Mirrors-And Some Reflections

...The Young Enchanted...

...the so-called realist are apparent here...

...centuries before his time...

...It is strange to realize that Helen of Troy and Walter De La Mare have learned their poetic may have seen her disastrous beauty in a mirror of spells in that country...

...The every-day miracle of reflection is The Lady of Shalott...

...They have seen nature and life Brushes and trays and porcelain cups for red ; in forms which they have clothed with raw emotions Here sate she, while her women tired and curled and uncouth words...

...492 THE COMMONWEAL September 29, 192 when they burned St...

...abling us to dispense with what we are compelled to do without, Both had been buried in coffins of old growth pine, almost and offering something better in its place...

...Why, then, should we assume that and a little later, a steel wrench I had lost from the mow- just because certain people in the past saw fit to inscribe a few ing machine only a few years before...

...But toinette sat before her glass at Versailles, as a poet even in the domain of creative imagination, the cult pictured her of ugliness and the spirit of revolt have blurred the This was her table, these her trim outspread vision of not a few...

...In Hassan, even the passion and horror seem fairs-but that is the end of the matter...

...accounted for in terms of "pure secular science...

...In each of these diverse themes, "a mirror faced a mir- Our only gods shall be the subterrane, ror" to the eyes of the mystic and poet...

...They did not find In such a case, there would seem to be but one course left for any on that occasion, but discovered, instead, a human skull, us to follow-a gradual return to hand-labor...

...perishable as autumn leaves in the forest...

...Most of us respond ever way it may be accounted for, of one thing we may to its appeal with the old eagerness, for no modern be sure, that this feeling is no cheat...

...name of poet while they disdain equally the working rules of philosophy and art...

...We read that When my grandfather, with his broad axe, hewed the timthe first settlers gave iron hatchets and arrow-points to the ber which constructs the framework of the house in which Indians in exchange for furs, but who has ever found one of I now write, life was very much as it had been during many those implements...

...Hugh Walpole's kind...

...It is exhausted, and that when it finally gives out, or becomes so now several rods in diameter, basin shaped, and with its outer diminished as to fail to meet the full demand, not only will the edge higher than the surrounding turf...

...They, more than others, should prothe days of remote Pharaohs-and that it imaged claim to us "a full assurance given by lookes," and another "fair and fatal" queen when Marie An- be able to interpret their own dreams in our ears...

...polished metal...

...Alice Meynell's the growth of this recurrent cult in another field of rare insight traced these counter-reflections in Irish art, and wrote its indictment history, in Othello, and in the minds of two poets...

...In what- Lewis Carroll's whimsical genius...

...But when, and secret mirror...

...The poet knows that the alluring power of worth while to know the reflections of Rembrandt and reflection is a more subtle thing, and finds in the story Holbein on their reflections-or to hear what G. F. of Narcissus a type of the subjective mind-or of the Watts the mystic had to say to Watts the man, face to Greek spirit itself-in ardent Search for truth and face in his studio ! beauty...

...Narcissus gazed so constantly at his own beauty mir- It may be that the old masters, and the modern rored in the clear fountain that he pined and died of artists who have painted their own portraits, redislove for that phantom self...

...our big cities now stand...

...The commonest room try...

...During the Puritan regime in the mother Faith in the new world...

...MIRRORS AND SOME REFLECTIONS By MURIEL KENT A 1 KIND of fascination is attached to the very but in the epilogue, he thus amended the suggestion word-the mireor of old French, and connected in its Latin form with mirari-to con- O whisper to your glass, and say template, wonder at...

...Since material prosperity incountry, swashbucklers prowled over the land, crossing variably awakens the ancestral pride, seemingly dorat the ferry and laying waste the homes and plan- mant many years in St...

...of the furniture and the persons his glass have dis- Though after twenty years they may not please, closed to him-he has no further vision...

...Tomorrow may be the age of red rust stains in the coarse-grained wood...

...But the short-sighted and undiscerning are sand, quickly wears away to nothingness, while as to books scarcely aware that, whether they will or no, they live and written and printed papers and manuscripts, they are as in a world of reflections...

...Pictures of things misshapen, harsh and crude, But if we narrow the argument to writers, and to those of our own day, we find that the limitations of Here, friend, are subtly-drawn uncommon things...

...It seems a reasonable supposition that in the centuries that elapse between civilizations, abandoned towns and cities would TIME AND CHANGE be appropriated by tribes of wild men-decendants, perhaps, By WILLIAM EVERETT CRAM of the original builders-leaving in their turn, traces of simpler life, which students of research in after years, might naturally 0 NE morning my plough turned up a broken tomahawk, ascribe to the real owners...

...Again, it was one of the great romanticists of the Elsewhere in Phantastes, he says that "a wondrous nineteenth century who wrote of the doomed Lady affinity exists between a mirror and a man's imagina- of Shalott, living always in a world of shadows tion !" Perhaps that is why a child, or a young girl, formed by her "mirror's magic sights," and reproducwill sometimes look at her reflected image with the ing them in the web she wove unceasingly...

