Lore of Proserpine

by Maurice Hewlett

  THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH

  The interest of my matter has caused me to lose sight of myself and tofail in my account of the flight of time over my head. That is,however, comparable with the facts, which were that my attention wasthen become solely objective. I had other things to think of than thedevelopment of my own nature. I had other things to think of, indeed,than those which surround us all, and press upon us until we becomepermanently printed by their contact. Solitary as I had ever been inmind, I now became literally so by choice. I became wholly absorbed inthat circumambient world of being which was graciously opening itselfto my perceptions--how I knew not. I was in a state of momentaryexpectation of apparitions; as I went about my ostensible business Ihad my ears quick and my eyes wide for signs and tokens that I wassurrounded by a seething and whirling invisible population of beings,like ourselves, but glorified: yet unlike ourselves in this, that whatseemed entirely right, because natural, to them would have been inourselves horrible. The ruthlessness, for instance, of Quidnunc as hepursued and obtained his desire, had Quidnunc been a human creature,would have been revolting; the shamelessness of the fairy wife ofVentris had she been capable of shame, how shameful had that been! ButI knew that these creatures were not human; I knew that they were notunder our law; and so I explained everything to myself. But to myselfonly. It is not enough to explain a circumstance by negatives. IfQuidnunc and Mrs. Ventris were not under our law, neither are the sun,moon and stars, neither are the apes and peacocks. But all these areunder some law, since law is the essence of the Kosmos. Under what lawthen were Mrs. Ventris and Quidnunc? I burned to know that. For manyyears of my life that knowledge was my steady desire; but I had nomeans at hand of satisfying it. Reading? Well, I did read in afashion. I read, for example, Grimm's _Teutonic Mythology_, a stoutand exceedingly dull work in three volumes of a most unsatisfyingkind. I read other books of the same sort, chiefly German, dealing inetymology, which I readily allow is a science of great value withinits proper sphere. But to Grimm and his colleagues etymology seemed tome to be the contents of the casket rather than the key; for Grimm andhis colleagues started with a prejudice, that Gods, fairies and therest have never existed and don't exist. To them the interest of theinquiry is not what is the nature, what are the laws of such beings,but what is the nature of the primitive people who imagined theexistence of such beings? I very soon found out that Grimm and hiscolleagues had nothing to tell me.

  Then there was another class of book; that which dealt in demonologyand witchcraft, exemplified by a famous work called _Satan's InvisibleWorld Discovered_. Writers of these things may or may not havebelieved in witches and fairies (which they classed together); but inany event they believed them to be wicked, the abomination ofuncleanness. That made them false witnesses. My judgment revoltedagainst such ridiculous assumptions. Here was a case, you see, wherewriters treated their subject too seriously, having the pulpit-cushionever below their hand, and the fear of the Ordinary before theireyes.[3] Grimm and his friends, on the other hand, took it toolightly, seeing in it matter for a treatise on language. I got no goodout of either school, and as time goes on I don't see a prospect ofany adequate handling of the theme. I should like to think that Imyself was to be the man to expound the fairy-kind candidly andmethodically--candidly, that is, without going to literature for mydata, and with the notion definitely out of mind that the fairyGod-mother ever existed. But I shall never be that man, for though Iam candid to the point of weakness, I am not to flatter myself that Ihave method. But to whomsoever he may be that undertakes the subject Ican promise that the documents await their historian, and I willfurnish him with a title which will indicate at a glance both thespirit of his attack and the nature of his treatise.

  [Footnote 3: The Reverend Robert Kirk, author of the _SecretCommonwealth_, was a clergyman and a believer in the beings of whomhis book professed to treat. He found them a place in his Pantheon;but he knew very little about them. I shall have to speak of him againI expect. He is himself an object-lesson, though his teachings arenaught.]

