A Hero and Some Other Folks Part 12

"Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'T is only n.o.ble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."

Nor is the Laureate's subsequent acceptance of the peerage a retraction of these earlier sentiments; for he did but accept the ribbon of an order which was part of the political system of his native land.

Himself was self-made. Who were the Tennysons? Who are the Tennysons?

He made a house. And in the list of lords, does any one think there is a name whose device one would rather wear than that of Lord Tennyson?

Holland has this bit of verse, whose application is apparent:

"Heaven is not reached at a single bound; But we build the ladder by which we rise From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, And mount to its summit round by round."

Genius does the same. The stairs each generation climbed are rotten at its death, so that no foot's weight can be borne upon them afterward.

Man builds his own stairway greatnessward. In the Idyl of the King, ent.i.tled "Gareth and Lynette," is application of this thought of manhood above t.i.tle or name or blood. Worth, the main thing, is the theme of the idyl.

Hear Gareth call, like voice of trumpets,

"Let be my name; until I make my name My deeds will speak."

He seemed, and was not, a kitchen knave. He seemed not, and he was, a knight of valor and of purity and might, of purpose and of succor.

Silly Lynette might rain her superficial insults on him like a winter's sleet--this hindered not his service. He knew to wait, and dare, and do. His fame was in him. A great life bears not its honors on its back, as mountains do their pines, but in his heart, as women do their love. In Tennyson's concept of manhood, worth counts, not rank. To this argument, words from "In Memoriam" are a contribution:

"As some divinely-gifted man, Whose life in low estate began And on a simple village green;

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And b.r.e.a.s.t.s the blows of circ.u.mstance, And grapples with his evil star;

Who makes by force his merit known, And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mold a mighty State's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne;

And moving on from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The center of a world's desire."

Such words seem as if fallen from the lips of Lincoln in a dream.

"Aylmer's Field" is a protest, written in grief and tears and blood against the iniquity of ancestry as divorced from the pure course of n.o.bler love. G.o.d made of one blood all kindreds of the earth, and means to mix this blood till time shall die. Hearts give scant heed to heraldry. Life is wider than a baron's field. Arthur Hallam, whose epitaph is the sweetest ever written, and bears t.i.tle of "In Memoriam,"--Arthur Hallam, so greatly loved and missed, was never n.o.bleman in genealogy, but was full prince in youth and ideality and purity and genius and promise, worth more than all the ancestries of buried kings. More: Tennyson was as much self-made as King Arthur. He made a house which rose to the sound of poet's lute, rehearsing, in our days, the story of Orpheus in the remote yesterdays. So myths come to be history. And who would not rather be author of "The Lotos-Eaters,"

and "Oenone," and "Ulysses," and "Enoch Arden," and "In Memoriam" than to have been possessed, with Sir Aylmer Aylmer, of

"s.p.a.cious hall, Hung with a hundred s.h.i.+elds, the family tree Sprung from the midriff of a prostrate king?"

King Arthur's knights were _novi viri_. Whence came Lancelot and Geraint and Sir Percivale? And how came they, save as

"Rising on their dead selves To higher things?"

Arthur, at whose back march all the legions of Tennyson's poetry celebrative of manhood,--Arthur a.s.serts the n.o.bleness of manhood, irrespective of the accidents of wealth or birth. Many scenes in Tennyson are taken from the cottage. "The May Queen," "The Gardener's Daughter," "The Grandmother," "Rizpah," and, above all, "Enoch Arden,"

are poems showing how poetry dwells in the hearts of common folks. The verse of books they may not know; the verse of sentiment they are at home with. Birth is not a term in the proportion of worth; and I hold Arthur one of the strongest voices of our century a.s.sertive of the sufficiency of manhood. Self-made and greatly made was this king at Camelot.

King Arthur was optimist. He expected good in men, was not suspicious.

