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The Kempton-Wace Letters
By
Jack London
Contents
I -
FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
II -
FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
III
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
IV -
FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
V -
FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
VI -
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
VII
- FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
VIII
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
IX -
FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XI -
FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XII
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XIII
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XIV
- FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XV -
FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XVI
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XVII
- FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XVIII
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XIX
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XX -
FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XXI
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXII
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XXIII
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXIV
- FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XXV
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXVI
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XXVII
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXVIII
- FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XXIX
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XXX
- FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XXXI
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XXXII
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXXIII
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXXIV
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXXV
- FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME
XXXVI
- FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON..
XXXVII
- FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE.
XXXVIII
- FROM HESTER STEBBINS TO HERBERT WACE.
XXXIX
- FROM HESTER STEBBINS TO DANE KEMPTON..
I - FROM DANE KEMPTON TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3 A QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. August
14, 19--.
Yesterday I wrote
formally, rising to the occasion like the conventional happy father rather =
than
the man who believes in the miracle and lives for it. Yesterday I stinted
myself. I took you in my arms, glad of what is and stately with respect for=
the
fulness of your manhood. It is to-day that I let myself leap into yours in a
passion of joy. I dwell on what has come to pass and inflate myself with pr=
ide
in your fulfilment, more as a mother would, I think, and she your mother.
But why did you n=
ot
write before? After all, the great event was not when you found your offer =
of
marriage accepted, but when you found you had fallen in love. Then was your
hour. Then was the time for congratulation, when the call was first sounded=
and
the reveille of Time and About fell upon your soul and the march to another=
's
destiny was begun. It is always more important to love than to be loved. I =
wish
it had been vouchsafed me to be by when your spirit of a sudden grew willin=
g to
bestow itself without question or let or hope of return, when the self brok=
e up
and you grew fain to beat out your strength in praise and service for the w=
oman
who was soaring high in the blue wastes. You have known her long, and you m=
ust
have been hers long, yet no word of her and of your love reached me. It was=
not
kind to be silent.
Barbara spoke
yesterday of your fastidiousness, and we told each other that you had gaine=
d a
triumph of happiness in your love, for you are not of those who cheat
themselves. You choose rigorously, straining for the heart of the end as do=
all
rigorists who are also hedonists. Because we are in possession of this bit =
of
data as to your temperamental cosmos we can congratulate you with the more
abandon. Oh, Herbert, do you know that this is a rampant spring, and that o=
n leaving
Barbara I tramped out of the confines into the green, happier, it almost se=
ems,
than I have ever been? Do you know that because you love a woman and she lo=
ves you,
and that because you are swept along by certain forces, that I am happy and
feel myself in sight of my portion of immortality on earth, far more than
because of my books, dear lad, far more?
I wish I could fly
England and get to you. Should I have a shade less of you than formerly, if=
we
were together now? From your too much green of wealth, a barrenness of
friendship? It does not matter; what is her gain cannot be my loss. One pow=
er
is mine,--without hindrance, in freedom and in right, to say to Ellen's son,
"Godspeed!" to place Hester Stebbins's hand in his, and bid them
forth to the sunrise, into the glory of day!
Ever your devoted
father, DANE KEMPTON.
II - FROM HERBERT WACE TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Se=
ptember
3, 19--.
Here I am, back in
the old quarters once more, with the old afternoon climb across the campus =
and
up into the sky, up to the old rooms, the old books, and the old view. You =
poor
fog-begirt Dane Kempton, could you but have lounged with me on the window
couch, an hour past, and watched the light pass out of the day through the
Golden Gate and the night creep over the Berkeley Hills and down out of the
east! Why should you linger on there in London town! We grow away from each
other, it seems--you with your wonder-singing, I with my joyful science.
Poesy and economi=
cs!
Alack! alack! How did I escape you, Dane, when mind and mood you mastered m=
e?
The auguries were fair. I, too, should have been a singer, and lo, I strive=
for
science. All my boyhood was singing, what of you; and my father was a singe=
r,
too, in his own fine way. Dear to me is your likening of him to
Waring.--"What's become of Waring?" He was Waring. I can think of=
him
only as one who went away, "chose land travel or seafaring."
Gwynne says I am
sometimes almost a poet--Gwynne, you know, Arthur Gwynne, who has come to l=
ive
with me at The Ridge. "If it were not for your dismal science," h=
e is
sure to add; and to fire him I lay it to the defects of early training. I k=
now
he thinks that I never half appreciated you, and that I do not appreciate y=
ou
now. If you will recollect, you praised his verses once. He cherishes that
praise amongst his sweetest treasures. Poor dear good old Gwynne, tender,
sensitive, shrinking, with the face of a seraph and the heart of a maid. Ne=
ver
were two men more incongruously companioned. I love him for himself. He tol=
erates
me, I do secretly believe, because of you. He longs to meet you,--he knew y=
ou
well through my father,--and we often talk you over. Be sure at every
opportunity I tear off your halo and trundle it about. Trust me, you receive
scant courtesy.
How I wander on. =
My
pen is unruly after the long vacation; my thought yet wayward, what of the
fever of successful wooing. And besides, ... how shall I say?... such was t=
he
gracious warmth of your letter, of both your letters, that I am at a loss. I
feel weak, inadequate. It almost seems as though you had made a demand upon
something that is not in me. Ah, you poets! It would seem your delight in my
marriage were greater than mine. In my present mood, it is you who are youn=
g,
you who love; I who have lived and am old.
Yes, I am going t=
o be
married. At this present moment, I doubt not, a million men and women are
saying the same thing. Hewers of wood and drawers of water, princes and
potentates, shy-shrinking maidens and brazen-faced hussies, all saying, &qu=
ot;I
am going to be married." And all looking forward to it as a crisis in
their lives? No. After all, marriage is the way of the world. Considered
biologically, it is an institution necessary for the perpetuation of the
species. Why should it be a crisis? These million men and women will marry,=
and
the work of the world go on just as it did before. Shuffle them about, and =
the
work of the world would yet go on.
True, a month ago=
it
did seem a crisis. I wrote you as much. It did seem a disturbing element in=
my
life-work. One cannot view with equanimity that which appears to be totally
disruptive of one's dear little system of living. But it only appeared so; I
lacked perspective, that was all. As I look upon it now, everything fits we=
ll
and all will run smoothly I am sure.
You know I had two
years yet to work for my Doctorate. I still have them. As you see, I am bac=
k to
the old quarters, settled down in the old groove, hammering away at the old
grind. Nothing is changed. And besides my own studies, I have taken up an
assistant instructorship in the Department of Economics. It is an ambitious
course, and an important one. I don't know how they ever came to confide it=
to
me, or how I found the temerity to attempt it,--which is neither here nor
there. It is all agreed. Hester is a sensible girl.
The engagement is=
to
be long. I shall continue my career as charted. Two years from now, when I
shall have become a Doctor of Social Sciences (and candidate for numerous o=
ther
things), I shall also become a benedict. My marriage and the presumably
necessary honeymoon chime in with the summer vacation. There is no disturbi=
ng
element even there. Oh, we are very practical, Hester and I. And we are both
strong enough to lead each our own lives.
Which reminds me =
that
you have not asked about her. First, let me shock you--she, too, is a
scientist. It was in my undergraduate days that we met, and ere the half-ho=
ur
struck we were quarrelling felicitously over Weismann and the neo-Darwinian=
s. I
was at Berkeley at the time, a cocksure junior; and she, far maturer as a
freshman, was at Stanford, carrying more culture with her into her universi=
ty
than is given the average student to carry out.
Next, and here yo=
ur
arms open to her, she is a poet. Pre-eminently she is a poet--this must be =
always
understood. She is the greater poet, I take it, in this dawning twentieth
century, because she is a scientist; not in spite of being a scientist as s=
ome
would hold. How shall I describe her? Perhaps as a George Eliot, fused with=
an
Elizabeth Barrett, with a hint of Huxley and a trace of Keats. I may say sh=
e is
something like all this, but I must say she is something other and differen=
t.
There is about her a certain lightsomeness, a glow or flash almost Latin or
oriental, or perhaps Celtic. Yes, that must be it--Celtic. But the
high-stomached Norman is there and the stubborn Saxon. Her quickness and fi=
ne
audacity are checked and poised, as it were, by that certain conservatism w=
hich
gives stability to purpose and power to achievement. She is unafraid, and
wide-looking and far-looking, but she is not over-looking. The Saxon grappl=
es
with the Celt, and the Norman forces the twain to do what the one would not
dream of doing and what the other would dream beyond and never do. Do you c=
atch
me? Her most salient charm, is I think, her perfect poise, her exquisite ad=
justment.
Altogether she is=
a
most wonderful woman, take my word for it. And after all she is described
vicariously. Though she has published nothing and is exceeding shy, I shall
send you some of her work. There will you find and know her. She is waiting=
for
stronger voice and sings softly as yet. But hers will be no minor note, no
middle flight. She is--well, she is Hester. In two years we shall be marrie=
d.
Two years, Dane. Surely you will be with us.
One thing more; in
your letter a certain undertone which I could not fail to detect. A shade l=
ess
of me than formerly?--I turn and look into your face--Waring's handiwork you
remember--his painter's fancy of you in those golden days when I stood on t=
he
brink of the world, and you showed me the delights of the world and the way=
of
my feet therein. So I turn and look, and look and wonder. A shade less of m=
e,
of you? Poesy and economics! Where lies the blame?
HERBERT.
III - FROM DANE KEMPTON TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, September 30, 19--.
It is because you
know not what you do that I cannot forgive you. Could you know that your le=
tter
with its catalogue of advantages and arrangements must offend me as much as=
it
belies (let us hope) you and the woman of your love, I would pardon the aff=
ront
of it upon us all, and ascribe the unseemly want of warmth to reserve or to=
the
sadness which grips the heart when joy is too palpitant. But something warn=
s me
that you are unaware of the chill your words breathe, and that is a lapse w=
hich
it is impossible to meet with indulgence.
"He does not
love her," was Barbara's quick decision, and she laid the open letter =
down
with a definiteness which said that you, too, are laid out and laid low. Yo=
ur
sister's very wrists can be articulate. However, I laughed at her and she s=
oon
joined me. We do not mean to be extravagant with our fears. Who shall presc=
ribe
the letters of lovers to their sisters and foster-fathers? Yet there are so=
me
things their letters should be incapable of saying, and amongst them that l=
ove
is not a crisis and a rebirth, but that it is common as the commonplace, a =
hit or
miss affair which "shuffling" could not affect.
Barbara showed me your note to her. "Had I written like this of myself and Earl--"<= o:p>
"You could
not," I objected.
"Then Herbert
should have been as little able to do it," she deduced with emphasis. =
Here
I might have told her that men and women are races apart, but no one talks =
cant
to Barbara. So I did not console her, and it stands against you in our minds
that on this critical occasion you have baffled us with coldness.
An absence of six
years, broken into twice by a brief few months, must work changes. When Bar=
bara
called your letter unnatural, she forgot how little she knows what is natur=
al to
you. She and I have been wont to predetermine you, your character, foothold,
and outlook, by--say by the fact that you knew your Wordsworth and that you
knew him without being able to take for yourself his austere peace. Youth w=
hich
lives by hope is riven by unrest.
"I made no =
vows;
vows were made for me, Bond unknow=
n to
me was given That
I should be, else sinning gently, A dedicated
spirit."
That pale sunrise seen from Mt. Tam=
alpais
and your voice vibrant to fierceness on the "else sinning gently"=
--to
me the splendour of rose on piled-up ridges of mist spoke all for you, so d=
ear
have you always been. It rested on the possible wonder of your life. It thr=
ew
you into the scintillant Dawn with an abandon meet to a son of Waring.
Tell me, do you s=
till
read your Wordsworth on your knees? I am bent with regret for the time when
your mind had no surprises for me, when the days were flushed halcyon with =
my
hope in you. I resent your development if it is because of it that you speak
prosaically of a prosaic marriage and of a honeymoon simultaneous with the
Degree. I think you are too well pleased with the simultaneousness.
Yet the fact of t=
he
letter is fair. It cannot be that the soul of it is not. Hester Stebbins is=
a
poet. I lean forward and think it out as I did some days ago when the news
came. I conjure up the look of love. If the woman is content (how much more
than content the feeling she bounds with in knowing you hers as she is your=
s),
what better test that all is well? I conjure up the look of love. It is thu=
s at
meeting and thus at parting. Even here, to-night, when all is chill and har=
d to
understand, I catch the flash and the warmth, and what I see restores you to
me, but how deep the plummet of my mind needed to sound before it reached y=
ou. It
is because you permitted yourself to speak when silence had expressed you
better.
Show me the ideal=
ly
real Hester Stebbins, the spark of fire which is she. The storms have not
broken over her head. She will laugh and make poetry of her laughter. If be=
fore
she met you she wept, that, too, will help the smiling. There is laughter w=
hich
is the echo of a Miserere sobbed by the ages. Men chuckle in the irony of p=
ain,
and they smile cold, lessoned smiles in resignation; they laugh in forgetfu=
lness
and they laugh lest they die of sadness. A shrug of the shoulders, a wideni=
ng
of the lips, a heaving forth of sound, and the life is saved. The remedy is=
as
drastic as are the drugs used for epilepsy, which in quelling the spasm bri=
ng
idiocy to the patient. If we are made idiots by our laughter, we are paying
dearly for the privilege of continuing in life.
Hester shall laugh
because she is glad and must tell her joy, and she will not lose it in the
telling. Greet her for me and hasten to prove yourself, for
"The Poet, =
gentle
creature that he is, Hath like t=
he
Lover, his unruly times; His fits wh=
en he
is neither sick nor well, Though no
distress be near him but his own Unmanageable
thoughts."
You will judge by this letter that =
I am
neither sick nor well, and that I reach for a distress which is not near. I=
f I
were Merchant rather than Poet, it would be otherwise with me.
DANE.
IV - FROM HERBERT WACE TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Oc=
tober
27, 19--.
Do I still read my
Wordsworth on my knees? Well, we may as well have it out. I have foreseen t=
his
day so long and shunned it that now I meet it almost with extended hands. N=
o, I
do not read my Wordsworth on my knees. My mind is filled with other things.=
I
have not the time. I am not the Herbert Wace of six years gone. It is fair =
that
you should know this; fair, also, that you should know the Herbert Wace of =
six
years gone was not quite the lad you deemed him.
There is no more
pathetic and terrible thing than the prejudice of love. Both you and I have
suffered from it. Six years ago, ay, and before that, I felt and resented t=
he
growing difference between us. When under your spell, it seemed that I was =
born
to lisp in numbers and devote myself to singing, that the world was good and
all of it fit for singing. But away from you, even then, doubts faced me, a=
nd I
knew in vague fashion that we lived in different worlds. At first in vague =
fashion,
I say; and when with you again, your spell dominated me and I could not que=
stion.
You were true, you were good, I argued, all that was wonderful and glorious;
therefore, you were also right. You mastered me with your charm, as you were
wont to master those who loved you.
But there came ti=
mes
when your sympathy failed me and I stood alone on outlooks I had achieved
alone. There was no response from you. I could not hear your voice. I looked
down upon a real world; you were caught up in a beautiful cloudland and shut
away from me. Possibly it was because life of itself appealed to you, while=
to
me appealed the mechanics of life. But be it as it may, yours was a world of
ideas and fancies, mine a world of things and facts.
Enters here the
prejudice of love. It was the lad that discovered our difference and concea=
led;
it was the man who was blind and could not discover. There we erred, man and
boy; and here, both men now, we make all well again.
Let me be explici=
t.
Do you remember the passion with which I read the "Intellectual
Development of Europe?" I understood not the tithe of it, but I was
thrilled. My common sense was thrilled, I suppose; but it was all very joyo=
us,
gripping hold of the tangible world for the first time. And when I came to =
you,
warm with the glow of adventure, you looked blankly, then smiled indulgently
and did not answer. You regarded my ardour complacently. A passing humour of
adolescence, you thought; and I thought: "Dane does not read his Drape=
r on
his knees." Wordsworth was great to me; Draper was great also. You had=
no
patience with him, and I know now, as I felt then, your consistent revolt
against his materialistic philosophy.
Only the other day
you complained of a letter of mine, calling it cold and analytical. That I
should be cold and analytical despite all the prodding and pressing and
moulding I have received at your hands, and the hands of Waring, marks only
more clearly our temperamental difference; but it does not mark that one or=
the
other of us is less a dedicated spirit. If I have wandered away from the wa=
rmth
of poesy and become practical, have you not remained and become confirmed in
all that is beautifully impractical? If I have adventured in a new world of=
common
things, have you not lingered in the old world of great and impossible thin=
gs?
If I have shivered in the gray dawn of a new day, have you not crouched over
the dying embers of the fire of yesterday? Ah, Dane, you cannot rekindle th=
at
fire. The whirl of the world scatters its ashes wide and far, like volcanic
dust, to make beautiful crimson sunsets for a time and then to vanish.
None the less are=
you
a dedicated spirit, priest that you are of a dying faith. Your prayers are
futile, your altars crumbling, and the light flickers and drops down into
night. Poetry is empty these days, empty and worthless and dead. All the
old-world epic and lyric-singing will not put this very miserable earth of =
ours
to rights. So long as the singers sing of the things of yesterday, glorifyi=
ng
the things of yesterday and lamenting their departure, so long will poetry =
be a
vain thing and without avail. The old world is dead, dead and buried along =
with
its heroes and Helens and knights and ladies and tournaments and pageants. =
You
cannot sing of the truth and wonder of to-day in terms of yesterday. And no=
one
will listen to your singing till you sing of to-day in terms of to-day.
This is the day of
the common man. Do you glorify the common man? This is the day of the machi=
ne.
When have you sung of the machine? The crusades are here again, not the
Crusades of Christ but the Crusades of the Machine--have you found motive in
them for your song? We are crusading to-day, not for the remission of sins,=
but
for the abolition of sinning, of economic and industrial sinning. The crusa=
de
to Christ's sepulchre was paltry compared with the splendour and might of o=
ur crusade
to-day toward manhood. There are millions of us afoot. In the stillness of =
the
night have you never listened to the trampling of our feet and been caught =
up
by the glory and the romance of it? Oh, Dane! Dane! Our captains sit in
council, our heroes take the field, our fighting men are buckling on their
harness, our martyrs have already died, and you are blind to it, blind to it
all!
We have no poets
these days, and perforce we are singing with our hands. The walking delegat=
e is
a greater singer and a finer singer than you, Dane Kempton. The cold,
analytical economist, delving in the dynamics of society, is more the proph=
et
than you. The carpenter at his bench, the blacksmith by his forge, the
boiler-maker clanging and clattering, are all warbling more sweetly than yo=
u.
The sledge-wielder pours out more strength and certitude and joy in every b=
low
than do you in your whole sheaf of songs. Why, the very socialist agitator,
hustled by the police on a street corner amid the jeers of the mob, has cau=
ght
the romance of to-day as you have not caught it and where you have missed i=
t.
He knows life and is living. Are you living, Dane Kempton?
Forgive me. I had
begun to explain and reconcile our difference. I find I am lecturing and
censuring you. In defending myself, I offend. But this I wish to say: We ar=
e so
made, you and I, that your function in life is to dream, mine to work. That=
you
failed to make a dreamer of me is no cause for heartache and chagrin. What =
of
my practical nature and analytical mind, I have generalised in my own way u=
pon
the data of life and achieved a different code from yours. Yet I seek truth=
as passionately
as you. I still believe myself to be a dedicated spirit.
And what boots it,
all of it? When the last word is said, we are two men, by a thousand ties v=
ery
dear to each other. There is room in our hearts for each other as there is =
room
in the world for both of us. Though we have many things not in common, yet =
you
are my dearest friend on earth, you who have been a second father to me as =
well.
You have long mer=
ited
this explanation, and it was cowardly of me not to have made it before. My =
hope
is that I have been sufficiently clear for you to understand.
HERBERT.
V - FROM DANE KEMPTON TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3 A QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. November
16, 19--.
You sigh "Po=
esy
and Economics," supplying the cause and thereby admitting the fact. I =
wish
you had shown some reluctance to see my meaning, that you had preferred to
waive the matter on the ground of insufficient data, that you had been less
eager to ferret out the science of the thing. Do you remember how your boy's
respect rose for little Barbara whenever she cried when too readily forgive=
n?
"She dreads a double standard," you explained to me with generous
heat. You sympathised with her fear lest I demand less of her than of you, =
honouring
her insistence on an equality of duty as well as of privilege. Is the man
Herbert less proud than the child Barbara, that you speak of a temperamental
difference and ask for a special dispensation?
You are not in love (this you say i=
n not
gainsaying my attack on you, and so far I understand), because you are a
student of Economics. At the last I stop. What is this about economics and
poesy? About your emancipation from my riotously lyric sway? The hand of the
forces by which you have been moulded cannot detain you from going out upon=
the
love-quest. The fact of your preference for Draper cannot forestall your sp=
irit's
need of love. There are many codes, but there is one law, binding alike on =
the economist
and poet. It springs out of the common and unappeasable hunger, commanding =
that
love seek love through night to day and through day to night.
Yet it is possibl=
e to
put oneself outside the pale of the law, to refuse the gift of life and snap
the tie between time and space and creature. It is possible to be too emaci=
ated
for interest or feeling. The men and women of the People know neither love =
nor
art because they are too weary. They lie in sleep prostrate from great fati=
gue.
Their bodies are too much tried with the hungers of the body and their spir=
its
too dimly illumined with the hope of fair chances. It is also possible to f=
ill oneself
so full with an interest that all else is crowded out. You have done this. =
Like
the cobbler who is a cobbler typically, the teacher who is a pedagogue, the
physician and the lawyer who are pathologists merely, you are a fanatic of a
text. You are in the toils of an idea, the idea of selection, as I well kno=
w,
and you exploit it like a drudge. When a man finds that he cannot deal in
petroleum without smelling of it, it is time that he turn to something else.
Every man is engaged in the cause of keeping himself whole, in watching him=
self
lest his man turn machine, in watching lest the outside world assail the in=
ner.
Nature spares the type, but the individual must spare himself. He is strong=
who
is sensitive and who responds subtly to everything in his environment, but =
his
response must be characteristic; he must sustain his personality and become
more himself through the years. He alone is vital in the social scheme who =
lets
nothing in him atrophy and who persists in being varied from all others in =
the
scale of character to the degree of variability that was his at the beginni=
ng.
I read in your le=
tter
nothing but a decision to stop short and give over, as if you had strength =
for
no more than your book and your theory! You have become slave to a small po=
int
of inquiry, and you call it the advance to a new time. "The crusade is
on," you say. Coronation rites for the commoners and destruction to
superstition. I put my hand out to you in joy. The joy is in unholy worship=
of
a fetish, the pain that there is no joy also deference to a fetish. Your cr=
eed
thunders "Thou shalt not." Love is a thing of yesterday. No room =
for
anything that intimately concerns the self. But what are the apostles of th=
e young
thought preaching if it is not the right of men to their own, and what woul=
d it
avail them to come into their own if life be stripped of romance?
I am dissatisfied
because you are willing to live as others must live. You should stay
aristocrat. Ferdinand Lassalle dressed with elegance for his working-men
audiences, with the hope, he said, of reminding them that there was somethi=
ng
better than their shabbiness. You are of the favoured, Herbert. It devolves
upon you to endear your life to yourself. You do not agree with me. You do =
not
believe that love is the law which controls freedom and life. Slave to your
theory and rebel to the law, you lose your soul and imperil another's.
"Gently!
Gently!" I say to myself. Old sorrows and wrongs oppress me and I grow
harsh. My heat only helps to convince you that my position is not based on =
the
rational rightness you hold so essential and that therefore it is unlivable=
. I
will state calmly, then, that it is wrong to marry without love. "For =
the
perpetuation of the species"--that is noble of you! So you strip yours=
elf
of the thousand years of civilisation that have fostered you, you abandon y=
our
prerogative as a creature high in the scale of existence to obey an instinct
and fulfil a function? You say: "These men and women will marry, and t=
he
work of the world go on just as it did before. Shuffle them about and the w=
ork
of the world would yet go on." And you are content. You feel no need o=
f anything
different from this condition.
Believe me, Herbe=
rt,
these million men and women will not let you shuffle them about. There are
forces stronger than force, shadows more real than reality. We know that the
need of the unhungered for the one friend, one comrade, one mate, is good. =
We
honour the love that persists in loving. More beautiful than starlight is t=
he
face of the lover when the Voice and the Vision enfold him. The race is
consecrated to the worship of idea, and the lover who lays his all on the a=
ltar
of romance (which is idea) is at one with the race. The arms of the unloved
girl close about the formless air and more real than her loneliness and her=
sorrow
is the imagined embrace, the awaited warm, close pressure of the hands, the
fancied gaze. What does it mean? What secret was there for Leonardo in Mona
Lisa's smile, what for him in the motion of waters? You cannot explain the
bloom, the charm, the smile of life, that which rains sunshine into our hea=
rts,
which tells us we are wise to hope and to have faith, which buckles on us an
armour of activity, which lights the fires of the spirit, which gives us
Godhead and renders us indomitable. Comparative anatomy cannot reason it do=
wn.
It is sensibility, romance, idea. It is a fact of life toward which all oth=
er
facts make. For the flush of rose-light in the heavens, the touch of a hand,
the colour and shape of fruit, the tears that come for unnamed sorrows, the
regrets of old men, are more significant than all the building and inventing
done since the first social compact.
Forgive my
tediousness. I have flaunted these truisms before you in order to exorcise =
that
modern slang of yours which is more false than the overstrained forms of a
feudal France. To shut out glory is not to be practical. You are not adjust=
ing
your life artistically; there is too much strain, too little warmth, too mu=
ch
self-complacence. I see that you are really younger than I thought. The wor=
ld
never censures the crimes of the spirit. You are safe from the world's tong=
ue
lashings, and in that safety is the danger against which my friendship warns
you.
I have been readi=
ng
Hester's poems, and I know that she is like them, nervous, vibrant, throbbi=
ng,
sensitive. I have been reading your letters, and I think her soul will esca=
pe
yours. If you have not love like hers, you have nothing with which to keep =
her.
This I have undertaken to say to you. It is a strange role, yet conventiona=
l. I
am the father whose matrimonial whims are not met by the son. The stock mea=
sure
is to disinherit. But the cause of our quarrel is somewhat unusual, and I c=
an
be neither so practical nor so vulgar as to set about making codicils. Love=
is
of no value to financiers; there is no bank for it nor may it be made over =
in a
will. Rather is it carried on in the blood, even as Barbara carried it on i=
nto
the life of her girl-babe. Your sister keeps me strong with the faith of lo=
ve.
May God be good to her! It was five years ago that she came to me and
whispered, "Earl." When she saw I could not turn to her in joy, s=
he leaned
her little head back against the roses of the porch and wept, more than was
right, I fear, for a girl just betrothed. Earl was a cripple and poor and h=
elpless,
but Barbara knew better than we, for she knew how to give herself. Poor lit=
tle
one, whom nobody congratulated! She sends you and Hester her love, unfolding
you both in her eager tenderness.
DANE.
VI - FROM THE SAME TO THE
SAME
LONDON. November 19, 19--.
Metaphysics is
contagious. I caught it from Barbara, and I cannot resist the impulse to pa=
ss
it on, and to you of all others.
