Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith
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Logan Pearsall Smith >> Trivia
_In the Pulpit_
The Vicar had certain literary tastes; in his youth he had
written an _Ode to the Moon_; and he would speak of the
difficulty he found in composing his sermons, week after week.
Now I felt that if I composed and preached sermons, I should by
no means confine myself to the Vicar's threadbare subjects--
should preach the Wrath of God, and sound the Last Trump in
the ears of my Hell-doomed congregation, cracking the heavens
and dissolving the earth with the eclipses and thunders and
earthquakes of the Day of Judgment. Then I might refresh them
with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach
of Reason--Predestination, Election, the Co-existences and
Co-eternities of the incomprehensible Triad. And with what a
holy vehemence would I exclaim and cry out against all forms
of doctrinal Error--all the execrable hypotheses of the great
Heresiarchs! Then there would be many ancient and learned and
out-of-the-way Iniquities to denounce, and splendid, neglected
Virtues to inculcate--Apostolic Poverty, and Virginity, that
precious jewel, that fair garland, so prized in Heaven, but so
rare on earth.
For in the range of creeds and morals it is the highest peaks
that shine for me with a certain splendour: it is toward those
radiant Alps that, if I were a Clergyman, I would lead my flock
to pasture.
_Human Ends_
I really was impressed, as we paced up and down the avenue, by
the Vicar's words and weighty, weighed advice. He spoke of the
various professions; mentioned contemporaries of his own who had
achieved success: how one had a Seat in Parliament, would be
given a Seat in the Cabinet when his party next came in; another
was a Bishop with a Seat in the House of Lords; a third was a
Barrister who was soon, it was said, to be raised to the Bench.
But in spite of my good intentions, my real wish to find,
before it is too late, some career or other for myself (and
the question is getting serious), I am far too much at the
mercy of ludicrous images. Front Seats, Episcopal, Judicial,
Parliamentary Benches--were all the ends then, I asked my self,
of serious, middle-aged ambition only things to sit on?
_Lord Arden_
"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar, "I should shut up that
great House; it's too big--what can a young unmarried man...?"
"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar's wife (and Mrs. La
Mountain's tone showed how much she disapproved of that young
Nobleman), "if I were Lord Arden, I should live there, and do my
duty to my tenants and neighbours."
"If I were Lord Arden," I said; but then it flashed vividly
into my mind, suppose I really were this opulent young Lord?
I quite forgot to whom I was talking; my memory was occupied
with the names of people who had been famous for their enormous
pleasures; who had filled their Palaces with guilty revels, and
built Pyramids, Obelisks, and half-acre Tombs, to soothe their
Pride. My mind kindled at the thought of these Audacities. "If
I were Lord Arden!" I cried....
_The Starry Heaven_
"But what are they really? What do they say they are?" the small
young lady asked me. We were looking up at the Stars, which were
quivering that night in splendid hosts above the lawns and
trees.
So I tried to explain some of the views that have been held
about them. How people first of all had thought them mere
candles set in the sky, to guide their own footsteps when the
Sun was gone; till wise men, sitting on the Chaldean plains, and
watching them with aged eyes, became impressed with the solemn
view that those still and shining lights were the executioners
of God's decrees, and irresistible instruments of His Wrath; and
that they moved fatally among their celestial Houses to ordain
and set out the fortunes and misfortunes of each race of newborn
mortals. And so it was believed that every man or woman had,
from the cradle, fighting for or against him or her, some great
Star, Formalhaut, perhaps, Aldebaran, Altair: while great Heroes
and Princes were more splendidly attended, and marched out to
their forgotten battles with troops and armies of heavenly
Constellations.
But this noble old view was not believed in now; the Stars were
no longer regarded as malignant or beneficent Powers; and I
explained how most serious people thought that somewhere--though
just where they did not know--above the vault of Sky, was to be
found the final home of earnest men and women; where, as a
reward for their right views and conduct, they were to rejoice
forever, wearing those diamonds of the starry night arranged in
glorious crowns. This notion, however, had been disputed by
Poets and Lovers: it was Love, according to these young
astronomers, that moved the Sun and other Stars; the
Constellations being heavenly palaces, where people who had
adored each other were to meet and live always together after
Death.
