My life and loves Vol. 2 Page 9

  "Did she ever dry you again?" I asked.

  Eirene laughed. "You want to know too much, sir," was all she would say.

  When I returned to Athens at the end of the summer, I took rooms in the people's quarter and lived very cheaply. Soon Eirene came to visit me again and we went often to the Greek theatre and I read Theocritus with her on many afternoons; but she gave me nothing new and in the spring I decided to return by way of Constantinople and the Black Sea to Vienna, for I felt that my Lehrjahre-"prentice-years"-were drawing to an end; and Paris beckoned, and London.

  One of the last evenings we were together Eirene wanted to know what I liked best in her.

  "You've a myriad good qualities," I began. "You are good-tempered and reasonable always, to say nothing of your lovely eyes and lithe slight figure.

  But why do you ask?"

  "My husband used to say I was bony," she replied. "He made me dreadfully unhappy, tho' I tried my best to please him. I didn't feel much with him at first and that word 'bony' hurt terribly."

  "Don't you know," I said, "one of our first meetings, when you got out of bed to go to your room, I lifted up your nightie and saw the outline of your curving thighs and hips; it has always seemed to me one of the loveliest contours I've ever seen. If I had been a sculptor I'd have modelled it long ago-'bony,' indeed; the man didn't deserve you: put him out of your head."

  "I have," she said, "for we women have only room for one, and you've put yourself in my heart. I'm glad you don't think me bony, but fancy you caring for a curve of flesh so much. Men are funny things. No woman would so overprize a mere outline-your praise and his blame both show the same spirit."

  "Yet desire is born of admiration," I corrected.

  "My desire is born of yours," she replied. "But a woman's love is better and different: it is of the heart and soul."

  "But the body gives the key," I said, "and makes intimacy divine!"

  I found several unlocked for and unimaginable benefits in this mouthworship.

  First of all, I could give pleasure to any extent without exhausting or even tiring myself. It thus enabled me to atone completely and make up for my steadily decreasing virility. Secondly, I discovered that by teaching me the most sensitive parts of the woman, I was able even in the ordinary way to give my mistresses more and keener pleasure than ever before. I had all the joy of coming into a new kingdom of delight with increased vigour. Moreover, as I have said, it taught me to know every woman more intimately than I had known any up to that time, and I soon found that they liked me better than even in the first flush of inexhaustible youth.

  Later I learned other devices but none so important as this first discovery which showed me once for all how superior art is to nature.

  The Sacred Band For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.

  After studying in Athens for some months, I heard of a club where university professors and some students met and talked classic Greek. A mistake or even an awkwardness of expression was anathema, and out of this reverence for the language of Plato and Sophocles there grew a desire to make the modern tongue resemble the old one as nearly as possible. It was impossible to bring back into common use the elaborate syntax; the subtle, shading particles too were lost forever; but it was sought to use words in their old meaning so exactly that even today Xenophon could read the daily paper in Athens and understand it without difficulty.

  This assimilation was only possible because the spoken language of the Greeks, e koine dialektos, had for many centuries existed side by side with the literary tongue. The spoken dialect had been preserved in the New Testament and in the Church services, and so it came easy for learned and enthusiastic Grecians to keep the language of the common people as like that of Plato as possible; and the race is so extraordinarily intelligent that even the peasant, who has always called a horse alogos (the brainless one), knows that ippos is a finer word for the same animal. And though the common pronunciation is not exactly that of classic times, still it is a great deal nearer the antique pronunciation than any English or even Erasmic imitation. The modern Greek does use his accents correctly, and anyone who has learned to do that by ear can appreciate the cadence of classic Greek poetry and prose far more perfectly than any scholar who only reads for the rhythm of long and short syllables.

  I think it was Raikes told a story that illustrated a side of this Greek ambition for me. Professor Blackie, a well-known Scotch historian and Philhellene, came out to Athens on a visit and spoke in the Piraeus. Raikes went to hear him with a distinguished university professor who was one of the leaders of the Hellenic movement. After listening to Blackie for a while, the Greek professor turned to Raikes and said, "I had no idea that English sounded so well."

  "But he's speaking modern Greek," said Raikes.

  "Good God!" cried the professor, "I'd never have guessed that; I've not understood a single word of it."

  One experience of this time I must relate shortly, for it had an enormous, a disproportionate influence on my whole outlook and way of reading the past.

  Everyone knows that Plutarch was born at Chaeroneia, and in my wanderings on foot through Attica I stayed for some days in a peasant's house on the plain.

  When Philip of Macedon and Alexander, his son, afterwards called the Great, invaded Attica, they came almost as barbarians and the city of Thebes had to bear the first shock. Plutarch tells how three hundred Theban youths of the best families came together and took a solemn oath that they would put a stop to Philip's astonishing career of conquest or die in the attempt. The forces met at Chaeroneia, and Philip's new order, the famous phalanx, carried all before it. In vain the three hundred youths dashed themselves against it; time and again they were beaten back and the phalanx drove on. In the bed of a river, the "Sacred Band," as they were called, o ieros lochos, made their supreme effort and perished to the last man; and after the battle, we are told, the noble three hundred were buried in one grave by their parents in Thebes.

  The course of the river, Plutarch says, was turned aside so that they might all be interred on the very spot where their final assault had failed.

  Everyone knows that in our day there was a gigantic marble lion at Chaeroneia. The Turks in their time had heard that there was money in it, so they blew it up to get the treasure, but they found nothing, and no one could understand what the lion of Chaeroneia was doing in the centre of a deserted plain, far away from any village.

  At a big meeting of the Classic Greek Society, I declared my belief that the lion of Chaeroneia was an excellent specimen of antique work carved in classic times. I believed it had been erected over the barrow of the "Sacred Band," and if excavations were carried out, I felt sure that the grave of the heroes would be discovered. Greek patriotism took fire at the suggestion; a banker and friend offered to defray the expenses and we went up to Chaeroneia to begin the work. There was no river at Chaeroneia, but a shallow brook, the Thermodon, was a couple of hundred yards away from the fragments of the lion. On studying the ground closely, I was insistent that a long grass-grown depression in the ground near the lion should be laid open first, arguing always that the lion would prove to have been erected on the grave itself; and soon the barrow was discovered.

  Four stone walls a foot or so broad and six feet or so in height had been built in the form of an elongated square, resting on the shingle of an old river bed, and therein like sardines we found the bodies, or rather, the skeletons of the "Sacred Band." The first thing we noticed was the terrible wounds sustained in the conflict; here, for example, was a skeleton with three ribs smashed on one side while the head of the spear that killed him was jammed between a rib and the backbone; another had his backbone broken by a vigorous spearthrust and one side of his head beaten in as well. The next thing that struck us was that the teeth in all the skeletons were excellently preserved and in almost perfect order. Clearly our inferiority in this respect must be due to ou
r modern, cooked food.

  We counted two hundred and ninety-seven skeletons, and in one corner there was a little pile of ashes, evidently of the three who had survived longest and were finally cremated. At one side of the oblong enclosure there was a solid piece of masonry some ten feet square, plainly the pedestal of the lion which was placed there couchant, looking away over the bodies of the dead towards Thebes in eternal remembrance of the heroism of the youths who had given their lives in defence of their fatherland. A "Sacred Band," indeed!

  So, the poetic legend that this modern historian and that could not even take seriously was found to be strictly and exactly true, a transcript of the facts. It all helped to make the work of the writer precious to me and vivified the past for me in such a way that I began to read other books, and notably the New Testament, in a different spirit. German scholars had taught me that Jesus was a mythical figure: his teaching a mish-mash of various traditions and religions and myths. He was not an historical personage in any way, they declared; the three synoptic Gospels were all compiled from 50 to 80 years after the events, and John was certainly later still.

