Chapter IV: The Good Man and Cupid 256 (4)

Then she turned to her indulgent keeper--whose happiness at being entrusted with a straightforward baby-bear after the monotony of complex Small Cats is delightful to watch--and they set to at a sparring-match with tremendous spirit. Gypsy is not an in-fighter (like Welsh) nor an offensive assaulter (like Johnson); her method is to deliver two or three open-handed blows (which are not allowed in the Ring) and then to escape punishment, at any rate on the face or chest, by rolling herself into a ball and squirming and revolving on the ground. This exposes her unguarded rotundities to attack, it is true, but blows there she seems to enjoy, although affecting to avoid; and then rising to her feet she again advances to the fray and repeats the performance. She is very gentle, and in some mysterious way softens her claws when she hits.

The contest over, Gypsy turned to my “Pall-Mall Gazette” and proceeded very deliberately and scrupulously to demolish it. Whether a paper written by gentlemen for gentlemen has ever before been made a Malayan baby-bear’s plaything, I do not know; but it is a very satisfying one, and kept her busy and happy for ten minutes. And all the while as she walked up and down the floor among the visitors, tearing the pages into shreds, the Small Cats in their cages were following her with intense and glittering gaze, while the largest of them--a young puma--flung himself once or twice in her direction like a lovely grey missile, to be brought up sharp against his bars.

To any one in need of a new pet I can recommend a Malayan baby-bear. Gypsy stands about forty-two inches, and is entirely covered with short, strong, yet soft hair, nearer black than brown. Her neck is a rich tawny yellow. Her mouth is full of teeth which do not bite, and her paws have long and very hard horn-like nails which do not scratch. She is more like a magnified mole than anything in the world; absurdly so, in fact. Her obedience is instant. “Back to your cage, Gypsy,” says her keeper, and she returns to it; “Shut your door, Gypsy,” says her keeper, and she shuts it. She then climbs to a lofty perch and smiles the smile of the virtuous and uncomplaining--a lesson to the restless ocelot and unquiet lynx.

There are always a few babies at the Zoo for those that think to ask for them. After I had seen Gypsy I saw a lion of tender years and he allowed me to ruffle his head and tickle his cheeks; but no such liberties are possible with the infant jaguar, which was born in January, 1911, and is anything but the harmless pat of butter that it looks. And then I held between my finger and thumb a six-weeks’ old alligator while he squirmed and raged and did everything he could to close his fret-saw jaws over me.

But none of these privileges of course made up for Delia’s death, and nothing can.

A Sale

The sale of the late Sir John Day’s pictures was particularly interesting to me, since it happens that I have the satisfaction of sharing that good judge’s predilections. His gods are for the most part mine. I, too, would choose for my walls (if I had any) Corots and Daubignys, Marises and Mauves, Millets and Bosbooms, Rousseaus and De Wints. I, too, prefer the wistful crepuscule to the vivid noon. Hence I entered Christie’s at a quarter to one on 13 May, 1909, and took the place that a boy messenger was keeping for me, with feelings of peculiar excitement and enthusiasm.

The seated company at a big sale at Christie’s is as unchanging as an ordinary congregation. A few strangers may be there, looking in for the first time, but the rest, the regular attendants, the pew-owners, so to speak, know each other, and are known to the auctioneer, so that the bids of those who engage in the contest are, as at most sales where dealers congregate, often imperceptible to others, although to him clear as speech.

We opened modestly. Lot 1 was a seascape by De Bock, and the first bid was five guineas. It little thought, that bid, what a huge total would be built upon it. The De Bock reached 160 guineas, and then made room for a Bosboom. Bosboom is a modern Dutch painter, now dead (you may see his palette in the Museum at the Hague), whose ecclesiastical interiors have a grave and sombre beauty that I suppose has never been equalled. Among collectors he is becoming more and more desired.

After the Bosbooms we came to the Corots, of which there were a round dozen, and a little anticipatory flutter was perceptible in the room. There are better Corots in the world than Sir John Day possessed; but this procession of twelve of the tender, serene canvases from the Ville d’Avray studio was very wonderful, and one lost the bidding in the quietude of the paint. Among them were three early works, when the artist liked a more rarefied air than later in life. And these one has to know in order to realize fully not only how superb Corot was, but how bewilderingly blind were the connoisseurs of that day to let him languish as they did. Of course it is easy to recognize his greatness now, when the very name Corot carries magic with it; it is difficult to put one’s self back into those times when it meant nothing, and to see the pictures with eyes unassisted by tradition; and yet I find it hard to believe that if one of these early works had come to me suddenly out of a clear sky, I should have failed to be arrested by it.

Well, there we sat, packed together like excursionists, while the giant picture-dealers of Europe fought for these pacific landscapes--these sweet lark songs among the light clouds of the grey day, to quote Corot’s own description of his ideal--until the dozen had reached a total of nearly £12,000.

