Progress of Stories

by Laura (Riding) Jackson

  I will even think along with you a little, to show that I bear you no ill will for not being able to think along with me. It is difficult, I realize, to change your habits at this late hour. You have been practising futile fortitudes so long, so long held your broken hearts together, so long put a noble look upon disappointments in ambitions that you should never have allowed yourselves—it is difficult, I realize, to abandon suddenly this heritage of tragic dignity and make child's play of your immortal souls. Ah, how you have worried and how old you have grown! And what have you worried about? You have been so afraid of death, so afraid of losing you knew not what. Always, dying, you have lived again, not quite dying. You have been so afraid of failing to be, in the end, all that you might have been. And so you go on being over and over what you have been, since no more than this may you be. For the true worry is not what you shall be in the end; you can be nothing different from what you have been, what you are. The true worry is to learn to die, to make child's play of your immortal souls, to enter gracefully into death in spite of being unalterably what you are. Death is not merely the end of life; it is a place. The true worry is not how, from dying, to go back to life, more life, but how, from dying, to go on, to be forgiven in what you are, to forget for one little moment in always your private meanings, to know for your moment the meaning of always. The true worry is only to say to yourselves softly, "In a little while." Perhaps, if one is gentle with you, you will manage. But it is difficult, I realize, to change your habits at this late hour.

  2

  The chroniclers disagree about every important event in the life of King Arthur (it is not easy to keep always remembering back). But they all agree that he had transcendent virtue. His virtue was that he would not give up hope. This was his virtue, and this is the curse by which the knights of the Round Table ever renew themselves (brave, tired ghosts) against his Second Coming—rex quondam, rex-que futurus. He is the perfect one of this jealous society—all that each in the end may be if he outwits the death which kills all that he might have been were it not for death. For death is made of something greater than man. Cannot man defeat death, they ask, by being greater than himself? And each knight is a man greater than himself, yet none is greater than the other. And King Arthur is the greatest: he is the presiding greater self of all of them. They are jealous, suspicious, restless; fatally united in their jealousy, suspicion, restlessness.

  To prove his right to the crown Arthur had again to pull the sword from the stone pillar and drive it home again—on Twelfth Day, and then again at Candlemas, and then again at Easter, and even again at Pentecost. Nor do these knights mean to be pure or wise; they mean only to be undefeated. The great Lady Lile of Avalon sent a sword to Arthur by a damozel; and he could not pull it out of its scabbard, for this could only be done by a pure knight. And of all the hundred and fifty who sat at the Round Table with him drinking rich wine from gold- mounted drinking-horns and eating hot peppered collops, and of all the thousand and more others who feasted in other parts of his great palace at Caerleon (or it may have been Camelot), no more than three were clean. But Arthur did not worry himself to know. He did not go adventuring in quest of the Sangreal; he did not love his knights to do so. German-hearted Perceval and Galahad had gone, it is true, and succeeded, by their virginity: succeeded and forgotten their vow to their king, and never returned. Only Launcelot had tried to be both in one always and the other. He had indeed seen the Sangreal. But he lay senseless on the ground for twenty-four hours after; then he returned to Arthur's court, and the braveries of which the false Guinevere was Queen.

  Guinevere could not but be false; as the always of the history-men can be no real always. Their always is a bold human there; and there can no queen rule, no human creature is a queen. A true queen is Queen Story always. And yet these were honest men; King Arthur is no villain. He is the true-born Englishman, whose quest is his greater self. Defoe sneered, "And where is our greater self? Where does it all begin?" And, indeed, there's no knowing where it all begins, because there's no knowing where it all ends. It does not begin, it does not end. It is all a legendary battle with a legendary sorrow, over which there are legendary victories, uncelebrated—uncelebrated, since these are honest men: King Arthur has not come a second time, they keep silent.

