant in him, — so wedded for time and eternity to his genius as a poet, —that you cannot imitate him without seeming to slight, or in some way offend, what should be as holy to us as to him !
THE ANCIENT {laying his hand on GALAHAD'S shoulder)- My dear boy, Whittier deserves all the love and reverence you are capable of giving him. He is just as fine an illustration of my side of the question : his poetic art has refined and harmonized that moral quality in his nature, which, many years ago, made his poetry seem partisan, and therefore, not unmixed poetry. But the alloy (in a poetic sense, only) has been melted out in the pure and steady flame of his intellect, and the preacher in him has now his rightful authority because he no longer governs the poet. As for those poems which exhale devotion and aspiration as naturally as a violet exhales odor, there is no danger of the Gannet imitating them ; he has not the power even if he had the will. But Whittier has also written —
THE GANNET. Don't you see I’m hard at work ? What do you mean by dictating what I may or may not do? I am already well launched, and {declaiming) “ I seek no change ; and, least of all, such change as you would give me ! ”
THE ANCIENT. I can't help you, Galahad ; go on with your own work now. I have drawn one of the youngsters, this time, and mean to turn him over to you when you have slaughtered Rossetti.
GALAHAD. Who is he ?
THE ANCIENT. A brother near your throne.
ZOILUS {to THE ANCIENT). I have done Barry Cornwall ; it’s an easy task. He is nearly always very brief. His are not even short swallow-flights of song, but little hops from one twig to another. While Galahad and the Gannet are finishing theirs, repeat to me something more of Olivers !
THE ANCIENT. I can only recall fragments, here and there. The refrain to a poem called “ The Poet’s Vocation,” in the “ Eonchs of Ruby,” is : —
Blown through the Conchimarian horns,
Down the dark vistas of the reboaatic Norns,
To the Genius of Eternity,
Crying : " Come to me ! Come to me ! ’ ”
ZOILUS. Ye gods ! It is amazing. Why can’t you write a stanza in his manner ?
THE ANCIENT {smiling). I think I can even equal him.
(He fakes a pencil and writes rapidly, fast as he finishes, GALAHAD and THE GANNET lay down their pencils and lean back in their scats.)
THE CIIORUS {eagerly). We must first hear the Ancient ! He is a medium for the great Chi vers.
THE ANCIENT. I have been merciful towards you. One stanza will suffice. (Reads.)
That walks ’mid the agates of June,
The wreaths of remorse that I gather
Were tom from the turrets of Rune ;
When the star-patterns broidered so brilliant
Shone forth from the diapered blue,
And the moon dropped her balsam scintilliant,
Soul-nectar for me and for you !
THE GANNET. Send for a physician ; tie a wet towel around his head ! A thousand years hence, when the human race comes back to polytheism, Chivers will be the god of all crack-brained authors.
THE ANCIENT. I recognize a fantastic infection. Come, Zoilus, give me a tonic !
ZOILUS. Wine has become a very fashionable tonic, and that is just what I have put into Barry Cornwall’s mouth. (Reads.)
SONG.
Stuff! the poet’s drink is wine.
Black as quaffed by old King Death,
That which biteth, maddeneth;
For my readers fain would see
What effect it has on me.
Joints be loose in every limb,
And the golden rhymes I chant
Sheer away on wings aslant,
Whale may whistle, porpoise roil,
Yet I ’il drain the gentle bowl !
Virtue’s mackerel looks austere ;
Duty’s hippopotamus
Waddles forward, leaving us ;
Joy, the sturgeon, leaps and soars,
While we coast the Teian shores 1
THE ANCIENT. What a fearful Bacchanalian you have made of good and gentle Barry Cornwall ! You must have been possessed by Poe’s “ Imp of the Perverse,” to yoke his manner to such a subject. I was expecting to hear something of spring and clover and cowslips. Faith! I believe I could improvise an imitation. Wait a second ! Now:—
And cowslips blow,
The milkmaid churnclh
Her creamy snow,
The mill-wheel spurneth
The stream below ;
The cherry-tree skippeth in earth and air,
The small bird calleth : beware, prepare !
And all is fair !
OMNES. Another stanza !
THE ANCIENT. O, you have but to turn things upside down, and there it is : —
O'er brake and burn.
The cream o'erfioweth
The tilted churn,
The mill wheel sloweth,
And fails to turn ;
The cherry-tree sheddeth her leaves in the fall,
The crow and the clamoring raven call,
And that is all !
But, seriously', Galahad, after what ZoÏlus has done, I am a little afraid of the Gannet’s work. Suppose he should make our beloved Whittier
Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences
Unmeet for ladies ” ?
GALAHAD (earnestly). Then I should withdraw from the Club.
THE GANNET. Prythee, peace, young hotspur ! I ’ll agree to start with you for Massachusetts by to-morrow morning’s express train, and lay before the poet what I ’ve written. If he does n’t laugh heartily, on reading it, I ’ll engage to come all the way back afoot.
THE ANCIENT. We can decide for him : read !
THE GANNET. It is a ballad of New England life which you shall hear. {Reads.)
