ARTHUR MACHEN: 30+ Horror Classics, Supernatural & Fantasy Books (Including Translations, Essays & Memoirs). Arthur Machen

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      "But the worst of it is we shall not merely descend to the beasts. We shall fall very far below the beasts. A black fellow is good, and a white fellow is good. But the white fellow who 'goes Fantee' does not become a negro—he becomes something infinitely worse, a horrible mass of the most putrid corruption.

      "If we can clear our minds of the horrible cant of our 'civilisation,' if we can look at a modern 'industrial centre' with eyes purged of illusions, we shall have some notion of the awful horror to which we are descending in our effort to become as the ants and bees—creatures who know nothing of

      CALIX INEBRIANS.

      "I doubt if we can really make this effort. Blacks, Stinks, Desolations, Poisons, Hell's Nightmare generally have, I suspect, worked themselves into the very form and mould of our thoughts. We are sober, and perhaps the Tavern door is shut for ever against us.

      "Now and then, perhaps, at rarer and still rarer intervals, a few of us will hear very faintly the far echoes of the holy madness within the closed door:

      "When up the thyrse is raised, and when the sound Of sacred orgies flies 'around, around.'

      "Which is the Sonus Epulantium in Æterno Convivio.

      "But this we shall not be able to discern. Very likely we shall take the noise of this High Choir for the horrid mirth of Hell. How strange it is that those who are pledged officially and ceremonially, as it were, to a Rite of Initiation which figures certainly a Feast, should in all their thoughts and words and actions be continually blaspheming and denying all the uses and ends of feastings and festivals.

      "This is not the refusal of the species for the sake of enjoying perfectly the most beautiful and desirable genus; it is the renouncing of species and genus, the pronouncing of Good to be Evil. The Universal being denied, the Particular is degraded and defiled. What is called 'The Drink Curse' is the natural and inevitable result and sequence of the 'Protestant Reformation.' If the clear wells and fountains of the magic wood are buried out of sight, then men (who must have Drink) will betake them to the Slime Ponds and Poison Pools.

      "In the Graal Books there is a curse—an evil enchantment—on the land of Logres because the mystery of the Holy Vessel is disregarded. The Knight sees the Dripping Spear and the Shining Cup pass before him, and says no word. He asks no question as to the end and meaning of this ceremony. So the land is blasted and barren and songless, and those who dwell in it are in misery.

      "Every day of our lives we see the Graal carried before us in a wonderful order, and every day we leave the question unasked, the Mystery despised and neglected. Yet if we could ask that question, bowing down before these Heavenly and Glorious Splendours and Hallows—then every man should have the meat and drink that his soul desired; the hall would be filled with odours of Paradise, with the light of Immortality.

      "In the books the Graal was at last taken away because of men's unworthiness. So it will be, I suppose. Even now, the Quester's adventure is a desperate one—few there be that find It.

      "Ventilation and sanitation are well enough in their way. But it would not be very satisfactory to pass the day in a ventilated and sanitated Hell with nothing to eat or drink. If one is perishing of hunger and thirst, sanitation seems unimportant enough.

      "How wonderful, how glorious it would be if the Kingdom of the Great Drinkers could be restored! If we could only sweep away all the might of the Sober Ones—the factory builders, the poison makers, the politicians, the manufacturers of bad books and bad pictures, together with Little Bethel and the morality of Mr. Mildmay, the curate (a series of negative propositions)—then imagine the Great Light of the Great Inebriation shining on every face, and not any work of man's hands, from a cathedral to a penknife, without the mark of the Tavern upon it! All the world a great festival; every well a fountain of strong drink; every river running with the New Wine; the Sangraal brought back from Sarras, restored to the awful shrine of Cor-arbennic, the Oracle of the Dive Bouteille once more freely given, the ruined Vineyard flourishing once more, girt about by shining, everlasting walls! Then we should hear the Old Songs again, and they would dance the Old Dances, the happy, ransomed people, Commensals and Compotators of the Everlasting Tavern."

      The whole treatise, of which this extract is a fragment in a rudimentary and imperfect stage, is, of course, an impassioned appeal for the restoration of the quickening, exuberant imagination, not merely in art, but in all the inmost places of life. There is more than this, too. Here and there one can hear, as it were, the whisper and the hint of deeper mysteries, visions of a great experiment and a great achievement to which some men may be called. In his own words: "Within the Tavern there is an Inner Tavern, but the door of it is visible to few indeed."

      In Ambrose's mind in the after years the stout notebook was dear, perhaps as a substitute for that aroma of the past in a phial which he has declared so desirable an invention. It stood, not so much for what was written in it as for the place and the circumstances in which it was written. It recalled Little Russell Row and Nelly, and the evenings at the Château de Chinon, where, night by night, they served still stranger, more delicious meats, and the red wine revealed more clearly its high celestial origin. One evening was diversified by an odd encounter.

      A middle-aged man, sitting at an adjoining table, was evidently in want of matches, and Ambrose handed his box with the sympathetic smile which one smoker gives to another in such cases. The man—he had a black moustache and a small, pointed beard—thanked him in fluent English with a French accent, and they began to talk of casual things, veering, by degrees, in the direction of the arts. The Frenchman smiled at Meyrick's enthusiasm.

      "What a life you have before you!" he said. "Don't you know that the populace always hates the artist—and kills him if it can? You are an artist and mystic, too. What a fate!

      "Yes; but it is that applause, that réclame that comes after the artist is dead," he went on, replying to some objection of Ambrose's; "it is that which is the worst cruelty of all. It is fine for Burns, is it not, that his stupid compatriots have not ceased to utter follies about him for the last eighty years? Scotchmen? But they should be ashamed to speak his name! And Keats, and how many others in my country and in yours and in all countries? The imbeciles are not content to calumniate, to persecute, to make wretched the artist in his lifetime. They follow him with their praise to the grave—the grave that they have digged! Praise of the populace! Praise of a race of pigs! For, you see, while they are insulting the dead with their compliments they are at the same time insulting the living with their abuse."

      He dropped into silence; from his expression he seemed to be cursing "the populace" with oaths too frightful to be uttered. He rose suddenly and turned to Ambrose.

      "Artist—and mystic. Yes. You will probably be crucified. Good evening ... and a fine martyrdom to you!"

      He was gone with a charming smile and a delightful bow to "Madame." Ambrose looked after him with a puzzled face; his last words had called up some memory that he could not capture; and then suddenly he recollected the old, ragged Irish fiddler, the player of strange fantasies under the tree in the outskirts of Lupton. He thought of his phrase about "red martyrdom"; it was an odd coincidence.

      IV

      The phrases kept recurring to his mind after they had gone out, and as they wandered through the lighted streets with all their strange and variegated show, with glittering windows and glittering lamps, with the ebb and flow of faces, the voices and the laughter, the surging crowds about the theatre doors, the flashing hansoms and the omnibuses lumbering heavily along to strange regions, such as Turnham Green and Castlenau, Cricklewood and Stoke СКАЧАТЬ