Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

“ On the other hand, in native Egypt, we see the National Party just at the moment when it had secured for the country the right of self-government and an existence of personal and civil freedom which it had never before in all its history enjoyed, when its Parliament had met, and after a first happy session had adjourned, when its mind was busy with projects of reform and when the general desire was to rest and be thankful, at peace with all the world, hurried from its attitude of calm into a sea of apprehension from without, and of treachery, backed by foreign intrigue, from within. ”

“ Was it because of Death, Life’s complement,—or Pain,
That thou didst loose thy pride to question of My will? Satan Nay, Lord, Thou knowest the truth. These evils are not ill.
They do but prove Thy wisdom. All that lives must perish,
Else were the life at charge, the bodily fires they cherish,
Accumulating ills. The creatures thou didst make
Sink when their day is done. They slough time like the snake
How many hundred sunsets? Yet night comes for rest,
And they awake no more,—and sleep,—and it is best. ”

“ GRISELDA CHAPTER I.
An idle story with an idle moral!
Why do I tell it, at the risk of quarrel
With nobler themes? The world, alas! is so,
And who would gather truth must bend him low,
Nor fear to soil his knees with graveyard ground,
If haply there some flower of truth be found.
For human nature is an earthy fruit,
Mired at the stem and fleshy at the root,
And thrives with folly's mixon best o'erlaid,
Nor less divinely so, when all is said.
Brave lives are lived, and worthy deeds are done
Each virtuous day, 'neath the all-pitying sun ”

“ Lastly, he had foreseen the quarrel which an attempt by England to seize Egypt would create with France: "My belief is that the day which witnesses our occupation of Egypt will bid a long farewell to all cordiality of political relations between France and England. There might be no immediate quarrel, no exterior manifestation, but a silent, rankling grudge there would be like the now extinguished grudge of America during the Civil War, which awaited the opportunity of some embarrassment on our side and on hers of returning peace and leisure from weightier matters. Nations have long memories." ”

“ The brazen bulls are anointed each festival day with oil, the foreheads of the worshippers with ochre. There is a scent of flowers and incense, and the business of religion goes on continuous from old time, perhaps a little slacker, on account of the increasing poverty of the people, but not less methodically, or as a living part of men’s daily existence. When I had seen Madura I felt that I had at last seen a temple of Babylon in all its glory, and understood what the worship of Apis might have been in Egypt. ”

“ Thus at Cairo, now that the influence of Constantinople has been partially removed, we find the Arabian Ulema rapidly assimilating to their own the higher principles of our European thought, and engrafting on their lax moral practice some of the better features of our morality. It is at no sacrifice of imagined dignity, as with the Turks, that Egypt is seeking a legal means for universal religious toleration, or from any pressure but that of their own intelligence that her chief people are beginning to reform their domestic life, and even, in some instances, to adopt the practice of monogamy. ”

“ And when some weep their undeserved disgrace,
Plucks at their cheeks and smites them in the face.
Thou hast no reverence, no respect for right.
Virtue to thee is a lewd appetite,
Remorse a pastime, modesty a lure,
And love, the malady, love's only cure.
Griselda, in her love at thirty-three,
Was the supreme fool of felicity.
Reason and she had taken separate roads,
A spectacle of mirth for men and gods.
And the world laughed—discreetly in its sleeves—
At her poor artless shifts and make-believes. ”

“ Satan ’Tis not for the World’s sake,
Lord God of Heaven and Earth, that I petition make,
But for Thy justice foiled. It irketh me to know
That I have tutored Man against Thee, to this woe,
And given him sure success. Yet is the World’s self good,
[Pg 52] And I would prove it Thee, lest Man’s ingratitude
Should so affect all truth, all honour, all high faith,
That Thou Thyself, Lord God, shouldst fall a prey to death
And leave him in dominion. What to me were Heaven
With this thought unappeased—even thus absolved, forgiven,
Yet by myself condemned? The Lord God Ah, Satan. ”

