George Keith

“ In Paris (1739) some fragments of cloth were successfully extracted from the wound, and from Paris the brothers paid a three months' visit (February–May 1740) to London, where, though he still was a Jacobite, Keith had more than one audience with George II. On his return to Russia he was made governor of the Ukraine, and a single year of his wise and humane administration made the natives complain that they should either never have appointed him, or, having once done so, never have recalled him. ”

“ But a happy marriage is not dramatic; perhaps it would be less happy if it were. The essence of a romantic heroine is that she asks herself an intense question; but the essence of a sensible wife is that she is much too sensible to ask herself any questions at all. ”

“ Where are you staying? How long are you going to be in town?" demanded Mrs. Lancaster, turning to Keith.
"Mining.--At the Brunswick.--Only a day or two," said Keith, laughing.
"Mining? Gold-mining?"
"No; not yet."
"Where?"
"Down South at a place called New Leeds. It's near the place where I used to teach. It's a great city. Why, we think New York is jealous of us."
"Oh, I know about that. A friend of mine put a little money down there for me. You know him? Ferdy Wickersham?"
"Yes, I know him."
"Most of us know him," observed Mr. Stirling, turning his eyes on Keith. ”

“ And one of them is the attitude of the wife to the husband, whom she regards at once as the strongest and most helpless of human figures. She regards him in some strange fashion at once as a warrior who must make his way and as an infant who is sure to lose his way. The man has emotions which exactly correspond ”

“ This for a time required his presence more or less continuously in New York, and he opened an office in one of the office buildings down in the city, and took an apartment in a pleasant up-town hotel.
When Keith returned to New York that Autumn, it was no longer as a young man with eyes aflame with hope and expectation and face alight with enthusiasm. The eager recruit had changed to the veteran. He had had experience of a world where men lived and died for the most sordid of all rewards--money, mere money. ”

“ Moore is always walking the world looking for a new one. Stevenson had found that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility. Self is the gorgon. Vanity sees it in the mirror of other men and lives. Pride studies it for itself and is turned to stone.
It is necessary to dwell on this defect in Mr. Moore, because it is really the weakness of work which is not without its strength. Mr. Moore's egoism is not merely a moral weakness, it is a very constant and influential aesthetic weakness as well. ”

“ When they rose from the table, Keith, as he afterwards told Norman, felt like a squeezed orange. The friendliest man to him was Mr. Yorke, whom Keith found to be a jovial, sensible little man with kindly blue eyes and a humorous mouth. His chief cross-examiner was a Mr. Kestrel, a narrow-faced, parchment-skinned man with a thin white moustache that looked as if it had led a starved existence on his bloodless lip.
"Those people down there are opposed to progress," he said, buttoning up his pockets in a way he had, as if he were afraid of having them picked. ”

“ But lovers lust after constancy more than after happiness; if you are in any sense prepared to give them what they ask, then what they ask, beyond all question, is an oath of final fidelity. Lovers may be lunatics; lovers may be children; lovers may be unfit for citizenship and outside human argument; you can take up that position if you will. But lovers do not only desire love; they desire marriage. The root of legal monogamy does not lie (as Shaw and his friends are for ever drearily asserting) in the fact that the man is a mere tyrant and the woman a mere slave. ”

“ Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves; they alone know how strong the chains need to be. But there are other souls who walk the woods like Diana, with a sort of wild chastity. I confess I think that this Irish purity a little disables a critic in dealing, as Mr. Shaw has dealt, with the roots and reality of the marriage law. He forgets that those fierce and elementary functions which drive the universe have an impetus which goes beyond itself and cannot always easily be recovered. ”

“ I might point out that the rich do not so much buy honesty as curtains to cover dishonesty: that they do not so much buy health as cushions to comfort disease. And I might suggest that the doctrine that poverty degrades the poor is much more likely to be used as an argument for keeping them powerless than as an argument for making them rich. But there is no need to find such answers to the materialistic pessimism of Major Barbara. The best answer to it is in Shaw's own best and crowning philosophy, with which we shall shortly be concerned. ”

