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Yet Again

by Max Beerbohm




Till I gave myself the task of making a little selection from what I
had written since last I formed a book of essays, I had no notion that
I had put, as it were, my eggs into so many baskets--The Saturday
Review, The New Quarterly, The New Liberal Review, Vanity Fair, The
Daily Mail, Literature, The Traveller, The Pall Mall Magazine, The May
Book, The Souvenir Book of Charing Cross Hospital Bazaar, The Cornhill
Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and The Anglo-Saxon Review...Ouf! But the
sigh of relief that I heave at the end of the list is accompanied by a
smile of thanks to the various authorities for letting me use here
what they were so good as to require.

M. B.



CONTENTS

THE FIRE
SEEING PEOPLE OFF
A MEMORY OF A MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
PORRO UNUM...
A CLUB IN RUINS
`273'
A STUDY IN DEJECTION
A PATHETIC IMPOSTURE
THE DECLINE OF THE GRACES
WHISTLER'S WRITING
ICHABOD
GENERAL ELECTIONS
A PARALLEL
A MORRIS FOR MAY-DAY
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS MANNER
THE NAMING OF STREETS
ON SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY
A HOME-COMING
`THE RAGGED REGIMENT'
THE HUMOUR OF THE PUBLIC
DULCEDO JUDICIORUM


WORDS FOR PICTURES

`HARLEQUIN'
`THE GARDEN OF LOVE'
`ARIANE ET DIONYSE'
`PETER THE DOMINICAN'
`L' OISEAU BLEU'
`MACBETH AND THE WITCHES'
`CARLOTTA GRISI'
`HO-TEI'
`THE VISIT'



THE FIRE

If I were `seeing over' a house, and found in every room an iron cage
let into the wall, and were told by the caretaker that these cages
were for me to keep lions in, I think I should open my eyes rather
wide. Yet nothing seems to me more natural than a fire in the grate.

Doubtless, when I began to walk, one of my first excursions was to the
fender, that I might gaze more nearly at the live thing roaring and
raging behind it; and I dare say I dimly wondered by what blessed
dispensation this creature was allowed in a domain so peaceful as my
nursery. I do not think I ever needed to be warned against scaling the
fender. I knew by instinct that the creature within it was dangerous--
fiercer still than the cat which had once strayed into the room and
scratched me for my advances. As I grew older, I ceased to wonder at
the creature's presence and learned to call it `the fire,' quite
lightly. There are so many queer things in the world that we have no
time to go on wondering at the queerness of the things we see
habitually. It is not that these things are in themselves less queer
than they at first seemed to us. It is that our vision of them has
been dimmed. We are lucky when by some chance we see again, for a
fleeting moment, this thing or that as we saw it when it first came
within our ken. We are in the habit of saying that `first impressions
are best,' and that we must approach every question `with an open
mind'; but we shirk the logical conclusion that we were wiser in our
infancy than we are now. `Make yourself even as a little child' we
often say, but recommending the process on moral rather than on
intellectual grounds, and inwardly preening ourselves all the while on
having `put away childish things,' as though clarity of vision were
not one of them.

I look around the room I am writing in--a pleasant room, and my own,
yet how irresponsive, how smug and lifeless! The pattern of the
wallpaper blamelessly repeats itself from wainscote to cornice; and
the pictures are immobile and changeless within their glazed frames--
faint, flat mimicries of life. The chairs and tables are just as their
carpenter fashioned them, and stand with stiff obedience just where
they have been posted. On one side of the room, encased in coverings
of cloth and leather, are myriads of words, which to some people, but
not to me, are a fair substitute for human company. All around me, in
fact, are the products of modern civilisation. But in the whole room
there are but three things living: myself, my dog, and the fire in my
grate. And of these lives the third is very much the most intensely
vivid. My dog is descended, doubtless, from prehistoric wolves; but
you could hardly decipher his pedigree on his mild, domesticated face.
My dog is as tame as his master (in whose veins flows the blood of the
old cavemen). But time has not tamed fire. Fire is as wild a thing as
when Prometheus snatched it from the empyrean. Fire in my grate is as
fierce and terrible a thing as when it was lit by my ancestors, night
after night, at the mouths of their caves, to scare away the ancestors
of my dog. And my dog regards it with the old wonder and misgiving.
Even in his sleep he opens ever and again one eye to see that we are
in no danger. And the fire glowers and roars through its bars at him
with the scorn that a wild beast must needs have for a tame one. `You
are free,' it rages, `and yet you do not spring at that man's throat
and tear him limb from limb and make a meal of him! `and, gazing at
me, it licks its red lips; and I, laughing good-humouredly, rise and
give the monster a shovelful of its proper food, which it leaps at and
noisily devours.