“ Wherever I went in India I heard the same story; from the poor peasants of the south who for the first time had learned the individual name of their ruler; from the high-caste Brahmins of Madras and Bombay; from the Calcutta students; from the Mohammedan divines of Lucknow; from the noblemen of Delhi and Hyderabad—everywhere his praise was in all men’s mouths, and moved the people to surprise and gratitude. “He is an honest man,” men said, “and one who fears God,” and in this consciousness all have seemed willing once more to possess their souls in patience. ”

“ In Nejd alone of all the countries of the world I have visited, either East or West, the three great blessings of which we in Europe make our boast, though we do not in truth possess them, are a living reality: "Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood," names only even in France, where they are written up on every wall, but here practically enjoyed by every free man. Here was a community living as our idealists have dreamed, without taxes, without police, without conscription, without compulsion of any kind, whose only law was public opinion, and whose only order a principle of honour. ”

“ The path of Orthodox Islam is no macadamised road such as the Catholic Church of Christendom has become, but like one of its own Haj routes goes winding on, a labyrinth of separate tracks, some near, some far apart, some clean out of sight of the rest. All lead, it is true, in the same main direction, and here and there in difficult ground where there is a mountain range to cross or where some defile narrows they are brought together, but otherwise they follow their own ways as the idiosyncrasy of race and disposition may dictate. ”

“ Griselda listened. In her heart there stirred
A strange unconscious pleasure at each word,
Which made the sunshine brighter and the sky
More blue, more tender in its sympathy.
The hills of the Campagna crowned with snow
Moved her and touched, she knew not why nor how.
The solemn beauty of the world; the fate
Of all things living, vast and inchoate
Yet clothed with flowers; the soul's eternal dream
Of something still beyond; the passionate whim
Of every noble mind for something good,
Which should assuage its hunger with new food ”

“ And stay his rage to slay. “Take ye no thought,” said He,
“Of what the day may bring. Be as the lilies be.
“They toil not, nor do spin, and yet are clothed withal.
“Choose ye the lowest place. Be guileless of all gall.
“If one shall smite you, smile. If one shall rob, give more.
“The first shall be the last, and each soul hold its store.
“Only the eyes that weep—only the poor in spirit—
“Only the pure in heart God’s kingdom shall inherit.”
On this fair base of love Thy Son built up His creed,
Thinking to save the world. And Man, who owned no need
Of any saving, slew Him. ”

“ India especially, in old days, did not change. Conquerors came and went; dynasties rose and perished; and years of peace and war, of plenty and of famine, trod closely on each other’s heels, while men were born and lived and died in the same thoughts. It was the natural life, the remnant of a society which still followed the law of instinct rather than of reason; but even in the natural world health must be attended with growth or it will turn into decay. ”

“ Greece is stamped out beneath a Wolseley's heels.
Or Egypt is avenged of her long mourning,
And hurls her Persians back to their own keels.
'Tis not alone the victor who is noble.
'Tis not alone the wise man who is wise.
There is a voice of sorrow in all shouting,
And shame pursues not only him who flies.
To fight and conquer—'tis the boast of heroes. ”

“ In each Griselda played conspicuous part—
Pupil and patron, ay, and patron-saint
To no few poor who live by pens and paint.
The world admired and flattered as a friend,
And only wondered what would be the end.
And so the days went by. Griselda's face,
Calm in its outline of romantic grace,
Became a type even to the vulgar mind
Of all that beauty means when most refined,
19 The visible symbol of a soul within,
Conceived immaculate of human sin,
And only clothed in our humanity
That we may learn to praise and better be. ”

“ At best the enmity of Islam will make the dream of reconciling the Indian populations to our rule for ever an impossibility. Leaders they will look for elsewhere—in Russia, maybe, in Germany, or even France, jealous of our interests in Egypt—not leaders such as we might have been for their good, but for our evil, and in pursuance of their own designs. The Caliphate is a weapon forged for any hand—for Russia's at Bagdad, for France's at Damascus, or for Holland's (call it one day Germany's) in our stead at Mecca. ”