THE BALLAD OF HIRAM HOVER,:
Pours its waters in the Skuutic,
Met, along the forest-side,
Hiram Hover, Huldah Hyde.
He, a red-haired, stalwart trapper,
Hunting beaver, mink, and skunk.
In the woodlands of Squeedunk.
Walked beside the Skuntic water,
Gathering, in her apron wet,
Snakeroot, mint, and bouncing-bet.
“ Gather yarbs for chills and fever,
When a lovyer, bold and true.
Only waits to gather you ? ”
I prefer a man more tasly :
Leastways, one to please me well
Should not have a beasty smell”
“ Mind and heart alike are cancered :
Jest look here ! these peltries give
Cash, wherefrom a pair may live.
Trapping beasts by no means fragrant ;
Yet — I’m sure it’s worth a thank —
I’ve a handsome sum in bank.”
And, before the year was over,
Huldah, with the yarbs she sold,
Bought a cape, against the cold.
Of a stylish cut the shape was ;
And the girls, in all the town,
Envied Huldah up and down.
Hiram came, without a warning :
“ Either,” said he, “ you are blind,
Huldah, or you 've changed your mind.
Yet you take the skins for garments :
Since you wear the skunk and mink.
There’s no harm in me, I think.”
Hiram : I accept the moral.
Now the fashion’s so, I guess
I can’t hardly do no less.”
Of the love of Hiram Hover :
Thus he made sweet Huldah Hyde
Huldah Hover, as his bride.
Things of good and evil savor;
That, which first appeared to part,
Warmed, at last, the maiden’s heart.
Life, the hunter, Love, the tanner.
Draw, from every beast they snare,
Comfort for a wedded pair !
ZoÏLUS. The Gannet distances us all, to-night. Even Galahad is laughing yet, and I saw, when the reading began, that he was resolved not to smile, if he could help it. What does our Ancient think ?
THE ANCIENT. It does, certainly, suggest the style of some of Whittier’s delightful ballads, only substituting a comical for an earnest motive. Change that motive and a few expressions, and it would become a serious poem. The Gannet was lucky in striking the proper key at the start. And here, perhaps, is one result of our diversions, upon which we had not calculated, over and above the fun. I don’t see why poets should not drill themselves in all that is technical, as well as painters, sculptors, opera-singers, or even orators. All the faculties called into play to produce rhythm, harmony of words, richness of the poetical dialect, choice of keys and cadences, may be made nimbler, by even mechanical practice, more active, and more obedient to command. I never rightly believed in the peculiar solemnity of the poet’s gift ; every singer should have a gay, sportive side to his nature. I am sure the young Shakespeare would have heartily joined in what we are here doing ; the young Goethe, we know, did many a similar thing. He was a capital improvvisatore; and who knows how much of his mastery over all forms of poetry may not have come from just such gymnastics ?
GALAHAD. Might not an aptness in representing the manner of others — like that of an actor who assumes a different character every night — indicate some lack of original force ?
THE ANCIENT. The comparison is deceptive. An actor’s sole business is to assume other individualities. What we do is no more than every novelist does, in talking as a young girl, an old man, a saint, or a sinner. If anything of yourself.is lost in the process, and you can’t get it back again, why — let it go !
ZoÏLUS. YOU have it now, Galahad !
GALAHAD. Well, I 'll cover my confusion by transferring myself into Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Reads.)
CIMABUELLA.
I.
In crescent curves above the light
Of eyes, whose dim, uncertain dawn
Becomes not day : a forehead white
Beneath long yellow heaps of hair :
She is so strange she must be fair.
II.
She were an angel; but she stands
With flat dead gold behind her head,
And lilies in her long thin hands :
Her folded mantle, gathered in.
Falls to her feet as it were tin.
III.
Her crimson lips no thing express ;
And never dread of saintly blame
Held down her heavy eyelashes:
To guess what she were thinking of,
Precludeth any meaner love.
IV.
Sprinkled with scarlet spots, I laid
Before her straight, cool feet unrolled :
But she nor sound nor movement made
(Albeit I heard a soft, shy smile,
Printing her neck a moment’s while);
V.
For that she spake not, neither kissed,
But stared right past me. Lo ! behind
Me stood, in pink and amethyst,
Sword-girt and velvet-doubleted,
A tall, gaunt youth, with frowzy head.
VI.
Thick lips that simpered, but, ah me !
I saw, with most forlorn surprise,
He was the Thirteenth Century,
I but the Nineteenth ; then despair
Curdled beneath my curling hair.
VII.
My rounded outlines, broader brain.
And my resuscitated Muse?
Some tears she shed, but whether pain
Or joy in him unlocked their source,
I could not fathom which, of course.
VIII.
With cither and with clavichord
Will sing her songs of sovran sound :
Belike her pity will afford
Such faint return as suits a saint
So sweetly done in verse and paint.
THE GANNET. O Galahad ! Who could have expected this of you ?
GALAHAD. YOU know I like Rossetti’s poems, but, really, I could n’t help it, after I once got under way.