The mood leapt up=
on
Barbara out of the pages of "Katia," a story by Tolstoy. To my mi=
nd,
it is a painful tale of lovers who outlive their love, killing it with their
own hands, but the author means it to be a happily ending novel. Tolstoy
attempts to show that men and women can find happiness only when they grow
content to give over seeking love from one another. They may keep the memory
but must banish the hope. "Hereafter, think of me only as the father of
your children," and the woman who had pined for that which had been th=
eirs
in the beginning of their union weeps softly, and agrees. Tolstoy calls this
peace, but for Barbara and me this gain is loss, this end an end indeed,
replete with all the tragedy of ending.
I found Barbara
to-day on the last page of "Katia," and much disturbed. "Dea=
r, I
saw a spirit break," she said. I waited before asking whose, and when I
did, she answered, "That of three-quarters of the world. The ghost of a
Dream walked to-day--when after the spirit broke, I saw it--and myself and =
my
Earl vanished in shadow. We and our love thinned away before the
thought-shape."
"Your dreami=
ng,
Barbara, can scarce be better than your living."
We looked long at
each other. She knew herself a happy woman, yet to-day the ghost had walked=
in
the light, and her eyes were not held, and she saw. Even her life was not
sufficient, even her plans were paltry, even her heart's love was cramped. =
Such
times of seeing come to happy men and to happy women. Barbara was reading t=
he
opinions of the world and the acceptances of the world, and in disliking th=
em
she came to doubt herself. Perhaps she, too, should be less at peace, she t=
oo
may be amongst Pharisees a Pharisee.
"In the mids=
t of
the breaking of spirit, how can I know?" she demanded. "Love is
sure," I prompted, my hand on her forehead. "Earl and I are sure,
dear," she laughed low, and a drift of sobbing swept through the music;
"it is not that we are in doubt about ourselves, but sometimes, like
to-day, you understand, one finds oneself bitten by the sharp tooth of the
world, and a despair courses through the veins and blinds the eyes, and the=
n,
in the midst of the bitterest throe, comes a great visioning."
I heard her and
understood, and my heart leapt as it had not done for long. Think of it,
Herbert, fifty-three and still young! When was it that I last fluttered with
joy? Ah, yes, that time the summer and the woods had a great deal to do with
it, and a few words spoken by a boy. I think Barbara's majesty of attainment
through vicarious breaking of spirit a greater cause for rejoicing.
And then, in the
midst of the bitterest throe, came a great visioning. When pain is good and=
to
be thanked for, how good life is! By this alone may you know the proportion=
and
the value of the good of being. Three-quarters of the world are broken
spirited, but from out the wreckage a thought-shape, and it is well. The Vi=
sion
fastens upon us, and what was full seems shrunken, what whole and of all ti=
me a
passing bit, an untraceable flash. And that is well, for the dream recalls =
the hope,
and the heart grows hardy with hoping and dreaming.
So Barbara.
And you? You do n=
ot
repine because of these things. Let the Grand Mujik mutter a thousand heres=
ies,
let three-quarters of the world accept and live them, you would not think t=
he
unaspiring three-quarters broken-spirited. You would hail them right practi=
cal.
And if you held a thought as firmly as your sister holds the thought of lov=
e,
and you found yourself alone in your esteem of it, you would part from it a=
nd
go over to the others. You would not be the fanatic your sister is, to stay=
so
much the closer by it that of necessity she must doubt her own allegiance,
fearing in her devotion that, without knowing it, she, too, is cold and but=
half
alive. You would not see visions that would put your best to shame. The
thought-shape of the more you could be, were you and the whole world finer =
and
greater, would not walk before you. You would rest content and assured, and=
--I
regret your assurance.
Always yours, DANE
KEMPTON.
VII - FROM HERBERT WACE TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. De=
cember
6, 19--.
No, I am not in l=
ove.
I am very thankful that I am not. I pride myself on the fact. As you say, I=
may
not be adjusting my life artistically to its environment (there is room for
discussion there), but I do know that I am adjusting it scientifically. I am
arranging my life so that I may get the most out of it, while the one thing=
to
disorder it, worse than flood and fire and the public enemy, is love.
I have told you, =
from
time to time, of my book. I have decided to call it "The Economic
Man." I am going over the proofs now, and my brain is in perfect worki=
ng
order. On the other hand, there is Professor Bidwell, who is likewise corre=
cting
proofs. Poor devil, he is in despair. He can do nothing with them. "I
positively cannot think," he complains to me, his hair rumpled and face
flushed. He did not answer my knock the other day, and I came upon him with=
the
neglected proofs under his elbows and his absent gaze directed through wind=
ow
and out of doors to some rosy cloudland beyond my ken. "It will be a
failure, I know it will," he growled to me. "My brain is dull. It
refuses to act. I cannot imagine what has come over me." But I could i=
magine
very easily. He is in love (madly in love with what I take to be a very
ordinary sort of girl), and expects shortly to be married. "Postpone t=
he
book for a time," I suggested. He looked at me for a moment, then brou=
ght
his fist down on the general disarray with a thumping "I will!" A=
nd
take my word for it, Dane, a year hence, when the very ordinary girl greets=
him
with the matronly kiss and his fever and folly have left him, he will take =
up
the book and make a success of it.
Of course I am no=
t in
love. I have just come back from Hester--I ran down Saturday to Stanford and
stopped over Sunday. Time did not pass tediously on the train. I did not lo=
ok
at my watch every other minute. I read the morning papers with interest and
without impatience. The scenery was charming and I was unaware of the sligh=
test
hurry to reach my destination. I remember noting, when I came up the gravel
walk between the rose-bushes, that my heart was not in my mouth as it shoul=
d have
been according to convention. In fact, the sun was uncomfortable, and I mop=
ped
my brow and decided that the roses stood in need of trimming. And really, y=
ou
know, I had seen brighter days, and fairer views, and the world in more
beautiful moods.
And when Hester s=
tood
on the veranda and held out her hands, my heart did not leap as though it w=
ere
going to part company with me. Nor was I dizzy with--rapture, I believe. Nor
did all the world vanish, and everything blot out, and leave only Hester
standing there, lips curved and arms outstretched in welcome. Oh, I saw the
curved lips and outstretched arms, and all the splendid young womanhood swa=
ying
there, and I was pleased and all that; but I did not think it too wonderful=
and
impossible and miraculous and the rest of the fond rubbish I am sure poor
Bidwell thinks when his eyes are gladdened by his ordinary sort of girl whe=
n he
calls upon her.
What a comely you=
ng
woman, is what I thought as I pressed Hester's hands; and none of the ordin=
ary
sort either. She has health and strength and beauty and youth, and she will
certainly make a most charming wife and excellent mother. Thus I thought, a=
nd
then we chatted, had lunch, and passed a delightful afternoon together--an
afternoon such as I might pass with you, or any good comrade, or with my wi=
fe.
All of which rati=
onal
rightness is, I know, distasteful to you, Dane. And I confess I depict it w=
ith
brutal frankness, failing to give credit to the gentler, tenderer side of m=
e.
Believe me, I am very fond of Hester. I respect and admire her. I am proud =
of
her, too, and proud of myself that so fine a creature should find enough in=
me
to be willing to mate with me. It will be a happy marriage. There is nothing
cramped or narrow or incompatible about it. We know each other well--a wisd=
om
that is acquired by lovers only after marriage, and even then with the like=
lihood
of it being a painful wisdom. We, on the other hand, are not blinded by love
madness, and we see clearly and sanely and are confident of our ability to =
live
out the years together.
HERBERT.
VIII - FROM THE SAME TO T=
HE
SAME
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. De=
cember
11, 19--.
I have been think=
ing
about your romance and my rational rightness, and so this letter.
"One loves
because he loves: this explanation is, as yet, the most serious and most
decisive that has been found for the solution of this problem." I do n=
ot
know who has said this, but it might well have been you. And you might well=
say
with Mlle. de Scudéri: "Love is--I know not what: which comes--I
know not when: which is formed--I know not how: which enchants--I know not =
by
what: and which ends--I know not when or why."
You explain love =
by
asserting that it is not to be explained. And therein lies our difference. =
You
accept results; I search for causes. You stop at the gate of the mystery, w=
orshipful
and content. I go on and through, flinging the gate wide and formulating the
law of the mystery which is a mystery no longer. It is our way. You worship=
the
idea; I believe in the fact. If the stone fall, the wind blow, the grass an=
d green
things sprout; if the inorganic be vitalised, and take on sensibility, and
perform functions, and die; if there be passions and pains, dreams and
ambitions, flickerings of infinity and glimmerings of Godhead--it is for yo=
u to
be smitten with the wonder of it and to memorialise it in pretty song, while
for me remains to classify it as so much related phenomena, so much play and
interplay of force and matter in obedience to ascertainable law.
There are two kin=
ds
of men: the wonderers and the doers; the feelers and the thinkers; the
emotionals and the intellectuals. You take an emotional delight in living; =
I an
intellectual delight. You feel a thing to be beautiful and joyful; I seek to
know why it is beautiful and joyful. You are content that it is, no matter =
how
it came to be; I, when I have learned why, strive that we may have more
beautiful and joyful things. "The bloom, the charm, the smile of
life" is all too wonderful for you to know; to me it is chiefly wonder=
ful
because I may know.
Oh, well, it is an
ancient quarrel which neither you nor I shall outlive. I am rational, you a=
re
romantic,--that is all there is to it. You are more beautiful; I am more
useful; and though you will not see it and will never be able to see it, you
and your beauty rest on me. I came into the world before you, and I made the
way for you. I was a hunter of beasts and a fighter of men. I discovered fi=
re
and covered my nakedness with the skins of animals. I builded cunning traps,
and wove branches and long grasses and rushes and reeds into the thatch and
roof-tree. I fashioned arrows and spears of bone and flint. I drew iron from
the earth, and broke the first ground, and planted the first seed. I gave l=
aw
and order to the tribe and taught it to fight with craft and wisdom. I enab=
led
the young men to grow strong and lusty, and the women to find favour with t=
hem;
and I gave safety to the women when their progeny came forth, and safety to=
the
progeny while it gathered strength and years.
I did many things.
Out of my blood and sweat and toil I made it possible that all men need not=
all
the time hunt and fish and fight. The muscle and brain of every man were no
longer called to satisfy the belly need. And then, when of my blood and swe=
at
and toil I had made room, you came, high priest of mystery and things
unknowable, singer of songs and seer of visions.
And I did you hon=
our,
and gave you place by feast and fire. And of the meat I gave you the tender=
est,
and of the furs the softest. Need I say that of women you took the fairest?=
And
you sang of the souls of dead men and of immortality, of the hidden things,=
and
of the wonder; you sang of voices whispering down the wind, of the secrets =
of
light and darkness, and the ripple of running fountains. You told of the po=
wers
that pulsed the tides, swept the sun across the firmaments, and held the st=
ars
in their courses. Ay, and you scaled the sky and created for me the hierarc=
hy
of heaven.
These things you =
did,
Dane; but it was I who made you, and fed you, and protected you. While you
dreamed and sang, I laboured sore. And when danger came, and there was a cr=
y in
the night, and women and children huddling in fear, and strong men broken, =
and
blare of trumpets and cry of battle at the outer gate--you fled to your alt=
ars
and called vainly on your phantoms of earth and sea and sky. And I? I girde=
d my
loins, and strapped my harness on, and smote in the fighting line; and died=
, perchance,
that you and the women and children might live.
And in times of p=
eace
you throve and waxed fat. But only by our brain and blood did we men of the
fighting line make possible those times of peace. And when you throve, you
looked about you and saw the beauty of the world and fancied yet greater
beauty. And because of me your fancy became fact, and marvels arose in stone
and bronze and costly wood.
And while your br=
ows
were bright, and you visioned things of the spirit, and rose above time and
space to probe eternity, I concerned myself with the work of head and hand.=
I
employed myself with the mastery of matter. I studied the times and seasons=
and
the crops, and made the earth fruitful. I builded roads and bridges and mol=
es,
and won the secrets of metals and virtues of the elements. Bit by bit, and =
with
great travail, I have conquered and enslaved the blind forces. I builded sh=
ips
and ventured the sea, and beyond the baths of sunset found new lands. I con=
quered
peoples, and organised nations and knit empires, and gave periods of peace =
to
vast territories.
And the arts of p=
eace
flourished, and you multiplied yourself in divers ways. You were priest and
singer and dancer and musician. You expressed your fancies in colours and
metals and marbles. You wrote epics and lyrics--ay, as you to-day write lyr=
ics,
Dane Kempton. And I multiplied myself. I kept hunger afar off, and fire and
sword from your habitation, and the bondsmen in obedience under you. I solv=
ed
methods of government and invented systems of jurisprudence. Out of my toil
sprang forms and institutions. You sang of them and were the slave of them,=
but
I was the maker of them and the changer of them.
You worshipped at=
the
shrine of the idea. I sought the fact and the law behind the fact. I was the
worker and maker and liberator. You were conventional. Tradition bound you.=
You
were full bellied and content, and you sang of the things that were. You we=
re
mastered by dogma. Did the Mediæval Church say the earth was flat, you
sang of an earth that was flat, and danced and made your little shows on an
earth that was flat. And you helped to bind me with chains and burn me with
fire when my facts and the laws behind my facts shook your dogmas. Dante's
highest audacity could not transcend a material inferno. Milton could not s=
hake
off Lucifer and hell.
You were more
beautiful. But not only was I more useful, but I made the way for you that =
there
might be greater beauty. You did not reck of that. To you the heart was the
seat of the emotions. I formulated the circulation of the blood. You gave
charms and indulgences to the world; I gave it medicine and surgery. To you,
famine and pestilence were acts of providence and punishment of sin: I made=
the
world a granary and drained its cities. To you the mass of the people were =
poor
lost wretches who would be rewarded in paradise or baked in hell. You could=
offer
them no earthly happiness of decency. Forsooth, beggars as well as kings we=
re
of divine right. But I shattered the royal prerogatives and overturned the
thrones of the one and lifted the other somewhat out of the dirt.
Nor is my work do=
ne.
With my inventions and discoveries and rational enterprise, I draw the world
together and make it kin. The uplift is but begun. And in the great world I=
am
making I shall be as of old to you, Dane. I, who have made you and freed yo=
u,
shall give you space and greater freedom. And, as of old, we shall quarrel =
as
when first you came to me and found me at my rude earth-work. You shall be =
the
scorner of matter, and I the master of matter. You may laugh at me and my w=
ork,
but you shall not be absent from the feast nor shall your voice be silent. =
For,
when I have conquered the globe, and enthralled the elements, and harnessed=
the
stars, you shall sing the epic of man, and as of old it shall be of the dee=
ds I
have done.
HERBERT.
IX - FROM DANE KEMPTON TO
HERBERT WACE
3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, S.W. Dec=
ember
28, 19--.
The curtain is ru=
ng
down on an illusion, but it rises again on another, this time, as before, w=
ith
the look of the absolute Good and True upon it. It is because we are at once
actor and spectator that we find no fault with blinking sight and slothful
thought. We are finite branded and content, except during the shrill,
undermining moments when the orchestra is tuning up. "Thus we half-men
struggle."
I follow your let=
ter
and wonder whether your illusions have qualities of beauty which escape me.=
I give
you the benefit of every doubt which it is possible for me to harbour with
regard to my own system of illusions. You glorify the crowd practical. You
attach yourself to the ranks that carried thought into action. You inspire
yourself with rugged strength by dwelling on the achievements of ruggedness,
forgetting that the progress of the world is not marshalled by those who wo=
rk
with line and rule. It was not his crew, but Columbus, who discovered Ameri=
ca.
The crew stood between the Old and the New, as indeed the crew always does.=
Between
the idealist and his hope were hosts of practical enemies whom he had to su=
bdue
before he reached land. But I must not fall into your mistake of dividing m=
en
into categories. Men are not either intellectual or emotional; they are bot=
h.
It is a rounded not an angular development which we follow. Feeling and
thinking are not mutually exclusive, and the great personality feels deeply
because he thinks highly, feels keenly because he sees widely. Common sense=
is
not incompatible with uncommon sense, evil does not of necessity attend bea=
uty,
nor weakness the strength of genius.
I shall sing of t=
he
deeds you have done if your deeds are worthy of song. I shall sing a Song of
the Sword, too, should the sword "thrust through the fatuous, thrust
through the fungous brood." Whatever helps the races to better life si=
ngs
itself into racial lore, and I alone shall not refuse the tribute. When you
come to see that the Iliad is as great a gift to the race as the doings of
Achilles, that the Iliads are more significant than the doings they celebra=
te,
you will cease to classify men into doers and singers. You will cease to
dishonour yourself in the eyes of the singers with the hope that in so doing
you gain somewhat elsewhere.
Professor Bidwell=
is
in love and it interferes with his work. You have the advantage of him ther=
e,
no doubt. However, you lose more than you gain. You have shattered the dream
and have awakened. To what? What is this reality in which your universe is
hung? Where shine the stars of your scientific heaven? By the beauty of your
dreaming alone, Herbert, shall you be judged and known. You dream that you =
have
learned the lesson, solved the problem, pierced the mystery, and become a
prophet of matter. But matter does not include spirit, so the motif of your
dream grows all confused. Your race epic omits the race. You sing the branc=
h and
the leaf rather than the sunlit and tenebral wood. Bidwell thinks his ordin=
ary
sort of girl a "lyric love, half angel and half bird, and all a wonder=
and
a wild desire." Bidwell exaggerates, perhaps, but unless he feels this=
for
his wife, he has no wife. Barbara obeyed the voice of her heart. That sounds
sentimental, but it is none the less a courageous thing to do. I was
inconsistent enough to be sorry because she loved a crippled man. Bidwell a=
nd
Barbara are wiser and happier than you can be, Herbert, than you from whose
hand the map of Parnassus Hill has been filched.
Is there one stat=
e of
consciousness better than another? I think yes. Better to have long, youthf=
ul
thoughts and to thrill to vibrant emotions than to grovel sluggishly; bette=
r to
hope and dream and aspire and sway to great harmonies than to be blind and =
deaf
and dumb--better for the type, better for the immortality of the world's so=
ul.
This to me is a vital thought, therefore life or death is in the issue. For=
the
rest I know not. By the glimmer of light lent me, I can but guess greatness=
and
descry vagueness. You go further and would touch the phantasmagorial veil.
"Right!" I say, and I pray, "Godspeed." But there must =
be intensity.
Are you thrilled? Do you stretch out your arms and dream the beauty? It is =
only
when you gaze into a reality empty of the voices of life that I would wake =
you
to bid you dream better.
Well, Herbert, I =
have
quarrelled with you and shall to the end, I promise. I wish I could take you
away, hide you from your Hester's sight, and pour my poetic spleen out on y=
ou.
Oh, I shall torment you into reason and passion! Whatever you may choose to=
be,
you are my son. I must take you and keep you as you are, of course, but I
choose to tell the truth to you though I do love you and hold you mine.
Disagreeable of me, but how else?
DANE.
X - FROM THE SAME TO THE =
SAME
LONDON. Sunday, January 1, 19--.
Behold, I have li=
ved!
I press your face to the breathing, stinging roses of my days, and bid you
drink in the sweet and throb with the pain. What is my philosophy but a
translation of the facts which have stamped me? Perhaps if I let you read t=
hese
facts, you will the sooner come to share my consecration and my faith. I mu=
st
teach you to know that you are the fact of my whole tangled web of facts, a=
nd
that all that I have and am, and all that might have been I and mine, stret=
ches
itself out in the unmarked path which is before you.
I take you back w=
ith
me to the road, white with dust, upon which like a Viking and like a feeble
girl I have travelled. It is not long, but how many paths, what byways and =
what
turns! What sudden glimpses of sea and sky, what inaccessibleness! Hark, fr=
om
the wood on either side murmurings of hope and hard sobbing of despair, you=
ng
laughter of joy and aged renunciations! See from amongst the pines the fare=
well
gleam of a white hand. All of it dear--dearly bought and precious and
miraculous, the heartache even as the gladness.
"Life is wo=
rth
living Through eve=
ry
grain of it, From the
foundations To the last=
edge Of the
cornerstone, death."
Ay, through every grain of it. Even=
that
morning in the wood, thirty years ago, when your mother put her hand in mine
and looked a great pity into my eyes. Indeed, she loved me well, but romance
shone on the brow of John Wace. For her his face was sunlit, and she needs =
must
take it between her hands and hold it forever. He was her Siegfried, her
master. Thus the gods decreed, and we three obeyed. What else was there to =
do? We
must be honest before all, and Ellen did not love me any more, and I must k=
now
it, and wipe out a past of deepest mutuality, and strengthen and console and
restore the woman whose hand held mine while her eyes were turned elsewhere=
.
Before that brigh=
t,
black summer morning which saw me woman-pitied, I knew I should have to
renounce her. Their souls rushed together in their first meeting. John had =
been
away, knocking about museums and colleges, and carrying on tempestuous radi=
cal
work. He was splendidly picturesque. I was a youth of twenty-three, almost =
ten
years his junior, a boy full of half-defined aims and groping powers, reach=
ing
toward what he had firm in his grasp. Ellen talked of his coming, and she
planned that she should meet this my one friend in the environment she loved
best--in my rooms, whose atmosphere, she declared, belonged to an earlier t=
ime
and
place. (She found=
in
me Nolly Goldsmith and all of Grub Street.) So they met at the tea-table in=
my
study, and a great warmth stole over your father. He spoke without looking =
at
either of us, while Ellen looked as if her destiny had just begun.
Without, it raine=
d. I
strode to the window and in a dazed way stared at the lamp-post which was
sticking out its flaming little tongue to the night. Why was I mocked? There
was no mocking and there should have been no bitterness. Of that there was =
none
either, after a while.
Ellen put her han=
d on
my hair, and a strong primal emotion rose in me. In that moment civilisation
was as if it had not been. I reverted to the primitive. The blood of forgot=
ten
ancestors, cave-men and river-men, reasoned me my ethics. I turned to her, =
met
her flushed cheeks and moved being and the glory of dawning in her eyes. I
measured my strength with hers and your father's, Herbert. Easily, great
strength was mine in my passion, easily I could carry her off!
You, too, have had
moments of upheaval when you heard the growling of the tiger and the bear, =
when
the brute crowded out the man. Then your soul writhed in derision, you scof=
fed
at that which you had held to be the nobility of the soul, and you minced w=
ords
satirically over the exquisiteness of the type which we have evolved. Then =
the
experiment of life turned farce, the heavens fell about your ears and
"Fool!" was upon your lips. Oh, the hurricane that sweeps over the
soul when it is cheated of its joy! In the first instant of Ellen's
indifference, when I felt myself pushed out of her life, I forgot everything
but my desire. I could not renounce her. I was in the throes of the passion=
for
ownership.
Gentle girl betwe=
en
whom and myself there had been naught but sweetness and fellowship! How oft=
en
had we talked large (we were very young!) of our sublimities and
potentialities, how often had we pictured tragedies of surrender and greate=
ned
in the speaking! Ah, it should come true. For her and for me there must be
miracles, and there were. So was the strength of the spirit proven, so was =
it
shown to be "pure waft of the Will." So was I confirmed in the cr=
eed
which believes that to keep we must lose, and to live we must die. So was I
assured that there may be but one way, and that, the way of service.
I did not grip her
passionately in my arms. I withdrew; I did much to make her task of leaving=
me
an easy one. Were it not for my efforts, it would have been harder for her =
to
obey a mandate which made for my pain. She could not quite drown an old,
Puritan voice, speaking with the authority of tradition, which bade her hol=
d to
her vows. Yes, I made it easy for her. Harrow my soul with theories of
selection and survival if you dare!
In those days the
spires of the temple were golden, the shrine white. The door was seen from
every point in the fog-begirt world. We who worshipped knew not of doubt.
Stirred by the rumbling organ tones of causes and ideas, we immolated our l=
ives
gladly. High priests of thought, we swung the censers and rose on the breas=
t of
the incense. Ellen and John and myself glorified God and enjoyed Him
forever,--God, the Type, the Final Humanity, the giant Body Soul of man. In=
our
hearts dwelt a religion which compelled us to serve the ideal. We strove to=
become
what organically we felt the "Human with his drippings of warm tears&q=
uot;
may become. We were the standard-bearers of the advancing margin of the wor=
ld.
We were the high-water mark toward which all the tides forever make. We were
soldiers and priests.
And so when Ellen
loved, and lacked courage for her love, I helped her. A past of kindness and
ardour riveted her to my side. She knew that we were in feeling and fact
divorced from each other by virtue of her stronger love for John, yet did s=
he
do battle with the rich young love. For two years we had been close; she had
been so much my friend, she could not in maiden charity seal for me a so
unwelcome fate. I had awakened her slumbering soul with my first look into =
the
sphinx wonder of her eyes. For me she had become fire and dew, flame of the
sun, and flower of the hill. Without me to help her do it she could not lea=
ve
me.
To the master of
matter this coping with spiritual abstractions must appear like juggling wi=
th
intellectual phantasmagoria. Yet I protest that life is finally for intangi=
ble
triumphs. Unnamed fragrances steal upon the senses and the soul revels and
greatens. Unseen hands draw us to worlds afar, and we are gathered up in the
dignity of the human spirit. Unknown ideas attract and hold us, and we take=
our
place in the universe as intellectual factors. In giving up Ellen I helped =
her,
and, sacredly better still, I sent on into a world of vague thinking and we=
ak acting
the impulse of devotion to revealed truth.
She had a sweet w=
ay
of sitting low and resting her head on my knee. She sat through one whole d=
ay
with me thus, and for hours I could have thought her asleep were it not for=
the
waves of feeling which surged in her upturned face. Toward the end she rais=
ed
her head, ecstasy in her eyes and on her cheek and lip. "Dane, I love =
you.
Dane! Dane!" The whole of me was caught up in the accents of that
tremulousness. She had know John three months; but her love for him was you=
ng,
it had come unexpectedly, it was still unexpressed and ineffable. Her yearn=
ing
for him led to softness toward me, and though she rose out of her mood as o=
ne
does from a dream, the hours when we were like the angels, all love and all
speech, were mine. So much was vouchsafed me.
Memories and echo=
es,
gusts of sweet breath from the violets on your mother's grave--the prophet =
of
matter will have none of them, and, I fear, will pity me that I am so much
theirs. I am yours also, dear lad, and I wish to serve you.
DANE KEMPTON.
XI - FROM HERBERT WACE TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Ja=
nuary
20, 19--.
I do not know whe=
ther
to laugh or weep. I have just finished reading your letter, and I can hardly
think. Words seem to have lost their meaning, and words, used as you use th=
em,
are without significance. You appear to speak a tongue strangely familiar, =
yet
one I cannot understand. You are unintelligible, as, I dare say, I am to yo=
u.
And small wonder =
that
we are unintelligible. Our difference presents itself quite clearly to the
scientific mind, and somewhat in this fashion: Man acquires knowledge of the
outer world through his sensations and perceptions. Sensation ends in
sentiment, and perception ends in reason. These are the two sides of man's
nature, and the individual is determined and ruled by whichever side in him
happens to be temperamentally dominant. I have already classed you as a fee=
ler,
myself as a thinker. This is, I think true. You, I am confident, feel it to=
be
true. I reason why it is true. You accept it on faith as true, lose sight of
the argument forthwith, and proceed to express it in emotional terms--which=
is
to say that you take it to heart and feel badly because it happens to be so=
.
You feign to know
this modern scientific slang, and you are contemptuous of it because you do=
not
know it. The terms I use freight no ideas to you. They are sounds, rhythmic=
and
musical, but they are not definite symbols of thought. Their facts you do n=
ot
grasp. For instance, the prehensile organs of insects, the great toothed
mandibles of the black stag-beetle, the amorous din of the male cicada and =
the
muteness of his mate--these are facts which you cannot relate, one with the
other, nor can you generalise upon them. Let me add to these related
characters, and you cannot discern the law which is alike to all. What to y=
ou
the fluttering moth, decked in gold and crimson, brilliant, iridescent, spl=
endid?