To Corot succeeded his friend Charles Daubigny, whose vast and luminous “Harvest Moon” produced the instant bid of 1000 guineas, to which, after a long interval of silence, it fell. His “Bords de l’Oise,” a great wet landscape, with Daubigny’s stern, sincere beauty drenching it, brought 1800 guineas. Others followed, and then five rich scenes by Diaz, also a citizen of the white village of Barbizon, whose home you may see to-day, with a tablet on the gate, almost opposite the rambling house of Jean François Millet. The first of these Diazes was an evening picture with cattle coming down to drink beneath a stormy sky; not unlike the superb moorland scene from the same brush which Mr. Salting left to the National Gallery. It began at fifty guineas and reached 850. (By the way, the starting of safe pictures at fifty and a hundred guineas would be a pleasant task for a reduced gentleman of the Captain Jackson type, who, able no longer to collect, wished still to sun himself in the illusion of prosperity and connoisseurship. To make in a loud voice a bid of 100 or 500 guineas, whether one has such a sum in the bank or not, must do something for the spirit. It cannot leave one quite where one was.)

After Diaz, Jules Dupré, another great and sincere painter of landscape, a direct disciple of Constable (who was a founder of the Barbizon school) and the friend of Corot, Rousseau, and their friends. It was Dupré who said beautifully of Corot that he might--it was within the bounds of possibility--be replaced as a painter, but never as a man. There were five Duprés, upon the first of which a sanguine friend of mine, unconscious of the growing value of this master, had placed the sum of £100, for which I was to try and get it for him. It was too little, I had suggested; but no, Dupré was not much considered, he fondly replied. His face fell when I told him how the first bid had been 200 guineas and the last 520.

It is one of the charms of Christie’s that you never can tell. Pictures fetch every day unexpected prices, both high and low. Good pictures slip through, taking the room unawares, and bad pictures occasionally reach absurd figures, for various reasons. This Dupré, however, was fine. I once bought at Christie’s for two guineas two water-colour drawings attributed to Clarkson Stanfield, and, behold, on stripping them to be framed again, one was revealed, by a minute history on its back, to be a David Cox worth many times what I gave for it. Let no one despair of a bargain, even when all the dealers from the Continent and all the dollars from America are present. The dealers’ idea, it must be remembered, is to sell again, and they buy accordingly. Many a good picture does not appeal to the commercial eye. At this sale, for instance, five examples of the, to me, impressive art of Georges Michel, the rich and sombre painter of windmills, a French Crome, brought together only a little more than 100 guineas, while on the second or water-colour day, there were many lots that went far too cheaply. In a sale where competition is concentrated upon the great works, the humble collector has often a chance.

After the Duprés came the Harpignies’, in which Sir John Day was peculiarly rich. This grand old man, who is still (1911) hale, at the age of 92, has been painting all his life in oil and water-colour, and has never put forth a meretricious or hurried thing. He is the link between Barbizon and the present day. Less charming, perhaps, than the greatest men of that school, he is more of a realist, and trees and foliage have no closer or more inspired student. His great lack, I suppose, is tenderness; everything else he has. It is good to know that in this fine, sure hand the blood still flows; that this artist, who has loved the world of beauty so long, is still able to enjoy it; and that he can watch himself becoming an Old Master, and the quarry of the collector, while he is still living.

The old age of artists was a theme on which Hazlitt wrote one of his best essays, and just now, were he to be still among us, he would find new subjects for study--for not only is there Harpignies at ninety-two in France, but Sir John Tenniel at ninety-two in London; while it is only a year or so since William Callow died at ninety-six, and W. P. Frith at ninety-one. An artist--particularly an open-air artist, like Harpignies and Callow--has, one would say, every opportunity of attaining to a great age. Given a strong constitution and the absence of such harassments as, for example, bowed prematurely the head of Haydon, there is little to put a strain upon his faculties or physique. By the conditions of his art he cannot work at night. He is a daylight man: he lives upon light and air; he is in direct _rapport_ with the sun; he watches the skies (and how few of us do that!); his eye, searching for beauty and knowing beauty when it sees it, is constantly being rewarded in the best way--and that must make for the content that in its turn must make for longevity. When the painter’s temperament has both placidity and simplicity, it must be the happiest of all.

Harpignies’ prices at Sir John Day’s sale were far in advance of anything he had previously made at Christies’. The largest picture produced 1800 guineas, and the eleven 6270 guineas. A week later, however, the old man’s English record rose to 2000 guineas at the Cuthbertson sale.

So far all the important work had been French, but now (the arrangement was alphabetical) came in an illustrious Dutchman, another Nestor--Joseph Israels, still happily active at the age of 87. Mr. Preyer, of Amsterdam, who hitherto had been silent, began now to be busy. For the most important picture, “Bonheur Maternel,” 1080 guineas were paid, and for five others 2470 guineas--among them “The Fisher,” which fell to Mr. Drücker and added yet another to a collection of Israels’ which has overflowed both into our National Gallery and into the City Museum at Amsterdam.

After the “Shepherdess” of Charles Jacque, who painted sheep more brilliantly than any hand ever before, had been sold for 1680 guineas, we entered upon a longer Dutch interlude, filled by the three Marises, Mauve, and Mesdag; and once again the room fluttered, for the name of Maris grows more powerful every year. There is, indeed, perhaps no recent prolific painter so certain of a great financial future as the late James Maris. On every sale his prices rise, both for oil and water-colour. His brother Matthew I do not set against him in rivalry, because Matthew stands apart. He is an exotic, the most fastidiously select painter of our day, beyond Whistler even. Matthew Maris is alone: a reserved, half-mystical exile, who has always painted as little rather than as much as possible, and has never taken his brush in hand but to produce a masterpiece unique and haunting. To him we come soon.

