Elsewhere, we find cleverly-written descriptions of life in Italy, in Algiers, at Hombourg, at French boarding-houses; stories about Napoleon III., Guizot, Prince Gortschakoff, Montalembert, and others; political speculations, literary criticisms, and witty social scandal; and everywhere a keen sense of humour, a wonderful power of observation. As reconstructed in these letters, the Inconnue seems to have been not unlike Mérimée himself. She had the same restless, unyielding, independent character. Each desired to analyse the other. Each, being a critic, was better fitted for friendship than for love. ‘We are so different,’ said Mérimée once to her, ‘that we can hardly understand each other.’ But it was because they were so alike that each remained a mystery to the other. Yet they ultimately attained to a high altitude of loyal and faithful friendship, and from a purely literary point of view these fictitious letters give the finishing touch to the strange romance that so stirred Paris fifteen years ago. Perhaps the real letters will be published some day. When they are, how interesting to compare them!
The Bird-Bride, by Graham R. Tomson, is a collection of romantic ballads, delicate sonnets, and metrical studies in foreign fanciful forms. The poem that gives its title to the book is the lament of an Eskimo hunter over the loss of his wife and children.
Years agone, on the flat white strand,
I won my sweet sea-girl:
Wrapped in my coat of the snow-white fur,
I watched the wild birds settle and stir,
The grey gulls gather and whirl.One, the greatest of all the flock,
Perched on an ice-floe bare,
Called and cried as her heart were broke,
And straight they were changed, that fleet bird-folk,
To women young and fair.Swift I sprang from my hiding-place
And held the fairest fast;
I held her fast, the sweet, strange thing:
Her comrades skirled, but they all took wing,
And smote me as they passed.I bore her safe to my warm snow house;
Full sweetly there she smiled;
And yet, whenever the shrill winds blew,
She would beat her long white arms anew,
And her eyes glanced quick and wild.But I took her to wife, and clothed her warm
With skins of the gleaming seal;
Her wandering glances sank to rest
When she held a babe to her fair, warm breast,
And she loved me dear and leal.Together we tracked the fox and the seal,
And at her behest I swore
That bird and beast my bow might slay
For meat and for raiment, day by day,
But never a grey gull more.
Famine comes upon the land, and the hunter, forgetting his oath, slays four sea-gulls for food. The bird-wife ‘shrilled out in a woful cry,’ and taking the plumage of the dead birds, she makes wings for her children and for herself, and flies away with them.
‘Babes of mine, of the wild wind’s kin,
Feather ye quick, nor stay.
Oh, oho! but the wild winds blow!
Babes of mine, it is time to go:
Up, dear hearts, and away!’And lo! the grey plumes covered them all,
Shoulder and breast and brow.
I felt the wind of their whirling flight:
Was it sea or sky? was it day or night?
It is always night-time now.Dear, will you never relent, come back?
I loved you long and true.
O winged white wife, and our children three,
Of the wild wind’s kin though you surely be,
Are ye not of my kin too?Ay, ye once were mine, and, till I forget,
Ye are mine forever and aye,
Mine, wherever your wild wings go,
While shrill winds whistle across the snow
And the skies are blear and grey.
Some powerful and strong ballads follow, many of which, such as The Cruel Priest, Deid Folks’ Ferry, and Märchen, are in that curious combination of Scotch and Border dialect so much affected now by our modern poets. Certainly dialect is dramatic. It is a vivid method of re-creating a past that never existed. It is something between ‘A Return to Nature’ and ‘A Return to the Glossary.’ It is so artificial that it is really naïve. From the point of view of mere music, much may be said for it. Wonderful diminutives lend new notes of tenderness to the song. There are possibilities of fresh rhymes, and in search for a fresh rhyme poets may be excused if they wander from the broad highroad of classical utterance into devious byways and less-trodden paths. Sometimes one is tempted to look on dialect as expressing simply the pathos of provincialisms, but there is more in it than mere mispronunciations. With the revival of an antique form, often comes the revival of an antique spirit. Through limitations that are sometimes uncouth, and always narrow, comes Tragedy herself; and though she may stammer in her utterance, and deck herself in cast-off weeds and trammelling raiment, still we must hold ourselves in readiness to accept her, so rare are her visits to us now, so rare her presence in an age that demands a happy ending from every play, and that sees in the theatre merely a source of amusement. The form, too, of the ballad—how perfect it is in its dramatic unity! It is so perfect that we must forgive it its dialect, if it happens to speak in that strange tongue.
Then by cam’ the bride’s company
Wi’ torches burning bright.
‘Tak’ up, tak’ up your bonny bride
A’ in the mirk midnight!’Oh, wan, wan was the bridegroom’s face
And wan, wan was the bride,
But clay-cauld was the young mess-priest
That stood them twa beside!Says, ‘Rax me out your hand, Sir Knight,
And wed her wi’ this ring’;
And the deid bride’s hand it was as cauld
As ony earthly thing.The priest he touched that lady’s hand,
And never a word he said;
The priest he touched that lady’s hand,
And his ain was wet and red.The priest he lifted his ain right hand,
And the red blood dripped and fell.
Says, ‘I loved ye, lady, and ye loved me;
Sae I took your life mysel’.’. . . . .
Oh! red, red was the dawn o’ day,
And tall was the gallows-tree:
The Southland lord to his ain has fled
And the mess-priest’s hangit hie!
Of the sonnets, this To Herodotus is worth quoting:
Far-travelled coaster of the midland seas,
What marvels did those curious eyes behold!
Winged snakes, and carven labyrinths of old;
The emerald column raised to Heracles;
King Perseus’ shrine upon the Chemmian leas;
Four-footed fishes, decked with gems and gold:
But thou didst leave some secrets yet untold,
And veiled the dread Osirian mysteries.And now the golden asphodels among
Thy footsteps fare, and to the lordly dead
Thou tellest all the stories left unsaid
Of secret rites and runes forgotten long,
Of that dark folk who ate the Lotus-bread
And sang the melancholy Linus-song.
Mrs. Tomson has certainly a very refined sense of form. Her verse, especially in the series entitled New Words to Old Tunes, has grace and distinction. Some of the shorter poems are, to use a phrase made classical by Mr. Pater, ‘little carved ivories of speech.’ She is one of our most artistic workers in poetry, and treats language as a fine material.