“ Time needs be optimist nor foul its own abode.
Else were Creation mocked—and haply I not God.
In sooth all’s well with the World. And thou my Raphael,
How fare the Spirit hosts? Say, is thy world, too, well? Raphael All’s well with the World. We stand, as aye, obedient.
We have no thought but Thee, no asking, no intent
More than to laud and worship, O most merciful,
Being of those that wait. Satan (aside) The contemplative rule
Out-ministers the active. These have right to boast,
Who stand aye in His presence, beyond the Angel host. The Lord God And none of ye grow weary? ”

“ What really deserves all Indian thanks, and is indeed an inestimable acquisition, because it contains within it the germs of a reconquest of all the rest, is that it has given her liberty of thought. This is a new possession which India never had, and never perhaps would have had, but for English influences, and it is difficult not to see in it a gift undesigned, but which, like the last treasure issuing from Pandora’s box, is destined to transform the curse of conquest into the blessing of a wider hope. ”

“ Throughout Egypt a cry of jubilation arose such as for hundreds of years had not been heard upon the Nile, and it is literally true that in the streets of Cairo men stopped each other, though strangers, to embrace and rejoice together at the astonishing new reign of liberty which had suddenly begun for them, like the dawn of day after a long night of fear. ”

“ Ran jealous anger at young Manton's wit,
While, half aloud, I flung my curse on it.
Later, I found Griselda gravely gay,
And glad to see me in the accustomed way
Of half affection my long zeal had won,
Her face no older, though the years had spun
Some threads unnoticed in her fair brown hair
Of lighter hue than I remembered there,
Less silver streaked than gold. All else had grown
Fairer with time, and tenderer in its tone,
As when in August woods a second burst
Of leaves is seen more golden than the first.
A woman truly to be loved—but loving? ”

“ After luncheon Major Clerk, the Nizam’s tutor, came to take us through the town on elephants, which pleased us much. The town is most interesting, being after Cairo the most gay and busy in the Mohammedan East. Compared with Madras, it is as Paris to a decayed watering-place. Instead of the squalid back streets and the pauper population of native Madras, Hyderabad is like a great flower bed, crowded with men and women in bright dresses and with a fine cheerful air of independence, more Arab than Indian. ”

“ The destruction of beauty in the name of science, the destruction of happiness in the name of progress, the destruction of reverence in the name of religion, these are the pharisaic crimes of all the white races; but there is something in the Anglo-Saxon impiety crueller still: that it also destroys, as no other race does, for its mere vain-glorious pleasure. The Anglo-Saxon alone has in our day exterminated, root and branch, whole tribes of mankind. ”

“ For, as in this sad world all things must pass,
However great and nobly framed and fair:
Griselda, too, is of the things that were.
But while she lived Griselda had no need
Of the world's pity. She was proudly bred
And proudly nurtured. Plenty her full horn
Had fairly emptied out when she was born,
And dowered her with all bounties. She was fair
As only children of the noblest are,
And brave and strong and opulent of health,
Which made her take full pleasure of her wealth. ”

“ Nor was I forgetful of the promise I had made to my Hindu friends of expounding to my fellow countrymen at home the griefs of which I had been witness in India; the infinite poverty of its people; the economic ruin they had suffered at our hands; the oppressive character of the land assessment constantly enhanced, aggravated as these things were by new forest laws and a salt tax levied on the very poor;—and, no less, the arrogance of their official rulers; the growing ill-will between class and class, and the causes of what was rapidly becoming race-hatred between Englishman and Indian. ”

“ I cannot conceive why Egypt should charge itself with governing the Nile beyond the First Cataract, its old boundary. Putting down the slave-trade in Africa is an amusement only rich countries need afford themselves. It will also be a great misfortune if such protection and supervision as the Government gets from England should be withdrawn, at least for some years and until a new generation has grown up used to a better order of things than the old. I should like immensely to see Syria put under another such régime. ”

“ The battlers of Thy seas, the four-foot Lords of Earth,
From which to choose Thy stem and get Thee a new birth.
There were forms painted, proud, bright birds with plumes of heaven
And songs more sweet than angels’ heard on the hills at even,
Frail flashing butterflies, free fishes of such hue
As rainbows hardly have, sleek serpents which renew
[Pg 18] Their glittering coats like gems, grave brindled-hided kine,
Large-hearted elephants, the horse how near divine,
The whale, the mastodon, the mighty Behemoth,
Leviathan’s self awake and glorious in his wrath. ”