The beauty of it bids you bend to deity, otherwise it has no worth; it is a
stimulus to religion, and that is all. So with the glowing incandescence of=
the
stickleback and its polished scales of silver. What make you of the hoarse
voice of the gorilla? Is not the dewlap of the ox inscrutable? the mane of =
the
lion? the tusks of the boar? the musk-sack of the deer? In the amethyst and
sapphire of the peacock's wing you find no rationality; to you it is a
manifestation of the wonder which is taboo. And so with the cock bird,
displaying his feathered ruffs and furbelows, dancing strange antics and
spilling out his heart in song.
I, on the other h=
and,
dare to gather all these phenomena together, and find out the common truth,=
the
common fact, the common law, which is generalisation, which is Science. I l=
earn
that there are two functions which all life must perform: Nutrition and
Reproduction. And I learn that in all life, the performance, according to t=
ime
and space and degree, is very like. The slug must take to itself food, else=
it
will perish; and so I. The slug must procreate its kind, or its kind will p=
erish;
and so I. The need being the same, the only difference is in the expression=
. In
all life come times and seasons when the individuals are aware of dim yearn=
ings
and blind compulsions and masterful desires. The senses are quickened and a=
lert
to the call of kind. And just as the fish and the reptile glimmeringly
adumbrate man, so do these yearnings and desires adumbrate what man in hims=
elf
calls "love," spelled all out in capitals. I repeat, the need is =
the
same. From the amoeba, up the ladder of life to you and me, comes this pass=
ion
of perpetuation. And in yourself, refine and sublimate as you will, it is n=
one
the less blind, unreasoning, and compelling.
And now we come to
the point. In the development of life from low to high, there came a dividi=
ng
of the ways. Instinct, as a factor of development, had its limitations. It
culminated in that remarkable mechanism, the bee-swarm. It could go no fart=
her.
In that direction life was thwarted. But life, splendid and invincible, not=
to
be thwarted, changed the direction of its advance, and reason became the
all-potent developmental factor. Reason dawned far down in the scale of lif=
e;
but it culminates in man and the end is not yet.
The lever in his =
arm
he duplicates in wood and steel; the lenses in his eyes in glass; the visual
impressions of his brain on chemically sensitised wood-pulp. He is able,
reasoning from events and knowing the law, to control the blind forces and
direct their operation. Having ascertained the laws of development, he is a=
ble
to take hold of life and mould and knead it into more beautiful and useful
forms. Domestic selection it is called. Does he wish horses which are fast,=
he
selects the fastest. He studies the physics of velocity in relation to equi=
ne locomotion,
and with an eye to withers, loins, hocks, and haunches, he segregates his b=
rood
mares and his stallions. And behold, in the course of a few years, he has a
thoroughbred stock, swifter of foot than any ever in the world before.
Since he takes se=
xual
selection into his own hands and scientifically breeds the fish and the fow=
l,
the beast and the vegetable, why may he not scientifically breed his own ki=
nd?
The fish and the fowl and the beast and the vegetable obey dim yearnings and
vague desires and reproduce themselves. "Poor the reproduction," =
says
Man to Mother Nature; "allow me." And Mother Nature is thrust asi=
de
and exceeded by this new creator, this Man-god.
These yearnings a=
nd
desires of the beast and the vegetable are the best tools nature has succee=
ded
in devising. Having devised them, she leaves their operation to the blindne=
ss
of chance. Steps in man and controls and directs them. For the first time in
the history of life conscious intelligence forms and transforms life. These
yearnings and desires, promptings of the "abysmal fecundity," hav=
e in
man evolved into what is called "love." They arise in instinct and
sensation and culminate in sentiment and emotion. They master man, and the
intellect of man, as they master the beast and all the acts of the beast. A=
nd
they operate in the development of man with the same blindness of chance th=
at
they operate in the development of the beast.
Now this is the l=
aw:
Love, as a means for the perpetuation and development of the human type, is
very crude and open to improvement. What the intellect of man has done with=
the
beast, the intellect of man may do with man.
It is a truism to=
say
that my intellect is wiser than my emotions. So, knowing the precise value =
and
use of this erotic phenomenon, this sexual madness, this love, I, for one,
elect to choose my mate with my intellect. Thus I choose Hester. And I do t=
ruly
love her, but in the intellectual sense and not the sense you fanatically
demand. I am not seized with a loutish vertigo when I look upon her and tou=
ch
her hand. Nor do I feel impelled to leave her presence if I would live, as =
did Dante
the presence of Beatrice; nor the painful confusion of Rousseau, when, in t=
he
same room with Madame Goton, he seemed impelled to leap into the flaming
fireplace. But I do feel for Hester what happily mated men and women, after
they have lived down the passion, feel in the afternoon of life. It is the
affection of man for woman, which is sanity. It is the sanity of intercourse
which replaces love madness; the sanity which comes upon sparrows after the
ardour of mating, when they leave off wrangling and chattering and set sobe=
rly
to work to build their nest for the coming brood.
Pre-nuptial love =
is
the madness of non-understanding and part-understanding. Post-nuptial affec=
tion
is the sanity of complete understanding; it is based upon reason and service
and healthy sacrifice. The first is a blind mating of the blind; the second=
, a
clear and open-eyed union of male and female who find enough in common to w=
arrant
that union. In a word and in the fullest sense of the word, it is sex
comradeship. Pre-nuptial love cannot survive marriage any considerable time=
. It
is doomed inexorably to flicker out, and when it has flickered out it must =
be
replaced by affection, or else the parties to it must separate. We well know
that many men and women, unable to build up affection on the ruins of love,=
do
separate, or if they do not, continue to live together in cold tolerance or
bitter hatred.
Now, Hester is my
mate. We have much in common. There is intellectual, spiritual, and physical
affinity. The caress of her voice and the feel of her mind are pleasurable =
to
me; likewise the touch of her hand (and you know that in the union of man a=
nd
woman the higher affinities are not possible unless there first be
physiological affinity). We shall go through life as comrades go, hand in h=
and,
Hester and I; and great happiness will be ours. And because of all this I s=
ay
you have no right to challenge my happiness, and vex my days, and feel for =
me
as one dead.
My dear, bewilder=
ed
Dane, come down out of the clouds. If I am wrong, I have gone over the grou=
nd.
Then do you go over that ground with me and show where I am wrong. But do n=
ot
pour out on me your romantic and poetic spleen. Confine yourself to the Fac=
t,
man, to the irrefragable Fact.
HERBERT.
Ah, your later le=
tter
has just arrived. I can only say that I understand. But withal, I am pained
that I am not nearer to you. These intellectual phantasmagoria rise up like
huge amorphous ghosts and hold me from you. I cannot get through the mists =
and
glooms to press your hand and tell you how dear I hold you. Do, Dane, do le=
t us
cease from this. Let us discuss no further. Let me care for Hester in my own
way so long as I do no sin and harm no one; and be you father to us, and bl=
ess us
who else must go unblessed. For Hester, also, is fatherless and motherless,=
and
you must be to her as you are to me.
HERBERT.
XII - FROM DANE KEMPTON TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. February
10, 19--.
So we have got in=
to
an argument! I have been poring over your last two or three letters, and th=
ey
read like a set of briefs for a debate. Doubtless mine have the same forens=
ic
quality. Our letters have become rebuttals, pure and simple. This discovery
gave my pen pause for a week. It occurred to me that Walt Whitman must have
meant didactic letters too, when he said of the fretters of our little worl=
d,
"They make me sick talking of their duty to God." Yet friend shou=
ld
speak to friend, should utter the word than which nothing is more sacred.
"Let there be light, and there was light"--a ripple of light, and=
a
flash, then the darkness broke and dispersed from the face of the waters. It
was a trumpet-call of words bringing drama into a nebulous creation. Let th=
e Word
break up our night and let us not only grant, but avow the conviction it br=
ings
us, no matter what the consequence. Let us worship the irrefragable Fact.
You hold that
marriage is an institution having for its purpose the perpetuation of the
species, and that respect and affection are sufficient to bring two people =
into
this most intimate possible relation. You also hold that the business of the
world, pressing hard upon men, makes "love from their lives a thing
apart," and that this is as it should be. Your letters are an expositi=
on
and a defence of what I may loosely call the practical theory. You show that
the world is for work and workers, and that life is for results as seen in
institutions and visible achievements. I, on the other hand, maintain that =
it
takes a greater dowry to marry upon than affection, and that men love as in=
tensely
and with as much abandon as women. People love in proportion to the depth o=
f their
natures, and the finest man in the world has an infinite capacity for giving
and receiving love store. The spell is strongest upon the finest.
This, briefly, is
what we have been saying to each other. You attack my idealism, call me
dreamer, and accuse me of being out of joint with the time, which itself is
rigorously in joint with the laws of growth. And I class you with the
Philistine because of your exaggeration of practical values. I hold that it=
is
gross to respect the fact tangible at the expense of the feeling ineffable.=
In your last lett=
er
you exploit the theory of Nutrition and Reproduction with a charm and warmth
which helps me see you as I have so long known you, and which tells me again
that you are worth fighting for and saving. But to trace love to its biolog=
ic
beginning is not to deny its existence. Love has a history as significant as
that of life. When, eons ago, the primitive man looked at his neighbour and
recognised him as a fellow to himself, consciousness of kind awoke and a ce=
ll
was exploded which functioned love. When, through the ages, economic forces
taught men the need of mutual aid, when everywhere in life the law of devel=
opment
charged men with leanings and desires and outreachings, then the sway of lo=
ve
began in life. What was subconscious became conscious, what, back in the pa=
st,
was a mere adumbration gloried out in Aurora splendours. The love of a Juli=
et
is the outgrowth of natural processes manifesting themselves everywhere down
the scale, but it is also the gift of the last evolution, and it speaks to =
us
from the topmost notch in the scale. The charm of morning rests on a Juliet=
's
love because its hour is young and yet old, striking the time of the past a=
nd
the future. It is thus that the hunger of the race and the passion of the r=
ace become
in the individual the need for happiness. The need of the race and the need=
of
the individual are at once the same and different.
What was the poin=
t of
your letter? That sexual selection obtains? I grant it. That it is incumbent
upon us as intelligent men and women to call to the aid of instinct our soc=
ial
wisdom? I grant and avow it. But our social wisdom insists that we obey the
choices of instinct; our social wisdom is only another phase of our refinem=
ent,
which, in impelling us to a love of the beautiful, does not the less impel =
us
to love. Our social wisdom educates our taste without lessening our taste f=
or
the thing. "Love a beautiful person nobly, but be sure you love her,&q=
uot;
says our social wisdom with interesting tautology. Besides, you are a heret=
ic
to your own breed, Herbert. It is you who would forsake our present social
wisdom, ruling modern men by laws which obtained in primitive life. It is y=
ou
who steadily hark back to the past, and to states of consciousness which we=
re but
can never be again. The early facts of biology cannot include that which
transcends them. To borrow from Ernest Seton Thompson, man is evolved with =
the
lower orders in the same way that water is changed into steam, and the natu=
re
of the change, when it is effected, is as radical. Add a number of degrees =
of
heat to water and it is still water. Let one degree be wanting to the neces=
sary
number, and the substance is still intact. Add the last degree, and water i=
s no
longer water. From water to steam is a radical change and a transformation.=
You agree to impr=
ove
upon the beasts of the fields and upon our own race in the past, and in this
you go farther than you have need if marriage is for nothing else than to s=
erve
the instinct for perpetuation. You shew some respect for what is natural and
instinctive, yet you say that all would be as well if individual choice had=
not
prevailed, and men and women were "shuffled about." You draw up a
cold programme for action in affairs of the spirit and formulate a code of =
procedure
in matters of the heart.
I have a programme
too. Mine does not break with nature. On the contrary, it obeys every insti=
nct
and listens to every call on the senses. My love begins in my biologic self,
grows with my growth, takes its hues from visioned sunsets in corn-flower
skies, its grace from swaying rivers of grain seen in dreams. It is for me =
what
it is for fish and fowl, beast and vegetable. It is my passion for
perpetuation, but it is also something as different from this as I am diffe=
rent
from beast and vegetable. My love is "blind, unreasoning, and
compelling," and for that I trust it. I do not conceive myself Man-god,
therefore I do not say to Nature, "Allow me." I cannot be sure th=
at
when I say it in the case of the horse, who obeys like me "dim yearning
and vague desires," I do not sacrifice him to a lust of my own. The lu=
st
for owning and spoiling is hard to cope with. Perhaps a purer time is near,
when, upborne by a sense of the dignity of romance and the sacredness of li=
fe, man
will refrain from laying rough hands on his mute brothers.
The romance which=
is
my proof of the good of being does not rest on passion. The unclean fires t=
hat
consume the loutish and degenerate are not of love. You quote instances of =
the
hyperphysical and hysterical. The feeling that I would have you obey for yo=
ur
soul's sake and without which you are but half alive, is not the blind pass=
ion
of an oversexed sentimentalism. Rousseau was never in love in his life, tho=
ugh
to say it were to accuse him of perjury.
One word more. Do=
you
wish to know why I care? I care because I know you to be of those who are
capable of love. Probably it was one little twist in your development that =
has
turned you into alien ways of thinking and living. Yes, and more than for t=
his
I care because you are the fulfilment of a sacred past. You are the son of =
my
sacrifice and your mother's love.
I care very much
indeed. I do not wish you to awake some terrible night to find that you had
ended your romance before you had begun it. I vex your days and call you de=
ad?
It is because I know the life that is by the grace of God yours, and becaus=
e I
cannot bear to let you coffin it. Herbert, there is misery when the blood
pales, and the tears dry up, and the flame of the heart sinks, and all that=
is
left is a memory of a thought--a memory of very long ago when one was young=
and
might have chosen to live.
I am sorry we dar=
ken
the days for each other.
Your friend alway=
s,
DANE KEMPTON.
XIII - FROM THE SAME TO T=
HE
SAME
LONDON, 3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. February
12, 19--.
Barbara and Earl
celebrated their anniversary yesterday. Invitations were sent out, the gues=
ts
consisting of Melville and myself. "Anniversary of what?" we aske=
d.
For answer we received inscrutable smiles. Birthdays are accidents of fate.=
You
may regret the accident or you may be thick enough in illusion to rejoice o=
ver
it, but you cannot in decency celebrate an occurrence wholly independent of
personal control and yet concerning itself with you! Leave the merrymaking =
for appreciative
friends. So rules Barbara. Not a birthday, then, nor the date of their
marriage. The occasion was in some flash struck from Being, the memory of w=
hich
enriches them,--in a mood that for an hour held them in strong grasp, in the
utterance of a word charged with destiny, in the avowal of their love if th=
eir
love awaited avowal. Whatever the cause, they honoured it with a will.
Barbara's eyes
flashed, her cheeks were sweetly suffused, and her voice was vibrant. Earl,
too, was at his best. My heart loved this man who had lain all his life with
death. His health is at its bad worst this winter, which fact made of the
"Celebration" a rather heart-rending affair. He has been obliged =
to
abandon the Journal, but we hope he can stay with the school. Meanwhile, his
chronic invalidism of body and purse does not too much affect him. He keeps=
his
charm of tenderness and strength. He rivets his pupils to him almost as he
riveted his Barbara.
I have discovered=
my
proof of this couple's happiness. It is that I have always taken it for
granted. Simple, is it not? And absolute. Often in their presence I catch
myself imagining their mutual lives and seeing vaguely the graces that each
brings to each. "How she must delight him!" I say. "How his =
eyes
speak to her!" "They can never come to the end of each other,&quo=
t;
and so on. The ordinary married couple so often brings a sense of distressed
surprise: "How can these two foot it together?" "How did it
happen?" "How can it go on?"
Last night counte=
d to
me. Your father and I have had such evenings, but I did not think I could d=
o it
all over again. We spoke with the fire (and conceit) of young students,
exciting ourselves with expired theories, hoping old hopes, smarting under
blows that perhaps had long ceased to fall. What then? What if we were ill-=
read
in the facts? We could not have been wrong in the feeling. For the old hope
that has been proven vain, a new; for the ancient hurt, a modern wrong, as
great and as crying. It was good to feel that we had not grown too wise to =
harbour
thoughts of change and redress, or too much ironed out with doctrine to be
resigned. I confess it is long since I have eaten my heart in fury, in
impatience, in wildness, but last night we awoke the radical in one another=
. We
condemned the system. We placed ourselves outside the régime, refusi=
ng
aught at its hands, registering our protest, hating the inordinate scheme of
things only as hotly as we loved the juster Hand of a future time.
It is curious that
we, offsprings of parvenue success, should be capable of such repudiation.
Barbara accepts the Management without the trouble of a question. "Wha=
t do
you know? What do you know?" the girl demands, a radiant little angel =
in
white, and a conservative. "You must know yourselves in the wrong, else
would you smite your way through the world."
Ah, Barbara has y=
et
to learn that it is hard to live. It is not so hard to fight, and it is eas=
y to
rest neutral, but to be fighter and bearer both, to stand staunch, holding =
ever
to the issue, and yet, without tameness, to take rebuff and wait, there's t=
he
true course and the heroic. It is difficult when one has been conquered to =
know
it. It is difficult to honour an outgrown ideal, which cost us, nevertheles=
s, comfort
and prestige--prizes which youth scorns and which oncoming age, pathetically
enough, holds dear. It is difficult to pull up when driving too fast and too
far, when galloping towards fanaticism, and it is impossible to whip oneself
into passion and martyrdom. It is difficult to live, little Barbara.
For me it is also
difficult to report a social function. At this one Browning presided, for
Melville took up "Caponsacchi" and read it to us. That voice of h=
is
is in itself an interpretation, but Browning needs interpreting less than a=
ny
other man who wrote great poems, because he wrote the greatest. It was four=
in
the morning when the "O great, just, good God! Miserable me!" of =
the
soldier-saint fell upon our ears. How we had listened! Earl steadily paced =
the
floor, Barbara leaned her cheek upon my hand. Her soul was doing battle, an=
d so
was mine. We were all fighting the gallant fight. Read "Pompilia"=
and
you are filled with reverence, read "Caponsacchi" and you are cau=
ght
up by the spirit of action. You must rise and forth to burn your way like h=
e,
though you may have been too weary in spirit before to answer to your name =
when
opportunity called roll.
It was Earl who b=
roke
the silence caused by the inner tumult. In a dreamy voice, his eyes very ea=
ger
and intent, he told us how at one time he had gone up a hill that faced the
house in which he lived. A hard rain was driving, he fell at every step up =
the
slippery steepness, but at every step the beauty of it became more and more
wondrous, hardly bearable. The little village sank lower and lower, and abo=
ut
him were soft hills, graceful and verdant, a stretch of water lying dark un=
der the
clouded sky, and the mountain gray and watchful in the distance. It was the=
n,
in the chill of a January rain, on an oak-clad hill of a western spot, that=
he
recognised the dear features of the Mother, knew her his as hers he was, and
loved her with passion. The sea is vast and wondrous, but it is alien. It h=
olds
you apart; it is not of you. But the gentle earth with her undulating form =
and
the growing life in her lap, soothes with wordless harmonies. It was then t=
hat
he forgave the fate which deformed him. A twisted oak, that is all--no less=
a
tree and no less beautiful in the landscape! And it was sufficient to live.=
In
the bosom of so much beauty sufficient also to die. As he stood, thinking i=
t out,
feeling the wonder and the glory, at times sorry for those who can see no
longer the slanting sheets of rain and the grass at the feet, at times feel=
ing
that since this is good, in some impalpable way oblivion to all this may be
also good, as he stood there, flushed with the climbing and sad with great =
joy,
the thought came: With whom? It cannot be lived alone. With whom? He turned=
at
the touch of an arm at his shoulder to meet the smile and the look and the
quick breath of her who had sent herself his Eve.
In the dawn steal=
ing
over the world of London, Earl told the story, and there and then we saw it
all--the hill in the heart of the hills, the reconciled boy who had climbed=
its
brow, the rain-drenched woman hurrying to overtake him, with the gift of al=
l of
herself in her eyes. We looked neither at Barbara nor at Earl. Possessed of=
the
secret, we spoke a few words and left. Our host had divulged what the
anniversary sought to celebrate. We understood and were glad.
Good night, lad. =
Would
you could have shared our heyday at the dawning!
DANE.
XIV - FROM HERBERT WACE TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Fe=
bruary
31, 19--.
Love is a somethi=
ng
that begins in sensation and ends in sentiment. Thanks to beautiful and per=
missible
hyperbole, you have begun with sensation in your description of love, and h=
ave
ended with sentiment. You have told me about love, in terms of love, which =
is a
vain performance and unscientific. Now let me make you a definition. Love i=
s a
disorder of mind and body, and is produced by passion under the stimulus of
imagination.
Love is a phase of
the operation of the function of reproduction, and it occurs solely in man.
Love, adhering to the common understanding of the term, is an emotional
excitement which does not obtain among the lower animals. The lower animals
lack the stimulus of imagination, and with them the passion for perpetuation
remains a mere passion. But man has developed imagination. The pure sexual
passion is glossed over and obscured by a cloud of fancies, mistaken yearni=
ngs,
and distorted dreams. And so well is the real intent of the function obscur=
ed,
that it is actually lost to him, especially during the period of love madne=
ss, so
that there seems an apparent divorce between the parts which go to make up
love, between passion and imagination.
The romantic love=
r of
to-day (expressing sensation in terms of sentiment, and fondly imagining th=
at
he is reasoning) cannot reconcile his soul-exaltation with bodily grossness,
cannot conceive that soul can turn body, and in the embrace of body tell out
all the wonder of soul. To all sensitive and spiritual men and women come t=
imes
of anguish and tears and self-revolt, when they are confounded and heart-br=
oken
by the physical aspect of love. Poor men and women! they suffer keenly and =
sincerely
through lack of something more than a sentimental concept of love. To them,
body and soul appear things apart, to be kept apart, lest the one contamina=
te
the other. And in the end, loving well and truly, they prove their love by
enduring, though unable ever quite to shake off the sense of sin and shame =
and
personal degradation. They do not understand life, that is the trouble. The
beast, lacking imagination, needs no rational rightness for the various act=
s of
living, such as they need, and which they do not possess. Because of their
unchecked and unbalanced imagination they mistake the half of life for the
whole, and when forced to face the whole are affrighted and shocked. They do
not reason that the need for perpetuation is the cause of passion; and that=
human
passion, working through imagination and worked upon by imagination, becomes
love.
And while I am in
this vein, I may as well deny that a greater spiritual dowry than affection=
is
required for marriage. (For that matter, I fail to see anything so spiritua=
l in
erotic phenomena.) If a man may achieve affection for a woman, without
undergoing pre-nuptial madness,--if a man may take the short cut, as it
were,--then I see no reason why he should not marry that woman. He is certa=
inly
justified, since affection is what romantic love must evolve into after
marriage. But do not mistake me, Dane. I do not intend this sweepingly. It =
will
not do for the whole human herd; for at once enters that abhorrent thing yo=
u rightly
fear, the marriage for convenience. Alas, it too often masquerades under th=
e guise
of romantic love. Certainly, every man is not capable of taking this short =
cut
and at the same time of avoiding a violation of true sexual selection. Havi=
ng
little brain, the average man can only act in line with sexual selection by
undergoing the romantic love malady. But for some few of us, and I dare to
include myself, the short cut is permissible. This short cut I shall take, =
and
far be it from any worldly sense of stocks and bonds and comfortable
housekeeping.
Marriage means le=
ss
to man than to woman? Yes, by all means, at least to the normal man or woma=
n.
As surely as reproduction is woman's peculiar function, and nutrition man's,
just so surely does marriage sum up more to woman than to man. It becomes t=
he
whole life of the woman, while to the man it is rather an episode, rather a
mere side to his many-sided life. Natural selection has made it so. The
countless men of the past, even from before the time they swung down out of=
the
trees, who devoted more time and energy to their love-affairs than to the
winning of food and shelter, died from innutrition in various ways. Only the
men, normal men, with a proper respect for the mechanism of life, survived =
and perpetuated
their kind. The chance was large that the abnormal lover did not win a wife=
at
all. At least it is so to-day. The abnormal lover is not a successful bidder
for women, and is usually passed by.
But while we are =
on
this topic, do not let us forget Dante Alighieri, your prince of lovers. Ha=
s a
suitable explanation ever occurred to you concerning how he came to marry
Gemma, daughter of Manetto Donati, who bore him seven children, and was nev=
er
once mentioned in the "Divina Commedia?" You remember what he sai=
d of
his first meeting with Beatrice, "At that moment I saw most truly that=
the
spirit of life which hath its dwelling in the secretest chambers of the hea=
rt
began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook
therewith." And he later had seven children by Gemma, daughter of Mane=
tto
Donati, and whom, as the historian has recorded, "there was no reason =
to
suppose other than a good wife."
As for the primit=
ive,
I hark back to it because we are still very primitive. How many thousands y=
ears
of culture, think you, have rubbed and polished at our raw edges? One,
probably; at the best, not more than two. And that takes us back to screami=
ng
savagery, when, gross of body and deed, we drank blood from the skulls of o=
ur
enemies, and hailed as highest paradise the orgies and carnage of Valhalla.=
And
before that time, think you, how many thousands of years of savagery did we
endure? and how many myriads of thousands in the long procession of life up
from the first vitalised inorganic? Two thousand years are an extremely thi=
n veneer
with which to cover the many millions.
And further, our
much-vaunted two thousand years of culture is a thing of the mind, an acqui=
red
character. We are not born with it. Each must gather it for himself after h=
e is
born, from the spoken and written words of his fellow and forerunners. Isol=
ate
a babe from all of its kind and it will never learn to speak, and without
speech words, it can never think save in the concretest possible way. Yet it
will possess all the brute instincts and passions--the raw edges which do
constantly shove through the culture varnish of the civilised man.
Our culture is the
last to come, the first to go. I have seen it go from a man in an hour, nay=
, on
the instant. Our culture is nothing more than the accumulated wisdom of the
race. It is not part of us, not a thing or attribute handed down from fathe=
r to
son. It is a something acquired in varying degree by each individual for
himself. Yes, I do well to hark back to the primitive. It tells me where I =
am to-day
and describes to me the world I am living in. You, Dane, are hyper-refined,=
or
refined beyond the times. You are like the idealistic and advanced zealots,
who, when such action would mean destruction, advise these United States to=
disarm
in the face of the war-harnessed world.
But no more of th=
is
jerky letter. Soon I shall proceed to make my contention good. I shall show=
the
higher part intellect plays in conjugal love, the control, restraint,
forbearance, sacrifice. And I shall show that conjugal love is higher and f=
iner
than romantic love.
HERBERT.
XV - FROM DANE KEMPTON TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. March
15, 19--.
Clyde Stebbins was
here an hour after your theories and definitions reached me. The fact that I
had been reading treason against his sister made me pick my subjects a litt=
le
too carefully for smooth conversation. Your letter, partly open, was on the
table before us, and my eyes fell upon it often as I wondered what it would
mean to Hester's brother--if he could read it. I no longer think only of yo=
u.
I reject your
definition of love. It is not a disorder of the mind and body, nor is it so=
lely
the instrument of reproduction. I reject and resent your distinction between
the pre-nuptial and post-nuptial states of feelings. Further, I hold that
marriage may not be based on affection alone, and I disagree with you that
population is better than principle. Children need not be brought into the
world at any cost.
