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 learning magic and was playing far away, but he heard these words. Throwing aside the club and ball and taking off his game-dress he went at once to the house where Conachoor was still sleeping.

'Hail, King!' said Cohoolin, and the king raised himself upon his elbow.

'What is it, Setanta?'

'This day I wish to take arms as a warrior.'

'Ah Cohoolin, Culann's hound, who put that into thy head?'

'Cathbad the Druid.'

'Then there is no denying the request,' said Conachoor, and he gave Cohoolin a sword, two spears and a shield, such as he kept by him to equip those of his boy band who took arms. Cohoolin received the sword and brandished it and broke it: he tried the spears against the shield and splintered the shield and then snapped the spears. Thus he did one after the other with every set of weapons in the king's store.

'O Conachoor,' he said, 'these weapons must have been meant for others.'

Then Conachoor gave him his own sword and his spears and shield. Cohoolin brandished and bent them and thrust and slashed with them upon the shield, and found them good.

'These now are good, O King,' he cried.

At that moment Cathbad entered and asked in wonder:

'Is little Cohoolin taking arms?'

'Yes...' said the king.

'It is not his mother's son that ought to take arms on such a day as this,' said the Druid.

'But what, did not you yourself put it into the boy's head?' asked the king.


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 turn sulky and drink by himself at Christmas time, he may make up his mind to be not a bit the better for it: let the spirits be never so good, or let them be even as many degrees beyond proof, as those which Gabriel Grub saw in the goblin's cavern."


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 be scoffed at, and his reformation disbelieved. He hesitated for a few moments; and then turned away to wander where he might, and seek his bread elsewhere.

"The lantern, the spade, and the wicker bottle, were found, that day, in the churchyard. There were a great many speculations about the sexton's fate, at first, but it was speedily determined that he had been carried away by the goblins; and there were not wanting some very credible witnesses who had distinctly seen him whisked through the air on the back of a chestnut horse blind of one eye, with the hind-quarters of a lion, and the tail of a bear. At length all this was devoutly believed; and the new sexton used to exhibit to the curious, for a trifling emolument, a good-sized piece of the church weathercock which had been accidentally kicked off by the aforesaid horse in his aërial flight, and picked up by himself in the churchyard, a year or two afterwards.

"Unfortunately, these stories were somewhat disturbed by the unlooked-for re-appearance of Gabriel Grub himself, some ten years afterwards, a ragged, contented, rheumatic old man. He told his story to the clergyman, and also to the mayor; and in course of time it began to be received, as a matter of history, in which form it has continued down to this very day. The believers in the weathercock tale, having misplaced their confidence once, were not easily prevailed upon to part with it again, so they looked as wise as they could, shrugged their shoulders, touched their foreheads, and murmured something about Gabriel Grub having drunk all the Hollands, and then fallen asleep on the flat tombstone; and they affected to explain what he supposed he had witnessed in the goblin's cavern, by saying that he had seen the world, and grown wiser. But this opinion, which was by no means a popular one at any time, gradually died off; and be the matter how it may, as Gabriel Grub was afflicted with rheumatism to the end of his days, this story has at least one moral, if it teach no better one-and that is, that if a man


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 they bore within their own bosoms the materials of happiness, contentment, and peace. He saw that women, the tenderest and most fragile of all God's creatures, were the oftenest superior to sorrow, adversity, and distress; and he saw that it was because they bore, in their own hearts, an inexhaustible well-spring of affection and devotion. Above all, he saw that men like himself, who snarled at the mirth and cheerfulness of others, were the foulest weeds on the fair surface of the earth; and setting all the good of the world against the evil, he came to the conclusion that it was a very decent and respectable sort of world after all. No sooner had he formed it, than the cloud which closed over the last picture, seemed to settle on his senses, and lull him to repose. One by one, the goblins faded from his sight; and as the last one disappeared, he sunk to sleep.

"The day had broken when Gabriel Grub awoke, and found himself lying, at full length on the flat grave-stone in the churchyard, with the wicker bottle lying empty by his side, and his coat, spade, and lantern, all well whitened by the last night's frost, scattered on the ground. The stone on which he had first seen the goblin seated, stood bolt upright before him, and the grave at which he had worked, the night before, was not far off. At first, he began to doubt the reality of his adventures, but the acute pain in his shoulders when he attempted to rise, assured him that the kicking of the goblins was certainly not ideal. He was staggered again, by observing no traces of footsteps in the snow on which the goblins had played at leap-frog with the grave-stones, but he speedily accounted for this circumstance when he remembered that, being spirits, they would leave no visible impression behind them. So, Gabriel Grub got on his feet as well as he could, for the pain in his back; and brushing the frost off his coat, put it on, and turned his face towards the town.

"But he was an altered man, and he could not bear the thought of returning to a place where his repentance would


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THE IVORY TOWER before me the sense of the connection in which I can see him as more or less covertly and waitingly, fastidiously and often too sceptically, conscious of possibilities of "writing". Quite frankly accept for him the complication or whatever of his fastidiousness, yet of his recognition withal of what makes for sterility; but again and again I have all this, I have it. His "culture", his initiations of intelligence and experience, his possibilities of imagination, if one will, to say nothing of other things, make for me a sort of figure of a floating island on which he drifts and bumps and coasts about, wanting to get alongside as much as possible, yet always with the gap of water, the little island fact, to be somehow bridged over. All of which makes him, I of course desperately recognise, another of the "intelligent", another exposed and assaulted, active and passive "mind" engaged in an adventure and interesting in itself by so being; but I rejoice in that aspect of my material as dramatically and determinantly general. It isn't centrally a drama of fools or vulgarians; it's only circumferentially and surroundedly so—these being enormously implied and with the effect of their hovering and pressing upon the whole business from without, but seen and felt by us only with that rich indirectness. So far so good; but I come back for a moment to an issue left standing yesterday—and beyond which, for that matter, two or three other points 331


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THE IVORY TOWER raise their heads. Why did it appear to come up for me again—I having had it present to me before and then rather waved it away—that one might see Horton in the kind of crisis that I glanced at as throwing him upon Gray with what I called violence? Is it because I feel "something more" is wanted for the process by which my Young Man works off the distaste, his distaste, for the ugliness of his inheritance—something more than his just generally playing into Morton's hands? I am in presence there of a beautiful difficulty, beautiful to solve, yet which one must be to the last point crystal-clear about; and this difficulty is certainly added to if Gray sees Horton as "dishonest" in relation to others over and above his being "queer" in the condoned way I have so to picture for his relation to Gray. Here are complexities not quite easily unravelled, yet manageable by getting sufficiently close to them; complexities, I mean, of the question of whether? Horton is abysmal, yes—but with the mixture in it that Gray sees. Ergo I want the mixture, and if I adopt what I threw off speculatively yesterday I strike myself as letting the mixture more or less go and having the non-mixture, that is the "bad" in him, preponderate. It has been my idea that this "bad" figures in a degree to Gray as after a fashion his own creation, the creation, that is, of the enormous and fantastic opportunity and temptation he has held out 332


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 custom of courtiers upon earth, who kick whom royalty kicks, and hug whom royalty hugs.

Show him some more!' said the king of the goblins.

"At these words, the cloud was dispelled, and a rich and beautiful landscape was disclosed to view—there is just such another, to this day, within half a mile of the old abbey town. The sun shone from out the clear blue sky, the water sparkled beneath his rays, and the trees looked greener, and the flowers more gay, beneath his cheering influence. The water rippled on, with a pleasant sound; the trees rustled in the light wind that murmured among their leaves; the birds sang upon the boughs; and the lark carolled on high, her welcome to the morning. Yes, it was morning; the bright, balmy morning of summer; the minutest leaf, the smallest blade of grass, was instinct with life. The ant crept forth to her daily toil, the butterfly fluttered and basked in the warm rays of the sun; myriads of insects spread their transparent wings, and revelled in their brief but happy existence. Man walked forth, elated with the scene; and all was brightness and splendour.

You a miserable man!' said the king of the goblins, in a more contemptuous tone than before. And again the king of the goblins gave his leg a flourish; again it descended on the shoulders of the sexton; and again the attendant goblins imitated the example of their chief.

"Many a time the cloud went and came, and many a lesson it taught to Gabriel Grub, who, although his shoulders smarted with pain from the frequent applications of the goblin's feet, looked on with an interest that nothing could diminish. He saw that men who worked hard, and earned their scanty bread with lives of labour, were cheerful and happy; and that to the most ignorant, the sweet face of nature was a never-failing source of cheerfulness and joy. He saw those who had been delicately nurtured, and tenderly brought up, cheerful under privations, and superior to suffering, that would have crushed many of a rougher grain, because


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 but they shrunk back from its touch, and looked with awe on his infant face; for calm and tranquil as it was, and sleeping in rest and peace as the beautiful child seemed to be, they saw that he was dead, and they knew that he was an Angel looking down upon, and blessing them, from a bright and happy Heaven.

Again the light cloud passed across the picture, and again the subject changed. The father and mother were old and helpless now, and the number of those about them was diminished more than half; but content and cheerfulness sat on every face, and beamed in every eye, as they crowded round the fireside, and told and listened to old stories of earlier and bygone days. Slowly and peacefully, the father sank into the grave, and, soon after, the sharer of all his cares and troubles followed him to a place of rest. The few, who yet survived them, knelt by their tomb, and watered the green turf which covered it, with their tears; then rose, and turned away: sadly and mournfully, but not with bitter cries, or despairing lamentations, for they knew that they should one day meet again; and once more they mixed with the busy world, and their content and cheerfulness were restored. The cloud settled upon the picture, and concealed it from the sexton's view.

"'What do you think of that?' said the goblin, turning his large face towards Gabriel Grub.

"Gabriel murmured out something about its being very pretty, and looked somewhat ashamed, as the goblin bent his fiery eyes upon him.

"'You a miserable man!' said the goblin, in a tone of excessive contempt. 'You!' He appeared disposed to add more, but indignation choked his utterance, so he lifted up one of his very pliable legs, and flourishing it above his head a little, to insure his aim, administered a good sound kick to Gabriel Grub; immediately after which, all the goblins in waiting, crowded round the wretched sexton, and kicked him without mercy: according to the established and invariable


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THE IVORY TOWER —even though these wouldn't have operated in the least, or couldn't, without predispositions in Horton's very genius. If Gray saw him as a mere vulgar practiser of what he does practise, the interest would by that fact exceedingly drop; there would be no interest indeed, and the beauty of my "psychological" picture wouldn't come off, would have no foot to stand on. The beauty is in the complexity of the question—which, stated in the simplest terms possible, reduces itself to Horton's practically saying to Gray, or seeing himself as saying to Gray should it come to the absolute touch: "You mind, in your extraordinary way, how this money was accumulated and hanky-pankied, you suffer, and cultivate a suffering, from the perpetrated wrong of which you feel it the embodied evidence, and with which the possession of it is thereby poisoned for you. But I don't mind one little scrap—and there is a great deal more to be said than you seem so much as able to understand, or so much as able to want to, about the whole question of how money comes to those who know how to make it. Here you are then, if it's so disagreeable to you—and what can one really say, with the chances you give me to say it, but that if you are so burdened and afflicted, there are ways of relieving you which, upon my honour, I should perfectly undertake to work—given the facilities that you so morbidly, so fantastically, so all but incredibly save for the 333


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 he was not in the habit of taking anything warm at night; one of the goblins held him while another poured the blazing liquid down his throat; the whole assembly screeched with laughter as he coughed and choked, and wiped away the tears which gushed plentifully from his eyes, after swallowing the burning draught.

"'And now,' said the king, fantastically poking the taper corner of his sugar-loaf hat into the sexton's eye, and thereby occasioning him the most exquisite pain: 'And now, show the man of misery and gloom, a few of the pictures from our own great storehouse!'

"As the goblin said this, a thick cloud which obscured the remoter end of the cavern, rolled gradually away, and disclosed, apparently at a great distance, a small and scantily furnished, but neat and clean apartment. A crowd of little children were gathered round a bright fire, clinging to their mother's gown, and gambolling around her chair. The mother occasionally rose, and drew aside the window-curtain, as if to look for some expected object: a frugal meal was ready spread upon the table; and an elbow chair was placed near the fire. A knock was heard at the door: the mother opened it, and the children crowded round her, and clapped their hands for joy, as their father entered. He was wet and weary, and shook the snow from his garments, as the children crowded round him, and seizing his cloak, hat, stick, and gloves, with busy zeal, ran with them from the room. Then, as he sat down to his meal before the fire, the children climbed about his knee, and the mother sat by his side, and all seemed happiness and comfort.

"But a change came upon the view, almost imperceptibly. The scene was altered to a small bed-room, where the fairest and youngest child lay dying; the roses had fled from his cheek, and the light from his eye; and even as the sexton looked upon him with an interest he had never felt or known before, he died. His young brothers and sisters crowded round his little bed, and seized his tiny hand, so cold and heavy;


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 tomb-stones: never stopping for an instant to take breath, but 'overing' the highest among them, one after the other, with the utmost marvellous dexterity. The first goblin was a most astonishing leaper, and none of the others could come near him; even in the extremity of his terror the sexton could not help observing, that while his friends were content to leap over the common-sized gravestones, the first one took the family vaults, iron railings and all, with as much ease as if they had been so many street posts.

"At last the game reached to a most exciting pitch; the organ played quicker and quicker; and the goblins leaped faster and faster: coiling themselves up, rolling head over heels upon the ground, and bounding over the tombstones like foot-balls. The sexton's brain whirled round with the rapidity of the motion he beheld, and his legs reeled beneath him, as the spirits flew before his eyes: when the goblin king, suddenly darting towards him, laid his hand upon his collar, and sank with him through the earth.

"When Gabriel Grub had had time to fetch his breath, which the rapidity of his descent had for the moment taken away, he found himself in what appeared to be a large cavern, surrounded on all sides by crowds of goblins, ugly and grim in the centre of the room, on an elevated seat, was stationed his friend of the churchyard; and close beside him stood Gabriel Grub himself, without power of motion.

"'Cold to-night,' said the king of the goblins, 'very cold. A glass of something warm, here!'

"At this command, half a dozen officious goblins, with a perpetual smile upon their faces, whom Gabriel Grub imagined to be courtiers, on that account, hastily disappeared, and presently returned with a goblet of liquid fire, which they presented to the king.

"'Ah!' cried the goblin, whose cheeks and throat were transparent, as he tossed down the flame, 'This warms one, indeed! Bring a bumper of the same, for Mr. Grub.'

"It was in vain for the unfortunate sexton to protest that


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THE IVORY TOWER testimony of my senses, permit me to enjoy." That, yes; but that is very different from the wider range of application of the aptitudes concerned. The confession, and the delinquency preceding it, that played a bit up for me yesterday—what do they do but make Horton just as vulgar as I don't want him, and, as I immediately recognise, Gray wouldn't in the least be able to stomach seeing him under any continuance of relations. I have it, I have it, and it comes as an answer to why I worried? Because of felt want of a way of providing for some Big Haul, really big; which my situation absolutely requires. There must be at a given moment a big haul in order to produce the big sacrifice; the latter being of the absolute essence. I say I have it when I ask myself why the Big Haul shouldn't simply consist of the consequence of a confession made by Horton to Gray, yes; but made not about what he has lost, whether dishonestly or not, for somebody else, but what he has lost for Gray. Solutions here bristle, positively, for the case seems to clear up from the moment I make Horton put his matter as a mere disastrous loss, of unwisdom, of having been "done" by others and not as a thing involving his own obliquity. What I want is that he pleads the loss—whether loss to Gray, loss to another party, or loss to both, is a detail. I incline to think loss to Gray sufficient—loss that Gray accepts, which is different from his meeting the 334


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 GABRIEL GRUB. 473 raise his spirits, perhaps, if he went on with his work at once. As he went his way, up the ancient street, he saw the cheerful light of the blazing fires gleam through the old casements, and heard the loud laugh and the cheerful shouts of those who were assembled around them; he marked the bustling preparations for next day's cheer, and smelt the numerous savoury odours consequent thereupon, as they steamed up from the kitchen windows in clouds. All this was gall and wormwood to the heart of Gabriel Grub; and when groups of children, bounded out of the houses, tripped across the road, and were met, before they could knock at the opposite door, by half a dozen curly-headed little rascals who crowded round them as they flocked up-stairs to spend the evening in their Christmas games, Gabriel smiled grimly, and clutched the handle of his spade with a firmer grasp, as he thought of measles, scarlet-fever, thrush, hooping-cough, and a good many other sources of consolation besides.

"In this happy frame of mind, Gabriel strode along: returning a short, sullen growl to the good-humoured greetings of such of his neighbours as now and then passed him: until he turned into the dark lane which led to the churchyard. Now, Gabriel had been looking forward to reaching the dark lane, because it was, generally speaking, a nice, gloomy, mournful place, into which the towns-people did not much care to go, except in broad day-light, and when the sun was shining; consequently, he was not a little indignant to hear a young urchin roaring out some jolly song about a merry Christmas, in this very sanctuary, which had been called Coffin Lane ever since the days of the old abbey, and the time of the shaven-headed monks. As Gabriel walked on, and the voice drew nearer, he found it proceeded from a small boy, who was hurrying along, to join one of the little parties in the old street, and who, partly to keep himself company, and partly to prepare himself for the occasion, was shouting out the song at the highest pitch of his lungs. So Gabriel waited until the boy came up, and then dodged him


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 even excepting the plainer portions of the young-lady visitors, who, in their excessive confusion, ran right under the mistletoe, as soon as it was hung up, without knowing it! Wardle stood with his back to the fire, surveying the whole scene, with the utmost satisfaction; and the fat boy took the opportunity of appropriating to his own use, and summarily devouring, a particularly fine mince-pie, that had been carefully put by, for somebody else.

Now, the screaming had subsided, and faces were in a glow, and curls in a tangle, and Mr. Pickwick, after kissing the old lady as before mentioned, was standing under the mistletoe, looking with a very pleased countenance on all that was passing around him, when the young lady with the black eyes, after a little whispering with the other young ladies, made a sudden dart forward, and, putting her arm round Mr. Pickwick's neck, saluted him affectionately on the left cheek; and before Mr. Pickwick distinctly knew what was the matter, he was surrounded by the whole body, and kissed by every one of them.

It was a pleasant thing to see Mr. Pickwick in the centre of the group, now pulled this way, and then that, and first kissed on the chin, and then on the nose, and then on the spectacles and to hear the peals of laughter which were raised on every side; but it was a still more pleasant thing to see Mr. Pickwick, blinded shortly afterwards with a silk handkerchief, falling up against the wall, and scrambling into corners, and going through all the mysteries of blind-man's buff, with the utmost relish for the game, until at last he caught one of the poor relations, and then had to evade the blind-man himself, which he did with a nimbleness and agility that elicited the admiration and applause of all beholders. The poor relations caught the people who they thought would like it, and, when the game flagged, got caught themselves. When they were all tired of blind-man's buff, there was a great game at snap-dragon, and when fingers enough were burned with that, and all the raisins were gone, they sat down by the huge


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THE IVORY TOWER disaster inflicted on another by Horton. What I want a bit is all contained in Gray's question, afterwards determined, not absolutely present at the moment, of whether this fact has not been a feigned or simulated one, not a genuine gulf of accident, but an appeal for relinquishment practised on Gray by the latter's liability to believe that the cause is genuine. I clutch the idea of this determinant of rightness of suspicion being one with the circumstance that Cissy in a sort of thereupon manner "takes up" with Horton, instead of not doing so, as figures to Gray as discernible if Horton were merely minus. Is it cleared up for Gray that the cause is not genuine?—does he get, or does he seek, any definite light on this? Does he tell any one, that is does he tell Rosanna of the incident (though I want the thing of proportions bigger than those of a mere incident)—does he put it to her, in short does he take her into his confidence about it? I think I see that he does to this extent, that she is the only person to whom he speaks, but that he then speaks with a kind of transparent and, as it were, (as it is in her sight) "sublime" dissimulation. Yes, I think that's the way I want it—that he tells her what has happened, tells it to her as having happened, as a statement of what he has done or means to do—perhaps his mind isn't even yet made up to it; whereby I seem to get a very interesting passage of drama and another very 335


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 vith the pain. 'Murder!' says the old gen'l'm'n. All right, sir,' says the pickpocket, a wisperin' in his ear. And wen he come straight agin, the watch and chain was gone, and what's worse than that, the old gen'l'm'n's digestion was all wrong ever artervards, to the wery last day of his life; so just you look about you, young feller, and take care you too fat."

As Mr. Weller concluded this moral tale, with which the fat boy appeared much affected, they all three repaired to the large kitchen, in which the family were by this time assembled, according to annual custom on Christmas eve, observed by old Wardle's forefathers from time immemorial.

From the centre of the ceiling of this kitchen, old Wardle had just suspended, with his own hands, a huge branch of mistletoe, and this same branch of mistletoe instantaneously gave rise to a scene of general and delightful struggling and confusion; in the midst of which. Mr. Pickwick, with a gallantry that would have done honour to a descendant of Lady Tollimglower herself, took the old lady by the hand, led her beneath the mystic branch, and saluted her in all courtesy and decorum. The old lady submitted to this piece of practical politeness with all the dignity which befitted so important and serious a solemnity, but the younger ladies, not being so thoroughly imbued with a superstitious veneration for the custom: or imagining that the value of a salute is very much enhanced if it cost a little trouble to obtain it: screamed and struggled, and ran into corners, and threatened and remonstrated, and did everything but leave the room, until some of the less adventurous gentlemen were on the point of desisting, when they all at once found it useless to resist any longer, and submitted to be kissed with a good grace. Mr. Winkle kissed the young lady with the black eyes, and Mr. Snodgrass kissed Emily, and Mr. Weller, not being particular about the form of being under the mistletoe, kissed Emma and the other female servants, just as he caught them. As to the poor relations, they kissed everybody, not


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THE IVORY TOWER fine "Joint." He doesn't, no, decidedly, communicate anything to Davey Bradham—his instinct has been against that—and I feel herewith how much I want this D.B. relation for him to have all its possibility of irony, "comedy", humorous colour, so to speak. I want awfully to do D.B. to the full and give him all his value. However, it's of the situation here with Rosanna that the question is, and I seem to feel that still further clear up for me. There has been the passage, the big circumstance, with Horton—as to which, as to the sense of which and of what it involves for him, don't I after all see him as taking time? after all see him as a bit staggered quand même, and, as it were, asking for time, though without any betrayal of "suspicion", any expression tantamount to "What a queer story!" Yes, yes, it seems to come to me that I want the determination of suspicion not to come at once; I want it to hang back and wait for a big "crystallisation," a falling together of many things, which now takes place, as it were, in Rosanna's presence and under her extraordinary tacit action, in that atmosphere of their relation which has already given me, or will have given, not to speak presumptuously, so much. It kind of comes over me even that I don't want any articulation to himself of the "integrity" question in respect to Horton to have taken place at all—till it very momentously takes place all at once in the air, 336


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 man, as hadn't caught a glimpse of his own shoes for five-and-forty-year."

"Lor!" exclaimed Emma.

"No, that he hadn't, my dear," said Mr. Weller; "and if you'd put an exact model of his own legs on the dinin' table afore him, he wouldn't ha' known 'em. Well, he always walks to his office with a wery handsome gold watch-chain hanging out, about a foot and a quarter, and a gold watch in his fob pocket as was worth—I'm afraid to say how much, but as much as as a a watch can be—a large, heavy, round manafacter, as stout for a watch, as he was for a man, and with a big face in proportion. 'You'd better not carry that 'ere watch,' says the old gen'l'm'n's friends, 'you'll be robbed on it,' says they. 'Shall I?' says he. 'Yes, you will,' says they. 'Vell,' says he, 'I should like to see the thief as could get this here watch out, for I'm blest if I ever can, it's such a tight fit,' says he; 'and venever I wants to know what's o'clock, I'm obliged to stare into the bakers' shops,' he says. Well, then he laughs as hearty as if he was a goin' to pieces, and out he walks agin' with his powdered head and pigtail, and rolls down the Strand vith the chain hangin' out furder than ever, and the great round watch almost bustin' through his grey kersey smalls. There warn't a pickpocket in all London as didn't take a pull at that chain, but the chain 'ud never break, and the watch 'ud never come out, so they soon got tired o' dragging such a heavy old gen'l'm'n along the pavement, and he'd go home and laugh till the pigtail wibrated like the penderlum of a Dutch clock. At last, one day the old gen'l'm'n was a rollin' along, and he sees a pickpocket as he know'd by sight, a-comin' up, arm in arm vith a little boy vith a wery large head. 'Here's a game,' says the old gen'l'm'n to himself, 'they're a-goin' to have another try, but it won't do!' So he begins a-chucklin' wery hearty, wen, all of a sudden, the little boy leaves hold of the pickpocket's arm, and rushes headforemost straight into the old gen'l'm'n's stomach, and for a moment doubles him right up.


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 and I am proud to know him (great uproar). He is a kind, excellent, independent-spirited, fine-hearted, hospitable, liberal man (enthusiastic shouts from the poor relations, at all the adjectives; and especially at the two last). That his daughter may enjoy all the happiness, even he can desire; and that he may derive from the contemplation of her felicity all the gratification of heart and peace of mind which he so well deserves, is, I am persuaded, our united wish. So, let us drink their healths, and wish them prolonged life, and every blessing!"

Mr. Pickwick concluded amidst a whirlwind of applause; and once more were the lungs of the supernumeraries, under Mr. Weller's command, brought into active and efficient operation. Mr. Wardle proposed Mr. Pickwick; Mr. Pickwick proposed the old lady. Mr. Snodgrass proposed Mr. Wardle; Mr. Wardle proposed Mr. Snodgrass. One of the poor relations proposed Mr. Tupman, and the other poor relation proposed Mr. Winkle; all was happiness and festivity, until the mysterious disappearance of both the poor relations beneath the table, warned the party that it was time to adjourn.

At dinner they met again, after a five-and-twenty mile walk, undertaken by the males at Wardle's recommendation, to get rid of the effects of the wine at breakfast. The poor relations had kept in bed all day, with the view of attaining the same happy consummation, but, as they had been unsuccessful, they stopped there. Mr. Weller kept the domestics in a state of perpetual hilarity; and the fat boy divided his time into small alternate allotments of eating and sleeping.

The dinner was as hearty an affair as the breakfast, and dessert and some more toasts. Then came the was quite as noisy, without the tears. coffee; and then, the ball.

The best sitting room at Manor Farm was a good, long, dark-panelled room with a high chimney-piece, and a capacious chimney, up which you could have driven one of the new


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THE IVORY TOWER as I say, and on the ground, and in the course, of this present scene. Immensely interesting to have made Everything precedent to have consisted but in preparation for this momentousness, so that the whole effect has been gathered there ready to break. At the same time, if I make it break not in the right way, unless I so rightly condition its breaking, I do what I was moved just above to bar, the giving away of Horton to Rosanna in the sense that fixing his behaviour upon him, or inviting or allowing her to fix it, is a thing I see my finer alternative to. The great thing, the great find, I really think, for the moment, is this fact of his having gone to her in a sort of still preserved uncertainty of light that amounts virtually to darkness, and then after a time with her coming away with the uncertainty dispelled and the remarkable light instead taking its place. That gives me my very form and climax—in respect to the "way" that has most perplexed me, and gathers my action up to the fulness so proposed and desired; to the point after which I want to make it workable that there shall be but two Books left. In other words the ideal will be that this whole passage, using the word in the largest sense, with all the accompanying aspects, shall constitute Book 8, "Act" 8, as I call it, of my drama, with the dénoûment occupying the space to the end—for the foregoing is of course not in the least the dénoûment, but only prepares it, 337


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 "Mrs. Wardle," said Mr. Pickwick, "we old folks must have a glass of wine together, in honour of this joyful event."

The old lady was in a state of great grandeur just then, for she was sitting at the top of the table in the brocaded gown, with her newly-married granddaughter on one side and Mr. Pickwick on the other, to do the carving. Mr. Pickwick had not spoken in a very loud tone, but she understood him at once, and drank off a full glass of wine to his long life and happiness; after which the worthy old soul launched forth into a minute and particular account of her own wedding, with a dissertation on the fashion of wearing high-heeled shoes, and some particulars concerning the life and adventures of the beautiful Lady Tollimglower, deceased: at all of which the old lady herself laughed very heartily indeed, and so did the young ladies too, for they were wondering among themselves what on earth grandma was talking about. When they laughed, the old lady laughed ten times more heartily, and said that these always had been considered capital stories: which caused them all to laugh again, and put the old lady into the very best of humours. Then, the cake was cut, and passed through the ring; the young ladies saved pieces to put under their pillows to dream of their future husbands on; and a great deal of blushing and merriment was thereby occasioned.

"Mr. Miller," said Mr. Pickwick to his old acquaintance the hard-headed gentleman, " a glass of wine?"

"With great satisfaction, Mr. Pickwick," replied the hard-headed gentleman, solemnly.

"You'll take me in?" said the benevolent old clergyman.

"And me," interposed his wife.

"And me, and me," said a couple of poor relations at the bottom of the table, who had eaten and drank very heartily, and laughed at everything.

Mr. Pickwick expressed his heartfelt delight at every additional suggestion; and his eyes beamed with hilarity and cheerfulness.


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 being honoured with a private view of the bride and bridesmaids, up stairs. All the Pickwickians were in most blooming array; and there was a terrific roaring on the grass in front of the house, occasioned by all the men, boys, and hobbledehoys attached to the farm, each of whom had got a white bow in his button-hole, and all of whom were cheering with might and main: being incited thereunto, and stimulated therein, by the precept and example of Mr. Samuel Weller, who had managed to become mighty popular already, and was as much at home as if he had been born on the land.

A wedding is a licensed subject to joke upon, but there really is no great joke in the matter after all;—we speak merely of the ceremony, and beg it to be distinctly understood that we indulge in no hidden sarcasm upon a married life. Mixed up with the pleasure and joy of the occasion, are the many regrets at quitting home, the tears of parting between parent and child, the consciousness of leaving the dearest and kindest friends of the happiest portion of human life, to encounter its cares and troubles with others still untried and little known: natural feelings which we would not render this chapter mournful by describing, and which we should be still more unwilling to be supposed to ridicule.

Let us briefly say, then, that the ceremony was performed by the old clergyman, in the parish church of Dingley Dell, and that Mr. Pickwick's name is attached to the register, still preserved in the vestry thereof; that the young lady with the black eyes signed her name in a very unsteady and tremulous manner; that Emily's signature, as the other bridesmaid, is nearly illegible; that it all went off in very admirable style; that the young ladies generally thought it far less shocking than they had expected; and that although the owner of the black eyes and the arch smile informed Mr. Winkle that she was sure she could never submit to anything so dreadful, we have the very best reasons for thinking she was mistaken. To all this, we may add, that Mr. Pickwick was the first who saluted the bride, and that in so doing,


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THE IVORY TOWER just as what is thus involved is the occupancy of Book 7 by the history with Horton. Of course I can but reflect that to bring this splendid economy off it must have been practised up to VII with the most intense and immense art: the scheme I have already sketched for I and II leaving me therewith but III, IV, V, and VI to arrive at the completeness of preparation for VII, which carries in its bosom the completeness of preparation for VIII—this last, by a like grand law, carrying in its pocket the completeness of preparation for IX and X. But why not? Who's afraid? and what has the very essence of my design been but the most magnificent packed and calculated closeness? Keep this closeness up to the notch while admirably animating it, and I do what I should simply be sickened to death not to! Of course it means the absolute exclusively economic existence and situation of every sentence and every letter; but again what is that but the most desirable of beauties in itself? The chapters of history with Rosanna leave me then to show, speaking simply, its effect with regard to (I assume I put first) Gray and Horton, to Gray and Cissy, to Cissy and Horton, to Gray and Mrs. Bradham on the one hand and to Gray and Davey on the other and finally and supremely to Gray and Rosanna herself. It is of course definitely on that note the thing closes—but wait a little before I come to it. Let me state as "plainly" 338


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 A happy party they were, that night. Sedate and solemn were the score of rubbers in which Mr. Pickwick and the old lady played together; uproarious was the mirth of the round table. Long after the ladies had retired, did the hot elder wine, well qualified with brandy and spice, go round, and round, and round again; and sound was the sleep and pleasant were the dreams that followed. It is a remarkable fact that those of Mr. Snodgrass bore constant reference to Emily Wardle; and that the principal figure in Mr. Winkle's visions was a young lady with black eyes, an arch smile, and a pair of remarkably nice boots with fur round the tops.

Mr. Pickwick was awakened, early in the morning, by a hum of voices and a pattering of feet, sufficient to rouse even the fat boy from his heavy slumbers. He sat up in bed and listened. The female servants and female visitors were running constantly to and fro; and there were such multitudinous demands for hot water, such repeated outcries for needles and thread, and so many half-suppressed entreaties of "Oh, do come and tie me, there's a dear!" that Mr. Pickwick in his innocence began to imagine that something dreadful must have occurred: when he grew more awake, and remembered the wedding. The occasion being an important one he dressed himself with peculiar care, and descended to the breakfast room.

There were all the female servants in a bran new uniform of pink muslin gowns with white bows in their caps, running about the house in a state of excitement and agitation which it would be impossible to describe. The old lady was dressed out in a brocaded gown which had not seen the light for twenty years, saving and excepting such truant rays as had stolen through the chinks in the box in which it had been lain by, during the whole time. Mr. Trundle was in high feather and spirits, but a little nervous withal. The hearty old landlord was trying to look very cheerful and unconcerned, but failing signally in the attempt. All the girls were in tears and white muslin, except a select two or three who were


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 boots with fur round the top, was observed to scream very loudly, when Mr. Winkle offered to help her over.

All this was very snug and pleasant. And when the difficulties of the stile were at last surmounted, and they once more entered on the open field, old Wardle informed Mr. Pickwick how they had all been down in a body to inspect the furniture and fittings-up of the house, which the young couple were to tenant, after the Christmas holidays; at which communication Bella and Trundle both coloured up, as red as the fat boy after the tap-room fire; and the young lady with the black eyes and the fur round the boots, whispered something in Emily's ear, and then glanced archly at Mr. Snodgrass: to which Emily responded that she was a foolish girl, but turned very red, notwithstanding; and Mr. Snodgrass, who was as modest as all great geniuses usually are, felt the crimson rising to the crown of his head, and devoutly wished in the inmost recesses of his own heart that the young lady aforesaid, with her black eyes, and her archness, and her boots with the fur round the top, were all comfortably deposited in the adjacent county.

But if they were social and happy outside the house, what was the warmth and cordiality of their reception when they reached the farm! The very servants grinned with pleasure at sight of Mr. Pickwick; and Emma bestowed a half-demure, half-impudent, and all pretty, look of recognition, on Mr. Tupman, which was enough to make the statue of Bonaparte in the passage, unfold his arms, and clasp her within them.

The old lady was seated in customary state in the front parlour, but she was rather cross, and, by consequence, most particularly deaf. She never went out herself, and like a great many other old ladies of the same stamp, she was apt to consider it an act of domestic treason, if anybody else took the liberty of doing what she couldn't. So, bless her old soul, she sat as upright as she could, in her great chair, and looked as fierce as might be—and that was benevolent after all.


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 their great-coats and play at leap-frog in pure lightness of heart and gaiety; and we firmly believe that had Mr. Tupman at that moment proffered "a back," Mr. Pickwick would have accepted his offer with the utmost avidity.

to However, Mr. Tupman did not volunteer any such accommodation, and the friends walked on, conversing merrily. As they turned into a lane they had to cross, the sound of many voices burst upon their ears; and before they had even had time to form a guess to whom they belonged, they walked into the very centre of the party who were expecting their arrival—a fact which was first notified to the Pickwickians, by the loud "Hurrah," which burst from old Wardle's lips, when they appeared in sight.

First, there was Wardle himself, looking, if possible, more jolly than ever; then there were Bella and her faithful Trundle; and, lastly, there were Emily and some eight or ten young ladies, who had all come down to the wedding, which was to take place next day, and who were in as happy and important a state as young ladies usually are, on such momentous occasions; and they were, one and all, startling the fields and lanes, far and wide, with their frolic and laughter.

The ceremony of introduction, under such circumstances, was very soon performed, or we should rather say that the introduction was soon over, without any ceremony at all. In two minutes thereafter, Mr. Pickwick was joking with the young ladies who wouldn't come over the stile while he looked—or who, having pretty feet and unexceptionable ankles, preferred standing on the top-rail for five minutes or so, declaring that they were too frightened to move—with as much ease and absence of reserve or constraint, as if he had known them for life. It is worthy of remark, too, that Mr. Snodgrass offered Emily far more assistance than the absolute terrors of the stile (although it was full three feet high, and had only a couple of stepping-stones) would seem to require; while one black-eyed young lady in a very nice little pair of


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THE IVORY TOWER as may be what "happens" as the next step in my drama, the next Joint in the action after the climax of the "scene" with Rosanna. Obviously the first thing is a passage with Horton, the passage after, which shall be a pendant to the passage before. But don't I want some episode to interpose here on the momentous ground of the Girl? These sequences to be absolutely planned and fitted together, of course, up to their last point of relation; to work such complexity into such compass can only be a difficulty of the most inspiring—the prize being, naturally, to achieve the lucidity with the complexity. What then is the lucidity for us about my heroine, and exactly what is it that I want and don't want to show? I want something to take place here between Gray and her that crowns his vision and his action in respect to Horton. As I of course want every point and comma to be "functional", so there's nothing I want that more for than for this aspect of my crisis—which does, yes, decidedly, present itself before Gray has again seen Horton. I seem even to want this aspect, as I call it, to be the decisive thing in respect to his "decision". I want something to have still depended for him on the question of how she is, what she does, what she makes him see, however little intending it, of her sensibility to the crisis, as it were—knowing as I do what I mean by this. But what does come up for me, and has to be faced, is all the appearance that all 339


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 with one leg dangling in the air, is nearly precipitated into the street, as the coach twists round the sharp corner by the cheesemonger's shop, and turns into the market-place; and before Mr. Snodgrass, who sits next to him, has recovered from his alarm, they pull up at the inn yard, where the fresh horses, with cloths on, are already waiting. The coachman throws down the reins and gets down himself, and the other outside passengers drop down also: except those who have no great confidence in their ability to get up again and they remain where they are, and stamp their feet against the coach to warm them—looking, with longing eyes and red noses, at the bright fire in the inn bar, and the sprigs of holly with red berries which ornament the window.

But the guard has delivered at the corn-dealer's shop the brown paper packet he took out of the little pouch which hangs over his shoulder by a leathern strap; and has seen the horses carefully put to; and has thrown on the pavement the saddle which was brought from London on the coach-roof; and has assisted in the conference between the coachman and the hostler about the grey mare that hurt her off-foreleg last Tuesday; and he and Mr. Weller are all right behind, and the coachman is all right in front, and the old gentleman inside, who has kept the window down full two inches all this time, has pulled it up again, and the cloths are off, and they are all ready for starting, except the "two stout gentlemen," whom the coachman inquires after with some impatience. Hereupon the coachman, and the guard, and Sam Weller, and Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass, and all the hostlers, and every one of the idlers, who are more in number than all the others put together, shout for the missing gentlemen as loud as they can bawl. A distant response is heard from the yard, and Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman come running down it, quite out of breath, for they have been having a glass of ale a-piece, and Mr. Pickwick's fingers are so cold that he has been full five minutes before he could find the sixpence to pay for it. The coachman shouts an admonitory


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 partly because he has a habit of doing it, and partly because it's as well to show the passengers how cool he is, and what an easy thing it is to drive four-in-hand, when you have had as much practice as he has. Having done this very leisurely (otherwise the effect would be materially impaired), he replaces his handkerchief, pulls on his hat, adjusts his gloves, squares his elbows, cracks the whip again, and on they speed, more merrily than before.

A few small houses, scattered on either side of the road, betoken the entrance to some town or village. The lively notes of the guard's key-bugle vibrate in the clear cold air, and wake up the old gentleman inside, who, carefully letting down the window-sash half-way, and standing sentry over the air, takes a short peep out, and then carefully pulling it up again, informs the other inside that they're going to change directly; on which the other inside wakes himself up, and determines to postpone his next nap until after the stoppage. Again the bugle sounds lustily forth, and rouses the cottager's wife and children, who peep out at the house-door, and watch the coach till it turns the corner, when they once more crouch round the blazing fire, and throw on another log of wood against father comes home; while father himself, a full mile off, has just exchanged a friendly nod with the coachman, and turned round to take a good long stare at the vehicle as it whirls away.

And now the bugle plays a lively air as the coach rattles through the ill-paved streets of a country-town; and the coachman, undoing the buckle which keeps his ribands together, prepares to throw them off the moment he stops. Mr. Pickwick emerges from his coat collar, and looks about him with great curiosity; perceiving which, the coachman informs Mr. Pickwick of the name of the town, and tells him it was market-day yesterday, both of which pieces of information Mr. Pickwick retails to his fellow-passengers; whereupon they emerge from their coat collars too, and look about them also. Mr. Winkle, who sits at the extreme edge,


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 to squeeze the cod-fish into the boot, first head first, and then tail first, and then top upward, and then bottom upward, and then side-ways, and then long-ways, all of which artifices the implacable cod-fish sturdily resists, until the guard accidentally hits him in the very middle of the basket, whereupon he suddenly disappears into the boot, and with him, the head and shoulders of the guard himself, who, not calculating upon so sudden a cessation of the passive resistance of the cod-fish, experiences a very unexpected shock, to the unsmotherable delight of all the porters and bystanders. Upon this, Mr. Pickwick smiles with great good-humour, and drawing a shilling from his waistcoat pocket, begs the guard, as he picks himself out of the boot, to drink his health in a glass of hot brandy and water; at which the guard smiles too, and Messrs. Snodgrass, Winkle, and Tupman, all smile in company. The guard and Mr. Weller disappear for five minutes: most probably to get the hot brandy and water, for they smell very strongly of it, when they return, the coachman mounts to the box, Mr. Weller jumps up behind, the Pickwickians pull their coats round their legs and their shawls over their noses, the helpers pull the horse-cloths off, the coachman shouts out a cheery "All right," and away they go.

They have rumbled through the streets, and jolted over the stones, and at length reach the wide and open country. The wheels skim over the hard and frosty ground and the horses, bursting into a canter at a smart crack of the whip, step along the road as if the load behind them: coach, passengers, cod-fish, oyster barrels, and all: were but a feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle sloop, and enter upon a level, as compact and dry as a solid block of marble, two miles long. Another crack of the whip, and on they speed, at a smart gallop: the horses tossing their heads and rattling the harness, as if in exhilaration at the rapidity of the motion: while the coachman, holding whip and reins in one hand, takes off his hat with the other, and resting it on his knees, pulls out his handkerchief, and wipes his forehead:


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 the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blest and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!

We write these words now, many miles distant from the spot at which, year after year, we met on that day, a merry and joyous circle. Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!

But we are so taken up and occupied with the good qualities of this saint Christmas, that we are keeping Mr. Pickwick and his friends waiting in the cold on the outside of the Muggleton coach, which they have just attained, well wrapped up in great-coats, shawls, and comforters. The portmanteaus and carpet-bags have been stowed away, and Mr. Weller and the guard are endeavouring to insinuate into the fore-boot a huge cod-fish several sizes too large for it—which is snugly packed up, in a long brown basket, with a layer of straw over the top, and which has been left to the last, in order that he may repose in safety on the half-dozen barrels of real native oysters, all the property of Mr. Pickwick, which have been arranged in regular order at the bottom of the receptacle. The interest displayed in Mr. Pickwick's countenance is most intense, as Mr. Weller and the guard try


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THE IVORY TOWER this later development that I have sketched and am sketching, rather directly involves a deviation from that help by alternations which I originally counted on, and which I began by drawing upon in the first three or four Books. What becomes after the first three or four then of that variation—if I make my march between IV and VIII inclusive all a matter of what appears to Gray? Perhaps on closer view I can for the "finer amusement" escape that frustration—though it would take some doing; and the fact remains that I don't really want, and can't, any other exhibition than Gray's own except in the case of Horton and the Young Woman. I should like more variation than just that will yield me withal—so at least it strikes me; but if I press a bit a possibility perhaps will rise. Two things strike me: one of these being that instead of making Book 9 Gray's "act" I may make it in a manner Cissy's own; save that a terrific little question here comes up as involved in the very essence of my cherished symmetry and "unity". The absolute prime compositional idea ruling me is thus the unity of each Act, and I get unity with the Girl for IX only if I keep it to her and whoever else. To her and Horton, yes, to her and Gray (Gray first) yes; only how then comes in the "passage" of Gray and Horton without her, and which I don't want to push over to X. It would be an "aesthetic" ravishment to make Book 10 balance 340


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Some ill-considered author once formulated a theory, which since has gained considerably more currency than it deserves, that the corps of critics is recruited from the ranks of unsuccessful novelists. It would be more easy to credit the converse of this fantastic supposition. Indeed, if nine-tenths of our novelists were critics it would not be possible for them to write such bad novels. Speaking for myself, I may say that I was both a dramatic and a music critic before I had conceived the idea that I should ever write a novel.

Ten or twelve years ago, Miss Geraldine Farrar remarked to an interviewer that singers should retire at the age of forty. In conversation, at any rate, I remember often to have expressed myself similarly in regard to critics of music. When I was younger I held the firm belief that after forty the cells hardened and that prejudices were formed which precluded the possibility of the welcoming of novelty. From almost the moment I began to write on the subject of music, therefore, I took it upon myself to

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 attack the older men who had closed their minds to new ideas. However that may be, Miss Farrar did not retire, and I did.

For twenty years, with a fringe of months at either end of this period, I attended a concert or an opera or a play nearly every evening, and, for long stretches, nearly every afternoon as well. There have been countless occasions on which I have heard parts of three or four operas and concerts during the same evening. This consistent activity was carried on in several cities: Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Munich, and elsewhere, and for at least sixteen of the twenty years I not only attended these entertainments, I also wrote about them.

Towards the end I grew very tired of this routine. Music, the drama, singers and actors, began to have precious little new to say to me, and I began to have precious little new to say about them. Had I continued, I should have been obliged to repeat myself, besides boring myself to death and running the by no means unlikely risk of catching a series of colds in draughty halls. Also, I recognized the symptoms of age creeping upon me. I began to prefer Johann Strauss waltzes to the last sonatas of Beethoven; Chopin pleased me more than Brahms. I determined, therefore, to step aside to make way for the younger generation, who are

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 hereby given permission to transfer what I said ten years ago about Stravinsky and Satie to Darius Milhaud and the young Italians.

There was a still more pregnant reason for my desertion of the camp of musical criticism. I seemed always to be about ten years ahead of most of the other critics and the orchestral conductors who make out programs. I missed the reviling of Wagner in New York, but I have watched the pundits of the press revile, in turn, Richard Strauss, Debussy, and Stravinsky, only, in the end, after their ears, through repeated hearings, had grown accustomed to the new clang-tints, to accept these composers as part of the sacred hierarchy. My orchestral education was carried on under Theodore Thomas in Chicago. Now Thomas was not a great conductor, although he always gave honest musical readings of his scores, but he had one great virtue: he believed that new music should be heard. He performed, therefore, every important European composition as soon as possible after it had been performed abroad. As a result, when I arrived in New York in 1906, having listened to and appraised nearly all the major works of Strauss and Debussy composed up to that date, I was amazed to discover that the New York critics were still fighting about these composers, first underpraising them and a little later overpraising

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 them, for Strauss, at any rate, to my mind, has never been a whit superior as a composer to such a man as Liszt. In Paris, in 1913, I heard Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps and a good deal more of this Russian's music. I wrote a panegyric about Le Sacre du Printemps in my first book, published in 1915. In 1924, Le Sacre du Printemps has at last been performed in New York and the critics have at last accepted Stravinsky. So, indeed, apparently, have the conductors who, until the past four years, hardly ever permitted his name to be emblazoned on their programs. The job of music critic in New York, therefore, is certainly not an ideal occupation for a man with imagination and foresight.

I might further urge that there were economic reasons for my shift of professions, for I realized but small sums of silver from this great outlay of labour. My stipend from the newspapers for which I worked was decidedly modest; the several volumes of criticism which I published, while encomiastically reviewed (Henry Mencken hailed even my first book with delight, seeing in it possibly, as did Peter Whiffle, the germ of future achievement), enjoyed but a small sale. Most of them, indeed, were "remaindered." I doubt if any one makes money out of music criticism. The late James Huneker, as prominent an

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 exponent of the profession as any one I could name offhand, died poor, notwithstanding the fact that he had always led an extremely simple life. I wonder if even Ernest Newman, probably the best living critic of music—or if not the best critic, at least the best writer on music—is driving about in a Rolls-Royce? Music criticism is poorly paid because it is poorly read. A novel, which is perhaps twice as easy to write—for any one who can write it at all—as such a book as the one that follows this preface, a novel, I say, which requires even in extreme instances about one-third as much documentation or fundamental knowledge as even a book like this poor Red, not only brings one money, it also brings one readers.

To be perfectly frank, however, I must state that the matter of economics never really entered into the question of my decision. Henry James once wrote, and he was writing about critics: "The sense of effort is easily lost in the enthusiasm of curiosity." When I first began to attend the opera and concerts and the theatre I went because I liked to go. It was, I honestly believe, a desire to broaden my prospects in these respects that got me out of the state of Iowa, where opportunities of this nature were meagre. I think it was the primary reason for my leaving Chicago, after I had spent seven years in that

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THE IVORY TOWER with Book 1 as Rosanna's affair; which I glimmeringly see as interestingly possible if I can wind up somehow as I want to do between Gray and Horton. In connection with which, however, something again glimmers—the possibility of making Book 9 quand même Cissy and Horton and Gray; twisting out, that is, some admirable way of her being participant in, "present at", what here happens between them as to their own affair. I say these things after all with the sense, so founded on past experience, that, in closer quarters and the intimacy of composition, pre-noted arrangements, proportions and relations, do most uncommonly insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open always to something more right and more related. It is subject to that constant possibility, all the while, that one does pre-note and tentatively sketch; a fact so constantly before one as to make too idle any waste of words on it. At the same time I do absolutely and utterly want to stick, even to the very depth, to the general distribution here imagined as I have groped on; and I am at least now taking a certain lightness and conclusiveness of parts and items for granted until the intimate tussle, as I say, happens, if it does happen, to dislocate or modify them. Such an assumption for instance I find myself quite loving to make in presence 341


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 city. I am sure that a hankering to hear Wagner in Munich was the inspiration for my first trip to Europe. Up until about the year 1918, in fact, my enthusiasm for the art under discussion sustained me in the belief that I should be writing about music throughout the length and breadth of my career. About that date I began to nourish doubts; sketches foreshadowing my future fictions began to appear in my books; I became uneasy in the concert hall; in short, I began to realize that I was nearly through. The last two papers in this volume reflect some of the reasons for this metamorphosis.

Certainly, I do not regret those years. They supplied me with not a little knowledge and experience; they served to introduce me, in one way or another, to most of the famous people of the period, but when a thing is done, it is done, at least so far as I am concerned. I have not entered an opera house for several seasons, and my recent attendance on the concert hall has been limited to a few special occasions.

I am delighted to see that many of my suggestions and prophecies have been realized. When I published my book about Spanish music, not one orchestral composition by a Spaniard, at least so far as I am aware, had yet been performed in our concert halls. This absurd state of affairs has since been remedied. Stravinsky,

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 whom I have considered, since I first became acquainted with his music eleven years ago, the most important of living composers, is now generally recognized as such. As for my plea that American popular music be taken more seriously, Eva Gauthier recently devoted an entire group on a recital program to jazz songs; a celebrated pianist has included Zez Confrey's Kitten on the Keys in his repertory; Paul Whiteman has given a series of concerts devoted to American jazz, which have created a sensation in musical circles (even Mengelberg has come forward with his word of commendation); more than all, George Gershwin has composed and performed his Rhapsody in Blue, a work in concerto form for piano and orchestra, in which jazz is utilized in a musicianly manner (as I predicted it would be in The Great American Composer) to create just the effect that Liszt got into his rhapsodies by a use of Hungarian tunes, or Albéniz into his Iberia suite, which is based on suggestions in melody and rhythm of Spanish popular dances. Jazz may not be the last hope of American music, nor yet the best hope, but at present, I am convinced, it is its only hope.

There remained to solve, however, the problem of my early books, most of which are out of

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 print, and which, for sufficiently good reasons, I shall never republish in their original forms or under their original titles. These volumes naturally contain much material that I should never care to reprint; moreover the later volumes include not only papers on musical subjects but also my first attempts at fictional sketches, for it was necessary for me to convince myself that I could write fiction before I undertook to do so on a large scale. There were also to be considered a number of papers which had appeared in magazines, but which had not yet been published in book form.

After a reperusal of the books in question—I may say that it is a habit of mine never to reread one of my books after it has come out, except for some reason like the present one—I have selected such papers on musical subjects as I care to preserve, save for a few dealing with specific composers, later to find their niches in a book to be entitled Excavations, which will also include papers on certain figures in the literary world whose reputations I have had some share in rescuing from comparative obscurity.

Music for the Movies is lifted from Music and Bad Manners; Why Music Is Unpopular, The Great American Composer, and The Importance of Electrical Picture Concerts, from Interpreters and Interpretations; The Authoritative Work on American Music and The New Art

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 of the Singer, from The Merry-Go-Round; Variations on a Theme by Havelock Ellis, On the Relative Difficulties of Depicting Heaven and Hell in Music, and On the Rewriting of Masterpieces, from In the Garret. Of the other three papers, none of which has previously been published in a book, Movies for Program Notes appeared in The Wave; On Hearing What You Want When You Want It, in The Musical Quarterly, and Cordite for Concerts, in The Smart Set.

I cannot say that I subscribe to all the general ideas expressed herein; as a matter of fact, they are not all entirely consistent, a state of affairs to have been expected in the work of a writer who apparently at heart was always creative rather than critical, but I believed them when I wrote them and that condition gives them whatever value they may now possess. They are, fortunately, dated. In all these papers I have made omissions, altered words and phrases, added a few others, and appended footnotes. On the whole, however, I have left them as they were; they are, therefore, not to be regarded as rewritten; they may be said to represent with some accuracy a phase and a period of my career which in all likelihood is at an end.

New York.

March 11, 1924.