...All the surpris- Very little I think, that could be deciphered to tell of the life ing things, the familiar objects in new aspects, were of the past...

...Glass exposed to the friction of wind-driven darkly...

...In the local aspect, at least, though perhaps from Virginia to the Protestant army which beseiged unawares, preparations go forward for the grand and captured St...

...The stone work stands there now...

...Even in these superior days, no one disparages is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...

...The story of Gerda's long quest in its depths, but those which gave us the spiritual for her playmate, and of Kay's rescue from his icy significance of The Golden Scarecrow, the glamour of bonds, shows us Hans Andersen's art at its highest...

...We have no positive evidence from different angles...

...Great cities flourished in Central and South found in the part which had been invisible from that America...

...All sincere art-in its widest sense-must be a mir- James Elroy Flecker, whose own avowed aim-in a ror: a double mirror in so far as it reproduces faith- period of decadence-was to "create beauty," marked fully the artist's view of life for us...

...They brought him under we must seek mirrors of Mr...

...the influence of the Snow Queen who carried him off Not merely his "green" one, with hints of wizardry to her own realms...

...eye sees that which it brings with it the power of see- If our civilization should come to an end next year, what ing...

...I first saw this sand circle us that the supply of mineral oil in the ground is well-nigh forty years ago, when it was only a few yards across...

...The result Only a headless ape with slimy wings of his observation is simply a dispassionate inventory Can whisk you round the interesting land...

...In A Day Dream, Tennyson bade paneled with glass, which enthralled the imagination, his lady equally with the poem, in those days...

...Over as a whole whilst performing its excellent labors for this now peaceful highway came the many recruits the Negro...

...On the other hand, those who have studied the progress of In reburying it where it was found, I discovered the rest invention claim that whenever anything we deem a necessity of the skeleton, and a few yards away another skeleton-lying fails along one line, inventive genius rises to the occasion, enparallel with the first, with the feet to the rising sun...

...which has been aptly described as "this self-conscious The mirror crack'd from side to side...

...His scholars, naturally, found For Babbitt-with his primitive emotions and his acthe effects very entertaining, and proclaimed that quired luxury-habits, his manufactured opinions and people could now see, for the first time, "how the commercialized standards-even Babbitt kept a small world and its inhabitants really looked...

...Mary's City, ably defended by celebration of the tri-centenary of the beginnings of William Digges, lord of Warburton, and other Catho- the Catholic Church in the United States...

...son walked that way looking for relics...

...In the myth beloved by poets, "What wonder if he thinks me fair...

...prose, perhaps Barrie and Walpole are distinguished The student of ancient civilizations finds the mirror, as explorers of the soul's borderland-the region which in its early forms, as far back in time as he can pene- is non-existent for the majority-while W. B. Yeats trate...

...With amazing skill, the author brings be- And, all the time, he was led "not by reason sensible 494 THE COMMONWEAL September 29, 1926 of deeming, but by reason imaginative," as Boethius bronze age, and the age of iron and steel, overlooking-it expressed it...

...Two years ago, my brother and my tories, the generation of electricity, and transportation generally...

...America...

...A that news is circulated through the medium of newspapers few seasons longer in the ground, and it would be only a and magazines in our present civilization...

...They supposed it to be that of an Indian, production of the chief necessities of life to supply the local but when examined a few days later, it seemed evident that daily needs of men...

...The Snow Queen, the arch-fiend made, for his own September 29, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 493 pleasure, a looking-glass which had the property of fore us a material, ugly world-and forces us to condiminishing everything good and lovely, "while all sider it...

...principal motive power of today be taken from us, but lack Every year I visit it in search of arrow-heads, and very sel- of oil for lubricating purposes will shut down mills and facdom fail to find them...

...for there is no fantasy can replace those beloved figures with their cheating in nature and the simple . . . feelings of the soul.inverted wisdom...

...Babbitt, with a dismal assurance that he and his circle There can be no doubt about the magic properties of are the true and only representatives of a large sec- Flecker's mirror...

...or If a childish memory of Moxon's illustrated edition the sense of wonder disappears altogether-just be- of the Early Poems can be trusted, it was D. G. Roscause a mirror meets the surface needs of human setti's drawing of that tragic figure, in a low chamber nature so exactly...

...reddish discoloration of the surrounding soil...

...He might "hate philosophy," but tion of the business world in the Middle-West of it was against its tabulated tenets that he rebelled...

...wireless, with invisible currents of power, caught and transIron and steel are more perishable than wood, and yet we formed to suit our pleasure, into light and heat, just as we confidently assume to name the ages of man, the stone age, now use them to transmit the spoken word...

...The poet, the artist, and the mystic declare, would the geologist find a few thousand years hence, where with Goethe, that "everything transitory is parable...

