The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER XXXIX Page 2
As for Rickman--
Lucia had taken a great deal of pains with that part of her subject, for she was determined to do justice to it. She was aware that it was open to her to take the ordinary practical view of Rickman as a culpable blunderer, who, by holding his tongue when he should have spoken, had involved her in the loss of much valuable property. To an ordinary practical woman the fact that this blunder had entailed such serious consequences to herself would have made any other theory impossible. But Lucia was not a woman who could be depended on for any ordinary practical view. Mere material issues could never confuse her estimate of spiritual values. To her, Rickman's conduct in that instance was a flaw in honour, and as such she had already sufficiently judged it. The significant thing was that he too should have so judged it; that he should have been capable of such profound suffering in the thought of it.
And now, somehow, it didn't seem to her to count.
It simply disappeared in her final pure and luminous view of Rickman's character. What really counted was the alertness of his whole attitude to honour, his readiness to follow the voice of his own ultimate vision, to repudiate the unclean thing revealed in its uncleanness; above all, what counted was his passionate sincerity. With her unerring instinct of selection Lucia had again seized on the essential. The triumph of Rickman's greater qualities appealed to her as a spectacle; it was not spoiled for her by the reflection that she personally had been more affected by his failure. If she showed her insight into Rickman's character by admitting the relative insignificance of that failure, she showed an equal insight into Jewdwine's by suppressing all mention of it now. For Horace would have regarded it as essential. It would have loomed large in his view by reason of its material consequences. Allowing for Horace's view she kept her portrait truer by omitting it.
And Jewdwine accepted her portrait as the true one. It appealed irresistibly to his artistic sense. He was by profession a connoisseur of things beautifully done. Rickman's behaviour, as described by Lucia, revived his earlier amused admiration for his young disciple. It was so like him. In its spontaneity, its unexpectedness, its--its colossal impertinence, it was pure Rickman.
Lucia had achieved a masterpiece of appreciation.
But what helped him in his almost joyous re-discovery of his Rickman was his perception that here (in doing justice to Rickman) lay his chance of rehabilitating himself. If he could not buy back the Harden library, he could at any rate redeem his own character. He did not hold himself responsible for Lucia's father's debts, but he was willing, not to say glad, to take up Lucia's. It was certainly most improper that she should be under any obligation to Rickman. In any case, Rickman's action concerned Lucia's family as much as Lucia; that is to say, it was his (Jewdwine's) affair. And personally he disliked indebtedness.
He gave the matter a fortnight's delicate consideration. At the end of that time he had made up his mind not only to invite Rickman to contribute regularly to _The Museion_ (a thing he would have done in any case) but to offer him, temporarily, the sub-editorship. Rash as this resolution seemed, Jewdwine had fenced himself carefully from any risk. The arrangement was not to be considered permanent until Rickman had proved himself both capable and steady--if then. In giving him any work at all on _The Museion_ Jewdwine felt that he was stretching a point. It was a somewhat liberal rendering of his editorial programme.
Metaphysics had preyed on Jewdwine like a flame. He was consumed with a passion for unity. The unity which Nature only strives after, blindly, furiously, ineffectually; the unity barely reached by the serene and luminous processes of Thought--the artist achieves it with one stroke. In him, by the twin acts of vision and creation, the worlds of Nature and the Idea are made one. He leaps at a bound into the very heart of the Absolute. He alone can be said to have attained, and (this was the point which Jewdwine insisted on) attained only by the sacrifice of his individuality.
Thus Jewdwine in his _Prolegomena to Æsthetics_.
As that work could be regarded only as a brutal and terrific challenge to the intellect, the safer course was to praise it, and it was unanimously praised. Nobody was able to understand a word of it except the last chapter on "Individualism in Modern Art." But as criticism wisely concentrated itself on this the only comprehensible portion of the book, Jewdwine (who otherwise would have perished in his own profundity) actually achieved some journalistic notoriety as a dealer in piquant paradox and vigorous personalities.
Jewdwine was ambitious. On the strength of his _Prolegomena_ he had come up from Oxford with a remarkable reputation, which he had every inducement to cherish and to guard. He was therefore the best possible editor for such a review as _The Museion_, and such a review as _The Museion_ was the best possible instrument of his ambition.
His aim was to preserve the tradition of the paper as pure as on the day when it was given into his hands.
He was a little doubtful as to how far young Rickman would lend himself to that.
However, as the fruit of Jewdwine's meditations, Rickman received a note inviting him to dine with the editor alone, at Hampstead. Jewdwine, whose health required pure air, had settled very comfortably in that high suburb. And, as his marriage seemed likely to remain long a matter for dubious reflection, he had arranged that his sister Edith should keep house for him. In inviting Rickman to dine at Hampstead his intention was distinctly friendly; at the same time he was careful to fix an evening when Miss Jewdwine would not be there. He was willing to help Rickman in every possible way short of introducing him to the ladies of his family.
But before dinner was ended he had to admit this precaution was excessive. Rickman (barring certain dreadful possibilities of speech) was really by no means unpresentable. He was attired perfect sanity. His methods at the dinner table, if at all unusual, erred on the side of restraint rather than of extravagance; he gave indications of a certain curious personal refinement; and in the matter of wine he was almost incredibly abstemious. It was the first time that Jewdwine had come to close quarters with his disciple, and with some surprise he saw himself going through the experience without a shock. Either he had been mistaken in Rickman, or Rickman had improved. Shy he still was, but he had lost much of his old ungovernable nervousness, and gave Jewdwine the impression of an immense reserve. He seemed to have entered into some ennobling possession which raised him above the region of small confusions and excitements. His eye, Jewdwine caught it, no longer struggled to escape; but it seemed to be held less by him than by its own controlling inner vision.
It was not until dinner was over, and Rickman was no longer eating Jewdwine's food, that they ventured on the unpleasant topic that lay before them, conspicuous, though untouched. Jewdwine felt that, as it was impossible to ignore what had passed between them since they had last met, the only thing was to refer to it as casually as might be.
"By the way, Rickman," he said when they were alone in his study, "you were quite right about that library. I only wish you could have let me know a little sooner."
"I wish I had," said Rickman, and his tone implied that he appreciated the painfulness of the subject.
There was a pause which Rickman broke by congratulating Jewdwine on his appointment. This he did with a very pretty diffidence and modesty, which smoothed over the awkwardness of the transition, if indeed it did not convey an adroit suggestion of the insignificance of all other affairs. The editor, still observing his unconscious candidate, was very favourably impressed. He laid before him the views and aims of _The Museion_.
Yes; he thought it had a future before it. He was going to make it the organ of philosophic criticism, as opposed to the mere personal view. It would, therefore, be unique. Yes; certainly it would also be unpopular. Heaven forbid that anything he was concerned in should be popular. It was sufficient that it should be impartial and incorruptible. Its tone was to be sober and scholarly, but militant. Rickman gathered that its staff were to be so many knights-errant defending the virtue of the English Language. No loose slip-shod journalistic phrase would be permitted in its columns. Its articles, besides being well reasoned, would be examples of the purity it preached. It was to set its face sternly against Democracy, Commercialism and Decadence.
The disciple caught fire from the master's enthusiasm; he approved, aspired, exulted. His heart was big with belief in Jewdwine and his work. Being innocent himself of any sordid taint, he admired above all things what he called his friend's intellectual chastity. Jewdwine felt the truth of what Lucia had told him. He could count absolutely on Rickman's devotion. He arrived by well-constructed stages at the offer of the sub-editorship.
Rickman looked up with a curious uncomprehending stare. When he clearly understood the proposal that was being made to him, he flushed deeply and showed unmistakable signs of agitation.
"Do you think," said Jewdwine discreetly, "you'd care to try it for a time?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," said Rickman thoughtfully.
"Well, it's only an experiment. I'm not offering you anything permanent."
"Of course, that makes all the difference."
"It does; if it isn't good enough--"
"You don't understand me. That's what would make it all right."
"Make what all right?"
"My accepting--if you really only want a stop-gap."
"I see," said Jewdwine to himself, "the youth has tasted liberty, and he objects to being caught and caged."
"The question is," said Rickman, sinking into thought again, "whether you really want _me_."
"N--no. Only I thought, after the mess I've made of things, that none of your family would ever care to have anything to do with me again." It was the nearest he had come to mentioning Lucia Harden, and the pain it cost him was visible on his face.
"My family," said Jewdwine with a stiff smile, "will _not_ have anything to do you. It has nothing to do with _The Museion_.
"In that case, I don't see why I shouldn't try it, if I can be of any use to you." From the calmness of his manner you would have supposed that salaried appointments hung on every lamp-post, ready to drop into the mouths of impecunious young men of letters.
"Thanks. Then we'll consider that settled for the present."
Impossible to suppose that Rickman was not properly grateful. Still, instead of thanking Jewdwine, he had made Jewdwine thank him. And he had done it quite unconsciously, without any lapse from his habitual sincerity, or the least change in his becoming attitude of modesty. Jewdwine considered that what Maddox had qualified as Rickman's colossal cheek was simply his colossal ignorance; not to say his insanely perverted view of the value of salaried appointments.
"Oh," said he, "I shall want you as a contributor, too. I don't know how you'll work in with the rest, but we shall see. I won't have any but picked men. The review has always stood high; but I want it to stand higher. It isn't a commercial speculation. There's no question of making it pay. It must keep up its independence whether it can afford it or not. We've been almost living on Vaughan's advertisements. All the same, I mean to slaughter those new men he's got hold of."
Rickman admired this reckless policy. It did not occur to him at the moment that Jewdwine was reader to a rival publisher.
"What," he said, "all of them at once?"
"No--We shall work them off weekly, one at a time."
Rickman laughed. "One at a time? Then you allow them the merit of individuality?"
"It isn't a merit; it's a vice, _the_ vice of the age. It shrieks; it ramps. Individuality means slow disease in ethics and politics, but it's sudden death to art. When will you young men learn that art is self-restraint, not self-expansion?"
"Self expansion--it seems an innocent impulse."
"it were an impulse--but it isn't. It's a pose. A cold, conscious, systematic pose. So deadly artificial; and so futile, if they did but know. After all, the individual is born, not made."
"I believe you!"
"Yes; but he isn't born nowadays. He belongs to the ages of inspired innocence and inspired energy. We are not inspired; we are not energetic; we are not innocent. We're deliberate and languid and corrupt. And we can't reproduce by our vile mechanical process what only exists by the grace of nature and of God. Look at the modern individual--for all their cant and rant, is there a more contemptible object on the face of this earth? Don't talk to me of individuality."
"It's given us one or two artists--"
"Artists? Yes, artists by the million; and no Art. To produce Art, the artist's individuality must conform to the Absolute."
Jewdwine in ninety-two was a man of enormous utterances and noble truths. With him all artistic achievements stood or fell according to the canons of the _Prolegomena to Æsthetics_. Therefore in ninety-two his conversation was not what you would call diverting. Yet it made you giddy; his ideas kept on circulating round and round the same icy, invisible pole. Rickman, in describing the interview afterwards, said he thought he had caught a cold in the head talking to Jewdwine; his intellect seemed to be sitting in a thorough draught.
"And the artist has a non-conforming devil in him? If he's the sort of genius who can't and won't conform? Strikes me the poor old Absolute's got to climb down."
"If he's a genius--he generally isn't--he'll know that he'll express himself best by conforming. He isn't lost by it, but enlarged. Look at Greek art. There," said Jewdwine, a rapt and visionary air passing over his usually apathetic face, "the individual, the artist, is always subdued to the universal, the absolute beauty."
"And in modern art, I take it, the universal absolute beauty is subdued to the individual. That seems only fair. What you've got to reckon with is the man himself."
"Who wants the man himself? We want the thing itself--the reality, the pure object of art. Do any of your new men understand that?"
"Do you _understand_ it?"
"Not I. Do you understand it yourself? Would you know it if you met it in the street?"
"It never is in the street."
"do you know? You can't say where it is or what it is. You can't say anything about it at all. But while you're all trying to find out, the most unlikely person suddenly gets up and produces it. And _he_ can't tell you where he got it. Though, if you ask him, ten to one he'll tell you he's been sitting on it all the time."
"Well," said Jewdwine, "tell me when you've 'sat on' anything yourself."
"I will." He rose to go, being anxious to avoid the suspicion of having pushed that question to a personal issue. It was only in reply to more searching inquiries that he mentioned (on the doorstep) that a book of his was coming out in the autumn.
"What, _Helen_?"
"No. _Saturnalia_ and--a lot of things you haven't seen yet." It was a rapid nervous communication, made in the moment of withdrawing his hand from Jewdwine's.
"Who's your publisher?" called out Jewdwine.
Rickman laughed as the night received him. "Vaughan!" he shouted from the garden gate.
"Now, what on earth," said Jewdwine, "could have been his motive for not consulting me?" He had not got the clue to the hesitation and secrecy of the young man's behaviour. He did not know that there were three things which Rickman desired at any cost to keep pure--his genius, his friendship for Horace Jewdwine, and his love for Lucia Harden.