“ If I tell a lie I am not to blame myself for having violated the ideal of truth, but only for having perhaps got myself into a mess and made things worse than they were before. If I have broken my word I need not feel (as my fathers did) that I have broken something inside of me, as one who breaks a blood vessel. It all depends on whether I have broken up something outside me; as one who breaks up an evening party. If I shoot my father the only question is whether I have made him happy. ”

“ He is very good, and very handsome, and most people count him perfect. I don't think I do. And the sort of liking that I have wouldn't make me the least unhappy if he went away to-morrow and never came back again. For I should have Mother still—and Nellie,—and my dear writing,—and a great many delightful things besides. And yet Sir Keith is a real friend of ours, and he certainly means to be as kind as possible to everybody all round. ”

“ Men were hurrying at a quicker pace than the rapid gait which was always noticeable in that thoroughfare. Groups occasionally formed and, after a word or two, dispersed. Newsboys were crying extras and announcing some important news in an unintelligible jargon. Messengers were dashing about, rushing in and out of the big buildings. Something unusual was evidently going on. As Keith, on his way to the bank of which Mr. Creamer was president, passed the mouth of the street in which Norman's office was situated, he looked down and saw quite a crowd assembled. The street was full. ”

“ Shyness is always the sign of a divided soul; a man is shy because he somehow thinks his position at once despicable and important. If he were without humility he would not care; and if he were without pride he would not care. Now the main purpose of Shaw's theoretic teaching is to declare that we ought to fulfil these great functions of life, that we ought to eat and drink and love. But the main tendency of his habitual criticism is to suggest that all the sentiments, professions, and postures of these things are not only comic but even contemptibly comic, follies and almost frauds. ”

“ Death! it was death everywhere! his aching eyes rested on nothing but what was typical of death. Even the heat waves seemed fantastic, grotesque, assuming spectral forms, as though ghosts beckoned and danced in the haze, luring him on to become one of themselves. Keith was not a dreamer, nor one to yield easily to such brain fancies, but the mad delirium of loneliness gripped him, and he had to struggle back to sanity, beating his hands upon his breast to stir anew the sluggish circulation of his blood, and talking to the horse in strange feverishness. ”

“ In after years we may make up what code or compromise about sex we like; but we all know that constancy, jealousy, and the personal pledge are natural and inevitable in sex; we do not feel any surprise when we see them either in a murder or in a valentine. We may or may not see wisdom in early marriages; but we know quite well that wherever the thing is genuine at all, early loves will mean early marriages. But Shaw had not learnt about this tragedy of the sexes, what the rustic ballads of any country on earth would have taught him. ”

“ A small cavil might make a great quarrel, and pistols would flash as quick as light.
The first visit that Keith received was from J. Quincy Plume, the editor of the Gumbolt Whistle. He had the honor of knowing his distinguished father, he said, and had once had the pleasure of being at his old home. He had seen Keith's name on the book, and had simply called to offer him any services he or his paper could render him. "There are so few gentlemen in this ---- hole," he explained, "that I feel that we should all stand together." ”

“ Take the goods the gods provide, and while you live, live. The epicurean is the only true philosopher. Come over and have a cocktail? No? Do you happen to have a dollar about your old clothes? I have not forgotten that I owe you a little account; but you are the only man of soul in this--Gehenna except myself, and I'd rather owe you ten dollars than any other man living."
Keith's manner more than his words shut up most of his teasers. Nothing would shut up J. Quincy Plume.
Keith always treated Terpsichore with all the politeness he would have shown to any lady. ”