  "The Natural History of the Praeternatural" it should be. I make him apresent of that--the only possible line for a sincere student. God gowith him whosoever he be, for he will have rare qualities and rareneed of them. He must be cheerful without assumption, respectfulwithout tragic airs, as respectable as he please in the eyes of hisown law, so that he finds respect in his heart also for the laws ofthe realm in which he is privileged to trade. Let him not stand, asthe priest in the Orthodox Church, a looming hierophant. Let him avoidany rhetorical pose, any hint of the grand manner. Above all, let himnot wear the smirk of the conjuror when he prepares with flourishes towhip the handkerchief away from his guinea-pig. Here is one whocondescends to reader and subject alike. He would do harm all round:moreover he would be a quack, for he is just as much of a quack whomakes little of much as he who makes much of little. No! Let hisattitude be that of the contadino in some vast church in Italy, whowalking into the cool dark gazes round-eyed at the twinkling candlesahead of him in the vague, and that he may recover himself a littleleans against a pillar for a while, his hat against his heart and hislips muttering an Ave. Reassured by his prayer, or the peace of thegreat place, he presently espies the sacristan about to uncover apicture not often shown. Here is an occasion! The tourists aregathered, intent upon their Baedekers; he tiptoes up behind them andkneels by another pillar--for the pillars of a church are his friendlyrocks, touching which he can face the unknown. The curtain is brailedup, and the blue and crimson, the mournful eyes, the wimple, thepointed chin, the long idle fingers are revealed upon their goldenbackground. While the girls flock about papa with his book, and mammawonders where we shall have luncheon, Annibale, assured familiar ofHeaven, beatified at no expense to himself, settles down to a quiettalk with the Mother of God. His attitude is perfect, and so is hers.The firmament is not to be shaken, but Annibale is not a _farceur_,nor his Blessed One absurd. Mysteries are all about us. Some are forthe eschatologist and some for the shepherd; some for Patmos and somefor the _podere_. Let our historian remember, in fact, that thenatures into which he invites us to pry are those of the littledivinities of earth and he can't go very far wrong. Nor can we.

  That, I am bold to confess, is my own attitude toward a lovely orderof creation. Perhaps I may go on to give him certain hints oftreatment. Nearly all of them, I think, tend to the same point--thediscarding of literature. Literature, being a man's art, is at itsbest and also at its worst, in its dealing with women. No man,perhaps, is capable of writing of women as they really are, thoughevery man thinks he is. A curious consequence to the history offairies has been that literature has recognised no males in thatcommunity, and that of the females it has described it has selectedonly those who are enamoured of men or disinclined to them. The fact,of course, is that the fairy world is peopled very much as our own,and that, with great respect to Shakespeare, an Ariel, a Puck, aTitania, a Peas-blossom are abnormal. It is as rare to find a fairycapable of discerning man as the converse is rare. I have known aperson intensely aware of the Spirits that reside, for instance, inflowers, in the wind, in rivers and hills, none the less bereft ofany intercourse whatever with these interesting beings by the simplefact that they themselves were perfectly unconscious of him. It isgreatly to be doubted whether Shakespeare ever saw a fairy, though hisage believed in fairies, but almost certain that Shelley must haveseen many, whose age did not believe. If our author is to have apoetical guide at all it had better be Shelley.

  Literature will tell him that fairies are benevolent or mischievous,and tradition, borrowing from literature, will confirm it. Theproposition is ridiculous. It would be as wise to say that a gnat ismischievous when it stings you, or a bee benevolent because he cannotprevent you stealing his honey. There would be less talk of benevolentbees if the gloves were off. That is the pathetic fallacy again; andthat is man all over. Will nothing, I wonder, convince him that he isnot the centre of the Universe? If Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Copernicusand Si
r Norman Lockyer have failed, is it my turn to try? Modestyforbids. Besides, I am prejudiced. I think man, in the conduct of hisbusiness, inferior to any vegetable. I am a tainted source. But suchtalk is idle, and so is that which cries havoc upon fairy morality.Heaven knows that it differs from our own; but Heaven also knows thatour own differs _inter nos_; and that to discuss the customs andhabits of the Japanese in British parlours is a vain thing. _TheForsaken Merman_ is a beautiful poem, but not a safe guide to thosewho would relate the ways of the spirits of the sea. But all this isleading me too far from my present affair, which is to relate how theknowledge of these things--of these beings and of their laws--cameupon me, and how their nature influenced mine. I have said enough, Ithink, to establish the necessity of a good book upon the subject, andI take leave to flatter myself that these pages of my own will beindispensable Prolegomena to any such work, or to any research tendingto its compilation.

