Adventures in understanding

Front matter

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Introduction

We Go to the Wicked City :

I Adventure Incognito The Meeting in the Tower The Iceman :

We Are Thankful .

The Man in the Glass Cage A Winter Interlude Coloured .

Jonas

The Adventure of ie Shabby Man.

The Man Afraid .

‘he-Rettim Moos Ss #

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“On Sunday morning I went to church to hear the Scotch Preacher” . Frontispiece

FACING PAGH

“He was about to escape me. I saw the prospects of luncheon fading away” . 42

“He flirted with or bantered all the cooks, maids, and even the housewives in our street”’ Deiat aries ee. Saray Sore ee)

“The mill grew more and more a kind of livinio: thitigee 4 5+ Ay hee ee ae

“Presently I heard someone sing out my SNe | Lg ip gl aes ey Sr REO

“The man had the passionate sincerity of one who had himself suffered”. . . a7

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGH “T think of him sitting at evening in his own doorway looking out across the Parden ike ns fie ero

“T came newly alive there at the turning, - at the sight of the smoke in my own Chimney’). as) as <0 eae Mee ae ee

INTRODUCTION

“A lute player,” observes one of the wisest of the old philosophers, “when he is singing for himself, has no anxiety.” So indeed it is with the writer. It is only when he is writing for himself that he writes happily.

Always since my youth I have loved to make _notes in small books wherein I set forth the common adventures of my day, describe faithfully the people I meet when I take to the road, or report the interesting arguments I often have with them, in most of which, since I myself write them down afterward, I easily come out ahead. If I am sad I find comfort in setting down the nature of my sadness, for I come thus to a kind of philosophical understanding te we ms INTRODUCTION of it. If I am glad I turn with no less eagerness to my pen, for a joy expressed is a joy doubled. Thus I write away my sorrows and increase my joys. I challenge thus my doubts: thus define my aspirations. In all this writing I am without anxiety, for, like the lute player mentioned by Epictetus, I sing for myself. When I consider making a new book, I look into these notes of mine and, having come upon an incident or an observation that sets me aglow with remembered enthusiasm, I say to myself, if it concerns a new friend, like the Iceman, ‘‘Now, wasn’t that a man worth knowing!’ Or if-an experience like my adventures in Caliphry, “Who could have imagined anything more amusing?” Or if a bit of philosophy, I say, “It’s true, it’s true!’ The more vividly these fine things come back to me, the more clearly it seems to me I understand what they mean, and the more I think I should like to share them with my friends. They seem somehow to count in making this a livable world. So I straightway warm up to my task and:out of such “adventures in understanding,” developed and rounded out, I make my book. I suppose this is a wayward and unregener- “ate process of writing, but it seems to be the

INTRODUCTION xi only way I know. Not long ago—while I was setting down the chapter herein called “Jonas” (over which I had much delight) I ran across * a delicious passage in Benvenuto Cellini’s Memoirs which has given me no end of comfort, since it encourages me in my perversity.

Cellini here relates the disgust and anger of King Francis because, when the King orders him to produce “twelve silver statues,” he appears with a “salt cellar and a vase and busts,” to say nothing of “a heap of other things that quite confound me.”

“That,” said I, gloating over the passage, “Gs just like me. I start out to produce twelve silver chapters—and see what common things I make. Salt cellars!”

“You have neglected my wishes,” said King Francis to Cellini, “and worked for the fulfilment of your own.”

What a sinner!

“Tf you stick to your own fancies,’ continued King Francis in what must have been a terrifying tone, “you will run your head against a stone wall.” )

“Here am I,” said I, “with my head already against a stone wall.”

So here is my book—common salt cellars, b xii INTRODUCTION vases that I have liked to make, busts without a torso or legs! Things that quite confound me when I consider them. But I have enjoyed writing every line of it. May you enjoy reading it.

DaviD GRAYSON.

