Macheath

“ CHAPTER X MYSTERIES IN MAYFAIR That night, and for many nights afterwards, Macheson devoted himself to his work in the East End. The fascination of the thing grew upon him; he threw himself into his task with an energy which carried him often out of his own life and made forgetfulness an easy task. Night after night they came, these tired, white-faced women, with a sprinkling of sullen, dejected-looking men; night after night he pleaded and reasoned with them, striving with almost passionate earnestness to show them how to make the best of the poor thing they called life. ”

“ Well then, here was Machen in a hot-bed of the occult and the devilish, surrounded by books of all sorts, especially the strange, the weird and the curious. His room in the Clarendon Road held as many books as it could accommodate along with its occupant—the overflow was stacked between the rungs of a ladder on the landing outside. He was busy with notebooks once more, and writing furiously as ever—but in despair rather than the fine frenzy and high spirits of a few years before. For now he was deep in Rabelais and Balzac—and these books cast a spell upon him. ”

“ A fight, perhaps—every one crowded around. Unnoticed, Macheson walked out.
Down the narrow stairs he groped his way, with the music of the orchestra, the fierce hysterical cries of the women, the mock cheering of those who crowded round, in his ears. He passed out into the blue-grey dawn. The stars were faint in the sky, and away eastwards little fleecy red clouds were strewn over the house-tops. He stood on the pavement and drew in a long breath. The morning breeze was like a draught of cold water; it was as though he had come back to life again after an interlude spent in some other world. ”

“ No common sickness was that which lay upon the Province, but it came of the wrath and vengeance of the gods. For in the days gone by the goddess Macha, one of the three fierce goddesses of war and battles, had visited Ulster as a mortal maid, to bring aid and comfort to one of the nobles of Ulster who was in sore distress. And the King and people had reviled her, and brought shame and scoffing upon her, because they saw that she was not as one of themselves; for they liked not that a woman greater than themselves should take up her abode amongst them. ”

“ Whether one was introduced to Machen by Cabell or Starrett or Van Vechten, or made the discovery for one’s self becomes a matter of some importance, at least to those who have come to know Machen and who regard him, as I do, as one of the greatest living writers in English literature. Yet it might seem that these personal recollections and this high regard, however deeply felt, are not quite reason enough for a book about such a man, nor significant enough to serve as an introduction to such a book. ”

“ It has been intimated that Paris has always been something of an occupational disease among writers and minor poets. And here is Machen, off to France, like any puerile poetaster upon the publication of his first “slender volume.” To those who feel some word of explanation is due, some apology for an opinion seemingly shattered, it will be noted that Machen went to the South of France, to the countryside—and not to the northern cities and carefully manicured meadows and pompadoured pleasure-grounds of the Bois. ”

“ Machen was, at this time, living the literary life, not quite as it was lived by the swish young men who were then breaking into print and whose names appeared in the more sensational evening papers and on court writs, but still, it was the literary life and still—a noble profession.
The Japanese bureau, its cubbyholes and compartments jammed with notes and notebooks and scraps of paper, had yielded up many tales and articles that appeared in this or that journal. Machen had already written The Holy Things, Psychology, Witchcraft, The Rose Garden, The Ceremony, Midsummer and many other. ”

“ I said in astonishment. "Where are we going?"
"I have taken a country house in the west of England, not far from Caermaen, a quiet little town, once a city, and the headquarters of a Roman legion. It is very dull there, but the country is pretty, and the air is wholesome."
I detected a glint in his eyes, and guessed that this sudden move had some relation to our conversation of a few days before.
"I shall just take a few books with me," said Professor Gregg, "that is all. Everything else will remain here for our return. ”

“ Macheson looked downwards at Thorpe, with the faint clang of that single bell in his ears. The frown on his forehead deepened as the rush of thoughts took insistent hold of him.
For a young man blessed with vigorous health, free from all material anxieties, and with the world before him, Macheson found life an uncommonly serious matter. ”

