NO. XIV.

MARCH, 1913
WITH LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.

RHYTHM

ART MONTH-
MUSIC LY
LITERAT-
-URE
4- NET

MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET
ADELPHI LONDON W.C.
 CONTENTS
VOL. I I . N O . XIV.
Page
Prologue to the Argive Women. By Maurice Hewlett 437
The Little Town. By J . D . Beresford. 440
T h e Mocking Fairy. By Walter de la M a r e . 446
Chloe. By Albert Rothenstein. 447
F r o m a J a p a n e s e I n k - s l a b . P a r t I I . By Yone
Noguchi 449
Sea Song. By Katherine Mansfield 453
The Clown. By B e r n a r d Kellermann. Translated
by Ethel M o r r i s 455
Drawing. By R. Ihlee. 461
D r a w i n g . By J . D. Fergusson 470
T h e r e w a s a Child Once. By Boris Petrovsky 471
Stupid Old Death. By A r t h u r Crossthwaite 472
Chronicles of the Month : Max and Moritz and S o m e
O t h e r s . By Gilbert Cannan 473
A Design. By Derwent Lees 475
The Galleries. By Michael T . H. Sadler 477
Designs from the Russian Ballet. By Anne Estelle
Rice 479
Reviews 484
Literary Supplement xvii-xxx

Edited by JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY

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ANNE ESTELLE RICE
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Russia . . MICHAEL LYKIARDOPOULOS
P u b l i s h e d on t h e 15th of e a c h m o n t h .
MARCH 1913
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PROLOGUE TO THE ARGIVE WOMEN
(Odysseus before the House of Paris.)
OD. About this wicked house ten years
The strife 'twixt Troy and Greece has surged
Since rifling Paris, thief and traitor,
Drew all men to the hue and cry
Menelaus made after him ;
And me, Laertes' son, my lands
And wife and child forsook, he drew
Into the weary insatiable years
Of slaughter, man to man, and Doom
Long-gathered, palsying heart and heart,
And Valour pent in little room
Ten years abrim, but in this tenth,
Now at the last, within this hour,
To drown the city and the sin
In one great well of blood, hence flooding
Where Paris keeps her his delight,
Soon to prove bane of Troyand his.
His, for her heart is changed ; she now
Longs for her husband, for her child,
For Lacedaemon, where she was born
And wooed, and learned her shameful lore,
The which now loathing, him her teacher,
Him her sleek thief she scorns, being all
Virgin for him who loved her first,
Nor ever swerved through years denied ;
And he, at last in sight
Of his reward, kneels for the crown,
He for the crown, a crowned king,
Of his high heart and purpose.
Yet
Not he alone, nor Greece alone
Made war in this high quarrel. Nay,
The gods themselves flung into it
Their pomp and panoply of storm,
Terrors of sky and sea, great winds,
Thunder and blown fire, and flood tides
And irresistible surge of the main,
Some to uphold the Dardan house,
438 RHYTHM
And some the wile of Kypris even
Whose sweet poison made Helen sinner ;
And some, as raving Ares, thus
Fulfill'd their natures, to whom men
Are as a tilth to weed, with spear
In visible hand, and battle shout
In terrible mouth ; and met in shock
Other celestial forms, and them
Highest of all and most to us
Nearer to us for our more need
Who cried upon the sin : faith broke,
Troth-plight made mockery, oath in vain,
Shameful things shameless doneand them
I serve, and with them plot the end
Of Troy and of the war.
So here
Enwombed in wood, we wait the yeaning
Of that great Horse, the which by wit
Athene-given Epeios made
And I conceived, hid up in arms,
The greatest of us and the best
Hidden here within the walls,
Within the heart of obdurate Troy,
Ready to issue forth,
Seize gates and open, that the tide
Even now girding at the walls
Surge in and cleanse the iniquity
Which to high Heaven has bared so long
A braggart blasphemous head.
But first
There is a deed for her to do,
Who by one wrong inuring wrong
Must now requite it, she alone
Before she can anoint the knees
Of her offended with her tears,
Before he dare to lift her up
To his fair bed and board ; for Zeus
Who set our world, set it in law
Which not himself can break. Ye men
Who live by labour, what ye sow
PROLOGUE TO THE ARGIVE WOMEN 439
That ye shall eat, and what ye eat
That ye shall win again by sowing.
Therefore let Helen sow in tears
And reap her joy, and eat with rue
That which she shameful sowed. Thus she
I serve, the gray-eyed Goddess, bids,
And thus her messenger I await
Helen within the wicked house
In this last throw of Troy with Doom.
(He hides himself. The curtains part and
disclose the women's house in the House of
Paris. The play begins.)
MAURICE HEWLETT.
 THE LITTLE TOWN
i
" It is quite a small place."
That was all the information I could obtain. I had been referred
to the omniscient Joe Shepperton, and this was all he could tell me.
" S t . E r t h , " he had said. " In Cornwall ? " And when I had ex-
plained that this was another St. Erth ; he had said, " Oh ! quite a
small place." Probably he had never before heard of it. . . .
As I looked out into the darkness and tried to dodge the reflection
of my own face in the window, it seemed that we were passing through
country of a kind which was quite unfamiliar to me. I had a vision of
mountains and the broad roll of great forests ; an effect that may have
been produced by clouds. The yellow lighted reflection of the now
familiar interior jutted out before me, its floor diaphanous and tra-
versed by two streaks of shining metal. And my own white face peered
in at me with strained, searching eyes, frowning at me when our glances
met, trying to peer past me into the light and warmth of the railway
carriage.
Once we crossed an interminable bridge that roared a sonorous
resentment against our passage. I could not explain that bridge.
We were not near the sea and no English river could surely have been
so wide. Yet the bridge was not a viaduct, for I caught the gleam of
water below, some reflection of paler shadows from the lift of the sky.
This adventure into unknown country was immensely exciting.
It was discovery. I gave up my strained enquiry into the world beyond,
and let my imagination wander out into mystery. I was in the midst
of high romance when the magnificent energy of our triumphant speed
was checked by the sickening grind of the brake . . .
The little station was a terminus ; one forsaken, gloomy platform
that stretched a grey finger into the night out of which we had come.
I tried to see what was on the further side, across the metals, but beyond
was a black void. I received the impression that I was on an immense
height, that the dimly seen low stone wall was the parapet of some
awful abyss.
I could form no idea of the town during my minute's walk from the
 THE LITTLE TOWN 441
station to the rooms I had engaged. The whole place seemed to be
very ill-lighted. All I could see was that it hung on the side of a hill.
I went out when I had had something to eat. It was only a few
minutes past eight, and I was eager for adventure. I told my landlady
that I was going down into the town to explore.
" I t ' s very dark," she said, with a note of warning in her voice.
The street in which I was staying dipped gently towards the town ;
but as I went on the dip became more pronounced. I congratulated
myself on the fact that there would be no difficulty in finding my way
back. The lie of the land would direct me, I had merely to ascend
again.
My street was longer than I had expected. At first there were
houses on one side only, but further down the roadway narrowed and
there were houses on each side. I classified my lodgings as being in
a sort of suburb grown up round the railway station which was detached
for obvious reasonsno railway but a funicular could have been carried
down that hill.
I came to the bottom of the street at last and found another narrow
street running across right and left. Opposite to me an alley con-
tinued the descent in nearly a straight line. Far below a dim lamp
was burning. I decided to keep straight on and plunged down the
alley.
It was interminably long. At the lamp it twisted suddenly but still
descended the hill.
" The place is bigger than I thought," was my reflection. I saw,
however, that as the road continually fell before me, I must be keeping
a right line.
The town was not deserted. There were movement and the sound
of voices all about me ; figures loomed up out of the darkness to meet
me and clattered past over the rough cobbles. I heard laughter, too,
and whisperings in the dim black recesses of courts and doorways,
and once or twice I caught the tinkle of some thin high music far away
in the distance.
Everywhere I was conscious of the stir and struggle of life, of unseen
creatures as careless of my presence as I of theirs.
And still I had not come as yet to the town itself. I had pictured
to myself some wider streets, or open market, a place of lighted shops
and visible life. I began to wonder if I had not passed by this imagined
centre. I became a trifle impatient. I hurried on ; down, always
down, through the wriggling maze of tiny narrow alleys and passage-
442 RHYTHM
ways, lighted only by an occasional flickering lamp, bracketed out
from some corner house.
" A small place, indeed," I said to myself. " I t is an enormous
place." I received the impression that I might walk on for ever
through that tedious ravel of streets. Yet I knew that I could not be
walking in a circle, for I was always descending.
I gave no thought now to the long toil of my return up the mountain
already I thought of it as a mountainI felt that I must and would
reach the bottom.
It was not what I had expected to find, yet the reality, when I came
upon it, was so inevitable that I believed it to be the thing I had always
anticipated.
I turned at last out of a passage so narrow that my body brushed
the wall on either side, into a small square of low houses and the floor
of the square was flat. On all sides it was entered by passages such as
that from which I had just emerged, and all of them led upwards.
About and above me I could vaguely distinguish an infinite slope of
houses, ranging up tier above tier, lost at last in the black immensity.
I appeared to be at the bottom of some Titanic basin among the moun-
tains ; at the centre of some inconceivably vast collection of mean
houses that swarmed over the whole face of visible earth.
" There is surely no other place like it in the world," I said to
myself in wonder.
II
There was light in the square ; two lamps that flanked an open
door. Above the door was a faded sign. I guessed the place to be a
hall of entertainment, probably a ' picture palace."
I walked over to it and read the sign ; it bore the one word
" Kosmos."
" Some charlatan," I decided.
No one was taking money at the door, and after a moment's hesita-
tion I went in.
It was a queer little hall. The bareness of the walls was partly
hidden by pathetic attempts at decoration ; some red material was
rudely draped over the raw brickwork ; and a few unframed, dingy
canvasesthe subjects indistinguishablewere hung on this back-
ground.
At the end was a rough proscenium opening, and behind it a stage
that appeared to me quite brilliantly lighted, after my long sojourn in
the darkness.
 THE LITTLE TOWN 443
In the body of the hall some twenty persons were seated on rough
benches staring at the still unoccupied stage.
I found a seat near the door and waited. It came to me that the
stage was disproportionately large for the size of the hall.
And then out of the wings came wobbling a tiny figure, and I
realised that this great stage was set for a puppet-show. The whole
thing was so impossibly grotesque, that I nearly laughed aloud . . .
Presently I turned my attention for a moment to the vague forms
sitting round me, some of them silhouetted against the light of the
stage. But none of them returned my stare. " Rustics ! " I thought,
with a touch of contempt. " Men and women of such small intelligence
and narrow experience that even such an amateur show as this amuses
them."
I turned back to the performance, though the foolishness of the
dolls' actions was beneath criticism.
Nevertheless, after a time, a certain fascinated interest began to
grow upon me, and I watched the performance, chafing at its slowness
with increasing attention. I tried to disentangle some meaning,
some story, some purpose from the apparently aimless movements of
these tiny dolls staggering about their gigantic setting. Every now
and again I thought that I understood, that there was an indication of
some sequence of action, some development of a theme. But always
the leading figures wavered or fell at the actual moment, and chaos
followed ; a hopeless, maddening jumble.
One piece of management, however, deserved and received my
approbation. I had never in any marionette show I have ever wit-
nessed, seen the suspending wires so cleverly concealed. Stare and
criticise as I would I could see no sign of any mechanism whereby the
dolls were supported and animated. This did, indeed, give me a
curious sense of reality, it made me feel that these poor ridiculous little
figures had a sentient life of their own. Then some senseless action
or helpless collapse reminded me of the invisible wires, and my pity
for the feeble dolls was turned to contempt for the ineptitude of the
operator.
Dwelling on that ineptitude, I began to lose my temper and I became
conscious that other members of the audience were being similarly
affected. I heard impatient sighs and half suppressed groans of
despair when some doll attempted to strut across the stage and col-
lapsed half way.
I looked round me again and saw that men were twitching their
 444 RHYTHM
a r m s , hands and fingers ; leaning this way and that as if to influence
the movement of the dollsjust as a man will strain and grimace in
order to influence the run of a ball over which he has no sort of control.
I discovered that I had been unconsciously making the same foolish
movements, and, also, that our attempted directions were not con-
certed. There was no unison, no characteristic sway in this direction
or that. It was plain that we wished to influence the dolls in contra-
dictory ways.
But one feeling, I am convinced, animated us a l l : we were unani-
mously and angrily critical of the unseen operator ; we were all con-
vinced that we could work the unseen wires far more efficiently than
that bungling performer. Indeed, the fact, so far as I was concerned,
seemed clearly demonstrable. The actions of the dolls were so
infantile, so contemptibly purposeless.
That obsession grew upon me. The mismanagement of the whole
stupid affair began to appear of quite transcendant importance.
I could not watch without striving to help, and I was forced to
watch . . .
III
The performance closed abruptly.
The curtain descended without notice, apparently in the middle of
the play, unheralded by any grouping or arrangement which might
suggest a finale.
The audience, almost in darkness, were left to stumble out as best
they could.
I could not find the exit and when I did find a door it was not the
right one. It opened on to a flight of steep narrow stairs.
It occurred to me that this must be the way up into the flies, to the
place in which the operator sat and controlled his dolls. In a sudden
mood of determination I decided to seek him outI would give him
some primitive instruction. He must be some ignorant countryman.
I would give him a few useful hints in the conduct of his business ;
suggest a story for his dolls to act, some sequent, purposeful story
moving towards a climax. . . .
I stumbled upwards in the dark, one hand on the cold rough wall,
the other stretched out before me to guard against any obstacle which
might be in my path. It was a very long staircase, for the proscenium
opening was a high one. When I was nearly at the top, the stairway
twisted unexpectedly, and I found myself looking down on the still
brilliantly lighted stage.
 THE LITTLE TOWN 445
Before me in a great chair that was almost a throne, an old man
sat gazing tenderly down upon the stage below him. There was a calm
gentle wisdom upon his face and he moved his hands slowly this way
and that.
I looked down and saw that although the curtain had fallen and the
hall was empty, the performance was still going on in the same,
aimless, inexplicable manner.
Perhaps the old man was practising his art, or perhaps he did not
know that the curtain had fallen and the audience gone awayin any
case he sat there with a sweet intent smile, passing his outspread hands
slowly to and fro over the heads of those foolish, inept figures
beneath.
And even then I could see no wires, no connection between those
mesmeric hands and the tottering figures.
A strange diffidence had come over me. From where I stood it
appeared an immensely difficult task to control and guide the move-
ments of those below.
My anxiety to instruct died out of me. I began to marvel at the
dexterity with which the old man would sometimes raise a falling doll
by the lift of his little finger. And from my new point of view I thought
I could at last discern some purpose in the play . . .
For a time I stood motionless, watching, and then I looked again
at the operator seated in his great chair. He was quite unconscious
of my presence. He wore always the same serene, gentle smile. He
was in no way perturbed when his dolls stumbled and fell. He sat
serene, intent; and his hand moved ceaselessly to and fro over the
great stage.
I crept away softly and found my way out.
When I reached the square again the moon had risen.
I looked up and saw the little railway station a few hundred yards
away.
It was a stiff climb, but I reached home in ten minutes.
The town was, after all, quite a small place. . . .
In the morning I wondered whether the old man still sat in the
same place manipulating his dolls.
I wondered whether he was a charlatan or only very old, and very,
very foolish.
J . D. BERESFORD.
THE MOCKING FAIRY
" Won't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill ? "
Quoth the Fairy callingcalling in the garden,
" Can't you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill ? "
Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden ;
But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still,
And the ivy-tod 'neath the empty sill,
And never from her window looked out Mrs. Gill
On the Fairy shrilly mocking in the garden.