James Maris was as abundant as Matthew has been restrained; and this makes the huge figures that his work now commands, and will, I believe, increasingly command, the more interesting. Sir John Day had fifteen of his oils and thirteen of his water-colours, all of which he bought during the artist’s life (only recently ended) through dealers at modest enough sums, averaging for the oils something about £80, and for the water-colours £40. At the sale the oils averaged £1000 and the water-colours £400. The highest sum paid for a single oil was 1600 guineas for a view of Dordrecht. That was large, but the following week, at the Cuthbertson sale, a James Maris brought 4000 guineas.

These prices may sound absurd, but they are not. An artist now and then becomes the fashion and excites competition beyond his deserts; but not so James Maris. James Maris was a great painter of skies, a great painter of river-side towns, a great painter of his native land. He saw things largely and painted them largely (now and then a little in the manner of the most beautiful landscape in the world--Vermeer’s “View of Delft”), and these facts are now known. His future, I fancy, is as secure as that of Constable and Crome. It gave me immense pleasure to see the brave, candid painter so popular.

And then Matthew Maris, and the first thrill of the sale. James’s rich and buoyant canvases, one by one on the easel, and the competition of the bidders, had set pulses agreeably beating; but we had not broken into applause. The first applause--no small thing at Christie’s, where impassivity is cultivated not only as a gentlemanly English habit but also from motives of commercial self-protection--the first applause was won by Lot 77.

What was Lot 77? The quietest little red and brown picture you ever saw, 8½ by 11½ inches; “a town [in the words of the catalogue] on the farther bank of a river; standing well above the red roofs of the houses are seen four windmills; a bridge crosses the river on the right; a barge and raft lying against the bank; a peasant woman in the foreground.” Such is “The Four Mills” of Matthew Maris, that strange, exclusive genius, most remarkable of the three Maris brothers. Matthew was born in 1835, and is therefore now an old man. He lives in lodgings in London, far from Holland and its mills and canals and sweeping sky: solitary and sad, with a few marvellous classics to his name, and on the walls of his sitting-room some dreadful oleographs which he will not ask the landlady to remove for fear of hurting her feelings. Here he lives, painting a little every day,--but they are pictures for no one to see,--and writing (I am told) some of the best letters of our time. The old age of artists! Hazlitt truly knew what to write about.

Matthew Maris has lived in England ever since he left Paris after the war. He even carried a rifle in that struggle, but it is characteristic of his gentle nature that he refused to load it. When he gave up painting for the public I know not. But the latest work that I know--that exquisite picture entitled “Butterflies”--a little blue girl lying in the grass, which seems to make much of both Whistler and Albert Moore insincere and even unnecessary, is dated 1874. It was exhibited in London again in 1909, with sixteen other of his works, including the adorable “Enfant Couchée” and one of the low-toned Montmartre souvenirs.

Such is the painter of Lot 77, which left his easel in 1871 and was then sold with difficulty for 100 francs, or four English sovereigns, or twenty American dollars, to M. Goupil, of Paris, who, it is recorded, threw in a little friendly lecture on the folly of painting “such unsaleable stuff.” Well, here it was now, Lot 77, “The Four Mills,” thirty-eight years older, and beautiful beyond description, with an appeal to the deeper nature of the connoisseur such as I cannot put into words. “Why,” I asked an artist, as we stood before it on the day before the sale, “why is it so good?” “Partly,” he said, “because he never wanted to show how cleverly he could paint. Everything has its true value. It is so simple and so sincere.” But this, of course, is not all. There is also the curious and exquisite alchemy of the painter’s mind; and how much of the painter is in this particular masterpiece may be gathered from the circumstance that (as I happen to know) it does not represent any real Dutch town at all but was an invention of his own. The Four Mills exist only on this canvas and in Matthew Maris’s strange and beautiful brain.

Lot 77. We have seen what the dealer gave the artist for it--100 francs. It then passed to Lord Powerscourt, and it was from his collection that Sir John Day bought it for £120. It was now, therefore, being sold for the third time.

“Lot 77. What shall I say for a start, gentlemen?”

“A thousand guineas? Thank you. A thousand guineas for this picture.”

“Eleven hundred.”

“Twelve.”

“Thirteen.”

“Fourteen.”

“Fifteen.”

“Sixteen.”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen fifty.”

“Eighteen.”

“Eighteen fifty.”

“Nineteen.” (The red roofs are getting redder, the brown mills browner! The peace of it all!)

“Two thousand guineas.”

“And one hundred.”

“Two hundred.”

“Three hundred.”

“Four hundred.”

“Five hundred.”

“Six hundred.”

“Seven hundred.”

“Eight hundred.”

“Nine hundred.” (How quiet and beautiful, and above all price, all struggle, all commercialism, the picture is!)

“Three thousand guineas.”

“And one hundred.”

“Two hundred and fifty.” (Strange reading for old Matthew Maris in his London lodgings to-morrow morning!)

“Three hundred.”

A pause.

“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”

A longer pause.

“For three thousand three hundred guineas.”

And the hammer falls and the room vibrates with the tapping of sticks and clapping of hands; and “The Four Mills” disappears, bound for the house of a dealer, who was to sell it, in time, to an English connoisseur, whom, upon my soul, I envy. He is the right kind of connoisseur, too; no Peer he, or National Gallery Trustee enamoured of American dollars, but a simple gentleman who has already given pictures to the nation and intends (I am told) to give more--perhaps this very Dutch masterpiece.

Lot 78. “Feeding Chickens.” This also is by Matthew Maris, and was painted in 1872. “A Girl in buff dress and blue cap, is feeding chickens with some grain which she holds in the fold of her white apron; foliage background.” Such is the Christie description, and it serves to recall the little enchanted scene to mind; but it says nothing of the mysterious romantic feeling of it, or the richness and delicacy and sweetness of it, or even of the fascinating mediæval city in the distance.

For this Sir John Day gave £300, and at the sale it began at a thousand guineas and reached three, falling also to a Scotch purse--and it is now, I hear, in Canada. Two hundred and sixty-four thousand six hundred saxpences never went bang to better purpose. This second picture, by the way, was painted from the same model that lends such charm to “The Girl at the Well,” feeding pigeons, in the McCulloch collection.

Six William Marises[1] follow, and then we come to another Dutch painter whose work is every year more and more desired of collectors--Anton Mauve, the pastoral poet of Holland, who did for its cows and sheep and blue-coated peasants what Israels has done for its fisher-folk and James Maris for its skies. The place that Mauve’s sincere and modest art has won in the eyes of the best connoisseurs is a refreshing proof that honesty in painting is ultimately the best policy, although the honest artist may have every opportunity of starving before the tide turns his way.

[1] William Maris also is coming to his own. On June 30, 1911,
one of his pastoral scenes brought £3200, at Christie’s.

Sir John Day had eight Mauves in oil and seven in water-colour. The first oil, “Troupeau de Moutons sous Bois,” he bought in 1888, immediately after the artist’s death. It was a picture of which Mauve was very fond; Sir John Day gave £150 for it. At the sale it began at 500 guineas, and after fierce competition it was secured by Mr. Reinhart, of Chicago, for 2700 guineas. Pictures with sheep in them, it has been said, always find buyers; but when the sheep are painted as these are, not with the _brio_ of Jacque, but so quietly and lovingly...!

Mauve, like all the greatest painters, took what he found around him and made it beautiful. He was one of the artists of whom the Creator must be most proud, in whom He must take most delight, for his whole life was given up to the demonstration of how beautiful everything is--and never with the faintest whisper of the words, “and how skilful am I!” Never. Anton Mauve stands with the greatest in his sincerity, his genius, and his self-effacement. American collectors have always appreciated him, while his village of Laren, in Holland, has long been a settlement of American painters.

Our first thrill was with the Matthew Maris; the next was with J. F. Millet’s “Goose Maiden”--one of the most lovely pieces of colour that can ever have leaned against Christie’s historic post. The merest trifle in size--12¼ by 9½ inches--an old master--a jewel of paint--from the moment it was born. Millet was no less a great colourist than a great draughtsman and a great lover of the earth, and here, in this tiny canvas, all his virtues meet. Sir John Day paid heavily for it in his time, but its new owner paid more heavily still. The bidding began at 500 guineas and mounted by hundreds to 5000.

After the Millet the most beautiful picture was a little landscape by Rousseau, the painter who left his studio at Barbizon to the villagers as a chapel. “River Scene: with a man fishing from a punt” was the description; but that omitted the wonder of the work--the evening light and stillness. It literally hushed the room. This picture is now in the National Gallery, for all to see. A week later (observe what it is to have the Christie habit) I saw another Rousseau with a richer but not more beautiful afternoon light in it, and some trees painted as only Rousseau could paint them, which brought 4600 guineas. (If forests can think, if villages have thoughts, what must be the reflection of Fontainebleau and Barbizon when they receive the news of these Christie contests!)

And so the day finished, some £75,000 having changed hands in three hours--a large sum for a little paint. A little paint, do I say? That is true; but a new world, too--a world of wistful beauty. And that, of course, cannot be appraised: it is dear at a five-pound note, if you do not want it--if your taste is unlike Sir John Day’s; it is cheap at all you have, if you desire it sufficiently.

A Georgian Town

This little town may be said to consist of three things--a long, narrow, and not very straight High Street, an almost equally long and equally diverging street parallel with it, and the quay. Both the High Street and its parallel neighbour might as easily have been straight as not; but it is very much to their advantage to curve a little, for not only are curves more beautiful, but they remind one of the street’s human origin, since before there can be a High Street there must be a path, and every one knows that no one can walk straight for more than a very few paces. Blindfold a man and tell him to walk across a field, and he will unconsciously bear to the left, I believe; and he will oscillate too.