“ Whom none could mock with bitterer jibes than hers,
69 And speechless to all question of her lord,
Who sought to learn what portent had occurred,
And still reverted to the theme begun
Of Roman fever and the Roman sun;
She was driven back to Rome. Two days her door
Was shut to all the world, both rich and poor,
And on the third she went to Ostia,
Pleading a wild desire to see the sea.
The sea! What virtue is there in the sea
That it consoles us thus in misery?
In joy we do not love it, and our bliss
Scoffs at its tears and scorns its barrenness. ”

“ I have found the Indian peasantry poor, in some districts to starvation, deeply in debt, and without the means of improving their position; the wealth accumulated in a few great cities and in a few rich hands; the public revenue spent to a large extent abroad, and by an absentee Government. I have been unable to convince myself that the India of 1885 is not a poorer country, take it altogether, than it was a hundred years ago, when we first began to manage its finances. ”

“ Satan Ay, but not of Man.
[Pg 49] He is beyond redeeming, or Thy Son had died
Not wholly to this loss. Who would be crucified
To-day must choose another, a young fleshly form,
Free from the simian taint, were it but flower or worm,
Or limpet of the rock, or grieving nightingale,
Wherein to preach his gospel. Yet should he prevail,
If only for truth’s sake and that this latest lie
Should be laid bare to shame, Time’s fraud, Humanity.
Choose Thee an Angel, Lord; it were enough. Thy Son
Was a price all too great even had the world been won. ”

“ In pleasure's inmost and most sacred field!
Who would not share the sunshine of your mirth,
Your god-like smile, your consciousness of worth,
The keenness of your wit in the world's ways,
Your heart so callous to its blame or praise!
Him I addressed, in pursuance of my doubt
How such a prodigy had come about.
Young Manton eyed me. "Every road," he said,
"Leads—well—to Rome." He laughed and shook his head,
As if in censure of a thought less sage.
"My lady's thirty is a dangerous age,
And of the three where most misfortunes come
Is the worst strewn with wrecks in Christendom." ”

“ Englishwomen in India look upon the land of their exile unaffectedly as a house of bondage, on its inhabitants as outside the pale of their humanity, and on the day of their departure home as the only star of hope on their horizon. The feeling may be a natural and an unavoidable one, for it is probable that race prejudices are more deeply rooted everywhere in women than in men, but I affirm that it is most unfortunate, and under the circumstances of growing education in the country, a very great and increasing danger. ”

“ In the Midland shires, where I had come, God knows,
Without a thought but of such joyous sort
As manhood ventures in the realms of sport
With that dear god of slaughter England's sons
77 Adore with incense-smoke and roar of guns,
That this new chapter opens. Who had guessed
So rare a phœnix housed in such a nest?
For we, in truth, were no wise company,
Men strong and joyous, keen of hand and eye,
And shrewd for pleasure, but whose subtlest wit
Was still to jest at life while using it,
And jest at love, as at a fruit low hung
To all men's lips, no matter whence it sprung. ”

“ Not Michael’s self hath dared, prince of the Seraphim.
Yet all now wail aloud. What ails ye, brethren? Speak!
Are ye too in rebellion? Angels Satan, no. But weak
With our long earthly toil, the unthankful care of Man. Satan Ye have in truth good cause. Angels And we would know God’s plan,
His true thought for the world, the wherefore and the why
Of His long patience mocked, His name in jeopardy.
We have no heart to serve without instructions new. Satan Ye have made a late discovery. ”

“ Madura is indeed the most interesting Hindu city in India, the place where the ancient Brahminical religion has been least touched by foreign conquest, Mogul, or French, or English. There is absolutely no sign in the city of anything alien. We did not see a European face, or a trace of Saracenic architecture. A festival was going on and an immense crowd thronged the streets, thousands and thousands of men dressed in white, with ochre patches on their foreheads, and of women in their beautiful gauze drapery, and carrying flowers. ”