“ He dared not approach the fort again; he lingered in the road to Caermaen that passed behind it, but a mile away, and separated by the wild land and a strip of wood from the towering battlements. Here he was looking over a gate one day, doubtful and wondering, when he heard a heavy step behind him, and glancing round quickly saw it was old Morgan of the White House.
'Good afternoon, Master Lucian,' he began. 'Mr. Taylor pretty well, I suppose? I be goin' to the house a minute; the men in the fields are wantin' some more cider. Would you come and taste a drop of cider, Master Lucian? ”

“ Holderness had answered. “It is a matter of the intelligence. As an artist, if I might dare to call myself one, I say that the [Pg 74] Christian life, if honestly lived, is the most beautiful thing of all the ages.”
Macheson walked down to the village with the memory of those words still in his brain. The bell was ringing for service from the queer, ivy-covered church, the villagers were coming down the lane in little groups. Macheson found himself one of a small knot of people, who stood reverently on one side, with doffed hats, just by the wooden porch. ”

“ Should he risk the favour of the King by fighting the battle of a few slaves? Yet Mackay remembered as he sat there, how Livingstone's great fight against the slave-traders had made him, as a student, vow that he too would go out and fight slavery in Africa. The memory nerved him for the fight he was now to make.
Mackay turned to M'tesa and said words like these: [55]
"O King M'tesa, you are set as father over all your multitude of people. They are your children. It is they who make you a great King. ”

“ An Irish brooch was a large circular wheel of gold or bronze, crossed by a long pin, and the great circular rampart surrounding a Celtic fortress might well be imaginatively likened to the brooch or a giantess guarding her cloak, or territory.118 The legend of Macha tells that she was the daughter of Red Hugh, an Ulster prince who had two brothers, Dithorba and Kimbay. They agreed to enjoy, each in turn, the sovranty of Ireland. Red Hugh came first, but on his death Macha refused to give up the realm and fought Dithorba for it, whom she conquered and slew. ”

“ The legend of the foundation of Emain Macha has already been told.133 But Macha, who was no mere woman, but a supernatural being, appears again in connexion with the history of Ulster in a very curious tale which was supposed to account for the strange debility or helplessness that at critical moments sometimes fell, it was believed, upon the warriors of the province. ”

“ Macheson looked across the table almost fiercely.
“What are you doing it for, Dick?” he exclaimed. “What does it mean?”
His friend looked across at him steadfastly.
“Victor,” he said, “I want you to understand. You are an enthusiast, a reformer, a prophet of lost causes. I want you to know the truth if you can see it. There are many sides to life.”
“What am I to learn of this?” Macheson asked, almost passionately.
“If I told you,” Holderness answered, “the lesson would only be half learnt. Sit tight and don’t be a fool. Drink your wine. Mademoiselle in violet there wants to flirt with you.” ”

“ Who, when he was come to Jerusalem, pretending peace, rested till the holy day of the sabbath: and then the Jews keeping holiday, he commanded his men to take arms.
5:26. And he slew all that were come forth to flee: and running through the city with armed men, he destroyed a very great multitude.
5:27. But Judas Machabeus, who was the tenth, had withdrawn himself into a desert place, and there lived amongst wild beasts in the mountains with his company: and they continued feeding on herbs, that they might not be partakers of the pollution. ”

“ Too often one finds mention of Macaulay, Lord; MacCarthy, Desmond; MacLeod, Fiona; even Mackenzie, Compton—but few are the mentions of Machen.
One finds too that the index of a book can be a very revealing thing indeed. We have before us, for example, the memoirs of a Literary Figure of, let us say, the 1890’s and the early 1900’s. The index indicates that our man knew everyone worth knowing. We find Shaw and More, Shelley and Kelley, Shakespeare, Rossetti and Donne, Keats and Yeats, Whistler and Wilde, Moore and Hardy and a generous sprinkling of the nobility. ”