“ It is odd that Bernard Shaw's chief error or insensibility should have been the instrument of his noblest affirmation. The denunciation of Shakespeare was a mere misunderstanding. But the denunciation of Shakespeare's pessimism was the most splendidly understanding of all his utterances. This is the greatest thing in Shaw, a serious optimism—even a tragic optimism. Life is a thing too glorious to be enjoyed. To be is an exacting and exhausting business; the trumpet though inspiring is terrible. ”

“ I'd buy a cow and I'd offer a man half as much again as she was worth if he'd sell me the mineral rights at a fair price, and he'd do it. He never had no use for 'em, an' I didn't know as I should either; but that young engineer o' yourn talked so positive I thought I might as well git 'em inside my pasture-fence." He sat back and looked at Keith with quizzical complacency.
"Come a man to see me not long ago," he continued; "Mr. Halbrook--black-eyed man, with a face white and hard like a tombstone. ”

“ After a brief discussion of recent events, he pushed a card across to his visitor and asked casually:
"What do you know about that man?"
"Gordon Keith!" exclaimed the younger man, in surprise. "Is he in New York, and I have not seen him! Why, I know all about him. He used to be an old friend of mine. We were boys together ever so long ago."
He went on to speak warmly of him.
"Well, that was long ago," said Mr. Creamer, doubtfully. "Many things have happened in that time. He has had time to change."
"He must have changed a good deal if he is not straight," declared Norman. ”

“ The squire had come over, as he said, "to hear about things." It was the first time he had seen Keith since the accident, though, after he had heard of it, he had written and invited Keith to come "and rest up a bit at his house."
When the old man learned of the summons that had come to Keith, he relit his pipe and puffed a moment in silence.
"Reckon they'll want to know why they ain't been a realizin' of their dreams?" he said, with a twinkle in his half-shut eyes. "Ever notice, when a man is huntin', if he gits what he aims at, it's himself ”

“ Here are all the same fascination and inspiration, all the same purity and plunging force as in poetry; but not requiring any verbal confession that light conceals things or that darkness can be seen in the dark. Music is mere beauty; it is beauty in the abstract, beauty in solution. It is a shapeless and liquid element of beauty, in which a man may really float, not indeed affirming the truth, but not denying it. Bernard Shaw, as I have already said, is infinitely far above all such mere mathematicians and pedantic reasoners ”

“ Keith came down from the clouds. He remembered, with compunction, Nan sitting in the armchair, the lateness of the hour, his own fatigue.
"You should hear Mr. Keith's new song, Charley," said Mrs. Morrell. "It's the most wonderful thing! The 'Bedouin Love Song,' You must surely sing it at the Firemen's Ball. It will make a great hit. No, you surely must. With a voice like yours it is selfish not to use it for the benefit of all. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Keith?"
"I'll sing it, if you will play my accompaniment," said Keith.
On their way home Keith's enthusiasm bubbled up again. ”

“ From the richest man in that section, an old cattle-dealer and lumberman named Rawson, to Tim Gilsey, who drove the stage from Eden to Gumbolt Gap, they were all opposed to any "newfangled" notions, and they regarded everything that came from carpet-baggers as "robbery and corruption."
He learned that "the most influential man down there" was General Keith, and that his place was for sale.
"I can reach him," said Mr. Wickersham, with a gleam in his eye. "I will have a rope around his neck that will lead him." So he bought the place. ”

“ It is worth consideration as a play, because it is not a play at all. It marks the culmination and completeness of that victory of Bernard Shaw over the British public, or rather over their official representatives, of which I have spoken. Shaw had fought a long fight with business men, those incredible people, who assured him that it was useless to have wit without murders, and that a good joke, which is the most popular thing everywhere else, was quite unsalable in the theatrical world. ”

“ He adores music because it cannot deal with romantic terms either in their right or their wrong sense. Music can be romantic without reminding him of Shakespeare and Walter Scott, with whom he has had personal quarrels. Music can be Catholic without reminding him verbally of the Catholic Church, which he has never seen, and is sure he does not like. Bernard Shaw can agree with Wagner, the musician, because he speaks without words ”