THE VAGABOND IN LITERATURE

by ARTHUR RICKETT

with six portraits

1906 london J. M. DENT & CO. 29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

p. ivAll Rights Reserved

p. vto my friend ALFRED E. FLETCHER

p. viiFOREWORD

In the introductory paper to this volume an attempt is made to justify the epithet “Vagabond” as applied to writers of a certain temperament. This much may be said here: the term Vagabond is used in no derogatory sense. Etymologically it signifies a wanderer; and such is the meaning attached to the term in the following pages. Differing frequently in character and in intellectual power, a basic similarity of temperament gives the various writers discussed a remarkable spiritual affinity. For in each one the wandering instinct is strong. Sometimes it may take a physical, sometimes an intellectual expression—sometimes both. But always it shows itself, and always it is opposed to the routine and conventions of ordinary life.

These papers are primarily studies in temperament; and the literary aspects have been subordinated to the personal element. In fact, they are studies of certain forces in modern literature, viewed from a special standpoint. And the standpoint adopted may, it is hoped, prove suggestive, though it does not pretend to be exhaustive.

If the papers on Hazlitt and De Quincey are more fragmentary than the others, it is because these writers have been already discussed by the author in a previous volume. It has been thought unnecessary to repeat the points raised there, and these studies may be regarded therefore as at once supplementary and complementary.

p. viiiMy cordial thanks are due to Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, who has taken so kindly and friendly an interest in this little volume. He was good enough to read the proofs, and to express his appreciation, especially of the Borrow and Thoreau articles, in most generous terms. I had hoped, indeed, that he would have honoured these slight studies by a prefatory note, and he had expressed a wish to do so. Unhappily, prior claims upon his time prevented this. The book deals largely, it will be seen, with those “Children of the Open Air” about whom the eloquent author of Aylwin so often has written. I am especially glad, therefore, to quote (with Mr. Watts-Dunton’s permission) his fine sonnet, where the “Vagabond” spirit in its happiest manifestation is expressed.

“A TALK ON WATERLOO BRIDGE “the last sight of george borrow “We talked of ‘Children of the Open Air,’ Who once on hill and valley lived aloof, Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair, Till, on a day, across the mystic bar Of moonrise, came the ‘Children of the Roof,’ Who find no balm ’neath evening’s rosiest woof, Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star. We looked o’er London, where men wither and choke, Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies, And lore of woods and wild wind prophecies, Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke: And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke Leave never a meadow outside Paradise.” [0]

A. R.

London, October, 1906

p. ixCONTENTS

INTRODUCTION the vagabond element in modern literature

I

Explanation of the term Vagabond

3

First note of the Vagabond temperament—restlessness

II

Second note of the Vagabond temperament—a passion for the Earth

4

Compare this with a passion for Nature

Browning—William Morris—George Meredith

III

Third note of the Vagabond temperament—the note of aloofness

6

Illustrate from Borrow, Thoreau, Walt Whitman

IV

Bohemianism—its relation to Vagabondage

8

Charles Lamb—a Bohemian rather than a Vagabond

The decadent movement in Verlaine, Baudelaire

The Russian Vagabond—Tolstoy, Gorky

V

The Gothic Revival and Vagabondage

12

VI

Robert Browning and his “Vagabond moods”

13

Tennyson and William Morris compared

VII

Effect of the Vagabond temperament upon Literature

15

I WILLIAM HAZLITT

I

Discussion of the term “complexity”

19

Illustration from Herbert Spencer, showing that complexity is of two kinds: (1) Complexity—the result of degeneration, e.g. cancer in the body; (2) Complexity—the consequent of a higher organism, e.g. dog more complex than dog-fish

p. xComplexity and the Vagabond—Neuroticism and Genius

Genius not necessarily morbid because it may have sprung from a morbid soil. Illustrate from Hazlitt

II

Two opposing tendencies in Hazlitt’s temperament:

24

(1) The austere, individualistic, Puritan strain;

(2) The sensuous, voluptuous strain. Illustrations of each

III

The Inquisitiveness of Hazlitt

28

No patience with readers who will not quit their own small back gardens. He is for ranging “over the hills and far away”

Hazlitt and the Country—Country people—Walking tours

IV

The joyfulness of Hazlitt

31

The joyfulness of the Vagabond a fundamental quality

V

The styles of Hazlitt and De Quincey compared

32

The tonic wisdom of Hazlitt

II THOMAS DE QUINCEY

I

The call of the Earth and the call of the Town

37

Compare De Quincey, Charles Dickens, and Elia

The veil of phantasy in De Quincey’s writings seemed to shut him off from the outside world

