Pagan Papers | Page 9

Piccadilly,
moves the young Apollo, the lord of the unerring (satin) bow; and
nothing meaner than a frock-coat shall in these latter years float round
his perfect limbs. But remote in other haunts than these the rural Pan is
hiding, and piping the low, sweet strain that reaches only the ears of a
chosen few. And now that the year wearily turns and stretches herself
before the perfect waking, the god emboldened begins to blow a clearer
note.
When the waking comes at last, and Summer is abroad, these deities
will abroad too, each as his several attributes move him. Who is this
that flieth up the reaches of the Thames in steam-launch hired for the
day? Mercury is out -- some dozen or fifteen strong. The
flower-gemmed banks crumble and slide down under the wash of his
rampant screw; his wake is marked by a line of lobster-claws,
gold-necked bottles, and fragments of veal-pie. Resplendent in blazer,
he may even be seen to embrace the slim-waisted nymph, haunter of
green (room) shades, in the full gaze of the shocked and scandalised
sun. Apollo meantime reposeth, passively beautiful, on the lawn of the
Guards' Club at Maidenhead. Here, O Apollo, are haunts meet for thee.
A deity subjectively inclined, he is neither objective nor, it must be said
for him, at all objectionable, like them of Mercury.
Meanwhile, nor launches nor lawns tempt him that pursueth the rural
Pan. In the hushed recesses of Hurley backwater where the canoe may
be paddled almost under the tumbling comb of the weir, he is to be
looked for; there the god pipes with freest abandonment. Or under the
great shadow of Streatley Hill, ``annihilating all that's made to a green

thought in a green shade''; or better yet, pushing an explorer's prow up
the remote untravelled Thame, till Dorchester's stately roof broods over
the quiet fields. In solitudes such as these Pan sits and dabbles, and all
the air is full of the music of his piping. Southwards, again, on the
pleasant Surrey downs there is shouting and jostling; dust that is
drouthy and language that is sultry. Thither comes the young Apollo,
calmly confident as ever; and he meeteth certain Mercuries of the baser
sort, who do him obeisance, call him captain and lord, and then proceed
to skin him from head to foot as thoroughly as the god himself flayed
Marsyas in days of yore, at a certain Spring Meeting in Phrygia: a good
instance of Time's revenges. And yet Apollo returns to town and swears
he has had a grand day. He does so every year. Out of hearing of all the
clamour, the rural Pan may be found stretched on Ranmore Common,
loitering under Abinger pines, or prone by the secluded stream of the
sinuous Mole, abounding in friendly greetings for his foster-brothers
the dab-chick and water-rat.
For a holiday, Mercury loveth the Pullman Express, and a short hour
with a society paper; anon, brown boots on the pier, and the pleasant
combination of Métropole and Monopole. Apollo for his part will urge
the horses of the Sun: and, if he leaveth the society weekly to Mercury,
yet he loveth well the Magazine. From which omphalos or hub of the
universe he will direct his shining team even to the far Hesperides of
Richmond or of Windsor. Both iron road and level highway are
shunned by the rural Pan, who chooses rather to foot it along the sheep
track on the limitless downs or the thwart-leading footpath through
copse and spinney, not without pleasant fellowship with feather and fir.
Nor does it follow from all this that the god is unsocial. Albeit shy of
the company of his more showy brother-deities, he loveth the more
unpretentious humankind, especially them that are adscripti glebæ,
addicted to the kindly soil and to the working thereof: perfect in no way,
only simple, cheery sinners. For he is only half a god after all, and the
red earth in him is strong. When the pelting storm drives the wayfarers
to the sheltering inn, among the little group on bench and settle Pan has
been known to appear at times, in homely guise of hedger-and-ditcher
or weather-beaten shepherd from the downs. Strange lore and quaint
fancy he will then impart, in the musical Wessex or Mercian he has
learned to speak so naturally; though it may not be till many a mile

away that you begin to suspect that you have unwittingly talked with
him who chased the flying Syrinx in Arcady and turned the tide of fight
at Marathon.
Yes: to-day the iron horse has searched the country through -- east and
west, north and south -- bringing with it Commercialism, whose god is
Jerry, and who studs the hills with stucco and garrotes