And shall Trelawney dine?
And shall Trelawney dine?
Then thrice ten thousand Cornish men
Will order in the wine.
In the absence of six-course dinners and newspapers about Home Rule, we have had to fall back upon literature. We borrowed Zola's latest-from the rector,-and read it simultaneously, stealing it from one another. Even the dogs have devoured bits of it. The poodle has taken in most, being French. She is an elegant, tricksy creature, Miss Plachecki by name, but called-for short-'Wopsy.' Wopsy's back is arranged in beds like a Dutch garden; she has rosettes of black hair symmetrically disposed about her hind quarters, and her tail is exactly like a mutton cutlet in its frill. She belongs to the Woman of the party. Chum belongs to the Girl. He is a bull-pup, with a frightfully ferocious face, but he never bites unless he wants to hurt you. Girl says she took him to a fashionable photographer's, but the artist refused to pose him. In vain she pointed out that Chum was more paralysed than he; that Chum was trembling all over (I opine 't was at the sight of the actresses' portraits-the young dog!). The photographer steadfastly kept the apparatus between him and the animal, telling Girl a story about a man who owned a bull-dog with a bad memory. The man, coming home late, and entering his sitting-room, was met by an ominous growl in the darkness. Bull-dogs have little smell, and so the man was not recognized. He made a movement towards the mantelpiece, where the matches were, to strike a light and convince the dog of its mistake. But unfortunately the dog guarded the mantelpiece, and every move was answered by a ghastly growl. More unfortunately still, the man's bedroom was only approached through the sitting-room, and its door was only approached through the dog. So, for want of a match, the man passed the night like a Peri at the gates of Paradise. At last Girl posed Chum, herself, her draperies constituting a nebulous background; and the artist, walking warily, adjusted his instrument, and the sun which shines alike on saints and bull-pups, painted the squatter's portrait. But, alas! a woeful disappointment was in store. When the proofs arrived, it was found that all that delightful uncouthness of visage which is Chum's chief charm, all that fascinating ferocity which makes him a thing of ugliness and a joy for ever, had vanished-refined away, idealised into a demureness as of domestic tabby, a platitudinarian peacefulness-nay, a sort of beauty! The camera had been so accustomed to actresses that it could no longer work naturally.
I AM reading Nietzsche and Tolstoi. Each tells me that the morality of the day is all wrong, and that he has discovered the one true way of salvation. Life, cries Nietzsche, strength, sunshine, beauty. Death, cries Tolstoi, abnegation, pity, holiness.'tisall as old as the hills, and withal so simple that one wonders why Nietzsche should have needed eleven volumes to say it in and Tolstoi endless pamphlets. I never can understand the lengths to which some authors go in self-repetition. Half the books are written to prove that water is dry, and the other half that it's wet. If you would only stop and think just for one moment, cries Tolstoi, you would at once see what a ridiculous life you are leading and you would refuse to lead it any longer. Stop and think! Ay, but'tisdifficult thinking to-day.
It will be all over and done with so long-by the time you read this-that the Triple Alliance may be in three pieces; but for the moment the complications of European politics alternately startle and depress my day with furious cannonades of honour from an Italian gunboat and brazen dronings of national anthems from a German band. For the young man whom Tolstoi has described as the most comic figure in Europe, coming to meet Umberto I. in Venice, inconsiderately stationed his yacht just outside my window; and though he is gone at last,
This brazen air was the one jar on the poetry of a spectacle possible only in Venice. Imagine it! Wagner played on a floating fairy-pagoda, built as of gold flame, and shot with green and red, on the broad bosom of St. Mark's basin, in the divine night, the stars seen hanging diversely in free space, not stuck like gold-headed nails in a dark ceiling; and in the mystery of the darkness, the domes and spires and palaces of Venice, and the dim creeping boats, and the quivering reflections of the illuminated Imperial vessel; and across the narrow track of luminous water made by the Pagoda-that glittered with a fantastic splendour as of Aladdin and Arabian nights-sudden gondolas gliding from darkness to darkness, the beautiful curve of the prow sharply revealed, the gondolier growing semi-transparent and quivering with light, a strange half-demoniac figure bestriding his black bark. And, mingled with the music, the hum of multitudes and the tramp of feet and the silence of the vast night. All as Nietzsche's poem on Venice hath it-'Gondeln, Lichter, Musik.' Yes, they play politics prettily on the Grand Canal-the finest street in Europe. Does it matter much what is the game? Cannons and colour, bands and decorations, bread and circuses, emperors uncovering to us, beautiful queens waving dainty handkerchiefs-this is what lies behind the dry Treaties of the history books. A few short weeks back we had been very angry with our King, and had talked of Republics and what not. But the dead men in Abyssinia are dead, and we are alive, and the Bengal fire on the palaces is really very picturesque. If we would only stop and think-just for one moment! But there's the rub.
It's no use stopping and thinking, unless everybody else will stop and think at the same time. For you cannot refuse to lead a life that everybody is leading, unless you are willing to be crushed by the revolutions of the social machinery. Socialists, for instance, are often twitted with not 'behaving as sich.' But socialists say that socialism should be the law of the land: they do not say that it is practicable for an odd man here and there to be a socialist in a world of individualists. Tolstoi, to be of effect, would have to move all mankind at once to renounce its ways, to abjure the lust of the eye and the pride of life. And he would have to keep on moving it, or back it would roll. Mazzini and the unification of Italy-what words to conjure with! But Mazzini is dead, and how much of Italy is alive!'tismore like a great show-place, supported by its visitors, than a real, live country. Stop and think!'tisperhaps better not to think, for fear we should stop. William II., at any rate-he is not likely to stop and think. This young man-from all I have observed since he became my neighbour-lives a highly coloured dramatic existence, in which there are sixty minutes to every hour and sixty seconds to every minute, the sort of life that should have pleased Walter Pater. He must be a disciple of Nietzsche, a lover of the strong and the splendid, this German gentleman who is just off to Vienna to prance at the head of fifteen hundred horsemen. While he lived opposite me, it was all excursions and alarums. As a neighbour an emperor is distinctly noisy. The local comic papers suggested that, as a universal genius, Guglielmo II. would at once set about rowing a two-oared sandolo. But this difficult feat Guglielmo
