Artie

“ His prospects, hazy as they were, made him most interesting to match-making mothers, and as his indomitable courage made him interesting to the other and better sort, you will see that Artie was pursued rather more than most eligible young men. ”

“ Only he who has lived for fifteen years in a hall bedroom and dined at lunch-counters, only he who has spent his life upon the footstool of occasion, only he who, in short, has been the principal unknown figure in a great city of great persons and has returned to be abruptly the center of a little world, can know how Artie Cherry gloried. ”

“ Now, shoemakers aren’t, you know. I’ve always taken a just pride in the profession, and I’ve always asserted that it develops logic; it develops logic, Artie, or else why are all cobblers good Liberals, I should like to know? Eh, can you tell me that; with all your Oxford training, sir, can you tell me that?’
‘It develops logic beyond the possibility of a doubt. Daddy; and it develops a good kind heart as well,’ said Arthur, smiling. ‘And it develops musical taste, and literary talent, and a marked predilection for the beautiful in art and nature. ”

“ It may be that, in fancy, he had caught a [Pg 75] glimpse of Mamma’s sad, disappointed face; very true it is that Mamma’s teaching has come to his mind, and then the morning prayer, so hurriedly said, “Deliver us from evil.” Then Artie looks upward, the promised Spirit descends as a Dove, stilling the troubled waters of the passionate boy nature, breathing in repentant feelings and helps to right doing.
The “nearest duty must first be done;” and Artie takes up the dreaded task to find his Papa has kindly chosen ”

“ Two ear-splitting blasts answered Fred’s whistle, and Artie and Ward shot out of the Larue barn, where they had been engaged in some interesting experiment. Artie always had an experiment or two on hand. ”

“ I may be a terrible free-thinker and all that kind of thing, as the neighbours say I am—poor bodies, they never read a word of modern criticism in their lives, heaven bless ‘em—stragglers from the march of intellect, mere stragglers—but I’ve too much respect for the cloth to bring a curate of St. Fredegond’s into such disgrace as that would mean for you, Artie. You shan’t have your career at Oxford spoiled by its being said of you that your father was a working shoemaker. ”

“ I admire a good lie, but a clumsy, misshapen, rippled affair like that one is an abomination in the sight of the Lord."
I stood up with a flaming face.
"Don't get excited," said Aubrey. "She is going home to-morrow. Keep calm to-night, and the next time you see Artie, he will relieve all your feelings by what he will say."
"Why? What does he know?"
"Well, the Also Ran admires athletic girls, you know, not being able to sit astride a horse himself, and through his boasting Artie has discovered that Flora is a crack golf player—won the cup for her college in her junior year." ”

“ Artie from losin', me from longin' for the time to come when I should start out to be a little Monte Cristo on my own hook, an' Locals an' Hammy, from pityin' Artie an' envyin' me.
On the twenty-fifth of March a wagon-load of grub an' four men came out to get things started. I see 'em comin' up the grade, an' I piked down an' told'em 'at I had landed a good thing, an' to just treat me as the boss for a few days an' I'd make it all right with 'em.
When Artie saw the new men he turned pale about the gills. He owed me close to three millions, an' blame if I didn't feel a little sorry for him. ”

“ And I think you may like to follow the story of the Arthur of literature, and see how, from very little, it has grown so great that now it is known all the world over. I should like you to remember, too, that the Arthur story is not the only one which repeats itself again and again throughout our Literature. There are others which have caught the fancy of great masters and have been told by them in varying ways throughout the ages. But of them all, the Arthur story is perhaps the best example. ”

“ When we add to this the fact that the writers of the 12th century represented the personages and events of the 6th in the garb, and under the conditions, of their own time, we can understand the reason of the manifold difficulties which beset the study of the cycle.
But into the figure of Arthur as we know him, other elements have entered; he is not merely an historic personality, but at the same time a survival of pre-historic myth, a hero of romance, and a fairy king; and all these threads are woven together in one fascinating but bewildering web. ”

