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Page 1 of 101929 · PDF PAGE 62
…Wales, refused to go and wrote him a poem. LINES ON BEING INVITED TO MEET THE PREMIER IN WALES, SEPTEMBER 1892 I will not shake thy hand old man, ....I will not shake thy hand; You bear a traitor's brand, old man, ....You bear a liar's brand. Thy talents are profound and wide, ....Apparent power to win; It is not every one has lied ....A nation into sin. And look not thou so black, my friend, ....Nor seam that hoary brow; Thy deeds are seamier, my friend, ....Thy record blacker now. Your age and sex forbid, old man, ....I need not tell you how,…
1929 · PDF PAGE 420
420 Later in the summer, I set to work on a really large idea, a play of Old Venice in five acts. I kept my two main principles of composition; the use of colour and form to distinguish my characters and compose a visible symphony. MORTADELLO The Doge has white hair, and is seventy years of age. Mortadello has hair died dark auburn, and forty years of age. He is stout, tall and pompous. {669} Alessandro has rough hair of fiery red and is thirty years of age. Lorenzo has scanty ashen hair, and is twenty-eight years of age. Gabriele is a hunchbac…
1929 · PDF PAGE 213
…the character of an inquirer on strictly scientific lines. This is unhappily calculated to damp the enthusiasm; but as I so carefully of old, for the Magical Path, excluded from my life all other interests, that life has now no particular meaning; and the path of Research, on the only lines I can now approve of, remains the one Path possible for me to tread. (By the Blossom and Fruit theory, I mean the existence of a body of initiates pledged to devote themselves to the redemption of mankind.) It sounds as if I had become a bit of a prig. I exp…
1929 · PDF PAGE 494
494 My best essay was "The Green Goddess" written in the old Absinthe House itself, and adorning its main theme the philosophical reflections suggested by absinthe with descriptions of the inn, its guests, and the city. From New Orleans I went to stay with my cousin Lawrence Bishop on his orange and grapefruit plantation in Florida. I shall describe elsewhere the spiritual abyss in which these lost souls were plunged. I cannot think of Florida, but in my ears rings the exceeding bitter cry of poor little sixteen-year-old Alma, "I've found it do…
1929 · PDF PAGE 319
319 The King-Ghost wears a crown of hopes forgotten: ....Dead loves are woven in his ghastly robe; Bewildered wills and faiths grown old and rotten ....And deeds undared his sceptre, sword and globe. ........Keep us, O Mary maid, ........What time the King-Ghost goes arrayed! The Hell-Wind whistles through his plumeless pinions; ....Clanks all that melancholy host of bones; Fate's principalities and Death's dominions ....Echo the drear discord, the tuneless tones. ........Keep us, dear God, from ill, ........What time the Hell-Wind whistles shr…
1929 · PDF PAGE 280
…have nothing to do with her, {458} but she was the only ayah available, so off we went. The one honest human being in the party was dear old shikari Salama Tantra. The loyal staunch old hound! He never flinched, he never failed; he had all the innocence of a child and all the wisdom of Pythagoras; the courage to face the unknown --- which Indians almost always fear to the limit --- and the gentleness which goes with great strength of body and soul. Peace be to thee, old friend, where'er thou be. {459} 54 The voyage to Rangoon was uneventful and…
1929 · PDF PAGE 476
…t turning a hair! Americans do not understand irony at all. But Viereck should have done so, considering the Jewish hetaera and the wily old robber baron in his ancestry. But are any tears salt enough to weep for England when I think that none of my countrymen could read my bitterness and anger between the lines of that comic travesty of blasphemy? I must explain here that I had more than one string to my bow. It was really a minor part of my programme to wreck the German propaganda on the proof of reductio ad absurdum. I had hoped to gain the …
1929 · PDF PAGE 419
… cocked pistol into the grate. It explodes; the bullet destroys one eye and cheek. But he recovers. The street boys take to calling him "Old Venus" and his guilty conscience persuades him that they have somehow heard the story. This tale is one of the most bitter truths that I have penned. I am glad to say that it is almost the only evidence of what I felt with regard to the attitude of the English bourgeoisie towards art and sex; and, even so, my picture of the younger generation bears witness to my unshakable faith in the emancipation of my f…
1929 · PDF PAGE 560
…ngly shocked. It is so fixed in the point of politeness to refuse reality. For the first time in my life, Paris disappointed me. All the old enchantments had somehow vanished. I felt that my work lay elsewhere. London called to me. It was quite unreasonable. I had no motive for going. I had no means to go. Uneasy and undecided I got through the days as best I could. {884} I decided to seek a solitude favourable for concentration at Hardelot, near Boulogne, in a delightful old inn where I had stayed before. The Ape of Thoth was in London. I wire…
1929 · PDF PAGE 568
568 teapot around which the old women of criticism nod and talk scandal. I wanted to be on the spot when the fur began to fly, so as to give as good as I got. However, the gods have their own ideas. I now put forward my scheme for publishing my memoirs --- my autohagiography I playfully called it --- before Collins. Beresford knew Sullivan {896} well, another lucky coincidence; and when I sent him a fairly full synopsis, they accepted my proposals gladly. I took a short holiday in Paris, chiefly to give the Ape a good time at the seaside, and o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 194
…sists exclusively of rocks, streams and dried apricots. The last named are its principal export. A moment --- and I understood! The poor old man had been unable to cross the plateau and was returning home to die! I expressed my sympathy and offered help. Oh, no, not at all! He had carried his sack all the way to Srinagar; but finding on arrival that the price of his produce had gone down by a fraction of a penny a pound, he refused to sell and was bringing the stuff back. The sack itself looked fabulous, so I got out the "butcher's terror" and …
1929 · PDF PAGE 501
…at paid a very poor compliment to his audience. Among my hearers was only one bearing even a remote resemblance to the human species, an old lady painted to resemble the cover of a popular magazine. I went to talk to her after the lecture and found she was an intimate friend of dear Hereward's. I saw no more of her except by accident for a few minutes' chat on two or three occasions. One evening in the spring of 1918, I was surprised by her calling with her youngest sister. I could not ask them into the studio, being engaged in an important con…
1929 · PDF PAGE 61
…he sturdy peasants or went abroad. North- western Europe appealed to me. There was a certain element of romance in the long nights, the cold clear air, the ice. I loved to wander solitary in Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. There was a mystery in the streets and a spontaneous gaiety in the places of amusement, which satisfied my soul. Life seemed both more remote and more intense. As a stranger, I never came into contact with the malaise, the soul-searching, the psychological dissatisfaction which Ibsen and Strindberg describe. But though m…
1929 · PDF PAGE 517
… for going to New Orleans almost immediately after returning from Lake Pasquaney. It was my last glimpse of beauty for a long while. The old French-Spanish quarter of the city is the only decent inhabited district that I discovered in America. From the architecture to the manners of the people, their clothes, their customs and their cookery, all was delightful. It was like being back in Europe again with the added charm of a certain wildness and romance; it was a civilization sui generis, with its own peculiar adornment in the way of history. I…
1929 · PDF PAGE 421
421 Christ crown the work! Here is the blessing that He gave thee. 6. After both second and fourth feet: Come, let me hold my crystal cross up to the moon! A guess of gold were at a loss to tell its tune. 7. After the first and fifth feet: No news! No word of Mortadello's fate! No hope To bruise the head of the old snake, the State. No scope. 8. After the first half foot and the second foot: Come, save me, save Thy Maiden! Strike each barbed dart Home to the grave convent and cloister of my heart. 9. After the fifth foot: Last, to the lords who…
1929 · PDF PAGE 214
214 GEORGE. What old woman? FENELLA. Her son was a lunatic. They let him out cured, as they thought. His mother came up here with him to lay flowers on his father's grave; and he caught her legs and smashed her brains against the wall. GEORGE. Oh damn it! {358} FENELLA. You baby! So, ever since, she comes from time to time to try and pick her brains off the wall. I certainly used to hear the "rolling of the head", but when I put in a billiard table, the old gentleman preferred it to the corridor and confined his amusements to the gunroom. Even …
1929 · PDF PAGE 324
… was resolved not to do so even {527} at the cost of restraining the theory of sensory hallucination. What struck me dumb was hearing an old shikari tell the story of Excalibur in language so near to that of Malory as to make no odds. Could one of his sahibs have told him the tale long ago, so that it popped up in this strange fashion with me as the hearer? I had no doubt whatever of the man's sincerity and truthfulness and he had no motive for inventing anything of the sort. I cannot believe it a coincidence; I really wondered whether the most…
1929 · PDF PAGE 25
…often) that by them it may be sowed with salt, accursed for ever! May the maiden that passes it be barren and the pregnant woman that beholdeth it abort! May the birds of the air refuse to fly over it! May it stand as a curse, as a fear, as an hate, among men! May the wicked dwell therein! May the light of the sun be withheld therefrom and the light of the moon not lighten it! May it become the home of the shells of the dead and may the demons of the pit inhabit it! May it be accursed, accursed --- accursed for ever and ever! {63} And still, st…
1929 · PDF PAGE 7
7 unconquerable dislike for for the cold plunge, and at the same time a vivid passion for ceremonial speech. These two qualities have played highly important parts in his development. This baptism, by the way, though it never worried him, provided a peril to the soul of another. When his wife's conduct compelled him to insist upon her divorcing him --- a formality as meaningless as their marriage --- and she became insane shortly afterward, an eminent masochist named Colonel Gormley, R.A.M.C. (dead previously, then and since) lay in wait for he…
1929 · PDF PAGE 133
… debauchery of devil dances, the pointless profession of Pansil (the Five Precepts of the Buddha), the ceremonial coddling of shrines as old maids coddle cats, voluble veneration and rigmarole religion: such is the threadbare tinsel which they throw over the nakedness of their idleness, immorality and imbecility. Indians plausibly maintain that some god got all the worst devils into Ceylon, and then cut it off from the continent by the straits. But then, how rich, how soft, how peaceful is Colombo! One feels that one needs never do anything any…