IN THE WRONG PARADISE.
AN OCCIDENTAL APOLOGUE.
In the drawing-room, or, as it is more correctly called, the “dormitory,”
of my club, I had been reading a volume named “Sur l'Humanité Posthume,”
by M. D'Assier, a French follower of Comte. The mixture of positivism
and ghost-stories highly diverted me. Moved by the sagacity and
pertinence of M. D'Assier's arguments for a limited and fortuitous
immortality, I fell into such an uncontrollable fit of laughter as
caused, I could see, first annoyance and then anxiety in those members of
my club whom my explosion of mirth had awakened. As I still chuckled and
screamed, it appeared to me that the noise I made gradually grew fainter
and more distant, seeming to resound in some vast empty space, even more
funereal and
melancholy than the dormitory of my club, the “Tepidarium.”
It has happened to most people to laugh themselves awake out of a dream,
and every one who has done so must remember the ghastly, hollow, and
maniacal sound of his own mirth. It rings horribly in a quiet room where
there has been, as the Veddahs of Ceylon say is the case in the world at
large, “nothing to laugh at.” Dean Swift once came to himself, after a
dream, laughing thus hideously at the following conceit: “I told Apronia
to be very careful especially about the legs.” Well, the explosions of
my laughter crackled in a yet more weird and lunatic fashion about my own
ears as I slowly became aware that I had died of an excessive sense of
the ludicrous, and that the space in which I was so inappropriately
giggling was, indeed, the fore-court of the House of Hades. As I grew
more absolutely convinced of this truth, and began dimly to discern a
strange world visible in a sallow light, like that of the London streets
when a black fog hangs just over the houses, my hysterical chuckling
gradually died away. Amusement at the poor follies of mortals was
succeeded by an awful and anxious curiosity as to the state of
immortality and the life after death. Already it was certain that “the
Manes are somewhat,” and that annihilation is the dream of people
sceptical through lack of imagination. The scene around me now resolved
itself into a high grey upland country, bleak and wild, like the waste
pastoral places of Liddesdale. As I stood expectant, I observed a figure
coming towards me at some distance. The figure bore in its hand a gun,
and, as I am short-sighted, I at first conceived that he was the
gamekeeper. “This affair,” I tried to say to myself, “is only a dream
after all; I shall wake and forget my nightmare.”
But still the man drew nearer, and I began to perceive my error.
Gamekeepers do not usually paint their faces red and green, neither do
they wear scalp-locks, a tuft of eagle's feathers, moccasins, and buffalo-
hide cloaks, embroidered with representations of war and the chase. This
was the accoutrement of the stranger who now approached me, and whose
copper-coloured complexion indicated that he was a member of the Red
Indian, or, as the late Mr. Morgan called it the “Ganowanian” race. The
stranger's attire was old and clouted; the barrel of his
flint-lock
musket was rusted, and the stock was actually overgrown with small
funguses. It was a peculiarity of this man that everything he carried
was more or less broken and outworn. The barrel of his piece was riven,
his tomahawk was a mere shard of rusted steel, on many of his
accoutrements the vapour of fire had passed. He approached me with a
stately bearing, and, after saluting me in the fashion of his people,
gave me to know that he welcomed me to the land of spirits, and that he
was deputed to carry me to the paradise of the Ojibbeways. “But, sir,” I
cried in painful confusion, “there is here some great mistake. I am no
Ojibbeway, but an Agnostic; the after-life of spirits is only (as one of
our great teachers says) ‘an hypothesis based on contradictory
probabilities;’ and I really must decline to accompany you to a place of
which the existence is uncertain, and which, if it does anywhere exist,
would be uncongenial in the extreme to a person of my habits.”
To this remonstrance my Ojibbeway Virgil answered, in effect, that in the
enormous passenger traffic between the earth and the next worlds mistakes
must and frequently do
occur.