Love is not a
disorder, but a growth. There is spiritual as well as physical growth. Some=
men
and women never grow up strong enough to love. Their development is arreste=
d,
or they are, from the beginning, poor creatures born of starvelings, and
perhaps fated to give birth to pale, sapless beings like themselves. Others
there are who love, and this is no ill chance, no disease of the mind and b=
ody
calling for psychiater and physician. It is a strength, a becoming, a
fulfilment. Let us reason from the effect to the cause. How does this madne=
ss
manifest itself? Not in weakness. You never saw a man or woman in love who =
was
the worse for it. The lover carries all things before him, and not for hims=
elf
alone, but for a larger world than ever had been his. He who loves one must=
perforce
love all the world and all the unborn worlds. This is the way life goes, wh=
ich
is another way of saying it is a scientific fact. That which makes men capa=
ble
of consecration is not a disorder of the mind and body. It is the greatest =
of
all forces, and it turns the wrangling and grabbing human creature into an
inspired poet.
And the cause? The
passion for perpetuation and the imagination. We agree. But there are other=
and
more immediate needs than the need of perpetuation that call out love, needs
that are peculiarly of the present, being bound up with the steady outreach=
ing
for help, for fellowship in the jerky journey through the universe. If love
were no more than an instrument of reproduction, you would be right in main=
taining
that the fastidiousness I insist on is unnecessary and unnatural. If love w=
ere
that and that alone, there would be no love, which is a paradox indeed.
"Because of=
our
souls' yearning that we meet And mix in =
soul
through flesh, which yours and mine Wear and im=
press,
and make their visible selves,-- All which m=
eans,
for the love of you and me, Let us beco=
me one
flesh, being one soul."
I dare a formula: In the beginning =
love
arose in the passion for perpetuation; to-day, the passion for perpetuation
arises in love. Just as we put ourselves in the way of natural selection,
pitting the microcosm against the macrocosm in a passion of ethical feeling,
just so do we reverse for ourselves processes that seem indeed to have all =
the force
of law. This reversal is civilisation.
The lover is impe=
lled
to perpetuate himself in the Here and the Now. The law of life exacts from =
him
the tribute of love. Imagination gives the lover the key to the object of h=
is
love. He enters and he beholds only the ideal which is hers; for him her cl=
ay
self and the mere facts of her do not exist. The conditions of love are
inherent in civilisation. When purpose is high and feeling rich, when "=
;the
everlasting possession of the good" is desired, then is heard the I Am=
of
love.
Now to my definit=
ion.
Negatively, love is not a disorder of the mind and body, not a madness, sin=
ce
it arises in the eternally most valuable, since it is the culmination of hi=
gh
processes, and since it makes for sanity of vision and strength and happine=
ss.
Positively, love is the awakening of the personality to the beauty and wort=
h of
some one being, caused by the passion for perpetuation and by imagination. =
It
is a desire to hold to the good everlastingly, and to merge with it.
Aristotle proved =
to
the satisfaction of his time that women have fewer teeth than men. Aristotle
was a great man, and besides being a philosopher was the foremost scientist=
of
his day. I cannot help thinking of this prodigious blunder. Perhaps (who
knows?) the same famous fate which a sexual classification of teeth enjoys =
awaits
a definition calling love a disorder.
I will continue
to-morrow. A note has just been given me calling me to Earl, who is ill, but
not seriously. Barbara has prescribed for him a game of chess. The desire to
see you again has got into my blood. I think I shall be in the new West and
with you before long.
Your friend alway=
s, DANE
KEMPTON.
XVI - FROM THE SAME TO THE
SAME
LONDON. Sunday morning.
I must proceed wi=
th
the three other points of my letter, so I shall stay here and write, though
there is a sharp breeze this morning and a coquettishly escaping sunlight, =
and
something tugs at me to go out upon the city streets. It is not restlessnes=
s,
but the love of the open. I am fain to leave a walled house, and, better st=
ill,
to get outside of the walls within and join the city in friendship and let =
the
city join me. I never feel greater fellowship than when I walk--
Except when I wri=
te
to you. Then do I greaten with the pride of life. My sympathies quicken and=
I
grow young again. I constitute myself advocate of the world, and enthusiasm
does not fail me in this high calling. It is but natural that in the face of
scepticism which I cannot share I should feel greater faith, that in the fa=
ce
of revilement a sense of the glory of the thing belittled should settle upon
me. I turn zealot and spend myself in long-drawn praising. I lay myself und=
er a
spell of harmony because I am serving and defending and approving what I ho=
ld
to be good.
So when you insist
that romantic love is pre-nuptial and that it dies at marriage as others
suppose it to die at the approach of poverty, I grow glad with the knowledge
that this is not true. I scrutinize facts which I hitherto took for granted,
and become doubly sure. You dogmatise when you say that the lover and the
husband are mutually exclusive. If there was love in the beginning, it will=
be
at the end. Love doubles upon itself. Propinquity tightens bonds and there =
is a
steady blossoming of the character in a radiant atmosphere. The marriages t=
hat
fail are the unions which are based on liking. In these, weariness must set=
in,
for marriage demands that men and women be all in all to each other, and un=
less
it be so with them, the lives of the "contracting parties" are, by
the laws of logic, and by the force of the laws of delicacy in the art of
living, forever spoilt.
Yes, and people w=
ho
truly love come to regret their married love, these too. But these have at
least begun well. Their lives are infinitely richer for this fact. Their
failure itself is made by it more bearable than the failure of those others=
who
act the vulgarian and demand so little of life that even that little escapes
them. No world-stains on these who are, at least, would-be lovers. They sta=
nd
mistaken but irreproachable. It was neither their fault nor love's, and
"life more abundant" comes to them even with the mistake.
You are consisten=
t.
Just as you maintain that love is passion, so do you think that it is no mo=
re
than a preliminary thrill. You note a change; the flutter and the excitement
felt in the presence of the unknown go, and you do not know that they give
place to the steadier joys of the unknown, that after the promise comes the
fulfilment, that the hope is not more beautiful than the realisation, that
there is divinity in both, and that love does not disappoint.
Tell me, are the
placid marriages of affection you are preparing to describe so very placid?=
Do
these jog along so well? Is the control, restraint, forbearance, sacrifice,=
of
which you speak, as readily practised for the person who is that to you whi=
ch
twenty others may quite as easily be, as it is for the one beyond all whom =
you
love and deify, whom the laws of your being command that you serve, living =
and dying?
God knows, the average marriage does not exhibit a striking picture of the =
practice
of these virtues! Rather are such phrases ideals on stilts on which sufferi=
ng
marital partners attempt to hobble across their extremity. On the other han=
d,
to some extent everybody practises restraint and sacrifice since everybody =
is
to some extent moral. But it goes very hard with your average man and woman=
in
your average marriage, and there is a decided setting of the mouth and
narrowing of the eyes with the effort.
Whatever placidity
there is is attained by means of vampirism. Diderot, the husband of a stupid
seamstress, had no right to the love of a Mlle. Voland. It was vampirism and
sin to take all from this woman, and to return her favour with so much less
than all, as surely as cowardice and selfishness are sin. But the illicit
relation will exist because custom cannot rid men and women of subtle
sympathies and dear yearnings, because men and women will love though the w=
orld
consider it cheap and mad. Individually, we have no difficulty in finding o=
ur
happiness, but we are made advance toward it through the twisted byways of =
an
unfrank world. "No straight road! Keep turning!" has been the scr=
eam
of convention since convention began.
So for every
commonplace marriage there is a canonised love, and the story is told in the
old Greek civilisation by the Hetairæ. You remember how it reads in t=
he
history: "The low position generally assigned the wife in the home had=
a
most disastrous effect upon Greek morals. She could exert no such elevating=
or
refining influence as she casts over the modern home. The men were led to s=
eek
social and intellectual sympathy and companionship outside the family circl=
e,
among a class of women known as Hetairæ, who were esteemed chiefly for
their brilliancy of intellect. As the most noted representative of this cla=
ss
stands Aspasia, the friend of Pericles. The influence of the Hetairæ =
was
most harmful to social morality." And the practice persisted through m=
any
a renaissance where Lauras and Beatrices were besung, down to the brilliant
encyclopædists of the eighteenth century with their avowed loves, dow=
n to
our Goethe and John Stuart Mill. All of these loves rose in very different
motives and environments, yet were they the same fundamentally,--strong, sw=
eet
love between man and woman, very much spoiled by the fact that custom permi=
tted
the loveless marriage at the same time, but yet love which was good since it
was the best that could be had. And when the historian permits himself to s=
ay,
"The influence of the Hetairæ was most harmful to social
morality," it is evident that he also thinks that a marriage which com=
pels
husband or wife to seek soul's help elsewhere than in their union is bad and
wrong.
To-day there is a
change in attitude. Woman is new-born in strength and dignity, and the high=
est
chivalry the world has ever known is in blossom. She is an equal, a comrade=
, a
right regal person. She is no longer a means but an end in herself, not alo=
ne
fit to mother men but fit to live in equality with men. I repeat, she is no=
t a
means but an individual, with a soul of her own to rear. Because of the gre=
ater
and more general emancipation of woman the subtlety of modern love has beco=
me
possible.
Now for the last
point, the question of perpetuation. Just as function precedes organ, so the
love of life is inherent in the living for the maintenance of life. But even
the primitive man, in whom instinct is strongest, proves himself capable of
death. Some men have always been able to give up their lives for some cause.
(Indeed there is thought to be suicide amongst animals.) And to-day we
certainly no longer say a man must live. Quite as often must he die. Men ha=
ve
found it wise to die at the stake or on the gallows. If this be true of our
relation to the life which courses through us, how much more true is it of =
our
instinct to perpetuate ourselves, which pertains to the love of life
biologically only, which is often, in the social manifestation of that
instinct, a cold intellectual concept and never a dominating thought! We are
not driven to procreate. In fact, every child born into the world competes =
hard
for its morsel. Under our unimaginable economic régime all increase =
in
population is a menace.
I call bringing
children into the world a codfish act which causes an overflux of vulgar li=
ttle
earthlings, if the process be not humanised and spiritualised. If the child=
is
conceived not in lust but in love, it is rightly born. If it is the child of
your ideal, the offspring of that which is your truest life, then is your
progeny your immortality, and then, and then only, have you reason for pride
and joy in that which you have caused to be.
My dear, dear
Herbert, my love has not failed. This you must come to understand. Love nev=
er
fails. The children that might have been mine are better unborn, since I co=
uld
not give them a mother whom I loved. You remind me that Dante married Gemma,
daughter of Manetto Donati, and she bore him seven children. Yet, Herbert, =
was
this wife not mentioned in the "Commedia," nor in "La Vita
Nuova," nor anywhere else in his writings. Dante was a Conformist. He =
was
not in all respects above his time; witness his theology. Convention permit=
ted
the dispassionate marriage side by side with love. He was conventional, and=
the
infinite moment of meeting in paradise with his Lady was embittered by her
"cold, lessoned smiles."
"Ah, from w=
hat
agonies of heart and brain, What exulta=
tions
trampling on despair, What tender=
ness,
what tears, what hate of wrong, What passio=
nate
outcry of a soul in pain, Uprose this=
poem
of the earth and air, This mediae=
val
miracle of song!"
It was for Beatrice that this man v=
exed
his spirit with immortal effort and raised a Titan voice which yet is heard=
in
charmed echoes. It was for Beatrice that he descended into the dead regions=
and
climbed the hills of purgatory and soared towards the Rose of
Paradise,--"And 'She, where is She?' instantly I cried."
Dante, our prince=
of
lovers, might have lived better, but he loved well.
This in answer to
your letter. To meet your argument I have found it best to employ something=
of
your own method, but I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I have vulgari=
sed
the subject by saying so much about it. I fear my letter would provoke a sm=
ile
from those who know love and the wonder of its simplicity through all the
subtlety. "We, in loving, have no cause to speak so much!" would =
be
their unanswerable criticism. It is easier to live than to argue about life=
.
The thought has
suddenly assailed me that what I have said may sound derogatory to Hester.
Know, then, that I do not think there is a woman in the world who is not
capable of inspiring true and abiding love in the heart of some man. Beside=
s,
Hester to me looms up as a heroine. Not a hair's breadth of what I know of =
her
that is not beautiful. My regret is that she, who could be "a vision
eterne," should be doomed to receive episodically your considerate
affection. She does not know your programme. She is a girl who takes your l=
ove
for granted in the same way as she gives hers, without niggardliness. It is=
the
woman who cannot be content with less than all that is slowly starved to de=
ath
on a bread-and-water diet and who does not find it out until the end.
Until the carnival
time when you and Hester come to love each other, if that time is to be, you
two must be as separate in deed as you are in fact. Forgive me and write so=
on.
Yours ever, DANE.=
XVII - FROM HERBERT WACE =
TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Ap=
ril 2,
19--.
So you have met
Hester's brother? Well, I have had an outing with Hester. She loves me well=
, I know,
and I cannot but confess a thrill at the thought. On the other hand, well d=
o I
know the significance of that love, the significance and the cause.
Notwithstanding that wonderful soul of hers, she is in no wise constituted
differently from her millions of sisters on the planet to-day. She loves--s=
he
knows not why; she knows--only that she loves. In other words, she does not
reason her emotions.
But let us reason=
, we
men, after the manner of men. And be thou patient, Dane, and follow me down=
and
under the phenomena of love to things sexless and loveless. And from there,=
as
the proper point of departure, let us return and chart love, its phases and
occurrences, from its first beginnings to its last manifestations.
Things sexless and
loveless! Yes, and as such may be classed the drops of life known as
unicellular organisms. Such a creature is a tiny cell, capable of performin=
g in
itself all the functions of life. That one pulsating morsel of matter is
invested with an irritability which, as Herbert Spencer says, enables it
"to adjust the inner relations with outer relations," to correspo=
nd
to its environment--in short, to live. That single cell contracts and recoi=
ls
from the things in its environment uncongenial to its constitution, and the
things congenial it draws to itself and absorbs. It has no mouth, no stomac=
h,
no alimentary canal. It is all mouth, all stomach, all alimentary canal.
But at that low p=
lane
the functions of life are few and simple. This bit of vitalised inorganic h=
as
no sex, and because of that it cannot love. Reproduction is growth. When it
grows over-large it splits in half, and where was one cell there are two. N=
or
can the parent cell be called mother or father: and for that matter, the pa=
rent
cell cannot be determined. The original cell split into two cells; one has =
as
much claim to parenthood as the other.
It lives dimly, t=
o be
sure, this mote of life and light; but before it is a vast evolution, Dane,=
on
the pinnacle of which are to be found men and women, Hester Stebbins, my mo=
ther,
you!
A step higher we =
find
the cell cluster, and with it begins that differentiation which has continu=
ed
to this day and which still continues. Simplicity has yielded to complexity=
and
a new epoch of life been inaugurated. The outer cells of the cluster are mo=
re
exposed to environmental forces than are the inner cells; they cohere more =
tenaciously
and a rudimentary skin is formed. Through the pores of this skin food is
absorbed, and in these food-absorbing pores is foreshadowed the mouth. Divi=
sion
of labour has set in, and groups of cells specialise in the performance of
functions. Thus, a cell group forms the skinny covering of the cluster, ano=
ther
cell group the mouth. And likewise, internally, the stomach, a sac for the
reception and digestion of food, takes shape; and the juices of the body be=
gin
to circulate with greater definiteness, breaking channels in their passage =
and
keeping those channels open. And, as the generations pass, still more group=
s of
cells segregate themselves from the mass, and the heart, the lungs, the liv=
er,
and other internal organs are formed. The jelly-like organism develops a bo=
ny
structure, muscles by which to move itself, and a nervous system--
Be not bored, Dan=
e,
and be not offended. These are our ancestors, and their history is our hist=
ory.
Remember that as surely as we one day swung down out of the trees and walked
upright, just so surely, on a far earlier day, did we crawl up out of the s=
ea
and achieve our first adventure on land.
But to be brief. =
In
the course of specialisation of function, as I have outlined, just as other
organs arose, so arose sex-differentiation. Previous to that time there was=
no
sex. A single organism realised all potentialities, fulfilled all functions.
Male and female, the creative factors, were incoherently commingled. Such an
individual was both male and female. It was complete in itself,--mark this,
Dane, for here individual completeness ends.
The labour of
reproduction was divided, and male and female, as separate entities, came i=
nto
the world. They shared the work of reproduction between them. Neither was
complete alone. Each was the complement of the other. In times and seasons =
each
felt a vital need for the other. And in the satisfying of this vital need, =
of
this yearning for completeness, we have the first manifestation of love. Ma=
le
and female loved they one another--but dimly, Dane. We would not to-day cal=
l it
love, yet it foreshadowed love as the food-absorbing pore foreshadowed the
mouth.
As long and tedio=
us
as has been the development of this rudimentary love to the highly evolved =
love
of to-day, just so long and tedious would be my sketch of that development.
However, the factors may be hinted. The increasing correspondence of life w=
ith
its environment brought about wider and wider generalisations upon that
environment and the relations of the individual to it. There is no missing =
link
to the chain that connects the first and lowest life to the last and the
highest. There is no gap between the physical and psychical. From simple re=
flex
action, on and up through compound reflex action, instinct, and memory, the
passage is made, without break, to reason. And hand in hand with these, all
acting and reacting upon one another, comes the development of the imaginat=
ion
and of the higher passions, feelings, and emotions. But all of this is in t=
he
books, and there is no need for me to go over the ground.
So let me sum up =
with
an analysis of that most exquisite of poets' themes, a maiden in love. In t=
he
first place, this maiden must come of an ancestry mastered by the passion f=
or
perpetuation. It is only through those so mastered that the line comes down.
The individual perishes, you know; for it is the race that lives. In this
maiden is incorporated all the experience of the race. This race experience=
is
her heritage. Her function is to pass it on to posterity. If she is
disobedient, she is unfruitful; her line ceases with her; and she is without
avail among the generations to come. And, be it not forgotten, there are ma=
ny
obedient whose lines will pass down.
But this maiden is
obedient. By her acts she will link the past to the future, bind together t=
he
two eternities. But she is incomplete, this maiden, and being immature she =
is
unaware of her incompleteness. Nevertheless she is the creature of the law =
of
the race, and from her infancy she prepares herself for the task she is to
perform. Hers is a certain definite organism, somewhat different from all o=
ther
female organisms. Consequently there is one male in all the world whose org=
anism
is most nearly the complement of hers; one male for whom she will feel the
greatest, intensest, and most vital need; one male who of all males is the
fittest, organically, to be the father of her children. And so, in pinafores
and pigtails, she plays with little boys and likes and dislikes according to
her organic need. She comes in contact with all manner of boys, from the
butcher's boy to the son of her father's friend; and likewise with men, from
the gardener to her father's associates. And she is more or less attracted =
by
those who, in greater or less degree, answer to her organic demand, or, as =
it
were, organic ideal.
And upon creatures
male she early proceeds to generalise. This kind of man she likes, that she
does not like; and this kind she likes more than that kind. She does not kn=
ow
why she does this; nor, with the highest probability, does she know she is
doing it. She simply has her likes and dislikes, that is all. She is the sl=
ave
of the law, unwittingly generalising upon sex-impressions against the day w=
hen
she must identify the male who most nearly completes her.
She drifts across=
the
magic borderland to womanhood, where dreams and fancies rise and intermingle
and the realities of life are lost. A dissatisfaction and a restlessness co=
me
upon her. There seems no sanity in things, and life is topsy-turvy. She is
filled with vague, troubled yearnings, and the woman in her quickens and cr=
ies
out for unity. It is an organic cry, old as the race, and she cannot shut o=
ut
the sound of it or still the clamour in her blood.
But there is one =
male
in all the world who is most nearly her complement, and he may be over on t=
he
other side of the world where she may not find him. So propinquity determin=
es
her fate. Of the males she is in contact with, the one who can more nearly =
give
her the completeness she craves will be the one she loves.
All of which is w=
ell
and good in its way, but let us analyze further. What is all this but the
symptoms of an extreme over-excitation and nervous disorder? The equilibriu=
m of
the organism has been overthrown and there is a wild scrambling for the
restoration of that equilibrium. The choice made may be good or ill, as cha=
nce
and time may dictate, but the impelling excitement forces a choice. What if=
it
be ill? What if to-morrow a male who is a far better complement should appe=
ar?
The time is now. Nature is not neglectful, and well she knows the disaster =
of delay.
She is prodigal of the individual and is satisfied with one match out of ma=
ny
mismatches, just as she is satisfied that of a million cod eggs one only sh=
ould
develop into a full-grown cod. And so this love of the human in no wise dif=
fers
from that of the sparrow which forgets preservation in procreation. Thus na=
ture
tricks her creatures and the race lives on.
For the lesser cr=
eatures
the trick serves the purpose well. There is need for a compelling madness, =
else
would self-preservation overcome procreation and there be no lesser creatur=
es.
And man is content to rest coequal with the beast in the matter of mating.
Notwithstanding his intelligence, which has made him the master of matter a=
nd
enabled him to enslave the great blind forces, he is unable to perpetuate h=
is
species without the aid of the impelling madness. Nay, men will not have it=
otherwise;
and when an individual urges that his reason has placed him above the beast,
and that, without the impelling madness, he can mate with greater wisdom and
potency, then the poets and singers rise up and fling potsherds at him. To
improve upon nature by draining a malarial swamp is permitted him; to impro=
ve
upon nature's methods and breed swifter carrier-pigeons and finer horses th=
an
she has ever bred is also permitted; but to improve upon nature in the bree=
ding
of the human, that is a sacrilege which cannot be condoned! Down with him! =
He
is a brute to question our divine Love, God-given and glorious!
Ah, Dane, remember
the first dim yearning of divided life, and the soils and smirches and fren=
zies
put upon it by the spawn of multitudinous generations. There is your love, =
the
whole history of it. There is no intrinsic shame in the thing itself, but t=
he
shame lies in that we are not greater than it.
HERBERT.
XVIII - FROM THE SAME TO =
THE
SAME
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Ap=
ril 4,
19--.
There were several
things in your letter which I forgot to answer. Much of beauty and wonder is
there in what you have said, and unrelated facts without end. Many of those
facts I endorse heartily, but it seems to me you fail to embody them in a
coherent argument.
I have stated, in=
so
many words, that there are two functions common to all life--nutrition and
reproduction. Of this you have missed the significance in your rejection of=
my
definition of love, so I must explain further. Unless these two functions be
carried on, life must perish from the planet. Therefore they are the most
essential concerns of life. The individual must preserve its own life and t=
he
life of its kind. It is more prone to preserve its own life than the life of
its kind, less prone to sacrifice itself for its species. So natural select=
ion
has developed a passion of madness which forces the individual to make the
sacrifice. In all forms of life below man the struggle for existence is keen
and merciless. The least weakness in an individual is the signal for its
destruction. Therefore it is counter to the welfare of the individual to do
aught that will tend to weaken it. On the other hand, the law is that the
individual must procreate. But procreation means a weakening and a temporary
state of helplessness. Problem: How may the individual be brought to procre=
ate?
to do that which is inimical to its welfare? Answer: It must be forced by
something deeper than reason, and that something is unreasoning passion. Did
the individual reason on the matter, it would certainly abstain. It is beca=
use
the passion is not rational that life has persisted to this day. Man, comin=
g up
from the walks of lower life, brought with him this most necessary passion.
Developing imagination, he commingled the two; love was the product.
Now, because of o=
ur imagination,
do not let us confuse the issue. The great task demanded of man is
reproduction. He is urged by passion to perform this task. Passion, working
through the imagination, produces love. Passion is the impelling factor,
imagination the disturbing factor; and the disturbance of passion by
imagination produces love.
Stripped of all i=
ts
superfluities, what function does love serve in the scheme of life? That of
reproduction. Nay, now, do not object, Dane; for you state the same thing,
though less clearly, in your own definition of love. You say, "Love is=
the
awakening of the personality to the beauty and worth of some one being"
and is a desire to merge the life with that of the beloved being. In other
words, your definition tells that the passion for perpetuation is the cause=
of
love, and perpetuation the end to be accomplished. Thus nature tricks her
creatures and the race lives on.
Then you say
negatively, "Love is not a disorder of mind and body, not a madness, s=
ince
it arises in the eternally most valuable, since it is the culmination of hi=
gh
processes, and since it makes for strength and sanity of vision and
happiness." I have shown the value of passion, and the processes of wh=
ich
love is the culmination, and I have shown that both are unreasoning and why
they are unreasoning. Do you demonstrate where I am wrong.
Then again, you d=
are
a formula: "In the beginning love arose in the passion for perpetuatio=
n;
to-day the passion for perpetuation arises in love." It is clever, but=
is
it true? Yes, as true as this formula I dare to pattern after yours: In the
beginning man ate because he was hungry; to-day he is hungry because he eat=
s.
There are many th=
ings
more I should like to answer, but I am writing this 'twixt breakfast and
lecture hour, and time presses and students will not wait.
HERBERT.
XIX - FROM DANE KEMPTON TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. April
22, 19--.
Nature tricks her
creatures and the race lives on, and I, overcivilised, decadent dreamer tha=
t I
am, rejoice that the past binds us, am proud of a history so old and so
significant and of an heritage so marvellous. Nature tricks her creatures a=
nd
the race lives on, and I am prayerfully grateful. The difference between us=
is
that you are not. You are suffering from what has been well called, the sad=
ness
of science. You accept the thesis of a common origin only to regret it. You
discover that romance has a history, and lo! romance has vanished! You are =
a Werther
of science, sad to the heart with a melancholy all your own and dropping in=
ert
tears on the shrine of your accumulated facts.
In this you are w=
ith
your generation. Just as every age has its prevailing disease of the body so
has it its characteristic spiritual ailment. To-day we are in the throes of
travail. In our arms is the child of our ever-delving intellect, but another
deliverance is about to be and the suffering is great. After science comes =
the
philosophy of science. Our eyes are bathed in Revelation, but upon our ears=
the
music of the Word has not yet fallen. Until that time when the meaning of i=
t all
shall flash out upon the world, the race will be hidebound in callousness a=
nd
in faint-hearted melancholy. As yet we do not know what to do with all whic=
h we
know, and we are afflicted with the pessimism of inertia and the pessimism =
of
dyspepsia. Intellectually, we have been living too high the last hundred ye=
ars
or so. In this is the secret of our difference. You insist upon cheapening =
life
for yourself because it has become evident to you that the phenomenon is
common, and I, on the other hand, shout its glory because it is universal. =
To
myself I am breathless with wonder, but to you and in my work I needs must
shout it.
Here let me be cl=
ear.
I take it that you are under the sway of a contemporary mood, that your
position is an accidental phase of to-day's materialism. Broadly, our quarr=
el
is that of pessimism and optimism, only your pessimism is unconscious, which
makes it the more dangerous to yourself. You are too sad to know that you a=
re
not happy or to care. Does my diagnosis surprise you? Analyze the argument =
of
your last letter. You trace the growth of the emotion of love from protopla=
sm to
man. You follow the progress of the force which is stronger than hunger and
cold and swifter and more final than death, from its potential state in the
unicellular stage where life goes on by division, up through the multifario=
us
forms of instinctive animal mating, till you reach the love of the sexes in=
the
human world. And the exploring leads you to the belief that nothing has been
reserved for the human worth his cherishing, to the conviction that the pla=
n of
life is simple and unvaried and therefore unacceptable.