  In the absence of books, in the situation in which I found myself ofreticence, I could do nothing but brood upon the things I had seen.Insensibly my imagination (latent while I had been occupied withobservation) began to work. I did not write, but I pictured, and mywaking dreams became so vivid that I was in a fair way to treat themas the only reality, and might have discarded the workaday worldaltogether. Luckily for me, my disposition was tractable andlaw-abiding. I fulfilled by habit the duties of the day; I toiled atmy dreary work, ate and slept, wrote to my parents, visited them,having got those tasks as it were by heart, but I went through therites like an automaton; my mind was elsewhere, intensely dogging theheels of that winged steed, my fancy, panting in its tracks, andperfectly content so only that it did not come up too late to witnessthe glories which its bold flights discovered. Thanks to it--allthanks to it--I did not become a nympholept. I did not hauntParliament Hill o' nights. I did not spy upon the darkling motions ofMrs. Ventris. Desire, appetite, sex were not involved at all in thisaffair; nor yet was love. I was very prone to love, but I did not loveMrs. Ventris. In whatsoever fairy being I had seen there had beennothing which held physical attraction for me. There could be noallure when there was no lure. So far as I could tell, not one ofthese creatures--except Quidnunc, and possibly the Dryad, the sun-dyednymph I had seen long ago in K---- Park--had been aware of mypresence. I guessed, though I did not know (as I do now) thatmanifestation is not always mutual, but that a man may see a fairywithout being seen, and conversely, a fairy may be fully aware ofmankind or of some man or men without any suspicion of theirs.Moreover, though I saw them all extraordinarily beautiful, I had neveryet seen one supremely desirable. The instinct to possess, which is anessential part of the love-passion of every man--had never stirred inme in the presence of these creatures. If it had I should haveyielded to it, I doubt not, since there was no moral law to hold meback. But it never had, so far, and I was safe from the wasting miseryof seeking that which could not, from its very nature (and mine) besought.

  There was really nothing I could do, therefore, but wait, and that iswhat I did. I waited intensely, very much as a terrier waits at thehole of the bolting rabbit. By the merest accident I got a clew to avery interesting case which added enormously to my knowledge. It was aclear case of fairy child-theft, the clearest I ever met with. I shalldevote a chapter to it, having been at the pains to verify it in allparticulars. I did not succeed in meeting the hero, or victim of it,because, though the events related took place in 1887, they were notrecorded until 1892, when the record came into my hands. By that timethe two persons concerned had left the country and were settled inFlorida. I did see Mr. Walsh, the Nonconformist Minister whocommunicated the tale to his local society, but he was both a dull anda cautious man, and had very little to tell me. He had himself seennothing, he only had Beckwith's word to go upon and did not feelcertain that the whole affair was not an hallucination on the youngman's part. That the child had disappeared was certain, that bothparents were equally distressed is certain. Not a shred of suspicionattached to the unhappy Beckwith. But Mr. Walsh told me that he feltthe loss so keenly and blamed himself so severely, thoughunreasonably, to my thinking, that it would have been impossible forhim to remain in England. He said that the full statement communicatedto the Field Club was considered by the young man in the light of aconfession of his share in the tragedy. It would, he said, have beenexorbitant to expect more of him. And I quite agree with him; and nowhad better give the story as I found it.