Then I spoke of the modern and real immensity of the unfathomed
Skies. But suddenly the vast meaning of my words rushed into my
mind; I felt myself dwindling, falling through the blue. And
yet, in these silent seconds, there thrilled through me in the
cool sweet air and night no chill of death or nothingness; but
the taste and joy of this Earth, this orchard-plot of earth,
floating unknown, far away in unfathomed space, with its Moon
and meadows.
_My Map_
The "Known World" I called the map which I amused myself making
for the children's schoolroom. It included France, England,
Italy, Greece, and all the old shores of the Mediterranean; but
the rest I marked "Unknown"; sketching into the East the
doubtful realms of Ninus and Semiramis; changing back Germany
into the Hyrcanian Forest; and drawing pictures of the supposed
inhabitants of these unexplored regions, Dog-Apes, Satyrs,
Cannibals, and Misanthropes, Cimmerians involved in darkness,
Amazons, and Headless Men. And all around the Map I coiled the
coils, and curled the curling waves of the great Sea _Oceanum_,
with the bursting cheeks of the four Winds, blowing from the
four imagined hinges of the Universe.
_The Snob_
As I paced in fine company on that Terrace, I felt chosen,
exempt, and curiously happy. There was a glamour in the air, a
something in the special flavour of that moment that was like
the consciousness of Salvation, or the smell of ripe peaches on
a sunny wall.
I know what you're going to call me, Reader. But I am not to be
bullied and abashed by words. And after all, why not let oneself
be dazzled and enchanted? Are not Illusions pleasant, and is
this a world in which Romance hangs on every tree?
And how about your own life? Is that, then, so full of golden
visions?
_Companions_
Dearest, prettiest, and sweetest of my retinue, who gather
with delicate industry bits of silk and down from the bleak
world to make the soft nest of my fatuous repose; who ever
whisper honied words in my ear, or trip before me holding up
deceiving mirrors--is it Hope, or is it not rather Vanity,
that I love the best?
_Edification_
"I must really improve my Mind," I tell myself, and once more
begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and
toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears
off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange
birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh
in the tumbling chimneys.
_The Rose_
The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her
garden, and was fond of telling how it had grown from a cutting
she had brought years before from Italy, when she was first
married. She and her husband had been travelling back in their
carriage from Rome (it was before the time of railways), and on
a bad piece of road south of Siena they had broken down, and had
been forced to pass the night in a little house by the roadside.
The accommodation was wretched of course; she had spent a
sleepless night, and rising early had stood, wrapped up, at her
window, with the cool air blowing on her face, to watch the
dawn. She could still, after all these years, remember the blue
mountains with the bright moon above them, and how a far-off
town on one of the peaks had gradually grown whiter and whiter,
till the moon faded, the mountains were touched with the pink
of the rising sun, and suddenly the town was lit as by an
illumination, one window after another catching and reflecting
the sun's beams, till at last the whole little city twinkled and
sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars.
That morning, finding they would have to wait while their
carriage was being repaired, they had driven in a local
conveyance up to the city on the mountain, where they had been
told they would find better quarters; and there they had stayed
two or three days. It was one of the miniature Italian cities
with a high church, a pretentious piazza, a few narrow streets
and little palaces, perched all compact and complete, on the top
of a mountain, within an enclosure of walls hardly larger than
an English kitchen garden. But it was full of life and noise,
echoing all day and all night with the sounds of feet and
voices.
The Cafe of the simple inn where they stayed was the meeting-place
of the notabilities of the little city; the _Sindaco_, the
_avvocato_, the doctor, and a few others; and among them they
noticed a beautiful, slim, talkative old man, with bright black
eyes and snow-white hair--tail and straight and still with
the figure of a youth, although the waiter told them with
pride that the _Conte_ was _molto vecchio_--would in fact be
eighty in the following year. He was the last of his family, the
waiter added--they had once been great and rich people--but he
had no descendants; in fact the waiter mentioned with complacency,
as if it were a story on which the locality prided itself, that
the _Conte_ had been unfortunate in love, and had never married.
