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Diana of the Crossways Chapter 1 - Of Diaries and Diarists Touching the Heroine · The George Meredith Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter one of Diana of the cross Ways. This is
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Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: Recording by k Hand Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith,
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Speaker 1: Chapter one of Diaries and Diarists Touching the Heroine. Among
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Speaker 1: the diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century,
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Speaker 1: there is frequent mention of a lady becoming famous for
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Speaker 1: her beauty and her wit, an unusual combination in the
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Speaker 1: deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however,
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Speaker 1: not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her. It
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Speaker 1: is otherwise in his case, and a general fling at
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Speaker 1: the sex. We may deem pardonable for doing as little
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Speaker 1: harm to womankind as the stone of an urchin cast
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Speaker 1: upon the bosom of mother Earth, though men must look
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Speaker 1: some day to have it returned to them, which is
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Speaker 1: a certainty and indeed full. Surely will our idle handed
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Speaker 1: youngster two, in his riper season be heard complaining of
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Speaker 1: a strange assault of wanton missiles coming on him. He
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Speaker 1: knows not whence, for we are all of us distinctly
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Speaker 1: marked to get back what we give, even from the
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Speaker 1: thing named inanimate nature. The leaves from the diarrhea of
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Speaker 1: Henry Wilmers are studded with examples of the dinner table
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Speaker 1: wit of the time. Not always worth quotation twice, for
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Speaker 1: some remarks have their measured distances, many requiring to be
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Speaker 1: a brulat poor point or within throw of the pistol
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Speaker 1: to make it hit. In other words, the majority of
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Speaker 1: them are addressed directly to our muscular system, and they
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Speaker 1: have no effect when we stand beyond the range. On
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Speaker 1: the contrary, they reflect somberly on the springs of hilarity
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Speaker 1: in the generation preceding us, with due reserve of credit,
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Speaker 1: of course, to an animal vivaciousness that seems to have
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Speaker 1: wanted so small an incitement. Our old yeomanry farmers, returning
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Speaker 1: to their beds over ferny commons, under bright moonlight from
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Speaker 1: a neighbor's harvest home, eased their bubbling breasts with a
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Speaker 1: ready roar. Not unakin to it. Still, the promptness to
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Speaker 1: laugh is an excellent progenatorial foundation for the wit to
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Speaker 1: come in people, and undoubtedly the diorrheal record of an
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Speaker 1: imputed piece of wit is witness to the spouting of laughter.
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Speaker 1: This should comfort us while we skim the sparkling passages
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Speaker 1: of the leaves. When a nation has acknowledged that it
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Speaker 1: is as yet, but in the fisticuff stage of the
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Speaker 1: art of condensing our purest sense to golden sentences, a
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Speaker 1: readier appreciation will be extended to the gift, which is
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Speaker 1: to strike not the dazzled eyes, the unanticipating nose, the ribs,
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Speaker 1: the sides, and stun us, twirl us, hoodwink, mystify, tickle
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Speaker 1: and twitch by dexterities of a lingual sparring and shuffling,
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Speaker 1: but to strike roots in the mind, the hesperides of
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Speaker 1: good things. We shall then set a price on the
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Speaker 1: unusual combination. A witty woman is a treasure. A witty
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Speaker 1: beauty is a power. Has she actual beauty, beauty, actual wit,
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Speaker 1: not simply a tidal material beauty that passes current any
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Speaker 1: pretty flippancy or staggering pretentiousness. Grant the combination, she will
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Speaker 1: appear a veritable queen of her period, fit for homage,
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Speaker 1: at least meriting a disposition to believe the best of
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Speaker 1: her in the teeth of foul rumor because the well
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Speaker 1: of true wit is truth itself, the gathering of the
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Speaker 1: precious drops of right reason, wisdom's lightning, and no soul
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Speaker 1: possessing and dispensing, it can justly be a target for
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Speaker 1: the world, however well armed, the world confronting her, our
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Speaker 1: temporary world, that old credulity and stone hurling urchin in
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Speaker 1: one supposes it possible for a woman to be mentally
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Speaker 1: active up to the point of spiritual clarity, and also
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Speaker 1: fleshly vile, a guide to life, and a biter at
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Speaker 1: the fruits of death, both open mind and hypocrite. It
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Speaker 1: has not yet been taught to appreciate a quality certifying
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Speaker 1: to sound a citizenship as authoritatively as acres of land
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Speaker 1: in the fee solimple or coffers of bonds, shares and stocks,
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Speaker 1: and a more imperishable guarantee. The multitude of evil reports
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Speaker 1: which it takes for proof are marshaled against her without
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Speaker 1: question of the nature of the victim, her temptress beauty.
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Speaker 1: Being a sufficiently presumptive delinquent, it does not pretend to
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Speaker 1: know the whole or naked body of the facts. It
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Speaker 1: knows enough for its furry dubiousness and accepting the sentimental
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Speaker 1: of men, a rocket headed horde, ever at the heels
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Speaker 1: of fair faces for ignition, and up starring away at
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Speaker 1: a hint of tearfulness, accepting further by chance a solid
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Speaker 1: champion man, or some generous woman capable of faith. In
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Speaker 1: the pelted solitary of her sex, Our temporary world blows
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Speaker 1: direct east on her shivering person. The scandal is warrant
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Speaker 1: for that, the circumstances of the scandal emphasize the warrant,
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Speaker 1: and how clever she is. Cleverness is an attribute of
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Speaker 1: the selector missionary lieutenants of Satan. We pray to be
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Speaker 1: defended from her cleverness. She flashes bits of speech that
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Speaker 1: catch men in their unguarded corner. The wary stuff their ears,
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Speaker 1: the stolid bid. Her best sayings rebound on her reputation. Nevertheless,
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Speaker 1: the world as Christian remembers its professions, and a portion
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Speaker 1: of it joins the burly in morals by extending to
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Speaker 1: her a rough old, charitable mercifulness better than sentimental ointment.
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Speaker 1: But the heaviest blow she has to bear to a
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Speaker 1: character swimming for life. That the lady in question was
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Speaker 1: much quoted the diaries and memoirs testify. Hearsay as well
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Speaker 1: as hearing, was at work to produce the abundance, and
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Speaker 1: it was a novelty in England, where in company the
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Speaker 1: men are the pointed talkers and the women conversationally fair circassians.
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Speaker 1: They are, or they know that they should be. It
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Speaker 1: comes to the same. Happily our civilization has not prescribed
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Speaker 1: the veil to them. The mutes have here and there
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Speaker 1: a sketch or label attached to their names. They are
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Speaker 1: strikingly handsome, They are very good looking. Occasionally they are
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Speaker 1: noted as extremely entertaining. In what manner is inquired by
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Speaker 1: a curious posterity that, in so many matters is left
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Speaker 1: unendingly to jump the empty and gaping figure of interrogation
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Speaker 1: over its own full stop. Great ladies, must they be
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Speaker 1: at the web of politics for us to hear them?
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Speaker 1: Sighted discoursing. Henry Wilmers is not content to quote the
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Speaker 1: beautiful Missus Warwick. He attempts a portrait. Missus Warwick is
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Speaker 1: quite Grecian, she might pose for a statue. He presents
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Speaker 1: her in Carpenter's lines, with a dab of school box colors.
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Speaker 1: Effective to those whom they keepsake, fashion can stir. She
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Speaker 1: has a straight nose, red lips, raven hair, black eyes,
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Speaker 1: rich complexion, a remarkably fine bust, and she walks well
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Speaker 1: and has an agreeable voice. Likewise, delicate extremities. The writer
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Speaker 1: was created for popularity, had he chosen to bring his
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Speaker 1: art into our literary market. Perry Wilkinson is not so elaborate.
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Speaker 1: He describes her in his recollections as a splendid bruin,
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Speaker 1: eclipsing all the blondes coming near her. And what is more,
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Speaker 1: the beautiful creature can talk. He wondered, for she was young,
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Speaker 1: new to society. Subsequently, he is rather ashamed of his
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Speaker 1: wonderment and accounts for it by not having known she
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Speaker 1: was Irish. She turns out to be Dan Marian's daughter.
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Speaker 1: We may assume that he would have heard if she
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Speaker 1: had any whiff of a brogue. Her sounding of the
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Speaker 1: letter R a trifle scrupulously is noticed by Lady Pennin,
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Speaker 1: and last, not least, the lovely Missus Warwick, twenty minutes
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Speaker 1: behind the dinner hour and really fearing she was late.
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Speaker 1: After alluding to the soft influence of her beauty and
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Speaker 1: ingenuousness on the vexed hostess, the kindly old marchioness adds
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Speaker 1: that it was no wonder she was late, for just
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Speaker 1: before starting from home, she had broken loose from her
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Speaker 1: husband for good, and she entered the room absolutely homeless.
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Speaker 1: She was not the less astonishingly brilliant. Her observations were
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Speaker 1: often so unexpectedly droll. I laughed till I cried. Lady
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Speaker 1: Pennon became, in consequence, one of the staunch supporters of
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Speaker 1: Missus Warwick. Others were not so easily won. Perry Wilkinson
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Speaker 1: holds a balance when it goes beyond a question of
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Speaker 1: her wit and beauty, Henry Wilmers puts the case aside
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Speaker 1: and takes her as he finds her. His cousin, the
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Speaker 1: clever and cynical Dorset Wilmers, whose method of conveying his
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Speaker 1: opinions without stating them was famous, repeats on two occasions
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Speaker 1: when her name appears in his pages, Handsome, lively, witty
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Speaker 1: and the stressed repetition of calculated brevity while a fiery
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Speaker 1: scandal was abroad concerning the lady implies wady substance, the
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Speaker 1: reservation of a constable's truncheon that could legally have knocked
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Speaker 1: her character down to the pavement. We have not to
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Speaker 1: ask what he judged. But Dorset Wilmers was a political
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Speaker 1: opponent of the ineminent peer who yields the second name
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Speaker 1: to the scandal, and politics in his day flushed the
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Speaker 1: conceptions of men. His short reference to that Warwick Danisbourg
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Speaker 1: affair are not verbally malicious. He gets wind of the
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Speaker 1: terms of Lord Danisburg's will and testament, noting them without comment.
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Speaker 1: The oddness of the instrument in one respect may have
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Speaker 1: served his turn. We have no grounds for thinking him malignant.
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Speaker 1: The death of his enemy closes his allusions to missus Warwick.
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Speaker 1: He was growing ancient, and gout narrowed the circle he
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Speaker 1: whirled in. Had he known this handsome, lively witty apparition
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Speaker 1: as a woman having political and social views of her own,
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Speaker 1: he would not, one fancies have been so stingless Our
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Speaker 1: England exposes a sorry figure in his reminiscences. He struck
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Speaker 1: heavily round and about him wherever he moved. He had,
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Speaker 1: by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discoloration. His unadorned,
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Speaker 1: harsh substantive statements, excluding the adjectives, gave his memoirs the
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Speaker 1: appearance of a body of facts attractive to the historic muse,
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Speaker 1: which has learnt to esteem those brawny, sturdy giants marching
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Speaker 1: club on shoal independent of henchmen in a preference to
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Speaker 1: your panoplead Knights with their puffy squires, once her favorites
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Speaker 1: and wind filling to her columns, ultimately found indigestible. His
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Speaker 1: exhibition of his enemy, Lord Danisburg, is one of the
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Speaker 1: class of noble portraits we see swinging over in portals,
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Speaker 1: grossly unlike in likeness. The possibility of the man's doing
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Speaker 1: or saying this and that adumbrates the improbability. He had
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Speaker 1: something of the character capable of it. Too much good
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Speaker 1: sense for the performance, we would think so, and still
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Speaker 1: the shadow is round our thoughts. Lord Danisburg was a
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Speaker 1: man of ministerial tact, official ability, pagan morality, and excellent
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Speaker 1: general manager, if no genius in state craft, but he
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Speaker 1: was careless of social opinion, unbuttoned and a laugher. We
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Speaker 1: know that he could be chivalrous towards women, notwithstanding the
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Speaker 1: perplexities he brought on them, and this the Dorset Diary
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Speaker 1: does not show. His chronicle is less mischievous as regards
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Speaker 1: Missus Warwick then the paragraphs of Perry Wilkinson, a gossip,
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Speaker 1: presenting an image of perpetual chatter like the waxen face
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Speaker 1: street advertisements of light and easy dentistry. He has no belief,
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Speaker 1: no disbelief, names the pro party and the Khan, recites
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Speaker 1: the case and discreetly over discreetly and pictures the trial,
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Speaker 1: tells the list of witnesses, records the verdict. So the
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Speaker 1: case went, and some thought one thing, some another thing.
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Speaker 1: Only it is reported for positive that a miniature of
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Speaker 1: the incriminated lady was cleverly smuggled over to the jury
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Speaker 1: injuries sitting upon these eases ever since the bedazzlement by
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Speaker 1: firing as you know. And then he related an anecdote
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Speaker 1: of the husband said to have been not a bad
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Speaker 1: fellow before he married his Diana, and the naming of
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Speaker 1: the goddess reminds him that the second person in the
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Speaker 1: indictment is now everywhere called the elderly shepherd. But immediately
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Speaker 1: after the bridal bells, this husband became sour and insupportable,
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Speaker 1: and either she had the trick of putting him publicly
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Speaker 1: to the wrong, or he lost all shame in playing
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Speaker 1: the churlish domestic tyrant. The instances are incredible of a gentleman.
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Speaker 1: Perry Wilkinson gives us two or three one on the
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Speaker 1: authority of a personal friend who witnessed the scene at
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Speaker 1: the Warwick Whist table, where the fair Diana would let
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Speaker 1: loose her silvery laugh in the intervals. She was hardly
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Speaker 1: out of her teens and should have been dancing instead
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Speaker 1: of fastened to a table. A difference of fifteen years
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Speaker 1: in the ages of the wedded pair accounts poorly for
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Speaker 1: the husband's conduct, However, solemn a business the game of whist.
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Speaker 1: We read that he burst out at last with bitter
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Speaker 1: mimicry Yang Yang Yang, and killed the bright laugh, shot
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Speaker 1: it dead. She had outraged the decorum of the square
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Speaker 1: table only while the cards were making perhaps her too dead.
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Speaker 1: Ensuing silence as of one striving to bring back the
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Speaker 1: throbs up to a slain bird in her bosom, allowed
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Speaker 1: the gap between the wetted pair to be visible, for
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Speaker 1: it was dated back to prophecy as soon as the
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Speaker 1: trumpet proclaimed it. But a multiplication of similar instances, which
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Speaker 1: can serve no other purpose than that of an apology,
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Speaker 1: is a miserable vindication of innocence. The more we have
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Speaker 1: of them, the darker the inference. In delicate situations, the
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Speaker 1: chatterer is noxious. Missus Warwick had numerous apologists. Those trusting
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Speaker 1: to her perfect rectitude were rarer. The liberty she allowed
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Speaker 1: herself in speech and action must have been trying to
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Speaker 1: our defenders in a land like ours, for here and
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Speaker 1: able to throw its shadow on our giddy upper circle.
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Speaker 1: The rigor of the game of life, relaxed, though it
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Speaker 1: may sometimes appear, would satisfy the statist whist player. She
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Speaker 1: did not wish it the reverse, even when claiming a
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Speaker 1: space for laughter. The breath of her soul, as she
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Speaker 1: called it, and as it may be felt in the
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Speaker 1: early youth of a lively nature. She, especially with her
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Speaker 1: multitude of quick perceptions and imaginative avenues, her rapid summaries,
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Speaker 1: her sense of the comic, demanded this aerial freedom. We
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Speaker 1: have it from Perry Wilkinson that the union of the
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Speaker 1: divergent couple was likened to another union. Always in a
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Speaker 1: court of law there was a distinction. Most analogies will
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Speaker 1: furnish one, and here we see England and Ireland changing
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Speaker 1: their parts. Until later after the breach, when the Englishman
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Speaker 1: and the irishwoman resumed a certain resemblance to the Yoked islands.
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Speaker 1: Henry Wilmers I have said, deals exclusively with the wit
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Speaker 1: and the charm of the woman. He treats the scandal
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Speaker 1: as we might do in like manner if her story
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Speaker 1: had not to be told. But these are not reporting columns.
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Speaker 1: Very little of it shall trouble them. The position is faced,
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Speaker 1: and that is all. The position is one of the
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Speaker 1: battle's incident to women their hardest. It asks for more
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Speaker 1: than justice from men, for generosity our civilization, not being
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Speaker 1: yet of the purest, that cry of hounds at her
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Speaker 1: disrobing by law is instinctive. She runs, and they give tongue.
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Speaker 1: She is a creature of the chase. Let her escape unmanngled.
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Speaker 1: It will pass in the record that she did once
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Speaker 1: publicly run, and some old dogs will persist in thinking
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Speaker 1: her cunninger than the virtuous, which would never put themselves
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Speaker 1: in such positions. But ply the distaff at home never
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Speaker 1: should reputation of women trail ascent. How true, and true
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Speaker 1: also that the women of waxwork never do, and that
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Speaker 1: the women of happy marriages do not, nor the women
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Speaker 1: of holy nunneries, nor the women lucky in their arts.
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Speaker 1: It is a test of the civilized to see and hear,
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Speaker 1: and add no yapping to the spectacle. Thousands have reflected
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Speaker 1: on a diarist's power to cancel our burial service. Not
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Speaker 1: alone the cleric's good work is upset by him, but
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Speaker 1: the sextons as well. He hawks the grave and transforms
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Speaker 1: the criet worms busy on a single, poor, peaceable body,
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Speaker 1: into winged serpents that disorder sky and earth with the
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Speaker 1: deadly flight of zigzags like military rockets among the living.
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Speaker 1: And if these are given to cry too much to
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Speaker 1: have their tender sentiments considered, it cannot be said that
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Speaker 1: history requires the flaying of them. A gouty diarist, a
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Speaker 1: sheer gossip diarist, may thus send the bequest of a
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Speaker 1: trail of reminiscence. Explode our temples, for our very temples
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Speaker 1: have powder in store, our treasuries, our homesteads alive with
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Speaker 1: dynamitic stuff. Nay, disconcert our inherited veneration. Dislocate the intimate
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Speaker 1: connection between the tugged flaxen forelock and a title. No
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Speaker 1: similar blame is incurred by Henry Wilmers. No blame whatever
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Speaker 1: one would say if he had been less copious or
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Speaker 1: not so subservient in recording the lady's utterances. For though
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Speaker 1: the wit of a woman may be terse quite spontaneous,
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Speaker 1: as this lady's assuredly was here and there, she is
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Speaker 1: apt to spin it out of a museful mind at
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Speaker 1: her toilette or by the lonely fire. And sometimes it
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Speaker 1: is imitative. Admirers should beware of holding it up to
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Speaker 1: the withering glare of print. She herself, quoting an obscure maximonger,
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Speaker 1: says of these lapidary sentences that they have merely the
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Speaker 1: value of chalk eggs, which lure the thinker to sit
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Speaker 1: and tempt the vacus to strain for the like when
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Speaker 1: might add, besides flattering the world to imagine itself richer
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Speaker 1: than it is in eggs that are golden. Henry Wilmers
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Speaker 1: notes a multitude of them. The talk fell upon our
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Speaker 1: being creatures of habit, and how far it was good?
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Speaker 1: She said. It is there that we see ourselves crutched
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Speaker 1: between love grown old and indifference aging to love. Critic
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Speaker 1: Ears not present at the conversation, catch an echo of
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Speaker 1: maxims and aphorisms over channel. Notwithstanding a feminine thrill in
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Speaker 1: the irony of aging to love, the quotation ranks rather
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Speaker 1: among the testimonies to her charm. She is fresher when
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Speaker 1: speaking of the war of the sexes, for one sentence
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Speaker 1: out of many, though we find it to be but
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Speaker 1: the clever literary clothing of a common accusation. Men may
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Speaker 1: have rounded Seraglio point they have not yet doubled Cape Turk.
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Speaker 1: It is war, and on the male side Ottoman war.
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Speaker 1: Her experience reduced her to think so positively. Her main
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Speaker 1: personal experience was in the social class, which is primitively venatorial,
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Speaker 1: still came under its Polish. She held it brief for
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Speaker 1: her beloved Ireland. She closes a discussion upon Irish agitation
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Speaker 1: by saying, rather neatly you have taught them. It is
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Speaker 1: English as well as common nature to feel an interest
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Speaker 1: in the dog that has bitten you. The dog periodically
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Speaker 1: puts on madness to win attention. We gather then that England,
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Speaker 1: and an angry tremor tries him with water gruel to
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Speaker 1: prove him sane. Of the Irish priest, and she was
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Speaker 1: not of his retinue when he was deemed a revolutionary.
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Speaker 1: Henry Wilmers notes her saying, be in tune with him.
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Speaker 1: He is in the keynote for harmony. He is shepherd, doctor, nurse, comforter, anecdotist,
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Speaker 1: and fun maker to his poor flock. And you wonder
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Speaker 1: why they see the burning gateway of their heaven and
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Speaker 1: him conciliate the priest. It has been partly done done late,
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Speaker 1: when the poor flock have found their doctoring and shepherding
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Speaker 1: at other hands, their bulb, food and fiddle that she
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Speaker 1: petitioned for to keep them from a complete shaving off
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Speaker 1: their patch of bog and scrub soil, without any perciption
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Speaker 1: of the tremulous transatlantic magnification of the fiddle and the
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Speaker 1: splitting discord of its latest inspiriting jig, and she will
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Speaker 1: not have the consequence of the weariful old Irish duel
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Speaker 1: between honor and hunger, judged by bread and butter juries.
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Speaker 1: She had no need to be beautiful to be tolerable.
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Speaker 1: In days when Englishmen stood more openly for the strong
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Speaker 1: arm to maintain the union, her troop of enemies was
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Speaker 1: of her summoning. Ordinarily, her topics were of wider range,
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Speaker 1: and those of a woman who mixed hearing with reading
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Speaker 1: and observation with her musings. She has no doleful ejaculatory
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Speaker 1: notes of the kind peculiar to women at war, containing
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Speaker 1: one third of speculative substance and two of sentimental, a
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Speaker 1: feminine plea for comprehension, and a squire. And it was
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Speaker 1: probably the reason, as there is no reason to suppose
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Speaker 1: an emotional cause, why she exercised her evident sway over
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Speaker 1: the mind of so plain and straightforward an Englishmen as
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Speaker 1: Harry Wilmers. She told him that she read rapidly, agreed
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Speaker 1: deal at one gulp, and thought in flashes away with
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Speaker 1: the makers of phrases she wrote, She confessed laboriously, the
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Speaker 1: desire to prune, compress overcharge was a torment to the
20:10
Speaker 1: nervous woman. Writing under a sharp necessity for payment, her
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Speaker 1: songs were shot off on the impulsion prose was the
20:17
Speaker 1: heavy task to be pointedly rational, she said, is a
20:20
Speaker 1: greater difficulty for me than a fine delirium. She did
20:24
Speaker 1: not talk as if it would have been so. He remarks,
20:27
Speaker 1: one is not astonished at her appearing an actress to
20:30
Speaker 1: the flat minded, but the basis of her woman's nature
20:33
Speaker 1: was pointed flame in the fullness of her history, we
20:36
Speaker 1: perceive nothing histrionic, capricious, or enthusiastic. In her youth. She
20:41
Speaker 1: never trifled with feeling, and if she did so with
20:44
Speaker 1: some showy phrases, and occasionally proffered commonplaces in guilt as
20:48
Speaker 1: she was much excited to do. Her moods of reflection
20:51
Speaker 1: were direct, always large, and honest, universal as well as feminine.
20:57
Speaker 1: Her saying that a woman in the pillory restores the
20:59
Speaker 1: original bark of brotherhood to mankind is no more than
21:03
Speaker 1: a cry of personal anguish. She has golden apples in
21:06
Speaker 1: her apron she says of life. When I fail to
21:09
Speaker 1: cherish it in every fiber, the fires within are waning,
21:12
Speaker 1: and that drives like rain to the roots. She says
21:15
Speaker 1: of the world generously, if with tapering idea from the
21:19
Speaker 1: point of vision of the angels, this ugly monster, only
21:22
Speaker 1: half out of slime, must appear our one constant hero.
21:27
Speaker 1: It can be read maliciously, but abstain, she says, of Romance.
21:32
Speaker 1: The young who avoid that region escape the title of
21:34
Speaker 1: fool at the cost of a celestial crown of poetry.
21:39
Speaker 1: Those that have souls meet their fellows there. But she
21:43
Speaker 1: would have us away with sentimentalism, sentimental people, in her phrase,
21:47
Speaker 1: fiddle harmonics on the strings of sensualism, to the delight
21:51
Speaker 1: of a world gaping for marvels of musical execution rather
21:55
Speaker 1: than for music. For our world is all but a
21:58
Speaker 1: sensational world at present, in maternal travail of a soberer,
22:02
Speaker 1: a braver, a brighter eyed. Her reflections are thus to
22:05
Speaker 1: be interpreted. It seems to me, she says, the vices
22:09
Speaker 1: of the world's nobler half in this day are feminine.
22:13
Speaker 1: We have to guard against half conceptions of wisdom, hysterical goodness,
22:17
Speaker 1: and impatient charity, against the elementary state of the altruistic virtues,
22:22
Speaker 1: distinguishable as the sickness and writhings of our egoism. To
22:26
Speaker 1: cast its first slough idea is there? The funny part
22:30
Speaker 1: of it is our finding it in books of fiction
22:32
Speaker 1: composed for payment. Manifestly, this lady did not chameleon her
22:37
Speaker 1: pen from the color of her audience. She was not
22:39
Speaker 1: of the uniform rank and file marching to drum and fife,
22:42
Speaker 1: as gallant interpreters of popular appetite and going are gone
22:46
Speaker 1: to soundlessness, and the icy shades touches inward are not absent.
22:52
Speaker 1: To have the sense of the eternal in life is
22:53
Speaker 1: a short flight for the soul. To have had it
22:56
Speaker 1: is the soul's vitality, and also valiation of a sin
23:01
Speaker 1: is the hunted creature's refuge and final temptation. Our battle
23:05
Speaker 1: is ever between spirit and flesh. Spirit must brand the
23:08
Speaker 1: flesh that it may live. You are entreated to repress alarm.
23:14
Speaker 1: She was by preference light handed, and her saying of
23:16
Speaker 1: oratory that it is always the more impressive for the
23:20
Speaker 1: spice of temper which renders it untrustworthy, is light enough.
23:24
Speaker 1: On politics, she is retorgal and swings. She wrote to Spur,
23:28
Speaker 1: a junior politician, It is the first business of men,
23:31
Speaker 1: the school to mediocrity, to the covetiously ambitious a stye,
23:35
Speaker 1: to the dullard his amphitheater, arms of titans, to the
23:38
Speaker 1: desperately enterprising olympus, to the genius. What a woman thinks
23:43
Speaker 1: of women is the test of her nature. She saw
23:46
Speaker 1: their existing posture clearly, yet believed as men disinclined to
23:50
Speaker 1: do that they grow. She says that in their judgments
23:53
Speaker 1: upon women, men are females voices of the present sexual dilemma.
23:58
Speaker 1: They desire to have a still woman who can make
24:01
Speaker 1: a constant society of her pins and needles. They create
24:05
Speaker 1: by stoppage a volcano, and are amazed at its eruptiveness.
24:09
Speaker 1: We live alone and do not much feel it till
24:11
Speaker 1: we are visited. Love is presumably the visitor of the
24:15
Speaker 1: greater loneliness of women. She says, it is due to
24:18
Speaker 1: the prescribed circumspection of their minds, of which they become
24:22
Speaker 1: aware and agitation. Were the walls about them beaten down,
24:25
Speaker 1: they would understand that solitariness is a common human fate
24:29
Speaker 1: and the one chance of growth, like space for timber.
24:33
Speaker 1: As to the sensations of women, after the beating down
24:36
Speaker 1: of the walls, she owns that the multitude of timerius
24:39
Speaker 1: would yearn in shivering affright for the old prison nest
24:42
Speaker 1: according to the sage prognostic of men, but the flying
24:46
Speaker 1: of a valiant few would form a vanguard. And we
24:49
Speaker 1: are informed that the beginning of a mode of life
24:51
Speaker 1: with women must be in the head equally with men,
24:54
Speaker 1: by no means a truism. When she wrote also that
24:57
Speaker 1: men do not so much fear to loose the hearts
24:59
Speaker 1: of thoughtful women as their strict attention to their graces.
25:03
Speaker 1: The present market is what men are for preserving an
25:06
Speaker 1: observation of still reverberating force. Generally, in her character of
25:11
Speaker 1: the feminine combatant, there is a turn of phrase like
25:14
Speaker 1: a dimple near the lips, showing her knowledge that she
25:16
Speaker 1: was uttering, but a tart measure of the truth. She
25:20
Speaker 1: always had too much lambent humor to be the dupe
25:22
Speaker 1: of the passion. Wherewith, as she says, we lash ourselves
25:26
Speaker 1: into the persuasive speech, distinguishing us from the animals. The
25:30
Speaker 1: instances of her drollery are rather hinted by the diarists
25:34
Speaker 1: for the benefit of those who had met her and
25:36
Speaker 1: could inhale the atmosphere. At a word, drolleries humors reputed
25:40
Speaker 1: witticisms are like odors of roast meats, passed with the
25:44
Speaker 1: picking of the joint. Idea is the only vital breath.
25:48
Speaker 1: They have It rarely, or it eludes the chronicler to
25:51
Speaker 1: say of the great erratic and forsaken lady A, after
25:55
Speaker 1: she had accepted the consolations of Bacchus, that her name
25:58
Speaker 1: was properly signified in asterix, as she was now knightly
26:02
Speaker 1: in aredane in heaven through her God sounds to us
26:06
Speaker 1: a roundabout with wit somewhere and fun nowhere sitting at
26:11
Speaker 1: the roast. We might have thought differently. Perry Wilkinson is
26:14
Speaker 1: not happier in citing her reply to his compliment on
26:17
Speaker 1: the reviewer's unanimous eulogy of her humor and pathos. The
26:21
Speaker 1: merry clown and poor pantaloon demanded of us in every
26:24
Speaker 1: work of fiction, she says, lamenting the writer's compulsion to
26:28
Speaker 1: go on producing them for applause until it is extremest
26:31
Speaker 1: age that knocks their knees. We are informed by Lady
26:35
Speaker 1: Pennin of the most amusing description of the first impressions
26:39
Speaker 1: of a pretty English simpleton in Paris. And here is
26:42
Speaker 1: an opportunity for ludicrous contrast of the French and English
26:45
Speaker 1: styles of pushing flatteries piping to the charmed animal, as
26:49
Speaker 1: Missus Warwick terms it in another place. But lady Pennin
26:53
Speaker 1: was acquainted with the silly woman of the peace and
26:55
Speaker 1: found her amusement in the wonderful truth of that representation.
27:00
Speaker 1: Diarists of amusing passages are under an obligation to paint
27:03
Speaker 1: us a realistic revival of the time, or we miss
27:06
Speaker 1: the relish the odor of the roast, and more a
27:09
Speaker 1: slice of it is required. Unless the humorous thing be
27:12
Speaker 1: preternaturally spirited to walk the earth as one immortal among
27:16
Speaker 1: a number less numerous than the mythic gods. He gives
27:20
Speaker 1: good dinners. A candid old critic said, when asked how
27:23
Speaker 1: it was that he could praise a certain poet in
27:26
Speaker 1: an island of chills and fogs colium cebrus inbibrus acnebulus foedum.
27:33
Speaker 1: The comic and other perceptions are dependent on the stirring
27:37
Speaker 1: of the gastric juices, and such a revival by any
27:40
Speaker 1: of us would be impolitic. Were it a possible attempt
27:44
Speaker 1: before our systems shall have been fortified by philosophy. Then
27:48
Speaker 1: may it be allowed to the diarist simply to relate,
27:50
Speaker 1: and we can copy from him? Then? Ah, then moreover,
27:56
Speaker 1: will the novelists art, now neither blushless infant nor executive
28:00
Speaker 1: man have attained its majority. We can then be voraciously historical,
28:05
Speaker 1: honestly transcriptive, Rose pink and dirty drab will alike have
28:09
Speaker 1: passed away. Philosophy is the foe of both, and their
28:12
Speaker 1: silly canceling contest perpetually renewed in a shuffle of extremes,
28:17
Speaker 1: as it always is, where a phantasm falseness rains, will
28:20
Speaker 1: no longer baffle, the contemplation of natural flesh smother, no
28:24
Speaker 1: longer the soul issuing out of our incessant strife. Philosophy
28:28
Speaker 1: bids us to see that we are not so pretty
28:31
Speaker 1: as rose pink, not so repulsive as dirty drab, and that,
28:34
Speaker 1: instead of everlastingly shifting those barren aspects, the sight of
28:39
Speaker 1: ourselves is wholesome, bearable, fruit, deifying, finally a delight. Do
28:44
Speaker 1: but perceive that we are coming to philosophy. The stride
28:47
Speaker 1: toward it will be a giant's a century a day.
