The Silent Isle by Arthur Christopher Benson (top non fiction books of all time .txt) 📖

a book they seem to me to be nothing but barbarous and foolish games of childish import.

Another year he found some Finnish legends when he was on a yachting cruise, which he translated into an ungainly English. The tales are utterly worthless, not a spark of romance from beginning to end, only typical of an age which I humbly thank God we have left behind.

This year he is full of Balearic music; he played me a number of dreary and monotonous tunes, which he said were so characteristic. But if they were characteristic, and I have no reason to doubt his word, they only seem to me to prove that those islanders are destitute of musical taste and instinct to a quite singular degree.

While I was up in town, my friends certainly did their best to amuse me; they had agreeable people of a literary type to luncheon, tea, and dinner. We heard some music, we went to a play or two, we went to look at some pictures. But I confess to having laboured under an increasing depression, because the whole thing was conducted by rule and line, and in a terribly businesslike way; we knew beforehand exactly what we were to look out for. We did not go in a liberal and expectant spirit, hoping that we might find or see or hear some unexpectedly beautiful thing, but we went in a severely critical spirit, to see if we could detect how the painters and musicians, whose art we were to inspect, deviated from received methods. We went, indeed, not to gain an impression of originality and personality, but to look out for certain tabulated qualities; it depressed me too, perhaps unduly, to hear the jargon with which these criticisms were heralded. The triumph appeared to be to use a set of terms, appropriate to one art, of the effects produced by the others; thus in music we went in search of colour and light, of atmospheric effect and curve; in painting it seemed we were in search of harmony, rhythm, and tone. I should not have minded if I had felt that these words really meant anything in the minds of those who used them; but it seemed to me that the critics were more in love with their terminology than with the effects themselves; and still more, that they went not to form novel impressions, but to search for things which they had been told to expect.

It was the same with the treatment of literature; it all seemed reduced to a game played with counters. There was no simplicity of apprehension; the point seemed to be to apply a certain set of phrases as decisively as possible. I never heard a generous appreciation of a book; what I rather heard was trivial gossip about the author, followed by shallow, and I thought pedantic, judgments upon an author's lack of movement or aerial quality. If one of the approved authors under discussion seemed to me painfully sordid and debased, one was told to look out for his tonic realism and his virile force. How many times in those sad hours was I informed that the artist had no concern with ethical problems! If I maintained that an artist's concern is with any motives that sway humanity, I was told smilingly that I wanted to treat art in the spirit of a nursery governess. If, on the other hand, a book appeared to me utterly unreal and false, I was told that it was typical and spiritual, and that the conception of the artist must not be limited by his experience, but that he arrived at correct intuitions by the force of penetrating insight and by the swift inference of genius.

What seemed to me to be absent from it all was the spirit of liberty, of frank enjoyment, of eager apprehension. I do not say that my friends seemed to me to admire all the wrong things; they had abundant appreciation for certain masters, both in art and music; but I felt that they swallowed masters whole, without any discrimination, and that the entire thing was a matter of tradition and rule and precept and authority, not of irresponsible and ardent enjoyment. It was all systematised and regulated; there was no question of personal preferences. The aim of the perceptive man was to find out what was the correct standard of good taste, and then to express his agreement with it in elaborate phrases. Most of the party were of the same type. Not that they were oddly-dressed, haggard, affected women or long-haired, pretentious, grotesque men. I have been at such coteries, too, where they praised each other's work with odd, passionate cries and wriggling, fantastic gestures. That is terrible too, because that is culture which has turned rancid. But at my friend's house it was not rancid at all, it was simply unassimilated. My friend himself handed out culture in neat pieces, carefully done up, as a vendor of toffee might hand it out to purchasers; and the people who came there, well-dressed, amiable, quiet, courteous people, would have been delightful if they had not been so cultivated. Culture lay about in lumps; it had never soaked in. The result was that I felt I could never get to know any of these agreeable people at all. One tried to talk, and one was met with a proffer of a lump of culture. Then, as I say, it was all in pieces; it was not part of a plan or an attitude of mind; it had all been laboriously collected, and it was just as it had been discovered; it did not seem to have undergone any mental process.