II

Merits and defects of his style. Not a plastic style, but in the delineation of certain moods supremely excellent

40

Compare De Quincey and Oscar Wilde

Our Ladies of Sorrow and De Profundis

III

The intellectual grip behind the shifting phantasies

45

De Quincey as critic and historian

p. xiIV

The humour of De Quincey—not very genuine page

48

Witty rather than humorous

Humour not characteristic of the Vagabond

V

De Quincey—Mystic and Logician

52

The fascination of his personality

III GEORGE BORROW

I

Dreamers in Literature

57

Romantic autobiography and Lavengro

Borrow on the subject of autobiography

The Celt and the Saxon in Borrow

His egotism

Little objective feeling in his friendships

A self-absorbed and self-contained nature

The Isopel Berners episode discussed

The coldness of Borrow

II

His faculty for seizing on the picturesque and picaresque elements in the world about him

66

Illustrations from The Bible in Spain

Illustrations from Lavengro

III

Borrow and the Gypsies

75

Mr. Watts-Dunton’s tribute to Borrow

Petulengro

Borrow’s faculty for characterization

“How to manage a horse on a journey”

IV

Borrow and Thomas Hardy compared

82

Both drawn to characters not “screened by convention”

Differences in method of presentment

Borrow’s greater affinity with Charles Reade

His distinctive originality

The spacious freshness of his writings

In his company always “a wind on the heath”

p. xiiIV HENRY D. THOREAU

I

Thoreau and his critics

89

The Saxon attitude towards him

The Walden episode

Too much has been made of it

He went to Walden not to escape ordinary life, but to fit himself for ordinary life

II

His indebtedness to Emerson

93

His poetic appreciation of Nature

Thoreau on “Walking”—compare with Hazlitt

“Emersonitis”—examples

III

Thoreau and the Indians

97

The Indians were to Thoreau what the Gypsies were to Borrow. But he lacked the picturesque vigour of Borrow

His utterances on the Indian character considered

Thoreau and civilization

Swagger and Vagabondage

IV

Thoreau as a thinker

104

His Orientalism

“Donatello” (?)

His power over animals

Thoreau and children—his fondness for them

This not an argument in favour of sociability

Lewis Carroll

The “unsociability” of the Vagabond in general, and Thoreau in particular

Thoreau and George Meredith

Similarity in attitude towards the Earth

V ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

I

Romance—what is it?

117

Its twofold character

p. xiiiRomanticism analysed

The elfish character of Stevenson’s work

II

The “Ariel” element in Stevenson predominant

120

The “unreality” of his fiction

Light but little heat

III

The Romantic and the Artist

123

Blake—Shelley—Keats—Tennyson

His ideal as an artist

His courageous gaiety

IV

His captivating grace

126

The essays discussed—their merits and defects

His indebtedness to Hazlitt, Lamb, Montaigne

His “private bravado”

V

The artist exemplified in three ways: (1) The maker of phrases; (2) The limner of pictures; (3) The painter of character. Illustrations

130

Dickens, Browning, and Stevenson—their love of the grotesque

Treatment of Nature in fiction from the days of Mrs. Radcliffe to the present day

Scott—the Brontës—Kingsley—Thomas Hardy

Stevenson moralizes

VI

Is the “Shorter Catechist” element a weakness?

137

Edgar Allan Poe and Stevenson

VI RICHARD JEFFERIES

I

Jefferies, Borrow, and Thoreau

141

The neuroticism of Jefferies

Distinction between susceptibility and passion

II

Jefferies as an artist

143

He loved the Earth with every nerve of his body

His acute sense of touch

Compare with Keats

p. xivIllustrations

His writings, studies, and tactile sensation

Their sensuous charm

III

His mysticism

148

Illustration

Compare with Tennyson

Mysticism and hysteria

The psychology of hysteria

“Yoga” and the Sufis

Oriental ecstasies and the trances of Jefferies

Max Nordau—Professor William James

De Quincey and Jefferies compared

IV

Differences between Thoreau and Jefferies

156

Praise and desire alternate in Jefferies’ writings

His joy in the beauty and in the plenitude of the Earth

V

Jefferies as a thinker

158

“All things seem possible in the open air”

Defect in his Nature creed

His attitude towards the animal creation

“Good sport”

His democratic sympathies—influence of Ruskin

His stoicism

His pride and reserve

Our indebtedness to him

VII WALT WHITMAN

I

The supreme example of the Vagabond in Literature

169

Mr. Swinburne’s verdict

Whitman the pioneer of a new order

No question about a “Return to Nature” with Whitman

He never left it. A spiritual native of the woods and heath

Yet wild only so far as he is cosmic

p. xvHis songs no mere pæans of rustic solitudes; they are songs of the crowded streets as well as of the country roads; of the men and women of every type, no less than of the fields and streams

No quarrel with civilisation as such

His “rainproof coat” and “good shoes”

Compare with Borrow’s big green gamp

II

Whitman’s attitude towards Art

173

Two essentials of Art—Sincerity and Beauty

Whitman’s allegiance to Sincerity

Why he has chosen the better part

His occasional failure to seize essentials

Illustrations of his powers as an artist

“On the Beach at Night”—“Reconciliation”—“When lilacs last on the dooryard bloomed”

Whitman’s utterances on Death

Whitman’s rude nonchalance deliberate, not due to carelessness

“I furnish no specimens”

Whitman’s treatment of sea

The question of outspokenness in Literature

Mr. Swinburne’s dictum

Stevenson’s criticism—“A Bull in a China Shop”

“The Children of Adam”

Merits and defects of his Sex Cycle

Whitman and Browning

The poetry of animalism

Whitman, William Morris, and Byron

Mr. Burroughs’ eulogy of Whitman discussed

The treatment of love in modern poetry

On the whole the defects of Whitman’s sex poems typical of his defects as a writer generally

Characteristics of Whitman’s style

III

Whitman’s attitude towards Humanity

187

His faith in the “powerful uneducated person”

The Poet of Democracy

Whitman and Victor Hugo

p. xviHis affection comprehensive rather than deep

Mr. William Clarke’s eulogy discussed

The psychology of the social reformer

Whitman and the average man

His egotism—emptied of condescension

Whitman no demagogue—his plain speaking

The Conservatism and conventionality of the masses

Illustration from Mr. Barrie’s Admirable Crichton

Democratic poets other than Whitman—Ebenezer Elliott, Thomas Hood, and Mrs. Browning

Whitman’s larger utterance

Whitman and William Morris compared

Affinity with Tolstoy

IV

Whitman’s attitude towards Life

198

No moralist—but a philosophy of a kind

The value of “messages” in Literature

Whitman and Browning compared

Whitman and culture

Whitman and science

Compares here with Tennyson and Browning

Tonic influence of his writings

“I shall be good health to you”

His big, genial sanity

p. xviiLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

William Hazlitt

Photogravure Frontispiece

From a crayon drawing by W. Bewick, executed in 1822

Thomas de Quincey

38

From an engraving by W. H. More

George Borrow

60

From a portrait in the possession of Mr. John Murray. Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Murray

Robert Louis Stevenson

118

From a woodcut by R. Bryden

Richard Jefferies

146

From a photograph. Reproduced by kind permission of the London Stereoscopic Company

Walt Whitman

172

From a woodcut by R. Bryden

p. 1INTRODUCTION the vagabond element in modern literature

p. 2“There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath.”—Lavengro.

p. 3I

There are some men born with a vagrant strain in the blood, an unsatiable inquisitiveness about the world beyond their doors. Natural revolutionaries they, with an ingrained distaste for the routine of ordinary life and the conventions of civilization. The average common-sense Englishman distrusts the Vagabond for his want of sympathy with established law and order. Eccentricity and unconventionality smack to him always of moral obliquity. And thus it is that the literary Vagabond is looked at askance. One is reminded of Mr. Pecksniff: “Pagan, I regret to state,” observed that gentleman of the Sirens on one occasion. Unhappily no one pointed out to this apostle of purity that the naughtiness of the Sirens was not necessarily connected with paganism, and that the siren disposition has been found even “in choirs and places where they sing.”

Restlessness, then, is one of the notes of the Vagabond temperament.

Sometimes the Vagabond is a physical, sometimes only an intellectual wanderer; but in any case there is p. 4about him something of the primal wildness of the woods and hills.

Thus it is we find in the same spiritual brotherhood men so different in genius and character as Hazlitt, De Quincey, Thoreau, Whitman, Borrow, Jefferies, Stevenson.