ADVENTURES IN UNDERSTANDING ktagtg rans of Vaehen

WE GO TOctHE WICKED: CITY

“Sail forth! Steer for the deep waters only! For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we risk the ship, ourselves and ail.”

HEN the Great War broke into my quiet

it changed all things for me. I ama

settled countryman and love well the hills of

Hempfield, where I live, and my own wide val-

_ dey and the pleasant open fields; but in war you do not do what you wish, but what you must.

I had to live ina City—at fi fir: sadly enough

—and there I wrote laborious’ articles and books. For it was not with.a sword, rior yet ;

al with a plough that I served, but with a pen. That drudgery!

But at the same time I was living another book—a high, free, true, adventurous book. And.this I have been writing down a little at a time, as I could, for seven years. (It is more than seven years since “Great Possessions,’ more than seventeen since ‘““Adventures in Contentment.”) I have called it from the first “Adventures in Understanding,” for it seemed to me that in the City I came to understand many strange new things, both without and within, new things about life and people, and the way to live.

I shall never forget the strange sense of adventure I had when we arrived at our chosen lodging: the old doorway with the fanlight over it and an aged wistaria vine tightly twisted into the rusty iron railings.

“That,” said I to Harriet, pointing to a tree that looked hopefully around the corner from the atey into the street, like a gossipy old woman, “is a Tree of Heaven.” ~ ,.

This old part of the city, is ,full bh ,sueh ailanthus trees, Eee have a pecuhar personality of their own. “IT came later to wonder at them and Somewhat to like them for the cheerful way in which they accepted the hard fate of growing in back alleys, in the crevices of brick walls, or among paving-stones. But Harriet looked sceptical and seemed to doubt whether a true tree of heaven could be so much at home in a city.

Presently the door opened at the hand of the redoubtable Mrs. Jensen, who, I promise you, shall be much better known to you in the future.

The curious smell of living when the door opened; and the mystery of the long, narrow, dim stairway upward.

“Here we are,” said I.

Harriet said nothing grimly, but I know as well what she was thinking as though she spoke aloud:

“Now, I wonder who lived here before, and whether they were nice, respectable, clean people.”

The English language has one adequate word to express Harriet’s approach to these complicated wonders: ‘“Gingerly.”

I have since looked up this excellent word in my dictionary:

“Gingerly: in a cautious, scrupulous, or fastidious manner.”

.

And the quotation given to illustrate the word:

“Gingerly, and as if treading upon eggs, Cuddie began to ascend the well-known pass.” Scott: Old Mortality. Vol. II, p. 53 (T. & By, 1867):

Since then, whenever I think of Harriet with her umbrella and armadillo basket mounting those wild, dark stairs to our chosen tower, I say to myself, under my breath:

“Gingerly, asif treading upon eggs, Cuddie began to ascend the well-known pass.”

As for me, I liked, at once, the old street and the old house with the lichens of human living upon it; and the old rooms which were to be ours, and the wide court at the back with ailanthus trees in it and little fenced yards, and, here and there, on a clothes-line, a domestic tragedy. An old street, in an old, forgotten, neglected corner of the town! But I liked such places: old quiet places, places to look out of; old, still, sunny places, and beautiful people going by. I like to think of windows that have been much looked through; rooms full of thoughts left over out of life. There is a chill, inhuman cleanness about a new place; but something warm, familiar, pleasing in an old house. Here

Lal men have dreamed and women loved; here, possibly, one was born and one died. Here a fool meditated a selfish deed, thinking it would bring him happiness; and a wise man reflected upon the folly of taking anything for himself out of life that all other men could not also have for themselves upon the same terms (as Whitman says). Something, I scarcely know what, but it is real, seems to remain of all human contacts. Nothing human is ever wholly lost.

“But,” said Harriet sensibly, “most people are so careless—so dirty!” (She thinks I have queer ideas. )

“Harriet,” I replied, “I wish they weren't; but still I’ve got to have them. They’re valuable. I can’t get along without a single one of them, And,’ said I, “you remember what Henry James’s artist replied to the critic who ° found so much dirt in Old Rome: ‘What you call dirt,’ said this artist, ‘we call colour.’ ”

To this remark Harriet deigned no reply.