"Interpreting others by his own pure heart," you interject, "He was duped." The harlot Vivien called him fool, and despised him; but she was fallen, shameful, treacherous, and, what was worse, so fallen as not to see the beauty in untarnished manhood, which is the last sign of turpitude. Many bad men have still left an honest admiration for a goodness themselves are alien to. Vivien was so lost as that goodness, manhood, knightliness, sweet and tall as mountain pines, made no appeal to her. Filth is dearer to some than mountain air. She was such. A fallen woman, given over to her fall, is horrible in depravity. Merlin saw that her estimate of Arthur was the measure of herself. Beatrix Esmond did not appreciate Henry Esmond; for the Pretender was her measure of soul. Though to her praise be it said that, in her old age, Esmond dead, she thought of him as women think of Christ. Arthur believed in men, supposing them to be transcripts of himself; and in so doing in details, he erred. His philosophy of goodness was erroneous; for he held to the theory of goodness by environment, fencing knights and ladies about with his own fine honor and chast.i.ty, supposing pure environment would make them pure, forgetting how G.o.d's kingdom is always within. Environment is not gifted to make men good. Arthur believed men pure, nor was he wholly wrong. The men about him gave the lie to his expectation; but these moral ragam.u.f.fins did not invalidate the king's faith. The road taken was not the world. Lancelot and Guinevere and Gawain and Modred, false? False! Pelleas, seeing Ettarre l.u.s.tful and untrue, digging rowels into his steed and crying, "False! false!" was not wise as Arthur. The optimist is right. Some were false, 't is true; but others were true as crystal streams, that all night long give back the heavens star for star. There were and are true men and women. Our neighborhood, if so be it is foul, is not the earth. Enid, and Elaine, and Sir Galahad, and Sir Percivale, and Gareth, and others not designated, were pure. Snows on city streets are stained with soot and earth; snows on the mountains are as white as woven of the beams of noon. King Arthur, expecting the better of the world, in so doing followed the example of his Savior, Christ, who was most surely optimist. King Arthur, in his midnight hour, when knight and wife and Lancelot deserted him, when his "vast pity almost made him die," still kept the lamp of hope aflame and sheltered from the wind, lest it flame, flare, and die. His fool still loved him and clasped his feet; and bold Sir Bedivere staid with him through the thunder shock of that last battle in the west. Not all were false. Some friends abide. Though his application was not always wise, his att.i.tude was justified. Having done his part, he had not been betrayed; for he was still victor. Lancelot and Guinevere were defeated, ruined, as were Gawain and Ettarre, who, as they wake, find across their naked throats the bare sword of Pelleas; then Ettarre knew what knight was knightly. Goodness wins in the long battle, though supposed defeated in the petty frays, Tennyson makes his ideal man an optimist. "Maud" is a study in pessimism. The lover's blood is tainted with insanity. He raves, is suspicious, is at war with all things and all men; rails at the social system, not from any broad sympathy with better things, but from a strident selfishness, rasping and self-proclamatory, lacking elevation, save as his love puts wings beneath him for a moment and lifts him, as eagles billow up their young; is weak, and tries to cover weakness up by ranting. We pity, then despise him, then pity him once more, and in sheer charity think him raving mad. Stand Maud's lover alongside King Arthur, and how splendid does King Arthur look! The lover was pessimist and wrong; Arthur was optimist and, in his temper, right. Though hacked at by the careless or vicious swords of c.u.mulating hatreds, underestimations, selfishness, and lewdness of lesser and cruder souls, knowing, as he did, how G.o.d is on goodness' side, knew, therefore, who is on G.o.d's side keeps hope in good, believing better things. Those who, thinking themselves shrewd, and are perennially suspicious, do really lack in shrewdness, lacking depth. The far view is the serene view. Pelleas, too, is a study in lost faith. He was near-sighted in his moral life, and so, in losing faith in Ettarre, lost faith in womanhood, a conclusion not justified from the premises; and you hear him in the wild night, crying as beasts of the desert cry, and what he hisses as you pa.s.s is, "I have no sword." Arthur kept his sword till time came to give it back to the "arm clothed in white samite." He threw not his sword away until his hand could hold it no longer. Hands and swords must keep company while life and strength remain, and who breaks or throws sword away from sheer despair has lost sight of duty, in so far that our business is to do battle valiantly and constantly for righteousness, and keep the sword at play in spite of dubious circ.u.mstances. Battles are often on the point of being won when they look on the point of being lost, as was the case with Pelleas, whose hope died just at the hour when hope ought to have begun shouts befitting triumph; for that night when he lay his naked sword across Ettarre's naked neck, she, waking and finding whose sword was lying, like a mad menace, on her breast, recovered her womanhood, loved the knight, who came and went, and slew her not, as his right was, and loved him to her death; while he, the cause of her reformation, swung through the gloomy night with faith and courage lost. He should have held his faith, however his trust in one had been shamed and sunk.