The old gentleman, however, seemed cheerful enough; and it was
plain that he took an interest in the strangers, and wished to
make their acquaintance. This was soon effected by the friendly
waiter; and after a little talk the old man invited them to
visit his villa and garden which were just outside the walls of
the town. So the next afternoon, when the sun began to descend,
and they saw in glimpses through doorways and windows blue
shadows beginning to spread over the brown mountains, they went
to pay their visit. It was not much of a place, a small,
modernized stucco villa, with a hot pebbly garden, and in it a
stone basin with torpid gold fish, and a statue of Diana and her
hounds against the wall. But what gave a glory to it was a
gigantic rose-tree which clambered over the house, almost
smothering the windows, and filling the air with the perfume
of its sweetness. Yes, it was a fine rose, the _Conte_ said
proudly when they praised it, and he would tell the Signora
about it. And as they sat there, drinking the wine he offered
them, he alluded with the cheerful indifference of old age to
his love-affair, as though he took for granted that they had
heard of it already.
"The lady lived across the valley there beyond that hill. I was
a young man then, for it was many years ago. I used to ride over
to see her; it was a long way, but I rode fast, for young men,
as no doubt the Signora knows, are impatient. But the lady was
not kind, she would keep me waiting, oh, for hours; and one day
when I had waited very long I grew very angry, and as I walked
up and down in the garden where she had told me she would see
me, I broke one of her roses, broke a branch from it; and when I
saw what I had done, I hid it inside my coat--so--and when I
came home I planted it, and the Signora sees how it has grown.
If the Signora admires it, I must give her a cutting to plant
also in her garden; I am told the English have beautiful gardens
that are green, and not burnt with the sun like ours."
The next day, when their mended carriage had come up to fetch
them, and they were just starting to drive away from the inn,
the _Conte's_ old servant appeared with the rose-cutting neatly
wrapped up, and the compliments and wishes for a _buon viaggio_
from her master. The town collected to see them depart, and the
children ran after their carriage through the gate of the little
city. They heard a rush of feet behind them for a few moments,
but soon they were far down toward the valley; the little town
with all its noise and life was high above them on its mountain
peak.
She had planted the rose at home, where it had grown and
flourished in a wonderful manner, and every June the great mass
of leaves and shoots still broke out into a passionate splendour
of scent and scarlet colour, as if in its root and fibres there
still burnt the anger and thwarted desire of that Italian lover.
Of course the old _Conte_ must have died many years ago; she had
forgotten his name, and had even forgotten the name of the
mountain city that she had stayed in, after first seeing it
twinkling at dawn in the sky, like a nest of stars.
_The Vicar of Lynch_
When I heard through country gossip of the strange happening at
Lynch which had caused so great a scandal, and led to the
disappearance of the deaf old Vicar of that remote village, I
collected all the reports I could about it, for I felt that at
the centre of this uncomprehending talk and wild anecdote there
was something with more meaning than a mere sudden outbreak of
blasphemy and madness.
It appeared that the old Vicar, after some years spent in the
quiet discharge of his parochial duties, had been noticed to
become more and more odd in his appearance and behaviour; and
it was also said that he had gradually introduced certain
alterations into the Church services. These had been vaguely
supposed at the time to be of a High Church character, but
afterwards they were put down to a growing mental derangement,
which had finally culminated at that notorious Harvest Festival,
when his career as a clergyman of the Church of England had
ended. On this painful occasion the old man had come into church
outlandishly dressed, and had gone through a service with
chanted gibberish and unaccustomed gestures, and prayers which
were unfamiliar to his congregation. There was also talk of a
woman's figure on the altar, which the Vicar had unveiled at a
solemn moment in this performance; and I also heard echo of
other gossip--gossip that was, however, authoritatively
contradicted and suppressed as much as possible--about the use
of certain other symbols of a most unsuitable kind. Then a few
days after the old man had disappeared--some of the neighbours
believed that he was dead; some, that he was now shut up in an
asylum for the insane.