" What have they done with you, you poor Mrs. Gill ? "
Quoth the Fairy brightly glancing in the garden,
" Where have they hidden you, you poor old Mrs. Gill ? "
Quoth the Fairy dancing lightly in the garden :
But night's faint veil now wrapped the hill,
Stark 'neath the stars stood the dead-still Mill,
And out of her stone cottage never answered Mrs. Gill
The Fairy mimbling mambling in the garden.
WALTER DE LA MARE.
 i ^ .
/ ! *

CHLOE ALBERT ROTHEN5TEIN

FROM A JAPANESE INK-SLAB
PART II.
I overheard the other day some young man exclaim : " Friend, you
reason too much ! " That remark made me think for a while, and
then I exclaimed to myself : " Why ! Have Japanese come already
to reason too much ? " Only forty years ago we were said to be bar-
barous ; and now we are too uncomfortable under the burden of know-
ledge. Growing, whether wiser or foolish, is certainly degeneration ;
if we could stay too barbarous as in old time ! We have lost a per-
sonality after all.

It is not a question how to take you ; the most important question

is how to arrive at the goal. Our Japanese saying has it that the ship
will go up the hill where there are too many sailors. We have too much
talk in present Japan, have we not ? Art has fallen, and poetry has
fallen ; and the other hundred worthy things have fallen ; what we
added to our original property was only a high hat marked a certain
Chrysty and a frock coat. Oh what a farce !

" I by the grace of God am Yone Noguchi," I exclaimed. You be

sure I was reading to-day the Life of Walter Savage Landor. By that
exclamation I wish I might be able to speak out when the occasion
comes.
How many people really know that it has already dawned when
the crows cry ?
It is not difficult to make a frame ; the real issue is the picture itself.
The Japanese Government has been making a frame for the country
for many years p a s t ; and now when the frame is fairly done, she finds
that there is the night already, too dark to draw the picture.
450 RHYTHM
Where is a mountain deep enough to hide me ? And where is a
river big enough to swallow me ? I say it, not because I am great,
but because I am I. I beg you, however, not to mistake me as a so-
called individualist.
1 found only lately how sweet is to sleep. Is there any more sweet
word than good-night ?
I said to my friend that I must live at any cost till seventy years
old, perhaps ninety years old or perhaps one hundred and twenty years
old. It was only yesterday I used to say I must not live to be more
than twenty-five, better still, not more than twenty years. How
beautiful is Life ! How the sun shines, how flowers bloom, how the
river runs, how the birds fly, and above all, how grasses keep green !

I think that the best writing of the English language seems to mean
to be read, while the best style of Chinese writing to be looked at. Oh
how I wish to write my poetry to be smelled !

" If I were king," I exclaimed. And a moment later I said again :

" You must not ask me what then."

The ancient Japanese always held the same attitude toward the world
and life, whether with the frost-cold sword at the moment of Harakiri,
or with the tea-bowl in the cha-no-yu rites ; their manner was never
abrupt. And how they hated dispute and talk ! When they had to
dispute, they let their swords settle the point; and for talk, they used
the language of silence. They were quiet and discreet toward Life's
object ; they moved around it as if an artist, and again like an excellent
artist, they never separated it from its surroundings. Where they
were faithful to tradition they well expressed their own eccentricity ;
and where they were eccentric they were most conventional. How
the times made us change ! We trust too much to words ; how we
assert and deny when a question comes forth ! And like an amateur,
we walk up on to Life's stage most ungracefully, often forget our lines ;
oh what poor acting !

You must not come to see me till I tell you you may come ; I must be
sure of the hour and day when the right light or proper shadow will be
provided. Do you laugh at me over my having too great anxiety in
 FROM A JAPANESE INK-SLAB 451
my presentation as if a piece of art rare and old ? But what else am I,
do you suppose ? When the first night bell rings out, I will loosen and
let fall all my reserves ; it is the time when my head will turn toward
my interlocutor. I will burn the incense which should rise as the
silken folds of the world-wearied courtesy ; under them the ego in
myself intent but aloof, will put a proper presentation or emphasis
on my life's page. Come, my friend, as such an hour, as my own
respect for myself will then be the very respect for my art and song,
I will show you then my b e s t ; if you do not know how to come, my
friend, I will tell you that you should ride on the cool breeze, or step
on the shadow of the moon.
Some one exclaimed to me the other day : " You are so awfully
Japanese and so awfully English ! " That was good indeed. When
I am so awfully Japanese, I might be a slave to my emotion ; but
without my being so awfully English, my record of artistic development
would not become visible. I confess, however, that I have a moment
sometimes when I feel a secret regret at my being so awfully English ;
is it not the reason why I, seeing greatness right before myself, cannot
get it ?

If I can be called poet, that would be through the virtue that I

carry it into my daily life ; when I am most poetical, I know I believe
that poetry will least betray itself. When I am most conventional,
I feel I am most eccentric, therefore finer and far truer.

To express my vehemence I always use the language of silence,

that is the best, strongest when crushing rivalry ; in silence, when I
am best and strong, I can be renaissance itself, and will create a peculiar
tone and shade, let me dare say, the beauty of nuance.

If I look modern, it is because I am human. If I am inarticulate

in song, that is because my heart is too full.

While I admire your brains, let me say that you are a little crude
and flat ; isn't there any way for you to forget your reaching the same
old conclusions ? Although I may appear to you alien, exotic, subtle,
mysterious, often baffling, I do not mean to become different from you ;
and I always deny when people say that my being here is rather a
sacrifice and incongruity. My thought is only to become like yourself ;
452 RHYTHM
if there is anything between you and me, it might be that I hope to
grow plainer. Do you call that eccentricity ?

I am in truth a spiritual exile, not because I have no friend, but

because I lost somewhere a tradition and environment to which I
think I should belong. And I hear the voice calling from a hidden world
where more than one moon ever shines ; alas, I do not know how
to come there.

I have a few chrysanthemums to look at, that's one thing," I wrote

to my friend. " I have an excellent tea to drink, and a few bad poems
from the West to amuse me. A people who is fully content with such
an eighteenth century will certainly live forever."

The other day my friend told me about his friend who ceased to be
a poet when he grew fat. Oh! where is a really great fat poet ? And
again, where is a really great fat artist ? Here turning over the pages
of the catalogue of the Academy Exhibition I can tell you the physiques
of the artists from their pictures ; many of them are quite fat, are
they not ?

If I fail to make me understood by the present Japanese, that might

be from the fact that they are less Japanese, or I am, in truth, more
Japanese. How remote they are, being " un-Japanese," from me as
I hope to put myself side by side with the old centuries (though I am
not sure what century) who better controlled principle and flame for
the unity in complexity ; I always think it is perfect nonsense to say
that the older time was simplicity. The older age well understood
how to collect the passion and force, to use another word, to put colour
into the time's mind. When I say that the present Japanese are un-
Japanese, I like to dwell on their hatred of freedom while professing
love for i t ; in their anxiety of knowledge I see their cowardice.

The occasion when people find me a little too difficult always falls
on when I myself feel a little too shy. It is strange that they think me
delightful when I feel absolutely hating myself.
How many people understand that pencils were to write their mind.
There are people who think that the temples at Nikko were built in
one day.
YONE NOGUCHI.
SEA SONG
I will think no more of the sea !
Of the big green waves
And the hollowed shore,
Of the brown rock caves
No more, no more
Of the swell and the weed
And the bubbling foam

Memory dwells in my far away home,

She is nothing to do with me.

She is old and bent

With a pack
On her back.
Her tears all spent,
Her voice, just a crack.
With an old thorn stick
She hobbles along,
And a crazy song
Now slow, now quick
Wheeks in her throat.