“ It is amazing, in a way, that a pleasant little group in a country rectory should decide over a little pamphlet written “about” the pagan rites at Eleusis, that their youthful relative was destined for a career in journalism. Of course, relatives are proud of one’s books and equally proud of one’s pamphlets, even if they do not read them. And so, perhaps, the rector and his family never bothered too much about the contents of the rarest Machen item of them all. Doubtless more than one of the ninety-nine copies slowly disintegrates in a Welsh garret to this very day. ”

“ In actual life writers, and artists of other sorts, are particularly susceptible to this form of cosmic accident—or at least many of them prefer to think so. It is, somehow, heartening to meet one who was pleased with the place of his birth.
“I shall always,” wrote Arthur Machen, “esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen to me, that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk, in the heart of Gwent.... ”

“ It is sometimes fascinating to compare different reactions to certain of Machen’s tales. Basil Davenport writing in the Saturday Review some years ago noted: “... there are some stories which portray a non-moral fall into a moral gulf; someone’s foot quite innocently slips, and there is no stopping above the bottom of hell ... that is what makes Mr. Arthur Machen’s stories supreme of [183] their kind ... and such a story of irrational, irresistible temptation as Mr. Machen’s The White People ... ”

“ She came into the market-place early on the Saturday morning in a state of some excitement, and as soon as she had taken up her usual place on the pavement by the churchyard, with her ducks and eggs and a few very early potatoes, she began to tell her neighbours about her having heard the sound of a great bell. The good women on each side smiled at one another behind Mrs. Parry's back, for one had to bawl into her ear before she could make out what one meant; and Mrs. Williams, Penycoed, bent over and yelled: "What bell should that be, Mrs. Parry? There's no church near you up at Penrhiw. ”

“ But when it was told Machabeus what was done, he assembled the rulers of the people, and accused those men that they had sold their brethren for money, having let their adversaries escape. 10:22. So he put these traitors to death, and forthwith took the two towers.
10:23. And having good success in arms, and all things he took in hand, he slew more than twenty thousand in the two holds.
10:24. But Timotheus, who before had been overcome by the Jews, having called together a multitude of foreign troops, and assembled horsemen out of Asia, came as though he would take Judea by force of arms. ”

“ But in the mean while, while I congratulated myself on my cunning, the third of Lipsius's emissaries was weaving her nets, and in an evil hour I paid a visit to an old friend, a literary man named Russell, who lived in a quiet street in Bayswater. The woman, as I found out too late, a day or two ago, occupied rooms in the same house, and I was followed and tracked down. Too late, as I have said, I recognized that I had made a fatal mistake, and that I was besieged. Sooner or later I shall find myself in the power of an enemy without pity ”

“ For the older I grow the more firmly am I convinced that anything which I may have accomplished in literature is due to the fact that when my eyes were first opened in earliest childhood they saw before them the vision of an enchanted land.”
There is no doubt that the simple fact that Arthur Machen was born in Caerleon-on-Usk has had a tremendous influence upon his style, his thinking, his writing, his philosophy and his life. ”

“ James Branch Cabell, whose Beyond Life was first published in 1919, was perhaps the first to mention in print the name of Arthur Machen and something of his work. In one of his lengthy monologues, speaking through the amiable and erudite Charteris, he says, “I wonder if you are familiar with that uncanny genius whom the London directory prosaically lists as Arthur Machen? If so, you may remember that in his maddening volume Hieroglyphics Mr. Machen circumvolantly approaches to the doctrine I have just voiced—that all enduring art must be an allegory. ”

“ Machen’s characters are completely believable, whatever events may occur, simply because of their very ordinary qualities. Lucian Taylor, the “hero” of The Hill of Dreams, an introvert we would call him today, was a normal school boy who did not conform too well to the rigors of the Public School System, and whose solitary home life conditioned him to react as he did to the strangeness of his environment and to succumb to the influences, real or imagined, of the Roman ruins near his home. ”