Landscape with figures · OmniClassics

LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES _By_ RONALD FRASER _NEW YORK_ BONI & LIVERIGHT _MCMXXVI_ COPYRIGHT 1926 :: BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, +Inc.+ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES PREFACE This book is only an attempt to reproduce, in words, experiences that have come in contemplating the landscapes, flowers and figures in Chinese pictures and on their porcelain. It is the story of a human mind that follows the mysterious and half-wanton beckonings of such an experience until it is seized and understood. The originals of my three Chinese friends are to be seen in the print-room, the ceramic-room, and the Asiatic galleries of the British Museum. I am not attempting to convey any profound meaning, unless it be the meaning of that mystical proverb, “Everything comes to him who waits.” The system of thought that I attempt to reproduce is Chinese and very ancient. I have not been able to make up my mind whether it contains something of general value, or whether it is merely a thought-puzzle with which those who find pleasure in such occupations may amuse themselves. LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES 1 We take this flower-filled and graceful story of a summer visit to a valley of the Far East from the diaries and minutes of Ambrose Herbert. It grows from his leaves like an image of some choice, cultivated flower, some Asiatic lake-lily; there is, indeed, a delicate lily-smell, a faint water-smell, that teases the sense with a hint of queer landscapes, alien, impenetrable faces, in an unreal world of paradoxical dreams. Yet they visited the real heart of that image, these seven men who called themselves, in a vein of humour, the Seven Sages, and it appears that they scarcely held their own, when it came to philosophy, with the uncompromising practitioners of wisdom they found there. After all, they were Europeans. Men of considerable sensibility, they yet did not give the things of the spirit undue attention; still less did they permit any vision of the universe they might have had to interfere with their way of life. They lived by common-sense adjustment to the more obvious in circumstances, occasionally, at sentimental moments, following a chance gleam—but not following it too far. Five of them, that is. The other two had gone wrong. All seven were associated in business—Lord Sombrewater’s business—and he was their president. They travelled in his steam-yacht. In England it was their custom to dine once a week at Lord Sombrewater’s house or in his bamboo garden, to hear a little music perhaps, drink wine (except one of them), discuss life and the world. Now the industrial world was seething at this time, and Lord Sombrewater had seemed to retire his forces, leaving a picket here, an outpost there, a strong point where necessary, well held. He had withdrawn into the quiet of the ocean to mature plans, taking with him these friends and chief lieutenants, who had each something to contribute. Much business was done daily by wireless. He kept touch with reluctant Governments, and controlled his generals in charge of the field, with relentless hand. Ambrose remarks that a wise captain-general of industry will not omit to remember that the good faith of a deputy may fail, and he is certain that Lord Sombrewater, a silent man, harboured during his silences considerations of that order even in regard to his six friends. Ambrose Herbert was annalist and minute-writer to the Sages. He was not himself a Sage. He recorded the sagacity of others, fitted for this exercise by the passionless receptivity of his mind. Every morning, every hour, he swept his mind clean, so that he might receive unprejudiced the impressions of the day, and no doubt that is why the lineaments of the people in his records, and the scenery, are so clear. It came to his ears that this passivity was looked on doubtfully in a man not yet senile, not yet even middle-aged, hardly mature; it was complained that he had no character, except in his being characterless; it was thought unfortunate. But Lord Sombrewater thought otherwise. 2 The first time we see them they are in far eastern seas. Lychnis, who is Lord Sombrewater’s daughter, Ruby Frew-Gaff and her father (the tall, polished Sir Richard, with pale blue eyes, Lord Sombrewater’s chief physicist) are in the motor-launch with the light-bearded and bard-like Terence Fitzgerald and Ambrose himself. Something had gone wrong with the pelagic trawls that they used for capturing plants out of the ocean. It seems to them a rather strange and other-worldly ocean, like a sea in a picture, or on a vase. It is afternoon. There is a magical warm scent in the wind, as if they were near some land of delicate spring. Terence, the poet-painter-seer, is riding in the bows, but his soul is afloat. Sir Richard is busy with the apparatus, and the two girls, who have stolen a forbidden plunge in the sea, are clinging to the sides of the launch like wet sea-snails. The ship, into which the Sages have committed the weight of their philosophy, the _Floating Leaf_, painted the colour of the bamboo, heaves gently a quarter of a mile off on waves of a dark liquid green, which is compared with the green of some claret glasses they used, and as the afternoon wears on the sky becomes the same colour. Ambrose, as usual, takes occasion to note some details. He mentions the longitude, the latitude, the depth, and the temperature at various levels as registered by the deep-sea thermometer. In addition, he mentions some details with regard to the two girls; for instance, that their arms and legs (bloodless, because of the cold) make changing lights with their wet, plum-coloured bodies, and the patterns move rhythmically. There is no doubt which of the two he prefers. At least, whenever he describes them he gives Lychnis more space, possibly because she is far more complex in her nature and difficult to describe. He finds a key to the two girls in all their features. Ruby is red-haired, well-developed and dimpled. Her mouth is described as full and red, and (for those who have desires that way) of the kind which, more than any other that he has seen, Ambrose supposes might be thought kissable—that is to say, for an upstanding and not too subtle lover. Lychnis is called, amongst other things, flower-like or spritish. He speaks of a flower-like face, with some trace on it of spritish and fairy passion. Her mouth seems to arouse thoughts of a non-sensual order—in himself, that is, for he records a remark of the Sage Quentin that to kiss Lychnis on the lips would be to find heaven through the flames of sensation. But Ambrose asks, would a man want to maul the body of a primrose with his mouth? In writing of the afternoon under description, he takes opportunity to point out a relation between their minds and their physique. Ruby, with reddish hair and fine shining body, travels tirelessly in the sea like some fabulous, ocean-going fish, and she is not variable in her moods; but Lychnis slithers and plays in the fields of the sea fawn-like, and then she is to be seen at rest considering the waters, or grimacing behind a wave. Presently Sir Richard, discovering where they were, commanded them with tones of displeasure into the boat. Ruby, who had only done what her friend ordered, obeyed, and Lychnis, stopping first to nose under the stern as if she were a whale, followed. “This is really not very sensible,” he said, with an eye on their vascular systems. “Down below at once and get dressed.” Lychnis stood on the deck for a moment consulting her inward heart. With her it was not a question of obeying or not obeying. In all matters she followed some secret and rhythmic way that unfolded itself to her at a suitable time. Ambrose transfers a sketch of her, standing there in her plum-coloured bathing dress, to his white pages. He discusses her head, shown against sky and sea, as a subtle and beautiful relation of browns and ambers and pinks. Her eyes were a surprising brown, greenish in face of the light, and her eyelashes made a line of blackish purple when the eyelids were lowered. Her hair seemed amber, light amber to brown, but often it held coppery lights too, and a sort of deep heliotrope sheen and shadow, as now, against sunset. The bloom of her skin, he says, was too delicate to injure with human language—he only indicates a flush of health under the tan of sun and voyage, and a vividness of colouring that came when her feelings were high. He does tell us that her mouth utterly satisfied the mind, with its pink deeper than coral, and a stain of some still richer hue—he never can decide what it is, and vermilion-purple is the nearest he can come to it. She had a way of turning up the corners of her mouth at him. Ruby called it making a fox-face. Then he speaks, geometrically, of certain curves which presented her to notice as a young woman. He makes more than a score of attempts, one time and another, to convey the movement and fine beauty of those curves, to describe certain relations between one part of her and another. She replied to Sir Richard, showing small, sharp teeth and umber shadows in the delicious cavern of her mouth: “I couldn’t help it. There’s something funny in the afternoon, or in the sea—something that makes one feel dreamy.” He smiled indulgently at her. “What does it make you dream of, visionary, yet not unpractical Lychnis?” She answered his smile. “Do you remember the seascape in some dessert-plates of daddy’s at home? They came from Asia, I think—old, buried Asia. I thought I had got melted into that picture.” Ruby, willing and adoring slave of the finer girl, never venturing to move without her except under orders, called from the companion-way: “Do come, Licky darling.” And Licky, her inward heart at that moment speaking, did not refuse. But she repeated to Sir Richard, as she went off: “I believe we have got melted into a picture. We are going to have an adventure in a dessert-plate.” When the two young women came back again, clothed and glowing (we hear that the tiny cabin was electrically warmed), evening was on the sea. They drew off a little to watch their ship, a blotch of brown-green floating on deep green water under a sky of dissolving lemon fire. Terence Fitzgerald still rode in the bows, tall, rapt and motionless (except that a sigh would now and then escape him, with a sentence or two). For him such things as Ambrose notes, axes of reference and other matters of exact detail, were not of moment. He had a fair beard, and he was bard-like and communed with the lordly ones, riding in the bows of the boat. And presently, when the _Floating Leaf_ drifted across the disc of the sun, he lifted his hands up, and his brows furrowed in what Ambrose calls the pain of his vision. He spoke: “I saw a cloud of them like peach-blossoms blown over the sea.” “A cloud of what?” asked Sir Richard. “The beautiful people.” Sir Richard was tickled. “They went sunwards, with an ecstasy on their faces, and we are to follow them.” “Ecstasy’s all very well in these tricky waters, Terence, but I should prefer to see their navigation certificates.” Terence smiled. “Believe me or not, my scientific Richard, we are to find a heavenly country.” Lychnis gazed at him round-eyed and more or less believing. She was