Quisque suos patimur manes, as the Roman
says, is the rule, but there are many exceptions. Many a man finds
himself in the paradise of a religion not his own, and suffers from the
consequences. This was, in brief, the explanation of my guide, who could
only console me by observing that if I felt ill at ease in the Ojibbeway
paradise, I might, perhaps, be more fortunate in that of some other
creed. “As for your Agnostics,” said he, “their main occupation in their
own next world is to read the poetry of George Eliot and the
philosophical works of Mr. J. S. Mill.” On hearing this, I was much
consoled for having missed the entrance to my proper sphere, and I
prepared to follow my guide with cheerful alacrity, into the paradise of
the Ojibbeways.
Our track lay, at first, along the “Path of Souls,” and the still, grey
air was only disturbed by a faint rustling and twittering of spirits on
the march. We seemed to have journeyed but a short time, when a red
light shone on the left hand of the way. As we drew nearer, this light
appeared to proceed from a prodigious strawberry, a perfect mountain of a
strawberry. Its cool and shining
sides seemed very attractive to a
thirsty Soul. A red man, dressed strangely in the feathers of a raven,
stood hard by, and loudly invited all passers-by to partake of this
refreshment. I was about to excavate a portion of the monstrous
strawberry (being partial to that fruit), when my guide held my hand and
whispered in a low voice that they who accepted the invitation of the man
that guarded the strawberry were lost. He added that, into whatever
paradise I might stray, I must beware of tasting any of the food of the
departed. All who yield to the temptation must inevitably remain where
they have put the food of the dead to their lips. “You,” said my guide,
with a slight sneer, “seem rather particular about your future home, and
you must be especially careful to make no error.” Thus admonished, I
followed my guide to the river which runs between our world and the
paradise of the Ojibbeways. A large stump of a tree lies half across the
stream, the other half must be crossed by the agility of the wayfarer.
Little children do but badly here, and “an Ojibbeway woman,” said my
guide, “can never be consoled when her child dies before it is fairly
expert in
jumping. Such young children they cannot expect to meet again
in paradise.” I made no reply, but was reminded of some good and unhappy
women I had known on earth, who were inconsolable because their babes had
died before being sprinkled with water by a priest. These babes they,
like the Ojibbeway matrons, “could not expect to meet again in paradise.”
To a grown-up spirit the jump across the mystic river presented no
difficulty, and I found myself instantly among the wigwams of the
Ojibbeway heaven. It was a remarkably large village, and as far as the
eye could see huts and tents were erected along the river. The sound of
magic songs and of drums filled all the air, and in the fields the
spirits were playing lacrosse. All the people of the village had
deserted their homes and were enjoying themselves at the game. Outside
one hut, however, a perplexed and forlorn phantom was sitting, and to my
surprise I saw that he was dressed in European clothes. As we drew
nearer I observed that he wore the black garb and white neck-tie of a
minister in some religious denomination, and on coming to still closer
quarters I recognized an old
acquaintance, the Rev. Peter McSnadden. Now
Peter had been a “jined member” of that mysterious “U. P. Kirk” which,
according to the author of “Lothair,” was founded by the Jesuits for the
greater confusion of Scotch theology. Peter, I knew, had been active as
a missionary among the Red Men in Canada; but I had neither heard of his
death nor could conceive how his shade had found its way into a paradise
so inappropriate as that in which I encountered him. Though never very
fond of Peter, my heart warmed to him, as the heart sometimes does to an
acquaintance unexpectedly met in a strange land. Coming cautiously
behind him, I slapped Peter on the shoulder, whereon he leaped up with a
wild unearthly yell, his countenance displaying lively tokens of terror.
When he recognized me he first murmured, “I thought it was these
murdering Apaches again;” and it was long before I could soothe him, or
get him to explain his fears, and the circumstance of his appearance in
so strange a final home. “Sir,” said Peter, “it's just some terrible
mistake. For twenty years was I preaching to these poor painted bodies
anent heaven and hell, and trying to win them from their
fearsome notions
about a place where they would play at the ba' on the Sabbath, and the
like shameful heathen diversions. Many a time did I round it to them
about a far, far other place—
“Where congregations ne'er break up,
And sermons never end!”
And now, lo and behold, here I am in their heathenish Gehenna, where the
Sabbath-day is just clean neglected; indeed, I have lost count myself,
and do not know one day from the other. Oh, man, it's just rideec'lous.
A body—I mean a soul—does not know where to turn.” Here Peter, whose
accent I cannot attempt to reproduce (he was a Paisley man), burst into
honest tears. Though I could not but agree with Peter that his situation
was “just rideec'lous,” I consoled him as well as I might, saying that a
man should make the best of every position, and that “where there was
life there was hope,” a sentiment of which I instantly perceived the
futility in this particular instance. “Ye do not know the worst,” the
Rev. Mr. McSnadden went on. “I am here to make them sport, like Samson
among the Philistines. Their paradise would be no paradise to them if
they
had not a pale-face, as they say, to scalp and tomahawk. And I am
that pale-face. Before you can say ‘scalping-knife’ these awful Apaches
may be on me, taking my scalp and other leeberties with my person. It
grows again, my scalp does, immediately; but that's only that they may
take it some other day.” The full horror of Mr. McSnadden's situation
now dawned upon me, but at the same time I could not but perceive that,
without the presence of some pale-face to torture—Peter or
another—paradise would, indeed, be no paradise to a Red Indian. In the
same way Tertullian (or some other early Father) has remarked that the
pleasures of the blessed will be much enhanced by what they observe of
the torments of the wicked. As I was reflecting thus two wild yells
burst upon my hearing. One came from a band of Apache spirits who had
stolen into the Ojibbeway village; the other scream was uttered by my
unfortunate friend. I confess that I fled with what speed I might, nor
did I pause till the groans of the miserable Peter faded in the distance.
He was, indeed, a man in the wrong paradise.
In my anxiety to avoid sharing the fate of
Peter at the hands of the
Apaches, I had run out of sight and sound of the Ojibbeway village. When
I paused I found myself alone, on a wide sandy tract, at the extremity of
which was an endless thicket of dark poplar-trees, a grove dear to
Persephone. Here and there in the dank sand, half buried by the fallen
generations of yellow poplar-leaves, were pits dug, a cubit every way,
and there were many ruinous altars of ancient stones. On some were
engraved figures of a divine pair, a king and queen seated on a throne,
while men and women approached them with cakes in their hands or with the
sacrifice of a cock. While I was admiring these strange sights, I beheld
as it were a moving light among the deeps of the poplar thicket, and
presently saw coming towards me a young man clad in white raiment and of
a radiant aspect. In his hand he bore a golden wand whereon were wings
of gold. The first down of manhood was on his lip; he was in that season
of life when youth is most gracious. Then I knew him to be no other than
Hermes of the golden rod, the guide of the souls of men outworn. He took
my hand with a word of welcome, and
led me through the gloom of the
poplar trees.
Like Thomas the Rhymer, on his way to Fairyland—
“We saw neither sun nor moon,
But we heard the roaring of the sea.”
This eternal “swowing of a flode” was the sound made by the circling
stream of Oceanus, as he turns on his bed, washing the base of the White
Rock, and the sands of the region of dreams. So we fleeted onwards till
we came to marvellous lofty gates of black adamant, that rose before us
like the steep side of a hill. On the left side of the gates we beheld a
fountain flowing from beneath the roots of a white cypress-tree, and to
this fountain my guide forbade me to draw near. “There is another
yonder,” he said, pointing to the right hand, “a stream of still water
that issues from the Lake of Memory, and there are guards who keep that
stream from the lips of the profane. Go to them and speak thus: ‘I am
the child of earth and of the starry sky, yet heavenly is my lineage, and
this yourselves know right well. But I am perishing with thirst, so give
me speedily of that still water which floweth forth of the
mere of
Memory.’ And they will give thee to drink of that spring divine, and
then shalt thou dwell with the heroes and the blessed.” So I did as he
said, and went before the guardians of the water. Now they were veiled,
and their voices, when they answered me, seemed to come from far away.
“Thou comest to the pure, from the pure,” they said, “and thou art a
suppliant of holy Persephone. Happy and most blessed art thou, advance
to the reward of the crown desirable, and be no longer mortal, but
divine.” Then a darkness fell upon me, and lifted again like mist on the
hills, and we found ourselves in the most beautiful place that can be
conceived, a meadow of that short grass which grows on some shores beside
the sea. There were large spaces of fine and solid turf, but, where the
little streams flowed from the delicate-tinted distant mountains, there
were narrow valleys full of all the flowers of a southern spring. Here
grew narcissus and hyacinths, violets and creeping thyme, and crocus and
the crimson rose, as they blossomed on the day when the milk-white bull
carried off Europa. Beyond the level land beside the sea, between these
coasts and the far-off
hills, was a steep lonely rock, on which were set
the shining temples of the Grecian faith. The blue seas that begirt the
coasts were narrow, and ran like rivers between many islands not less
fair than the country to which we were come, while other isles, each with
its crest of clear-cut hills, lay westward, far away, and receding into
the place of the sunset. Then I recognized the Fortunate Islands spoken
of by Pindar, and the paradise of the Greeks. “Round these the ocean
breezes blow and golden flowers are glowing, some from the land on trees
of splendour, and some the water feedeth, with wreaths whereof they
entwine their hands.”
* And, as Pindar says again, “for them shineth
below the strength of the sun, while in our world it is night, and the
space of crimson-flowered meadows before their city is full of the shade
of frankincense-trees and of fruits of gold. And some in horses and in
bodily feats, and some in dice, and some in harp-playing have delight,
and among them thriveth all fair flowering bliss; and fragrance ever
streameth through the lovely land as they mingle incense of every kind
upon the altars of the
gods.” In this beautiful country I took great
delight, now watching the young men leaping and running (and they were
marvellously good over a short distance of ground), now sitting in a
chariot whereto were harnessed steeds swifter than the wind, like those
that, Homer says, “the gods gave, glorious gifts, to Peleus.” And the
people, young and old, received me kindly, welcoming me in their Greek
speech, which was like the sound of music. And because I had ever been a
lover of them and of their tongue, my ears were opened to understand
them, though they spoke not Greek as we read it. Now when I had beheld
many of the marvels of the Fortunate Islands, and had sat at meat with
those kind hosts (though I only made semblance to eat of what they placed
before me), and had seen the face of Rhadamanthus of the golden hair, who
is the lord of that country, my friends told me that there was come among
them one of my own nation who seemed most sad and sorrowful, and they
could make him no mirth. Then they carried me to a house in a grove, and
all around it a fair garden, and a well in the midst.
Now stooping over the well, that he
might have sight of his own face, was
a most wretched man. He was pale and very meagre; he had black rings
under his eyes, and his hair was long, limp, and greasy, falling over his
shoulders. He was clad somewhat after the manner of the old Greeks, but
his raiment was wofully ill-made and ill-girt upon him, nor did he ever
seem at his ease. As soon as I beheld his sallow face I knew him for one
I had seen and mocked at in the world of the living. He was a certain
Figgins, and he had been honestly apprenticed to a photographer; but,
being a weak and vain young fellow, he had picked up modern notions about
art, the nude, plasticity, and the like, in the photographer's workroom,
whereby he became a weariness to the photographer and to them that sat
unto him. Being dismissed from his honest employment, this chitterling
must needs become a model to some painters that were near as ignorant as
himself. They talked to him about the Greeks, about the antique, about
Paganism, about the Renaissance, till they made him as much the child of
folly as themselves. And they painted him as Antinous, as Eros, as
Sleep, and I
know not what, but whatever name they called him he was
always the same lank-haired, dowdy, effeminate, pasty-faced
photographer's young man. Then he must needs take to writing poems all
about Greece, and the free ways of the old Greeks, and Lais, and Phryne,
and therein he made “Aeolus” rhyme to “control us.” For of Greek this
fellow knew not a word, and any Greek that met him had called him a
κόλλοψ, and bidden him begone to the crows for a cursed fellow, and
one that made false quantities in every Greek name he uttered. But his
little poems were much liked by young men of his own sort, and by some of
the young women. Now death had come to Figgins, and here he was in the
Fortunate Islands, the very paradise of those Greeks about whom he had
always been prating while he was alive. And yet he was not happy. A
little lyre lay beside him in the grass, and now and again he twanged on
it dolorously, and he tried to weave himself garlands from the flowers
that grew around him; but he knew not the art, and ever and anon he felt
for his button-hole, wherein to stick a lily or the like. But he had no
button-hole. Then he would look at
himself in the well, and yawn and
wish himself back in his friends' studios in London. I almost pitied the
wretch, and, going up to him, I asked him how he did. He said he had
never been more wretched. “Why,” I asked, “was your mouth not always
full of the ‘Greek spirit,’ and did you not mock the Christians and their
religion? And, as to their heaven, did you not say that it was a tedious
place, full of pious old ladies and Philistines? And are you not got to
the paradise of the Greeks? What, then, ails you with your lot?” “Sir,”
said he, “to be plain with you, I do not understand a word these fellows
about me say, and I feel as I did the first time I went to Paris, before
I knew enough French to read the Master's poems.