Fire is the only one of the elements that inspires awe. We breathe
air, tread earth, bathe in water. Fire alone we approach with
deference. And it is the only one of the elements that is always
alert, always good to watch. We do not see the air we breathe--except
sometimes in London, and who shall say that the sight is pleasant? We
do not see the earth revolving; and the trees and other vegetables
that are put forth by it come up so slowly that there is no fun in
watching them. One is apt to lose patience with the good earth, and to
hanker after a sight of those multitudinous fires whereover it is,
after all, but a thin and comparatively recent crust. Water, when we
get it in the form of a river, is pleasant to watch for a minute or
so, after which period the regularity of its movement becomes as
tedious as stagnation. It is only a whole seaful of water that can
rival fire in variety and in loveliness. But even the spectacle of sea
at its very best--say in an Atlantic storm--is less thrilling than the
spectacle of one building ablaze. And for the rest, the sea has its
hours of dulness and monotony, even when it is not wholly calm.
Whereas in the grate even a quite little fire never ceases to be
amusing and inspiring until you let it out. As much fire as would
correspond with a handful of earth or a tumblerful of water is yet a
joy to the eyes, and a lively suggestion of grandeur. The other
elements, even as presented in huge samples, impress us as less august
than fire. Fire alone, according to the legend, was brought down from
Heaven: the rest were here from the dim outset. When we call a thing
earthy we impute cloddishness; by `watery' we imply insipidness;
`airy' is for something trivial. `Fiery' has always a noble
significance. It denotes such things as faith, courage, genius. Earth
lies heavy, and air is void, and water flows down; but flames aspire,
flying back towards the heaven they came from. They typify for us the
spirit of man, as apart from aught that is gross in him. They are the
symbol of purity, of triumph over corruption. Water, air, earth, can
all harbour corruption; but where flames are, or have been, there is
innocence. Our love of fire comes partly, doubtless, from our natural
love of destruction for destruction's sake. Fire is savage, and so,
even after all these centuries, are we, at heart. Our civilisation is
but as the aforesaid crust that encloses the old planetary flames. To
destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature. Nature is still
`red in tooth and claw,' though she has begun to make fine flourishes
with tooth-brush and nail-scissors. Even the mild dog on my hearth-rug
has been known to behave like a wolf to his own species. Scratch his
master and you will find the caveman. But the scratch must be a sharp
one: I am thickly veneered. Outwardly, I am as gentle as you, gentle
reader. And one reason for our delight in fire is that there is no
humbug about flames: they are frankly, primaevally savage. But this is
not, I am glad to say, the sole reason. We have a sense of good and
evil. I do not pretend that it carries us very far. It is but the
tooth-brush and nail-scissors that we flourish. Our innate instincts,
not this acquired sense, are what the world really hinges on. But this
acquired sense is an integral part of our minds. And we revere fire
because we have come to regard it as especially the foe of evil--as a
means for destroying weeds, not flowers; a destroyer of wicked cities,
not of good ones.

The idea of hell, as inculcated in the books given to me when I was a
child, never really frightened me at all. I conceived the possibility
of a hell in which were eternal flames to destroy every one who had
not been good. But a hell whose flames were eternally impotent to
destroy these people, a hell where evil was to go on writhing yet
thriving for ever and ever, seemed to me, even at that age, too
patently absurd to be appalling. Nor indeed do I think that to the
more credulous children in England can the idea of eternal burning
have ever been quite so forbidding as their nurses meant it to be.
Credulity is but a form of incaution. I, as I have said, never had any
wish to play with fire; but most English children are strongly
attracted, and are much less afraid of fire than of the dark. Eternal
darkness, with a biting east-wind, were to the English fancy a far
more fearful prospect than eternal flames. The notion of these flames
arose in Italy, where heat is no luxury, and shadows are lurked in,
and breezes prayed for. In England the sun, even at its strongest, is
a weak vessel. True, we grumble whenever its radiance is a trifle less
watery than usual. But that is precisely because we are a people whose
nature the sun has not mellowed--a dour people, like all northerners,
ever ready to make the worst of things. Inwardly, we love the sun, and
long for it to come nearer to us, and to come more often. And it is
partly because this craving is unsatisfied that we cower so fondly
over our open hearths. Our fires are makeshifts for sunshine. Autumn
after autumn, `we see the swallows gathering in the sky, and in the
osier-isle we hear their noise,' and our hearts sink. Happy, selfish
little birds, gathering so lightly to fly whither we cannot follow
you, will you not, this once, forgo the lands of your desire? `Shall
not the grief of the old time follow?' Do winter with us, this once!
We will strew all England, every morning, with bread-crumbs for you,
will you but stay and help us to play at summer! But the delicate
cruel rogues pay no heed to us, skimming sharplier than ever in
pursuit of gnats, as the hour draws near for their long flight over
gnatless seas.

Only one swallow have I ever known to relent. It had built its nest
under the eaves of a cottage that belonged to a friend of mine, a man
who loved birds. He had a power of making birds trust him. They would
come at his call, circling round him, perching on his shoulders,
eating from his hand. One of the swallows would come too, from his
nest under the eaves. As the summer wore on, he grew quite tame. And
when summer waned, and the other swallows flew away, this one
lingered, day after day, fluttering dubiously over the threshold of
the cottage. Presently, as the air grew chilly, he built a new nest
for himself, under the mantelpiece in my friend's study. And every
morning, so soon as the fire burned brightly, he would flutter down to
perch on the fender and bask in the light and warmth of the coals. But
after a few weeks he began to ail; possibly because the study was a
small one, and he could not get in it the exercise that he needed;
more probably because of the draughts. My friend's wife, who was very
clever with her needle, made for the swallow a little jacket of red
flannel, and sought to divert his mind by teaching him to perform a
few simple tricks. For a while he seemed to regain his spirits. But
presently he moped more than ever, crouching nearer than ever to the
fire, and, sidelong, blinking dim weak reproaches at his disappointed
master and mistress. One swallow, as the adage truly says, does not
make a summer. So this one's mistress hurriedly made for him a little
overcoat of sealskin, wearing which, in a muffled cage, he was
personally conducted by his master straight through to Sicily. There
he was nursed back to health, and liberated on a sunny plain. He never
returned to his English home; but the nest he built under the
mantelpiece is still preserved in case he should come at last.

When the sun's rays slant down upon your grate, then the fire blanches
and blenches, cowers, crumbles, and collapses. It cannot compete with
its archetype. It cannot suffice a sun-steeped swallow, or ripen a
plum, or parch the carpet. Yet, in its modest way, it is to your room
what the sun is to the world; and where, during the greater part of
the year, would you be without it? I do not wonder that the poor, when
they have to choose between fuel and food, choose fuel. Food nourishes
the body; but fuel, warming the body, warms the soul too. I do not
wonder that the hearth has been regarded from time immemorial as the
centre, and used as the symbol, of the home. I like the social
tradition that we must not poke a fire in a friend's drawing-room
unless our friendship dates back full seven years. It rests evidently,
this tradition, on the sentiment that a fire is a thing sacred to the
members of the household in which it burns. I dare say the fender has
a meaning, as well as a use, and is as the rail round an altar. In
`The New Utopia' these hearths will all have been rased, of course, as
demoralising relics of an age when people went in for privacy and were
not always thinking exclusively about the State. Such heat as may be
needed to prevent us from catching colds (whereby our vitality would
be lowered, and our usefulness to the State impaired) will be supplied
through hot-water pipes (white-enamelled), the supply being strictly
regulated from the municipal water-works. Or has Mr. Wells arranged
that the sun shall always be shining on us? I have mislaid my copy of
the book. Anyhow, fires and hearths will have to go. Let us make the
most of them while we may.

Personally, though I appreciate the radiance of a family fire, I give
preference to a fire that burns for myself alone. And dearest of all
to me is a fire that burns thus in the house of another. I find an
inalienable magic in my bedroom fire when I am staying with friends;
and it is at bedtime that the spell is strongest. `Good night,' says
my host, shaking my hand warmly on the threshold; you've everything
you want?' `Everything,' I assure him; `good night.' `Good night.'
`Good night,' and I close my door, close my eyes, heave a long sigh,
open my eyes, set down the candle, draw the armchair close to the fire
(my fire), sink down, and am at peace, with nothing to mar my
happiness except the feeling that it is too good to be true.

At such moments I never see in my fire any likeness to a wild beast.
It roars me as gently as a sucking dove, and is as kind and cordial as
my host and hostess and the other people in the house. And yet I do
not have to say anything to it, I do not have to make myself agreeable
to it. It lavishes its warmth on me, asking nothing in return. For
fifteen mortal hours or so, with few and brief intervals, I have been
making myself agreeable, saying the right thing, asking the apt
question, exhibiting the proper shade of mild or acute surprise,
smiling the appropriate smile or laughing just so long and just so
loud as the occasion seemed to demand. If I were naturally a brilliant
and copious talker, I suppose that to stay in another's house would be
no strain on me. I should be able to impose myself on my host and
hostess and their guests without any effort, and at the end of the day
retire quite unfatigued, pleasantly flushed with the effect of my own
magnetism. Alas, there is no question of my imposing myself. I can
repay hospitality only by strict attention to the humble, arduous
process of making myself agreeable. When I go up to dress for dinner,
I have always a strong impulse to go to bed and sleep off my fatigue;
and it is only by exerting all my will-power that I can array myself
for the final labours: to wit, making myself agreeable to some man or
woman for a minute or two before dinner, to two women during dinner,
to men after dinner, then again to women in the drawing-room, and then
once more to men in the smoking-room. It is a dog's life. But one has
to have suffered before one gets the full savour out of joy. And I do
not grumble at the price I have to pay for the sensation of basking,
at length, in solitude and the glow of my own fireside.

Too tired to undress, too tired to think, I am more than content to
watch the noble and ever-changing pageant of the fire. The finest part
of this spectacle is surely when the flames sink, and gradually the
red-gold caverns are revealed, gorgeous, mysterious, with inmost
recesses of white heat. It is often thus that my fire welcomes me when
the long day's task is done. After I have gazed long into its depths,
I close my eyes to rest them, opening them again, with a start,
whenever a coal shifts its place, or some belated little tongue of
flame spurts forth with a hiss.... Vaguely I liken myself to the
watchman one sees by night in London, wherever a road is up, huddled
half-awake in his tiny cabin of wood, with a cresset of live coal
before him.... I have come down in the world, and am a night-watchman,
and I find the life as pleasant as I had always thought it must be,
except when I let the fire out, and awake shivering.... Shivering I
awake, in the twilight of dawn. Ashes, white and grey, some rusty
cinders, a crag or so of coal, are all that is left over from last
night's splendour. Grey is the lawn beneath my window, and little
ghosts of rabbits are nibbling and hobbling there. But anon the east
will be red, and, ere I wake, the sky will be blue, and the grass
quite green again, and my fire will have arisen from its ashes, a
cackling and comfortable phoenix.


SEEING PEOPLE OFF

I am not good at it. To do it well seems to me one of the most
difficult things in the world, and probably seems so to you, too.

To see a friend off from Waterloo to Vauxhall were easy enough. But we
are never called on to perform that small feat. It is only when a
friend is going on a longish journey, and will be absent for a longish
time, that we turn up at the railway station. The dearer the friend,
and the longer the journey, and the longer the likely absence, the
earlier do we turn up, and the more lamentably do we fail. Our failure
is in exact ratio to the seriousness of the occasion, and to the depth
of our feeling.

In a room, or even on a door-step, we can make the farewell quite
worthily. We can express in our faces the genuine sorrow we feel. Nor
do words fail us. There is no awkwardness, no restraint, on either
side. The thread of our intimacy has not been snapped. The leave-
taking is an ideal one. Why not, then, leave the leave-taking at that?
Always, departing friends implore us not to bother to come to the
railway station next morning. Always, we are deaf to these entreaties,
knowing them to be not quite sincere. The departing friends would
think it very odd of us if we took them at their word. Besides, they
really do want to see us again. And that wish is heartily
reciprocated. We duly turn up. And then, oh then, what a gulf yawns!
We stretch our arms vainly across it. We have utterly lost touch. We
have nothing at all to say. We gaze at each other as dumb animals gaze
at human beings. We `make conversation'--and such conversation! We
know that these are the friends from whom we parted overnight. They
know that we have not altered. Yet, on the surface, everything is
different; and the tension is such that we only long for the guard to
blow his whistle and put an end to the farce.

On a cold grey morning of last week I duly turned up at Euston, to see
off an old friend who was starting for America.

