The Hive :: 25

ROMANCE

Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that pay. We keep in touch with the world—that is practical mysticism. We rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required.

Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher workmanship. Romance—each has his idea of that. Each does his best by that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very well:

Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the world—to be with them one at a time. In the Rockies or in the misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and sense. One will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels, foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will mean the sun betin desert—camels, and men stooping over a fire. They are all my comrads.
Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down. They were wounderful days—those. I got right to the heart of Fred, and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me. Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way.
The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot last long—for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads, horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great future—all ahead—my comrads—all comrads—the world will be all comrads!

All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means not to stay! It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss his train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no grey confronting of misery—like that of meeting one's own commonness catching up.

It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain....

There is something to do with martyrdom in my dream of Romance in later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word—a singing about it. The name Kuru t'ul Ayn comes to my mind in thoughts of Romance—"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked through the door of heaven in her eyes—some haunting mystery there of beauty and bestowal—the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of life, transcending every man-made institution.

One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door to the dusk,—baby heads weaving under her hands—warm air coming up from the valleys, but his step not coming that night.... Here is a suggestion from one of her letters:

Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for the Stranger's dinner—tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look back to see how sweet the purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom—could there be a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with open arms out there. We all send white love to you—our waiting Mary!

Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the passers-by—always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of Romance follow, from the twelve-year period:

The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the plough, in the peasant's body—dissatisfaction with self and surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much simple blackness. It is just that, which gives him the power to stand up against the ways he has known so long—to stand up for himself—to push the new vague dreams through to life and light. It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that would come to the peasant would be to the Town—to many men and things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find—to the extreme.

The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness, satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks, until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls of the "white torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile, and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light around them is really not a light at all—just a colour, a cold, grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they had anything to do with you, any power over you—you could laugh at them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness hurts you. They can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great inner glowing—the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also, to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic Ruffians—a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter."

She paints the City Street a bit darker in this:

Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men—little men, following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints its pain upon our souls. And their women now—with faces wanting, always wanting, everything in them wanting! I have been carried away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass—little men following.

... The pain of utter isolation—somehow this means Romance to me, in a deeper fold of being. Isolation—the hate of an undivided people—a man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has something to do with the coming of Saviours.

Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is martyrdom.... I tell all this from time to time in tales—but only the children seem to understand....

Romance—I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and pathetic to me—but under it all—the endless iteration of the Soul: "Here is a man—as much me as myself!" A call in that—always a call in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all.

I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment—and that's why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. That is Romance.

There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now.... I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him taking his woman in his hands—half laughing, half crying, their faces upturned—one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that.

I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl:

... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me—to give all to the Coming Generation—to acknowledge the New Race as one's God—remembering always that all Gods are jealous Gods."

It's all in that, our dream of Romance—Democracy, the Planetary Hive.

I am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer to the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, martyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be a master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what we mean, as a group,—what we mean about many things. This is not a marketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place for itself just here in this book.

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