Such was the fantastic and almost incredible talk I listened to,
but in which, as I say, I found much more meaning than my
neighbours. For one thing, although they knew that the Vicar had
come from Oxford to this remote College living, they knew
nothing of his work and scholarly reputation in that University,
and none of them had probably ever heard of--much less read--an
important book which he had written, and which was the standard
work on his special subject. To them he was simply a deaf,
eccentric, and solitary clergyman; and I think I was the only
person in the neighbourhood who had conversed with him on the
subject concerning which he was the greatest living authority in
England.
For I had seen the old man once--curiously enough at the time of
a Harvest Festival, though it was some years before the one
which had led to his disappearance. Bicycling one day over the
hills, I had ridden down into a valley of cornfields, and then,
passing along an unfenced road that ran across a wide expanse of
stubble, I came, after getting off to open three or four gates,
upon a group of thatched cottages, with a little, unrestored
Norman church standing among great elms, I left my bicycle and
walked through the churchyard, and as I went into the church,
through its deeply-recessed Norman doorway, a surprisingly
pretty sight met my eyes. The dim, cool, little interior was
set out and richly adorned with an abundance of fruit and
vegetables, yellow gourds, apples and plums and golden wheat
sheaves, great loaves of bread, and garlands of September
flowers. A shabby-looking old clergyman was standing on the top
of a step-ladder, finishing the decorations, when I entered. As
soon as he saw me he came down, and I spoke to him, praising the
decorations, and raising my voice a little, for I noticed that
he was somewhat deaf. We talked of the Harvest Festival, and as
I soon perceived that I was talking with a man of books and
University education, I ventured to hint at what had vividly
impressed me in that old, gaudily-decorated church--its pagan
character, as if it were a rude archaic temple in some corner of
the antique world, which had been adorned, two thousand years
ago, by pious country folk for some local festival. The old
clergyman was not in the least shocked by my remark; it seemed
indeed rather to please him; there was, he agreed, something of
a pagan character in the modern Harvest Festival--it was no
doubt a bit of the old primitive Vegetation Ritual, the old
Religion of the soil; a Festival, which, like so many others,
had not been destroyed by Christianity, but absorbed into it,
and given a new meaning. "Indeed," he added, talking on as if
the subject interested him, and expressing himself with a
certain donnish carefulness of speech that I found pleasant to
listen to, "the Harvest Festival is undoubtedly a survival of
the prehistoric worship of that Corn Goddess who, in classical
times, was called Demeter and Ioulo and Ceres, but whose cult as
an Earth-Mother and Corn-Spirit is of much greater antiquity.
For there is no doubt that this Vegetation Spirit has been
worshipped from the earliest times by agricultural peoples; the
wheat fields and ripe harvests being naturally suggestive of the
presence amid the corn of a kindly Being, who, in return for due
rites and offerings, will vouchsafe nourishing rains and golden
harvests." He mentioned the references in Virgil, and the
description in Theocritus of a Sicilian Harvest Festival--these
were no doubt familiar to me; but if I was interested in the
subject, I should find, he said, much more information collected
in a book which he had written, but of which I had probably
never heard, about the Vegetation Deities in Greek Religion. As
it happened I knew the book, and felt now much interested in my
chance meeting with the distinguished author; and after
expressing this as best I could, I rode off, promising to visit
him again. This promise I was never able to fulfil; but when
afterwards, on my return to the neighbourhood, I heard of that
unhappy scandal, my memory of this meeting and our talk enabled
me to form a theory as to what had really happened.
It seemed plain to me that the change had been too violent for
this elderly scholar, taken from his books and college rooms and
set down in the solitude of this remote valley, amid the
richness and living sap of Nature. The gay spectacle, right
under his old eyes, of growing shoots and budding foliage, of
blossoming and flowering, and the ripening of fruits and crops,
had little by little (such was my theory) unhinged his brains.
More and more his thoughts had come to dwell, not on the
doctrines of the Church in which he had long ago taken orders,
but on the pagan rites which had formed his life-long study,
and which had been the expression of a life not unlike the
agricultural life amid which he now found himself living. So as
his derangement grew upon him in his solitude, he had gradually
transformed, with a maniac's cunning, the Christian services,
and led his little congregation, all unknown to themselves, back
toward their ancestral worship of the Corn-Goddess. At last he
had thrown away all disguise, and had appeared as a hierophant
of Demeter, dressed in a fawn skin, with a crown of poplar
leaves, and pedantically carrying the mystic basket and the
winnowing fan appropriate to these mysteries. The wheaten posset
he offered the shocked communicants belonged to these also, and
the figure of a woman on the altar was of course the holy
Wheatsheaf, whose unveiling was the culminating point in that
famous ritual.
It is much to be regretted that I could not recover full and
more exact details of that celebration in which this great
scholar had probably embodied his mature knowledge concerning a
subject which has puzzled generations of students. But what
powers of careful observation could one expect from a group of
labourers and small farmers? Some of the things that reached my
ears I refused to believe--the mention of pig's blood for
instance, and especially the talk of certain grosser symbols,
which the choir boys, it was whispered, had carried about the
church in ceremonious procession. Village people have strange
imaginations; and to this event, growing more and more monstrous
as they talked it over, they must themselves have added this
grotesque detail. However, I have written to consult an Oxford
authority on this interesting point, and he has been kind enough
to explain at length that although at the _Haloa_, or winter
festival of the Corn-Goddess, and also at the _Chloeia_, or
festival in early spring, some symbolization of the reproductive
powers of Nature would be proper and appropriate, it would have
been quite out of place at the _Thalysia_, or autumn festival of
thanksgiving. I feel certain that a solecism of this nature--the
introduction into a particular rite of features not sanctioned
by the texts--would have seemed a shocking thing, even to the
unhinged mind of one who had always been so careful a scholar.
_Tu Quoque Fontium_
Just to sit in the Sun, to bask like an animal in its heat--this
is one of my country recreations. And often I reflect what a
thing after all it is still to be alive and sitting here, above
all the buried people of the world, in the kind and famous
Sunshine.
Beyond the orchard there is a place where the stream, hurrying out
from under a bridge, makes for itself a quiet pool. A beech-tree
upholds its green light over the blue water; and there, when I
have grown weary of the sun, the great glaring indiscriminating
Sun, I can shade myself and read my book. And listening to this
water's pretty voices I invent for it exquisite epithets, calling
it _silver-clean_ or _moss-margined_ or _nymph-frequented_, and
idly promise to place it among the learned fountains and pools
of the world, making of it a cool green thought for English exiles
in the dust and glare of Eastern deserts.
_The Spider_
What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind?
To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to
a barrel full of floating froth and refuse?
No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung
on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with
dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the
Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny
Soul.
BOOK II
_"Thou, Trivia, goddess, aid my song: Through spacious streets
conduct thy bard along."_
Gay's _Trivia, or New Art of Walking Streets of London._
_L'oiseau Bleu_
What is it, I have more than once asked myself, what is it that
I am looking for in my walks about London? Sometimes it seems to
me as if I were following a Bird, a bright Bird that sings
sweetly as it floats about from one place to another.
When I find myself however among persons of middle age and settled
principles, see them moving regularly to their offices--what keeps
them going? I ask myself. And I feel ashamed of myself and my Bird.
There is though a Philosophic Doctrine--I studied it at College,
and I know that many serious people believe it--which maintains
that all men, in spite of appearances and pretensions, all live
alike for Pleasure. This theory certainly brings portly,
respected persons very near to me. Indeed with a sense of low
complicity I have sometimes followed and watched a Bishop. Was
he too on the hunt for Pleasure, solemnly pursuing his Bird?
_At The Bank_
Entering the Bank in a composed manner, I drew a cheque and
handed it to the cashier through the grating. Then I eyed him
narrowly. Would not that astute official see that I was only
posing as a Real Person? No; he calmly opened a little drawer,
took out some real sovereigns, counted them carefully, and
handed them to me in a brass-tipped shovel. I went away feeling
I had perpetrated a delightful fraud. I had got some of the gold
of the actual world!
Yet now and then, at the sight of my name on a visiting card, or
of my face photographed in a group among other faces, or when I
see a letter addressed in my hand, or catch the sound of my own
voice, I grow shy in the presence of a mysterious Person who is
myself, is known by my name, and who apparently does exist. Can
it be possible that I am as real as any one else, and that all
of us--the cashier and banker at the Bank, the King on his
throne--all feel ourselves like ghosts and goblins in this
authentic world?