“ That fellow Norton Ward's of the first class. He's never looking about him; his eyes are always turned upwards, towards an inspiring vision of himself at the top. But you and I like looking about us; we're not in a hurry to be always on the upward move. The scene delights us, even though we've no part in it, or only a small one. That's been true about me, and I think it's true about you, Arthur. ”

“ This was the poet’s moral: and what way of expressing this moral in the history, but by making Prince Arthur appear in each adventure, and in a manner subordinate to its proper hero? Thus, though inferior to each in his own specific virtue, he is superior to all by uniting the whole circle of their virtues in himself: and thus he arrives, at length, at the possession of that bright form of Glory, whose ravishing beauty, as seen in a dream or vision, had led him out into these miraculous adventures in the land of Fairy. ”

“ The Arthur of the legends, of the Welsh and Breton ballads, of the later Chansons de Geste, of Malory and Tennyson, has quite stepped out of the historic page and become a hero without time or place in any real world, a king of the imagination, the loftiest figure in that great outgrowth of chivalric romance which formed the favorite fictitious literature of Europe during three or four of the mediæval centuries. ”

“ And surely it is no small debt of gratitude we owe the troubadours and chroniclers and poets who through many centuries have sung of Arthur and his champions, each adding to the song the gifts of his own imagination, so building from simple folk-tales one of the most magnificent and moving stories in all literature. ”

“ Arthur, even now I long for the purer air and flashing sympathies of that vast Hereafter, when the strong sense of knowledge shall scarcely find a limit ere it overleaps it; when visible power shall radiate from our being, and living on together through countless Existences, Periods, and Spheres, we shall progress from majesty to ever-growing majesty! ”

“ There are, among the more ardent Arthurians, poets and pedants, dilettantes and divorcees, men of letters and three-letter men from the universities, reviewers and romanticists, critics and connoisseurs, columnists and collectors of every description—a rare assemblage that numbers sincere admirers, warm friends, not a few dreads and some drolls. ”

“ Beauty. All the elements of poetic beauty join to make The Passing of Arthur a masterpiece. Sublime sentiment thrills through the stanzas. A stately meter gives a solemn, rhythmic swing to the noble lines. Sonorous words add to the grandeur. Apt phrases and beautiful figures of speech seize the imagination and enchain the fancy. Rare and choice diction gives artistic finish to every sentence. ”

“ Young Arthur, who was a boy of a sensitive and highly imaginative temperament, found little sympathy with his peculiar tastes in the musty folios over which he was expected to pore day after day, or in the deeds and legal instruments which he was called upon to engross. He devoted his leisure time to obtaining some knowledge of painting from a teacher of that art. He made so great proficiency in this department as to surprise his teacher, who exclaimed, with enthusiasm, that he was born to be an artist. ”

“ And so, in history, Arthur, the hero of such a mass of romantic story, is little more than a name, and it is hardly possible to explain how he attained to such renown as the hero of marvellous and, sometimes, magical feats, unless on the supposition that he became confused with some legendary hero, half god, half man, whose fame he added to his own. ”

“ Most dark, Arthur, is the path of some power which now, to-night, is at work within this Europe of ours—a phantom of whose being and trend one's fancy can form no dream, walking vast though invisible among us, amorphous, yet most actual. And I do not speak of a probability. I am pretty sure now that this is so, and Father Max Dees and Robinson, if they live, are sure also. ”

“ Here in these few introductory words I should like, if possible, to [vi] make clear my own position with regard to the question of Arthurian criticism as a whole. I shall probably be deemed presumptuous when I say that, so far, I very much doubt whether we have any one clearly ascertained and established fact that will serve as a definite and solid basis for the construction of a working hypothesis as to the origin and development of this immense body of romance. We all of us have taken, and are taking, far too much for granted. ”

“ One cannot read the old chansons de geste in which fighting, and not love, is the absorbing topic, without feeling that the audience before whom they were chanted was predominantly male. One cannot but feel the contrary to have been the fact with the romances in verse and prose which constitute that immense mass of literature vaguely termed Arthurian. ”

“ And through such a roll of generations, Arthur! The beauty that could so long baffle the law 'they all shall change,' what a charm of life must have informed her! If we who now see her mouthing her mumblings in her extreme age, garishly rouged and dizened with trumperies, can still by an effort live again in her youth, how vital a youth must that have been! ”

“ Light your cigar,” Arthur went on, carelessly, offering his friend a fusee.
[Pg 67]
“What a grand thing it is, too, the painter’s art; of all arts the most delightful, the most satisfying! He is not like the writer, who must be read and studied before his audience can understand and enjoy what he has done. The effect of the artist’s work on the beholder is instantaneous, the reward of his genius is immediate; to say nothing of his own personal delight and satisfaction. But I’m getting prosy, Arthur. ”

“ But Arthur, above all others that I have ever known, had passed from the particular to the general. Plato's praise of love was based on the principle that the philosopher passed from the love of one fair form to the love of abstract beauty. The fault is that so many never pass the initiation. Arthur did cross the threshold; he passed from the contemplation of his own suffering to the consideration of the root of all human suffering. ”

“ But although the eloquent blood that rose to neck and brow had not its source in the inner, and to Arthur the undiscovered, depths of her affection, although the visible palpitations of her heart could not with truth be traced to the consciousness of harbouring one unholy or forbidden thought, still Arthur’s words and sighs and glances produced upon this child of nature effects precisely analogous to those which might have been displayed had the love which he professed and felt been returned tenfold into his bosom. ”

“ He had not the art—perhaps he would have disdained the art—to touch all these with picturesque color, and to make that page of the world’s history glow and palpitate with life.
Among those great griefs which weighed upon the historian, and to which allusion has been made, I name that one only with which you are perhaps familiar—I mean the sudden death of his son Arthur, a youth of rare accomplishments—counted by many of more brilliant promise than any young Englishman of his time—yet snatched from life, upon a day of summer’s travel, as by a thunderbolt. ”

“ The spirit of King Arthur dominates the work ideally, and justifies not only the ferocious and warlike first subject with its peculiar and influential rhythm, but the old-fashioned and unadorned folk-tone of the second subject. ”

“ I think it has to you, hasn't it, Arthur?"
"It's been more than pleasant, sir. It's been somehow—I don't quite know what to call it—broadening, perhaps. I've spread out—didn't you call it that the other day?"
"Yes. Go on doing that. It enriches your life, though it mayn't fill your pocket. Make acquaintances—friends in different sets. Know all sorts of people. Go and see places. No reason to give up the theatre even! ”

“ In the Poem of King Arthur, published many years afterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplation of our positive life through a spiritual medium: and I have enforced, through a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete and enduring success, that harmony between the external events which are all that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and the subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conduct of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the World. ”

“ Isn’t that so, dear Arthur? You belong to another world⁠—⁠the theatrical world⁠—⁠where morals and religion are all topsy-turvy, anyhow! How could you suppose for a moment a clergyman’s wife could receive into her house, on such a night as this, an opera-singing woman with three aliases to her name, who’s just run away in a fit of pique from her lawful husband! Whether she’s right or wrong, she’s not a person one could associate with! To mix oneself up like that with a playhouse scandal! and the Dean coming to dine, whose influence for a canonry’s so important to us all! ”

“ Only when a smile floods out, All the soul in beauty glows. With that smile I grew content, And my heart grew strangely calm, As with trustful step I walked, My arm resting on his arm. Brother, turn your face away, So, dear, I can tell you best All that followed; but be sure You are looking to the west. Arthur, I have seen him since, Nearly every day, until If I lose him, all my life Would grow wan, and dark, and chill. ”