And then, further, I felt that it was all too comfortable--it was all built on a foundation of comfort; that lay really at the bottom of it all. The house was too full of beautiful things; the dinner was too long and too good; the wine was too choice. I am not going to pretend that I do not like comfort; but I do not like luxury, and this was luxurious. I do not want to have a long and elaborate dinner; it should be simplex munditiis, as Horace said. And beautiful pictures and furniture are more beautiful if there is not too much of them. One felt, in this warm, fragrant house, with every room and wall crammed with charming objects, with every desire anticipated, the dinner-table bright with flowers and silver, with "orient liquor in a crystal glass," as if one stifled under a load of delights; I yearned for plainer rooms and simpler fare, and for freer and more genuine talk. One felt that the aim of the circle was satisfaction rather than beauty; to be sheltered and caressed rather than to be invigorated and tranquillised.

I was standing in a drawing-room one night before dinner, already sated with the food, the talk, the music, and the art of the day, as the guests began to arrive: such clean, brilliant men, faultlessly appointed; such beautiful and delicate women, with a vague sense of fragrance and jewels, came stealing in. Suddenly among the company there came stalking in a great literary man, an old friend of my own; handsome, too, and well-appointed enough, but with a touch of roughness and vigour that made him, I thought, like a chieftain among courtiers; and wearing the haggard air of the man who toils at his art, and cannot achieve his incommunicable hopes or capture his divine dreams. He came up to me, smiling, in a secluded corner. "Hullo," he said, "mon vieux! who would have thought of finding you here in the island of Circe?"

"I might ask the same question," I said. "But perhaps I have the sacred herb, moly, the 'small unsightly root' in my bosom, to guard me against the spells."

"The leaf has prickles on it," he said, with a smile; "there is nothing prickly about our friends here."

This was mere sword-play, of course, not real talk; and then we had five minutes' talk which I will not put down, because I should betray secrets, and secrets too in their rough, uncut form, the gems of art, which must be cut before they are presented. But I got more out of those five minutes than I did out of the rest of my visit.

Presently we went in to dinner, and the performance began. How skilfully it was all guided and modulated by our host, who was in his best form. What delicate flies he threw over his fish; how softly they rose to them. The talk flashed to and fro; the groups formed, broke, re-formed. But it was a shallow stream; there was no zeal or vehemence; it was all polished, deft, superficial, conventional. It was like playing an agile and elaborate game; and I felt that those who took part in it were congratulating themselves on the brilliance of the affair. Education, religion, art, poetry, music--we had something to say about all; and yet I felt that no light had been thrown upon anything. A lady of high rank gave me her views upon the writing of English prose, with the air of one speaking condescendingly from Olympus, which, as we know, was above even Parnassus. In the middle I caught the eye of the great man, who was opposite me; he gave me a mournful smile, and I read his thoughts. When the ladies had withdrawn, my host, with a determined air as of a man above prejudice, started the conversation on rather more virile lines; and the result was a certain amount of delicately risque talk. But even here we felt that it was not human nature that was revealed. It was Voltairean rather than Rabelaisian; and I dislike both. Then afterwards we sank into luxurious chairs in the rich perfumed drawing-room; we talked low and impressively to charming ladies; there was some exquisite music, so pure and sweet that it seemed to me to put to shame the complex and elaborate pageant of life in which we took part; and outside, one remembered, there were the rain-splashed streets, the homeless wind; and the toiling multitudes that made such delights possible, and gave of their dreary, sordid labour that we might sit thus at ease. The whole thing seemed artificial, soulless, hectic, unreal. One could not help thinking of Dives and Lazarus, that strange parable that has so stern a moral. "But now he is comforted and thou art tormented." It is not suggested there that vice is punished and virtue rewarded; merely that wealth is penalised and poverty compensated.

Well, it is a great mystery. No uneasy doubt as to the rightness of things, as they are, ever troubled the mind of my serene host or his gracious wife. The following morning I went away; I was sped on my way with courteous kindness; but all the attention I received lies somewhat heavy on my heart. I do not know how I could express to my friends what I felt; they would not understand it if I tried to explain it. They think of me as a queer rustic being, fond of a lonely life; they feel, unconsciously enough, that they are conferring a benefit upon me by enabling me to set foot in so cultured a circle; and there is no sense of patronage about this--nothing but real kindness. But they feel that they are in possession of the higher and more beautiful life, and I have no sort of doubt that they believe I regard their paradise with envy; that I would live the same life if I had the means. I fully admit that I am not nearly so perfectly equipped with culture as my friends. I have not got a quarter of their stock or of their