THE GANNET. Rossetti is picturesque, whatever else he may not be. His poetry has a delicate flavor of its own, and that is much to me, in these days, when so many dishes seem to be cooked with the same sauce. A poet is welcome to go back to the thirteenth Century, if he only fetches us pictures. Poetry belongs to luxurious living, as much as painting and music ; hence we must value color, rhythmical effect, quaint and unexpected play of fancy, and every other quality that makes verse bright and sparkling. The theme is of less importance. Take, for instance, Victor Hugo’s Orientates.
ZOÏLUS. Pray, let us not open that discussion again ! You know, already, how far I go with you, and just where Galahad and the Ancient stand. We should rather confine ourselves directly to the authors we imitate. Now, I think. Rossetti’s book on the Early Italian Poets better than his own poems. Perhaps it was the attempt to reproduce those poets in English which has given the mediæval coloring to his verse. We cannot undertake to say how much of the manner is natural, and how much assumed ; for a thirteenth or even a second century nature may be born nowadays. But it is none the less out of harmony with our thought and feeling, and the encouragement of such a fashion in literature strikes me as being related to the PreRaphaelite hallucination in art. I should like to have the Ancient’s opinion ou this point.
THE ANCIENT. Here is your other name, Galahad. (Gives him a slip of paper.) If there were not so much confusion of taste, Zoilus, — such an uncertainty in regard to the unchanging standards of excellence, in literature and art, — I could answer you in a few words. We must judge these anachronistic developments (as they seem) by those which provoked them. A movement may be false in itself, yet made necessary by some antecedent illusion or inanity. If you want to leave port, almost any craft will answer. I might carry out the image, and add that we never can foresee what side-winds may come to force the vessel to some other shore than that for which she seems bound, I have carefully read Rossetti’s book, as one of the many phenomena of the day. It seems to me that there is a thin little thread of native poetry in him, but so encumbered with the burden of color, sensuous expression, and mediæval imagery and drapery, that it often is quite lost. What I have heard of the author explains to me the existence of the volume ; but its immediate popularity is something which I cannot yet comprehend. GALAHAD. I have written.
THE GANNET. Already ? Who was it, then ?
GALAHAD. A personal friend, whose poems I know by heart, — Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Therefore, I could n’t well avoid violating our rule, for a special little rhyme popped into my head, and imitated myself. If Aldrich were not living in Boston, we should have him here with us to-night, and he would be quite ready to burlesque himself (Reads.)
PALABRAS GRANDIOSAS:
Under the roses dappled and dun.
I thought of the Sultan Gingerbeer,
In his palace beside the Bendemeer,
With his Affghan guards and his eunuchs blind,
And the harem that stretched for a league behind
The tulips bent i’ the summer breeze,
Under the broad chrysanthemum trees,
And the minstrel, playing his culverin,
Made for mine ears a merry din.
If I were the Sultan, and he were I,
Here i’ the grass he should loafing lie,
And I should bestride my zebra steed,
And ride to the hunt of the centipede :
While the pet of the harem, Dandeline,
Should fill me a crystal bucket of wine,
And the kislar aga, Up-to-Snuff,
Should wipe my mouth when I sighed “ Enough ! ’
And the gay court poet, Fearfulbore,
Should su in the hall when the hunt was o’er. And chant me songs of silvery tone,
Not from Hafiz, but— mine own !
I am not the Sultan Gingerbeer,
Nor you the odalisque Dandeliue,
Yet I am yourn, and you are mine 1
THE ANCIENT. There’s a delicate, elusive quality about Aldrich’s short lyrics, which I should think very difficult to catch. I have an indistinct recollection of poor George Arnold writing something.
ZOILUS. It was all about a mistake Aldrich made, years ago, in the ^olor of a crocus. He called it red, and there may be red crocuses for aught I know ; but yellow or orange is the conventional color. Of course we did n’t let the occasion slip ; we were all unmerciful towards each other. I remember I wrote something like this : —
Through the blossoms of every hue ;
And I saw the pink, with its yellow stain.
And the rose, with its bud of blue.
George Arnold’s lines were : —
The blue arbutus of the early June,
The crimson lemon and the purple yam,
And dainties brought from Seringapatam !
THE GANNET. They are better than yours. Well, I ’m glad that Galahad has not confused our color, at least. For my part, I like Aldrich ; he is faithful to his talent, and gives us nothing that is not daintily polished and rounded. Some of his fragments remind me of Genoese filigree-work, there seems to be so much elaboration in a small compass ; yet only sport, not labor, is suggested. He, also, has ceased to sing in the minor key ; but I don’t think he ever affected it much.
THE ANCIENT (earnestly). I ’m glad to hear it ! O ye cheerful gods of all great poets, shall we never have an end of weeping and wailing and lamentation ! Is the world nothing but a cavern of sorrow, and the individual life a couch of thorns ? Must we have always bats, and never skylarks, in the air of poetry ?
ZOILUS. Hear, hear ! I have not seen the Ancient so roused this many a day.
THE ANCIENT. The truth always excites.
GALAHAD. Before you put on your hats, let us have one more “lager.” (The glasses are filled.) Now, to the health of all our young authors !
THE GANNET. Here ’s to them heartily,— for that includes ourselves.
THE ANCIENT. AS the youngest, I return thanks.
[Exeunt.