Between the High Street and its neighbour there could not well be a greater difference; for the High Street is all bustle and business, and its neighbour is all quietude and residential repose. But they have this in common, that both are Georgian and red. The High Street, it is true, has thrown out a few plate-glass shop-fronts in keeping with twentieth-century enterprise, and a few new facades are there too; but the character of the street is still Georgian none the less. Its residential neighbour has made no concessions; it is eighteenth century still. Old shipowners and merchants--yes, and maybe old smugglers too--who lived there when George III was King would yet be quite at home were they to revisit it under George V. Hence I like this street the better. I like its window-frames, flush with the wall, such as builders may no longer give us; I like its square dormer windows, its fanlights over the door, its steps, its knockers, its blinds; its town-hall, with a flight of steps on each side, which, after describing an elegant curve, meet at the imposing door on the first floor; and, more than anything, I like its almshouses, which are five hundred years old.--So much for the little street, where Miss Greenaway might have made studies.

No need for me to say that the houses no longer harbour the class of resident for which they were intended; you know that as well as I do. Successful business men have ceased to live in the hearts of towns. Either because they genuinely want more room and air, or because a visible token of success is a pleasant thing to have, they now build houses on the outskirts, and the humbler folk inhabit the old houses at a reduced rent. The town has scores of these villas dotted about just outside its walls. From a balloon the centuries could be divided accurately--sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth in the centre; then a fringe of early nineteenth, then an outer fringe of later nineteenth; and then the latest addition of all, the twentieth-century villas, spick-and-span, and surrounded with greenery. Meanwhile, behind the Kate Greenaway shutters in the town’s core the managers and clerks and shop-assistants and their families are happy--and long may they be so!

As for the High Street, I can tell you about that very quickly. The best house in it, a superb red Georgian mansion, is now the office of the Gas Company. That gives you the High Street, does it not? There are two book and paper shops, and both supply “Punch” only to order. That gives you the class of town, does it not? There are assembly-rooms where an occasional entertainment is given, and an electric theatre has just been opened. (The assembly-rooms, by the way, have a name pretty enough for a heroine in a novel by Mr. Hardy--Amity Hall.) At night, however, in spite of the absence of organized harmony, the High Street is full of melody from upper windows and tap-rooms, or from the white building at the foot, close to the Custom House--famous in history for a smugglers’ raid which led to the recapture of a tremendous haul of run-goods--where the town band practises. The little town is rich in small inns, as maritime towns always are; and it has also two large ones, with spacious yards, relics of the brave days when gentlemen posted, and billiard-tables whose cloth is yellow and whose cushions have some of the inflexibility of a sea-wall.

Such is the High Street of my little town, which, while always a scene of animation, rises to its greatest social height on Saturday nights, when the country people come in to market, and the town-people market too, and the youths walk up the middle four and five abreast, and the girls walk down the middle four and five abreast, and jokes are made, and hearts, I doubt not, are lost, and the little tap-rooms get fuller and fuller.

And now the third thing and the best--the quay. A little Georgian town with a quay cannot go far wrong. In its electric theatres the cinematoscope may buzz and dazzle; sixpenny-halfpenny bazaars may be opened; its beautiful old mansions may house gas clerks; the latest novelties may effloresce in its shop-windows; but the quay will keep it sweet. Ships and mariners will arrest the meddling hand of Time. For there is something about the sea that will ever refuse to come into line. Wherever wind-tanned men with level eyes live all day in blue jerseys, there the lover of ancient peace may safely abide. And the quay of my little town and the boats in her great, spreading harbour are populous with such men. They arrest progress. Even the arrival of petrol and the spectacle of a fishing-boat gaining the open sea in the teeth of a headwind at a rate of ten knots an hour has not injured them. The sea remains the sea in spite of petrol: still the capricious, dangerous mistress, never the same for two minutes together, never quite to be trusted, and so jealous that in no other direction may the eyes of her subjects rove.

Two little tugs trot in and out of the harbour all day long, often enough dragging in some three-master that they have found in the bay; and at the moment that I write a big German barque with a green hull lies at one wharf; a Dutch tjalck at another; and a variety of coasters thrust their masts and spars and cordage against the evening sky and make it more wonderful still. And in one of the shipwrights’ yards a huge schooner into whose way a man-of-war casually loafed in the Channel a month ago is being fitted with a new bowsprit and prow; and since the bowsprit that the man-of-war left her resembles a birchbroom, there is no doubt that she needs them.

I had a little talk with one of the blue jerseys about smuggling. He, like myself, thought of the past with some regret. “I’ve no quarrel with a little smuggling,” he said, in his caressing, rich Southern voice. “No harm in smuggling, I says. I don’t say but what I’ve done some in my time. I don’t say that I should have any objection to running over to Guernsey any day and bringing back a ton of tubs. But the difficulty is, what to do with them? And you would look so blue if you were caught.” “True,” I said; “but surely there are safe landings all about there?” waving my hand towards the southern borders of this vast and mysterious harbour, so rich in creeks and sandy shores. “Yes,” he said, “yes. But that’s not it. You couldn’t do it alone: that’s the real trouble. And in smuggling it doesn’t do to trust any one. No,” he said, “not even your own brother. Not in smuggling.”

Mus Penfold--and Billy

Every man, however unobservant or incapable of correlating experiences, must learn something in the course of his life. Some little thing. Circumstances will force it into his intelligence. And a truth that has just been forced into mine is this--that it is a foolish thing to lend your sheep-dog to a shepherd, for the simple reason that the shepherd will at once insidiously and surely make it his own. You may reclaim it in the evening, fondle it, call it “Good old Bob, then!” receive its half-hearted caresses, and feed it; but it will be yours no longer. That is to say, its soul will be yours no longer, however you may cherish the husk. The cause is twofold--first, that the sheep-dog is a noble animal, who prefers work to sloth and a master to an owner; and, secondly, that shepherds are clever men, hiding under a simple exterior much shrewdness and quite a little guile.

