III

IN WAY OF TASTE.

Troilus and Cressida; iii.--3.

One of the most curious of modern whims in Boston has been the study of the poems of Robert Browning. All at once there sprang up on every hand strange societies called Browning Clubs, and the libraries were ransacked for Browning's works, and for the books of whoever has had the conceit or the hardihood to write about the great poet. Lovely girls at afternoon receptions propounded to each other abstruse conundrums concerning what they were pleased to regard as obscure pa.s.sages, while little coteries gathered, with airs of supernatural gravity, to read and discuss whatever bore his signature.

A genuine, serious Boston Browning Club is as deliciously droll as any form of entertainment ever devised, provided one's sense of the ludicrous be strong enough to overcome the natural indignation aroused by seeing genuine poetry, the high gift of the G.o.ds, thus abused. The clubs meet in richly furnished parlors, of which the chief fault is usually an over-abundance of bric-a-brac. The house of Mrs. Gore, for instance, where Edith was going this evening, was all that money could make it; and in pa.s.sing it may be noted that Boston clubs are seldom of const.i.tutions sufficiently vigorous to endure unpleasant surroundings.

The fair s.e.x predominates at all these gatherings, and over them hangs an air of expectant solemnity, as if the celebration of some sacred mystery were forward. Conversation is carried on in subdued tones; even the laughter is softened, and when the reader takes his seat, there falls upon the little company a hush so deep as to render distinctly audible the frou-frou of silken folds, and the tinkle of jet fringes, stirred by the swelling of ardent and aspiring bosoms.

The reading is not infrequently a little dull, especially to the uninitiated, and there have not been wanting certain sinister suggestions that now and then, during the monotonous delivery of some of the longer poems, elderly and corpulent devotees listen only with the spiritual ear, the physical sense being obscured by an abstraction not to be distinguished by an ordinary observer from slumber. The reader, however, is bound to a.s.sume that all are listening, and if some sleep and others consider their worldly concerns or speculate upon the affairs of their neighbors, it interrupts not at all the steady flow of the reading.

Once this is finished, there is an end also of inattention, for the discussion begins. The central and vital principle of all these clubs is that a poem by Robert Browning is a sort of prize enigma, of which the solution is to be reached rather by wild and daring guessing than by any commonplace process of reasoning. Although to an ordinary and uninspired intellect it may appear perfectly obvious that a lyric means simply and clearly what it says, the true Browningite is better informed. He is deeply aware that if the poet seems to say one thing, this is proof indisputable that another is intended. To take a work in straightforward fashion would at once rob the Browning Club of all excuse for existence, and while parlor chairs are easy, the air warm and perfumed, and it is the fashion for idle minds to concern themselves with that rococo humbug Philistines call culture, societies of this sort must continue.

Once it is agreed that a poem means something not apparent, it is easy to make it mean anything and everything, especially if the discussion, as is usually the case, be interspersed with discursions of which the chief use is to give some clever person or other a chance to say smart things. When all else fails, moreover, the club can always fall back upon allegory. Commentators on the poets have always found much field for ingenious quibbling and sounding speculation in the line of allegory. Let a poem be but considered an allegory, and there is no limit to the changes which may be rung upon it, not even Mrs.

Malaprop's banks of the Nile restraining the creature's headstrong ranging. Only a failure of the fancy of the interpreter can afford a check, and as everybody reads fiction nowadays, few people are without a goodly supply of fancies, either original or acquired.

Although Fenton had declined to go to Mrs. Gore's with his wife, he had finished his cigar when the carriage was announced, and decided to accompany her, after all. The parlors were filling when they arrived, and Arthur, who knew how to select good company, managed to secure a seat between Miss Elsie Dimmont, a young and rather gay society girl, and Mrs. Frederick Staggchase, a descendant of an old Boston family, who was called one of the cleverest women of her set.

"Is Mr. Fenwick going to read?" he asked of the latter, glancing about to see who was present.

"Yes," Mrs. Staggchase answered, turning toward him with her distinguished motion of the head and high-bred smile. "Don't you like him?"

"I never had the misfortune to hear him. I know he detests me, but then I fear, that like olives and caviare, I have to be an acquired taste."

"Acquired tastes," she responded, with that air of being amused by herself which always entertained Fenton, "are always the strongest."

"And generally least to a man's credit," he retorted quickly. "What is he going to inflict upon us?"

"Really, I don't know. I seldom come to this sort of thing. I don't think it pays."

"Oh, nothing pays, of course," was Fenton's reply, "but it is more or less amusing to see people make fools of themselves."

The president of the club, at this moment, called the a.s.sembly to order, and announced that Mr. Fenwick had kindly consented--"Readers always kindly consent," muttered Fenton aside to Mrs. Staggchase--to read, _Bishop Blougram's Apology_, to which they would now listen.

There was a rustle of people settling back into their chairs; the reader brushed a lank black lock from his sallow brow, and with a tone of sepulchral earnestness began:

"'No more wine? then we'll push back chairs, and talk.'"

For something over an hour, the monotonous voice of the reader went dully on. Fenton drew out his tablets and amused himself and Miss Dimmont by drawing caricatures of the company, ending with a sketch of a handsome old dowager, who went so soundly to sleep that her jaw fell.

Over this his companion laughed so heartily that Mrs. Staggchase leaned forward smilingly, and took his tablets away from him; whereat he produced an envelope from his pocket and was about to begin another sketch, when suddenly, and apparently somewhat to the surprise of the reader, the poem came to an end.

