THE PROSE
“Word meeteth word, and at touch o’ me, doth
spell to thee.”—Patience Worth.
Strictly speaking, there is no prose in the compositions of Patience Worth. That which I have here classified as prose, lacks none of the essential elements of poetry, except a continuity of rhythm. The rhythm is there, the iambic measure which she favors being fairly constant, but it is broken by sentences and groups of sentences that are not metrical, and while it would not be difficult to arrange most of this matter in verse form, I am inclined to think that to the majority it will read smoother and with greater ease as prose. Nevertheless, as will be seen, it is poetry. The diction is wholly of that order, and it is filled with strikingly vivid and agreeable imagery. There is, however, this distinction: most of the matter here classed as prose is dramatic in form and treatment, and each composition tells a story—a story with a definite and well-constructed plot, dealing with real and strongly individualized people, and mingling humor and pathos with much effectiveness. They bring at once a smile to the face and a tear to the eye. They differ, too, from the poetry, in that they have little or no apparent spiritual significance. They are stories, beautiful stories, unlike anything to be found in the literature of any country or any time, but, except in the shadowy figure of “The Stranger,” they do not rise above the things of earth. That is not to say, however, that they are not spiritual in the intellectual or emotional sense of the word, as distinguished from the soul relation.
At the end of an evening a year and a half after Patience began her work, she said: “Thy hearth is bright. I fain would knit beside its glow and spinn a wordy tale betimes.”
At the next sitting she began the “wordy tale.” Up to that time she had offered nothing in prose form but short didactic pieces, such as will appear in subsequent chapters of this book, and the circle was lost in astonishment at the unfolding of this story, so different in form and spirit from anything she had previously given.
Her stories are, as already stated, dramatic in form. Indeed they are condensed dramas. After a brief descriptive introduction or prologue, all the rest is dialogue, and the scenes are shifted without explanatory connection, as in a play. In the story of “The Fool and the Lady” which follows, the fool bids adieu to the porter of the inn, and in the next line begins a conversation with Lisa, whom he meets, as the context shows, at some point on the road to the tourney. It is the change from the first to the second act or scene, but no stage directions came from the board, no marks of division or change of scene, nor names of persons speaking, except as indicated in the context. In reproducing these stories, no attempt has been made to put them completely in the dramatic form for which they were evidently designed, the desire being to present them as nearly as possible as they were received; but to make them clearer to the reader the characters are identified, and shift of scene or time has been indicated.