  Who is King Arthur? Was he indeed begotten by King Uther on Igraine—what chronicler truly remembers? And the Table which anyone may see to-day (even at Winchester)— what chronicler will swear it was the Table then? And what of the lost sword of Launcelot, and the lost mantle of Caradoc, and the lost skull of Gawain—what chronicler can find them? And who is King Arthur? He is the dead man. And he lives on, beyond his given time, by the magic of memory—the magic of Merlin. The magic words are: "Surely there is still a span to go? Surely this is not the end?" And such is Englishman's luck—to be dead men, to hang on to time, to go back again, and back again, crying, "Surely we can amount to more than this?" Such is Englishman's luck. And it is good luck as it is shame, and bad luck as shame is pride. In Shakespeare it was good luck and bad luck balanced, shame and pride at war, self- hate answering self-love. In Shakespeare time has suspense, in King Arthur vain repetition.

  Is King Arthur, then, no better than Merlin, his evil spirit? Can habits change at this late hour? Habits cannot change, no, not at any hour; but exhaustion may come. If he have no

  Second Coming, if he fail, then will King Arthur succeed. If his last battle, with Modred at Camelford, be indeed his last battle, then will he—in a little while—truly die. Then will the tournaments and the hunting and the banqueting, and all love, conquest and glory, have been the false glamour, Merlin's enchantment, the greater self that could not be. For while man's shame of himself may become an evil spirit, it may also become, through the wearing out of the evil spirit in the wearing out of pride, dead pain of what he is, what he has been. This is not child's play, nor to forget. But it is to rest silent, remembering; to lie still though not in bliss. It is truly to die—in the flesh. The death of the mind, the forgetting of the private meanings, is but a shorter way, and a surer way. By the longer way many are lost, by the shorter way one at least comes into always: the child which man is comes into open life, though the proud ages of himself remain proud ghosts behind, grave-locked.

  In the end King Arthur disowned Excalibur, the sword he had won by Merlin's arts—Merlin's power in his own right hand. Or so it seemed. Or so it is, if there be no false Second Coming. He told Bedivere: "Comfort thyself, for in me is no trust for to trust in." Launcelot turned holy and put on a hermit's habit. But King Arthur died. And with him all of the Round Table died: he was each and all. Bedivere hesitated to throw Excalibur into the lake, as Arthur bade him; Bedivere's hesitation was his own. So Sir Pellemore and Sir Palamides in pursuit of the Questing Beast had been Arthur in pursuit; it was Arthur who had first sighted it. Launcelot's evil love- making with Guinevere had been Arthur's evil love-making. And Modred even was Arthur—from whom he had the deadly wound, in spite of his magic armour. And Sir Bedivere was all Arthur's love of his sword; Launcelot, all his disconsolateness in death. King Arthur died; Launcelot still futurizes the Arthurian to-day.

  And immediately the fairy ship drew near. And in it was Queen Morgan le Fay, from the island of Avalon. Some say she was his sister. Others know she was the spirit of death. How long he had been away on Merlin's business! It was Merlin who had first charmed him into carrying Stonehenge over from Ireland; Stonehenge was the Devil's chaplet, which gave the Irish genius—trouble. At last Arthur no longer troubled; at last Arthur rested. Launcelot perhaps does not yet rest: the Englishman is still the dead man tossing in his grave. Yet he is not, at least, of the lost tribes which leave the grave by an idiot or demon power of the dead body and wander in nowhereish hells. By the magic of Morgan le Fay he is indeed dead. By the power of death King Arthur sleeps. It is a haunted sleep: he dreams—remembers. He may not perhaps wake into the true always, forgetting. But neither will he wake into time again.
He tosses as he dreams: Launcelot tosses, Launcelot perhaps lives. But he is a hermit, no knight of glory; and his cell is a grave. Launcelot tosses. "Nevertheless Arthur came never again." So wrote the matter-of-fact Wace.

