XI. THE STORY OF A SOUTH AFRICAN DREAM.
Elephants and Fairies suggest the "Arabian Nights." The "Arabian Nights" suggest, in their turn, the East, and the East suggests—ah! what does the East not suggest? A. P. Sinnett with his eyeglass? a vision of "Koot-Hoomi?" pretty Mrs. Besant, once atheist, now theosophist? or the marvellous fat (now dematerialised) of the marvellous Blavatsky? More, far more than these things! The very idea of the East causes me to stand still where I am, in a corner among all the literary folk, and "dream." The mood grows upon me; I am in the humour for "dreams." I feel metaphysical; don't listen to me; the fit will pass by and by. Nay, it is passing, and I feel pious instead—very pious; and I shall probably get blasphemous directly. From piety to blasphemy is but a step; from the prayer of Moses to his professing to see the Deity's "back parts" was but the hair's-breadth of a line in Holy Writ. And as I find everything in a very bad state, and as I think everybody wants reforming, I am going to tell a little story. It is a beautiful little story, and if you ask the Athenæum about it, it will tell you that it is "like a picture by Watts"; that "it has had no forerunners in literature and probably will have no successors." So you must pay great attention to it, and you must think it over for a long time. It requires thinking over for a long time, because it is a Parable. The best people, and especially those who want to "tickle the ears" of the Pall Mall groundlings, are all going to talk and live and write in Parables for the future. So listen!
"There was once a woman in South Africa.
She saw the sunlight lie across her bed.
When there is a window and no blind to it, the sunlight has a way of pouring in,
And of falling in the direction which is most natural to itself.
* * * * *
The sunlight did not move,
So the woman covered her eyes.
And sleep came upon the woman and she dreamed.
* * * * *
Now in her dream the woman saw a hole.
It was a round hole, and it was red inside and very deep
And the woman looked down at the hole and said—'What hole is this?'
And a loud voice answered her, saying—
'That hole is Hell!'
And the woman looked up, and, lo! there was God laughing at her.
* * * * *
And the woman looked down again at the hole, and saw how red it was and how very deep.
And she knelt down, with both arms leaning on the brink of the hole.
And she said to God: 'I like this place.'
And God answered: 'Ay, dost thou so?'
And God laughed again.
And the woman said again: 'I like this place. It seems warm.'
And God said: 'Ay, it is warm.'
And the woman said: 'I think I will go in thither.'
And God said: 'Ay, go by all means!'
And the woman went.
* * * * *
The hole was very wide and red and deep.
And the woman had plenty of space to slide down.
She slid; and the hole got wider and redder and deeper, but still she slid on.
And presently she caught a creature by the hair.
And she said to the creature: 'Who art thou?'
And the creature answered: 'I am X. Y. Z. of the Athenæum, Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane.
And the woman said: 'Good, I like thee. Give me thy hand, and we will go together.'
And the creature went with the woman.
* * * * *
The hole grew deeper, and it began to be more hot than warm.
And further on the woman saw another creature saying mock prayers.
And the woman asked: 'To whom dost thou say mock prayers?'
And the creature said: 'To God up there. I want him not to laugh at me.'
Then the woman said: 'Who art thou that God should laugh?'
And the creature writhed, and answered: 'I am the religious Spirit of the Pall Mall, abiding in the street called Northumberland, off Strand.'
And the woman said again: 'And doth God laugh at thee?'
And the creature answered: 'Ay, he laugheth sore.'
And the woman said: 'Nay, he shall not laugh. I will tell him to protect thee. Come with me.'
And the creature ceased praying mock prayers, and followed the woman.
* * * * *
And presently the woman from South Africa grew weary.
She desired to get out of the hole.
And she called aloud to God: 'I wish to leave Hell.'
And God said: 'Leave it then.'
And she left it.
* * * * *
Outside the sun was shining.
There was no hole anywhere to be seen.
And the woman looked up, and lo! there was God laughing at her.
Then said the woman: 'There is no hole.'
And God gaily answered, 'No.'
Then the woman asked: 'Where is Hell?'
And God, very much amused, replied: 'I haven't the least idea!'
And the woman smiled right joyously, and said: 'I have had bad Dreams.'
And God said: 'You have!'