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THE IVORY TOWER of the vision quite colouring up for me yesterday of Book 9 as given to Gray and Horton and Cissy Together, as I may rudely express it, and Book 10, to repeat, given, with a splendid richness and comprehensiveness, to Rosanna, as I hope to have shown Book 1 as so given. Variety, variety—I want to go in for that for all the possibilities of my case may be worth; and I see, I feel, how a sort of fond fancy of it is met by the distribution, the little cluster of determinations, or, so to speak, for the pleasure of putting it, determinatenesses, so noted. It gives me the central mass of the thing for my hero's own embrace and makes beginning and end sort of confront each other over it.

Is it vain to do anything but say, that is but feel, that this situation of the Three in Book 9 absolutely demands the intimate grip for clearing itself up, working itself out? Yes, perfectly vain, I reflect, as at all precluding the high urgency and decency of my seeing in advance just how and where I plant my feet and direct my steps. Express absolutely, to this end, the conclusive sense, the clear firm function, of Book 9 out of which the rest bristles. I want it, as for that matter I want each Book, with the last longing and fullest intention, to be what it is "amusing" and regaling to think of as "complete in itself"; otherwise a thoroughly expressed Occasion, or as I have kept calling it Aspect, such as one can 342


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Music criticism usually divides itself automatically into two classes. In the one, the critic, whose emotions have ostensibly been aroused by poems in tone, tries to render to the reader the intensity of his feelings by quoting from the word poets. The first line of Endymion and passages from Shakespeare fall athwart his pages. Scarcely a musical note but has its literary echo. The music of Maurice Ravel reminds this unimaginative scribe of verses from Arthur Rimbaud and Jules Laforgue; snippets and snatches from Keats and Wordsworth serve admirably to evoke the spirit of almost any composer; I have found Walt Whitman linked with Edward MacDowell; Milton and Handel are occasionally made to seem to speak the same language; Byron and Tchaikovsky are asked to walk hand in hand. If you have never heard Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, it may afford you some small consolation to find it tied up in the reviewer's mind with something like this:

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 It is quite likely, indeed, that an audience of silly maiden ladies in the middle west, unaccomplished in the skill of tones, hearing little music, applauds delightedly this soft sobbery. Two often apposite lines, however, I have never come upon in music criticism. This, from W. B. Yeats's King and No King, would certainly fit many a singer: "Would it were anything but merely voice!" and sometimes, after a few days of shameless concert-going with a friend from out of town, I feel tempted to reassure him, Calibanwise: "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises."

Our second critic approaches his task with more sobriety of expression. He believes it to be his bounden, and unenlivening, duty to avoid florid language in his dismal effort to impress his readers with the sublime seriousness of the art he so laboriously strives to hold within academically prescribed limits. His erudite style bristles with adverbial clauses, with technical conjurations, abjurations, and apostrophes. He summons the eleven dull devils of dusty knowledge to his aid in his consistent endeavour to be accurate and just. He never deals in metaphor, never in simile; no figures of speech whatever sully the dead drab of his columns; he would consider them, if he thought about the matter at all, cheapening influences, encroaching on the drowsy preserves of his somnolent profession. With

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 as pedantic a gesture as he can command, and his talents in this direction are considerable, he lays out his weights and measures, always qualifying, almost always. Buts, ifs, and in spite ofs cumber his operose paragraphs. No music is perfect; none is imperfect. With this axiom, liberally disregarded by more lively writers, for a text, he proceeds to tell us that the allegro of the new fantasia is admirable in form, but that the themes, perhaps, do not justify such elaborate treatment. He emphasizes history; he leans on handbooks; musty facts are dragged in palestrically for their own sake alone. His manner is formidable, exegetical, eupeptic, a dynamic, asthenic. He clings to cliché: "The composition smells of the midnight oil," etc., etc.

These two varieties of critics are only too actually with us on every side, not only in New York and Boston, but in London, Paris, and Berlin as well. They always have been and they always will be with us. They are one of the principal causes for the profound and unfortunate indifference, nay contempt, with which music (as an art) is regarded by the man who may take an enormous amount of pleasure out of reading books or looking at pictures. Instead of awakening an interest in the greatest and most mysterious of the arts, these obstinate fellows have acted as direct agents in the perpetuation of the

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 bugaboos and voodoos of the academy, freely offering incense and the freshly slain sacrifices of baby composers to the false gods of their fathers. Often, indeed, their crime is feticide. Far from urging the layman to enter the sacred temples, rather they frighten him away. "Come and listen" is a phrase that is never on their lips, never flows from their pens. On the contrary, they write: "Turn about. I have spent my whole life, and I am an old man, trying to learn what you never can hope to know. Any pleasure you may derive from listening to music is a false pleasure, because it is not based on knowledge. Pleasure, indeed, is forbidden; the initiated do not enjoy themselves. Retreat, young man; go back to your books and pictures; the gods of music desire none such as you to draw near to their altars." Instead, indeed, of sending the reader to the nearest concert hall, they have made him take an oath that never, if he knows it, will he voluntarily set foot in such a place. I am presupposing readers! The truth is that these men, after a time, are not even read, save by sopranos and fiddlers, and their early readers, sceptical thereafter regarding all literature devoted to a discussion of music, never again will peruse a line of what they have been led to consider, through these unfortunate examples, as hopeless drivel. Thereby they shut themselves off, unwittingly, not only from further

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 communion with music itself, but also from intimacy with one of the most delightful sidetracks of the art of letters, for it cannot be denied that Berlioz and Ernest Newman and Ethel Smyth would amuse and interest even a tone-deaf Methodist hardware importer.

For there are other kinds of music critics, besides the two varieties which I have described. There is, for instance, the man who writes with a flourish, indulges in "fine writing" and what is "precious," and vocalizes with adjectives. You may not agree with his hyperbolical statement that Grieg and MacDowell were the foremost musicians of the nineteenth century, but you are interested in it because he means it and because he is not afraid to say so emphatically. "Perhaps," on occasion you whisper to yourself chasteningly, "he is right. It may even be possible that Mendelssohn was greater than Beethoven."

Another reviewer slashes violently into some school or other; he drives his sword sharply into the heart of your pet theory, while valiantly defending as good a one of his own; he dips his pen in gall and guides it over paper soaked in wormwood. He despises the new music, any new music, and he consumes nine thousand words in explaining why; he loathes the opera, and he throws all the weight of his influential opinion against it. This man is readable and interesting.

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 His views assume importance even to the reader who does not agree with them, because they arouse curiosity. "Can the music of Schoenberg be as bad as all that?" you question yourself, and then decide, "I must hear it and form my own opinion."

A third writer mingles anecdote with more pregnant matter; nothing is too trivial for his purpose, nothing too serious. He is accurate without being pedantic; he paints the human side of the art. He draws us nearer to compositions by discussing the composers. When he writes of a singer it is not as though he were describing a vocal machine, emitting perfect and imperfect notes; he pictures a human being applying herself to her task; his account is vivid, humorous, sometimes a trifle malicious. He enlivens us and he awakens our interest. This is not altogether a matter of style; it is also a matter of feeling. The style is perhaps the man.

There are but two rules for the critic to follow: have something to say and say it as well as you know how; say it with charm or say it with force, but say it naturally; do not be afraid to say today what you may regret tomorrow; and, above all, do not befuddle and befog the mind of your reader by dragging in Shelley, Francis Thompson, William Blake, and Verlaine. If you can actually suggest ideas to him by quoting from the

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 poets, then by all means quote freely, but do not try to kindle in him the sensation caused by a hearing of César Franck's D minor Symphony by printing copious excerpts from the published works of Swinburne and Mallarmé. Music criticism has two purposes, beyond the obvious and essential one that it provides a bad livelihood for the critic: the first, and perhaps the most important, is to entertain the reader, because criticism, like any other form of literature, should stand by itself and not lean too heavily on the matter of which it treats; the second is to interest the reader in music, or in books about music, or even in musicians. Criticism can be informing without being pedantic; it can prod the pachydermatous hide of a conservative old fogy concert-goer without deviating from the facts. Above all else criticism should be an expression of personal feeling. Otherwise it has no value. "Whoever has been through the experience of discussing criticism with a thorough, perfect, and entire Ass," writes Bernard Shaw, "has been told that criticism should above all things be free from personal feeling."

On one occasion I experienced an irrepressible desire to rail against the intellectual snobbery which persuaded flaccid minds that the string quartet was the noblest musical art form and that the organizations which devoted themselves to

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 this fetish were archangelic interpreters of a heavenly song. I might have said: "The string quartet is an overrated art form. Certainly, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms have poured some of their finest inspiration into this mould, some of their most musical feeling, and yet the nature of this music is such that its interpreters derive more pleasure from its performance than its auditors." It is possible that these sentences might have been read, and if so, understood. . . and forgotten. If every time I expressed a personal feeling, and all my feelings and tastes are intensely personal, I followed with something like this, "it seems to me," or "this may or may not be true," or "according to my taste," or "Mr. Thing does not agree with me," my utterances would lose whatever charm or force they possess, and they would be so clogged with extraneous qualifications that no one would think of reading them. "It is the fault of our rhetoric," Emerson once wrote, "that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other." What I did say about string quartets provoked attention. Philip Hale remarked that the

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 older lions roared and shook their manes because I had spoken disrespectfully of chamber music, which thus suffered along with the equator. Perhaps. However, a certain salutary disrespect for the snobbery of string quartet fanatics survived. . . also along with the equator.

It is not necessary, gracious reader, that you should agree with the critic. You will satisfy no longing in the heart of the animal if you do agree with him, unless he be made of base metal. It will require only a little reading on your part to convince you that the critics themselves, especially the best and most interesting critics, do not agree. There exist no standards, it would seem, by which music can be assessed and judged with any degree of finality. Lawrence Gilman gives us plenty of evidence on this point, if any were needed. He reminds us that John F. Runciman viewed Parsifal with a contemptuous eye, calling the music "decrepit stuff," "the last sad quaverings of a beloved friend," while Ernest Newman describes it as "in many ways the most wonderful and impressive thing ever done in music." Vernon Blackburn regarded Elgar's Dream of Gerontius as the finest musical work since Wagner, but George Moore dismisses it briefly as "holy water in a German beer-barrel." H. E. Krehbiel con-

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 siders Pelléas et Mélisande a score of which "nine-tenths is dreary monotony," whereas Louis Laloy is stirred to reverence by contemplation of its beauty. Jean Marnold and H. T. Finck do not agree about Carmen, and W. J. Henderson and James Huneker hold opposing opinions regarding the merits of Strauss's Don Quixote.

There are critics who accept Wagner whole: Rienzi, Lohengrin, Ring, and Parsifal; others find nothing to enjoy or praise in certain of his works and even discover tiresome passages in Die Walküre. Some critics profess to admire folksongs and folksong influences; others do not. Many otherwise estimable men have been found who are willing to subscribe to an everlasting veneration for the music of Liszt, a fancy, even, for the compositions of Rubinstein. I have read in several newspapers and at least one magazine that Horatio Parker's Mona was a valuable contribution to our national art. It is possible. When we are informed that Percy Grainger is a greater composer than Debussy we may be interested, if we are interested in the manner of the telling, but we are not obliged to accept the statement as literally true.

To be sure, the acknowledgment is pretty general that Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart were great composers, but some critics insist that the musicians who imitate the forms and styles of

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THE IVORY TOWER go at, thanks to the flow of the current in it, in the firmest possible little narrative way. The form of the Occasion is the form that I somehow see as here very particularly presenting itself and contributing its aid to that impression of the Three Together which I try to focus. Where, exactly, and exactly how, are they thus vividly and workably together?—what is the most "amusing" way of making them so? It is fundamental for me to note that my action represents and embraces the sequences of a Year, not going beyond this and not falling short of it. I can't get my Unity, can't keep it, on the basis of more than a year, and can't get my complexity, don't want to, in anything a bit less. I see a Year right, in fine, and it brings me round therefore to the early summer from the time of my original Exposition. With which it comes to me of course that one of the things accruing to Gray under his Uncle's Will is the house at Newport, which belonged to the old man, and which I have no desire to go into any reason whatever for his heir's having got rid of. There is the house at Newport—as to which it comes over me that I kind of see him in it once or twice during the progress of the autumn's, the winter's, the spring's events. Isn't it also a part of my affair that I see the Bradhams with a Newport place, and am more or less encouraged herewith to make out the Scene of Book 9, the embracing Occasion, of the three, as a "staying" 343


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 these masters today are great composers, a point of view which always awakens the murderous instinct within me, as it should be apparent to the veriest dolt that an artist in some way must reflect the spirit of his own epoch. Besides what one man has done naturally, another copies servilely and without reason. Bach employed the fugue because it was the natural form into which his ideas came to him. Subsequent composers, for the greater part, have used the fugue as an end in itself.

There are a few delightful writers about music, and you will find that all of them, in one way or another, bear out the point of my remarks. There are too many others who are hedging the most universal of the arts away from the people to whom it belongs, protecting it with their damp vapourings, their vapid technicalities, their worship of Clio, their stringent analyses, or, worse than anything else, their extensive explanations. Let each judge for himself, and let every one be encouraged to judge. Let more think about music; to make that possible, curiosity must be stimulated, so that there may be a more general

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 desire to hear music, especially new music. Books are on every hand; if one does not visit galleries, at least one cannot escape reproductions of good pictures in our periodicals and in the Sunday supplements of the newspapers, but to hear music (I am speaking, of course, of so-called "art music") it is necessary to visit certain halls on certain days. This requires encouragement because it also requires patience. Why, I have waited more than twelve years to hear Vincent d'Indy's Istar only to discover that I have heard it too late. The conductors of our concerts make these matters difficult; do not let our critics make them more so.

In the stricter interests of accuracy this paper, of course, should have been christened Some remarks on one of the reasons for the comparative unpopularity of music as an art form, an exact description of its contents, but if I had called it that do you think you would have read it?

March 1, 1917.

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When, a hundred years hence, some curious investigator searches through the available archives in an attempt to discover what was the state of American music at the beginning of the twentieth century, do you fancy that he will take the trouble to exhume and dig into the ponderous scores of Henry Hadley, Arthur Foote, Ernest Schelling, George W. Chadwick, Horatio W. Parker, and the rest of the crew who are regarded with respect by contemporary critics? Will he hesitate ten minutes to peruse the scores of Mona, the Four Seasons Symphony, or The Pipe of Desire? A plethora of books and papers will cause him to wonder why so much pother was made about Edward MacDowell, and he will even shake his head a trifle wearily over the saccharine delights of The Rosary and Narcissus. But if he be lucky enough to come upon copies of Waiting for the Robert E. Lee, Alexander's Ragtime Band, or Hello Frisco, which are generally regarded with horror by the music critics of our day, his face will light up and he will feel an emotion akin

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 to that which Yvette Guilbert must have felt when she unearthed Le cycle du vin, or Le lien serré, or C'est le mai, and he will attempt to find out, probably in vain, something about the composers, Lewis F. Muir, Irving Berlin, and Louis A. Hirsch, the true grandfathers of the great American composer of the year 2001.

There will be difficulties in his way. Nothing disappears so soon from the face of the earth as a very popular song. The music shops sell hundreds of thousands of copies before the demand suddenly ceases. Then, when no more copies are ordered from the publisher, he is likely to lose interest in a song which may occupy space that might be allotted to a newer tune, and he causes the destruction of the plates. As for the purchasers, on every moving day they consign their old popular songs to the dustheap. After the Ball makes way for Two Little Girls in Blue (or vice-versa; I really cannot be expected to remember that far back). Try to buy After the Ball now and see if you can. Advertise for a copy and see if you can secure one. You will find it difficult, I imagine, and yet it was only as far back as 1892, or 1893, that everybody was singing this melancholy tale of the misadventures of a little girl in a big city. No doubt, at that period, kind old ladies stopped on the street to

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 pat bleached blondes on the cheeks, with the reflection. She may be somebody's daughter.

Music of that variety will not be sought after by collectors and prized and sung again, except to satisfy curiosity, or to "furnish innocent merriment." There will be those, no doubt, impelled to form a collection of the sentimentalities of the late nineteenth century, including therein the drawings of Howard Chandler Christy, which, in the year 2000, will be as rare as black hawthorn vases are today, and the novels of George Barr McCutcheon, a single copy of whose Nedra or Graustark may fetch the tidy sum of forty dollars in gold at some twenty-first century auction.

The American sentimental song, however, has been largely obliterated by the best new music of the twentieth century, into which a new quality has crept, a quality which may serve to keep it alive, just as the coon songs which preceded it in the nineteenth century have been kept alive. Dixie and such solemn tunes as were created by Stephen C. Foster are not to be scoffed at. They are not scoffed at, as we very well know. They are sung and played at the concerts given by sopranos and violinists like the folksongs of other nations. They are known all over the world. They have found their way into serious compositions by celebrated composers. Even the cakewalks of a

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 later date, The Georgia Campmeeting, Whistling Rufus, Hello, Ma Baby, and the works of Williams and Walker (curiously enough, the best ragtime has not been written by Negroes, although Under the Bamboo Tree and the extraordinary At the Ball are the creations of black men) have their value, but ragtime, as it exists today, had not been invented in the nineties. The apotheosis of syncopation had not begun. Not that syncopation is new in music. Nearly the whole of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is based on it. Schumann scarcely wrote two consecutive bars which are not syncopated. But ragtime syncopation is different. Louis A. Hirsch once pointed out to me what he considered its distinctive feature. "The melody and harmony are syncopated separately," was his explanation and it will have to suffice, in spite of the fact that the same thing is true of the prelude to Parsifal, in which the conductor is forced to beat 6–4 time with one hand and 4–4 with the other, and of certain Spanish dances, in which singer, guitarist, dancer, and public vie with one

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 another to produce a bewildering complexity of rhythm. There is abundance of syncopation and the most esoteric rhythmic intricacy in Igor Stravinsky's ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (on certain pages of this ballet the time-signature changes with every bar), but ragtime is not the word to describe that vivid score, nor is it likely that any one can find much resemblance between Everybody's Doing It or Ragging the Scale and the jota or the prelude to Parsifal.

Regard, for example, the form of Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. A writer in the London Times calls attention to the fact that, although for convenience it is written out in a rhythm of 8, it is really a rhythm of 3, followed by a rhythm of 5, proceeding without warning, occasionally, into the normal rhythm of 8. It is impossible for many trained singers to read ragtime at all. They can decipher the notes, but they do not understand the conventions observed by the composers in setting these notes on paper, conven-

title: Page:Red (1925).pdf/43