5th
We do not play intellectual games here, thank heaven, and there is no idol on a pedestal, nor one person who is more the fashion than another. We are frivolous usually, although I have occasionally heard some solid and instructive conversation, and we all read a good deal. Every house has several shelves of books, and the best literature of all countries except the Great Republic is well represented. Although I no longer take much interest in the subject—and indeed had observed long ago that the Americans of this class cared little for their own bookmakers—I asked Mrs. Van Worden the other day the cause of it. She often answers in sentences so short they sound like epigrams; however, brevity is the soul as well as the substance of most epigrams, as far as I am able to distinguish between the short sentences of the witty novelists and the paragraphs of those who think. For some reason the staccato movement supplies a meaning of which the words reck not.
Mrs. Van W. shrugged her flexible little shoulders when I called her attention to the fact that she had only three American novels in her bookcase.
“Why should I waste my little time on the obvious? I read what I do not know. I want knowledge. Not of a new dialect and pin point on a map, but of life, of the eternal mysteries. I want the wisdom of those who are not afraid to live and tell of what they have felt, thought, done. I am not satiated, not blasée. I am still full of hopes and dreams, and often I am quite happy; but I have lived. Therefore I want to read books by people who have lived more. How could the surface—painted in water-colours by a cautious hand—interest me. And the love scenes! Rotten. Conducted through a telephone. I want books written out of a brain and heart and soul crowded and vital with Life, spelled with a big L. I want poetry bursting with passion. I don’t care a hang for the ‘verbal felicities.’ They’ll do for the fringe, but I want the garment to warm me first. Good God! how little true poetry there is in our time; and I often feel the want of it so terribly. I know the old boys by heart. Oh, for a new Voice! What is the matter with the men, anyway? Women make asses of themselves when they try to be passionate and rhyme at the same time, but I can see no reason why a man should become so offensively ladylike the moment he becomes a poet.”
“These are busy times,” I suggested. “Perhaps the virile brains have found something better to do. A poet always has seemed to me a pretty poor apology for a man. Byron was masculine but he was the great exception. And his genius of personality was far greater than his poetical gift, great, creatively, as that was. I could stand a man being a poet incidentally, if he had the power to make me forget he was a poet, but not otherwise.”
And then we all went out on the lake in the dusk and Mr. Nugent quoted Byron to me for an hour. Not to my back. He was rowing this time.
6th
About two miles from here is a lake entirely covered with water-lilies. It is seldom that a boat cuts the surface or a fish line is cast, for the water is too warm for trout, and our fishermen disdain bull heads and sunfish. Consequently the green lily pads have spread over every inch of it, and scattered upon them are the waxen cups with their golden treasure. It is a scene of indescribable beauty and peace, and the low hills above the shore, instead of the usual haughty mountains, are almost as sweet and wildly still.
The keeper carried a boat there yesterday, and Mr. N. rowed me about for an hour. I gathered an armful of the lilies and hung them all over my hat and gown, linking the long soft stems in my belt until they trailed to my knees. I felt so happy in catching at the beautiful things as the boat grinded through their hidden part, and in adorning myself, that I quite forgot Mr. N., who had fallen silent. The silence of one of these Americans, by the way, is quite different from that of our men. They are at so much pains usually to entertain and interest a woman that their silences indicate either a pleasant intimacy, or depression, never a lordly superiority to small matters. Therefore, I suddenly paused with a cluster of lilies half raised and directed my glance to my companion. He looked neither musing nor sad. His eyes were fastened upon me with eager admiration, his whole face, that lean powerful nervous face stamped by unconquerable emotions, was so concentrated, that I felt myself blushing vividly, and I waved the cluster of lilies at arm’s-length.
“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” I exclaimed gaily. “Is there any flower in the world so artistic as the water-lily?—from its pure cold form to its aloofness from the leaves?—and always alone, never a blossom and its buds, never a group, gathered as if in fragrant gossip. It is the nun among flowers, sexless, childless, angelically pure and cold, asking nothing of this life but to bloom white and unspotted in some mountain convent like this, a convent of perpetual silence, with its wall of hills, its roof of blue, embroidered with gold at night and haunted by day with fleecy clouds that look like wandering angels—Oh, dear! I forgot the thunder-storms and the cries of angry deer, but doubtless the lilies merely close up at such unholy sounds and pray in unruffled serenity.”