Faith in one snuffed out is not in logic to lose faith; for all are more than one. Trust Arthur; he was right. Pessimism is no sane mood.

All history conspires to justify his att.i.tude. Himself inspires optimism in us, and the three queens wait for him, and the black funeral barge that bears him, not to his funeral, but to some fair city where there seems one voice, and that a voice of welcome to this king; and besides all this, his name lights our nights till now, as if he were some sun, pre-empting night as well as day. Has not his optimism been justified a hundred-fold? Do those who view the present only, think to see all the landscape where deeds reap victories? Time is so essential in the propagandism of good. Time is the foe of evil, but sworn ally of good. G.o.d owns the future.

King Arthur considered life a chance for service. Life is no abstraction, no theoretical science; rather concrete, experimental.

Magician Merlin's motto, too. We may think _or_ act, though this of conduct. We may think or act, though this disjunctive is wrong, wholly wrong. [Transcriber's note: Something seems to have gone wrong with the typesetting of the previous three sentences. The first sentence makes no sense, and the second two both start with the same seven words.] There is no separation between act and thought in a wise estimate. They are not enemies, but friends. We are to think _and_ act. We are, in a word, not to dream or do, but dream and do, the dreaming being prelude to the doing. Who dreams not is metallic.

Dreams redeem deeds from being stereotyped, and make motions sinuous and graceful as a bird's flight across the sky; and when they impregnate conduct, deed becomes instinct with a melody thrilling and sweet as a wood-thrush note. Arthur was no mystic. He did not dwell apart from men; he was a part of men. "The Mystic" is an admirable conception of the soul, living remote from society and action, seeing our world as through a smoke. Mysticism has its truth and power. Many of us bl.u.s.ter and do, and do not stand apart and dwell enough with the unseen.

"Always there stood before him, night and day, The imperishable presences serene, One mighty countenance of perfect calm,"

And

"Angels have talked with him and showed him thrones."

So much in him is needed to a soul hungry to be fortified for danger, duty, manliness. Despise not a mystic's brooding, but recall that brooding is not terminal; that he who broods alone has left life wearying around him as he found it, while his need was to change the circ.u.mambient air of thought and action into something better than it was; and for such change he must a.s.sociate him with the lives he fain would help. Arthur brooded and dreamed, and saw the Christ, and then conceived his worthiest service to be to interpret the What he heard and Whom he saw to men; and in pursuance of such purpose he lived with knights, ladies, soldiers, and countrymen. Him they saw and knew.

"St. Simeon Stylites" is an application of another side of the same thought. Heroism is in this pillar saint, but a mistaken heroism. He stands,

"A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud."

But to what purpose? Hear him call,

"I smote them with the cross,"

and feel a.s.sured from such a word that he who spoke, had he been where the battle raged, had left his stroke on many a s.h.i.+eld; for his words have the crash of a Crusader's ax. What a loss it was to men that St.

Simeon came not down from his pillar, clothed himself, made himself clean and wholesome, instead of filthy and revolting, and dwelt with people for whom Christ died. A religious recluse is a religious ignoramus, since he does not know that the one-syllable word in the vocabulary of Christ is, "Be of use." The problem of living, as Arthur saw vividly, was not how to get yourself through the world unhurt, but how to do the most for some one besides yourself while you are in the world; and this att.i.tude is otherness, altruism. Nurture strength to use. Pa.s.s your might on. Knighthood was to serve everybody else first, after the fas.h.i.+on of the Founder of knighthood, even Christ, "who came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister." King Arthur served. Play battles stung him not to prowess, but, as Lancelot saw, in the actual battle, the hero was not Lancelot, but Arthur. May be a too deep seriousness was in him. I think it probable. He had been more masterful in wielding men had he been colored more by laughter and jest. We must not take ourselves, nor yet the world, with too continuous seriousness. There are intervals between battles when warriors may rest, and intervals in the stress of deeds and sorrow where room is given for the caress and wholesome jest. That arch-jester, Jack Falstaff, had much reason with him. We like him, despite himself, and despite ourselves, because there was in him such comradery. Though he was boisterous, yet was he jovial. All characters, save Christ, have limitations. Arthur had his. Lack of sprightliness was his mistake and lack. But the work to be done fills him with might unapproachable, so that,

"Like fire, he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee."