...She is his voice reached her, did she leave her loom to look entranced by the nearest representation of her mys- down to the Camelot of reality: terious individuality-and all but tangible self which still remains separate and aloof...

...Our whole modern civilization has A mile to the west of my home there is a "sand circle"- sprung up since then, and how much longer it will continue a spot where the winds, deflected by the evergreen woods on is wholly a matter of conjecture...

...but if along former standpoint...

...of their records on parchment, brick, stone, and bronzeThe flint hatchet, fashioned by a red-skinned workman hoping, perchance, to leave something that might be read by centuries ago, lies on my desk as I write...

...It flashed a wistful sprite into his in their attempt to introduce the glass to the heavenly dreams at times: it threw a gleam of romance around regions, it fell to earth and was shivered into millions the friend of his youth-kindling in Babbitt's mind a and billions of fragments-it became still more mis- transient longing for the one, an abiding loyalty to chievous, for each minutest splinter had the same dis- the other...

...Two flying particles of this glass But if we desire some glimpse of "mystical simililodged in the eye and heart of little Kay, and spoiled tude" rather than the cruder methods of the camera, his vision and affections...

...Go, look in any glass and say In the prologue to Hans Andersen's charming story, What moral is in being fair...

...Arnold Bennett, for instance, can show us his But Flecker himself left us the burnished, glowing menage with such craft that he convinces us of every imagery of Gates of Damascus, the brief, haunting detail as indisputable fact...

...Among modern writers of It holds, moreover, a fable for sceptics and cynics...

...seems to me-the possibility that, alternating with these there Surely it becomes increasingly possible to conceive may have been periods of civilization like our own, when iron of science and art no longer as rival seers, proclaim- and steel and other metals dominated all other materials in ing different gospels, but as gazing into one mirror, supplying the needs of men...

...Mary's City and destroyed its lic manor owners, the Fenwicks, Sewalls, Hills, records, plundered the homes of its citizens and took Neales, Lancasters, and many others whose names the pioneer shepherd, Father Andrew White, in chains stand gloriously in the annals of the defenders of the to London...

...to fade into, and blend with, the quest of the ideal, Or we find ourselves, after reading the famous as the caravan takes the Golden Road to Samarkand...

...gold coins and jewels here and there, and perhaps that what could be seen from the old room remained some inscriptions stamped on copper or bronze or platinum...

...the individual partly uncovered...

...planet," the fresh, questioning regard of youth is lost "The curse is come upon me" cried all too soon...

...it was a white man's skull...

...Strange, too, to think that this me- We have a clearer right to demand magic mirrors dium of reflection was used by Egyptian beauties in of the poets...

...Mary's, the Cardinal Gibbons tations in both the counties where Catholic history in Institute has wrought a good work for the community the United States had its opening chapters...

...Perhaps this suggests our condi- with these stone buildings, there were also towering steel tioned vision of deeper verities...

...Out of his profound structures, and leagues on leagues of intersecting wires and steel rails along which freight trains rumbled, we should be experience, Saint Paul wrote: "Now we see in a mirror none the wiser...

...still stronger relief...

...There are those who claim the The most unhappy head in all the world...

...The curious fact should not be ignored that it was George MacDonald, ever a citizen of "the deeper a Victorian who introduced us to the immortal Alice, fairy-land of the soul," declared: and described the inhabitants of Looking-glass CounAll mirrors are magic mirrors...

...Make such your gods: they only understand...

...title of "actualist" would be a less misleading one...

...A shallow moralist may covered some of the lurking secrets of a mirror, as explain the longing as a supreme instance of human they studied their subjects by its means...

...rotted away, and where the coffin nails had been were only Today is the age of steel...

...quite commonplace and uninteresting...

...Mr...

...It would be vanity...

...torting power...

...Only when intentness of Narcissus, and quite apart from the con- Sir Lancelot, on his charger, was reflected there, and sideration of her own features or coloring...

...The presses, by means of which what they found to say was passed steel wrench I might easily have mistaken for the half-decayed from one to another of their time much in the same manner root of a tree, encrusted and eaten away as it was, by rust...

...The scientist admits that "the in the matter, either one way or the other, and hence it must remain a subject for conjecture...

...More than that, he beauty of November Eves and Tenebris Interlucensecures our deep interest in their most ordinary af- tum...

...Perhaps the Sane men have worshiped stranger gods than these...

...But the book is something better than a dethat was worthless or ill-looking was brought out into tached inquiry into the social phenomena of a group...

...On the one hand, there are three sides, blow the sand round and round and ever outward- many who claim to be possessed of indisputable facts, telling like the waters of a whirlpool...

...But in a world Out flew the web and floated wide...

...Massive foundations of stone, and Alice's first discovery in the looking-glass room was little else...

...It is of the type of a later comers-that these same people, or others of an earlier swamper's axe, double-edged, with a hole through the middle generation, did not also have their paper mills and printing for the handle to fit into, clear-cut as when first made...