* * * * *
The sunlight lay across the bed of the woman from South Africa.
She woke, and thought of the deep red hole she had seen.
And she reflected on her strange meeting with X. Y. Z. of the Athenæum, and the 'Religious Spirit' of the Pall Mall.
And she also thought what a playful and hilarious personage God was.
Then she remembered she had had late supper the previous evening.
Which accounted for 'Dreams.'
* * * * *
The sunlight still lies now and then across the bed of the woman from South Africa.
It is a way the sunlight has.
And God laughs, as well He may."
Now I hope everybody sees what a "touching simplicity" there is, what a child-like familiarity with the Deity pervades the whole of this "prose poem." And yet there is a "subtlety," a candour, a strange melancholy, a curious cynicism, and a weirdness of conception and strong picturesqueness about its every line. It is unique in itself; it wants no explanation, because it says everything in the fewest words. It has a diction as innocent and unadorned as that of an infant's first spelling-book. And all the best critics I know want authors to let "brevity be the soul of wit," and to tell their stories as concisely as possible. If I were a novel-maker and wished to please the critics, I should write my "thrillers" in telegram form; twelve or twenty-four words to a chapter. Then I am sure I should get very well reviewed. Critics have no time to read any thoroughly finished and careful work—they seldom can do more than scan the first page and the last. I know this, being a Critic myself, and I think it is a thousand pities authors should take any trouble to write a middle part to their stories. An Ollendorf curtness of wording is always desirable, unless, indeed, one happens to be a George Meredith, and can manage to get cleverly involved in a long sentence which takes time to decipher, and when deciphered has literally no meaning at all. Then of course one is a genius at once; but such masterly art is rare. And so on the whole I like the "allegory" style best, because it is both brief and obscure at the same time. It has the surface appearance of simplicity, but its depth—ah! it is surprising to what a depth you can go in an allegory. You can fall down a regular well of thought and go fast asleep at the bottom, and when you wake up you wonder what it was all about, and you have to begin that allegory over again. That is what I call "reading"—hard reading—sensible reading. I like a thing you can never make head or tail of—the brain fattens on such provender. I am going to write out several dozen "Dreams" by and by—some of the queer ones I have had after a bout of champagne, for example—and I shall give them gratis to the Pall Mall with my fondest blessing. If there is "one bright particular star" in the sphere of journalism I worship more than another it is the Pall Mall, and I feel I can never do too much for it. And it likes "dreams" and little innocent religious allegories, because it is so good itself, and, like the boy Washington, has "never told a lie." I have always considered that the Pall Mall and the German Kaiser are the only two earthly institutions "God" can favour, seeing that, according to the lady from South Africa, He has taken to "laughing" at most things. It is a pleasant picture, that of God laughing—one, too, not to be found in all the Bible. There the Deity has been represented as angry, jealous, reproachful, or benignant, but it has been left to South African literary skill to show us how He "laughed." And as the Pall Mall thinks it all right that He should laugh, why then we ought to coincide unanimously in the Pall Mall's opinion. Because just imagine what London would be without the Pall Mall! Can mind conceive a more hideous desert?—a more wildly howling desolation? We should be left friendless and all unguided without our angel of reform; our clean, white-winged, heavenly, truthful Apostle of Northumberland Street, who is always able to tell us what is good and what is bad; who can inform us all, statesmen, clerics, authors, artists, and day-labourers, exactly what we ought and what we ought not to do. In the event of another Deluge (and some of the scientists assure us we shall have it soon) I know of a way in which some few of us might be saved; that is, some few with whom "God" is delighted, such as myself and the German Kaiser. We should simply require to make friends with the Pall Mall staff, (several of the members are ladies, and how charming to have their society!), and build an ark out of planks from the Pall Mall office floors. We should then paste it all over with Pall Mall placards of the latest accounts of the Flood up to date of sailing, for the fishes to read, and then we should get into it; we who were the elected ones (including the Kaiser of course), and off we would go in smiling safety, secure from winds and waves, being the only "just people" left on a corrupted earth. And if in the end we found another Mount Ararat, and it were left to the governing body, i.e., the Pall Mall staff and the German Kaiser, to begin a new world ... O ye gods and little fishes! What a world it would be!
XII.
QUESTIONETH CONCERNING THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND.