The Complete Essays | Page 4

LETTERS A NOVELIST'S ALLEGORY SOME
PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA MEDITATION ON
FINALITY WANTED--SCHOOLING ON OUR DISLIKE OF
THINGS AS THEY ARE THE WINDLESTRAW
CENSORSHIP AND ART ABOUT CENSORSHIP VAGUE
THOUGHTS ON ART

"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal." --ANATOLE FRANCE

CONCERNING LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS: INN OF TRANQUILITY MAGPIE OVER
THE HILL SHEEP-SHEARING EVOLUTION RIDING IN THE
MIST THE PROCESSION A CHRISTIAN WIND IN THE ROCKS
MY DISTANT RELATIVE THE BLACK GODMOTHER

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY
Under a burning blue sky, among the pine-trees and junipers, the
cypresses and olives of that Odyssean coast, we came one afternoon on
a pink house bearing the legend: "Osteria di Tranquillita,"; and, partly
because of the name, and partly because we did not expect to find a
house at all in those goat-haunted groves above the waves, we tarried
for contemplation. To the familiar simplicity of that Italian building
there were not lacking signs of a certain spiritual change, for out of the
olive-grove which grew to its very doors a skittle-alley had been
formed, and two baby cypress-trees were cut into the effigies of a cock
and hen. The song of a gramophone, too, was breaking forth into the air,
as it were the presiding voice of a high and cosmopolitan mind. And,
lost in admiration, we became conscious of the odour of a
full-flavoured cigar. Yes--in the skittle-alley a gentleman was standing
who wore a bowler hat, a bright brown suit, pink tie, and very yellow
boots. His head was round, his cheeks fat and well-coloured, his lips
red and full under a black moustache, and he was regarding us through
very thick and half-closed eyelids.
Perceiving him to be the proprietor of the high and cosmopolitan mind,
we accosted him.
"Good-day!" he replied: "I spik English. Been in Amurrica yes."
"You have a lovely place here."
Sweeping a glance over the skittle-alley, he sent forth a long puff of
smoke; then, turning to my companion (of the politer sex) with the air
of one who has made himself perfect master of a foreign tongue, he
smiled, and spoke.
"Too-quiet!"
"Precisely; the name of your inn, perhaps, suggests----"
"I change all that--soon I call it Anglo-American hotel."
"Ah! yes; you are very up-to-date already."
He closed one eye and smiled.

Having passed a few more compliments, we saluted and walked on;
and, coming presently to the edge of the cliff, lay down on the thyme
and the crumbled leaf-dust. All the small singing birds had long been
shot and eaten; there came to us no sound but that of the waves
swimming in on a gentle south wind. The wanton creatures seemed
stretching out white arms to the land, flying desperately from a sea of
such stupendous serenity; and over their bare shoulders their hair
floated back, pale in the sunshine. If the air was void of sound, it was
full of scent--that delicious and enlivening perfume of mingled gum,
and herbs, and sweet wood being burned somewhere a long way off;
and a silky, golden warmth slanted on to us through the olives and
umbrella pines. Large wine-red violets were growing near. On such a
cliff might Theocritus have lain, spinning his songs; on that divine sea
Odysseus should have passed. And we felt that presently the goat-god
must put his head forth from behind a rock.
It seemed a little queer that our friend in the bowler hat should move
and breathe within one short flight of a cuckoo from this home of Pan.
One could not but at first feelingly remember the old Boer saying: "O
God, what things man sees when he goes out without a gun!" But soon
the infinite incongruity of this juxtaposition began to produce within
one a curious eagerness, a sort of half-philosophical delight. It began to
seem too good, almost too romantic, to be true. To think of the
gramophone wedded to the thin sweet singing of the olive leaves in the
evening wind; to remember the scent of his rank cigar marrying with
this wild incense; to read that enchanted name, "Inn of Tranquillity,"
and hear the bland and affable remark of the gentleman who owned
it--such were, indeed, phenomena to stimulate souls to speculation.
And all unconsciously one began to justify them by thoughts of the
other incongruities of existence--the strange, the passionate
incongruities of youth and age, wealth and poverty, life and death; the
wonderful odd bedfellows of this world; all those lurid contrasts which
haunt a man's spirit till sometimes he is ready to cry out: "Rather than
live where such things can be, let me die!"
Like a wild bird tracking through the air, one's meditation wandered on,
following that trail of thought, till the chance encounter became
spiritually luminous. That Italian gentleman of the