I may as well confess, first as last, that I found the early days of our life in the city not easy to bear. I used to find myself thinking of a little turning in the country road near the Hempfield creamery, where one catches the first clear view of the hills—I kept thinking of that particular turning and the smoke I could often see from our own chimney. I am a friendly man and love people who pass by. Often and often, in the country, have I stopped work in my field or orchard to beard a passing traveller in the road and “swop a lie with him,” as we sometimes say. Your country traveller likes to be stopped and asked the price of apples or told about the condition of the weather (which he knows already).

But the people in the city streets: How they surged by entirely regardless of me! They did not seem to know that I was there. I was oppressed with populations, overcome with speed. It seemed to me that there was no place anywhere to be quiet or to think, no height from which I could look away to distant beautiful things.

Moreover, I found my labour heavy and difficult. A man should never write under compulsion: a man should write only when he is in love with somebody or something (as I am now). But in these days the Press was to me an inhuman monster, black with ink, roaring and ravening, pursuing me in a kind of nightmare race—pressing, pressing with me just escaping each week from being swallowed alive.

All this, added to the sense I had of a thundering Great War going on just around the corner _ (or so it seemed), made it appear for a time as if everything fine, simple, natural, beautiful in the world had shrivelled up and blown away.

So often the only way to get a man to look up is to get him down. A man utterly on his back has to look up. I remember one evening, after many days of dull labour, glancing out of the window near my table.

It was May, with a kind of softness in the air. The sun was going down, but still glowed upon the upper stories of the houses opposite. On an iron balcony I could see a child leaning to look over into the shadowy valley below. Men and women were here and there in the curious little boarded yards, working or talking.

Suddenly, something down deep within me seemed to come alive. I cannot rightly describe it; but all at once this scene, which had scarcely before awakened any reaction at all within me—unless it was aversion—became strangely and suddenly interesting, curious, human. I seemed to catch a harmony I had not heard before.

I leaned farther out.

The ailanthus trees were coming into leaf and held up to me their new green whorls— the peace offering of spring. I could hear pleasant confused voices without catching distinctly any words at all.

Presently a girl’s voice from some nearby open window—though I could not see the girl herself—broke out singing:

“There are smiles

An instant later the half-mocking voice of a boy, from another window, joined in: “smiles that make you s-a-a-d’’—and I heard the girl’s voice trailing away in laughter.

All at once the oppression of the city, the oppression of too many people, left me. It seemed curiously and newly interesting to have all around me so many human beings, so much warm, strange, tragic, beautiful, brief human life.

I leaned still farther out.

Such a variety of odd activities! What were they all doing? What were they thinking about? Were they happy? Or miserable? What did they read? Had they any God? And, above all, why did they live all crowded together in such honeycombs of places, when there was room enough and to spare in the open country?

“How excited you look,” said Harriet, when I turned to glance at her.

“Harriet,” said I, “have you thought of all the extraordinary and interesting things that must be happening at this moment in these little pigeonholes of places, in these caverns and burrows and strange passageways?”

“No,” said Harriet, “I have not.”

“T think,” said I, “that I have never before seen such a tangle of human life as there is right here under our eyes. I did not know it was here before. It seems to me I'd like to get down into it—all over.”

It was then that I had the curious flashing vision (I’m going to confess everything!) of this room of mine at the dingy top of a city lodging house as a Tower. It improved it immediately. It was my Tower: and this was the City Wall I lived upon; high up, overlook- _ ing the world. It was something to live in a Tower on the Wall of the City, I would have you know. One could see much from a Tower!

“David,” said Harriet, “what are you laughing at?”

“Do you remember, Harriet, when Nehemiah was rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem?”

“Ves,” said Harriet.

“And how they got tired of seeing him perched up there and wanted him to come down among common human beings and be sociable?”

“Yes,” said Harriet; “but—”

“And do you remember what Nehemiah said: ‘I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.’ ”

When I said no more, Harriet asked presently, “What of it, David?”

“Well,” said I, “it’s extraordinary how many men think they are doing a Great Work and cannot come down.”

“But Nehemiah was doing a great work,” said Harriet.

“That,” said I, “is different.”

After that my nights and Sundays began to be much more cheerful. I began to go all about our neighbourhood, first, like a careful explorer, near shore, but little by little I ventured into deeper waters and sailed by unknown countries. And I began to look upon these shores for some native I could pounce upon, like a kind of good-humoured pirate, and carry

UNDERSTANDING TI off captive tomy Tower. It seemed to me that there must be a way, if one could find it, of getting to these strange people.

When once we come to this mood, adventure is never far in the offing, and comes upon us in the most surprising ways.

If any one had told me that I should stumble upon my first adventure at the foot of my own Tower, I should surely not have believed it— but so it was. For adventure is like love—we do not have to seek far for it; we can begin anywhere. I think sometimes we mistake the nature both of love and of adventure; and sit by waiting for someone else to begin the loving, or for some fine and thrilling thing to happen to us. But true love is not like that—nor yet beautiful adventure. Love comes of loving first, and adventure, because we have it in the soul of us.

I had come down the stairs at evening and stood looking up the street. In the block above, an Italian was playing on a street organ. Rendered soft by the distance, it was somehow sweet to hear. An evening breeze off the harbour, with a touch of salt in it, came cheerfully in at one end of the street and went out at the other. I had to admit, grudgingly, that the city, after all, had a kind of beauty of its wn.

Presently my eye lighted upon the substantial figure of Mrs. Jensen, standing below me in the little front area-way that led into her basement burrow. She had her hands folded upon her capacious apron and was looking out for a moment in the cool of the evening, benevolently, upon the passing world.

“Good-evening, Mrs. Jensen,” said I.

“Good-evening,” said she.

I think I profit by looking something like a farmer.

“Did you ever live in the country, Mrs. Jensen?” I asked.

“No,” said she.

“Never had any hens, or pigs, or bees?”

“No,” said she.

“Never made a garden?”

“No,” said she; “but Jensen, he’s crazy about gardens. Jensen, he makes gardens in the house.”

She spoke in a rather guttural voice, with a slight foreign inflection.

“Does he? What kind of a garden? Right here in the city?”

“Sure,” said Mrs. Jensen broadly. “Sure. Every year he has flowers, and sometimes vegetables. Oh, not many, but good. This year the vegetable he is planting is punkin.”

“But how can he do it?” said I, in astonishment.

“How can any one make a garden among all these stones?”

When Mrs. Jensen laughs she shakes in the middle. I could see I had her interested, and presently she was leading me down the steps and through a dark passageway to a large room at the back of the house.

“Jensen,” said she, “here’s Mr. Grayson, and he wants to see how you plant vegetables.”

At this I saw a man, who had been stooping over at work near the window, rise up and face me. He was a slight man with greying hair thrust back in disorder. He looked a little like pictures I have seen of Beethoven. A fine, sensitive, serene face, upon which was written as it were in capital letters, “Impractical.” But I liked him at once.

Jensen smiled deprecatingly at this bold introduction. I could see that he was embarrassed.

“I’m from the country,” said I, “and I like to see things grow. I was surprised to hear about your flowers—”

“And vegetables,” put in Mrs. Jensen.

“Oh, it is nothing,” said he.

He said “‘iss nutting,’ for he had still more of the foreign burr in his voice than his wife. He was a Dane.

At that I discovered that the whole back window was full of bloom. On little shelves cunningly constructed close to the glass were many pots containing daffodils, narcissus, and tulips, now coming into full blossom and filling the air with as rare a fragrance as ever in the country.

“How fine your flowers are!” I exclaimed.

“It iss nutting!’ And he spread out his hand apologetically.

“He makes nutting of ever’ting,’ Mrs. Jensen.

“We have not here enough sunlight,” he said. “They grow veak. It iss not like the country.”

But they gave true evidence of much loving care. I know well the sign of the man who loves growing things: how his hands touch them gently. It took no time at all to warm him into enthusiasm. His face began to flush remarked and a light came into his eyes. He told me of each variety and even the peculiarities of each plant, the obstinacy of this one, the enterprise of that one, how this one was tricky and that thirsty.

“But where is your vegetable garden?” I asked presently.

“This year,’ remarked Mrs. Jensen, “the vegetable he is planting is punkin.”

Jensen led me out of the door into the little pocket-handkerchief of a stone court. I did not see so much as a square foot of garden space.

“There,” said he with pride.

Close to the wall stood a large wooden box filled with earth. Jensen told me how he had brought in this earth pail by pail from a distant lot, and how he had gathered manure from the street outside; he showed me the cunning device he had invented for sprinkling his garden by way of a bit of hose from the kitchen tap just within the window. All around the edges of his box he had radishes and lettuce, already growing quite thriftily, and in each corner, with mathematical precision, he had set a cabbage plant; but what he especially pointed out was the new adventure of the year—pumpkins—which were just thrusting their bent green knees out of the moist earth. Jensen tenderly flecked away a bit of earth here and there as if to help them in their struggle to emerge.

“Jensen, he likes vegetables,” said Mrs. Jensen.

“But where in the world,” I asked, thinking of the activities of a really energetic pumpkin vine, “are they to run to?”

This caused Jensen to laugh aloud, and with the greatest triumph. His face literally glowed.

“Tt iss so in the city,” said he, “that there iss not room to grow out, so ve grow up!”

He illustrated this process vividly with both head and arms.

“So vit men, so vit punkins.”

I saw then that here was a philosopher as well as a gardener—though I knew beforehand that all true gardeners become, sooner or later, philosophers.

Jensen showed me with delight a little trellis he was then building on the brick wall leading upward,

“Ve haf plenty room,” said he, chuckling; “ve can go up to the sky!”

I had a vision of great yellow pumpkins — adorning the side of the house all the way up, which was altogether so amusing that I couldn’t help laughing.

“But when the pumpkins get large,” I asked, “how are you going to keep them from breaking away or pulling the vines down?”

I wish you could have seen Jensen at that moment—tapping his head with two fingers, his eyes twinkling, saying mysteriously:

“I haf a great idea,”—but refusing to tell me what it was.

At this I glanced at Mrs. Jensen. There she stood, shaking her head slowly from side to side and saying:

“Jensen, he lofes vegetables.”’

But the wonders had only begun. Jensen now exhibited another box, much smaller, so that it could be carried in, if necessary. He did not need to show me what it contained, for no sooner did he open the grated lid than I had olfactory information! Rabbits. He pointed out the pair and observed:

“There will be more soon,” which I did not doubt.

From this we went inside, and I made the acquaintance of his sleepy canary birds, each in a cage of its own, for which Jensen had made curtains to keep out the evening light. There were also a bowl of goldfish and a cat. He came so near having a complete menagerie that I asked finally in my soberest voice:

“Where’s the pony ?”

They both looked at me in solemn surprise. Jensen recovered first.

“Ach, you are a joker.’ Only he said, “yoker.”’

Mrs. Jensen here put in, as though somehow to answer a reasonable question.

“Jonas, he hass a flivver.”

Jonas, I learned, was their son. I had no premonition then of what possibilities and excitements were wrapped up in the “flivver” of Jonas. That is another epic.

I cannot tell what delight I took in all these simple discoveries. I suppose they could have been duplicated in a thousand cramped yards and area-ways in that great city, but they were new to me. And it seemed to me, in the warmth of my enthusiasm, that here, in this dim basement, was a kind of ideal life—nature indeed balked, but human nature somehow triumphant under handicaps. Here were people who managed to live interestingly. But it is a strange thing that people who get the credit of living ideal lives often do not see it in that light at all. No sooner did I try to express something of my feeling than I unloosened the floods.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Jensen, in her guttural voice, “ve have great troubles.”’

I looked at Jensen; the glow was dying out of his face. He was beginning to be uncomfortable, for he plainly knew what was coming. A moment before he had been the master, exhibiting his triumphs, and Mrs. Jensen was the worshipful follower, hanging breathless upon his words; but now she turned upon him suddenly, with a kind of indignation:

“Jensen, he can’t get vork. He try and try, and he cannot get vork.”

Jensen hung his head but said nothing.

“He iss no good, Jensen: he iss afraid of ever't'ing. He goes to ask for vork, and when the boss says ‘No,’ Jensen goes avay. He should not go avay. He should ask, “Why? Iss there not vork in America? Do not Americans have books to bind?”

By this time she had become vehement and glared fiercely upon poor Jensen, who seemed more and more to shrink into his unworthiness. Yes, he looked like some dreamy Beethoven. . .

“So Mr. Jensen is a bookbinder,” I said, to relieve the situation.

“He iss too much an artist for America. All they say in America is ‘Qvick, qvick.’ They do not want good vork, only qvick, qvick vork. And Jensen, he iss not qvick!”

And then, the hopelessness of the situation overcoming her, she seemed fairly to swell up in her indignation:

“Jensen, he vill not try qvickness. I tell him he live in America he must be qvick. But he say, ‘I cannot be qvick.’ Sooch a man!”

“T wonder,” I said, “if any real artist is ever quick.”” But my remark made no impression whatever. She shook her head in complete helplessness.

“Ah, ve have such troubles. Food it costs so much and the rent is so high. And Jonas, he must have his flivver. Ah! ve have troubles.”

Poor Jensen. He stood with hanging head, saying never a word. It was evidently an old experience with him.

“Well,” I said, “I am interested in books. What kind of books do you bind?”

At this Mrs. Jensen started up with alacrity. “T vill show you,” said she.

So she went to a drawer in a kind of dresser

UNDERSTANDING at and took out a parcel carefully wrapped in paper. This she unrolled and took out a leather-covered box beautifully fitted together. Opening this with hands as tender as those of a mother, she drew out a book. Jensen stood still, hanging his head, and did not look up. Mrs. Jensen handed the book to me with every solicitude. I thought it at the moment truly the most beautiful thing of the kind I had ever seen, rich green morocco, hand tooled in red and gold; all exquisitely perfect.

“What a beautiful piece of work!” I exclaimed.

I saw Jensen’s head slowly rising. I looked at the book more closely.

“How perfectly your satin inner covers match the morocco!” I said.

At this Jensen took a step toward me and half lifted his hands.

“And where did you get such a design for the lettering? It’s wonderful!”

“Ah! So you like it!’ said Jensen.

I wish you could have seen the change in the man; from deepest dejection all in a moment to pride and power. He thrust one hand through his hair as though he were about to sit down and play asonata. Then he took the book from me, and with a touch of loving tenderness, turned it over and over in his hands; showed me each difficult excellence, the tooling, the lettering, the pasting, the pressing. His face was glowing again and his eyes shining. His whole aspect became one of masterly dignity and pride. At the same time Mrs. Jensen seemed to fade away or shrink down again into her former place as worshipful admirer. It was as good asa play. She stood by, occasionally remarking, in her guttural voice, and with unmistakable pride:

“Ah, Jensen, he iss an artist!”

Then she would pause a moment, as though struggling with herself, and add, shrugging, “But he iss not qvick.”

Suddenly Jensen turned to me with a look of affectionate confidence, like a child:

“So you are interested in books.”

“Yes,” said I, “I like the outsides of books when they are like this: I like still better the insides of books.”

He had told me that this was a book he had just finished binding for a rich book-lover. It was an exquisite edition of the “Odes of Horace.” I opened it almost at random and came across the ode to Mecenas, inviting him to the Sabine farm (which long ago I knew well), and I read aloud: