by John Buchan
“But there is no hope without mystery. The horizon must not be too clear if the adventurer is to have the true joy of his enterprise. Something magical and beautiful must lurk behind the twilight haze. Art cannot rise to the heights, except in the consciousness of a destiny too infinite to be expressed in formulas. We have tried our best to materialise life. We have stifled it with prudential maxims, we have turned policy into a profit - and - loss account, and we have striven to analyse and docket the aspirations of the human heart. And we have failed, grossly and finally. Science, once the ally of the economists, has ranged herself on the side of the poets. It is because Imperialism gives us a world whose boundaries no man can define that it ministers especially to the needs of Art. You remember the chorus in the Bacchæ: —
‘Knowledge, we are not foes!
I seek thee diligently;
But the world with a great wind blows,
Shining, and not from thee;
Blowing to beautiful things,
On, amid dark and light,
Till Life, through the trammellings
Of Laws that are not the Right,
Breaks clean and pure, and sings
Glorying to God on the height!’
“But this creed of ours has a vertical as well as a horizontal extension. It not only carries the few into a wider world, but it carries all classes in the State. In the true sense it is democratic, for its ends can only be attained by the union of all citizens. It cries out for a new sense of civic duty, a richer and more enduring ideal of civic well-being. Politics will cease to be the hobby of the few and become the duty and the privilege of all. So, too, the Art which is to come to fruit in such a State must be, as all great Art has been, a democratic thing. Art has never truly flourished when it was the perquisite of a class or a sect. The minor poet who creates a little garden of his own, and declares that no vulgar wind from the outer world shall ever shake his rose-trees, stands confessed by his declaration as eternally second-rate. If a man has not the wit to be a citizen he has still less the wit to be an artist. In an empire inspired throughout with a corporate ideal we shall recapture for our Art something of the immortal simplicity of the Greek spirit, which did not disdain the market-place or the schools or the battlefield. Our Muse must put off her modish silks and gems, which so quickly tarnish, and go out like a beggar-maid to the highways of the world. But in the end she will find far nobler jewels, for in her eyes there will be starlight and on her brow the glory of morning.
“But, as I have already said, we must carry into the new world all that is best in our past. For Art at bottom is conservative. The laws of her kingdom are immutable, though her subjects change and her boundaries expand. The categories remain the same though their content may alter. This morning I went fishing in a meadow on the edge of the downs. Angling has long been a classic sport, and Izaak Walton ages ago gave it a certain literary atmosphere. When I think of a trout-stream I think of the Lea or the Dove — English meadows, with clear, slow-flowing water, little fishing-houses on the bank, old country inns to lodge at, milkmaids and gipsy choruses, and Corydon’s song among the willows. Or I think of some Scotch burn falling in golden pools, overhung with rowan-berries, with the scent of thyme and heather around, and all the magic of long tradition. But my fishing to-day was a revelation. Only the big trout and the clear water and the limpid air belonged to my old picture. I cast my flies over strange flowers, and the birds which I stirred were not larks or curlews. My gillie was a Masai hunter, who carried a gun in case of meeting wild animals. And when I stopped to rest and looked round, I did not see English woodlands or a Scotch glen, but the immense mystical panorama of Equatoria. I realised how, even in a little thing like a sport, it was only the essentials that mattered, and that it might be carried to any clime, provided the spirit remained unchanged. It seemed to me a kind of parable for Art. She may trim her sails and set her helm for new seas, but the ship and the compass are the same as of old. Abana and Pharpar are running rivers like Jordan. And though the waters are strange, and wilder forests clothe unfamiliar hills, she will still hear the pipes of Pan among the trees, and in some secret glade have sight of Venus and the sister nymphs —
‘Panaque, Silvanamqne senem, Nymphasque sorores.’”
Mrs Deloraine paused and looked deprecatingly at the company. “I am afraid that what I have had to say has been very confused and schwcirmerisch. Perhaps I can put it better in verse, for I am more accustomed to write in that form than in prose. I have here a kind of dialogue between Youth and the Spirit of Art, in which the same idea appears as I have been trying to expound. May I read it, if it does not bore you?”
Being assured of the attention of her audience, Mrs Deloraine read the following poem: —
YOUTH.
Angel of love and light and truth,
In whose deep eyes the stars are set,
And in whose calm unchanging youth,
The mysteries of the world have met,
What means thy forward-beckoning hand,
The steadfast brow, the enraptur’d gaze?
They point me to a lonely land —
I cannot pierce the twilight haze.
With thee of old I walked at noon
In gardens where the airs were kind,
And from thy lips I read the rune
Of joy in every wave and wind.
We roamed blue hills of far romance,
We worshipped at the ancient shrines:
For us the oreads joined their dance
At even in the moonlit pines.
What darkling spell has rent thy skies
And turned thy heart to steel and fire,
And drawn across thy starry eyes
The curtains of a wild desire?
THE SPIRIT OF ART.
I change not. I am old as
Time And younger than the dews of morn.
Those lips will sing the world’s high prime
Which blessed the toils when life was born.
I am the priestess of the flame
Which on the eternal altar springs;
Beauty and truth and joy and fame
Sleep in the shelter of my wings.
I wear the mask of age and clime,
But he who of my love is fain
Must learn my heart which knows not time,
And seek my path which fears not pain, —
Till, bruised and worn with wandering
In the dark wilds my feet have trod,
He hears the songs the Immortals sing
At even in the glades of God.
YOUTH.
Angel, that heart I seek to know,
I fain would make thy word my stay,
Upon thy path I yearn to go
If thy clear eyes will light the way.
But ancient loves my memory hold,
And I am weak and thou art strong;
I fear the blasts of outland cold, —
Say if the way be dark and long.
THE SPIRIT OF ART.
On mountain lawns, in meads of spring, With idle boys bedeck thy hair,
Or in deep greenwood loitering
Tell to thy heart the world is fair.
That joy I give, but frail and poor
Is such a boon, for youth must die;
A little day the flowers endure,
And clouds o’erride the April sky.
Upon the windy ways of life,
In dark abyss of toil and wrong,
Through storm and sun, through death and strife,
I seek the nobler spheral song.
No dulcet lute with golden strings
Can hymn the world that is to be.
Out of the jarring soul of things
I weave the eternal harmony. —
In forest deepe, in wastes of sand,
Where the cold snows outdare the skies:
Where wanderers roam uncharted lands,
And the last camp-fire flares and dies:
In sweating ma
rt, in camp and court,
Where hopes forlorn have vanquished ease:
Where ships, intent on desperate port,
Strain through the quiet of lonely seas:
Where’er o’erbome by sense and sin,
With bruised head and aching hand,
Guarding the holy fire within,
Man dares to steel his heart and stand —
Breasting the serried spears of fate,
Broken and spent, yet joyous still,
Matching against the blind world’s hate
The stark battalions of his will: —
Whoso hath ears, to him shall fall,
When stars are hid and hopes are dim,
To hear the heavenly voices call,
And, faint and far, the cosmic hymn —
That hymn of peace when wars are done,
Of joy which breaks through tears of pain,
Of dawns beyond the westering sun,
Of skies clear shining after rain.
No sinless Edens know the song,
No Arcady of youth and light,
But, born amid the glooms of wrong,
It floats upon the glimmering height,
Where they who faced the dust and scars,
And shrank not from the fires of hate,
Can walk among the kindred stars,
Master of Time and lords of Fate.
And haply then will youth, reborn,
Restore the world thou fain wouldst hold;
The dawn of an auguster morn
Will flush thy skies with fairy gold.
The flute of Pan in wild-wood glade
Will pipe its ancient sweet refrain;
Still, still for thee through April shade
Will Venus and her sister train
Lead the old dance of spring and youth.
But thine the wiser, clearer eyes,
Which having sought the shrine of truth
And faced the unending sacrifice,
Can see the myriad ways of man,
The ecstasy, the fire, the rod,
As shadows of the timeless plan
That broods within the mind of God.
Kin to the dust, yet throned on high,
Thy pride thy bonds, thy bonds release;
Thou see’st the Eternal passing by,
And in His Will behold’st thy peace.
Mr Wakefield had listened to Mrs Deloraine’s theories of art with an interested but puzzled expression. He was so wholly under the spell of her charm that he was prepared to take every word she uttered for gospel, and his sense of the ridiculous, which made him explosive in the presence of the transcendental, was rapidly perishing from disuse. A strenuous career at the Bar, and a middle age spent mainly in fiscal controversy, had not fitted him to appreciate a discourse on aesthetic. But he was cheerful and congratulatory about the poem.
“I know what you mean by a background of mystery,” he said. “I wish I could take you up with me to the great lakes and forests of our northern country, and show you some of our voyageurs. You might make a lot out of them. I think you are perfectly right in saying that what poetry wants is a fresh subject, and not something that has been hammered at by every poet since King David. I can no more read Tennyson than I can drink stagnant water.” Mrs Deloraine looked a little aghast at this version of her conclusions. Sir Edward, whose eyes had a far-away look, said abruptly from a dark corner —
“Do you know that what you have been saying is what I have been trying to think out for a long time? It is what distinguishes our own people from any other breed of pioneer. We won’t admit any hard-and-fast line between the known and the unknown, and so our horizon is always a little misty. The Frenchman wants to draw a clear line and say that all on one side is civilisation, and all on the other side is barbarism, and he doesn’t care a cent what becomes of it. He wants a cosy self-contained little kingdom, because at heart he fears the wilds, while we love them. Our people won’t admit any final march where they must stop short and pitch their tents. They must always be pushing on and possessing some new country. And therefore there is no limit to their hopes, for any evening may bring them to the Land of Promise. There’s a lot in that if you think it over. I don’t know much about art, but I am sure Mrs Deloraine and I mean the same thing.”
Mr Lowenstein intervened as if to rescue the unfortunate lady from Philistine approval.
“You have said many beautiful and convincing things, for which I am very grateful. Our difficulty as Imperialists has always been that, though the common people may hear us gladly, the elect will shrug their shoulders and turn away. We are in danger of making Imperialism purely what Mr Wakefield calls ‘a business proposition,’ and therefore of identifying it with an arid, mercantile view of life. The people who love beauty — the artists, the scholars, the poets — will behave towards it like a well-dressed woman towards a street accident — cast a glance of pity or dislike, and then pass by on the other side. I almost think that our most urgent duty is to insist upon the spiritual renaissance at the back of everything. For, properly regarded, our creed is a religion, and we must hold it with the fervour of a convert.”
Lord Launceston abandoned his seat by the window and came forward into the firelight to get himself a cigarette.
“I think I agree with most of your conclusions,” he said, looking down at Mrs Deloraine; “but you will not think me dull if I put the thing more prosaically. We seek to show that empire is not antagonistic to a high spiritual development. I think we can go further and prove that it may be a positive aid. But when we have said that, we must be careful of going further. For Imperialism is in its essence a political thing. It is concerned with man as a political animal, man in the social aspect, and not directly with the spiritual life of the citizen. It provides a fuller basis for art and morality, and, I think I may add, religion, but in itself it is none of these things. It deals — it must deal — mainly with the formal side of life. I grant you willingly that the tendency is for the vie intime of any man to be more closely knit to the communal life. But there must always remain something which no state, however noble in its character, can give — that inner peace and satisfaction of the soul Many of us, I think, tend to exalt Imperialism to too high a plane, and seek in a political ideal that which belongs only to what, in the widest sense of the word, we call religion. This seems to me a very real danger. For if we make claims for our creed which it cannot fulfil, sooner or later we shall discredit it. No alchemy can turn the stones of our dream-city into bread for the hungry.”
Mrs Deloraine cried out in warm approval. “I am so glad to hear you say that, for it is what I should have liked to add if I had thought my subject allowed of it. I feel that the overstatement of our creed is one of the gravest perils which it has to face. We must maintain that it has its spiritual aspect, but we dare not claim that in itself it will satisfy the eternal cravings of the spirit. We may make a new earth, a prosperous and happy and civilised earth, but if our citizens can look no further they will be worse off than at the beginning. The poor man even now, broken by want and disease, who can declare in his last hours that his Redeemer liveth, has reached a spiritual height to which no ideal citizenship of itself can ever rise. I do not wish to preach about those viewless things on which we all must make our peace with our own souls, but I ask that we recognise their profundity, and do not attempt to allot them to a creed which has no answer to make to them.”
“That is the most sensible thing I have heard you say, Barbara.” The Duchess had slept peacefully through the earlier discussion, and had awakened in time to be shocked by Mr Lowenstein. “Don’t you see that if you confound religion with politics you are falling into the very blunder which you were kind enough to say was the favourite pastime of my party? You will vulgarise the one and sentimentalise the other. I am old-fashioned enough to think it impious, and, what is more to the purpose, it is extremely silly. There is a kind of disease in men’s minds which compels them to break down all t
he common-sense boundary-fences and to turn every nostrum into a complete philosophy of life. Why can’t they be content with the Here and leave the Hereafter to its proper exponents? Tories like Caroline are always telling me that politics have no principles and are wholly opportunist, but if they were faithful to their creed they would never try to stretch the bounds of politics so wide that they include provinces like religion where opportunism is unthinkable.”
The Duchess turned a friendly eye upon Mr Wakefield, in whom she believed she would find a supporter. Mr Wakefield, however, was too much a devotee of Mrs Deloraine to be willing to argue with his wonted brusqueness on a side where he was uncertain of her sympathies. He took refuge in a distinction.
“Of course you are right, generally speaking, but then Imperialism is not quite an ordinary political creed. We have already defined it as an attitude of mind, and that implies some sort of philosophy of life. I think Mrs Deloraine has made the distinction clear. It gives us a better basis for art and religion, but it does not take the place of one or the other. I think that is true, although, as I have often said, I am mortally afraid of getting too high-falutin on the subject. I detest mysticism and want to keep close to fact, but at the same time that is no reason why I should make our creed narrower than it really is. There are many who will prefer the dessert to the joint, and by all means let them have it if it is in the bill of fare. The instinct of empire is towards comprehension, not exclusion.”