At any rate the shepherd to whom recently I made the mistake of lending my sheep-dog is a clever man, hiding under a simple exterior much shrewdness and quite a little guile; and the moment for which he is living I know perfectly well is the moment when I shall say to him (as surely I shall), “Well, shepherd, you’d better call Bob yours after this and keep him altogether.” He knows as well as I do that I shall say that, although Bob has a pedigree like a duke and the shepherd is accustomed to very plebeian assistants.

Just for fun I intend to postpone that announcement as long as I can, because the shepherd and I understand each other and we shall both subterraneously enjoy the suspense. He knows that he is a bit of a schemer, and he knows that I know it; I know that I am a bit of an ass, and I know that he knows it. As to bearing him any grudge for his act of subtle alienation--that is absurd. I like him too much, and I recognize too that he is fulfilling Nature’s wish, Nature having devised Bob to round up sheep, and every minute that he spends in idleness walking at my heels being a defiance to her.

This shepherd is the true breed. His father was a shepherd on the same farm; his grandfather was a shepherd on the same farm. His name is drawn from his calling: not exactly Penfold, but akin. He is sixty-six, and he has been out in all weathers on the South Downs ever since he was a child, and he has never had a cold in his life. His crook is never out of his hand. When it rains he carries also a faded green umbrella and an ancient military cloak lined with red. He still wears a smock. He has never been to London, but knows Brighton railway station. He cannot read or write.

The older I grow the more respect I have for the wise people who cannot read or write. The shepherd cannot read or write, yet conversation with him is as natural as if he knew all the jargons. I never find myself (who have both read and written more than is good for any one) hunting for words within his vocabulary. He has a sly, glancing humour that would make the fortune of an author, and observing eyes that would make the fortune of two. He misses nothing; and, having nothing to confuse and congest his mind, he has forgotten nothing.

He describes well; but his adjectives are very few: “tidy” and “middling” for ordinary praise, “out-an’-out” for eulogy. His Bible at home is “out-an’-out old”; his watch “out-an’-out big.” Where you and I say we will consider it, he says “insider.” He is that rare thing in a Southern county, an independent labourer. The vicar met him not long since, remarking that he had not seen him lately. “No, I beänt much pestered by parsons,” he replied. I can think of no more disconcerting reply to a kindly question; but it was not cruelly meant. It merely comes to this, that his attitude to the world is defensive.

He regrets many things that are no more, not the least being the days when wheatears were still eaten and the shepherds had in August an easy way of adding to their very scanty wages by trapping these little plump birds and selling them to the Brighton poulterers. But that is all done with, and the only opportunity of earning a little extra money that he now has is by stopping earths for the hunt just before the meet; which to me seems to be not quite playing the game.

He looks back, too, to the smuggling days with a certain wistfulness; not that he did any himself, but he could not help knowing what was going on, and he remembers more than one exciting arrest; while his grandmother, over at Lullington, near Alfriston, was always well in with the smugglers, and once went so far as to conceal some tubs under her skeps, which the Revenue officer never thought of searching, partly, no doubt, for fear of the bees. But the shepherd has the same tale as the fisherman in the Georgian town--the same tale, although the fisherman represents the sea-smugglers and the shepherd the land-smugglers. The end of smuggling, they both say, was not so much the vigilance of the coastguard as the prevalence of the informer. Small village life in Sussex and along the coast in the early years of Victoria seems to have been ruined by the presence of informers. A good field for a novelist here! For the most part those writers who have dealt with smuggling, from G. P. R. James to Mr. Meade Falkner, have confined themselves to its perils and triumphs; but the tale-bearer is perhaps better material--psychologically at any rate. Anyway, it was the tale-bearer who prevailed, and bit by bit the old, alluring, dangerous game was dropped. “The man who lived in the cottage next to you,” says the shepherd, “was a rare smuggler. He did more work at night than ever he did by day, though he had to show up in the fields just to keep them from being too suspicious.”

Although the shepherd has never been to London, he has done some travelling; but that, too, is a thing of the past. Once he used to take his lambs to the great Sussex “ship fairs” to be sold--to Lindfield and the “Bat and Ball” at Chiddingly, and so forth. But now that ancient custom also has gone, so far as he is concerned, for the new farmer prefers to offer them by auction at the nearest town; and the boy can drive them there. “A foolish boy,” the shepherd finds him, “always thinking of something else instead of the ship. Book-learning, I suppose.”

Mus Penfold, although mostly smiling and detached, has his anxieties too--and during the lambing season this year (1911) he has been bowed with care. For the weather’s hand was against him the whole time. I saw him continually throughout this trying period and for the first time realized not only how sound a man he is, but how many qualities the good shepherd needs. For he must be good doctor, good midwife and good nurse, apart from flock management altogether; and he must be prepared for little sleep, and the exercise of boundless patience and resignation. The lambs were born just across the road; and I was on that side almost as much as this.