He is no play soldier, and foemen mark his sword as a thing to fear. A mutilated herdsman, rus.h.i.+ng into Caerlaen, and shaking b.l.o.o.d.y story from his hideous wounds, which, Arthur hearing, though a tourneyment would blow its bugles on the plain erelong, forgets the coming joust, remembering only a wrong to be avenged, and evil-doers to be punished or destroyed, so they may no longer be a noxious presence in the land, and goes, and at tourney's close comes back, through the dark night, wet with rain; but he has cleansed the hostile land of villains on that day. In human nature is a bias to escape the world, to get out of the turmoil, to seek cloisters of quiet, which bias "The Holy Grail"

attacks. Arthur was no friend to the pursuit of the grail; not that he loves not, with a pa.s.sion white as sun's flame, the good and pure, but that he has sagacity to see such quest will scatter the round table and its fellows.h.i.+p, and would dispeople his forces, whose presence makes for peace and sovereignty in all his realm and compels the sovereignty of law. Him, their king, these errant knights heeded not, so enticing and n.o.ble seemed the warfare they espoused, and thought their sovereign cold and calculating, while, in fact, he knew them for visionaries. He was right. Without them he was bankrupt in strength to compel social betterment. The visionary, in so far as he is simply visionary, is foe to progress; for progress comes by battle and by a.s.sociation in affairs, and he who would be helper to the better life of man must mix with the currents of his time. Snowdrifts in the mountains and on the northern slopes that hold snows in their shadows for the summer's use; and dark mountain meadows, where fogs and rains soak every particle of sod, and waters percolate through the spongy root and soil to form bubbling streams; and the pines, whose shadows make a cool retreat where streams may not be drained dry by the sun; the silver threads of tributary brooks; the sponge of mountain mosses, which squeezes its cup of water into a larger laver,--all these seem remote from the broad river on whose flood merchants' fleets are slumbering, nor seem partic.i.p.ants with these floodgates to the sea; yet are they adjuncts, though so far removed, and pay their tribute to the flood.

Their service was as p.r.o.nounced and valuable as if they had been huge as Orontes. There is an absence which is presence, and there is a presence which is absence; and what is asked of all men, near or far, is that they be helpers to the general good. They must not, by intent or mistake, escape their share of the public burden.

A poet seems apart, and is not, but is to be esteemed a portion of this world's most turbulent life. To intend to have a share in this world's business is important. To shun the taking up your load when need is, is to be coward when your honor bids you be courageous. This means, be a citizen, neglect no office in that worthy relation; be not wandering knights, pursuing fire-flies, supposing them to be stars; but be as Arthur, who found the Holy Grail, and drained its sacramental wine in truest fas.h.i.+on, in "staying by the stuff;" in being statesman, soldier, defender of the weak, reformer, liver of a clean life in public place, builder of a State, negotiator of schemes which make for the diminution of earth's ills and increase of earth's fairer provinces. Edward the Confessor was a monk, wearing a king's crown and refusing to discharge a king's offices, and thought himself a saint by such omission, when what G.o.d and the realm wanted and needed was a man to rule and suffer for the common weal. Arthur was not a thing "enskied and sainted;"