“ Saw other worlds which were not of to-day,
32 With cardinals, popes, Petrarch and the Muse.
She stopped to weep with Laura at Vaucluse,
Where waiting in the Mistral poor Lord L.,
Who did not weep, sat, slept and caught a chill;
This sent them southwards on through Christendom,
To Genoa, Florence, and at last to Rome,
Where they remained the winter.
Change had wrought
A cure already in Griselda's thought,
Or half a cure. The world in truth is wide,
If we but pace it out from side to side,
And our worst miseries thus the smaller come. ”

“ The burden of every argument was, “No reform is possible for us until the Indian Government is itself reformed. It is too conservative, too selfish, too alien to the thoughts and needs of India, to effect anything as at present constituted; and just as in England reformers at the beginning of this century looked first to a reform of Parliament, so must Indian reformers now look first to a reform of the governing body of the country.” ”

“ Griselda's early days
Of married life were not that fitful maze
Of tears and laughter which betoken aught,
Changed or exchanged, of pain with pleasure bought,
15 Of maiden freedom conquered and subdued,
Of hopes new born and fears of womanhood.
Those who then saw Griselda saw a child
Well pleased and happy, thoughtlessly beguiled
By every simplest pleasure of her age,
Gay as a bird just issued from its cage,
When every flower is sweet. ”

“ Viewed as a power hostile to India, Russia is and may for ever remain innocuous, and I should view with equanimity her approach to the Hindu Kush, or even to the actual frontier, were it impossible for her to appear there as a friend. But as a friend I fear her. If our selfish system of government for our own and not for India’s good remains unchanged; if we do nothing to secure Indian loyalty; if we refuse to give to the people that assurance of ultimate self-government which shall enable them to await in patience the realization of their hopes ”

“ Griselda, in her flight, had left behind
All but the dress she stood in, too refined,
In her fair righteousness of thought and deed,
To make provision for a future need,
However dire. She was no Israelite
To go forth from her Pharaoh in the night,
With spoils of the Egyptians in her hands,
And had thrown herself on Manton and on France
With a full courage worth a nobler cause,
Grandly oblivious of prudential laws. ”

“ Often in conversation I have been on the point of protesting against the too naïve confidence of men known as demagogues in the good faith of English political action, against their implicit trust in the virtue of reason and a just cause, and their belief that, when they should have proved their griefs to be well founded, relief would thereupon be given. They seemed intentionally to ignore the selfishness and indifference of party statesmanship in England with regard to India, and to be only too willing, in spite of political deceptions, still to be deceived. ”

“ Turned as he spoke, and laughter came unwise
Before she answered, and an hour was flown,
Before he joined the rest and she was gone.
O Love! what an absurdity thou art,
How heedless of proportion, whole or part!
Time, place, occasion, what are they to thee?
Thou playest the wanton with Solemnity,
The prince with Poverty, the rogue with Worth,
The fool with all the Wisdoms of the Earth.
Thou art a leveller, more renowned than Death,
For he, when in his rage he stops our breath,
88 Leaves us at least the harvest of our years,
The right to be heroic in our tears. ”

“ Nor do I believe that it will be again possible for England to master a military revolt, which would this time have the sympathy of the whole people. Moreover, even if we should suppose this fear exaggerated and the evil day of revolt put off, there is yet the certainty of a Government by force becoming yearly more costly and more difficult to carry on. It is a mistake to suppose that India has ever yet been governed merely by the English sword. The consent of the people has always underlain the exercise of our power, and were this generally withdrawn it could not be maintained an hour. ”

“ A paragon of pleasure undenied
At her own chaste respectable fireside,
Becomes, what shall I say, when she steps down
From the high world of her untouched renown—
A something differing in no serious mood
From the sad rest of the light sisterhood:
Perhaps indeed more troublesome than these,
Because she keenlier feels the agonies:
A wounded soul, who has not even the wit
To hide its hurt and make a jest of it;
A maid of Astolat, launched in her barge,
A corpse on all the world, a femme à charge. ”