Thoreau turned his back on civilization, and found a new joy of living in the woods at Maine. ’Tis the Open Road that inspired Whitman with his rude, melodic chants. Not the ways of men and women, but the flaunting “pageant of summer” unlocked the floodgates of Jefferies’ heart. Hazlitt was never so gay, never wrote of books with such relish, as when he was recounting a country walk. There are few more beautiful passages than those where he describes the time when he walked between Wrexham and Llangollen, his imagination aglow with some lines of Coleridge. De Quincey loved the shiftless, nomadic life, and gloried in uncertainties and peradventures. A wandering, open-air life was absolutely indispensable to Borrow’s happiness; and Stevenson had a schoolboy’s delight in the make-believe of Romance.

II

Another note now discovers itself—a passion for the Earth. All these men had a passion for the Earth, an intense joy in the open air. This feeling differs from the Nature-worship of poets like Wordsworth and Shelly. It is less romantic, more realistic. The attitude is not so much that of the devotee as that of the lover. There p. 5is nothing mystical or abstract about it. It is direct, personal, intimate. I call it purposely a passion for the Earth rather than a passion for Nature, in order to distinguish it from the pronounced transcendentalism of the romantic poets.

The poet who has expressed most nearly the attitude of these Vagabonds towards Nature—more particularly that of Thoreau, Whitman, Borrow, and Jefferies—is Mr. George Meredith.

Traces of it may be found in Browning with reference to the “old brown earth,” and in William Morris, who exclaimed—

“My love of the earth and the worship of it!”

but Mr. Meredith has given the completest expression to this Earth-worship.

One thinks of Thoreau and Jefferies when reading Melampus—

“With love exceeding a simple love of the things That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck; Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; Or, cast their web between bramble and thorny hook; The good physician Melampus, loving them all, Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book.”

While that ripe oddity, “Juggling Jerry,” would have delighted the “Romany”-loving Borrow.

Indeed the Nature philosophy of Mr. Meredith, with its virile joy in the rich plenitude of Nature and its touch of wildness has more in common with Thoreau, with Jefferies, with Borrow, and with Whitman than with p. 6Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, or even with Tennyson—the first of our poets to look upon the Earth with the eyes of the scientist.

III

But a passion for the Earth is not sufficient of itself to admit within the charmed circle of the Vagabond; for there is no marked restlessness about Mr. Meredith’s genius, and he lacks what it seems to me is the third note of the genuine literary Vagabond—the note of aloofness, of personal detachment. This it is which separates the Vagabond from the generality of his fellows. No very prolonged scrutiny of the disposition of Thoreau, Jefferies, and Borrow is needed to reveal a pronounced shyness and reserve. Examine this trait more closely, and it will exhibit a certain emotional coldness towards the majority of men and women. No one can overlook the chill austerity that marks Thoreau’s attitude in social converse. Borrow, again, was inaccessible to a degree, save to one or two intimates; even when discovered among congenial company, with the gipsies or with companions of the road like Isopel Berners, exhibiting, to me, a genial bleakness that is occasionally exasperating.

It was his constitutional reserve that militated against the success of Jefferies as a writer. He was not easy to get on with, not over fond of his kind, and rarely seems quite at ease save in the solitude of the fields.

Whitman seems at first sight an exception. Surely here was a friendly man if ever there was one. Yet an p. 7examination of his life and writings will compel us to realize a lack of deep personal feeling in the man. He loves the People rather than the people. Anyone who will go along with him is a welcome comrade. This catholic spirit of friendliness is delightful and attractive in many ways, but it has its drawbacks; it is not possible perhaps to have both extensity and intensity of emotion. There is the impartial friendliness of the wind and sun about his salutations. He loves all men—because they are a part of Nature; but it is the common human element in men and women themselves that attracts him. There was less of the Ishmaelite about Whitman than about Thoreau, Borrow, or Jefferies; but the man whose company he really delighted in was the “powerful, uneducated man”—the artisan and the mechanic. Those he loved best were those who had something of the elemental in their natures—those who lived nearest to the earth. Without denying for a moment that Whitman was

capable of genuine affection, I cannot help feeling, from the impression left upon me by his writings, and by accounts given by those who knew him, that what I must call an absence of human passion—not necessarily affection—which seems to characterize more or less the Vagabond generally, may be detected in Whitman, no less than in Thoreau and Borrow. It would seem that the passion for the earth, which made them—to use one of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s happy phrases—“Children of the Open Air,” took the place of a passion for human kind.

In the papers dealing with these writers these points are discussed at greater length. For the present p. 8reference is made to them in order to illustrate the characteristics of the Vagabond temperament, and to vindicate my generic title.