You raise the wai=
l of
Ecclesiastes, "All is vanity and a striving after wind, and there is no
profit under the sun." The Preacher and Omar and Swinburne are
pathetically human, and we who are also human respond to their finality, to
their quizzical indifference and their stinging resentment. We also say,
"Vanity of vanities," and bow our heads murmuring "Ilicet,&q=
uot;
and stretch out our hands to "turn down an empty glass," but all =
this
in twilight moods when a dimness as of dying rests upon the soul. There are=
a
few with whom it is always morning, and others who remember something of the
radiance of the young day even in the heart of midnight. These disprove the
postulates of sameness and satiety, these are not smitten by the seen fact =
as
are you of the microscopic retina, these "see life steadily and see it
whole."
We need not fear =
the
label of an idea. When I say that your position is that of the pessimist, i=
t is
not more of an accusation than if I said it was that of the optimist. The t=
hing
to concern oneself with is the question, "which of these makes the nea=
rer
approach to the truth?" You have been asking me, "What is love
worth?" And you have answered your question often enough and to your
satisfaction, "In itself it is worth nothing, being but the catspaw to
scheming forces." With your denial of any intrinsic beauty in the emot=
ion,
with your acceptance of it as an unfortunate incident in human affairs, com=
es a
vague hope that the race will outgrow this force. Here is your rift in the
cloud. You picture a scientific Utopia where there are no lovers and no
back-harkings to the primitive passion, and you appoint yourself pioneer to=
the
promised land of the children of biology.
Ah! I speak as if=
I
were vexed instead of simply being sure I am in the right. I wish to help y=
ou
to see that there is another reading to your facts. If love is essentially =
the
same from protoplasm to man, it does not for this reason become worthless. =
By
virtue of being universal it is enhanced and most divinely humanly binding.=
You
tell me that love is involuntary, compelled by external forces as old as ti=
me
and as binding as instinct, and I say that because of this, life is finally=
for
love. What! The cavemen, and the birds, too, and the fish and the plants, f=
orsooth!
What! The inorganic, perhaps, as well as the organic, swayed by this force
which is wholly physical and yet wholly psychical! And does it not fire you?
You are not caught up and held by this giant fact? You find that love is not
sporadic, not individual, that it does not begin with you or end with you, =
that
it does not dissociate you, and you do not warm to the world-organic kinshi=
p,
you do not hear the overword of the poets and philosophers of all times, yo=
u do
not see the visions that gladdened the star-forgotten nights of saints?
The same surprise
sweeps over the mind in reading Ecclesiastes. Is it a sorry scheme of things
that one generation goes and another comes and the world abides forever? If=
the
same generation peopled the earth for a million years, the dignity of life
would not be increased. It is not necessary to have the assurance of eternal
life as the dole for having come to be, in order to live under the aspect of
eternity. It is larger to be short-lived, to be but a wave of the sea rolli=
ng
for one sunful day and starry night towards a great inclusiveness. It is a
higher majesty to be inalien and a part--a ringed ripple in the Vastness--t=
han to
lie broad and smiling in meaningless endlessness.
So it is a strange
thing that men who are schooled by evolution to relate themselves to all th=
at
exists, and to seek for new kinships, should lament that there is no new th=
ing
under the sun. And whose eye would be satisfied with seeing and whose ear w=
ith
hearing? Who would rather have the truth than the power to seek it? There i=
s a
way of reading Ecclesiastes and Schopenhauer with a triumphant lilt in the =
voice.
After all, it is the modulation that carries the message of the text. When =
you
write the history of love, I find it fair reading. When you tell me love is
primal and engrossing, I hold it the more a sin to crouch away from its fir=
es.
"Love is the
assertion of the will to live as a definitely determined individual." =
This
is Schopenhauer's thesis and (unnecessarily enough) he apologises for it, a=
s if
it belittled love to say that it affects man in his essentia æterna. =
The
genius of the race takes the lover conscript and makes him a soldier in lif=
e's
battalions.
"The genius =
of
the race," a metaphysical term, but meaning what you do when you speak=
of
the function of love. Schopenhauer is a pessimist consciously, you,
unconsciously; and you have both missed the living value of your facts.
"Love is ruled by race welfare," says Schopenhauer. "It (the
race welfare) alone corresponds to the profoundness with which it is felt, =
to
the seriousness with which it appears, to the importance which it attributes
even to the trifling details of its sphere and occasion." Love concerns
itself with "The composition of the next generation," therefore y=
ou
find it common as the commonplace, therefore Schopenhauer regards it as a f=
orce
treacherous to happiness, since to live is to be miserable. "These lov=
ers
are the traitors who seek to perpetuate the whole want and drudgery which w=
ould
otherwise speedily reach an end; this they wish to frustrate as others like
them have frustrated it before."
Because love
frustrates the death of the race, it is the joy of my senses and the goal o=
f my
striving.
Says Schopenhauer:
"Through love man shows that the species lies closer to him than the
individual, and he lives more immediately in the former than in the latter.=
Why
does the lover hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, an=
d is
ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because it is his immortal part that
longs after her, while it is merely his mortal part that desires everything
else." Because this is so, love is the God of my faith.
You see where our
subject takes us! And all the while I care nothing for the points of argume=
nt
except where they prick you from your position. One must scale the skies and
swim the seas in order to reach you. Well, have I approached within your
hearing?
I was sitting amo=
ngst
the fennel in Barbara's garden when your letter was brought, and I read it
twice to make sure I understood. When the sun lies warm on waving fennel an=
d a
city is before you, mysterious in a veil of mist, it is easier to feel love=
than
to think about it. For a while, it was difficult to see the bearing of the =
data
which you marshalled so well in defence of your denial. You went far in ord=
er
to answer why you are content to marry a woman you do not love. Your methods
are not the methods of the practical mind. I am glad for that. You idealise
your attitude, you go far back in time, you enmesh yourself in theories and
generalisations, you ride your imagination proudly, in order to reconcile
yourself to something which suggests itself as more ideal than that for whi=
ch
the unreasoning heart hungers. You are sad, but you are not practical and y=
ou
are not blasé.
Of Barbara, of
myself, and of London doings, this is no time to write. Tell Hester your fr=
iend
thinks of her.
Yours with great =
memories
and greater hopes, DANE KEMPTON.
XX - FROM HERBERT WACE TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Ma=
y 18,
19--.
I stand aloof and
laugh at myself and you. Oh, believe me, I see it very clearly myself in the
heyday and cocksureness of youth, flinging at you, with much energy and lit=
tle
skill, my immature generalisations from science; and you with an elderly
beneficence and tolerance, smiling shrewdly and affectionately upon me, sec=
ure
in the knowledge that sooner or later I am sure to get through with it all =
and
join you in your broad and placid philosophy. It is the penalty age exacts =
from
youth. Well, I accept it.
So I am suffering
from the sadness of science. I had been prone to ascribe my feelings to the
passion of science. But it does not matter in the least--only, somehow, I w=
ould
rather you did not misunderstand me so dreadfully. I do not raise the wail =
of
Ecclesiastes. I am not sad, but glad. I discover romance has a history, and=
in
history I am quicker to read the romance. I accept the thesis of a common
origin, not to regret it, but to make the best of it. That is the key to my
life--to make the best of it, but not drearily, with the passiveness of a
slave, but passionately and with desire. Invention is an artifice man emplo=
ys to
overcome the roundabout. It is the short cut to satisfaction. It makes man
potent, so that he can do more things in a span. I am a worker and doer. The
common origin is not a despair to me; it has a value, and it strengthens my=
arm
in the work to be done.
The play and
interplay of force and matter we call "evolution." The more man
understands force and matter, and the play and interplay, the more is he
enabled to direct the trend of evolution, at least in human affairs. Here i=
s a
great and weltering mass of individuals which we call society. The problem =
is:
How may it be directed so that the sum of its happiness greatens? This is my
work. I would invent, overcome the roundabout, seek the short cut. And I
consider all matter, all force, all factors, so that I may invent wisely and
justly. And considering all factors, I consider romance, and I consider you=
. I
weigh your value in the scheme of things, and your necessity, and I find th=
at
you are both valuable and necessary.
But the history of
progress is the history of the elimination of waste. One boy, running
twenty-five machines, turns out a thousand pairs of socks a day. His granny
toiled a thousand days to do the same. Waste has been eliminated, the
roundabout overcome. And so with romance. I strive not to be blinded by its
beauty, but to give it exact appraisal. Oftentimes it is the roundabout, the
wasteful, and must needs be eliminated. Thus chivalry and its romance vanis=
hed
before the chemist and the engineer, before the man who mixed gunpowder and=
the
man who dug ditches.
I melancholy? Sir=
, I
have not the time--so may I model my answer after the great Agassiz. I am n=
ot a
Werther of science, but rather you are a John Ruskin of these latter days. =
He
wept at the profanation of the world, at the steam-launches violating the
sanctity of the Venetian canals and the electric cars running beneath the
shadow of the pyramids; and you weep at the violation of like sanctities in=
the
spiritual world. A gondola is more beautiful, but the steam-launch takes one
places, and an electric car is more comfortable than the hump of a camel. I=
t is
too bad, but waste romance, as waste energy, must be eliminated.
Enough. I shall g=
o on
with the argument. I have drawn the line between pre-nuptial love and
post-nuptial love. The former, which is the real sexual love, the love of w=
hich
the poets sing and which "makes the world go round," I have called
romantic love. The latter, which in actuality is sex comradeship, I call
conjugal affection or friendship. To be more definite, I shall call the one
"love," the other "affection" or "friendship."
Now love is not affection or friendship, yet they are ofttimes mistaken, one
for the other, for it so happens that the friendship, which is akin to conj=
ugal
affection, is in many instances pre-nuptial in its development--a token, I =
take
it, of the higher evolution of the human, an audaciousness which dares to s=
hake
off the blind passion and evade nature's trick as man evaded when he harnes=
sed steam
and rested his feet. It is of common occurrence that a man and woman, throu=
gh
long and tried friendship, reach a fine appreciation of each other and marr=
y;
and the run of such marriages is the happiest. Neither blinded nor frenzied=
by
the unreasoned passion of love, they have weighed each other,--faults, virt=
ues,
and all,--and found a compatibility strong enough to withstand the strain of
years and misfortune, and wise enough to compromise the individual clashes
which must inevitably arise when soul shares never ending bed and board wit=
h soul.
They have achieved before marriage what the love-impelled man and woman must
achieve after marriage if they would continue to live together; that is, th=
ey
have sought and found compatibility before binding themselves, instead of
binding themselves first and then seeking if there be compatibility or not.=
Let me apparently
digress for the moment and bring all clear and straight. The emotions have =
no
basis in reason. We smile or are sad at the manifestation of jealousy in
another. We smile or are sad because of the unreasonableness of it. Likewis=
e we
smile at the antics of the lover. The absurdities he is guilty of, the cape=
rs
he cuts, excite our philosophic risibility. We say he is mad as a March har=
e.
(Have you ever wondered, Dane, why a March hare is deemed mad? The saying i=
s a
pregnant one.) However, love, as you have tacitly agreed, is unreasonable. =
In fact,
in all the walks of animal life no rational sanction can be found for the
love-acts of the individual. Each love act is a hazarding of the individual=
's
life; this we know, and it is only impelled to perform such acts because of=
the
madness of the trick, which, though it strikes at the particular life, makes
for the general life.
So I think there =
is
no discussion over the fact that this emotion of love has no basis in reaso=
n.
As the old French proverb runs, "The first sigh of love is the last of
wisdom." On the other hand, the individual not yet afflicted by love, =
or
recovered from it, conducts his life in a rational manner. Every act he
performs has a basis in reason--so long as it is not some other of the
emotional acts. The stag, locking horns with a rival over the possession of=
a
doe, is highly irrational; but the same stag, hiding its trail from the hou=
nds
by taking to water, is performing a highly rational act. And so with the hu=
man.
We model our lives on a basis of reason--of the best reason we possess. We =
do
not put the scullery in the drawing-room, nor do we repair our bicycles in =
the bedchamber.
We strive not to exceed our income, and we deliberate long before investing=
our
savings. We demand good recommendations from our cook, and take letters of
introduction with us when we go abroad. We overlook the petulant manner of =
our
friend who rowed in the losing barges at the race, and we forgive on the mo=
ment
the sharp answer of the man who has sat three nights by a sick-bed. And we =
do
all this because our acts have a basis in reason.
Comes the lover,
tricked by nature, blind of passion, impelled madly toward the loved one. H=
e is
as blind to her salient imperfections as he is to her petty vices. He does =
not
interrogate her disposition and temperament, or speculate as to how they wi=
ll
coördinate with his for two score years and odd. He questions nothing,
desires nothing, save to possess her. And this is the paradox: By nature he=
is
driven to contract a temporary tie, which, by social observance and demand,
must endure for a lifetime. Too much stress cannot be laid upon this, Dane,=
for
herein lies the secret of the whole difficulty.
But we go on with=
our
lover. In the throes of desire--for desire is pain, whether it be heart hun=
ger
or belly hunger--he seeks to possess the loved one. The desire is a pain wh=
ich
seeks easement through possession. Love cannot in its very nature be peacef=
ul
or content. It is a restlessness, an unsatisfaction. I can grant a lasting =
love
just as I can grant a lasting satisfaction; but the lasting love cannot be =
coupled
with possession, for love is pain and desire, and possession is easement and
fulfilment. Pursuit and possession are accompanied by states of consciousne=
ss
so wide apart that they can never be united. What is true of pursuit cannot=
be
true of possession, no more than the child, grasping the bright ball, can d=
eem
it the most wonderful thing in the world--an appraisement which it certainly
made when the ball was beyond reach.
Let us suppose the
loved one is as madly impelled toward the lover. In a few days, in an hour,
nay, in an instant--for there is such a thing as love at first sight--this =
man
and woman, two unrelated individuals, who may never have seen each other
before, conceive a passion, greater, intenser, than all other affections,
friendships, and social relations. So great, so intense is it, that the wor=
ld
could crumble to star-dust so long as their souls rushed together. If
necessary, they would break all ties, forsake all friends, abandon all blood
kin, run away from all moral responsibilities. There can be no discussion,
Dane. We see it every day, for love is the most perfectly selfish thing in =
the
universe.
But this is easily
reconcilable with the scheme of things. The true lover is the child of natu=
re.
Natural selection has determined that exogamy produces fitter progeny than
endogamy. Cross fertilisation has made stronger individuals and types, and
likewise it has maintained them. On the other hand, were family affection
stronger than love, there would be much intermarriage of blood relations an=
d a
consequent weakening of the breed. And in such cases it would be stamped ou=
t by
the stronger-breeding exogamists. Here and there, even of old time, the wis=
e men
recognised it; and we so recognise it to-day, as witness our bars against
consanguineous marriage.
But be not misled
into the belief that love is finer and higher than affection and friendship,
that the yielding to its blandishments is higher wisdom on the part of our
lovers. Not so; they are puppets and know and think nothing about it. They =
come
of those who yielded likewise in the past. They obey forces beyond them,
greater than they, their kind, and all life, great as the great forces of t=
he
physical universe. Our lovers are children of nature, natural and uninventi=
ve.
Duty and moral responsibility are less to them than passion. They will obey=
and
procreate, though the heavens roll up as a scroll and all things come to ju=
dgment.
And they are right if this is what we understand to be "the bloom, the
charm, the smile of life."
Yet man is man
because he chanced to develop intelligence instead of instinct; otherwise he
would to this day have remained among the anthropoid apes. He has turned aw=
ay
from nature, become unnatural, as it were, disliked the earth upon which he
found himself, and changed the face of it somewhat to his liking. His trend=
has
been, and still is, to perform more and more acts with a rational sanction.=
He
has developed a moral nature, made laws, and by the sheer force of his will=
and
reason curbed his lyings and his lusts.
However, our love=
rs
are natural and uninventive. They get married. Pursuit, with all its Tantal=
us
delights, its sighings and its songs, is gone, never to return. And in its
place is possession, which is satisfaction, familiarity, knowledge. It hera=
lds
the return of rationality, the return to duty of the weighing and measuring
qualities of the mind. Our lovers discover each other to be mere man and wo=
man after
all. That ethereal substance which the man took for the body of the loved o=
ne
becomes flesh and blood, prone to the common weaknesses and ills of flesh a=
nd
blood. He, on the other hand, betrays little petulancies of disposition, li=
ttle
faults and predispositions of which she never dreamed in the pre-nuptial da=
ys,
and which she now finds eminently distasteful. But at first these things are
not openly unpleasant. There are no scenes. One or the other gives in on th=
e instant,
without self-betrayal, and one or the other retires to have a secret cry or=
to
ruminate about it over a cigar--the first faint hints, I may slyly suggest,=
of
the return of rationality. They are beginning to think.
Ah, these are lit=
tle
things, you say. Precisely; wherefore I lay emphasis upon them. The sum of =
the
innumerable little things becomes a mighty thing to test the human soul.
Moreover, many a home has been broken because of disagreement as to the use=
s or
abuses of couch cushions, and more than one divorce induced by the lingerin=
g of
tobacco odours in the curtains.
If the marriage of
our lovers conform to the majority of marriages, the first year of their we=
dded
life will determine whether they are able to share bed and board through the
lengthening years. For this first year--often the first months of it--marks=
the
transition from love to conjugal affection, or witnesses a rupture which
nothing less than omnipotence can ever mend. In the first year a serious
readjustment must take place. Unreason, as a basis for the relation, must g=
ive
way to reason; blind, ignorant, selfish little love must flutter away, so t=
hat friendship,
clear-eyed and wise, may step in. There will come moments when wills clash =
and
desires do not chime; these must be moments of sober thought and compromise,
when one or the other sacrifices self on the altar of their nascent friends=
hip.
Upon this ability to compromise depends their married happiness. Returning =
to
the rationality which they forsook during mating-time, they cannot live a j=
oint
rational existence without compromising. If they be compatible, they will
gradually grow to fit, each with the other, into the common life; compromis=
e,
on certain definite points, will become automatic; and for the rest they wi=
ll exhibit
a tacit and reasoned recognition of the imperfections and frailties of life=
.
All this reason w=
ill
dictate. If they be incapable of rising to compromise, sacrifice, and
unselfishness, reason will dictate separation. In such cases, when they will
have become rational once more, they will reason the impossibility of a
continued relation and give it up. In which case the true-love disciple may
contend that there was no real love in the beginning. But he is wrong. It w=
as
just as real as that of any marriage, only it failed in the post-nuptial qu=
est
after compatibility. In all marriages love--passionate, romantic love--must=
disappear,
to be replaced by conjugal affection or by nothing. The former are the happy
marriages, the latter the mistaken ones.
As I close, the
saying of La Bruyère comes to me, "The love which arises sudden=
ly
takes longest to cure." This generalisation upon all the love-affairs
within the scope of a single lifetime cannot but be true, and it is quite in
line with the general argument. I have shown that the love (so called) which
grows slowly is akin to friendship, that it is friendship, in fact, conjugal
friendship. On the other hand, the more sudden a love the more intense it m=
ust
be; also the less rationality can it have. And because of its intensity and
unreasonableness, the longer period must elapse ere its frenzy dies out and
cool, calm thought comes in.
HERBERT.
P.S.--My book is
out--"The Economic Man." I send it to you. I cannot imagine you w=
ill
care for the thing.
XXI - FROM THE SAME TO THE
SAME
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Ma=
y 26,
19--.
"Pretty
nineteen-year-old Louisa Naveret, because her slower-minded fiancé,
Charles J. Johnson, could not understand a joke, is dying with a bullet in =
her
brain, and he, her murderer, lies dead at the morgue. They were to have been
married to-day."
From to-day's pap=
er I
quote the above introduction to a column murder-sensation in simple life.
Simple it was, and elemental--the man loving steadily and doggedly and madl=
y,
after the manner of the male before possession; the woman fluttering, and
teasing, and tantalising, after the manner of the female courting possessio=
n.
They had been engaged for some time. The woman loved the man and fully inte=
nded
to marry him. The engagement neared its close, and on the day before that of
the wedding, the man, slow minded, loving intensely, procured the marriage
licence. The woman read the document, and with the last coy flutter before
surrender told him that she would not marry him.
"I meant it =
as a
jest," she said as she lay on a cot at the receiving hospital; but four
bullets were in her body, and Charles J. Johnson, clumsy and natural lover,=
lay
dead in an adjoining room with the fifth bullet in his brain.
In this pitiful little tragedy appear two of the most salient characteristics of love; name= ly, madness and selfishness. Let us analyze Charles J. Johnson's condition. He = was a lineman for a telegraph company, healthy and strong, used to open-air life and hard work. He had steady employment and good wages. Can't you see the m= an, content with a good digestion, unailing body, and mild pleasures, and enjoy= ing life with bovine placidity? But pretty Louisa Naveret entered his life. The= "abysmal fecundity" was stirred and life clamoured to be created. Peacefulness = and content vanished. All the forces of his existence impelled him to seize upon and possess "nineteen-year-old" Louisa Naveret. He was afflicted = with a disorder of mind and body, a madness so great, a delusion so powerful, a = pain and unrest so pressing, that the possession of that particular "nineteen-year-old" woman became the dearest thing in the world, dearer than life itself and more potent than the "will to live."<= o:p>
I do well to call
love a madness. Any departure from rationality is madness, and for a man of
Charles J. Johnson's calibre, suicide is an extremely irrational act. But he
also killed Louisa Naveret, wherein he was as selfish as he was mad. Convin=
ced
that he was not to possess her, he was determined that no other man should
possess her.
While on this mat=
ter
of love considered as a disorder of mind and body, I recall a recent magazi=
ne
article of Mr. Finck's, in which he analyzes Sappho's conception of love.
"In that famous poem of Sappho," he says, "that has been so
often declared a compendium of all the emotions that make up love, I have n=
ot
been able to find anything but a comic catalogue of such feelings as might
overwhelm a woman if she met a bear in the woods--'deadly pallor,' 'a cold
sweat,' 'a fluttering heart,' 'tongue paralyzed,' 'trembling all over,' 'a
fainting fit.'"
Dante suffered
similarly from the disorder of love, if you will recollect. In this connect=
ion
may be cited the following passage from Diderot's "Paradox of Acting
":--
"Take two
lovers, both of whom have their declarations to make. Who will come out of =
it
best? Not I, I promise you. I remember that I approached the beloved object
with fear and trembling; my heart beat, my ideas grew confused, my voice fa=
iled
me, I mangled all I said; I cried yes for no; I made a thousand blunders; I=
was
illimitably inept; I was absurd from top to toe, and the more I saw it the =
more
absurd I became. Meanwhile, under my very eyes, a gay rival, light hearted =
and
agreeable, master of himself, pleased with himself, losing no opportunity f=
or
the finest flattery, made himself entertaining and agreeable, enjoyed himse=
lf;
he implored the touch of a hand which was at once given him, he sometimes
caught it without asking leave, he kissed it once and again. I, the while,
alone in a corner, avoided a sight which irritated me; stifling my sighs,
cracking my fingers with grasping my wrists, plunged in melancholy, covered
with a cold sweat, I could neither show nor conceal my vexation."
Oh, the clamour of
life to be born is a masterful thing, and so far as the individual is
concerned, a most irrational thing; and so far as the world of beasts and
emotional men and women is concerned, it is a most necessary thing. That li=
fe
may live and continue to live, a driving force is needed that is greater th=
an
the puny will of life. And in the disorder produced by the passion for
perpetuation, whether or not assisted by imagination, is found this driving
force. As Ernest Haeckel, that brave old hero of Jena, explains:--
"The
irresistible passion that draws Edward to the sympathetic Otillia, or Paris=
to
Helen, and leaps all bounds of reason and morality, is the same powerful,
unconscious, attractive force which impels the living spermatozoon to force=
an
entrance into the ovum in the fertilisation of the egg of the animal or pla=
nt--the
same impetuous movement which unites two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of
oxygen for the formation of a molecule of water."
But with the adve=
nt
of intellectual man, there is no longer need for obeying blind and irresist=
ible
compulsion. Intellectual man, changing the face of life with his inventions=
and
artifices, performing telic actions, adjusting himself and his concerns to
remote ends and ultimate compensations, will grapple with the problem of
perpetuation as he has grappled with that of gravitation. As he controls and
directs the great natural forces so that, instead of menacing, they are mad=
e to
labour for his safety and comfort, so will he control and direct the operat=
ion
of the reproductive force so that life will not only be perpetuated but dev=
eloped
and made higher and finer. This is not more impossible than is the steam-en=
gine
impossible or democracy impossible.
HERBERT.
XXII - FROM DANE KEMPTON =
TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. June
12, 19--.
Please remember t=
hat
these letters are written to you alone. I do not think that there is less l=
ove
in the world than ever before. I make you representative of a class, which,=
in
turn, is characteristic of the modern scientific type, but I do not make you
representative of all that to-day's world has lived up to and lived down. S=
o I
do not join my Ruskin in lamenting the past. To be sure, you are contempora=
ry
and you are parvenu. What then? You are few, nevertheless, and like the par=
venu
rich, you must pass into something quite unlike yourself. It is the law of
growth. I ask you to account for yourself as an individual. The thing is
fiercely personal. But you choose the roundabout method of answering me. Fo=
r a
view of what in your eyes is pertinent to this matter, you stretch a canvas
wide as the world. You are resolved that your course should dramatise the w=
hole
play and interplay of force and matter. It is ideally ambitious of you and =
I am
glad. It puts you in the ranks with the students of the ideal tendencies. It
shows that you are not always impatient for short cuts, and that you begin =
to
be of those who harness "horses of the sun to plough in earth's rough
furrows."
Your letter sounds
conclusive. Romance is waste, love is unreasoning; compatibility alone is w=
orth
while. You think this, and are ready to encrust yourself with what is
conventional and practical. Ah, no, it is not even decently conventional! T=
he
formal world pretends, at least, to love. It also reaches for the fires that
thrill and thaw, whereas you stand before a cold hearth and think the chill
well and welcome, since you understand its cause. You have grasped part of a
truth, and though my mind complete your arc into the perfection of a circle=
, I
cannot place it about your head as a halo. My confusion comes from thinking=
of you
more than of my creed. A pregnant factor in our debate is the debater. The
Hafiz of the Hafiz maxims, the philosopher of your philosophy happens to
interest me. You have been building yourself up before my eyes, and for
watching I cannot speak.
With what does
romance interfere? If it implied a waste of vital force, a giving up, a
postponement of life, it were a roundabout path to development and happines=
s.
But we live most when we are most under its sway, and it is for such
self-promised sparks that we live at all. Romance quickens and controls as =
does
nothing else, and because of this it is not only a means but an end in itse=
lf.
It is stirred-up life. We live most when we love most. The love of romance =
and
the romance of love is the only coin for which the heart-hurt sell their de=
ath.
A trick? Perhaps. The love of life is a trick to save the races from
self-murder. Nature makes legitimate her tricks. Let the Genius of the Race
lure us with passion and dreaming! We are not the losers by it. And if the
dream fades and we grow gray despite what has been lived, then it is someth=
ing to
remember that soul and sense have leapt and pulsed. I am thankful that roma=
nce
has an aftermath, and that old men and women can prattle about days that we=
re
robust. I am thankful that the soldiers of life are at the end given a furl=
ough
in which to fondle the arms they wielded with clumsiness and with spirit, a=
nd
in which to pass themselves in review before their pension expires and their
days are over. Youth has the romance of loving, and age the romance of
remembering.
Lovers are not al=
ways
compatible, you say, and, before all, you insist upon good partnership. How
will you insure yourself against unfitness? Surely not by a registering and
weighing of qualities, not by bargaining and speculating. We do not choose =
our
wives as we do our saddle-horses; we do not plan our marriages as we plan o=
ur
houses. It may sound paradoxical, but there is a higher compatibility than =
that
of quality and degree. It is not whether people can live together, but whet=
her
they should live together. "It is an awkward thing to play with
souls,"--you override the fastidiousness of the soul in marrying your
companion. Unless you are an automaton, you cannot rest happy in the fact t=
hat
you and she do not disagree. For comfort's sake you would have a negative d=
imension
to your cosmos, forgetting that your longings and your needs and, it may be,
your dreams, are positive. If sex-comradeship and affection were not as
accidental and as dependent on mood as love itself, your position would have
much in its favour. You could then arrange for compatibility in marriage.
You speak of the
methods in economics that conserve energy and capital, such as the employ of
the machine-guiding boy, which saves the labour power of a hundred men, and=
you
hold that in the realm of personal life like methods may obtain with value =
and
dignity. I can see how natural it has become for you to take this viewpoint.
One can be a zealot in matters frigid. The law behind the fact has you in i=
ts
coil, and your passion goes to ice. You burn for that cold thing,
compatibility. You, too, are in the market-place bound to a stake--it is not
for such as you to escape the fire. If you look to compatibility and want it
intensely, as others want love, then you suffer, and from your standpoint (=
not mine)
you raise a vain cry; for compatibility, like everything else, is illusory.=
The
illusions of love are a strength, and the ways of love are divine; through =
them
we come to that feeling of completion which is compatibility and which is as
ineffable as the white-lipped promise of waves heard by those who have also
listened to weeping. Love is not responsible for institutionalism. There wo=
uld
be no fewer marriages if people married for convenience, nor would the law =
make
such unions less binding. It is not the fault of love that the great social
paradox exists. In the precipitancy of feeling, you say, the lover fastens =
upon
an unsuitable mate, and, with possession, love dies. Here I attack your fac=
ts.
If an awakening comes, it is not for either of these reasons. Love is not
essentially rational, but then it is love. There is some consistency in aff=
airs
natural, and the esoteric draught that enchanted at one time cannot poison =
at
another.
Love is not
essentially rational, and it will not of a sudden become so at the possessi=
on
of the loved one. People who marry from convenience may wake to find their
union most inconvenient. "There are more things in heaven and earth,&q=
uot;
and there are more intricacies of feeling and more sloughs and depths, than=
are
dreamed of in your philosophy. A definite understanding as to sofa cushions=
and
tobacco smoke does not always insure unwearied forbearance and devotion. Wi=
th
love, on the other hand, disappointment is very much less likely to spring =
up,
for the reason that it is free from calculation. Love is a sympathy. It tak=
es
hold, it grows upon the soul and the senses, and it does not flee before
argument and explanation.
Still less can I
admit that possession kills love. Do we give up living because the world is
based on Will and Idea? Yet to will is to want, Schopenhauer tells us, and =
to
want is to be in pain. Do we know ourselves in pain every minute of our liv=
es?
Hardly. This applies. You hold that, with the fulfilled hope and the appeas=
ed
hunger, indifference takes the place of desire. It reads so in logic, but n=
ot
in life. If what is in our possession be good, we prize it more highly for =
its
being within reach. The good in our keeping does not sate; it pains with di=
vine
hungers. We do not tire of what we have; we rise to it. We do not know the
sweetness of being steadfast until we are so impelled by the love with whic=
h we
have grown great. The lover may well say: "She was not my ideal; befor=
e I
knew her I was not great enough to think her. She taught me."
Besides, an
acquaintance with your wife's faults does not kill your love. You cannot tu=
rn
from your brother or your friend if he commit even a lurid act; you cannot =
turn
from a stranger; much less can you turn from your beloved. Herbert, when men
set themselves to judge, they are invariably ridiculous and an offence to h=
igh
heaven. Believe me, it is artificial. The true judge cares not for the fact=
of
the deed, but for its motive. And the lover knows the motive. He has the ke=
y to
the life. He knows his beloved, not as she is, but "as she was born to
be." His lips press and his arms enfold not her so much as the ideal of
her, and unless she unmake herself, he cannot unlove her. "To judge a =
man
by the fruit of his actions," says Professor Edward Howard Griggs,
"it is necessary to know all of the fruit, which is impossible. You can
only know what he eternally must be if you catch the aspect of his soul and=
grow
to understand his aspirations and his loves." To idealise, therefore, =
is
not to be blind, but to be far-seeing.
There is another =
way
of looking on this question of the paradox. Granted that it is caused by
romantic love, romantic love is still exclusively the best thing in the wor=
ld.
You cannot pay too dearly for the good of life. I know that the misery of b=
eing
in the intimacy of wedlock with one who is not loved is unutterable. It is =
to
become degraded and unrecognisable, it is to wear the brand of liar before =
God!
The man whose outer life belies the inner is an enforced suicide. There is =
something
of majesty on "laying one's self down with a will," and there is
something of strength in cloistering the body for the spirit's health's sak=
e,
but to die when all within is warm and clamorous for life is terrible. Such=
a
death they die who are held together, not by the bonds of the spirit, but by
those of convention. They who would go from each other and dare not, die the
ignominious death of fear. The suicide is contemptible, besides being pitia=
ble,
when he is hounded out of life despite himself, when he is a little embezzl=
er
of a clerk who rushes from the music hall to the Thames and thinks of the
unfinished glass with his last breath. No, I do not underestimate the trage=
dy
of the paradox. Yet I say that if love were accountable for it (which it is=
not),
it would still be folly to forswear love. Do you ask why? Because its dange=
rs
are the dangers common to all life, and we are so made that we cannot be
frightened away from our portion of experience. We are as loth to give up o=
ur
nights as our days. The winters as the summers, all the seasons and all the
climes, the fears as the hopes, all the travail of deepest, fullest living,=
we
claim as our own forever. We guard jealously our heritage of feeling. Would=
you
for all the world sleep rather than wake, forget rather than remember? Then
cease the requiem of your speech about the dangers of disillusion!
Madness and
selfishness were the cause of Louisa Naveret's death, and the man who was m=
ad
and selfish was her lover. The poor man had not the strength to renounce wh=
en
he thought he found himself face to face with the necessity of renouncing. =
But
all lovers are not too weak to cope with love. John Ruskin, if you remember,
loved his wife, and he shot neither himself, nor her, nor Millais. Charles =
J.
Johnson is not a Ruskin, and Ruskin's love was not a madness.
And, Herbert, to =
me
there is nothing comic in a stress of feeling. Let the lover pale and flutt=
er
and faint; in the presence of his deity it is an acceptable form of worship.
The very self-possessed lover is more preposterous!
Your book has not=
yet
reached me. To-morrow I shall write again, providing I remember how to writ=
e a
natural letter.
Yours, DANE KEMPT=
ON.
XXIII - FROM THE SAME TO =
THE
SAME
LONDON. June 20, 19--.
There are imperso=
nal
hours when the things of the day drop below consciousness and the spirit gr=
ows
devotional and wends a pilgrimage to larger spheres, there to sit apart. Su=
ch a
respite was mine to-day. There had been a call to rouse and put forth work,=
and
I wrought with all the puniness of my might (woe is me!), and earned my pos=
t at
the window that looks out upon the large things. The best of nights and day=
s of
toil is that there comes a twilight in which fatigued eyes see clear. I sai=
d it
did not matter how you do about your marriage. Time may right you in a way I
cannot know. I said it did not matter if you are not righted in this, there
being so much that never rights itself. Both hope and despair were followed=
by
a calm of neutrality. The inquiry waited no solution. The stress no longer
touched me, and my twilight became luminous. I saw things as from a height =
and
forms dropped out of my range, when Barbara came tugging at me, and my pale
while of abstraction was at an end.
She wanted to kno=
w what
troubled me. She made her way to me, hurried but resolved, and stated her
demand. "You catechised me yesterday; to-night you shall answer."=
She had come to
defend herself. My talk having of late taken on the sameness of that of the=
man
of one idea, Barbara was aroused. I was gauging her because she distressed =
me,
was her thought. (I had been trying to find whether it is possible to live
differently from her and live happily and well.) "You think I am not c=
lose
enough to Earl, because I mourn for my little one, perhaps. You think me no=
t sufficiently
happy to be wifely." Could I suppose aught else from such an utterance=
but
that there was an estrangement and hidden pain? How, unless there were sorr=
ow,
could the woman see herself sorrowed for? My mind leapt to possibilities.
Little Barbara on the rack was more than I could bear. I groped for her han=
ds.
It was a fault in her to be so much on her guard. She had no sorrow to conf=
ess,
and spoke--only to ward off what was not directed toward her.
"The tenour =
of
your talk led me on to believe--" she stammered with hot cheeks. It is=
a
standing offence of hers to imagine herself accused, and she admits it is a
weakness born of lack of poise. "But I took all for granted, I thought=
you
fortunate beyond any other woman," I protested. At this the radiance b=
roke
forth. I forgave the chill that her first words on entering the room struck=
to
my heart, and she forgot what she had imagined.
There is nothing =
more
important than the play and interplay of feeling.
Were Barbara "unwifely," I could not blame her, but neither could I have at ha= nd my proof of dear miracles. My proof remained to me, for there she stood, her face lifted toward mine, her mouth tremulous, her grey eyes swimming. The m= ate woman was stirred. Barbara is twenty-six and has been married seven years, = and she still vibrates with the old wonder to find herself loving and beloved.<= o:p>
I meant to tell y=
ou
of what we spoke later, in the hope that I could show you a little better w=
hat
I hold dear and why. But my hand grows nerveless. The twilight of abstracti=
on
has set in. A little while ago this hand was quick to rest on Barbara's as I
called her my heroine. She is that, not alone because she is pure and good =
and
strong, but because she can accept the test of her instincts. It takes both
faith and strength to obey oneself. "When shows break up, what but one=
's
Self remains?" asks Whitman. The shows are but shows for Barbara. Will=
I
look into your eyes on the morrow and find them, like hers, clear? Grant th=
at it
be!
DANE.
XXIV - FROM HERBERT WACE =
TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Ju=
ly 1,
19--.
Somewhere in Ward=
you
may read, "It must constantly be borne in mind that all progress consi=
sts
in the arbitrary alteration, by human efforts and devices, of the normal co=
urse
of nature, so that civilisation is wholly an artificial product." Why,
Dane, this is large enough to base a sociology upon. And I must ask you fir=
st,
is it true? Second, do you understand, do you appreciate, the tremendous
significance of it? And third, how can you bring your philosophy of love in
accord with it?
Romantic love is
certainly not natural. It is an artifice, blunderingly and unwittingly
introduced by man into the natural order. Is this audacious? Let us see. In=
a
state of nature the love which obtains is merely the passion for perpetuati=
on
devoid of all imagination. The male possesses the prehensile organs and the
superior strength. Beyond the ardour of pursuit the female has no charms for
him. But he is driven irresistibly to pursuit. And by virtue of his prehens=
ile
organs and superior strength he ravishes the females of his species and goes
his way. But life creeps slowly upward, increasing in complexity and necess=
arily
in intelligence. When some forgotten inventor of the older world smote his
rival or enemy with a branch of wood and found that it was good and thereaf=
ter
made a practice of smiting rivals and enemies with branches of wood, then, =
and
on that day, artificiality may be said to have begun. Then, and on that day,
was begun a revolution destined to change the history of life. Then, and on
that day, was laid the cornerstone of that most tremendous of artifices,
CIVILISATION!
Trace it up. Our
ape-like and arboreal ancestors entered upon the first of many short cuts. =
To crack
a marrow-bone with a rock was the act which fathered the tool, and between =
the
cracking of a marrow-bone and the riding down town in an automobile lies on=
ly a
difference of degree. The one is crudely artificial, the other consummately
artificial. That is all. There have been improvements. The first inventors
grasped that truthful paradox, "the longest way round is the shortest =
way
home," and forsook the direct pursuit of happiness for the indirect
pursuit of happiness. If the happiness of a savage depended upon his crossi=
ng
an extensive body of water, he did not directly proceed to swim it, but tur=
ned
his back upon it, selected a tree from the forest, shaped it with his rude
tools and hollowed it out with fire, then launched it in the water and padd=
led
toward where his happiness lay.
Now concerning lo=
ve.
In the state of nature it is a brutal passion, nothing more. There is no
romance attached. But life creeps upward, and the gregarious human forms so=
cial
groups the like of which never existed before. Consider the family group, f=
or
instance. Such a group becomes in itself an entity. By means of the group m=
an
is better enabled to pursue happiness. But to maintain the group it must be
regulated; so man formulates rules, codes, dim ethical laws for the conduct=
of
the group members. Sexual ties are made less promiscuous and more orderly. =
A greater
privacy is observed. And out of order and privacy spring respect and
sacredness.
But life creeps
upward, and the family group itself becomes but a unit of greater and great=
er
groups. And rules and codes change in accordance, until the marriage tie
becomes possessed of a history and takes to itself traditions. This history=
and
these traditions form a great fund, to which changing conditions and growing
imagination constantly add. And the traditions, more especially, bear heavi=
ly
upon the individual, overmastering his natural expression of the love insti=
nct
and forcing him to an artificial expression of that love instinct. He loves,
not as his savage forebears loved, but as his group loves. And the love met=
hod of
his group is determined by its love traditions. Does the individual compare=
his
beloved's eyes to the stars--it is a trick of old time which has come down =
to
him. Does he serenade under her window or compose an ode to her beauty or
virtue--his father did it before him. In his lover's voice throb the voices=
of
myriads of lovers all dead and dust. The singers of a thousand songs are the
ghostly chorus to the song of love he sings. His ideas, his very feelings a=
re not
his, but the ideas and feelings of countless lovers who lived and loved and
whose lives and loves are remembered. Their mistaken facts and foolish prec=
epts
are his, and likewise their imaginative absurdities and sentimental philand=
erings.
Without an erotic literature, a history of great loves and lovers, a garlan=
d of
love songs and ballads, a sheaf of spoken love tales and adventures--without
all this, which is the property of his group, he could not possibly love in=
the
way he does.
To illustrate: Is=
olate
a boy babe and a girl babe of cultured breed upon a desert isle. Let them f=
eed
and grow strong on shell-fish and fruit; but let them see none other of the=
ir
species; hear no speech of mouth, nor acquire knowledge in any way of their
kind and the things their kind has done. Well, and what then? They will gro=
w to
man and woman and mate as the beasts mate, without romance and without
imagination. Does the woman oppose her will to that of the man--he will beat
her. Does he become over-violent in the manifestation of his regard, she wi=
ll
flee away, if she can, to secret hiding-places. He will not compare her eye=
s to
the stars; nor will she dream that he is Apollo; nor will the pair moon in =
the
twilight over the love of Hero and Leander. And the many monogamic generati=
ons
out of which he has descended would fail to prevent polygamy did another wo=
man
chance to strand on that particular isle.
It is the common
practice of the man of the London slum to kick his wife to death when she h=
as
offended him. And the man of the London slum is a very natural beast who
expresses himself in a very natural manner. He has never heard of Hero and
Leander, and the comparison of the missus' eyes to the stars would to him be
arrant bosh. The gentle, tender, considerate male is an artificial product.=
And
so is the romantic lover, who is fashioned by the love traditions which come
down to him and by the erotic literature to which he has access.
And now to the po=
int.
Romantic love being an artificial product, you cannot base its retention up=
on
the claim that it is natural. Your only claim can be that it is the best
possible artifice for the perpetuation of life, or that it is the only perf=
ect,
all-sufficient, and all-satisfying artifice that man can devise. On the one
hand, for the perpetuation of life, man demonstrates the inefficiency of
romantic love by his achievements in the domestic selection of animals. And=
on
the other hand, the very irrationality of romantic love will tend to its gr=
adual
elimination as the human grows wiser and wiser. Also, because it is such a
crude artifice, it forces far too many to contract the permanent marriage t=
ie
without possessing compatibility. During the time romantic love runs its co=
urse
in an individual, that individual is in a diseased, abnormal, irrational
condition. Mental or spiritual health, which is rationality, makes for
progress, and the future demands greater and greater mental or spiritual
health, greater and greater rationality. The brain must dominate and direct
both the individual and society in the time to come, not the belly and the
heart. Granted that the function romantic love has served has been necessar=
y;
that is no reason to conclude that it must always be necessary, that it is
eternally necessary. There is such a thing as rudimentary organs which serv=
ed functions
long since fallen in disuse and now unremembered.
The world has
changed, Dane. Sense delights are no longer the sole end of existence. The
brain is triumphing over the belly and the heart. The intellectual joy of
living is finer and higher than the mere sexual joy of living. Darwin, at t=
he
conclusion of his "Origin of Species," experienced a nobler and m=
ore
exquisite pleasure than did ever Solomon with his thousand concubines and
wives. And while our sense delights themselves have become refined, their v=
ery
refinement has been due to the increasing dominion over them of the intelle=
ct.
Our canons of art are not founded on the heart. No emotion elaborated the l=
aws
of composition. We cannot experience a sense of delight in any art object u=
nless
it satisfies our intellectual discrimination. "He is a natural singer,=
"
we say of the poet who works unscientifically; "but he is lame, his
numbers halt, and he has no knowledge of technique."
The intellect, not
the heart, made man, and is continuing to make him--ah, slowly, Dane, for l=
ife
creeps slowly upward. The "Advanced Margin" is a favourite shibbo=
leth
of yours. And I take it that the Advanced Margin is that portion of our race
which is more dominated by intellect than the race proper. And I, as a memb=
er
of that group, propose to order my affairs in a rational manner. My reason
tells me that the mere passion of begetting and the paltry romance of pursu=
it
are not the greatest and most exquisite delights of living. Intellectual de=
light
is my bribe for living, and though the bargain be a hard one, I shall endea=
vour
to exact the last shekel which is my due.
Wherefore I marry
Hester Stebbins. I am not impelled by the archaic sex madness of the beast,=
nor
by the obsolescent romance madness of later-day man. I contract a tie which=
my
reason tells me is based upon health and sanity and compatibility. My intel=
lect
shall delight in that tie. My life shall be free and broad and great, and I
will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancest=
ry.
I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwi=
se?
HERBERT WACE.
XXV - FROM THE SAME TO THE
SAME
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Ju=
ly 5,
19--.
I had not intende=
d to
answer your letter critically, but, on re-reading, find I am forced to spea=
k if
for no other reason than your epithet "parvenu." The word has no
reproach. It was ever thus that the old and perishing recognised the vigoro=
us
and new. Parvenu, upstart--the term is replete with significance and health=
. I
doubt not Elijah himself was dubbed parvenu when he fluttered with his gold=
en
harp into that bright-browed throng, pride-swollen for that they had fought
with Michael when Lucifer was hurled into hell.
"We do not
choose our wives as we buy our saddle-horses; we do not plan our marriages =
as
we do the building of our houses,"--so you say, and it is said
excellently. No better indictment of romantic love do I ask. And oh, how ma=
ny
good men and women have I heard bitterly arraign society in that in the
begetting of children it does not exercise the judgment which it exercises =
in
breeding its horses and its dogs! Marriage is something more than the mere
pulsating to romance, the thrilling to vague-sweet strains, the singing idl=
y in
empty days, the sating of self with pleasure--what of the children?
"Never mind =
the
children," says selfish little Love. "It has been our wont never =
to
give any thought to the children; they were incidental. Always have we soug=
ht
our own pleasure; let us continue to seek our own pleasure." So Society
continues to breed its horses and dogs with judgment and forethought and to
trust to luck for its children.
But it won't do,
Dane. Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for liv=
ing
and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he w=
ho
has no reverence for the fact wanders afar. Chivalry went mad over an idea.=
It
idealised, if you please. It made of love a fine art, and countless
knights-errant devoted themselves to the service of the little god. It
sentimentalised over ladies' gloves and forgot to make for living and
surviving. And while chivalry committed suicide over its ladies' gloves, the
stout, wooden-headed burghers, with an eye to the facts of life, dickered a=
nd
bickered in trade. And on the wreck and ruin of chivalry they flaunted their
parvenu insolence. God, how they triumphed! The children and cobblers and s=
hop-keepers
buying with the yellow gold the "thousand years old names!" buying
with their yellow gold the proud flesh and blood of their lords to breed wi=
th
them and theirs! patronising the arts, speaking a kind word to science, and
patting God on the back! But they triumphed, that is the point. They revere=
nced
the fact and made for living and surviving.
Love is life, you
say, and you seem to hold it the achievement of existence. But I cannot say
that life is love. Life? It is a toy, i' faith, given to us, we know not wh=
y,
to play with as we chance to please. Some elect to dream, some to love, and
some to fight. Some choose immediate happiness, and some ultimate happiness.
One stakes the Here and Now upon the Hereafter; another takes the Here and =
Now
and lets the Hereafter go. But each grasps the toy and does with it accordi=
ng
to his fancy And while none may know the end of life, all know that life is=
the
end of love. Love, poor little, crude little, love, is the means to life--a=
nd
so we complete the circle. Life? It is a toy, i' faith, given us, we know n=
ot
why, to play with as we chance to please.
But this we know,=
that
love is the means to life, and it is subject to inevitable improvement. By =
our
intellect will we improve upon it. Life abundant! finer life! higher life!
fuller life! When we scientifically breed our race-horses and our
draught-horses, we make for life abundant. And when we come scientifically =
to
breed the human, we shall make for life abundant, for humanity abundant.
You say an
acquaintance with the petty vices of one's wife does not kill one's love. Oh
yes, it does, and out of the ashes of that love rises affection, comradeshi=
p,
in kind somewhat similar to the affection and comradeship which I have for =
my
brother. I do not love my brother, and it is because I do not love him, and
because I do have affection and comradeship for him, that I do not turn away
when he commits even a lurid act. Love, you will remember, takes its rise in
the emotions, and is unstable and wanton and capricious. But affection takes
its rise in the intellect, is based upon judgment of the brain. Love is
unyielding tyranny; affection is compromise. Love never compromises, no more
than does the mad little mating sparrow compromise.
My brother?--I pl=
ayed
with him as a boy. His weaknesses and faults incensed and hurt me, as mine
incensed and hurt him. Many were our quarrels. But he had also good qualiti=
es
which pleased me, and at times performed gracious acts and even sacrifices.=
And
I likewise. And with my brain I weighed his weaknesses and faults against h=
is
gracious acts and sacrifices, and I achieved a judgment upon him. The ethic=
s of
the family group also contributed to this judgment. The duties of kinship a=
nd
the responsibilities of blood ties were impressed upon me. We grew up at ou=
r mother's
knee, and she and our father became factors in determining what my conduct
should be. They, too, taught me that my brother was my brother, and that in=
so
far as he was my brother, my relations with him must be different from my
relations with those who were not my brothers. And all went to crystallise =
an
intellectual judgment, or a set of criteria, as it were, to guide all sane,
unemotional acts and even to control and repress any emotional acts. These
criteria, I say, became crystallised, became automatic in my thought proces=
ses.
And now, in manho=
od,
my brother commits a lurid act, an act repulsive to me, one capable of arou=
sing
emotions of anger, of bitterness, of hatred. I experience an emotional impu=
lse
to pour my wrath upon him, to be bitter toward him, to hate him. Then I
experience an intellectual impulse. Whatever way I may act, I must first se=
ttle
with my crystallised criteria. The personal bonds of my boyhood and manhood=
press
upon me--the gracious acts and sacrifices and compromises, our father and o=
ur
mother, the duties of kinship and the responsibilities of blood. Thus two c=
ounter-impulses
strive with me. I desire to do two counter things. Heart and head the fight=
is
waged, and heart or head I shall act according to which is the stronger
impulse. And if my affection be stronger, I shall not turn away, but clasp =
my
brother in my arms.
I fear I have not
made myself clear. It is difficult to write hurriedly of things psychologic=
al,
when the extreme demand is made upon intellect and vocabulary; but at least=
you
may roughly catch my drift. What I have striven to say is, that I forgive my
brother, not because I love him, but because of the affection I bear him; a=
lso
that this affection is the product of reason, is the sum of the judgments I
have achieved.
HERBERT.
XXVI - FROM DANE KEMPTON =
TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. July
21, 19--.
"Progress is=
an
arbitrary alteration, by human efforts and devices, of the normal course of
nature, so that civilisation is wholly an artificial product." You ask=
me
to consider this refracted bit of sociology and by its light to cast out my
exalted notion of love. As if you have proven that love is incompatible with
civilisation! We make over life with each successive step, but we do not gi=
ve
over living. In developing new forms and in establishing more and more subt=
le
social relations we are only building upon what we find ready to hand. The =
paradox
of creature and creator does not exist. When your sociologist speaks of
arbitrary alterations, he has reference to polities and governments and
criteria, to the material and ideal forces which a progressive society may
wield for itself. He cannot include under progress an alteration of those n=
eeds
of existence which make up the quality of existence. Speak of a community w=
hich
equally distributes the products of labour and I will grant that there has =
been
an arbitrary alteration, the normal course of nature being that the stronge=
r,
openly, and even with the common assent, takes to the repletion of his desi=
re from
the weaker. But speak of a condition so progressive that it subverts the ne=
ed,
so that where in the one case hunger was equitably gratified, in the other,
hunger was done away with, and I will say that you are giving an Arabian
Nights' entertainment.
Love is of a piece
with life, like hunger, like joy, like death. Your progress cannot leave it
behind; your civilisation must become the exponent of it.
Your last letter =
is
formal and elaborate, and--equivocal. In it you remind me, menacingly, of t=
he
possibilities of progress, you posit that love is at best artificial, and y=
ou
apotheosise the brain. As an emancipated rationality, you say you cut yours=
elf
loose from the convention of feeling. Progress cannot affect the need and t=
he
power to love. This I have already stated. "How is it under our contro=
l to
love or not to love?" Life is elaborate or it is simple (it depends up=
on
the point of view), and you may call love the paraphernalia of its wedding-=
feast
or you may call it more--the Blood and Body of all that quickens, a
Transubstantiation which all accept, reverently or irreverently, as the case
may be.
I can more readily
conceive the existence of a central committee elected for the purpose of
regulating the marriages of a community, than of a community satisfied with
such a committee. There is no logic in social events. The world persists in=
not
taking the next step, and what to the social scout looked a dusty bypath may
prove to be the highway of progress for the hoboing millions. Side issues a=
re
constantly cropping up to knock out the main issues of the stump orator; so=
let
us be humble. For this reason I refuse to discuss possibilities in infinity=
. You
and I cannot have become products of an environment which is not in existen=
ce.
It is safe to suppose that our needs are like those of the race and that in=
us
nothing is vestigial that is active in others. You cannot have become too
rational to love. The device has not yet been formed.
You think I should
take your word for it? But why? Have you never found yourself in the wrong,
never disobeyed your best promptings never meant to take the good and grasp=
ed
the bad? Is it not possible that you are not yet awake, or, God pity you, t=
hat
you are hidebound in the dogmatism of your bit of thinking.
It is for the sec=
ond
point of your letter that I called you equivocal. Earlier in our discussion=
, I
remember, you laid stress on the fact that love is an instinct common to all
forms of life; now you go to great lengths in order to show that it is
artificial.
How do you
differentiate between the artificial and nature? Surely a development is not
artificial because it is recent! Surely man is as integral to life as his
progenitors! When we come to civilisation, we are face to face with the lar=
gest
and subtlest thing in life, and the civilisation of human society is not
artificial. It is the fulfilment of the nature of man, the promise made goo=
d,
the career established, the influence sent out. A universe of mind-stuff an=
d a
civilising force constantly causing change, for change is growth, constantly
compelling expression of that change--to conceive it is to conceive infinit=
ude.
And the purpose? Development, always development. To that end the individua=
l perishes,
to that end the race is conserved, to that end the peril and the sacrifice,=
and
the agony of triumph in the overcharged heart at its last bound. And what is
this refining of the type, this goal for which we all make with such tragic
directness, but the gaining in the power to love? We begin with love to end
with greater love, and that is progress. To write the epic of civilisation =
is a
task for some giant artist who shall combine in himself Homer and Shakespea=
re,
and the work will be a love story.
We do not throw a=
way
the grain and keep the chaff, nor do we transmit the "absurdities"
and "philanderings" alone. If in the lover's voice throb the voic=
es
of myriads of lovers, it is because he is stirred even as they. If a ballad
wakes a response in him, it is because its motif has been singing itself of=
its
own accord in his heart, and its rhythm was the dream nightingale to which =
he
bade Her hearken. Behind the tradition lies the fact. The expression may be
ephemeral, the song flat, the motto conventional, but the feeling which
prompted it is true. Else it could not have survived. And it has more than
survived. It has grown with growth. For centuries it lodged in the nature of
man, lulled in acquiescence, then, when the sense of recognition awoke, bac=
k in
those wondrous young days, it wakened to pale life, and now the feeling is =
man's
whole support, giving him courage to work and purpose to live.
But the half brut=
e of
the London slums kicks his wife when she offends him and knows nothing of l=
ove.
Well for the honour of love that it is so! The half brute of the London slu=
ms
had not food enough when a child, and malnutrition is deadly. Later, he sto=
le
and lied in order to eat, and he was bullied and kicked for it out of human
shape. The trick was passed on to him. The unfortunate of the London slums =
will
push us all from heaven's gate, because we do not do battle with the condit=
ions
that make him. It is not such as he that should lead you to scorn love, for=
he
is a mistake and a crime.
In your example of
the isolated boy babe and girl babe we meet with a different condition. The
individual repeats the history of the race, and as these have been left out=
by
the civilising forces, they revert to past racial states. For these it is
natural to live stolidly--is it therefore natural for us? The point I make =
is
that our refinement, crying in us with great voice, is as much a part of us=
as
are the simple few hungers of the racial infant. We are not the less natural
for being subtle. And can it not be that the face of romance reveals itself
even to savage eyes? According to the need is the power, and the early man =
needs
must hope and desire; he is curbed by waiting and taught by loss in the
hunting, he is hungry, and he dreams that he is feasting. This dream is his
romance--a red flicker in the dawn, then still the gray. To suppose this is=
not
to be unscientific, for what is true of us must have had a beginning, and
feeling, as well as being, cannot have been spontaneously generated.
There is an absol=
ute
gravitation to justice in nature. This was the creed preached by Huxley to
Kingsley a week after his boy's death. Grief had turned the mind upon itsel=
f,
and in the upheaval he formulated a philosophy of faith and joy!
Our reward is met=
ed
out according to our obedience to all of the law, spiritual and physical.
Nature keeps a ledger paying glad life's arrears each minute of time. And t=
he
creed rises to my lips when I hear you cry shame upon the delight of love. =
It
must be good, this thing which is so fraught with joy! You brand it sense
delight, but all delight is of the senses, and Darwin at the conclusion of
"The Descent of Man," if he was not overtaken by a feeling of
incompleteness in the work and a consuming fever for the further task, was =
glad
in a human way, with the senses and through the emotions. Darwin's supreme
moment may have come at quite a different time. What can we know of the mom=
ents
of repletion that fall into another's life? With Huxley we may only know th=
at
our hearts bound high when we strike a chord of harmony and prove ourselves=
obedient
to "all of the law," and our hearts bound high when we love. It is
nature's way of showing her approval. Oh, the strength of love and the mira=
cles
of its compensations! The sense of becoming that it gives, even in its defe=
ats,
the gladness that ripples in its sob-strangled throat!
The day for
asceticism is gone, or shall we say the night? We are not afraid of sense
delights. We are intent upon living on all sides of our natures, roundly and
naturally. You have a fine gospel of work and I congratulate you upon it, b=
ut
you make no mention of the purpose of it all. It must not be work for work's
sake. "When I heard the learned astronomer--" says Whitman. Do you
remember? He caught in one hour the whole majesty, caught to himself the wo=
nder
that was unseen by the watching astronomers. Somehow you feel the learned o=
nes
had made a mistake in calculating so long that they had no time to see with=
personal
eyes the glory of the stars, and that Whitman had been philosopher and had
gained where they failed. The inspiration of the poet, of the painter, of t=
he
economist, and biologist, is in the revelation which they receive of what t=
o do
and why to do. For this reason philosophy, which treats of the life and wor=
ks
of man, is in the highest sense sociological. The generalisations of philos=
ophy
go to improve our methods so that we may have greater proneness for sense o=
f delight
and greater possibility for sense delight. Why, what else is there? You are=
a
poet, and you give an unrestorable day, when the sun is shining and the hil=
ls
lie purple in the distance, to writing a sonnet. If you do so merely to emp=
loy
yourself, it must be that the wolf of despair is at your being's door. You =
have
come to the end, and the sun and the hills do not matter. You and they have
parted company. But if you write, impelled by the wish that others should r=
ead
and recognise, read and remember, and grow to know and feel better, and per=
haps
to love the sun and hills better, then is yours a work of love, and it will=
be made
good to you, so that for the day which you have not seen, your night shall =
be
instinct with light. And if your labours are more especially in the service=
of
art, then, also, with each approach toward expression, you are warmed throu=
gh
with the delight of achievement.
Is my meaning qui=
te
dashed away by this torrent of speech? It is simply this: Before we think we
feel, and the end of thinking is feeling. The century of Voltaire and Dr.
Johnson held that man is rational, the century of James, Ribot, Lange, and
Wundt is thrilled to the heart with the doctrine that first, last, and alwa=
ys
man is emotional. To speak loosely, the dimensions of the human cosmos are
feeling, emotion, and sensation.
Build your fine
structures. We like to see the foundations laid well and the thick walls go=
up.
Keep to your wizard inventions. We like to live in a magic world. And ah, t=
he
indomitable machines with their austere promise of free days for weary hand=
s,
and ah, the locomotives and the ships steaming their ways toward intercours=
e,
toward comity, toward fellowship! We like the intricacy and the vastness of=
the
world in which we live. But "an unconsidered life is not fit to be liv=
ed
by any man," says Aristotle. We must consider the phenomenon,
civilisation, searching down for the nucleus of its worth. We will find that
the stone structure without hope were a pitiable thing, that the making of =
compacts
and the banking of capital, without hope, were pitiable. This hope that is =
the
life germane, the immortal flash of mortality, the most keenly human point =
in
all humanity, is the hope for greater and greater social happiness. Our wor=
ld
is an ever unfinished house which we are employed in building. If we are im=
bued
with the spirit of the architect and not of the hod-carrier, we will hope
sweetly for the work. The house beautiful will begin to mean our life, and =
each
night we will consult our drawings, looking to it that on the house built of
our days the sun shall wester, and that within shall be intimacy, and laugh=
ter,
great speech and close love, looking to it that the home be such as to bett=
er to-day's
tenant so that he be more loving and lovable than the one of yesterday.
We are wrong,
perhaps. Long ago we were no less than now. When we reached a hand in the
darkness and grasped that of our fellow, the love and the strongly frail hu=
man
abandon were no less. We have not grown in heart's munificence, perhaps. It=
is
one of the illusions only. But the hope is ours. For what do you hope?
DANE.
XXVII - FROM THE SAME TO =
THE
SAME
LONDON. July 22, 19--.
Your birthday,
Herbert, and for greeting I state that I walk your length with you. A truce=
to
quarrelling! It is now a year since you informed me you were going to be
married, and since then the gods have thundered their laughter at the sight=
of
two muttering men who sat themselves on the axes of earth to dangle their l=
egs
into orbit vastness. Chronic somnambulists that they are, they took their
monopolist way thither in their sleep.
I cannot tell you=
how
full of vagary the correspondence we have fallen into seems to me. I
deliberately attempted to write you into passion and for months you
deliberately continued to convict yourself out of your own mouth, and we did
not see that it was tragic and comic and preposterous. Could we personify t=
his
our dealing, we would do well to call it a kind of Caliban. And the tentacl=
es
we threw out, clawing at everything, stealing for prop to our little theory=
all
of man and God! It is the conceit of us that I find utterly hopeless of gra=
ce.
So I drop my rôle of omniscience. I take my form off the hub, believi=
ng
the system will maintain its gravity though I go my private way, and I prom=
ise
to let you alone. Forgive me, and God bless you. Ah, yes, and many happy re=
turns
of the day. All my heart in the blessing and the wish.
I did some
remembering to-day, dear lad. When you were born, I was five years younger =
than
you are now, yet I felt myself old. "If we were as old as we feel, we
would die of old age at twenty-one." My life seemed all behind me, lon=
g,
turbulent, packed with pain, useless. I spoke of myself as if all were over.
"It had been full of purpose, but what came of it? A few rhymes and a
spoilt hope." To my morbid fancy your having come to be was a signal f=
or
me to go. I had no thought of dying, yet I accepted you as the proof of my
failure. In the exacting eyes of the genius of the race I was insolvent. You
were not mine. I looked into Time, and saw none of me there.
Yet the letter I
wrote to your parents was sincere,--how else? And that night and the next a=
nd
the next, I wrote "Gentleman Adventurers," which the critics call=
ed
the epitome of all that is balladesque. One pitied the dead because they co=
uld
go forth no more on water and under sky. This poem, written in a mood which
beneficent nature sends on the too-sick spirit, has served for more than a
quarter of a century as the complete and accepted catalogue of the reasons =
for
living. Well, I must not laugh at it. It may be true that the passion of my
heart incarnated itself in it beyond the rest, that my one song sang itself=
out
those first three days of your life. If so, it is true that love is never c=
heated
of its fruit, and that the joy which might have been for the individual ooz=
es
out of him to the race, that the strength which would have settled upon its=
elf
in the calm of satisfied hope, filters through him outwards.
Good night, lad. =
My
hand is on your shoulder and I am loath to take it off. For a while I would
like what cannot be, to travel with you the red-brown country-roads fragrant
with hay, to cross the stiles and knock upon the cabin doors, and enter whe=
re
sorrow and where gladness is, big with greeting and sure of welcome. I have
often pleased myself with the fancy that the outer aspects of life are
patterned after the inner, so that in the map of the spirit are to be found
city and country, wood, desert, and sea, so that we know these outer worlds
through having travelled the worlds within. Though I stay behind, my eyes c=
an
follow you from this night's landmark along the stretch, on to the city ave=
nues,
up the highways, tracing the twists of the bypaths, clambering untrod trail=
s of
wilderness and mountain, on, on, till out upon the sea.
In one of the near
turnings a woman with waiting face smiles subtly. Her hands beckon you to t=
he
tryst. Godspeed, my son.
DANE.
XXVIII - FROM HERBERT WAC=
E TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Au=
gust
6, 19--.
As I have constan=
tly
insisted, our difference is temperamental. The common words we lay hold of =
mean
one thing to you and another thing to me. I do not equivocate when I say th=
at
love is instinctive, and that the latter-day expression of love is artifici=
al.
"Art," as I understand the term in its broadness, contradistingui=
shes
from nature. Whatever man contrives or devises is an artifice, a thing of a=
rt
not of nature, and therefore artificial.
As for ourselves,
among animals we are the only real inventors and artificers. Instead of hair
and hide, we have soft skins, and we weave cunning textures and wear wondro=
us
garments. In cold weather, in place of eating much fat meat, we keep oursel=
ves
warm by grate fires and steam heat. We cut up our blood-dripping meat chunks
with pieces of iron hardened by fire and sharpened by stone, and we eat fish
with a fork instead of our fingers. We put a roof over our heads to keep out
storm and sunshine, sleep in pent rooms, and are afraid of the good night a=
ir and
the open sky. In short, we are consummately artificial.
As I recollect, I
have shown that the natural expression of the love instinct is bestial and
brutal and violent. I have shown how imagination entered into the developme=
nt
of the expression of this love instinct till it became romantic. And, in tu=
rn,
I have shown how artificial was the romantic expression of this love instin=
ct,
by isolating a boy babe and a girl babe in a natural state wherein they
expressed their love instinct bestially and brutally and violently. As you =
say,
they have simply been "left out by the civilising force." And this
civilising, or socialising force is simply the sum of our many inventions. =
The
isolated pair merely expressed their instincts in the unartificial, natural
way. They had not been taught a certain particular fashion in which to expr=
ess
those instincts as have you and I and all artificial beings been taught.
As Mr. Finck has
said, "Not till Dante's 'Vita Nuova' appeared was the gospel of modern
love--the romantic adoration of a maiden by a youth--revealed for the first
time in definite language."
Dante, and the men
who foreshadowed and followed him, were inventors. They introduced an artif=
ice
for protracting one of our most vital pleasures. Well, they succeeded. And =
what
of it? There are artifices and artifices, and some are better than others. =
The
automobile is a more cunning artifice than the ox-cart, the subway than a
palanquin. Devices come and devices go. Change is the essence of progress. =
All
is development. The end of rapes and romances is the same--perpetuation. Th=
ere
may be head love as well as heart love. And in the time to come, when the b=
rain
ceases to be the servant of the belly, the head the lackey of the heart, in
that time stirpiculture, which is scientific perpetuation, will take the pl=
ace
of romantic love. And in the present there may be men ready for that time.
There must be a beginning, else would we still be jolting in ox-carts. And =
I am
ready for that time now.
You say, "Lo=
ve
is of a piece with life, like hunger, like joy, like death." Quite tru=
e.
And civilisation is merely the expression of life--a variform utterance whi=
ch
includes love, and hunger, and joy, and death. Else what is this civilisati=
on
for? How did it happen to be? And I answer: It is the sum of the many
inventions we have made to aid us in our pursuit of life and love and joy. =
It
helps us to live more abundantly, to love more fruitfully, to joy more
intelligently, and to get grim old Death by his knotty throat and hold him =
at
arm's length as long as possible.
I stated that
"all progress consists in the arbitrary alteration, by human efforts a=
nd
devices, of the normal course of nature." This sociological concept co=
mes
inevitably into accord with my philosophy of love. It is the law of
development, and all things of human life (which includes love) come inside=
of
it. Wherefore, certainly, I am not outside our province when I demand of yo=
u to
bring your philosophy of love into like accord.
Incidentally, I w=
ill
state that I have fallen in love. I have grown feverish with desire, gone m=
ad
with dumb yearning. I have felt my intellect lose dominion, and learned tha=
t I
was only a garmented beast, for all the many inventions very like the other
beasts ungarmented. Nay, I am no cold-blooded theorist, no thick-hided
dogmatist; nor am I a chastely simple young man mooning in virginal innocen=
ce.
My generalisations have been tempered in the heats of passion, and what I k=
now
I know, and without hearsay.
I have seen a lea=
rned
man, drunk with wine, interrogate the new states of consciousness of his
unwonted condition, and so doing, gain a more comprehensive psychological
insight. So I, with my loves. I was impelled toward the women I shall prese=
ntly
particularise. I asked why the impulsion. I reasoned to see if there were a
difference between these illicit passions of mine and the illicit passions =
of
my respectable and respected friends. And I found no difference. Separated =
from
codes and conventions, shorn of imagination, divested of romance, stripped
naked down to the core of the matter, it was old Mother Nature crying throu=
gh us,
every man and woman of us, for progeny. Her one unceasing and eternal
cry--PROGENY! PROGENY! PROGENY!
Just as little gi=
rls,
instinctively foreshadowing motherhood, play with dolls, so children feel v=
ague
sex promptings, and in sweetly ridiculous ways love and quarrel and make up
after the approved fashion of lovers. You loved little girls in pigtails and
pinafores. We all did. And in our lives there is nothing fairer and more jo=
yful
to look back upon than those same little pigtails and pinafores. But I shall
pass the child loves by, and instance first my calf love.
Do you remember t=
he
incident of the torn jacket and the blackened eyes?--so inexplicable at the
time. Try as you would, neither you nor Waring could get anything out of me.
Oh, believe me, it was tragic! I was fifteen. Fifteen, and athrill with a
strange new pulse; flushed, as the dawn, with the promise of day. And, of
course, I thought it was the day, that I loved as a man loved, and that no =
man
ever loved more. Well, well, I laugh now. I was only fifteen--a young calf =
who
went out and butted heads with another calf in the back pasture.
She was a demure
little coquette, Celia Genoine, Professor Genoine's daughter, if you will r=
ecollect.
"Ah," I hear you remonstrate, "but she was a woman." Ju=
st
so. Fifteen and twenty-two is usually the way of calf loves. I invested her
with all the glow and colour of first youth, and in her presence became a
changed being. I blushed if she looked at me; trembled at the touch of her =
hand
or the scent of her hair. To be in her presence was to be closeted with the
awfulness and splendour of God. I read immortality in her eyes. A smile from
her blinded me, a gentle word or caressing look and I went faint and dizzy,=
and
I was content to lurk in some corner and gaze upon her secretly with all my
soul. And I took long, solitary walks, with book of verse beneath my arm, a=
nd learned
to love as lovers had loved before me.
Sufficient romance
was engendered for me to pass more than one night worshipping beneath her
window. I mooned and sentimentalised and fell into a gentle melancholy, unt=
il
you and Waring began to worry over an early decline, to consult specialists,
and by trick and stratagem to entice me into eating more and reading less. =
But
she married--ah, I have forgotten whom. Anyway, she married, and there was
trouble about it, too, and I bade adieu to love forever.
Then came the lov=
e of
my whelpage. I was twenty, and she a mad, wanton creature, wonderful and
unmoral and filled with life to the brim. My blood pounds hot even now as I
conjure her up. The ungarmented beast, my dear Dane, the great primordial
ungarmented beast, mighty to procreate, indomitable in battle, invincible in
love. Love? Do I not know it? Can I not understand how that splendid fighti=
ng
animal, Antony, quartered the globe with his sword and pillowed his head
between the slim breasts of Egyptian Cleopatra while that hard-won world
crashed to wrack and ruin?
As I say, This was
the love of my whelpage, and it was vigorous, masterful, masculine. There w=
as
no sentimentalising, no fond foolishness of youth; nor was there that cool,
calm poise which comes of the calculation and discretion of age. Man and wo=
man,
we were in full tide, strong, simple, and elemental. Life rioted in our vei=
ns;
we were a-bubble with the ferment; and it is out of such abundance that Mot=
her Nature
has always exacted her progeny. From the strictly emotional and naturalistic
viewpoint, I must consider it, even now, the perfect love. But it was decre=
ed
that I should develop into an intellectual animal, and be something more th=
an a
mere unconscious puppet of the reproductive forces. So head mastered my hea=
rt,
and I laid the grip of my will over the passion and went my way.
And then came ano=
ther
man's wife, a proud-breasted woman, the perfect mother, made pre-eminently =
to
know the lip clasp of a child. You know the kind, the type. "The mothe=
rs
of men," I call them. And so long as there are such women on this eart=
h,
that long may we keep faith in the breed of men. The wanton was the Mate Wo=
man,
but this was the Mother Woman, the last and highest and holiest in the
hierarchy of life. In her all criteria were satisfied, and I reasoned my ne=
ed
of her.
And by this I tak=
e it
that I was passing out of my blind puppetdom. I was becoming a conscious
selective factor in the scheme of reproduction, choosing a mate, not in the
lust of my eyes, but in the desire of my fatherhood. Oh, Dane, she was
glorious, but she was another man's wife. Had I been living unartificially,=
in
a state of nature, I would certainly have brained her husband (a really
splendid fellow), and dragged her off with me shameless under the sky. Or h=
ad
her husband not been a man, or had he been but half a man, I doubt not that=
I
would have wrested her from him. As it was, I yearned dumbly and observed t=
he conventions.
Nor are these
experiences heart soils and smirches. They have educated me, fitted me for =
that
which is yet to be. And I have written of them to show you that I am no clo=
set
naturalist, that I speak authoritatively out of adequate understanding. Sin=
ce
the end of love, when all is said and done, is progeny; and since the love =
of
to-day is crude and wasteful; as an inventor and artificer I take it upon m=
yself
to substitute reasoned foresight and selection for the short-sighted and bl=
undering
selection of Mother Nature. What would you? The old dame would have made a =
mess
of it had I let her have her way. She tried hard to mate me with the wanton,
for it was not her method to look into the future to see if a better mother=
for
my progeny awaited me.
And now comes Hes=
ter.
I approach her, not with the milk-and-water ardours of first youth, nor with
the lusty love madness of young manhood, but as an intellectual man, seeking
for self and mate the ripe and rounded manhood and womanhood which comes on=
ly
through the having of children--children which must be properly born and br=
ed.
In this way, and in this way only, can we fully express ourselves and the l=
ife
that is in us. We shall utter ourselves in the finest speech in the world, =
and,
our children being properly born and bred, it shall be in the finest terms =
of
the finest speech in the world. To do this is to have lived.
HERBERT.
XXIX - FROM DANE KEMPTON =
TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, 3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, =
S.W. August
26, 19--.
You insist that t=
he
question is not on the value of love but on the significance of the artific=
ial.
Be that as it may. To me love is integral with life, and to speak of civili=
sing
it away, seems, in point of fact, as preposterous and as anomalous as a
Hamletless play of Hamlet. You forget that in developing you carry yourself
along; you change, yet you remain racial and natural. Else there were too m=
any missing
links in all your departments. We read Homer to-day--telling proof that the
chain of sympathy stretches unbroken through epochs of inventions and
discoveries and revolutions. Truism that it is, it presents itself with
particular force at this stage.
With how much for=
ce?
We stand in danger of exaggerating these vociferous thoughts. This question=
of
naturalness as opposed to artificiality is not immediately pertinent to our
problem, nor is the matter of optimism and pessimism, nor the biologic idea=
of
survival. We should have looked more to the way of love in the lives of men=
and
women and become historians of the method and conduct of the force. There w=
ould
have been less confusion. So I write, "Be that as it may," and go
back to more immediate considerations. And yet we were not far wrong! The
little flower in the crannied wall could tell what God and man is. This is =
of all
thoughts the most charged with truth. Let me understand one of your conclus=
ions,
root and all, and all in all, and such is the gracious plan of oneness in t=
he
branching and leafage and uptowering, that I must know and name the tree. Y=
our
winding bypath, could I but follow it to the end, must bring me to the high=
way
of your thought, every step tell-tale of the journey's destination. But soo=
n I
shall be with you (the fifth of next month, after all; the arrangements as
planned). Then we will begin to know each other, and we will no longer be
tormented by the irksomeness of writing. Therefore, until easier and more
fluent times, to the heart of the subject straight.
Your love-affairs=
--how
well you have outgrown them and how ably you criticise them! They have not
withstood the test of time, for you bear them no loyalty. Calfdom and whelp=
age,
vagaries of adolescence, you call them. You do not show them much respect! =
For
this reason your examples lose what weight they might have borne. They belo=
ng
so wholly to the past, they are mere wraiths of bygone stirrings, they cann=
ot
clothe you with knowledge of love. Cold now, what boots it that you have be=
en afire?
You cannot be taught by what is utterly over.
You are catching =
what
I aim to say, I hope, for I aim to say much. Put it that instead of a girl =
whom
you idealised, it was a principle--some scheme of reform which you honoured
with all the passion of young hope and dream, and which knit your alert bei=
ng
into a Laocoon of striving. Your maturer eyes see this ideal impossible and
narrow. In no wise can it satisfy your bolder reach and larger sympathy. But
you do not laugh at what has been. If you strove for it sincerely at any ti=
me,
no matter how remote, you could never again deride it. Because once you lov=
ed
it you are eternal keeper of the key to its good. What has been wholly yours
you never quite desert. Nothing has remained to you of your love-affairs,
therefore your recital of them is empty of meaning. If you were in love to-=
day,
and because of your philosophy you determined to do battle with your feelin=
g,
your experience would be more authoritative.
You have known lo=
ve,
and having known you refuse it. Henceforth, it must be reason and not feeli=
ng.
"What is your objection?" you ask. This merely, that the thing ca=
nnot
be. Marriage to be marriage must come through love, through the reddest rom=
ance
of love, through fire of the spirit, yes, even through the love of calfdom =
and
whelpage. Else it is a mockery. Where is the woman of character who would s=
ell
the be-all and end-all of her existence for a neat catalogue of possible
advantages? Where is the man who would frankly and without embellishment da=
re
make such proposal? You point to yourself. But you have never explained you=
rself
to Hester, and even to me you are embellishing the matter with all the migh=
t in
your persuasive pen.
The ardours of
calfdom and whelpage that you smile at I would have you throb with. You
underrate the firstlings of the heart, the rose and white blossoming, the c=
all
upon the senses and the readiness to respond and to fulfil, to give and to
take, to be and make happy--the great pride and utter abandon which is young
love. At fifteen, fortunately for the development of mind and character, ho=
pe
is placed where hope must pine. Love, then, is doomed to be tragic. The you=
th
"attains to be denied." But he sounds his depth. Thereafter, he k=
nows
what to expect of himself. He has a precedent. After this he will count it a
sin to forget, and to accept the solace of mediocrity. In this lies the val=
ue of
the tragedy.
I sometimes think
that whatever is youngest is best. It is the young that, timid and bold, pay
greatest reverence to knowledge, receiving without chill of prejudice and
shameful cowardice of quibbling the brave new thought. Wisdom may be of age,
but passion for scholarships, trail-breaking, and hardy prospecting in the
treasure mines of research, is of young pioneerhood alone. It is a youth who
dares be radical, who dares, in splendid largess, build mistake upon mistak=
e,
bleeding his life out in service. And it is a youth, standing tiptoe upon t=
he
earth, now waiting in unperturbed ease, now searching with unbridled zeal, =
who is
lover and mystic. "The best is yet to be," says Rabbi Ben Ezra,
"the last of life, for which the first is made." Yes, the last of
life will be good, but only if it is like youth, beating with its pulse and=
instinct
with its spirit.
The unhappy youth=
is
left on the battle-field but not to die. The sword-thrusts challenge him to=
put
forth greater strength in fiercer wars. He learns hard and well.
Indeed, I cannot
leave this subject of first love. How do you know it was not good for you to
love as you did? It is strange you should resolve to love no more because at
one time you loved deeply enough almost to remain in love. It cannot be that
you have grown old and that nature is resolving for you. You tell me of your
experiences in order that I may be convinced that you know whereof you speak
and I listen in wonder. Your conclusions are unwonted.
Then something was
amiss, for you have outgrown and forgotten, but how is it with you in the
present when your indifference waits not upon time? You approach your future
wife clothed in indifference as in mail, and you do violence. How can I show
you? I speak as I would to a child to whom it is necessary to explain that =
it
is bad to abandon an education. Life is a school, and to me it seems that y=
ou
are about to resign long before diploma and degree, so I interpose. I was
taught by first love, and I honour that time beyond any other. I was Ellen'=
s. I
have been lonely. For the mere human need, for the sake of that which to the
lonely is very dear, I have thought of marriage, but I remembered and I ref=
used
to do violence to myself remembering. Long ago my standard was established.=
I
learned how deeply I could feel, and I refuse to acknowledge myself bankrup=
t, I
refuse to approach an honourable human being with less than my all. Until my
soul flower out again, until suns flame about my head as in that dear yoret=
ime,
I shall keep teeming with dreams and make no affront. I who have seen love,
dare not live without love.
I would not give =
in
to fate, Herbert. I would assert my manhood. I would abide in the strength =
of
the first output, going with the flush of the first glow into the gloom. I
would spurn the calm of compromise and mediocrity and register a high claim=
. I
would keep the peace with Romance and fly her colours to the last. You have
lived? It is well, and it might have been better, but do not give over and =
talk
of stirpiculture. You are not wiser than the laws which made you.
DANE.
XXX - FROM HERBERT WACE TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. Se=
ptember
18, 19--.
How abominable I =
must
seem to you, Dane! For certainly a creature is abominable that lays rough h=
ands
on one's dearest possessions. I doubt if even you realise how deeply you are
stirred by my conduct towards love. My marriage with Hester, considering the
quality and degree of the contracting parties, must appear as terrible to y=
ou
as the sodomies that caused God's ancient wrath to destroy cities. You see,=
I
take your side for the time, see with your eyes, live your thoughts, suffer
what you suffer; and then I become myself again and steel myself to continu=
e in
what I think is the right.
After all, mine is
the harder part. There are easier tasks than those of the illusion-shattere=
r.
That which is established is hard to overthrow. It has the nine points of
possession, and woe to him who attempts its disestablishment; for it will
persist till it be drowned and washed away in the blood of the reformers and
radicals.
Love is a convent=
ion.
Men and women are attached to it as they are attached to material things, a=
s a
king is attached to his crown or an old family to its ancestral home. We ha=
ve
all been led to believe that love is splendid and wonderful, and the greate=
st
thing in the world, and it pains us to part with it. Faith, we will not part
with it. The man who would bid us put it by is a knave and a fool, a vile,
degraded wretch, who will receive pardon neither in this world nor the next=
.
This is nothing n=
ew.
It is the attitude of the established whenever its conventions are attacked=
. It
was the attitude of the Jew toward Christ, of the Roman toward the Christia=
n,
of the Christian toward the infidel and the heretic. And it is sincere and
natural. All things desire to endure, and they die hard. Love will die hard=
, as
died the idolatries of our forefathers, the geocentric theory of the univer=
se,
and the divine right of kings.
So, I say, the
rancour and warmth of the established when attacked is sincere. The world is
mastered by the convention of love, and when one profanes love's Holy of Ho=
lies
the world is unutterably shocked and hurt. Love is a thing for lovers only.=
It
must not be approached by the sacrilegious scientist. Let him keep to his
physics and chemistry, things definite and solid and gross. Love is for ard=
ent
speculation, not laboratory analysis. Love is (as the reverend prior and the
learned bodies told brother Lippo of man's soul):--
"--a fire, =
smoke
... no, it's not ... It's vapour=
done
up like a new-born babe-- (In that sh=
ape
when you die it leaves your mouth) It's ... we=
ll,
what matters talking, it's the soul!"
I thoroughly understand the popular
sentimental repugnance to a scientific discussion of love. Because I dissect
love, and weigh and calculate, it is denied that I am capable of experienci=
ng
love. It is too radiant and glorious a thing for a dull clod like me to kno=
w.
And because I cannot experience love and be made mad by it, my fitness to d=
escribe
its phenomena is likewise denied. Only the lover may describe love. And only
the lunatic, I suppose, may compose a medical brochure on insanity.
HERBERT.
XXXI - FROM DANE KEMPTON =
TO
HERBERT WACE
LONDON, October 7, 19--.
It is true that y=
ou
have a hard task before you, but it is not because you are fighting convent=
ion
and shattering illusion; it is because you are assailing a good. Love has n=
ever
acquired the prestige of the established, and the run of marriages are prom=
pted
by advantage, routine, or passion. So you are no innovator, Herbert. The
idolatry of love will not be overthrown by a drawn battle between those of =
the
Faith and those of the Reformation. Nothing so spectacular awaits us.
I have a friend w=
ho
has undertaken to translate "Inferno" into English, keeping to the
terza rima. "It is like climbing the Matterhorn," he says gravely.
"I get to places where I feel I can go neither forward nor back. The t=
ask
is prodigious." And it is. But whom will it concern if he succeeds in
going forward? There are few who will read his book. The translation is of =
more
importance to the translator than to anyone else. Yet the professor's magnum
opus confers a degree upon us all. Because a standard is upheld and a man is
willing and able to climb a Matterhorn of thought, we can ourselves stride
forward with better courage. The work will be an output of heroism, and it =
will
ennoble even those who will not know of it.
I have another fr=
iend
who ruined his life for love, so says the world that you think steeped in t=
he
idolatry of love. A priest, who by a few strokes was able to quell in Ameri=
ca a
strong and bitter movement, a gifted orator, a man of giant powers, and who=
was
won away at the age of forty from his career by a mere girl. The girl plann=
ed
nothing. She found herself a force in his life almost despite herself. The =
mere
fact that she lived was enough to wrest this Titan from the arms of the Chu=
rch.
He told me that she criticised him with the directness of a simple nature, =
and
that he came to understand her truths better than she herself. I think she =
must
have loved him at first, but she did not go to him when all grew calm. I wi=
sh
it could have been otherwise, and that she could have brought him a woman's
heart.
The priest, as the
professor, is a hero. Both made great outputs.
There are few who=
can
live like these. But because there are a few who can love and work, the gam=
e is
saved. And because there are a few of these, we must ever quarrel with the =
many
who are not like them.
"Give all to
love; Obey
thy heart; Friends, ki=
ndred,
days, Estate, good
fame, Plans, cred=
it,
and the Muse,-- Nothing
refuse."
Does this really seem such poor
philosophy to you? And when, Herbert, will you marry?
DANE KEMPTON.
XXXII - FROM THE SAME TO =
THE
SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY. November 20, 1=
9--.
Hester met me at =
the
station, and we walked through the Arboretum to her home on the campus. Then
followed an evening together in the dormitory parlour. I have just left her.
Her face was tumultuously joyous when I murmured my "At last!" Her
tearful excitement was like Barbara's. You did not tell me she is so young.=
You
must have made her feel our closeness, or she may have found a bit of my ve=
rse
that all expressed her, and presto, the whole-hearted one is my friend. Her
poet is now her father, brother, comrade,--what she chooses, and all she
chooses.
At one time, befo=
re
we were well out of the Arboretum, our eyes met, and there was something so=
sad
and mild and strange in the burn of her gaze that I felt her frank spirit w=
as
unveiling itself in an utterness of speech. But I have become too much spoi=
lt
by mere length of living to be able to remember back and recognise what you=
ng
eyes mean when they look like that. From London to Palo Alto is a short tri=
p,
if at the end of it you meet a Hester. Yet I am sad. The mood crept on me t=
he
moment we grew aware that evening had come, and we stopped a little in fron=
t of
the arch to observe the night-look of the foot-hills. Lights had begun to a=
ppear
in the corridors of the quadrangle, and here and there in a professor's off=
ice,
while Roble and Encina looked like lit-up ferries. There was a spell of mys=
tery
and promise in the quiet which was deeper for being suggestive of the seeth=
ing
student-life just subsided. It was a silence that seemed to echo with bells=
and
recitations, and babble and laughter and heartache. I fell into thought. One
generation cometh and another passeth away. There is no respite. March with
time and find death, mayhap, before it has found you. As years ago the flam=
elet
of the street-lamp, so now these outposts of the colossal embryo of a world=
derided
me and seemed to point me out and away. The evening grew chill with "a
greeting in which no kindness is."
"Your coming=
has
been announced in every class, and your lecture is on the bulletin-boards.
After that, can you be depressed?"
The light words w=
ere
spoken low, as if doubtful whether they could be taken in good part, and th=
ey
came with something that was like music. Was it the voice or some inexplica=
ble
feeling? I turned in wonder. Her head was raised, and in the indistinctness=
I
caught that sweet look of hers which besought me, and which I answered with=
out
knowing to what question.
I owe you a great
happiness. Good-night.
DANE KEMPTON.
XXXIII - FROM THE SAME TO=
THE
SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY. Wednesday.
Last night I
delivered my address to the student body. Behold the chapel crowded to the
doors, aisles and window-seats crammed, and faces peering in from without,
those of boys and girls who had perched themselves on the outer sills. A
student audience is at the same time most critical and the most generous. I
spoke on Literature and Democracy.
Hester approved my
effort. "How does it feel to be great?" she laughed. "How do=
es
it feel to be cruel?" I retorted. "But think, Mr. Kempton, when y=
ou
visited the English classes you were just so much text for us. It should co=
unt
us a unit merely to have seen you."
A memory stood up=
and
had its revenge on me. It taunted me for the half-expressed thought, for the
fled insight, for the swelling note that midmost broke. Praise the artist, =
and
he feels himself betrayer. Blear-eyed, the poet recalls the poem's sunrise,
straightens himself with the old pride, is held again by the splendour which
forecasts the about-to-be-steadier glory of day, and even with the recallin=
g he
shrinks together before what he knows was a false dawn. There was never a d=
ay.
The song's note never sang itself at all.
Hester looked up =
with
that wistfulness which so draws me. Her look said: "I pity you. I wish=
you
were as happy as I." And a thought leaped out in answer to her look wh=
ich
would have smote her had it spoken. It was, "You, too, are awakened by=
a
false dawning." Why is she so sure of herself and of you? Is she sure?=
The
puny bit of writing had a vigorous rising. The ragged author was clad in it=
as
in ermine. So the seeming love makes a strong call, for a while holding the
girl intent upon a splendour of unfolding, her nature roused, her being
expectant. But later, for poet and lover, the failure and the waste! Were it
otherwise with your feeling for your betrothed, the comparison would not ho=
ld.
Hester does not t=
hink
these things, and she is beautiful and happy.
Yours devotedly, =
DANE
KEMPTON.
XXXIV - FROM THE SAME TO =
THE
SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY. Saturday.
Her happiness wru=
ng
it from me. Before I could intervene, the question asked itself, "How =
will
it be with you in after years?"
Straight the answ=
er
came, "There will be Herbert."
Hester is proud.
To-night I saw it in the lift of her chin, in the set of her neck, in the
brilliance of her cheek. She knows herself endowed. So when she prattled wi=
th
abandon of all you both meant to be and do, her form erect before me, her h=
ands
eloquent with excitement, her voice pleading for the right to her very
conscious self-esteem, I asked her to look still further. Further she saw y=
ou,
and was content.
That was before
dinner. Later we were walking. "I have a friend in Orion," she sa=
id.
The witchery of starshine played in her eyes and about her mouth. Where were
you, Herbert? This night will never return. Yet what has been was for you--=
the
more, perhaps, that you seemed away. So it is with lovers. She thinks you l=
ove
her.
"I am sorry =
for
your mood," she said. "You are holding yourself to account these =
days
in a way I know." Then she spoke, and I learned with new heaviness of
spirit that she does know the way of it. You never thought Hester had much =
to
struggle with?
"I am
difficult," she said. And again, "There are times when no power c=
an
hold me." Then she quoted Browning:--
"Already ho=
w am I
so far Out
of that minute? Must I go Still like =
the
thistle-ball, no bar, Onward, whe=
never
light winds blow, Fixed by no
friendly star?"
"Are you unhappy, Hester?"=
; I
asked.
"Yes, but wi=
th
no more reason than you for your unhappiness. Since you have come here, you
have renewed your demands upon yourself. You wish to go to school with the
youngest and find you cannot. You suffer because more seems behind you than
before." Her voice rose as if she were fighting tears. It was different
with her, I told her. Nothing was behind her.
"You test yo=
ur
work and I test my love. When you are sad, it is because the soul of the so=
ng
spent itself to gain body--" She did not finish. Why is she sad? Becau=
se
the soul of her love is narrower than she hoped?
On our return from
our walk she sank on the seat under the '95 oak. "Did you think I mean=
t I
was always unhappy?" she asked. Her words seem always to say more than=
her
meaning. She imparts something of her own elaborateness to them. I laughed.=
"How could I
with the 'Herbert is' in my ears?" Then her love became voluble. I for=
got
what I knew of your theories and grew aflame with her ardour. I anticipated=
as
largely as she. She was again possessed by her hopes.
There, under the
shadow of the quadrangle which her young strides measured, she spoke of wha=
t,
with you in her life, the years must be. Beyond words you are blessed, Herb=
ert.
But if she mistakes?
D.K.
XXXV - FROM THE SAME TO T=
HE
SAME
STANFORD UNIVERSITY. November 27, 1=
9--.
Be outspoken! What
will happen I can only surmise, but you must tell her what she is to you. S=
et
her right.
This is the fourth
letter in seven days about Hester. I am endeavouring to make you acquainted
with her. I had no need if you loved her. How she loves you! Yet she thinks
that your calm is depth, your silence prayer. Her pride protects her, but s=
he
strains for the word which does not come. She has never been quite sure, an=
d I
thank God for that. Hester has been fearing somewhat, and she has been
doubting, and it is this that may save her when the night sets in and the s=
torm
breaks over her head.
You, too, are
thankful that her instincts served her true and that she never quite accept=
ed
the gift that seemed to have been proffered?
You have a right =
to
demand the reason for my renewed attack. It is because I have learned the
strength of her love. "You are blessed beyond words," I said two =
days
ago, but as you reject the blessing, Hester must know it and you must tell =
her.
Herbert, I am your friend.
DANE KEMPTON.
XXXVI - FROM HERBERT WACE=
TO
DANE KEMPTON
THE RIDGE, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA. No=
vember
29, 19--.
What a flutter of
letters! And what a fluttery Dane Kempton it is! The wine of our western
sunshine has bitten into your blood and you are grown over-warm. I am glad =
that
you and Hester have found each other so quickly and intimately; glad that y=
ou
are under her charm, as I know her to be under yours; but I am not glad when
you spell yourself into her and write out your heart's forebodings on her
heart. For you are strangely morbid, and you are certainly guilty of reading
your own doubts and fears into her unspoken and unguessed thoughts.
Believe me, rather
than the soul of her love seeming narrower than she hopes, the truth is she
gives her love little thought at all. She is too busy--and too sensible. Li=
ke
me, she has not the time. We are workers, not dreamers; and the minutes are=
too
full for us to lavish them on an eternal weighing and measuring of heart
throbs.
Besides, Hester is
too large for that sort of stuff. She is the last woman in the world to peer
down at the scales to see if she is getting full value. We leave that to the
lesser creatures, who spend their courtship loudly protesting how unutterab=
le,
immeasurable, and inextinguishable is their love, as though, forsooth, each
dreaded lest the other deem it a bad bargain. We do not bargain and chaffer
over our feelings, Hester and I. Surely you mistake, and stir storms in
teacups.
"Be outspoken," you say. If my conscience were not clear, I should be trou= bled by that. As it is, what have I hidden? What sharp business have I driven? A= nd who is it that cried "cheated!"? Be outspoken--about what, pray?<= o:p>
You bid me tell h=
er
what she is to me. Which is to bid me tell her what she already knows, to t=
ell
her that she is the Mother Woman; that of all women she is dearest to me; t=
hat
of all the walks of life, that one is pleasantest wherein I may walk with h=
er;
that with her I shall find the supreme expression of myself and the life th=
at
is in me; that in all this I honour her in the finest, loftiest fashion that
man can honour woman. Tell her this, Dane. By all means tell her.
"Ah, I do not
mean that," I hear you say. Well, let me tell you what you mean, in my=
own
way, and bid you tell her for me. In the lust of my eyes she is nothing to =
me.
She is not a mere sense delight, a toy for the debauchery of my intellect a=
nd
the enthronement of emotion. She is not the woman to make my pulse go fever=
ed
and me go mad. Nor is she the woman to make me forget my manhood and pride,=
to
tumble me down doddering at her feet and gibbering like an ape. She is not =
the
woman to put my thoughts out of joint and the world out of gear, and so to =
befuddle
and make me drunk with the beast that is in me, that I am ready to sacrifice
truth, honesty, duty, and purpose for the sake of possession. She is not the
woman ever to make me swamp honour and poise and right conduct in the vorte=
x of
blind sex passion. She is not the woman to arouse in me such uncontrolled
desire that for gratification I would do one ill deed, or put the slightest
hurt upon the least of human creatures. She is not the most beautiful woman=
God
Almighty ever planted on His footstool. (There have been and are many women=
as
true and pure and noble). She is not the woman for whose bedazzlement I mus=
t advertise
the value of my goods by sweating sonnets to her, or shivering serenades at
her, or perpetuating follies for her. In short, she is not anything to me t=
hat
the woman of conventional love is to the man.
And again, what is
she to me? She is my other self, as it were, my good comrade, and fellow-wo=
rker
and joy-sharer. With her woman she complements my man and makes us one, and
this is the highest civilised sense of union. She is to me the culmination =
of
the thousands of generations of women. It took civilisation to make her, as=
it
takes civilisation to make our marriage. She is to me the partner in a marr=
iage
of the gods, for we become gods, we half brutes, when we muzzle the beast a=
nd
are not menaced by his growls. Under heaven she is my wife and the mother o=
f my
children.
Tell her, then, t=
ell
her all you wish, you dear old fluttery, mothery poet father--as though it =
made
any difference.
HERBERT.
XXXVII - FROM DANE KEMPTO=
N TO
HERBERT WACE
STANFORD UNIVERSITY. December 3, 19=
--.
Not three weeks a=
go
you were sitting opposite me and speaking of Hester. You admitted many thin=
gs
that night, amongst them that the girl never carried you off your feet. You
stated over again with precision all you had written. You betrothed yoursel=
f,
not because Hester is different from everybody else in the world, but becau=
se
she is like. You took her for what is typical in her, not for what is
individual. You preferred to walk toward her before your steps were impelle=
d,
because you feared that impulsion would preclude rational choice. With the =
hope
of out-tricking nature, you reached for Hester Stebbins, in order that there
might be a wall between your heart's fancy and yourself, should your heart
become rebellious. I was to understand that this is the new school, that so=
live
the masters of matter and of self.
And as you spoke,=
I
wondered about the woman Hester and the form of love-making which existed
between you, and whether she was simple and without any charm despite her
culture and her gift of song. "She either loves him too well to know o=
r to
have the strength to care, or she is, like him, of the new school," I
thought. I sat and watched you, noting your youth, surprised by the scorn in
your eyes and the sadness on your lips. You seemed hopeless and helpless. I
closed my eyes. "What has he left himself?" I kept asking. "=
How
will he tread 'The paths gray heads abhor?'" My own head bowed itself =
as
before an irreparable loss. I had rejoined the child of my care only to find
him blasted as by grief, the first sunshine smitten from his face and his h=
eart
weighted. One word, one ray lighting your looks in a wonted way, one
uncontrolled movement of the hand, one little silence following the mention=
of
her, would have led me to believe that I had not understood and that all was
well. The night grew old with your plans and analyses. We parted with a sen=
se
of shame upon us that we should have written and spoken so long and with su=
ch
heat, and to such little purpose.
You do not see how
this answers your last letter. I will tell you. It shows you that you have
explained yourself fully the night we spoke face to face.
You say that Hest=
er
is the woman to complement your man. This sounds like a lover, only I happe=
n to
know that she is not the irresistible woman. I found it out quite by
accident--a few words dropped into a letter, a corroboration of the fact and
further committal, a protracted defence of your position, running through a
correspondence of over a year, and, finally, a face-to-face declaration. Wh=
at
boots it now that you write prettily? You do not love Hester. You want her =
to
mother your children, and you install her in your life for the purpose befo=
re
the need.
Love is not lust,=
and
it is good. The irresistible marriage, alone, is the right one. Upon it, al=
one,
does the sacrament rest. The chivalry of your last letter refers less to the
girl than to your own ends. It is not because Hester is what she is, that
"of all the walks in life that one is pleasantest wherein you may walk
with her," but because that walk is the one you choose beyond any other
for your wife to follow. The mother woman is legion, and you refuse to
specialise.
Hester does not p=
eer
down at the scales to see if she is getting full value, yet she does look to
her dignity, and, being poor, will not account herself rich. Hester has felt
since you made known to her that you wished her to be yours, that she count=
ed
punily in your scheme, that you placed little of yourself in charge of her.=
She
loved you and avowed it, but she has never been happy. The tragedy of love =
is
not (what it is thought to be) the unreciprocated love, but the meagerly
returned love. It is better to be rejected, equal turned from equal, than t=
o be
held with slim desire for slight purpose. Can you see this, Herbert? You ar=
e hurting
the girl's life. She will ask for what you withhold, though not a word rise=
to
her lips; will thirst for it through the years, will herself grow cramped w=
ith
your denial till her own love seem a thing of dream, unstable and vague and
illusive. And all the time you are gentle. You are devoted to her interests,
furthering her happiness to the best in your power; but your power cannot t=
ouch
her happiness. It is not what you do; it is the motive to your acts, and He=
ster
would know that she has left you unmoved. You respect the function of
motherhood, but you do not love Hester. Tell her this, and prevent her from
entering a union in which she must feel herself half useful, half wifely, h=
alf
happy, and therefore all unhappy.
It is not Hester's
fault that you cannot love her, and perhaps it is not her misfortune. There=
is
no need for panic. Of two persons, one loving and one loath, the indifferent
one is in the right. Can a tree defend itself from the hewer's axe? What wo=
uld
avail it, then, to feel pain at the blows? It is beyond our control to love=
or
not to love, and no effort that we may put forth can draw love to us when i=
t is
denied. It does not avail us to suffer from unrequited love.
This which I have
just said is an article of faith which the doctrine of experience often
contradicts, for there may be mistake, and the one who does not love may be=
in
the wrong. If only you could wait to see the beauty which is she before you
call her! A year later and Hester may flower for you in a passionate
blossoming; her face may challenge you to live. A year later and you may fi=
nd
that she is indeed the woman to guide you and to follow you; her voice a so=
ng;
her eyes a light in the day. As yet, you have not gauged her, and you would=
put
her to small uses. Stand aside, dear Herbert. It will be better.
I have played a s=
urly
part. I may be accused of having been to you both a Dmitri Roudin and an Ia=
go.
I beg you to believe that it has not been easy for me. I have uttered the
earnest word, have driven you on by the goad of friendship, which drives fa=
r. I
looked upon the days that came tripping toward you out of the blue-white
horizon of time and saw them gray for a dear woman, gray and silent as the =
tomb
over a dead love, and heavy hearted for a man who is my son.
Ever wholly yours=
, DANE
KEMPTON.
XXXVIII - FROM HESTER STE=
BBINS
TO HERBERT WACE
STANFORD UNIVERSITY. December 15, 1=
9--.
Over and ended. It
shall be as I said last night. Herbert, there is no call for anger; believe=
me,
there is not. I am doing what I cannot help doing. You have not changed, bu=
t my
faith in you has, and I cannot pretend to a happiness I do not feel.
Oh, but I laugh, =
my
very dear one, I laugh that I could seem to choose to wrest myself from you.
Did you at one time love me? That morning of wild sunshine when you took my
hand and asked me to be your wife seems very long ago. I should have
understood--the blame is all mine--I should have known you did not love me,=
I
should have been filled with anger and shame instead of happiness. The blam=
e is
all mine.
Last night, while=
you
were speaking, I was standing in the window wondering what all the trouble =
was
about. I could afford to be calm since I knew I was not hurting you very
deeply. At most I was disappointing a very self-sufficient man. How do women
find courage, O God, to take from men who love them the love they gave? No =
such
ordeal mine?
Farewell, Herbert.
Let us think calmly of each other since we have helped each other for so lo=
ng a
stretch of life. Farewell, dear.
Always your frien=
d, HESTER
STEBBINS.
XXXIX - FROM HESTER STEBB=
INS
TO DANE KEMPTON
STANFORD UNIVERSITY. December 18, 1=
9--.
Herbert has analy=
zed
the situation and has arrived at the conclusion that my dissatisfaction ari=
ses
in an inordinate desire for happiness. You should not care so much about
yourself, he says. Poor, dear, young Herbert! He is very young and cannot as
yet conceive how much there is about oneself that demands care. I thought it
out in the hills to-day. It was gray and there was a fitful wind. What is t=
his
selfishness but a prompting to make much of life? You and I and people of o=
ur
kind are old before our time, that is the reason we are not reckless. Our
dreams mature us. I was a mere girl when Herbert said he wished to marry me=
, but
I was old enough to grasp the full meaning of the pact, as he could not gra=
sp
it. In a moment I had travelled my way to the grave and back. I looked at t=
he
sheer, quick clouds that flitted past the blue, and I felt that I had caugh=
t up
with life; I had overtaken the wonders that hung in the sky of my dreaming.
Then I looked at him and the sunshine got in my face and made me laugh (or
cry)--I was so more than happy, being so much too sure of his need of me. I=
am
glad I walked to-day. The view from the hills was beautiful. (You see I am =
not
unhappy!) I stood on a rock and looked about me, thinking of you, of
Barbara,--I feel I know her,--and of Herbert. He and I had often come to th=
ese
spots. Oh, the hungry memories! Yet what were we but a young man and a young
woman, who, without being battered into apathy by misfortune, without being=
wearied
or ill, were taking each other for better or for worse because they seemed
compatible? We were doing just that, to Herbert's certain knowledge! I fail=
ed
him; he hoped for more complaisance. Marriage is a hazard, Mr. Kempton, con=
fess
it is, and a man does much when he binds himself to make a woman the mother=
of
his children--nay, the grandmother of theirs, even that. What else and what
more? I would never have been wholly in my husband's life, comrade and fell=
ow
to it. Herbert knew this clearly, and I vaguely but I acted with clearness =
on
my vagueness. It was hard to do. It has left me breathless and a little afr=
aid
to be myself,--as if I had killed a dear thing,--and tearful, too, and spas=
modic
for your sympathy and sanction.
I told him that f=
or a
long time I did not understand, supposing myself beloved and desired and ch=
osen
for him by God, thinking he yearned for the subtlety and mystery of me,
thinking all of him needed me and cleaved earths and parted seas to come to=
me.
Later, when I became oppressed by a lack and was made to hear the stillness
that followed my unechoed words, I became grave and still myself. He had
unloved me, I said, and I waited. Something seemed pending, and meanwhile I
could love! I made much of every word of comfort that he dropped me, and dw=
elt with
hope on the future. All this I told Herbert the night when I explained, and=
he
turned pale. "You people fly away with yourselves. I cannot follow you.
What is wrong, Hester?" He smiled in his distress. Yet was there in his
softness an imperiousness, commanding me to be other than I am, forbidding =
me
the right to crave in secret what I had made bold to ask for openly. His man
was stronger than my woman, and I leapt to him again. "My husband,&quo=
t; I
whispered, my hands in his. This, even after I understood, dearest Mr. Kemp=
ton.
It is a sorry tan=
gle.
If only one could suit feeling to theory! It is not for a theory that I ref=
use
to be Herbert's wife. Yet if I loved him enough, I could give up love itself
for him. He hinted it, looking as from a distance at me in my attitude of
protest and restraint. If I loved him enough, I could forego love itself for
him. Somewhere there is a fault, it would seem, somewhere in my abandon is
restraint, in my love, self-seeking. Remorse overcame me just as he was abo=
ut
to leave, and I schooled myself to think that there had been no affront, th=
at
it honours a woman to be wanted no matter for what end, that every use is a=
noble
use, that we die the same, loved or used. If Herbert Wace wants a wife and
thinks me fitting, why, it is well. I thought all this and aged as I though=
t.
Nevertheless, my hand did not put itself out a second time to detain the man
who had forced me to face this.
There is a youth =
here
who loves me. If Herbert's face could shine like his for one hour, I believ=
e I
would be happier than I have ever been. And it would not spoil that happine=
ss
if this love were toward another than myself. Say you believe me. You must =
know
it of me that before everything else in the world I pray that knowledge of =
love
come to the man over whom the love of my girlhood was spilled.
Do you ask what is
left me, dear friend? Work and tears and the intact dream. Believe me, I am=
not
pitiable.
HESTER.