28:51
Speaker 1: And imagine the celestial refreshment of having a pure decency
28:54
Speaker 1: in the place of sham, real flesh, a soul born, active, wind,
28:58
Speaker 1: beaten but ascending honorable. Will fiction then appear honorable, a
29:04
Speaker 1: fount of life, and aid to life quick with our blood.
29:08
Speaker 1: Why when you behold it, you love it, and you
29:10
Speaker 1: will not encourage it, or only when presented by dead
29:13
Speaker 1: hands worse than that alternative dirty drab, Your recurring rose
29:18
Speaker 1: pink is rebuked by hideous revelations of the filthy fowl
29:21
Speaker 1: for nature will force her way, and if you try
29:23
Speaker 1: to stifle her by drowning, she comes up not the
29:26
Speaker 1: fairest part of her uppermost. Peruse your realists, rally your
29:30
Speaker 1: castigators for not having yet embraced philosophy. As she grows
29:34
Speaker 1: in the flesh when discreetly tended, nature is unimpeachable flower eke,
29:39
Speaker 1: yet not too decoratively a flower. You must have her
29:41
Speaker 1: with the stem, the thorns, the roots, and the fat
29:44
Speaker 1: bedding of roses. In this fashion she grew, says historical fiction.
29:49
Speaker 1: Thus does she flourish now, would say the modern transcript,
29:52
Speaker 1: reading the inner as well as exhibiting the outer. And
29:56
Speaker 1: how may you know that you have reached to philosophy?
29:59
Speaker 1: You touch skirts when you share her hatred of the sham,
30:02
Speaker 1: decent her derision of sentimentalism. You are one with her
30:06
Speaker 1: when but I would not have you a thousand years
30:08
Speaker 1: older get to her, if in no other way, by
30:11
Speaker 1: the sentimental route, that very winding path, which again and
30:15
Speaker 1: again brings you round to the point of original impetus,
30:18
Speaker 1: where you have to be unwound for another whirl. Your
30:20
Speaker 1: point of original impetus being the grossly material, not at
30:24
Speaker 1: all the spiritual it is most true that sentimentalism springs
30:28
Speaker 1: from the former, merely and badly aping the latter, fine
30:31
Speaker 1: flower or pinnacle flame spire of sensualism that it is,
30:35
Speaker 1: could it do other? And accompanying the former, It traverses
30:39
Speaker 1: tracts of deserts, here and there, couching in a garden,
30:42
Speaker 1: catching with one hand at fruits, with another at colors,
30:45
Speaker 1: imagining a secret ahead, and goaded by an appetite sustained
30:49
Speaker 1: by sheer gratifications. Fiddle enharmonics as it may, it will
30:53
Speaker 1: have these gratifications at all costs, should none be discoverable
30:57
Speaker 1: at once. You are at the cave of despair, beneath
31:00
Speaker 1: the funereal orb of glaucoma, in the thick midst of
31:03
Speaker 1: poiniarded slit throat rope dependent figures placarded across the bosom, disillusioned, infidel, agnostic, miserrimus.
31:14
Speaker 1: That is the sentimental route to advancement. Spirituality does not
31:18
Speaker 1: light it. Evanescent dreams are its oil lamps, often with
31:21
Speaker 1: wick a scant in the socket A thousand years. You
31:25
Speaker 1: may count full many a thousand by this route before
31:28
Speaker 1: you are one with divine philosophy. Whereas a single flight
31:32
Speaker 1: of brains, will reach and embrace her, give you the
31:34
Speaker 1: savor of truth, the right use of the senses, reality's
31:38
Speaker 1: infinite sweetness. For these things are in philosophy and the fiction,
31:42
Speaker 1: which is the summary of actual life. The within and
31:45
Speaker 1: without of us is prose or verse, plotting or soaring.
31:49
Speaker 1: Philosophies elect handmaiden to such an end. Let us bend
31:53
Speaker 1: our aim to work, knowing that every form of labor,
31:56
Speaker 1: even this flimsiest as you esteem it, should minister to growth.
32:00
Speaker 1: If in any branch of us we fail in growth,
32:03
Speaker 1: there is you are aware an unfailing aboriginal, democratic old
32:06
Speaker 1: monster that waits to pull us down, certainly the branch,
32:10
Speaker 1: possibly the tree, and for the welfare of life we fall.
32:14
Speaker 1: You are acutely conscious of yonder old monster when he
32:17
Speaker 1: is mouthing at you in politics. Be wary of him
32:20
Speaker 1: in the heart. Especially, be wary of the disrelish of
32:23
Speaker 1: brain stuff. You must feed on something. Matter that is
32:27
Speaker 1: not nourishing to brains can help constitute nothing but the
32:29
Speaker 1: bodies which are pitched on rubbish heaps. Brain stuff is
32:33
Speaker 1: not lean stuff. The brain stuff of fiction is internal history,
32:37
Speaker 1: and to suppose it dull is the profoundest of errors.
32:40
Speaker 1: How deep you will understand when I tell you that
32:42
Speaker 1: it is the very football of the holiday afternoon imps
32:45
Speaker 1: below they kick it for past time. They are intelligences perverted,
32:50
Speaker 1: the comic of it, the adventuress, the tragic they make
32:53
Speaker 1: devilish to kindle their euegian hilarity, but sharply comic, adventurous,
32:59
Speaker 1: instructively tragic. It is in the interwinding with human affairs
33:03
Speaker 1: to give a flavor of the modern day, reviving that
33:05
Speaker 1: of our poet, between whom and us yon Time's most
33:09
Speaker 1: hollow jaws. Surely we owe a little to Time to
33:12
Speaker 1: cheer his progress, a little to posterity and to our country.
33:16
Speaker 1: Dozens of writers will be in at yonder yawning breach
33:20
Speaker 1: if only perusers will rally to the philosophic standard. They
33:23
Speaker 1: are sick of the wooden puppetry they dispense as on
33:26
Speaker 1: a race course to the roaring frivolous. While if not
33:29
Speaker 1: dozens half dozens gallant pens are alive, one can speak
33:33
Speaker 1: of them in the plural. I venture to say that
33:36
Speaker 1: they would be satisfied with a dozen for audience for
33:38
Speaker 1: a commencement, they would perish of inannation, unfed, unapplauded, amenable
33:43
Speaker 1: to the laws, perchance for an assault on their last
33:46
Speaker 1: remaining pair of ears or heels to hold them fast.
33:50
Speaker 1: But the example is the thing. Sacrifices must be expected.
33:53
Speaker 1: The example might one hopes, create a taste. A great
33:57
Speaker 1: modern writer of clearest eye and head, now departed, capable
34:01
Speaker 1: in activity of presenting thoughtful women, thinking men, groaned over
34:04
Speaker 1: his puppetry, that he dared not animate them flesh, though
34:08
Speaker 1: they were with the fires of positive brain stuff. He
34:12
Speaker 1: could have done it, and he is of the departed.
34:14
Speaker 1: Had he dared, he would, for he was tighten enough
34:18
Speaker 1: have raised the art in dignity on a level with history,
34:21
Speaker 1: to an interest surpassing the narrative of public deeds as
34:23
Speaker 1: vividly as man's heart and brain in their union excel
34:26
Speaker 1: his plain lines of action to eruption. The everlasting pantomime
34:31
Speaker 1: suggested by Missus Warwick in her exclamation to Perry Wilkinson
34:34
Speaker 1: is derided not unrighteously by our graver seniors. They name
34:39
Speaker 1: this art the pasture of idiots, a method for idiotizing
34:42
Speaker 1: the entire population which has taken to reading, and which
34:45
Speaker 1: soon discovers that it can write likewise that sort of stuff.
34:49
Speaker 1: At least the forecast may be hazarded. That if we
34:52
Speaker 1: do not speedily embrace philosophy in fiction, the art is
34:55
Speaker 1: doomed to extinction. Under the shining multitude of its professors.
35:00
Speaker 1: They are fast capping the candle. Instead. Therefore, of objurating
35:03
Speaker 1: the timid intrusions of philosophy, invoke her presence. I pray you.
35:08
Speaker 1: History without her is the skeleton map of events. Fiction
35:12
Speaker 1: a picture of figures modeled on no skeleton anatomy, but
35:16
Speaker 1: each with philosophy and aid blooms and is humanly shapely
35:20
Speaker 1: to demand of us truth to nature. Excluding philosophy is
35:23
Speaker 1: really to bid a pumpkin caper. As much as legs
35:27
Speaker 1: are wanted for the dance, Philosophy is required to make
35:29
Speaker 1: our human nature credible and acceptable. Fiction implores you to
35:33
Speaker 1: heave a bigger breast and take her in with this
35:35
Speaker 1: heavenly preservative, helpmate her inspiration and her essence. You have
35:41
Speaker 1: to teach your imagination of the feminine image you have
35:43
Speaker 1: set up to bend your civilized needs to that it
35:46
Speaker 1: must temper its fastidiousness, shun the grossness of the over
35:49
Speaker 1: dainty or to speak in the philosophic tongue, you must
35:53
Speaker 1: turn on yourself, resolutely, track and seize that burrower, and
35:57
Speaker 1: scrub and cleanse him, by which process, during the course
36:01
Speaker 1: of it you will arrive at the conception of the
36:03
Speaker 1: right heroical woman for you to worship. And if you
36:06
Speaker 1: prove to be of some spiritual stature, you may reach
36:09
Speaker 1: to an ideal of the heroical feminine type for the
36:11
Speaker 1: worship of mankind and image. As yet in poetic outline,
36:15
Speaker 1: only on our upper skies, so well do we know ourselves,
36:19
Speaker 1: that we one and all determine to know a purer,
36:22
Speaker 1: says the heroine of my columns. Philosophy in fiction tells,
36:26
Speaker 1: among various other matters, of the perils of this intimate
36:29
Speaker 1: acquaintance with a flattering familiar in the Purer, a person
36:33
Speaker 1: who more than ceases to be of else to us,
36:35
Speaker 1: after his ideals shall have led up men from their
36:38
Speaker 1: flint and arrowhead caverns to intercommunicative daylight. For when the
36:42
Speaker 1: fictitious creature has performed that service of helping to civilize
36:46
Speaker 1: the world, it becomes the most dangerous of delusions, causing
36:50
Speaker 1: first the individual to despise the mass, and then to
36:53
Speaker 1: join the mass in crushing the individual, wherewith led us
36:56
Speaker 1: to our story, the froth being out of the bottle
37:01
Speaker 1: end of Chapter one