There was a joyful stir. The dowager awoke, and there was a perfunctory clapping of hands when Mr. Fenwick laid down his volume, and people were a.s.sured that there was no mistake about his being really quite through. A few murmurs of admiration were heard, and then there was an awful pause, while the president, as usual, waited in the never-fulfilled hope that the discussion would start itself without help on his part.

"How cleverly you do sketch," Miss Dimmont said, under her breath; "but it was horrid of you to make me laugh."

"You are grateful," Fenton returned, in the same tone. "You know I kept you from being bored to death."

"I have a cousin, Miss Wainwright," pursued Miss Dimmont, "whose picture we want you to paint."

"If she is as good a subject as _her_ cousin," Fenton answered, "I shall be delighted to do it."

The president had, meantime, got somewhat ponderously upon his feet, half a century of good living not having tended to increase his natural agility, and remarked that the company were, he was sure, extremely grateful to Mr. Fenwick, for his very intelligent interpretation of the poem read.

"Did he interpret it?" Fenton whispered to Mrs. Staggchase. "Why wasn't I told?" "Hush!" she answered, "I will never let you sit by me again if you do not behave better."

"Sitting isn't my _metier_, you know," he retorted.

The president went on to say that the lines of thought opened by the poem were so various and so wide that they could scarcely hope to explore them all in one evening, but that he was sure there must be many who had thoughts or questions they wished to express, and to start the discussion he would call upon a gentleman whom he had observed taking notes during the reading, Mr. Fenton.

"The old scaramouch!" Fenton muttered, under his breath. "I'll paint his portrait and send it to _Punch_."

Then with perfect coolness he got upon his feet and looked about the parlor.

"I am so seldom able to come to these meetings," he said, "that I am not at all familiar with your methods, and I certainly had no idea of saying anything; I was merely jotting down a few things to think over at home, and not making notes for a speech, as you would see if you examined the paper."

At this point Miss Dimmont gave a cough which had a sound strangely like a laugh strangled at its birth.

"The poem is one so subtile," Fenton continued, unmoved; "it is so clever in its knowledge of human nature, that I always have to take a certain time after reading it to get myself out of the mood of merely admiring its technique, before I can think of it critically at all. Of course the bit about 'an artist whose religion is his art' touches me keenly, for I have long held to the heresy that art is the highest thing in the world, and, as a matter of fact, the only thing one can depend upon. The clever sophistry of Bishop Blougram shows well enough how one can juggle with theology; and, after all, theology is chiefly some one man's insistence that everybody else shall make the same mistakes that he does."

Fenton felt that he was not taking the right direction in his talk, and that in his anxiety to extricate himself from a slight awkwardness he was rapidly getting himself into a worse one. It was one of those odd whimsicalities which always came as a surprise when committed by a man who usually displayed so much mental dexterity, that now, instead of endeavoring to get upon the right track, he simply broke off abruptly and sat down.

His words had, however, the effect of calling out instantly a protest from the Rev. De Lancy Candish. Mr. Candish was the rector of the Church of the Nativity, the exceedingly ritualistic organization with which Mrs. Fenton was connected. He was a tall and bony young man, with abundant auburn hair and freckles, the most ungainly feet and hands, and eyes of eager enthusiasm, which showed how the result of New England Puritanism had been to implant in his soul the true martyr spirit. Fenton was never weary of jeering at Mr. Candish's uncouthness, his jests serving as an outlet, not only for the irritation physical ugliness always begot in him, but for his feeling of opposition to his wife's orthodoxy, in which he regarded the clergyman as upholding her.

The rector's self-sacrificing devotion to truth, moreover, awakened in the artist a certain inner discomfort. To the keenly sensitive mind there is no rebuke more galling than the unconscious reproof of a character which holds steadfastly to ideals which it has basely forsaken. Arthur said to himself that he hated Candish for his ungainly person. "He is so out of drawing," he once told his wife, "that I always have a strong inclination to rub him out and make him over again." In that inmost chamber of his consciousness where he allowed himself the luxury of absolute frankness, however, the artist confessed that his animosity to the young rector had other causes.

As Fenton sank into his seat, Mrs. Staggchase leaned over to quote from the poem,--

"'For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.'"

The artist turned upon her a glance of comprehension and amus.e.m.e.nt, but before he could reply, the rough, rather loud voice of Mr. Candish arrested his attention.

"If the poem teaches anything," Mr. Candish said, speaking according to his custom, somewhat too warmly, "it seems to me it is the sophistry of the sort of talk which puts art above religion. The thing that offends an honest man in Bishop Blougram is the fact that he looks at religion as if it were an art, and not a vital and eternal necessity,--a living truth that cannot be trifled with."

"Ah," Fenton's smooth and beautiful voice rejoined, "that is to confound art with the artificial, which is an obvious error. Art is a pa.s.sion, an utter devotion to an ideal, an absolute lifting of man out of himself into that essential truth which is the only lasting bond by which mankind is united."

Fenton's coolness always had a confusing and irritating effect upon Mr.

Candish, who was too thoroughly honest and earnest to quibble, and far from possessing the dexterity needed to fence with the artist. He began confusedly to speak, but with the first word became aware that Mrs.

Fenton had come to the rescue. Edith never saw a contest between her husband and the clergyman without interfering if she could, and now she instinctively spoke, without stopping to consider where she was.

"It is precisely for that reason," she said, "that art seems to me to fall below religion. Art can make man contented with life only by keeping his attention fixed upon an ideal, while religion reconciles us to life as it really is."

A murmur of a.s.sent showed Arthur how much against the feeling of those around him were the views he was advancing.

"Oh, well," he said, in a droll _sotto voce_, "if it is coming down to a family difference we will continue it in private."

And he abandoned the discussion.