  3

  When he was a child Hans Andersen made himself a toy- theatre and learned how to sew clothes for his puppets. For his head was full of fancies, and what to do with fancies? You can't walk with them in the street or sit them in chairs beside you: people would laugh at you and say, "Why, those are only fancies." At school you learned not to do things that other people would laugh at. What did people laugh at? Oh, anything different. Hans Andersen's head was full of something different. But what to do with it, where to put it? At school he was taught not to do things that other people would laugh at. At school he was a very stupid boy, and he hated school. But he was also a sensible and practical boy. At school they tried to teach sensibleness and practicalness, though not his sort of sensibleness and practicalness. Their sort was to put fancies far away, his sort was to keep fancies near without making them seem ridiculous. He wanted to protect his fancies from the laughter of other people and yet have them here with him—or be here with them. He wanted to live with his fancies as humble people live with the world in which they live, sensibly and practically. There are trees, and the trees bear fruit, and they eat the fruit and tend the trees—and what more can they do, and what less?

  But at school it was taught how to live with people. To live with people is to cut the here away from under the feet and live in the imagination. The imagination is a world of man's own. There is also the way that primitive people live, neither in the imagination nor in fancies, but in a here which is they do not know exactly where. Hans Andersen knew where, although he knew very little about the kind of world he was in. And he preferred being in this world, which he saw with small eyes, to being in an imagined world which would make his eyes seem big. But the world of people had its big eye on him: it was kindly trying to educate him in its sensibleness and practicalness. And, being a sensible and practical person himself, he was loath to be thought a fool by people who were in their own way sensible and practical.

  The fear of being thought a fool caused Hans much un-happiness. It made him go to school for a long time, although he was stupid at school and hated it. It made him try to write a great many things with his imagination—instead of with his fancies. And it made him, thinking where he should put his fancies, try to put them on the stage, which is where people put things they only believe in. But he failed in his stage way of being sensible and practical because, stronger than the fear of being laughed at, was his knowledge that he knew; he could not hide this in belief. There are certain canny ones, such as a certain canny Sir James, who make themselves a comfortable fame with people, by believing in fairies—such fame as a traveller makes himself by journeying out and then journeying back. It is a canny thing to come journeying back. Such ones clink golden spurs and clatter golden heels and walk high, thinking how they have kept in with their fancies without falling out with people. But the gold at their heels they have got from people. Hans Andersen shall have gold on his head, he shall walk so much higher by a crown.

  Hans Andersen was a clumsy one. He had no great luck in the world of people, except that at last his body fell out of bed into it—out of fancying into it—and that he got his death in it; his body indeed came journeying back, or, rather, tumbling down. And that was a very good sign. When you go journeying out and really get there (here), it's a good sign if the news comes journeying back instead of you. Yes, a very clumsy one was Hans Andersen. He had the clumsiness of earth; he didn't try to make that a matter of golden heels. Indeed, he knew all about shoes; his father was a shoemaker—another clumsy one. What, in fact, can be clumsier than a shoemaker—or shoes to walk with on earth, as if that could be an unclumsy thing to do? A tailor is still another clumsy one: he tries to cover up the clumsiness of the people of the earth—which, of course, can only be done clumsily. When Hans Andersen was a child and made puppets, he sewed for his puppets; he was going to be a tailor, it seemed. To be a tailor, or a shoemaker, or any clumsy one, is to see the clumsiness of the earth and of the people of the earth. And if there are fancies—honest fancies—they are clumsy fancies; they were clumsy puppets.

  And what isn't clumsy? That so strange thing is surely not clumsy. How do we know? How do we know about anything, except by comparison? You are always comparing one of you with the other: that's how you know the ways in which you differ. And the ways in which you resemble one another—how do you know that? You know it, naturally, by comparison. You would not deny that by comparison you are all rather clumsy? By comparison with what? With a feeling of grace which you feel the more as you feel that it is not your grace: what does it matter whose grace it is so long as there is grace? Thus by comparison may a feeling of clumsiness become that feeling of grace which cannot be without, first, a feeling of clumsiness.

  Do you not remember how it hurt the poor Little Mermaid to walk—as if she were walking on the sharp edges of knives— when she cast off her fish's tail for love of the prince she had saved from drowning? And how did Hans Andersen know how it hurt? He knew by comparison—by how it didn't hurt him and by how he yet knew. And he also knew that it would never not hurt, because she was as different as grace from clumsiness. He called her 'the Little Mermaid'; but she didn't stay a mermaid. And then he couldn't follow the difference any further. The Little Mermaid began escaping comparison; she began to become immortal. But he shall have the crown the Little Mermaid was to have when she attained immortality; for what he took to be the Little Mermaid was his own slow flight towards self-forgetting and thinking only of grace.

  But meanwhile he still felt the big eyes of the world of people on him and his fancies. And the people and their earth were facts as the different thing was the truth: both were so, and both strange, though the different thing stranger than the earth and its people. He saw the facts with the same small eyes with which he saw the different thing. The four winds were not sizeless monsters: each was no bigger than a man. Nothing of the earth-world was any bigger than a man, and a man was small. He was clumsy and small. Hans Andersen felt his own earthly clumsiness; he saw with his clumsiness. And so he saw the different thing as fairies. And he must not lose his clumsy self until he had the fairies by heart, from feeling grace by comparison, and saw himself through them rather than them through himself. Then only might there be an end of clumsiness. And so ever since passing through the Valley of Death (through which man must pass before reaching the Island of Bliss in which is to be found the Garden of Paradise) Hans Andersen has been very slowly, and very patiently, forgetting himself—so patiently that all the time he has kept saying to himself "In a little while." It might, he thought, take three hundred years. "And we may even get there earlier"—making one of the Little Mermaid and himself—"through the goodness of children." And what is the goodness of children? It is patience: to be anxious for the good thing, but meanwhile to wait as patiently as possible, saying "In a little while."

  Meanwhile he had to wait patiently. The Little Mermaid has, indeed, still the whole way to go: the way seems up through the air, which means the brooding wish only. The prince who really did get on the way went in—not up; we know that he got on his way because the rest of the way went in and in, more and more tinily. But even he, when he thinks he has arrived, has still not arrived; he has still not seen small enough. "When I call 'Come with me, come with me,' " the Fairy of Paradise tells him, "remain where you are. Do not follow me into the room where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grows, and under which I still lie sleeping." So long as there seems space to go there is still big-eyed illusion, the Fairy of Paradise is still a woman of earth-size to love in an earthly way; as the women of earth are the gross vision of the Fairy of Paradise. And the Fairy of Paradise waits for a thousand and a thousand years, until the prince shall see small enough to see truly.

  The prince is man o
n the way to true childhood. When he is truly a child, then the Fairy of Paradise greets him like "a happy mother rejoicing in her child." But he has first to struggle with his manhood, first to love the Fairy of Paradise as any woman. When she calls "Come with me, come with me," it is not herself speaking, but his own manhood. When he follows her and takes the forbidden kiss from her as she lies under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it is his own big-mindedness and self-love that defeats him: he cannot see her for himself—as a small object before the eyes can interfere with the vision of a whole countryside. And when he had kissed her, there was a clap of thunder and everything vanished— "the Garden of Paradise has sunk into the earth." There was still a long way to go inward. There was still manhood to be used up—still more life to be lived before death could be. The prince was no proud knight of the Round Table, but even he had a humbleness to learn. For however humble his mind, by his body he was of the same manhood. And meanwhile, instead of Paradise, there was only the bright morning star of futurity.

  And how to be dead? One way only: to live. But Hans Andersen had no happiness of his manhood. He knew his manhood as pain, he endured the pain; and pain endured becomes a wise hunger. Hunger may be fed on truth, or it may be fed as men feed themselves when they cannot endure pain—on the unripe fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Hans Andersen tried to sing: to forget his hunger. And when he could not forget he tried to dance. To dance is to destroy life. But he could not dance, because he had given his life to the Fairy of Paradise to be destroyed in the true way.