  The story of the "Sacred Band" led me to use my brain on the person of Jesus as I had already used it on Shakespeare; and soon I found indubitable proof that Jesus was not only an historical personage, but could be studied in his words and works and realized in his habit as he lived. Tacitus and Josephus both were witnesses to his existence, and if the passage in Josephus has been added to, that of Tacitus is untouched and absolutely convincing: "A certain fellow called Jesus" (Quidam Jesu) did certainly live and teach in Jerusalem and was there crucified as the "King of the Jews" and "Son of God!"

  Not God or King to me in any superhuman sense, but flesh and bone, a man among men, though a sacred guide and teacher of the highest. As I read, the scales fell from my eyes, and I saw that this Jesus was blood-brother to Shakespeare: both weak in body: Jesus could not carry His Cross and was supposed to have died in the first few hours of agony; both too, called "gentle"; both of incomparable speed and depth of thought and sweet loving-kindness of character. Read the Arthur of King John speaking to his executioner, Are you sick, Hubert? You look pale today:

  In sooth, I would you were a little sick, That I might sit all night and watch with you.

  I warrant I love you more than you do me, and then recall the sacred words, "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven!"

  Surely these two men are of the same divine spirit.

  In courage Jesus was the greater and accordingly came to a more dreadful end and to a loftier fame; but Shakespeare insists on the need of repentance and absolute forgiveness just as Jesus did: "Pardon's the word for all." My life was enriched by finding another sacred guide, but alas! I yielded to the new influence very reluctantly, and it was many years before the knowledge of the Christ began even to modify my character. But this gradual interpenetration is the dominant impulse in the next twenty years of my life and bit by bit led me to attempt that synthesis of paganism and the spirit of Jesus, which, it seems to me, must constitute the essential elements at least of "the religion of the future!" For what is the spirit of Jesus but the certainty that God is just goodness and must be loved by all of us mortals!

  The first duty of man or woman is purely pagan: each of us should develop all his faculties of body and mind and soul as harmoniously as possible. He should, too, secure the highest enjoyment possible from his gifts; but when he has thus, so to speak, reached the zenith of his accomplishment, he should study how to give the utmost possible help to his fellow-men and make "the new commandment" of Jesus the chief purpose of his life.

  Alas! To "love one another" is a most difficult rule, unless we can remember that it is just to love what is good and to forgive the veiling faults. The best way to this all-comprehending love, I feel, is by dint of pity- "good pity,"

  Shakespeare calls it, and "sacred pity," "holy pity" even, for it leads, he knew, to pardon and forgiveness. And this pity must needs result in redressing the worst injustices of life, and, above all, in levelling up the awful inequality that gives one child everything in unimaginable superfluity and denies to another just as gifted and healthy even decent conditions of living. The handicap of the rich and great is just as poisonously bad as the handicap of the poor that stunts the frame and impoverishes the blood. It is pity and loving sympathy that may amend in time the worst diseases of society. One would think that the knowledge of natural laws and the control of natural resources, while increasing enormously the productivity of bureaus, would of necessity improve the position of the labourer. So far that has not been the case: the greater power given us by the thinker and man of science has merely increased the inequality between the possessors and the hordes of the dispossessed. If that process continues, the race is doomed; but already those of us who have reached a certain plane of thought, even though they have found riches easy or hard to acquire, are on the side of the poor.

  John Stuart Mill thought the remedy lay in heavy succession duties and it may be that this is the most practical way of attack; indeed, it looks as if it were, though I prefer the nationalization of the land and public utilities, such as railways and water and gas companies. Yet the succession duties in England since the World War have remained without serious objection at something like thirty-three per cent of the great inheritances. One thing is certain, in one way or other the worst inequalities must be ended. The overgreat individual liberty in England has led to the practical enslavement and degradation of the working classes. In 1837 only ten per cent of recruits were below five feet-six in height; in 1915 seventy per cent were below that height and even fifty per cent could not pass the puny physical standard required.

  Having learned in life both what riches can give and what poverty gives, I have always stood in favour of the poor. The levelling up process is the most important task of our politicians, and they should be classed according to the help they give to this reform of reforms.

  But after the World War and the misery which the hateful so-called peace of Versailles has brought upon Europe, other fears for the future of humanity must invade the soul. Pity, that angel of the world, must be cultivated and taught, or life for us short-sighted, selfish animals will become impossible.

  Will not some young noble-minded man start a new "Sacred Band" that will struggle for humanity and the rights of man as valiantly as those Theban youths struggled for the liberty and safety of Greece? Or must we come to the despair sung by Sophocles in his Oedipus of Colonos:

  Who breathes must suffer and who thinks must mourn And he alone is blest who n'er was born.

  But, everyone is asking, does this rebirth of paganism, which is mainly due to the progress of science, hold any hope, any consolation, in presence of the awful mystery of death? It must be admitted that here the fates are almost silent. We no longer believe, it is true, as the Greek did, that it would have been better for us never to have been born. We are proud of our inheritance of life, can already see how it may be bettered in a thousand ways, but hope beyond the grave there is none. Yet we English and Americans have the highest word and the most consoling yet heard among men.

  Meredith's noble couplet is higher than the best of Sophocles:

  Into the breast that bears the rose

  Shall I, with shuddering, fall?

  These seventy years or so of life are all we've got, but, as Goethe says, we can fill them, if we will, with great deeds and greater dreams. Goethe and Meredith: I have compared them before: I love them both. … Both are cupbearers undying Of the wine that's meant for souls!

  CHAPTER VII

  Holidays and irish virtue!

  I went by ship from Athens to Constantinople and admired, as every one must, the superb position of the city; like New York, a queen of many waters.

  But I was coming away without having learned much when, as my luck would have it, I fell into talk with a German, a student of Byzantine architec
ture who raved to me of St. Sophia, took me to see it, played guide and expositor of all its beauties time and again, till at length the scales fell from my eyes and I too saw that it was perhaps as he said, "The greatest church in the world," thought I could never like the outside as much as the inside. The bold arches and the immense sweep of pillars and the mosaics, frescoes, and inscriptions on the walls give an unique impression of splendour and grandeur combined, a union of color and form, singular in magnificence.

  Devout Turks were always worshiping Mahomet in the church and here and there on the pavement schools were being held; but on the walls the older frescoes representing the Crucified One were everywhere, showing through the Mahometan paint or plaster, and the impression left on me was that the Cross everywhere was slowly but surely triumphing over the Crescent. In time I came to see that St. Sophia was a greater achievement even than the Parthenon, and learned in this way that the loftier Spirit usually finds in Time the nobler body.

  My German friend took me too, to the Church of the Saviour, which he called "the gem of Byzantine work," and indeed the mosaics, at least of the fourteenth century, were richer and more varied than anything I have since seen, even in Palermo.

  We had a wild passage through the Black Sea and neither Varna nor the Danube wiped out the sense of discomfort.

  But Belgrade with its citadel pleased me intimately, and Buda with Pesth across the great bridge caught my fancy, its fortress hill reminding me of the Acropolis; but Vienna won my heart. The old Burg Theatre with actors and actresses as good as those of Paris, the noble Opera-House with the best music in Europe, and the Belvedere with its gorgeous Venetian pictures, and the wonderful Armoury, all appealed to me intensely! Then too there was the Court and the military pageants of the Hofburg, and the great library, and above all the rich kindly life of the people in the Wurstelprater, the stout German carpet, so to speak, illumined with a thousand colours of Slav and Semite, Bohemian and Polish embroidery, till even the gypsies seemed to add the touches of barbarism and superstition needed to fringe and set off the gorgeous fabric. In many-sided appeal, Vienna seemed to me richer even than Paris; and Pauline Lucca, exquisite singer at once and beautiful charming person, became to my imagination the genius of the city, with Billroth, the great doctor, as symbol of the science on which the whole life was builded. I find it hard to forgive the barbarian Wilson for maiming and impoverishing a nobler corporate life than he and his compatriots are able to produce. It takes a thousand years to make a Vienna and fortunately for us no one man can utterly destroy it.