Overnight, we had given him a farewell dinner, in which sadness was
well mingled with festivity. Years probably would elapse before his
return. Some of us might never see him again. Not ignoring the shadow
of the future, we gaily celebrated the past. We were as thankful to
have known our guest as we were grieved to lose him; and both these
emotions were made evident. It was a perfect farewell.

And now, here we were, stiff and self-conscious on the platform; and,
framed in the window of the railway-carriage, was the face of our
friend; but it was as the face of a stranger--a stranger anxious to
please, an appealing stranger, an awkward stranger. `Have you got
everything?' asked one of us, breaking a silence. `Yes, everything,'
said our friend, with a pleasant nod. `Everything,' he repeated, with
the emphasis of an empty brain. `You'll be able to lunch on the
train,' said I, though this prophecy had already been made more than
once. `Oh yes,' he said with conviction. He added that the train went
straight through to Liverpool. This fact seemed to strike us as rather
odd. We exchanged glances. `Doesn't it stop at Crewe?' asked one of
us. `No,' said our friend, briefly. He seemed almost disagreeable.
There was a long pause. One of us, with a nod and a forced smile at
the traveller, said `Well!' The nod, the smile, and the unmeaning
monosyllable, were returned conscientiously. Another pause was broken
by one of us with a fit of coughing. It was an obviously assumed fit,
but it served to pass the time. The bustle of the platform was
unabated. There was no sign of the train's departure. Release--ours,
and our friend's--was not yet.

My wandering eye alighted on a rather portly middle-aged man who was
talking earnestly from the platform to a young lady at the next window
but one to ours. His fine profile was vaguely familiar to me. The
young lady was evidently American, and he was evidently English;
otherwise I should have guessed from his impressive air that he was
her father. I wished I could hear what he was saying. I was sure he
was giving the very best advice; and the strong tenderness of his gaze
was really beautiful. He seemed magnetic, as he poured out his final
injunctions. I could feel something of his magnetism even where I
stood. And the magnetism, like the profile, was vaguely familiar to
me. Where had I experienced it?

In a flash I remembered. The man was Hubert le Ros. But how changed
since last I saw him! That was seven or eight years ago, in the
Strand. He was then (as usual) out of an engagement, and borrowed
half-a-crown. It seemed a privilege to lend anything to him. He was
always magnetic. And why his magnetism had never made him successful
on the London stage was always a mystery to me. He was an excellent
actor, and a man of sober habit. But, like many others of his kind,
Hubert le Ros (I do not, of course, give the actual name by which he
was known) drifted seedily away into the provinces; and I, like every
one else, ceased to remember him.

It was strange to see him, after all these years, here on the platform
of Euston, looking so prosperous and solid. It was not only the flesh
that he had put on, but also the clothes, that made him hard to
recognise. In the old days, an imitation fur coat had seemed to be as
integral a part of him as were his ill-shorn lantern jaws. But now his
costume was a model of rich and sombre moderation, drawing, not
calling, attention to itself. He looked like a banker. Any one would
have been proud to be seen off by him.

`Stand back, please.' The train was about to start, and I waved
farewell to my friend. Le Ros did not stand back. He stood clasping in
both hands the hands of the young American. `Stand back, sir, please!'
He obeyed, but quickly darted forward again to whisper some final
word. I think there were tears in her eyes. There certainly were tears
in his when, at length, having watched the train out of sight, he
turned round. He seemed, nevertheless, delighted to see me. He asked
me where I had been hiding all these years; and simultaneously repaid
me the half-crown as though it had been borrowed yesterday. He linked
his arm in mine, and walked me slowly along the platform, saying with
what pleasure he read my dramatic criticisms every Saturday.

I told him, in return, how much he was missed on the stage. `Ah, yes,'
he said, `I never act on the stage nowadays.' He laid some emphasis on
the word `stage,' and I asked him where, then, he did act. `On the
platform,' he answered. `You mean,' said I, `that you recite at
concerts?' He smiled. `This,' he whispered, striking his stick on the
ground, `is the platform I mean.' Had his mysterious prosperity
unhinged him? He looked quite sane. I begged him to be more explicit.

`I suppose,' he said presently, giving me a light for the cigar which
he had offered me, `you have been seeing a friend off?' I assented. He
asked me what I supposed he had been doing. I said that I had watched
him doing the same thing. `No,' he said gravely. `That lady was not a
friend of mine. I met her for the first time this morning, less than
half an hour ago, here,' and again he struck the platform with his
stick.

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