DURING all my stay at Bridgely Level I had been hearing more or less—an occasional remark—of a certain Sir Scorp, an Irish knight and art critic, a gentleman who had some of the finest Manets in the world. He had given Dublin its only significant collection of modern pictures—in fact, Ireland should be substituted for Dublin, and for this he was knighted. He was the art representative of some great museum in South Africa—at Johannesburg, I think,—and he was generally looked upon as an authority in the matter of pictures.
Barfleur came one evening to my hotel with the announcement that Sir Scorp was coming down to Bridgely Level to spend Saturday and Sunday, that he would bring his car and that together on Sunday we three would motor to Oxford. Barfleur had an uncle who was a very learned master of Greek at that University and who, if we were quite nice and pleasant, might give us luncheon. We were, I found, to take a little side trip on Saturday afternoon to a place called Penn, some twenty or twenty-five miles from Bridgely Level, in Buckinghamshire, whence William Penn had come originally.
Saturday was rainy and gloomy and I doubted whether we should do anything in such weather, but Barfleur was not easily put out. I wrote all morning in my alcove, while Barfleur examined papers, and some time after two Sir Scorp arrived,—a pale, slender, dark-eyed man of thirty-five or thereabouts, with a keen, bird-like glance, a poised, nervous, sensitive manner, and that elusive, subtlety of reference and speech which makes the notable intellectual wherever you find him. For the ten thousandth time in my life, where intellectuals are concerned, I noticed that peculiarity of mind which will not brook equality save under compulsion. Where are your credentials?—such minds invariably seem to ask. How do you come to be what you think you are? Is there a flaw in your intellectual or artistic armor? Let us see. So the duel of ideas and forms and methods of procedure begins, and you are made or unmade, in the momentary estimate of the individual, by your ability to withstand criticism. I liked Sir Scorp as intellectuals go. I liked his pale face, his trim black beard, his slim hands and his poised, nervous, elusive manner.
“Oh, yes. So you’re new to England. I envy you your early impression. I am reserving for the future the extreme pleasure of reading you.” These little opening civilities always amuse me. We are all on the stage and we play our parts perforce whether we do so consciously or not.
It appeared that the chauffeur had to be provided for, Sir Scorp had to be given a hasty lunch. He seemed to fall in with the idea of a short run to Penn before dark, even if the day were gloomy, and so, after feeding him quickly before the grate fire in the drawing-room, we were off—Sir Scorp, Barfleur, Berenice and Percy—Barfleur’s son—and myself. Sir Scorp sat with me in the tonneau and Barfleur and Percy in the front seat.
Sir Scorp made no effort to strike up any quick relationship with me—remained quite aloof and talked in generalities. I could see that he took himself very seriously—as well he might, seeing that, as I understood it, he had begun life with nothing. There were remarks—familiar ones concerning well-known painters, sculptors, architects, and the social life of England.
This first afternoon trip was pleasant enough, acquainting me as it did with the character of the country about Bridgely Level for miles and miles. Up to this time I had been commiserated on the fact that it was winter and I was seeing England under the worst possible conditions, but I am not so sure that it was such a great disadvantage. To-day as we sped down some damp, slippery hillside where the river Thames was to be seen far below twisting like a letter S in the rain, I thought to myself that light and color—summer light and color—would help but little. The villages that we passed were all rain-soaked and preternaturally solemn. There were few if any people abroad. We did not pass a single automobile on the way to Penn and but a single railroad track. These little English villages for all the extended English railway system, are practically without railway communication. You have to drive or walk a number of miles to obtain suitable railway connection.
I recall the sag-roofed, moss-patterned, vine-festooned cottages of once red but now brownish-green brick, half hidden behind high brick walls where curiously clipped trees sometimes stood up in sentinel order, and vines and bushes seemed in a conspiracy to smother the doors and windows in an excess of knitted leafage. Until you see them no words can adequately suggest the subtlety of age and some old order of comfort, once prevailing, but now obsolete, which these little towns and separate houses convey. You know, at a glance, that they are not of this modern work-a-day world. You know at a glance that no power under the sun can save them. They are of an older day and an older thought—the thought perhaps that goes with Gray’s “Elegy” and Goldsmith’s “Traveller” and “Deserted Village.”
That night at dinner, before and after, we fell into a most stirring argument. As I recall, it started with Sir Scorp’s insisting that St. Paul’s of London, which is a product of the skill of Sir Christopher Wren, as are so many of the smaller churches of London, was infinitely superior externally to the comparatively new and still unfinished Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. With that I could not agree. I have always objected, anyhow, to the ground plan of the Gothic cathedral, namely, the cross, as being the worst possible arrangement which could be devised for an interior. It is excellent as a scheme for three or four interiors—the arms of the cross being always invisible from the nave—but as one interior, how can it compare with the straight-lying basilica which gives you one grand forward sweep, or the solemn Greek temple with its pediment and glorifying rows of columns. Of all forms of architecture, other things being equal, I most admire the Greek, though the Gothic exteriorly, even more than interiorly, has a tremendous appeal. It is so airy and florate.
However, St. Paul’s is neither Greek, Gothic, nor anything else very much—a staggering attempt on the part of Sir Christopher Wren to achieve something new which is to me not very successful. The dome is pleasing and the interior space is fairly impressive, but the general effect is botchy, and I think I said as much. Naturally this was solid ground for an argument and the battle raged to and fro,—through Greece, Rome, the Byzantine East and the Gothic realms of Europe and England. We finally came down to the skyscrapers of New York and Chicago and the railway terminals of various American cities, but I shall not go into that. What was more important was that it raised a question concerning the proletariate of England,—the common people from whom, or because of whom, all things are made to rise, and this was based on the final conclusion that all architecture is, or should be, an expression of national temperament, and this as a fact was partly questioned and partly denied, I think. It began by my asking whether the little low cottages we had been seeing that afternoon—the quaint windows, varying gables, pointless but delicious angles, and the battered, time-worn state of houses generally—was an expression of the English temperament. Mind you, I love what these things stand for. I love the simpleness of soul which somehow is conveyed by Burns and Wordsworth and Hardy, and I would have none of change if life could be ordered so sweetly—if it could really stay. Alas, I know it can not. Compared to the speed and skill which is required to manipulate the modern railway trains, the express companies, the hotels, the newspapers, all this is helpless, pathetic.
Sir Scorp’s answer was yes, that they were an expression, but that, nevertheless, the English mass was a beast of muddy brain. It did not—could not—quite understand what was being done. Above it were superimposed intellectual classes, each smaller and more enthusiastic and aware as you reach the top. At least, it has been so, he said, but now democracy and the newspapers are beginning to break up this lovely solidarity of simplicity and ignorance into something that is not so nice.
“People want to get on now,” he declared. “They want each to be greater than the other. They must have baths and telephones and railways and they want to undo this simplicity. The greatness of England has been due to the fact that the intellectual superior classes with higher artistic impulses and lovelier tendencies generally could direct the masses and like sheep they would follow. Hence all the lovely qualities of England; its ordered households, its beautiful cathedrals, its charming castles and estates, its good roads, its delicate homes, and order and precedences. The magnificent princes of the realm have been able to do so much for art and science because their great impulses need not be referred back to the mass—the ignorant, non-understanding mass—for sanction.”
Sir Scorp sprang with ease to Lorenzo, the magnificent, to the princes of Italy, to Rome and the Cæsars for illustration. He cited France and Louis. Democracy, he declared, is never going to do for all what the established princes could do. Democracy is going to be the death of art. Not so, I thought and said, for democracy can never alter the unalterable difference between high and low, rich and poor, little brain and big brain, strength and weakness. It cannot abolish difference and make a level plane. It simply permits the several planes to rise higher together. What is happening is that the human pot is boiling again. Nations are undergoing a transition period. We are in a maelstrom, which means change and reconstruction. America is going to flower next and grandly, and perhaps after that Africa, or Australia. Then, say, South America, and we come back to Europe by way of India, China, Japan and through Russia. All in turn and new great things from each again. Let’s hope so. A pretty speculation, anyhow.
At my suggestion of American supremacy, Sir Scorp, although he protested, no doubt honestly, that he preferred the American to any other foreign race, was on me in a minute with vital criticism and I think some measure of insular solidarity. The English do not love the Americans—that is sure. They admire their traits—some of them, but they resent their commercial progress. The wretched Americans will not listen to the wise British. They will not adhere to their noble and magnificent traditions. They go and do things quite out of order and the way in which they should be done, and then they come over to England and flaunt the fact in the noble Britisher’s face. This is above all things sad. It is evil, crass, reprehensible, anything you will, and the Englishman resents it. He even resents it when he is an Irish Englishman. He dislikes the German much—fears the outcome of a war from that quarter—but really he dislikes the American more. I honestly think he considers America far more dangerous than Germany. What are you going to do with that vast realm which is “the states”? It is upsetting the whole world by its nasty progressiveness, and this it should not be permitted to do. England should really lead. England should have invented all the things which the Americans have invented. England should be permitted to dictate to-day and to set the order of forms and procedures, but somehow it isn’t doing it. And, hang it all! the Americans are. We progressed through various other things,—an American operatic manager who was then in London attempting to revise English opera, an American tobacco company which had made a failure of selling tobacco to the English, but finally weariness claimed us all, and we retired for the night, determined to make Oxford on the morrow if the weather faired in the least.
The next morning I arose, glad that we had had such a forceful argument. It was worth while, for it brought us all a little closer together. Barfleur, the children and I ate breakfast together while we were waiting for Scorp to come down and wondering whether we should really go, it was so rainy. Barfleur gave me a book on Oxford, saying that if I was truly interested I should look up beforehand the things that I was to see. Before a pleasant grate fire I studied this volume, but my mind was disturbed by the steadily approaching fact of the trip itself, and I made small progress. Somehow during the morning the plan that Barfleur had of getting us invited to luncheon by his uncle at Oxford disappeared and it turned out that we were to go the whole distance and back in some five or six hours, having only two or three hours for sightseeing.
At eleven Sir Scorp came down and then it was agreed that the rain should make no difference. We would go, anyhow.
I think I actually thrilled as we stepped into the car, for somehow the exquisite flavor and sentiment of Oxford was reaching me here. I hoped we would go fast so that I should have an opportunity to see much of it. We did speed swiftly past open fields where hay cocks were standing drearily in the drizzling rain, and down dark aisles of bare but vine-hung trees, and through lovely villages where vines and small oddly placed windows and angles and green-grown, sunk roofs made me gasp for joy. I imagined how they would look in April and May with the sun shining, the birds flying, a soft wind blowing. I think I could smell the odor of roses here in the wind and rain. We tore through them, it seemed to me, and I said once to the driver, “Is there no law against speeding in England?”
“Yes,” he replied, “there is, but you can’t pay any attention to that if you want to get anywhere.”
There were graceful flocks of crows flying here and there. There were the same gray little moss-grown churches with quaint belfries and odd vine-covered windows. There were the same tree-protected borders of fields, some of them most stately where the trees were tall and dark and sad in the rain. I think an open landscape, such as this, with green, wet grass or brown stubble and low, sad, heavy, gray clouds for sky and background, is as delicious as any landscape that ever was. And it was surely not more than one hour and a half after we left Bridgely before we began to rush through the narrow, winding streets where houses, always brick and stone and red walls with tall gates and vines above them, lined either side of the way. It was old—you could see that, even much that could be considered new in England was old according to the American standard. The plan of the city was odd to me because unlike the American cities, praise be! there was no plan. Not an east and west street, anywhere. Not a north and south one. Not a four- or five-story building anywhere, apparently, and no wood; just wet, gray stone and reddish-brown brick and vines. When I saw High Street and the façade of Queens College I leaped for joy. I can think of nothing lovelier in either marble or bronze than this building line. It is so gentle, so persuasive of beautiful thought, such an invitation to reflection and tender romance. It is so obvious that men have worked lovingly over this. It is so plain there has been great care and pains and that life has dealt tenderly with all. It has not been destroyed or revised and revivified, but just allowed to grow old softly and gracefully.
Owing to our revised plans for luncheon I had several marmalade sandwiches in my hand, laid in an open white paper which Barfleur had brought and passed around, the idea being that we would not have time for lunch if we wished to complete our visit and get back by dark. Sir Scorp had several meat sandwiches in another piece of paper equally flamboyant. I was eating vigorously, for the ride had made me hungry, the while my eyes searched out the jewel wonders of the delicious prospect before me.
“This will never do,” observed Sir Scorp, folding up his paper thoughtfully, “invading these sacred precincts in this ribald manner. They’ll think we’re a lot of American sightseers come to despoil the place.”
“Such being the case,” I replied, “we’ll disgrace Barfleur for life. He has relations here. Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”
“Come, Dreiser. Give me those sandwiches.”
It was Barfleur, of course.
I gave over my feast reluctantly. Then we went up the street, shoulder to shoulder, as it were, Berenice walking with first one and another. I had thought to bring my little book on Oxford and to my delight I could see that it was even much better than the book indicated.
How shall one do justice to so exquisite a thing as Oxford,—twenty-two colleges and halls, churches, museums and the like, with all their lovely spires, towers, buttresses, ancient walls, ancient doors, pinnacles, gardens, courts, angles and nooks which turn and wind and confront each other and break into broad views and delicious narrow vistas with a grace and an uncertainty which delights and surprises the imagination at every turn. I can think of nothing more exquisite than these wonderful walls, so old that whatever color they were originally, they now are a fine mottled black and gray, with uncertain patches of smoky hue, and places where the stone has crumbled to a dead white. Time has done so much; tradition has done so much; pageantry and memory; the art of the architect, the perfect labor of builder, the beauty of the stone itself, and then nature—leaves and trees and the sky! This day of rain and lowery clouds—though Sir Scorp insisted it could stand no comparison with sunshine and spring and the pathos of a delicious twilight was yet wonderful to me. Grays and blacks and dreary alterations of storm clouds have a remarkable value when joined with so delicate and gracious a thing as perfectly arranged stone. We wandered through alleys and courts and across the quadrangles of University College, Baliol College, Wadham College, Oriel College, up High Street, through Park Street, into the Chapel of Queens College, into the banquet of Baliol and again to the Bodleian Library, and thence by strange turns and lovely gateways to an inn for tea. It was raining all the while and I listened to disquisitions by Sir Scorp on the effect of the personalities, and the theories of both Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, not only on these buildings but on the little residences in the street. Everywhere, Sir Scorp, enthusiast that he is, found something—a line of windows done in pure Tudor, a clock tower after the best fashion of Jones, a façade which was Wren pure and simple. He quarreled delightfully, as the artist always will, with the atrocity of this restoration or that failure to combine something after the best manner, but barring the worst errors which showed quite plainly enough in such things as the Oxford art gallery and a modern church or two—it was all perfect. Time and tradition have softened, petted, made lovely even the plainest surfaces.
I learned from Barfleur where Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde lived, where Shelley’s essay on atheism was burned, and where afterwards a monument was erected to him, where some English bishops were burned for refusing to recant their religious beliefs and where the dukes and princes of the realm were quartered in their college days. Sir Scorp descanted on the pity of the fact, that some, who would have loved a world such as this in their youth, could never afford to come here, while others who were as ignorant as boors and as dull as swine, were for reasons of wealth and family allowed to wallow in a world of art which they could not possibly appreciate. Here as elsewhere I learned that professors were often cads and pedants—greedy, jealous, narrow, academic. Here as elsewhere precedence was the great fetish of brain and the silly riot of the average college student was as common as in the meanest school. Life is the same, be art great or little, and the fame of even Oxford cannot gloss over the weakness of a humanity that will alternately be low and high, shabby and gorgeous, narrow and vast.
The last thing we saw were some very old portions of Christ College, which had been inhabited by Dominican monks, I believe, in their day, and this thrilled and delighted me quite as much as anything. I forgot all about the rain in trying to recall the type of man and the type of thought that must have passed in and out of those bolt-riven doors, but it was getting time to leave and my companions would have none of my lagging delight.
It was blowing rain and as we were leaving Oxford I lost my cap and had to walk back after it. Later I lost my glove! As we rode my mind went back over the ancient chambers, the paneled woodwork, stained glass windows, and high vaulted ceilings I had just seen. The heavy benches and somber portraits in oil sustained themselves in my mind clearly. Oxford, I said to myself, was a jewel architecturally. Another thousand years and it would be as a dream of the imagination. I feel now as if its day were done; as if so much gentle beauty can not endure. I had seen myself the invasion of the electric switch board and the street car in High Street, and of course other things will come. Already the western world is smiling at a solemnity and a beauty which are noble and lovely to look upon, but which cannot keep pace with a new order and a new need.