* Again, every one
here is mirthful and gay, and there is no man with a divinely passionate
potentiality of pain. When I first came here they were always asking me
to run with them or jump against them, and one fellow insisted I should
box with him, and hurt me very much. My potentiality of pain is
considerable. Or they would have me drive with them in these dangerous
open
chariots,—me, that never rode in a hansom cab without feeling
nervous. And after dinner they sing songs of which I do not catch the
meaning of one syllable, and the music is like nothing I ever heard in my
life. And they are all abominably active and healthy. And such of their
poets as I admired—in Bohn's cribs, of course—the poets of the
Anthology, are not here at all, and the poets who are here are tremendous
proud toffs” (here Figgins relapsed into his natural style as it was
before he became a Neopagan poet), “and won't say a word to a cove. And
I'm sick of the Greeks, and the Fortunate Islands are a blooming fraud,
and oh, for paradise, give me Pentonville.” With these words, perhaps
the only unaffected expression of genuine sentiment poor Figgins had ever
uttered, he relapsed into a gloomy silence. I advised him to cultivate
the society of the authors whose selected works are in the Greek
Delectus, and to try to make friends with Xenophon, whose Greek is about
as easy as that of any ancient. But I fear that Figgins, like the Rev.
Peter McSnadden, is really suffering a kind of punishment in the disguise
of a reward, and all through
having accidentally found his way into what
he foolishly thought would be the right paradise for him.
Now I might have stayed long in the Fortunate Islands, yet, beautiful as
they were, I ever felt like Odysseus in the island of fair Circe. The
country was lovely and the land desirable, but the Christian souls were
not there without whom heaven itself were no paradise to me. And it
chanced that as we sat at the feast a maiden came to me with a
pomegranate on a plate of silver, and said, “Sir, thou hast now been here
for the course of a whole moon, yet hast neither eaten nor drunk of what
is set before thee. Now it is commanded that thou must taste if it were
but a seed of this pomegranate, or depart from among us.” Then, making
such excuses as I might, I was constrained to refuse to eat, for no soul
can leave a paradise wherein it has tasted food. And as I spoke the
walls of the fair hall wherein we sat, which were painted with the
effigies of them that fell at Thermopylæ and in Arcadion, wavered and
grew dim, and darkness came upon me.
The first of my senses which returned to me was that of smell, and I
seemed almost
drowned in the spicy perfumes of Araby. Then my eyes
became aware of a green soft fluttering, as of the leaves of a great
forest, but quickly I perceived that the fluttering was caused by the
green scarfs of a countless multitude of women. They were “fine women”
in the popular sense of the term, and were of the school of beauty
admired by the Faithful of Islam, and known to Mr. Bailey, in “Martin
Chuzzlewit,” as “crumby.” These fond attendant nymphs carried me into
gardens twain, in each two gushing springs, in each fruit, and palms, and
pomegranates. There were the blessed reclining, precisely as the Prophet
has declared, “on beds the linings whereof are brocade, and the fruit of
the two gardens within reach to cull.” There also were the “maids of
modest glances,” previously indifferent to the wooing “of man or ginn.”
“Bright and large-eyed maids kept in their tents, reclining on green
cushions and beautiful carpets. About the golden couches went eternal
youths with goblets and ewers, and a cup of flowing wine. No headache
shall they feel therefrom,” says the compassionate Prophet, “nor shall
their wits be dimmed.” And all that land is misty
and fragrant with the
perfume of the softest Latakia, and the gardens are musical with the
bubbling of countless
narghilés; and I must say that to the Christian
soul which enters that paradise the whole place has, certainly, a rather
curious air, as of a highly transcendental Cremorne. There could be no
doubt, however, that the Faithful were enjoying themselves
amazingly—“right lucky fellows,” as we read in the new translation of
the Koran. Yet even here all was not peace and pleasantness, for I heard
my name called by a small voice, in a tone of patient subdued
querulousness. Looking hastily round, I with some difficulty recognized,
in a green turban and silk gown to match, my old college tutor and
professor of Arabic. Poor old Jones had been the best and the most shy
of university men. As there was never any undergraduate in his time (it
is different now) who wished to learn Arabic, his place had been a
sinecure, and he had chiefly devoted his leisure to “drawing” pupils who
were too late for college chapel. The sight of a lady of his
acquaintance in the streets had at all times been alarming enough to
drive him into a shop or up a lane, and he
had not survived the creation
of the first batch of married fellows. How he had got into this
thoroughly wrong paradise was a mystery which he made no attempt to
explain. “A nice place this, eh?” he said to me. “Nice gardens; remind
me of Magdalene a good deal. It seems, however, to be decidedly rather
gay just now; don't you think so? Commemoration week, perhaps. A great
many young ladies up, certainly; a good deal of cup drunk in the gardens
too. I always did prefer to go down in Commemoration week, myself; never
was a dancing man. There is a great deal of dancing here, but the young
ladies dance alone, rather like what is called the
ballet, I believe, at
the opera. I must say the young persons are a little forward; a little
embarrassing it is to be alone here, especially as I have forgotten a
good deal of my Arabic. Don't you think, my dear fellow, you and I could
manage to give them the slip? Run away from them, eh?” He uttered a
timid little chuckle, and at that moment an innumerable host of houris
began a
ballet d'action illustrative of a series of events in the career
of the Prophet. It was obvious that my poor uncomplaining old friend was
really very miserable. The “thornless loto trees” were all thorny to
him, and the “tal'h trees with piles of fruit, the outspread shade, and
water outpoured” could not comfort him in his really very natural
shyness. A happy thought occurred to me. In early and credulous youth I
had studied the works of Cornelius Agrippa and Petrus de Abano. Their
lessons, which had not hitherto been of much practical service, recurred
to my mind. Stooping down, I drew a circle round myself and my old
friend in the fragrant white blossoms which were strewn so thick that
they quite hid the grass. This circle I fortified by the usual signs
employed, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us, in the conjuration of evil
spirits. I then proceeded to utter one of the common forms of exorcism.
Instantly the myriad houris assumed the forms of irritated demons; the
smoke from the uncounted
narghiles burned thick and black; the cries of
the frustrated
ginns, who were no better than they should be, rang wildly
in our ears; the palm-trees shook beneath a mighty wind; the distant
summits of the minarets rocked and wavered, and, with a tremendous crash,
the paradise of the Faithful disappeared.
* * * * *
As I rang the bell, and requested the club-waiter to carry away the
smoking fragments of the moderator-lamp which I had accidentally knocked
over in awaking from my nightmare, I reflected on the vanity of men and
the unsubstantial character of the future homes that their fancy has
fashioned. The ideal heavens of modern poets and novelists, and of
ancient priests, come no nearer than the drugged dreams of the angekok
and the biraark of Greenland and Queensland to that rest and peace
whereof it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive. To the
wrong man each of our pictured heavens would be a hell, and even to the
appropriate devotee each would become a tedious purgatory.
[*]
From Mr. E. Myers's “Pindar.”
[*]
Poor Figgins always called M. Baudelaire “the Master.”