rather a wholesome man, whose duty lay in working for men. Sir Percivale became a monk; other knights returned no mote, thus spilling the best blood of the table round. Meantime the king's enemies multiplied, and these visionaries decimated the ranks of opposition to the wrong; but come what would, King Arthur served. An appeal to him for help found answer, though treasons plotted at his back. As to his last battle, though his heart was breaking, he marched nor paused, perceiving, so long as he was king, he must uphold the order of the State. He was no dilettante. Great service called him, and he thought he heard the voice of G.o.d. Duty is a ponderous word in Arthur's lexicon. In "Lucretius," Tennyson shows the moral apathy of materialism by letting us look on at a suicidal death, and hear the cry, half-rage and half-despair, "What is duty?" and in that fated cry, atheism has run its course. Here it empties into its dead sea, and materialism finds its only possible outcome. This materialist of long ago is the mouthpiece for his fraters in these last days. There is one speech, and that a speech of dull despair, for those who say there is no G.o.d; and for them who have no G.o.d, there is no duty, for duty is born of hold on G.o.d. King Arthur, sure of G.o.d, therefore never asking, "What is duty?" but in its stead urges the n.o.bler query, "Where is duty?" and so infused himself into the blood of empire; aye, and more, into the spiritual blood of uncalendared centuries.

And King Arthur was pure. Vice is so often glorified and offers such chromo tints to the eye as that many superficial folks think virtue tame and vice exhilarating. Here lies the difficulty. They look on those parts which are contiguous to vice, but are really not parts of it. In the self of vice is nothing attractive. Lying, l.u.s.t, envy, hate, debauchery,--which of these is not tainted? Penuriousness is vice unadorned, and who thinks it fair? Like Spenser's "false Duessa,"

it is revolting. Drunkenness, b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, spleen,--what roseate views shall you take of these? Who admires Caliban? And Caliban is vice, standing in its naked vileness and vulgarity. Man, meant for manhood, self-reduced to brutehood,--that is drunkenness. In an era when Dumas by fascinating fictions was making vice ingratiating, Tennyson was rendering virtue magnificent. Can any person of just judgment rise from reading "Idyls of the King" without feeling a repugnance toward vice, like a nausea, and a magnetism in virtue? An admiration for Arthur becomes intense. The poet draws no moral from his parable: doing what is better, he puts morals into one's blood. While never railing at Guinivere, he makes us ashamed of her and for her, and does the same with Lancelot. He makes virtue eloquent. King Arthur is neither drunkard nor libertine, therein contradicting the pet theories of many people's heroes. He loves cleanness and is clean. He demands in man a purity equal to woman's; setting up one standard of mortals and not two. The George Fourth style of king, happily, Arthur is not; for George was a shame to England and to men at large, while Arthur is a glory, burning on above the cliffs of Wales, like some brave sunrise whose colors never fade. To men and women, he is one law of virtue and one law of love. When the years have spent their strength, then vice shows itself hideous vice. The glamour vanished, no one can love or plead for wickedness. Virtue is wholly different; for to it the ages burn incense each year, rendering its loveliness more apparent and bountiful. Virtue grows in beauty, like some dear face we love.

Heroism is virtue; manliness is virtue; devotion is virtue. Sum up those remembered deeds of which the centuries speak, and you will find them n.o.ble, virtuous. Seen as it is, and with the light of history on its face, vice is uncomely as a harlot's painted face. King Arthur is virile and he is n.o.ble, engaging and fascinating us like a romance written by a master, full of persuasive sweetness and enduring help.

Besides, King Arthur was a religious man. This is the transparent explanation of his career. He is an attempted incarnation of the precepts and love of Christ. This long-vanished prince knew that if a king might but repeat the miracle of Jesus' life in his own history, he would have achieved kings.h.i.+p indeed. "_Mea vita vota_" was Dempster's motto,--a sentiment Arthur knew by heart. His life was owed to G.o.d, and right manfully he paid his debt. Arthur exalted G.o.d in his heart and court and on hard-fought field. So intense and vivid his sense of G.o.d, he reminds us of the Puritan; but the Puritan touched to beatific beauty by the interpretation of love G.o.d's Christ came to give.

Tennyson always made much of G.o.d, saw Him immanent in every hope of human betterment, saying, as we remember and can not forget:

"Our little systems have their day-- They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee; And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

"The Idyls of the King" and "In Memoriam" might felicitously be called treatises on theology written in verse. St. Augustine and Wesley were not more certainly theologians than this poet Laureate. The rest and help that come to men in prayer is burned into the soul in "Enoch Arden:"

"And there he would have knelt, but that his knees Were feeble, so that falling p.r.o.ne he dug His fingers into the wet earth and prayed."