“Well, shepherd, how many now?” “’Bout sixty, I reckon.” “How many twins?” “Eight couple o’ twins. There’s two you could put in your waistcoat-pocket. I’ll show you.” And I followed him through the straw of the shed, now divided into little hurdled cubicles, like a dormitory, with a mother and child in each, to the barn, where he picked up by the fore-legs two of the forlornest little objects you ever saw. “Reckon they’ll die,” he said. “I’ve been feeding them, but I reckon they’ll die. They’re out-an’-out miserable.”

Owing to the cold winds far too many did die; but there was “a big six hundred,” as the shepherd said, by the time all were in this green world. When a lamb died Mus Penfold removed its skin and placed it on the back of another for whom a foster-mother was needed. Then he put the living one thus clad into the pen with the bereaved mother, who, smelling its skin and finding it true, adopted the changeling without a murmur. The skin is fitted on rather ingeniously, with the living lamb’s legs through holes left for them and the neck tied with string; but it would take in no one with any intelligence. Either sheep are very incurious or the maternal instinct makes them careless, for the deception almost always succeeds. On the other hand, the maternal instinct can fail utterly; and there were usually one or two sheep whose heads had to be tied close to the hurdle to prevent them butting their lambs away.

This lambing season, by the way, was the only time when I ever saw the shepherd using his crook. As I have said, he carries it with him all the year--in fact, it is as inseparably his as the emblem of a Saint; but he never ordinarily uses it except as a staff or a gentle chastener of his dogs. But lately it was busy. I found him dragging newborn lambs over the straw with it, from the yard to the maternity ward, while he carried another by its fore-legs. The act looks, if not exactly cruel, at any rate thoughtless; but this is not so, for the shepherd is a tender man.

I never see a crowd of sheep without wanting a picture of them and thinking of pictures of others, although one can see cattle and horses and dogs and have no such pictorial wish or association. Why is this? Is it because sheep are so essentially pictorial--because, in the artist’s phrase, they always “compose”? I suppose so. However they stand or lie they make a harmony. That is why one so seldom sees a picture of sheep that is wholly bad; and similarly it is why every photograph of sheep is also a picture. An artist who sets out to depict sheep and makes an outrage must be crude indeed. No artist understood sheep better than Blake, although his type was, perhaps, a little too Eastern. But he made sheep lie about and occur exactly as sheep do. He did not force them into a picture, as Charles Jacque was a little too much inclined to do, nor pose them like Sidney Cooper. But then I have never seen sheep in real life like Sidney Cooper’s. My own favourite painters of sheep are Edward Calvert, Mauve, and J. F. Millet; but I possess a tiny drawing by Robert Hills, one of the founders of the Old Water-colour Society, which has as much feeling as any. I saw Millet’s most beautiful sheep-picture quite recently--his “Bergère gardant ses Moutons” under a full moon, and it is wonderful. I saw also three or four Jacques in the same collection--the new Chauchard Collection, just opened at the Louvre--and he again seemed to me a shade too brilliant for his subject. Millet came to his sheep as a part of life--the homely, melancholy, busy life that he knew--and painted them exactly in their relation to it; Jacque came to them rather as a heaven-sent subject for his brush. Millet, of course, poetised them, as he was bound to do, but never to their detriment: they remained sheep, just as his peasants, though poetised, remained peasants. Mauve saw sheep also as a part of the universe, but rather as a part of Nature than of life. Nor had Mauve Millet’s wistful depths. But there is a flock of sheep by Mauve, passing over the Laren dunes, that reaches, perhaps, the highest mark of true and beautiful animal-painting. Among the Old Masters I recall with most pleasure the sheep of the Bassano family, father and sons. In the gallery at Vienna they have a room to themselves, and a more attractive collection of warm stables and mangers I never saw. It is when I think of such pictures as these that my brain swoons at the idea of what the post-impressionists would make of a scene of sheep. There were none at the Grafton Galleries recently. May there never be any!

One pleasant development of sheep-nature that the lambing season brings about is accessibility. Usually there is no intercourse possible between man and sheep, except by the hard medium of a crook. Why sheep are so mistrustful I have never understood; for no one would hurt them, not even boys on Sunday afternoons. They know too that to man’s care they owe all their food and comfort, and yet the sight of a strange man or a child equally fills them with panic. How different a little early training can make sheep the adorable Billy proves. For Billy is as much a part of the human family as any child or grandfather ever was.

Billy is a pet lamb in the Midlands--in a river valley far from these austere hills. He is thick and sturdy, with a black face. He fears no one and nothing. His favourite resting-place is the very middle of a frequented path. When tired of repose he saunters about looking for mischief. If the gate is open he strolls into the street and pursues and butts the children. No lamb can ever have so entertained and exhilarated so many grown-up people. The children run and shout, Billy lowers his head and leaps and dances, the people rush to the doors to enjoy the fun. When there are no children he chases the hens or explores the back-gardens. Billy is fed with milk in an old oil can and at this formidable vessel he plunges several times a day, as though he had never eaten before, although he has been picking up trifles since dawn; and even when filled he rarely allows a stranger to pass without groping at his knees in an effort to derive sustenance from them.

I have never seen any other animal with more character than this three months old lamb. He is alive with it, as we say. His countenance is jaunty; his movements are elvish. He is in short an imp, as unlike, on the one hand, the timid foolish sheep of which our flocks are composed as, on the other, the sentimental pet lamb of Wordsworth’s poem. Looking at him one realizes what a waste of good spirits the ordinary method of sheep-rearing and sheep-tending leads to. If all lambs could be brought up by hand, one thinks, how merrie would England be!

But I have not put this possibility before Mus Penfold. He would smell something very treasonable. A humourist he may be, but he is no Radical.

Theologians at the Mitre

I remember hearing an ingenious journalist remark that if ever he were appointed editor of a literary paper he would now and then devote a whole number to reviews of one book only, each review to be the work of a critic of eminence who was unaware that his verdict was not (as is usual) the only one that would be printed. “Thus,” he added, “I should make an interesting number of my paper, while the differences of opinion in the reviews would healthily illustrate the vanity of criticism.”

After having just read, with much entertainment, in an old book, the record of the travels in England of an intelligent German in the year 1782, I am inclined to think that, were I the editor of a general paper, I should adapt my friend’s idea, and now and then induce several foreigners to visit my city or country and record their impressions in parallel columns; just to show the reader how we strike contemporaries and strangers. But here, of course, the differences of opinion would rather tend to complete the picture than to bring criticism into disrepute. The result would be like those myriad reflections of oneself that are obtained from the triple mirrors in hatters’ shops--all true, all different, and some exceedingly unfamiliar and surprising.

If one of my observers were a man as shrewd and philosophic as Charles Moritz, the 1782 traveller, the excellence of one column at any rate of that number would be assured, for Moritz had both eyes and a brain.

A pastor in his native land, he sailed for England alone in May, 1782, bent upon seeing London and, for some unexplained reason, the Peak of Derbyshire. He knew the language perfectly, from books; and he brought to his adventure an open and tolerant mind, courage, determination and humour. As it turned out, he found himself in need of all these qualities. Indeed, no good traveller can be without any of them. He wrote in German: my copy of his work was translated “by a Lady.”

Let us disembark at Dartford on 2 June, 1782, with Mr. Moritz, and proceed with him to London in a postchaise, by way of Greenwich. I have read of postchaises before, but never found them so vividly or informingly described as by this German pastor. It is worth while to pause a moment before going farther and ask ourselves what we know of postchaises in England in 1782. It will make Mr. Moritz the more interesting. Speaking for myself, I certainly did not know that three persons might (by Act of Parliament) ride for the same cost as one, and that the charge was fixed at a shilling a mile. Had you realized that? I had always thought of the postchaise as a luxury for the rich only, but this brings it within reach of much humbler purses. And now for the German: “These carriages are very neat and lightly built, so that you hardly perceive their motion, as they roll along these firm smooth roads; they have windows in front, and on both sides. The horses are generally good, and the postilions particularly smart and active, and always ride on a full trot. The one we had wore his hair cut short, a round hat, and a brown jacket, of tolerable fine cloth, with a nosegay in his bosom. Now and then, when he drove very hard, he looked round, and with a smile seemed to solicit our approbation.” This is quite a picture, is it not? Dickens could have made the postboy look round no less brightly and triumphantly, but he would have given him jokes. This is Dickens without language: Dickens on the cinematoscope.

The road to London is very prettily etched in. “A thousand charming spots, and beautiful landscapes, on which my eye would long have dwelt with rapture, were now rapidly passed with the speed of an arrow. Our road appeared to be undulatory, and our journey, like the journey of life, seemed to be a pretty regular alternation of uphill and down, and here and there it was diversified with copses and woods; the majestic Thames every now and then, like a little forest of masts, rising to our view, and anon losing itself among the delightful towns and villages. The amazing large signs which, at the entrance of villages, hang in the middle of the street, being fastened to large beams, which are extended across the street from one house to another opposite it, particularly struck me; these sign-posts have the appearance of gates, or of gateways, for which I first took them, but the whole apparatus, unnecessarily large as it seems to be, is intended for nothing more than to tell the inquisitive traveller that there is an inn. At length, stunned as it were by this constant rapid succession of interesting objects to engage our attention, we arrived at Greenwich nearly in a state of stupefaction.”

It is very much as a few years ago men wrote of their first motor-car ride, or as Mr. Grahame White’s passengers write now.

In London Mr. Moritz lodged with a tailor’s widow somewhere near the Adelphi. The family consisted “of the mistress of the house, her maid, and her two sons, Jacky and Jerry; singular abbreviations for John and Jeremiah. The eldest, Jacky, about twelve years old, is a very lively boy, and often entertains me in the most pleasing manner, by relating to me his different employments at school and afterwards desiring me, in my turn, to relate to him all manner of things about Germany. He repeats his _amo_, _amas_, _amavi_, in the same singing tone as our common-school boys. As I happened once, when he was by, to hum a lively tune, he stared at me with surprise, and then reminded me it was Sunday; and so, that I might not forfeit his good opinion by any appearance of levity, I gave him to understand that, in the hurry of my journey, I had forgotten the day.... When the maid is displeased with me, I hear her sometimes at the door call me ‘the German’; otherwise in the family I go by the name of ‘the Gentleman.’.” Quite an Addisonian touch.