And every day

While there's light on the shore
She searches for something
Her withered claw
Tumbles the seaweed ;
She pokes in each shell
Groping and mumbling
Until the night
Deepens and darkens,
And covers her quite,
And bids her be silent,
And bids her be still.
 RHYTHM
The ghostly feet
Of the whispery waves
Tiptoe beside her.
They follow, follow
To the rocky caves
In the white beach hollow . . .
She hugs her hands,
She sobs, she shrills,
And the echoes shriek
In the rocky hills.
She moans : it is lost!
Let it be ! Let it be !
I a m old. I'm too cold
I am frightened . . . the sea
Is too loud . . . it is lost,
It is gone. . . . Memory
Wails in my far away home.
KATHERINE MANSFIELD.
 THE CLOWN

Eva used to accompany her husband to his school. She went

every day. They usually stood and talked for a few minutes in the
doorway. The last late-comers shot past them, each one giving his
cap a hasty tug. In some classes the noise had not yet ceased ; in
one there was quietness already, and only one voice was to be heard.
" Well, goodbye, Eva. At five." " Goodbye, Peter." She stayed
a few minutes longer. She heard a door close, the uproar in the
class subsided, there was a shuffling of feet. And now it was all as
quiet as a church and she heard his voicehe had a round, pleasant
voice. She moved away with a smile on her lips : they must all be
sitting as still as mice looking at him.
Eva went down the street to the harbourshe went every day,
down the same street. These afternoons were her own and she could
do as she liked with them. The harbour was the most interesting
place. There were always vessels there, just unloading, or going out
to sea, and then the " Dorothea " started at half-past three.
The captain of the " Dorothea " was sitting on deck on a camp-stool
reading his newspaper. For five whole years Eva had never seen him
do otherwise. He had white hair, closely shorn, and a fiery red face
covered with warts and lumps. He was comic to look at, he was like
a potato. A sailor was scouring the decks and the woman was singing
at the buffet.
A buzzing noise began in the interior of the " Dorothea " and the
air about the funnel quivered like a swarm of gnats. Then a few
passengers came. Sheep were loaded, and pigs that squeaked so
dreadfully that Eva could not help laughing. But as soon as the
train ran into the station close by, the captain folded up his paper and
went up on to the bridge. For the mail might come any minute
now.
The gangway was drawn up, the railing closed, the old man with
the limp who worked on the quay unwound the rope, the captain
 456 RHYTHM
shouted " Half steam ahead " down the speaking tube, the screw of
the steamer churned up the water, and the " Dorothea " went a few
yards backwards along the quay. The old man with the limp hobbled
along beside her with the rope, threw it round another post, and the
" Dorothea " heaved to. Then she steamed away.
Eva gazed after her, and she always felt as though she had said
goodbye to a friend : the quay looked so desolate nowsun, sea, and
silence : Eva went away. She went slowly along by the harbour
and looked to see if there was anything new among the sailing ships.
Great masses of jelly-fish rose and fell between them : the yellow
waves beat against the half-rotten timbers and brought up bits of
wood and rags and all sorts of rubbish.
There lay the brand-new sailing-boat belonging to the chemist
Oh yes ! the chemist. And beside it was the little steamer that
brought the pigsthe " Armourbearer." The head of the engine-
man was sticking out of the hatchway, with a pipe between its teeth.
Then a black hand came through and seized the cap.
" Good afternoon," said Frau Eva, and nodded. She found a sort
of pleasure this particular day in being really gracious. But the head
in the hatchway turned round and looked after her.
She went through the building-yard, where shavings and wood-
chips stood several feet high so that the ground was quite elastic to
the tread, and then she went out along the jetty.
Here she knew every stone. There were those that looked like
big porous sponges and those that had " no face." There was one
that looked like a great leaden heart with a crack through the middle ;
and one on which the sea had written its runes, like a finger. She felt
as though the jetty belonged to her, and to no one else in the world.
Often when she was walking along there, she would bend her head a
little, and a gentle melancholy would gradually fill her heart and she
would imagine herself to beyes, to be a little martyr, and a thousand
eyes seemed to be directed towards her. There she isthere is Eva
Oh Heaven ! and yet she was so fortunate !
Eva had her own place at the far end of the jetty. It was a com-
fortable seat made of sun-warmed stones. The stone with the runes
on it was her foot-stool.
On this seat she sank down and she looked out to sea. Yonder in
the distance went the "Dorothea," hidden in her own smoke. The
sun was shining and Eva, with eyes contracted by the glare, looked
into its light, and saw the bright colours of the rainbow trembling on
 THE CLOWN 457
her eyelashes : and she dreamed the waves splashed " Eva, Eva."
Were not the waves calling her ?

There she sat, and suddenly her thoughts turned involuntarily to

the light-ship. " Oh yes, the light-ship ! " she said. It was lying
at this moment somewhere out at sea and swaying to and fro. She
had seen how it was built, from beginning to end. First the keel lay
there, then the bow was added. Then came the ribs, one behind the
other, with scarcely an inch between them, and every one of them two
inches thick, for it was a light-ship and it had to be strong. Before
long the whole thing looked like a human diaphragm. Splinters flew,
axes gleamed, there was plenty to look at in those days. And then
came the weeks when the hammers thudded, and the whole town knew
" That's the light-ship having its steel casing put on." Then it was
ready, and was pushed off from the slip, decked like a peasant-bride,
and away it steamed. She had felt that day just as if a friend had gone
away. For had she not watched the ship grow every day for a year and
a half ? But now it lay by night in the black gloomy sea and flashed
and twinkled and tooted in the fog. Heavy seas washed over its deck
the wind whistled in its cables. Such a brave ship it was, and yet it
had no name. Light-ship Number Three. " Light-ship far out at
sea," hummed Eva. Ah, well! it was getting time to go.
On the way home Eva amused herself by playing a game. She said,
" If you don't walk on a join in the pavement, something will happen
to-day." She kept her eyes turned upwards and nevertheless she saw
the joins quite plainly and adjusted her steps to them. She laughed
because she was deceiving herself. Nothing ever happened, although
she did not step on the joinsfor of course she cheated ! Oh, how
silly ! But never mind, the time was her own and she could do as she
liked with it.
It was half-past four when she got home. She immediately set
about putting the things on the table for coffee. Then she waited
with her hands in her lap. But just as it struck five she suddenly
got hot all over. " Oh ! the shortbread ! " and she rushed back to
the town.
Peter was there before her : he came in rather warm after teaching,
with a pile of exercise books under his a r m .
" Are there any letters ? "
" No, no letters." But he went out again and looked in the letter
box.
458 RHYTHM
Peter brought home from school a collection of tit-bits, and told
them while they drank their coffee.
Bachmann had written quite an excellent essay.
" What do you think of this, Eva ? Among the sources of artificial
warmth used by man he has mentioned food."
" That Bachmann is very clever. He's like his father, Peter."
" Yes, he's a very gifted lad."
The head-master had been talking to Peter in a distinctly friendly
manner that morning. Indeed, he had been altogether more civil to
him since the inspector had spoken so well of his class. Hitherto he
had hardly as much as said " Good morning." Now he might even
raise his salary. But there was another matter that had been the
great difficulty for weeks. What was to be done with Michael, the
Burgomeister's son ? It lay in Peter's hands entirely whether Michael
was moved up or not. His German was good enough, but how about
his mathematics ?
" Can't you just wink at that ? "
Peter shook his head with an air of conscientious reflection and
scanned the marks.
" If it were my own brother and it went against my c o n s c i e n c e "
" Oh, of course, but perhaps "
" Yes, perhaps "
They talked a good deal every day about Michael.
At six there was a knock at the door ; a private pupil came. Eva
retired to the next room and took up some sewing. She drew the cur-
tains and soon the room was filled with a warm golden glow. Next
door Peter was walking up and down, and the scent of his cigar came
through the keyhole. Eva bent over her sewing and smiled. She
could see him through the wall! Going to the window, bending over
the table with the cigar between his fingers. He was so dignified and
so good-looking, with his gold-rimmed spectacles and his clear-cut
featureswhat did it matter that his hair was getting a little thin ?
She listened for his voice, which rose and fell in cadences of earnestness
and dignity and kindness and patronage. A sort of sadness came over
her. She was as it were touched when she reflected how good he was ;
he had never said an unkind word to her in all these yearsnever!
She had certainly every reason to be satisfied with him. Good heavens!
What nonsense ! Who said she was not satisfied ? Ha, ha ! And Eva
plied her needle and smiled while the stammering, spasmodic voice
of the pupil in the next room alternated with the kind deliberate voice
 THE CLOWN 459
of Peter. And thoughts chased through her mind. How different it
all was long ago, long, long ago. When he was writing his book
and it was printed and the critics came and he said, " Now, Eva,
you'll see ! " nothing had come of it.
And all the verses he had written her ! Every d a y ! His heart
was so rich with love and his brain afire with enthusiasm. And now, ?
Yes, work, this stupid routine labour had drawn him under. You give
him money, you who stand without and criticise. Give him money,
and then you'll see ! Ho ! you'll see ! Now he was always nervous
and tired. He didn't talk to her much, no, indeed he did n o t ! He
smiled to her whenever he looked at her and he stroked her hand. And
at night he was quite exhausted and fell into a deep, heavy sleep :
he never sat bolt upright in bed as he used to with " Eva, you must
just listen to this ideathere are possibilities in it, eh ?" Yes, she
saw that there were possibilities in itit was a brilliant idea ! That
was Peter once. Ah ! he was always tired now and slept straight away.
He was always exhausted. He had only waked up once, and then he
had said : " My boots must be soled, Eva." Haha ! Haha ! Eva
laughed out loud. Peter opened the door and looked in with a smile,
and put his finger to his lips. " I strike a circle," stammered the
pupil. My boots. Yes, that was what he had said. Oh, how she had
laughed.
But suddenly Eva felt a pain at her heart, a sharp pain as though
she had been cut from top to toe with a knife as fine as a hair. The
pupil went away. Peter appeared in the door-way with his hat on his
head :
" We must be thinking about supper, Eva."
" Yes, Peter." Eva bent low over her work. On the sewing there
was a little wet spot. " I ' l l get it immediately, dear."

The days went by. The sailing-ships were lying in the harbour,
the same ships seemed always to be there. The " Dorothea " steamed
out at half-past three. Eva went her rounds. But it sometimes
happened when she was sitting out on the jetty, and the sea came
wandering on and the clouds fled by, that all at once a disquietude
would lay hold of her. Then she jumped up and rushed into the town-
For she suddenly felt as if she must go to Fraulein Geier, the music
teacher, and tell her of the crisis. Oh yes ! yes ! quickly I Oh God I
she could not stay in this town with the three crooked streets and the
churchyard with the sloe tree in it for ever, this town where she knew
460 RHYTHM
everybody and nodded to everybody, and where every flagstone of the
pavement called to her, telling her its name. No, to-day or perhaps
to-morrow she would pack up and go away to a big town where there
were theatres and more people. She arrived at Fraulein Geier's house
all out of breath and dragged at the bell. Her heart was throbbing
in her t h r o a t : what if she were not at home ! And now Eva suddenly
became calm. How extraordinary ! She had come flying along with
her hat all on one side as though she were bringing the news of the
end of the world, and now she had no idea what she really wanted to
say.
" How nice of you to call, Frau Professor."
" Yes, I have been thinking what an age it is since we m e t . "
And so they sat and talked and laughed without any particular
reason, and after an hour Eva said " Goodbye," and promised to call
again very soon. Very soon. Yes, she would be certain to. Yet it
might be weeks before she came back. But why should she do this ?
She had Peter. And she did not need anybody. O God ! O God !
It was so good to be alone and to sit and look out to sea and to dream
of what might happen.
There was the Swede in dock, for instance, with its three masts
that reached right up into the sky. Perhaps before the Swede went
awayit was going to stop ten daysperhaps before then

And something did happen before the Swede with the masts that
reached right up into the sky went away.
One day Milano's Circus arrived and the whole town was in a
fever of excitement. Eva went earlyat four in the afternoonto
take tickets for the first performance. Everybody of importance was
there : the Burgomeister and his wife and Michael came in and they
all bowed to her in a most friendly and respectful manner. She knew,
of course, that it was only because of Peter. Fraulein Geier nearly fell
into the ring in her violent hurry to reach her seat.
The Chemist was leaning against a pillar in the middle of the
front seats and had fixed his eyes on Eva. She grew embarrassed, for
everyone noticed him. Freda Marschner came in just in time, thank
goodnessin a low evening frock and a huge hat with plumesand
he had something else to stare at. The audience began to whisper.
This old Don Juan ought to get married. He was as rich as a Jew ;
he had the pharmacy which was a regular gold-mine, a yacht, a motor
why in the world was he waiting so long ? The Chemist picked up
DRAWING R.IHLEE
 THE CLOWN 463
an opera-glass and with perfect coolness pointed it towards Fraulein
Marschner. It really was ! At that very moment he turned his
glasses on to Eva. Quite calmly. How dare he ! Her face glowed as
though afire were scorching her through the opera-glass. Then the
performance began.
The first night of Milano's Circus was a complete success. Round
after round of applause thundered through the tent. They were
first-rate artists, everybody said so. Melano, the chief, with his wild
horses, the acrobats, the backwoodsmen. Eva gave her hat incessant
little tugs. " The Man with the Lion's Mouth," who bent bars of
iron in his teethtwo men hung on to the barsand lifted up a horse
with the rider in the saddlehow splendid ! Peter ! Mddlle. Liane de
Faubourg was certainly a most wonderful horsewoman. And the
Chemist had another chance to play his game. He stood against the
pillar and smiled at Mdlle. Liane and examined her from top to toe
with his opera-glass. And Mdlle. LianeGood heavens ! she stopped
her horse and looked right into the Chemist's eyes. What tempera-
ment that Gypsy woman had !
But the Clown, everybody saw, put all the others in the shade.
" Henri le Castele, the finest clown in the world." They could well
believe it. They all burst into shouts of laughter as soon as they saw
him. He invented tricks without end : he was excruciatingly funny
a perfect genius.
A wonderful clownjust listen how he was dressed. He had bright
green hair. He had a red nose which lighted up with an electric
light whenever he turned round. But the most outrageous things
were his trousers. They were sacks arranged so that you could not
see his feet. They were so wide that he could hide hats and bottles
or anything in them, and he even pretended to conceal the acrobats' mat
in them. In these sacks he did his great leap right over the backs of
eight men. One, two, three . . . up to eight. There was no end to
his tricks. He was fine. Just look at his walk. He was not walking
at all, he was waddling, and when he bowed to Mdlle. Liane the whole
theatre roared with laughter. He walked along on his heels, he was
curved inwards like a reed with his head almost touching his toes
they screamed : Oh ! This clown ! in short he was the best clown in
the world !
When he was thirsty he brought a regular array of grog-glasses
out of his hundred pocketsall fullHo ! Proset Mr. Porterand a
glass of wine to finish up with. But his next turn was the favourite.
 464 RHYTHM
He had a water flagon brought in and a tea-spoon, and he asked the
attendant if he could make the tea-spoon dance in the bottle when he
told it to. What ? He could not ? Now I will do itready ! He glided
round and round the water bottle which was standing on a stool in the
middle of the ring, and with the most outlandish gestures he adjured
the spoon to dance : " Dance, little tea-spoon," and the spoon hopped
and tinkled in the flagon. " Still, little spoon," and the spoon stood
still. Was it magic ? Bravo ! Noit was quite a simple trick and
the clown showed them how it was done. A thread was fastened to
the spoon and a messenger was pulling it in the wings.
" Dance, little spoon ! " Eva laughed even after she had got home.
Oh, Peter, that clown was too funny !
Next day the town talked of nothing but Milano's and the clown.
He had electrified the whole place. People were all agog. They
greeted one another in the street with a gaiety and absence of for-
mality that was altogether unwonted ; they gave one another in-
vitations and arranged picnics. It was so long since there had been
any diversion in the townmoreover they talked about something else,
namely, the Chemist! How he had begun his game again. Scanda-
lous ! There was a rumour that he went to supper with the circus
people after at the " Star "Mdlle. Liane, of course. And a fine man
like him, and in his position. Ha ! Eva laughed. She was in tre-
mendous spirits the whole day.

Yet what a strange creature man is ! Next day she was corres-
pondingly depressed. She knit her brows and her heart beat slug-
gishly. Had she expended several days' gaiety yesterday and had she
none left ? Or was it the weather ? Perhaps it was. The wind blew,
there were heavy seas, and the spray hissed against the jetty. She
did not care if she did get wet. What did it matter ? What did any-
thing matter ? It was all the same to her. She wished people would
leave her alone. And the eternal Chemist. And she thought she had
heard enough for the present too of what the headmaster had said
about how many marks Bachmann would get, and how hopeless Michael
was at mathematics.
What was it all to herreally and truly ? She might have been
in Egypt riding a camel at this very moment, or perhaps talking to
clever people in a garden. She might . . . no, it was sad in this
place! As sad as the sea that goes on and on saying the same thing
and tossing to and fro . . . to and fro . . . to and fro. . . .
 THE CLOWN 465
Suddenly Eva started. Did someone speak or was it she herself?
She hesitated and looked round. Standing behind her was a young
man, a Southerner from his appearance, dressed in well-cut clothes
that made the Chemist's and Peter's seem old-fashioned and provincial,
and wearing patent leather shoes and kid gloves. The young man
was, however, not looking at her. He was gazing out over the gloomy
sea. And Eva suddenly realised what he had said. He had spoken
French : " How sad the sea is ! "
" Yes, it does look sad to-day," answered Eva, without knowing
why she answered so easily. Perhaps it was because they were both
so entirely alone out there. The young well-dressed man turned and
looked at her. Eva looked straight back at him, spell-bound and
frightened. His eyes were wild, worn out, their life consumed, they
were glazed, like the eyes of a man enduring an anguish of physical
pain. The eyebrows stood high above them as if they did not belong
to them, and gave them a surprised expression.
" You are not German, Madame." He made a grimace as though
something unpleasant had occurred to him.
" O yes, I am ! But my mother was a Frenchwoman."
The young man nodded.
" I saw that at once," he said. " And what are you doing here ? "
Eva smiled awkwardly. His manner was so free and unabashed.
He did not raise his hat like the men in the townthere was an air of
the world in every gesture. " What are you doing in this village ? "
He cast a serious glance at her and shook his head.
" Are you a stranger here ? " she said.
He turned and looked out over the sea, and his eyelids half-closed
over his restless, tired eyes.
" A stranger here. A stranger everywhere. But it does not matter."
Eva prepared to go. He was so extraordinary and his voice de-
pressed her. But he seized his hat and said :
" Thank you. Thank you. Why, thank you."
She went. She hurried. What a strange experience ! Her head
was whirling. And he was a good-looking man in spite of the weary
eyes, in spite of the expression of disgust about his mouth. And as
Eva went through the ship-yard, which was particularly feathery
that day, it suddenly became clear to her why she hated the people in
this place : they all laughedthey laughed day and nightthey were
always cheerful. And the same silly jokes and puns were always in
their mouths. Oh, they were only half human: they had never suffered.
466 RHYTHM
What would Peter say to her experience ? If only she could describe
those eyes to him. They were like the eyes of a condemned man
looking about him for the last time to seek some means of escape.
But when Peter camein a good temper and armed with some new
tit-bitsshe did not say anything. But she scrutinised Peter. He
was good-looking ; it was a keen face and there was plenty of ex-
pression in the well-cut nose and mouthbut it was emptyempty,
miserably empty. He had had to give up his career as an artist and
take up this pettyfogging work ; and he had not sufferedor if he had,
what was there to show that he had ? In what lines were his sufferings
written ? No, he would never understand the young man's eyes.
And Eva kept her experience to herself. She did not like Peter
to-night, and she was glad he had to go to his club. Goodbye, Peter.
She made up her mind that the evening should be a pleasant one.
She took up a book, but she did not read. She stared beyond it.
Listen ! it was the wind moaning. Listen ! it was the bell-buoy out
beyond the harbour. What a lonely, melancholy sound. The harbour
lights were flashing, and when Eva went to the window she could see
the great high masts of the Swede towering up into the cloudy night.
And a thought crossed her mind. Had she not been thinking how
sad the sea looked just when he was thinking it ? She had. She blushed.
Next day Eva did not dare to go out on to the jetty. But the thought
of going was in her mind the whole day long. On the next day, how-
ever, she took her accustomed walk. The quay was deserted, so were
the ship-yard and the jetty ; there was not a soul to be seen. Of
course the man who was a stranger everywhere was far enough away.
She would like to have seen him again. She might have been able
to find out why he was so extraordinary. And perhaps she might
n o t ! She was so frightfully lonely here, and it surely could not harm
anyone if she enjoyed some imaginary experience. Eva was just going
to sit down on the rune-stoneshe saw a bit of white paper between the
stones and something written on it in French. What was it ? She took
the paper and unfolded it mechanically. " M a d a m e , " it ran, " I have
been here yesterday and to-day. Do not be afraid. I want nothing
from you. It was a great pleasure to me to speak a few words of
French. An unhappy man is as helpless as a child." Eva was as still
as if she had been stunned. She remained so for a long time. Then
she moved away, her brain devoid of thought. She tore up the paper
and after a time she came back again to see if she had left any tell-tale
pieces lying about. "Madame, I have been here yesterday and to-day."
 THE CLOWN 467
Was it possible that a man who lived so many thousands of miles
apart from other men had thought of her, just her ?
Perhaps Peter felt and noticed that there was something wrong
with her, although she laughed and chattered.
Suddenly Peter disappeared and came back after half an hour
with a ticket for the circus.
" You are to go and amuse yourself, Eva."
Eva blushed. That was just it, he was so good.
" And what about you ? "
" Me ? Oh, I have promised to go and play skat."
Eva went without particularly wanting to go. However, the ticket
was paid for and when she saw the crowd in the doorway and the
tinsel of the ring, she began actually to enjoy herself. Of course the
Chemist was there again with his opera-glass in his hand. And
Mdlle. Lianehmyou could think what you liked about her.
The atmosphere excited her, and when the clown came in with
" Dance, little spoon," she had forgotten everything, the letter, her
anxiety, everything. She laughed, like everyone else. This time
the clown was smashing plates : he came in with a regular column of
them and smashed them right and left. Eva clapped with all her
might. Then the clown made his comic bow to Mdlle. Liane, who
was calmly cantering about in the ring on the white horse : and the
whole circus sighed with laughter. Oh, it was too funny. But how
dare anyone make such eyes ? And Mdlle. Liane was absolutely cool
over it, arranged her hair and cast a glance over her shoulder at the
Chemist in the meantime.
Suddenly Eva felt that she was turning faint. The clown was right
in front of her and all the time he was bowing to Mdlle. Liane he was
looking at her out of his peculiar eyes. He made a grimace and
showed his teethas though he were going to bite, and this finally
drove the audience mad. Bravo ! Bravo ! How they clapped !
But Eva got up slowly, and quite slowly, as though in her sleep,
she moved away. Then the clown laughed. Laughed ? He screamed !
Like a mad despairing animal. Haha ! Hoohoo ! and a round of
wild applause followed his screams.
Eva went out.
" The clown, the clown," she said, and closed her eyes. " The
clown," she said as she hurried home through the dark streets and
stood in her unlighted house. " The clown," she sobbed, as she tore
off her clothes and crept into bed as if to hide herself.
468 RHYTHM
Eva stayed in the house for a few days. It was raining and she sat
doing needlework. Her mind was calm and collected. Well ? What
had happened ? Nothing. O God! such things . . . What time is
it ? Let us look. Four o'clock. Another hour and Peter will be here.
There was a noise at the door. Was it a knock? Eva opened.
A little boy was standing outside, a boy she had never seen before.
" The Frau Professor ? " he said. He was pert and no more shy
than a grown-up.
"Yes."
He pulled a letter out of his pocket and before Eva could say a word
he was down the steps and she was standing there with the letter in
her hand.
At first she thought ofshe bolted the doorshe thought of tearing
the letter up. She was as hot as fire ; she went from one corner of
the room to the other, with the letter in her hand the whole time.
" Madame, you did not come. We are going away to-morrow.
Where (we are going) is of no interest. Soon I shall be going on a far
longer journey. I am done for. For years I have been battling with
despair and I have exhausted my strength. To-morrow at ten I
shall be there. Come, I beg of you. I should like to know a human
creature again before my fate overtakes me. I beg of you ! I have
not slept for a month. I do not want anything from you." Eva tore
the letter in two.
"Whatever is he thinking of? " What a miserable thing human
nature is ! While she was seething with indignation and reviling
hima clowna clownshe was countingWednesday, Thursday,
Fridaythis was the evening for chess. And then for hours she
thought of nothing else. One thing she would certainly doshe would
let him waitabsurdthe Clown. " Dance little spoon " Haha !
He could just w a i t !
Peter went at eight. At nine Eva took a hairpin out of her hair
and after half-past ten she turned out the lamp.
People were walking about the street. The circus was over. Eva
stood at the window. It was raining and the wind was blowing. No,
she would not go. But at that very moment she saw a man standing
in the street, and the blood stood still in her veins. There he was.
O God ! She ought not to be left alonea woman like her, so afraid of
ghosts. No, no! He looked up, and turned in the direction of the harbour.
And now a strange thing happened. Eva suddenly struck a match
and looked in the glass : she slipped into a hood and went downstairs.
 THE CLOWN 469
She had a terrible shock right in her very doorway. A shadow rushed
at her, but it was only the shadow of a tree.
" I'll throw my a r m s round him and say, ' You poor sufferer.' "
So much she thought and hurried out into the rain and along towards
the harbour.
And just by the steamer that carried the pigsthe " Armourbearer"
some one came quietly up to her :
" Madame, I was quite certain you would come."
Eva smiled and nodded. She felt at this moment a real affection
for this foreign strange young man, for she could see quite clearly how
glad he was that she had come. She would speak nicely to him, she
would speak to him like a sister.
" Yes, I have come,'' she answered and looked at him. His eyes flashed.
" Thank you," he said, and his voice trembled.
They walked together like old friends, both thrilling gently to an
undefinable joy.
" I t is so good to walk beside h i m , " thought Eva. And then she
suddenly started. Some awful thing arose in front of her. A shadow,
a gigantic shadow, standing between two dangling ropes. It was the
Chemist standing on the deck of his ship.
Eva stood still, stepped aside as though to defend herself from an
undesirable companion.
" Leave m e , " she shouted. " Go, or I will call the police ! "
" Oh, Madame ! " said the tired, worn-out voice.
How did Eva get home ? She did not know. She lay in bed, and
covered her face with her hands. The Chemist! He had been
steaming up his boat. And just at that moment! Oh, it was horrible !
the whole town would know in the morning ! And P e t e r ! A key
scraped in the lock. Eva pretended to be asleep. Then Peter came
into the room, listened, and struck a light. She did not move. Then
she heard him rattling the chessmen. She saw him with his foot up
on his stool and his chin on his hand looking carefully at a move.
" Peter," she sobbed.
"Eva?"
She sat up.
" I have had a dreaman awful dream."
"You silly little girl. Go to sleep! B a h ! I lost the game
to-night. . . . " And Peter went back to the chess.
BERNARD KELLERMANN.
Translated by ETHEL MORRIS.
DRAWING J . D. FERGUSS0N
THERE WAS A CHILD ONCE
There was a child once.
He came to play in my garden ;
He was quite pale and silent.
Only when he smiled I knew everything about him,
I knew what he had in his pockets,
And I knew the feel of his hands in my hands
And the most intimate tones of his voice.
I led him down each secret path,
Showing him the hiding-place of all my treasures.
I let him play with them, every one,
I put my singing thoughts in a little silver cage
And gave them to him to keep. . . .
It was very dark in the garden
But never dark enough for us. On tiptoe we walked among the
deepest shades ;
We bathed in the shadow pools beneath the trees,
Pretending we were under the sea.
Oncenear the boundary of the garden
We heard steps passing along the World-road ;
O how frightened we were !
I whispered : " Have you ever walked along that road ? "
He nodded, and we shook the tears from our eyes. . . .
There was a child once.
He camequite aloneto play in my garden ;
He was pale and silent.
When we met we kissed each other,
But when he went away, we did not even wave.
BORIS PETROVSKY.
STUPID OLD DEATH
Death, you can't frighten me
Waving your sickle,
You're just as women be
Flighty and fickle.

You lop a head or two,

Carelessly cutting.
I'm not afraid of you ;
My head's not jutting.

You get the lanky ones

Titles and money.
I'm one of them as runs
Quick as a bunny.

You get the thistle heads

Spiking and shoving.
You miss the bugs abed
Cuddling and loving.

So you can't frighten me

Stupid old Death,
Men die on top of me ;
But I'm underneath.
ARTHUR CROSSTHWAITE.
 CHRONICLES OF THE MONTH
MAX AND MORITZ AND SOME OTHERS
Max and Moritz are chimpanzees who have not the privilege of
" topping the bill " at the Coliseum, though they move the audience
to delight as none of the celebrated personages in the programme
is able to do. They have the satisfaction of winning their audiences,
or they would have if they cared about it. It is a part of their charm
that they care so little about their audiences that they turn their backs
on the applause. More than that, they despise the tricks which they
have learned with so much sweat and do their best to evade them.
These tricks, they know, are not at all expressive of the chimpanzee
soul, while mischief is. Therefore they indulge in mischief to the top
of their bent, and the audience, recognising the chimpanzee soul,
salutes it and loves them. Max and Moritz are by no means awed
by the machinery of the stage. In this they are unlike the Sisters
Vanbrugh who appear in the same bill, the one in a sentimental piece of
virtuosity by a modern author, and the other in a scene from a great
play by an author who is never sentimental. Both these actresses,
having some reputation in the " legitimate " theatre, with more
solemnity than seriousness produce the tricks they have learned with
much patience and deliberation, and exaggerate them for their new
audience. The neatness and skill in weaving nonsense into a sort of
semblance of sense of the modern author, the imagination and power
in sweeping life up into drama of the ancient authors go for nothing.
The famous actresses are on that stage to act, and they produce the
tricks of the " legitimate " theatre, and, unlike Max and Moritz, do not
recognise that those tricks are not at all expressive of the soul of their
 474 RHYTHM
species. They are awed by the machinery of the stage, have an ex-
aggerated sense of the importance of what they are doing, and, as the
French say, they " plant the audience there," or, as we say, they " do
not deliver the goods." The audience can recognise nothing except
tricks, and having been taught by the chimpanzees to despise tricks,
they can do nothing but pay polite homage to the obviously sincere
intention of the actresses to do their best. " Scheherazade " is even
worse. It is a bad version of what has been done magnificently else-
where. Here the audience realises that the performers are doing their
worst and gives no salutation whatever. It is a galling thought that
chimpanzees should be able to defy the hocus-pocus of the stage, while
human beings are crushed by i t ; but so it is, and the only comfortable
reflection is this, that, being chimpanzees, their minds are beyond the
reach of the folly of the higher species. Also it must be remembered
that the soul of a chimpanzee is a less mighty thing than the human soul
and can more easily snatch at the passing opportunity for expression.
The human soul needs discipline.
On the other hand, at another music-hall, there is Mr. Frank
Tinney, who could knock the chimpanzees into a cocked hat. There
again you have a creature who is in no way awed by the machinery
of the theatre, but, by an assumption of stupidity, has reduced his
need of tricks to a minimum. He is, like Max and Moritz, but with
intelligence, his own dramatist. And loyally he makes his every
faculty serve the drama of his own creation. Whereas the famous
actresses at the Coliseum are intent not on serving their authors, small
and great, but on making those authors serve their personalities and
their skilled but meaningless manipulation of the scale of actor's tricks,
and they seem to be content to forego the spontaneous applause of their
audiences so long as they can compel the homage which is always
Britishly forthcoming for success and reputation. All the same, there
is no gainsaying the fact, that at the Coliseum the honours are with
Max and Moritz, chimpanzees, who, in spite of their trainer, insist
on expressing themselves and their own joy in living.
GILBERT CANNAN.
A DESIGN DERWENT L E E S
THE Lovat
GALLERIES Fraser

In his studio at 45 Roland Gardens, Mr. Lovat Fraser has been

giving an exhibition of his work. The amazing decorative quality of
his painting showed off to great advantage in the genial irregularity
of a studio, and was freed from that embarrassment which is exercised
by even the most perfect gallery on the pictures it contains.
Mr. Fraser has a very wonderful colour sense and, with it, great
strength of line. He feels the power of walls, the immense energy of
mere structure, and he sees behind the drabness of city externals
the colours of vitality. Thus in a row of houses at Rotterdam the
roofs are pink and blue, the windows framed in green. This is a
perfectly legitimate way of giving blended colour-effects by massing
them together. He expresses sunlight and hustle and gaiety more
by this deliberate brightening of roofs and walls than by use of heavy
shadows, or bright window-boxes or the multitude of coloured detail
which a photographic analysis of the same scene would necessarily
emphasise. On the other hand, when he wishes to give an idea of
desolation, he deliberately kills his colour. " The Chapel, York " is
a study in grey and black, built of severe, simple lines, flat, utterly
forsaken.
When he applies this supple colour sense to stage scenes, the results
are, as can be imagined, of glowing brilliancy. His studies of Sche-
herazade are a blaze of red, orange, and blue. The blues and greens
of Les Sylphides are phosphorescent.
Mr. Fraser is at his best when he is uninfluenced by Gordon Craig
that is to say, in his later work. Perhaps it is because the subject is
off my beat, but the designs for stage costumes left me cold. Besides,
the dehumanised art of Craig, the clothing and setting of the " Ober-
marionette " gives no scope for Mr. Fraser's love of colour, and his
belief in life.
Here is another industrial landscape painter (there was occasion
to mention C. J . Holmes in that connection last month) but one who
478 RHYTHM
loves buildings, gasometers, huddled roofs because they are structur-
ally rigid and make strong angles, more than because they are part of
a new landscape.

VLADIMIR POLUNIN
This discreet and attractive little exhibition, at the moment being
held at Messrs. Goupil's gallery in Bedford Street, will probably be
closed by the time the following lines appear in print. Although,
therefore, I cannot help to swell the visitors' list, it is a pleasure to
thank M. Polunin for the opportunity of seeing some of his skilful
and conscientious work. He is above all an etcherhis drawings
showing the same repetition of keen, nervous line that is required by
the process of etching. It is probably for this reason that the black
and white work is more satisfactory than the coloured. Coloured
etchings always look rather like magic-lantern slides, and I felt before
M. Polunin's coloured drawing the same sense of there being a light
behind the original, somewhere out of sight. The only exception
I would make is the landscape" Autumn Clouds "which has a
beautiful flowing quality both of line and colour, which is, perhaps,
rather needed in much of the other work.
Of the two " Merton Streets "one an etching, the other a tinted
drawingthe first seemed to me much the finest. It had, to those
who know the spot especially, that silent velvety darkness, cut with
a blade of light, which is so characteristic of Oxford bye-ways. " Old
Town," " T h e Abbey Steps," and "Captain Cook's H o u s e " (all
belonging to the Whitby set) show such a mastery of drawing that
one feels behind M. Polunin the artist, M. Polunin the architect. I
think I liked the first-named of these three the best of anything in the
show. The unfaltering strokes and direct simplicity of the treatment
give one the same pleasure as those black-and-white drawings of Van
Gogh, which show endless radiations of furrowed fields, and in the
sky a petalled sunset.
The restraint of M. Polunin's work is very striking. With such
technique one feels he could do anything. But the truer the artist
the more he dreads virtuosity. Still, the etching reproduced in the
February number of this paper, shows that all the illusion of size and
height can be expressed in small compass, and once that is mastered
there is no cause for fear. Before his next exhibition, M. Polunin
must, by some means or other, be made less modest, more aggressive.
MICHAEL T. H. SADLER.
DESIGNS FROM THE RUSSIAN BALLET
By ANNE ESTELLE RICE

1. Spectre de la Rose.
2. Scheherazade.
3. Scheherazade.
4. Thamar.
5. L'Apres-midi d'un Faune.

NOTE. As it is now difficult to obtain the August number of Rhythm in which these designs
from the Russian Ballet appeared, we have pleasure in reproducing them separately.
 REVIEWS

JELF'S, A COMEDY IN FOUR ACTS. By H. A. Vachell. John

Murray. 1s. 6d. and 2s. 6d. net.
" Jelf's," acted at Wyndham's Theatre, is a parasitic work. There
is nothing original in it, nothing particularly interesting ; except
perhaps the Butler, Gramshawe, who, when a female, being alone in
a punt, is in a thoroughly female distress, stands watching the pro-
ceedings and remarks very leisurely, " We're doing all we can." I
rather like him : but, alas ! he is a minor character. As we all
know, there is a sort of play now in the air that deals with big busi-
nesses and financial smashes and fiancees that don't quite know
their own minds, and accordingly are inclined to get in the way, and
with people finding their souls and re-establishing the big businesses.
It has been done very well, as in " The Voysey Inheritance." But
" Jelf's " is only the faint commercial echo of art. Everything is
watered down and second-hand. Dick Jelf comes back from Canada,
takes over the ancestral bank, and gets engaged to Lady Fenella Mull,
a former flame (le mot juste !) of J i m Palliser, who is a fairly fast
young man, of Palliser's bank. There is a run on Palliser's. Out
of a slight tangle of emotions it emerges that Dick will help them.
Result: a run on Jelf's. Enter Deus ex Machina, Sir Jonathan Dunne,
a city magnate, and announces that the Amalgamated Association of
Bankers will stand by Dick. Fenella, who has been a little vague,
comes round finally to Dick, when he decides to help Palliser's at all
costs. For the rest, the Hon. Archie Mull gets fixed up with Dorothy
Dunne, with Dick's help and against the wish of her father. And there
is a Galsworthy head-clerk, a very sound man, Winslow by name.
Not very interesting people. As for the dialogue, much of it is natural
in the pedestrian way in which modern dialogue is natural. But
much of it is strained in the effort after colloquialism. Dick's Canadian
slang usually seems laid on patchily, not worked in. He is called the
Kangaroo, because of his impulsive jumpy manner, and at one point,
when collecting information how to dress in order to be one of the
English upper classes, he remarks : " I n short, a kangaroo may
 REVIEWS 485
draw big cheques, but he mayn't wear them." Now that sort of
silly-cleverness is irritating in itself and not in character. And
Archie has some most impossible affectations ; e.g., on the entrance
of J i m Palliser in Act 2, he says : " The man himself ! Conspicuous
and cool! " while of Dolly he exclaims : " Isn't she a little sprink " ?
Personally, I have never moved among the upper classes, but I cannot
imagine that sexual emotion makes them go like that. In fact, the
general effect is uncomfortable ; rather like waiting for dinner with
hungry, self-conscious people in a cold reception room. F.G.

THE VIGIL OF VENUS AND OTHER POEMS. By Q. Methuen

and Co. 3s. 6d. net.
All who care for good poetry will be inclined to treat with respect
any work that bears the signature of Q. For his two well-known
anthologies prove beyond doubt that Q both loves and understands
real poetry.* Even an artist may learn something from a real connois-
seur, much more then should a mere critic speak with diffidence.
Q, with his always genuine and graceful modesty, would be the first
to say that he makes no claim to the High Title of Poet ; but he is
always a conscientious, capable and elegant versifier, occasionally he
has real inspiration, and has written some poems that belong to
actual literature.
This volume, as a whole, leaves a pleasing effect on one's memory,
but except for the poem " Of Three Children Choosing a Chaplet of
Verse," it is neither very important nor particularly significant
In fact, after the earlier volume, " Poems and Ballads," it comes as
a distinct disappointment. There is a certain lack of originality in
both volumes, a result one often notices of wide knowledge and good
taste, though these two qualities give many advantages which are
very obvious in the work before us.
The volume opens with the Latin text of " The Vigil of Venus,"
printed page to page with an English version ; this version is a little
prolix, but it contains much graceful verse, and will appeal to all
who care for Latin Poetry. The one-act play, " A Regent "a story
of love and murder in Italy in the year 1571does not quite come off,
and must be pronounced an exercise rather than an actual work of
art. The rest of the volume consists of short poems, none of which
are without distinction. The lines to " Alma Mater " express with
a dainty and sincere sentiment, what so many of us have felt for
* [This review was written before the publication of the Anthology of Victorian Verse.Ed.]
486 RHYTHM
ourselves but cannot express, and we should like to conclude this
notice by quoting the last verses.
Still on her spire the pigeons hover,
Still by her gateway haunts the gown.
Ah ! but her secret ? You, young lover,
Drumming her old ones forth from town,
Know you the secret none discover ?
Tell itwhen you go down.
Yet if at length you reck her, prove her,
Lean to her whispers never so nigh ;
Yet if at last not less her lover
You in your hansom leave the High ;
Dawn from her towers a ray shall never
Touch youa passer by. A. H. J .
JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE. By Francis Bickley. Modern Bio-
graphies. Constable. 1s.
This, one conceives, is exactly the kind of book that Synge would
have liked to have written about him. It is not a monument. An
artist needs no monument other than his work. It is not a paean.
There can be no sadder reflection for an artist than that men need to
be whistled and herded into appreciation of his work. It is rather a
memorandum. It states barely that John Synge was born, worked,
met W. B. Yeats, became a dramatist, and died. It presents the man
in relation to his contemporaries, to the Irish literary movement, to
Irish poetry, and to English written drama. Its niceness must give
pleasure to those already acquainted with the facts it sets forth and
its subject, while nothing could be better than its precision for in-
forming those who have heard of Synge only as a name that breeds
enthusiasm with his importance and the beauty that he brought into
the world. It was Synge's incalculable service that he brought back
dignity into the theatre, the dignity of health and courage. Small in
bulk as his work is, yet it stands as a rebuke to all those who have
loved the theatre less and themselves more and used the stage not to
create beauty but only to establish the ascendancy of their own
personalities. By the creation of real joy he showed the tawdriness
of the " false j o y " set up by the theatrists. His dignity and
sincerity remain for an inspiration and a touchstone to the young
men now entering the theatre. This book is dignified and sincere
and sober. It will be very useful. G. C.
 REVIEWS 487
POEMS OF LOVE AND EARTH. By John Drinkwater. David Nutt.
1s. 6d. net.
Mr. Drinkwater is disappointing. He writes so well. His poetry
is so good. But, somehow, it just is not good enough. He lacks,
somewhere, ultimately, the divine touch in ordering his words.
There is just enough final absence of distinction to make him, at pre-
sent, not a good poet. Yet it keeps recurring to me, he so nearly is !
Some of his poems are such good reading! There is a clean loveli-
ness about them, rare in modern poetry. His muse, and his goddesses,
are
" wise of cloud and star,
And winds and boughs all blossom hung."
The winds blow echoes of William Morris and Thomas Hardy about
his orchards, his very English orchards. The orchards are his own,
right enough. At present they grow only a sweet kind of apple with
any success. His larger efforts, that is to say, are the less good.
" Vegetable-marrow" would be unkind and rather unfair. He
handles metre well ; as a poet. In the end his words will catch fire,
one prays. Meanwhile there is a lot to be thankful for. D. W.
THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER. By H. Belloc. Methuen. 5s.
Mr. Belloc is certainly a great genius. Only a genius could keep
it up. Two books a year, or more ; and all written in better English
than any other living writer can command ! For certainly, if it is
possible to separate style from matter, Mr. Belloc is the best stylist
we have now. What living, jocund, admirable stuff! Of this book
it is only possible to saywith surprise, almost shockedlythat it is
as good as the others of his in the same kindcollections of witty and
serious short essays. Mr. Belloc is certainly our greatest satirist.
But for him, irony and satire in all their branches would be extinct.
So, in this collection, " T h e Book," " T h e Servants of the Rich,"
" The Spy," " The Human Charlatan " and the admirable " Obituary
Notice," are especially to be praised. But there is also his fine
writing on places (" The Little River " and " The Place Apart ") ;
his fun " (On Omens " and " On Lying " ) ; and his seriousness ( " O n
Rest," " The Love of England," " On Dropping Anchor " ) . Besides
such superb unclassified gems as the most tragic " The Pleasant
Place." It is possible to disagree with or detest Mr. Belloc's views ;
but only a eunuch could be blind to the merit of his writing. His
poses have more reality than most men's sincerity. A noble writer.
R. B.
POETRY AND DRAMA
A QUARTERLY periodical devoted to the criticism and appreciation of modern
poetry and drama of all countries, published on the 15th March, June,
September and December, at The Poetry Bookshop, 35 Deronshire Street,
Theobalds Road, London, W.C.
Each issue contains:
Articles on subjects relating to poetry. Original works by modern poets. Criticism
of important current books of poetry, biography and the art of the theatre. A survey
of American, French, Italian, and German literature, and the Drama.
Annual subscription 10s. 6d. net, post free. Separate copies, 2s. 6d. net each.
In connection with P O E T R Y & DRAMA, a Bookshop has been opened for the
sale of poetry, and all books, pamphlets, and periodicals connected directly or
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executed. For further information call, or write to
THE POETRY BOOKSHOP,
35 DEVONSHIRE STREET, THEOBALDS ROAD, LONDON, W.C.

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A fortnightly illustrated review of politics, art,
science and literature
Edited by G. A. di CESARO, M.P., and V I N G E N Z O PICARDI
La Rassegna Contemporanea publishes articles b y t h e best Italian w r i t e r s
and most p r o m i n e n t politicians. Subscriptions (post free for t h e r e a d e r s
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RHYTHM
LITERARY SUPPLEMENT March 1913
CONTENTS
Page
The Georgian Renaissance. By D. H. Lawrence xvii
Anton Tchekoff. By Gilbert Cannan xx
The Influence of Baudelaire. By J. Middleton Murry xxiii
The Canadian Kipling. By Frederick Goodyear xxvii
Max Beerbohm's Parodies. By Richard Curie xxix
Advertisements xxxi

THE GEORGIAN RENAISSANCE

By D. H. LAWRENCE.
" Georgian Poetry " is an anthology of verse which has been pub-
lished during the reign of our present king, George V. It contains
one poem of my own, but this fact will not, I hope, preclude my
reviewing the book.
This collection is like a big breath taken when we are waking up
after a night of oppressive dreams. The nihilists, the intellectual,
hopeless peopleIbsen, Flaubert, Thomas Hardyrepresent the
dream we are waking from. It was a dream of demolition. Nothing
was, but was nothing. Everything was taken from us. And now our
lungs are full of new air, and our eyes see it is morning, but we have
not forgotten the terror of the night. We dreamed we were falling
through space into nothingness, and the anguish of it leaves us rather
eager.
But we are awake again, our lungs are full of new air, our eyes of
morning. The first song is nearly a cry, fear and the pain of remem-
brance sharpening away the pure music. And that is this book.
The last years have been years of demolition. Because faith and
belief were getting pot-bound, and the Temple was made a place to
barter sacrifices, therefore faith and belief and the Temple must be
broken. This time Art fought the battle, rather than Science or any
new religious faction. And Art has been demolishing for us :
*" Georgian Poetry." The Poetry Bookshop. Edited by E. M. 3s. 6d. net.
xviii RHYTHM
Nietzsche the Christian Religion as it stood, Hardy our faith in our
own endeavour, Flaubert our belief in love. Now, for us, it is all
smashed, we can see the whole again. We were in prison, peeping at
the sky through loop-holes. The great prisoners smashed at the loop-
holes, for lying to us. And behold, out of the ruins leaps the whole sky.
It is we who see it and breathe in it for joy. God is there, faith,
belief, love, everything. We are drunk with the joy of it, having got
away from the fear. In almost every poem in the book comes this
note of exultation after fear, the exultation in the vast freedom, the
illimitable wealth that we have suddenly got.
" But send desire often forth to scan
The immense night that is thy greater soul,"
says Mr. Abercrombie. His deadly sin is Prudence, that will not risk
to avail itself of the new freedom. Mr. Bottomley exults to find men
forever building religions which yet can never compass all.
" Yet the yielding sky
Invincible vacancy was there discovered."
Mr. Rupert Brooke sees
" every glint
Posture and jest and thought and tint
Freed from the mask of transiency
Triumphant in eternity,
Immote, immortal "
and this at Afternoon Tea.
Mr. John Drinkwater sings :
" We cherish every hour that strays
Adown the cataract of days :
We see the clear, untroubled skies,
We see the glory of the rose "
Mr. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson hears the " terror turned to tenderness "
then
" I watched the mother sing to rest
The baby snuggling on her breast."
And to Mr. Masefield :
" When men count
Those hours of life that were a bursting fount
Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs,
There seems a world, beyond our earthly things,
Gated by golden moments."
It is all the samehope, and religious joy. Nothing is really wrong.
 THE GEORGIAN RENAISSANCE xix
Every new religion is a waste-product from the last, and every religion
stands for us for ever. We love Christianity for what it has brought us,
now that we are no longer upon the cross.
The great liberation gives us an overwhelming sense of joy, joie
d'etre, joie de vivre. This sense of exceeding keen relish and appre-
ciation of life makes romance. I think I could say every poem in the
book is romantic, tinged with a love of the marvellous, a joy of natural
things, as if the poet were a child for the first time on the seashore,
finding treasures. " Best trust the happy moments," says Mr. Mase-
field, who seems nearest to the black dream behind us. There is Mr.
W. H. Davies' lovely joy, Mr. De La Mare's perfect appreciation of life
at still moments, Mr. Rupert Brooke's brightness, when he " lived
from laugh to laugh," Mr. Edmund Beale Sargant's pure, excited
happiness in the woodlandit is all the same, keen zest in life found
wonderful. In Mr. Bottomley it is the zest of activity, of hurrying,
labouring men, or the zest of the utter stillness of long snows. It is a
bookful of Romance that has not quite got clear of the terror of realism.
There is no " Carpe diem " touch. The joy is sure and fast. It is
not the falling rose, but the rose for ever rising to bud and falling to
fruit that gives us joy. We have faith in the vastness of life's wealth.
We are always rich : rich in buds and in shed blossoms. There is no
winter that we fear. Life is like an orange tree, always in leaf and bud,
in blossom and fruit.
And we ourselves, in each of us, have everything. Somebody said :
" The Georgian Poets are not Love Poets. The influence of Swinburne
has gone." But I should say the Georgian Poets are just ripening to be
love-poets. Swinburne was no love-poet. What are the Georgian
poets, nearly all, but just bursting into a thick blaze of being. They
are not poets of passion, perhaps, but they are essentially passionate
poets. The time to be impersonal has gone. We start from the joy
we have in being ourselves, and everything must take colour from that
joy. It is the return of the blood, that has been held back, as when
the heart's action is arrested by fear. Now the warmth of blood is in
everything, quick, healthy, passionate blood. I look at my hands as I
write and know they are mine, with red blood running its way, sleuth-
ing out Truth and pursuing it to eternity, and I am full of awe for this
flesh and blood that holds this pen. Everything that ever was thought
and ever will be thought, lies in this body of mine. This flesh and blood
sitting here writing, the great impersonal flesh and blood, greater
than me, which I am proud to belong to, contains all the future. What
xx RHYTHM
is it but the quick of all growth, the seed of all harvest, this body of
mine. And grapes and corn and birds and rocks and visions, all are
in my fingers. I am so full of wonder at my own miracle of flesh and
blood that I could not contain myself, if I did not remember we are all
alive, have all of us living bodies. And that is a joy greater than any
dream of immortality in the spirit, to me. It reminds me of Rupert
Brooke's moment triumphant in its eternality ; and of Michael Angelo,
who is also the moment triumphant in its eternality; just the opposite
from Corot, who is the eternal triumphing over the moment, at the
moment, at the very point of sweeping it into the flow.
Of all love-poets, we are the love-poets. For our religion is loving.
To love passionately, but completely, is our one desire.
" What is " The Hare " but a complete love-poem, with none of the
hackneyed " But a bitter blossom was born " about it, nor yet the
Yeats, " Never give all the heart." Love is the greatest of all things,
no " bitter-blossom " nor such like. It is sex-passion, so separated,
in which we do not believe. The " Carmen " and " Tosca " sort of
passion is not interesting any longer, because it can't progress. Its
goal and aim is possession, whereas possession in love is only a means
to love. And because passion cannot go beyond possession, the
passionate heroes and heroinesTristans and what-notmust die.
We believe in the love that is happy ever after, progressive as life itself.
I worship Christ, I worship Jehovah, I worship Pan, I worship
Aphrodite. But I do not worship hands nailed and running with blood
upon a cross, nor licentiousness, nor lust. I want them all, all the
gods. They are all God. But I must serve in real love. If I take my
whole, passionate, spiritual and physical love to the woman who in
return loves me, that is how I serve God. And my hymn and my
game of joy is my work. All of which I read in the Anthology of
Georgian Poetry.

ANTON TCHEKOFF
By GILBERT CANNAN.
Tchekoff s work is only known to the English theatre by perform-
ances of " The Cherry Orchard," once in Glasgow, fortunately super-
vised by Mr. George Calderon, who has an understanding of Tchekoff's
technique, the other at the Stage Society,not so fortunately ; and by
* " T w o Plays by Tchekoff." Translated with an Introduction and Notes by George
Calderon. Grant Richards. 3s. 6d. net.
" Plays by Anton Tchekoff." Translated with an Introduction by Marian Fell. Duck-
worth. 6s.
 ANTON TCHEKOFF xxi
productions of the " Sea-gull " in Glasgow, and London. When the
much hoped for visit of the Moscow Theatre is accomplished, it is to
be hoped that the series will be produced so that some intelligent
person will perceive their full value in performance, and learn how to
give them with greater effect in the English theatre, with English
actors, before English audiences. I am afraid that " Uncle Vanya "
and "Ivanoff" will have to be re-translated, for in their present
version they are unactable, being without style. They have ceased to
be Russian and do not achieve an English convention of " Russian-
i s m u s . " All the same, if they are not given such a form as to make
them acceptable to the English public, yet they are and will be
increasingly valuable to English dramatists and producers and actors.
We in England are suffering from the rigid technique which has been
used so successfully by modern play-makers ever since Robertson,
a technique which has been worn so threadbare that critics and mana-
gers have ceased to look for anything in a play save what they call
" construction," that is to say, that if the bones of a piece of stage-work
stick out they can recognise it as a play, and if not, not. Now con-
struction is entirely a matter of machinery, and it must always be
accommodated to fit the theme of each play. The rigid technique of
the English theatre makes it impossible for a large number of themes
to be brought into it, so that the English drama is being strangled, and
from lack of variety is too weak to resist. The word " construction "
has become an instrument of tyranny, and I would suggest that it be
dodged by the adoption of another termarticulation. The plays of
Tchekoff, for instance, are properly articulate(he was a doctor and
understood his anatomy and the value of the skeleton) ; their bones
are properly fitted together to support and give free play to the flesh
and blood, muscles, nerves and sinews which he wished to impose
on them. His desire was not to have a scheme on to which he could
pin characters, dialogues and situations, or ideas, and criticism and
wit, but to present certain aspects of life in such a way, through the
medium of the stage, as to wring the beauty out of them. He is said
to have called his wonderful short stories " Tedious Tales," and these
plays of his might be called "Tedious Plays." They are, at any rate,
plays of tedium, of suspended action, of characters so helplessly
enmeshed in trivialities as to be capable of nothing save negation.
His Ivanoffs and Uncle Vanyas and Trigorins are driven by their
futility further and further away from life, and often so far as to come
by a despairingly translucent vision of life, which brings them to real
xxii RHYTHM
tragedy where their action must become positive, even if it be only
in the renunciation of suicide. Analysis of these plays does reveal a
very positive structure of the instinct for life seeking expression through
the mist of unimportant talk and meaningless and vain activities with
which existence is padded out, and how much more recognisably true
is the inaction of Tchekoff's plays than the faked action of our drama-
tists. Perhaps that is only to say that Tchekoff had genius and our
dramatists have not, and that Tchekoff was content to do his work for
its own sake, while here in England our playwrights do their work
to please the actors, for rewards, or credit, or reputation, or to avoid
quarrelling with their colleagues, or for any of the thousand and one
inadequate reasons why in this country so many people do set the
machinery of the theatre in motion.
Nearly all Tchekoff's plays end with a pistol-shot, not as a violent
solution (a la Mrs. Tanqueray) of an otherwise insoluble problem,
but as acceptance and realisation of the force of the world's purpose and
man's sinfulness in cheating it by the setting up of his own conceited
momentary illusions of pleasure or power in its place. Uncle Vanya
ends thus in renunciation and resignation :
" W e must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We
shall live through the long procession of days before us and through
the long evenings : we shall patiently bear the trials that fate impresses
on us : we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we
are old ; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and
then, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept,
that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us. . . We shall see
evil and all our pain sink away in the great compassion that shall
enfold the world. Our life will be as peaceful and tender and sweet
as a caress. I have faith ; I have faith. . . . My poor Uncle Vanya,
you are crying ! You have never known what happiness was, but wait,
Uncle Vanya, w a i t ! We shall rest. . . . We shall rest."
This spirit of compassion and tragic hope informs all the plays.
At their most despairing the writer's humour never deserts him, but
with its light fortifies the strength of weakness in dark places, dis-
covering faith, and leading to the final acceptance of life as a tragic
business, a mighty opportunity for which we are so inadequately
equipped, of which also, being the servants of the past and the future,
we cannot even within our limitations make full use.
In these plays one could go on almost indefinitely finding ethical
and moral significance, an absorbing occupation which is in itself a
 THE INFLUENCE OF BAUDELAIRE xxiii
tribute to the work that encourages it. These plays are art, a lense
through which to condense the light of life and to throw upon the screen
of the mind an idea, sound and round and fruitful, of life's meaning.
To have achieved this through the study of the most really miserable
and pitiful of human beings, those who are the most incapable of
rising to their opportunity and yet in their failure do attain the heroism
of living, is great. Depressing? Not a bit of it. It is only depressing
to the sentimentalist, who must have a comfortable formula for life,
but then, to such an one, all art must be distressing until it is sufficiently
coated with tradition and superstition to be fitted into his formula.
It is impossible to give a detailed account or analysis of these
plays. They are so finely articulated, so closely woven of detail and
thought and sympathy and emotionall finely " warped " by the
dramatic sensethat to take threads here and there would be to
unravel the textile. They should be read by all playgoers in antici-
pation of the visit of the Moscow Theatre in the summer. There can
be no doubt that in time they will find their way into the English
theatre and will there help to destroy the tyranny of " construction "
and give us the greater freedom of " articulation."

THE INFLUENCE OF BAUDELAIRE*

By JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY.
One of Matthew Arnold's strangest critical delusions in which
there was, as ever with him, an element of truth, was his treatment
of something which he called the Zeitgeist as a person. Certainly,
that such a thing existed in England to be reckoned with and fought
against was one of Arnold's great discoveries ; but it was part of his
insular pugnacity to insist on seeing Philistinism as a flesh and blood
beef-eating Goliath, in the capacity of a Member of Parliament
making self-congratulatory speeches to his Philistine constituents.
Unique in England in his knowledge that there was such a thing as a
Zeitgeist, at times he pretended to a kind of personal intimacy with it
which led him astray. As a matter of fact, the essence of a Zeitgeist
is to be elusive and vague ; it is, as it were, the least common factor
of the mental attitudes of a number of individuals, with their personal
attributes necessarily eliminated. Bad Zeitgeists do not make Jingo-
istic political speeches ; neither can good ones write transcendent
lyric poetry. A Zeitgeist is a mental attitude.
* " T h e Influence of Baudelaire in France and England." By G. Turquet-Milnes. Constable.
7s. 6d. net.
 xxiv RHYTHM
Matthew Arnold's mistake was comparatively unimportant, a
personal prejudice for anthropomorphism. There is a more serious
one which personifies the mental attitude of a generation in a par-
ticular person, and, forgetting that the particular person owes his
symbolic significance to the existence of a number of disparate in-
dividuals, tends to treat them as his dependents, much as a common
or garden Member of Parliament will airily refer to his constituents
as a portion of his personal property. A particular artist may well be
the most eminent and most gifted of a number of artists who possess
a certain community of mental attitude. It may be, for instance,
critically convenient even to call a certain period of English literature
the Shakespearean age ; but it must never be forgotten that such
t e r m s are nothing more than a kind of critical shorthand. In the end
we must consider the individuality as more significant than the com-
munity ; and the universal as possessing its real existence only in the
particular. To forget this is to open the way to critical mistakes of
the most serious.
This is the misconception which vitiates much of Miss Turquet-
Milnes' valuable book, " The Influence of Baudelaire in France and
England." That Baudelaire was an extremely significant figure in the
artistic development of the nineteenth century cannot be denied ; but
Baudelaire's significance is due to the fact that he was the most perfect
embodiment of a mental attitude which supervened in Europe after
the excitement and enthusiasm of the great Revolution had dissipated.
1789 and the reign of Reason had ended in military tyranny ; 1848
only paved the way for the coup d'etat. Europe had been shaken to its
foundations ; but the aristocracy of the old regime had been supplanted
by the timocracy of the Rothschilds. Somehow the old things re-
mained. Then the despairing cry was true : L'idealisme a cesse; le
lyrisme est tari. Political idealism was dead and gave place to a
crude material optimism, in essence the apotheosis of pessimism.
The artist mind, seeing no way of escape to the ideal, turned in upon
itself. Repelled by the charlatan extravagances of Honore de Balzac,
despising the vulgar political patriotism of Victor Hugo, the artist
found no liberation for the activities of his soul. Unable to enrich his
consciousness by gathering into himself the life that lay outside him,
he prided himself upon a false acquisition, and announced the dis-
covery that he had a soul, compact of strange unheard-of sensations.
He was blind to the fact that the articulation of his soul was a piece of
psychological mechanics which was of little importance compared with
 THE INFLUENCE OF BAUDELAIRE xxv
his soul's true function, much as though a hen should seriously con-
sider herself the queen of a poultry farm if she could explain the physio-
logical process by which an egg was produced, and yet should neglect
to lay one. But, though we may consider this mental attitude as wrong,
we must at least accept it as the almost inevitable result of the general
condition of France in the second generation of the nineteenth century.
Miss Turquet-Milnes admirably analyses the elements of this Baude-
lairian spirit as
1. The faculty of self-analysis and self-torment in love.
2. Pursuit of lust mingling with it a kind of sacrilegious pleasure.
Pursuit of sensation at any cost, with its inevitable consequences :
perversity and madness on the one hand, mysticism on the other ;
creation of a new language.
3. Moral anarchy, overwhelming pessimism, and terrible solitude
of the soul.
These characteristics are the expression of a certain mental attitude
which it may be convenient to label the " Baudelairian spirit " ; but
to contend that wherever in French or English literature this spirit
makes itself manifest we are entitled to ascribe it to the influence of
the author of " Les Fleurs du Mal," and to make this contention the
fundamental idea of a book, is a really serious critical non-sequitur,
and of this Miss Turquet-Milnes has been guilty.
It would be impossible here to examine with the necessary detail
the author's estimate of Baudelaire's influence in France. That it
was considerable and intimate is certain ; but a certain broad simi-
larity in mental outlook is not sufficient evidence. We seek the influ-
ence of Baudelaire's great individuality upon the individualities of
the generation that followed ; for surely Baudelaire's influence was
pre-eminently stylistic. The " Poemes en Prose " possess a line of
lineal descendants in virtue of their form alone, and their influence is
at work to-day through Arthur Rimbaud upon one of the most interest-
ing of the younger French literary movements, that of the " Fantais
istes." Miss Turquet-Milnes should have set herself this task before all
others, to follow out stylistic clues to their modern conclusions.
More obvious, however, are the shortcomings in her idea and her
method when she proceeds to consider the question of the influence of
Baudelaire in England. She finds it in a curious congeries of writers
and artists, in Swinburne, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Oscar Wilde,
Arthur Machen, George Moore, Richard Middleton, Alfred Douglas
and Aubrey Beardsley, as well as in Shelley, by anticipation. I myself
xxvi RHYTHM
cannot help thinking that Miss Milnes had her tongue in her cheek
when she wrote that " Shelley has too a Baudelairian keen perception
of the limits of utility." Or again, " There is another and less known
Baudelairian side of Shelleythe side that found pleasure in cultivating
weird fancies . . . ." At all events such phrases are as near down-
right critical absurdity as it is possible to get, not because they play the
deuce with chronologyinfluences are not always chronologicalbut
because they ignore the particular and individual excellences of Baude-
laire and Shelley. And so it is with Swinburne. In spite of the fact
that Swinburne's elegy upon Baudelaire may be cited as concrete proof
of influence, it shows a really mistaken estimate of the individual
importance of the English poet to treat him as the English Baudelairian
par excellence. Swinburne's importance in English literature, it must
be repeated again, is the importance of a remarkably good style.
Baudelaire's importance is of exactly the same kind. But no two styles
in the world are more utterly unlike than those of Swinburne and
Baudelaire. Swinburne's was never more happily described than by
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton in his latest book, as " a sort of fighting and
profane parody of the Old Testament." It is not subtle ; it is a blud-
geoning, pistolling, stand-and-deliver, and a very wonderful sort of
style. On the contrary, Baudelaire's style is really subtle ; it is the
concrete expression of the Baudelairian spirit. It does make manifest
hidden sensations and articulate the soul. We believe,and this is
what the difference really amounts towhen Baudelaire writes of some
strange emotion, that he really experienced it, and we feel it again.
The monsters that he conjures are really there, for all that we would
hurry to put them back again. But Swinburne's " Roses and raptures
of vice ". It is as though some Falstaff hit you in the small of the
back with a flagon of sack and roared : " I'm a pervert, I am, my old
buck." We want to laugh first. Then we think that the lines really
are terrific after all, in an adroit buccaneering kind of way, as though
Blackbeard had taken up one of his three-foot pistols and shot the pip
out of a playing card. The manner and the matter do not fit. We
never believe
" Yea, with red lips the faces of them shine ;
But in all these there was no sin like mine ;
No, not in all the strange great sins of them
That made the wine-press froth and foam with wine."
The mere Saxon monosyllables of the first couplet give Baudelairian
influence the lie. We never believe Swinburne's sensations. We always
 THE CANADIAN KIPLING xxvii
believe Baudelaire. Baudelaire's matter and manner always fit.
Swinburne's never. And if this is true of Swinburne, it is a thousand
times more true of Wilde.
The truth is that English aestheticism,and the so-called Renaissance
of the " Nineties " derive from sources very different from Baudelaire.
The true line of descent is English and insular, from Ruskin through
Walter Pater. It is the triumph of English literature that only in
England could style and matter be so discordant as in Swinburne, or
Oscar Wilde, the leader of the aesthetic movement, be guilty of such
execrable literary taste in the manufacture of his poetry. Baudelaire
would have been foremost in disowning such disciples. We should
never have heard so much of the so-called French influence upon our
literature of the nineties if Oscar Wilde had not been able to take
advantage of the abysmal ignorance of French literature then prevailing.
Wilde treated the French as a professional secret, a privately printed
book of pornography which he did not really understand, but yet
vaguely felt was beautifully written. This he tried to live up to ; but
the difficulties of the attempt were too much for him. The mere
idea of Wilde understanding Baudelaire, or Verlaine, or Laforgue or
Mallarme is something ludicrous. Even the French did not quite
assimilate Baudelaire. Jules Laforgue, that most wonderful of poets
and most exquisite of critics, divined this, when he says of Baude-
laire's successors : " Tous ses eleves ont glisse dans le paroxysme,
dans l 'horrible plat comme des carabins d 'estaminets.'' The paroxysts
of the English Baudelairians are the most ordinary pinch-beck con-
tortionists. " Baudelaire may be a cynic or mad ; he is never gross ;
there is never a wrong fold in the impressions with which he clothes
himself. He is always courteous with ugliness. He behaves well. . ."
said Laforgue. The English Baudelairians never behave. There is a
world of difference.

THE CANADIAN KIPLING*

By FREDERICK GOODYEAR
Mr. Robert W. Service is known and advertised as the Canadian
Kipling. The comparison, like all comparisons, is a challenge to the
reviewer. Now it is perfectly true that Mr. Service deals in his
poetry with the outposts of civilisation, the legion of the damned and
various Kiplingeries of that kind. Moreover, his metres, his explosive -
ness and his centripetal aim at those points of life where something
* " R h y m e s of a Rolling S t o n e . " By Robert W. Service. T. Fisher Unwin. 3s. 6d. net.
 xxviii RHYTHM
illuminating rises like an arc-light between strong desires and strong
inhibitions,all that, too, justifies the advertisement. Further, he
confesses in one poem in this book to having a Kipling on his knee.
On the other hand, he has not his model's clearness and craft in writing;
that could scarcely be expected ; and to say he is not so good as Kipling
is not of course to say that he is not of the Kipling clan. But there is
something in the spirit of his verse, the angle from which he sees life,
his implicit morality, that places him so far from Kipling as to make
the juxtaposition of the two essentially deceptive, despite any lesser
resemblances. It is something supersubtle ; otherwise it could not
be important. But it amounts to this, that, although Mr. Service has
a certain artistic plausibility, he certainly cannot attain artistic truth.
I believe that it was Mr. J . M. Barrie who said that Kipling was " born
blase." No doubt he said it plaintively. But what he really meant
was that Kipling was born an artist. To the sentimental an artist
always seems blase ; and it is difficult to prove that he is not merely
blase, except by asking how on earth he turns out such thumping good
stuff. The sentimental answer is that it is not good, because it is
blase ; at which point the argument becomes passionate and physical.
Now I cannot imagine any common man finding Mr. Service blase ;
I cannot imagine him writhing in contortions of impotent envy because
Mr. Service was a cut above him. True, Kipling does not get much
writhed a t ; partly because he has disastrous lapses that reconcile
the worst people, partly because he arms himself with humour, partly
because his fondness for dramatic monologue allows him, very
properly, to say what he does not mean. He is a liar, just as Homer
was, according to Aristotle, the prince of liars. But poor Mr. Service
could not lie ; he believes abjectly in white men and white girls and
vicious fellows who get pitchforked into Heaven, where they would
feel hopelessly contemptuous and superior, in virtue of turning up
some physical kind of trumps in the end. If he went out to advocate
or oppose women's suffrage, he could not achieve anything like " For
the female of the species is more deadly than the male," which, bad
as it is, is surprisingly philosophical in its context. In fact, Mr.
Service is melodramatic and uncivilised. For all his trick of words,
he cannot be any better than the other Sourdoughs and Cheechakos.
He sees the Yukon sub specie Yukonitatis : he is parochial. No
doubt it is something to have delimited a parish rather nearer the
North Pole than any other litterateur. It is to me an interesting fact,
which I appreciate much as I appreciate my dinner. But what has it
 MAX BEERBOHM'S PARODIES xxix
to do with me when wrapt in my rhythmic cubo-spheroid ? Nothing
at all. In so far as I want more Klondyke, I want it banausically ; my
banausic self might go there,if my rhythmic self allowed it any energies.
No, as a critic, I cast out Klondyke till it comes to me sub specie
eternitatis. Mahomet won't go to the mountain, and the mountain must
be considerably astralised before it can be brought along to Mahomet.
Wanted in Alaska, a literary Picasso :that's the gist of the matter.
F. G.
MAX BEERBOHM'S PARODIES
By RICHARD CURLE.
Will anyone who objects to this review please remember that I am
writing it on board the " Caronia," within sight of the rocky Italian
coast ? The sea is calm, the sky cloudless, and we are due into Naples
bay in a few hours. These may be ideal conditions in one sense, but
they are not the ideal conditions under which to write a review and,
above all, a review of a book such as " A Christmas Garland." For
caricature is about as artificial a form of literature as you could wish
formore suitable, let us say, for a London study on a winter night
than for a fine morning in the Mediterranean. However, there are
prejudices in all directions
Of course, one can't help seeing the extraordinary cleverness of
most of these parodies. I don't know which are the bestperhaps
the Meredith, the A. C. Benson, and the Galsworthy. But it's hard to
choose. The Bennett, the Henry James, the Wells, the Chesterton,
the Kipling, the Frank Harris, the Belloc, the Shaw, and the George
Moore are all brilliant, even astonishingly brilliant. That leaves but
five unmentionedthe Hardy, the Hewlett, the Conrad, the G. S.
Street, and the Edmund Gosse. Of these, the Hardy seems to me poor,
and the Hewlett, though amusing, too exaggerated to be legitimate.
As for the Conrad, it's pretty poor also. Mr. Beerbohm (or should
I be calling him " the inimitable Max " ?) doesn't altogether get hold
of Conrad. For him the swift subtlety of a Meredith rather than the
romantic intensity of a Conradin other words, the drawing-room
rather than the forest. Well, I don't mean that in any ill-natured sense
it's just interesting to note in passing. As a matter of fact, " the
inimitable Max " is rather too finished a product for my taste, but I
don't let that interfere unduly with my enjoyment. But was it worth
while writing parodies of G. S. Street and Edmund Gosseare they
sufficiently well known ?
The penetrating observation behind most of these little chapters
* " A Christinas Garland." Woven by Max Beerbohn. 5s. net. Heinemann.
xxx RHYTHM
reveals itself to the reader in the most convincing of waysin a sense
of almost personal shame. As Mr. Beerbohm, unfolding an episode
in the exaggerated manner of one of his victims, shows us with airy
lightness the weak spots in his armour, we grow hot and cold all over.
It's almost like watching a member of one's own family perform in
public. He's got a devilish rapier touch has Max, a devilish touch
and, generally speaking, a very sure one. Just listen to the beginning
of the A. C. Bensononly, excuse me, this parody is but an added
refinement to discomfort. To read the real Mr. A. C. Benson is not
exactly exhilarating. However, here is the simulacrum :
" More and more, as the tranquil years went by, Percy found him-
self able to draw a quiet satisfaction from the regularity, the even
sureness, with which, in every year, one season succeeded to another.
In boyhood he had felt always a little sad at the approach of autumn.
The yellowing leaves of the lime trees, the creeper that blushed to so
deep a crimson against the old grey walls, the chrysanthemums that
shed so prodigally their petals on the smooth green lawnall these
things, beautiful and wonderful though they were, were somehow a
little melancholy also, as being signs of the year's decay. Once, when
he was fourteen or fifteen years old, he had overheard a friend of the
family say to his father, ' How the days are drawing in ! 'a remark
which set him thinking deeply, with an almost morbid abandonment
to gloom, for quite a long t i m e . "
How excessively clever of Max to have created this Benson atmo-
sphere with just that spice of exaggeration which turns his usual
sentimental triteness into something unspeakably vapid. To seize
the spirit and to lose the sense that is the triumph of the caricaturist.
Max is both malicious and good-natured. You feel the universal
animus of a sprite but none of the bitter personal animus of a human
being. He may give offence, but it will be against his intentionthat,
at any rate, is how it strikes me. I may be wrongit doesn't much
matterbut I hope I'm right, because I like to understand psychology.
And the psychology of a caricaturist, and, in particular, a caricaturist
who can write so well in the manner of Wells, and so comparatively
badly in the manner of Conrad, must be worth understanding. But
I'm afraid Max is an out-of-date product. He belongs to the Yellow
Book of the '90s, and to the worshipping followers of George Meredith.
He may still be inimitable, but nowadays he wouldn't find too many
people who would want to challenge his position. When he can make
a really successful parody of Conrad, we may begin to count him
among the moderns. Till then, au revoir, as far as I am concerned.

Univ. of Tulsa Library

Tulsa, Oklahoma
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