ACROSS THE WALNUTS AND THE WINE. In after dinner talk. 1871.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, 29 June 1871

ACROSS THE WALNUTS AND THE WINE.

In after-dinner talk.  

               “Across the walnuts and the wine.”—Tennyson.

  

Among the smaller phenomena produced by the late gigantic war is to be seen that confusion of politics which our national anthem invokes against the Queen’s enemies. When the conflict began, since France was governed by an emperor, and Prussia was supposed to have constitutional tendencies, Liberals were inclined to take the latter side (independently of the immediate cause of quarrel, about which there were naturally two opinions), and our Conservatives the former. But now that the situation is reversed, and we have (at the time we write, at least) a republic in France and an emperor in Germany, our after-dinner politicians are sorely put to it.

 “Consistency may be the virtue of fools,” but the “eating of words” is distasteful even to the wisest. Thus, even Professor Puffington now ceases to be positive and is obliged to content himself with being plausible, while men of no opinions, and professional jokers, such as Mr. Caradog, who have never committed themselves to either side, are masters of the position. The “telegrams to our Augusta”—now more august than ever—have become a painful subject to him, and he is mercilessly twitted about the “moderation” of her William.  

In vain he explains his favorite’s altered conduct by the intoxication of victory, and falls back upon the poets: “You must understand, my friends, that

‘To play at the game when moves are Death,

Makes a man draw too short a breath.’”  

“In other words,” replies Thunderbombs the Major (thus the late Colonel speaks of “the breath of Germany’s nostrils”), “he does not know on which side his tail hangs!”  

“And where does that admirable quotation come from?” inquires Pinson Grey.  

It is evident that he does not mean the Colonel’s, and the Professor is only too happy to elude his foes by satisfying our divine’s curiosity. He repeats the whole of that wondrous poem, never so significant as now, while we listen with rapt looks and seem to hear the very

“Sound of the drums grow less and less,

Walking, like circles cast off from distress to see,

Stench steady the ranks of men,

Wheel and fall in and wheel again,

Softly as circles drawn with pen.”  

The battle is fought before our eyes, more visibly than ever painter drew it, from the very first, when

“A gaze there was of doubt and fear,

And the jest that died in the jester’s ear,

And preparation visible to see

Of all-accepting mortality—

Tranquil necessity gracing force,

And the trumpets danced with the stirring horse,

And lovely voices here and there,

Called to war through the gentle air.”  

Then suddenly, with its voice of doom,

“Spoke the cannon ’twixt fire and foam,

Making wider the dreadful room.”  

“I have read Homer,” says Pinson Grey in an ecstasy, “but this is the first time I have had a battle brought home to me!”  

“A great university scholar like yourself,” observes the Professor (now himself again), “should surely be more careful in his eulogies. Is it possible, then, you can regret not having made acquaintance with a poet of your own land, who has not even age to recommend him? Pooh!”  

“Death for death! The storm begins,

Hush! The drums in a torrent of dins,

Crush the muskets, task the war-words,

Shoes grow red in a thousand fords.

Now for the first and the cartridge bite,

Faint to the palate and stinging to sight,

Muskets are pointed, they scarce know where—

No matter! Murder is cluttering there.

‘Keep the line, boys, close up, close up!’

Death feeds him, and his food is his cup.

No time to be breather of thoughtful breath—

This the giver and taker of death till death.

See where comes the horse-tempest again,

A visible earthquake, bloody of mane!

Foes are upon us with edges of pain,

Crashing their spears and twice slaying the slain.

‘Victory, victory!’ Anathema’s plan—

Cannibal patience has done what it can,

Carved and been carved, drunk the drinker’s doing,

And now there is one that hath won the crown.

One pale visage stands lord of the land,

His to trumpet’s blow, street with his trumpet’s sway,

‘There is none to stir him, nay’—except,”  

“His trumpets,” interpolates Caradog. We should have frowned him down, but the Professor adds good-naturedly, “They and his horse!”  

“They and his horse, and bear him away,

They and his feet with a tired, proud flow,

Tattered escapers and women of woe.

Open, ye cities! Hats off! Hold breath to see

The man who has been with Death,

To see the man who determines right

By the virtue perplexing, virtue of might.

Sudden before him have ceased the drums,

And lo! at the edge of empire he comes.”  

“By Jove!” exclaims the Colonel (meaning “By Mars!”), in a burst of literary enthusiasm, “I should like to know the name of the fellow who wrote that!”  

“Why, it’s Hunt, of course,” said Mr. Bitter Aloes, savage with long-enforced silence. “Don’t you remember that Radical fellow with the white hat who made such a fuss at the time of the Reform Bill?”  

But the Professor took pains to correct that mischievous remark and to introduce the Colonel to a knowledge of the gentle Leigh, by far the most unappreciated poet that ever wrote English verse.  

“Why, there is not a picture by Weavermans that breathes the breath of battle half so naturally,” cried the Colonel. “I saw two or three of them in the Exhibition of the Old Masters yesterday.”  

“Quite true,” echoed Housewife, “but what a glorious Exhibition it was! This is the second year that our great folks have lent the contents of their galleries, while they say there are materials equally good for half a dozen such displays. And yet we are told that the English do not love art!”  

“Nay, rather, they love it not wisely, but too well,” observed the Professor. “They care for the name more than the thing itself, for the reputation more than for the merit. Can anything be more ridiculous than this outcry about the doubtful Turner? If it is as good as a Turner, what does it matter though it be by Jones or Robinson?”  

“Oh, by Bismarck!” interrupted Mr. Caradog, “who will not be an Old Master, they say, even though he’s Church Low-aim!”  

“It’s a question of the silver,” observed Mr. Macpherson, disregarding the miserable joker. “A Turner is worth muckle, and a Robinson not a bawbee.”  

“But why,” argued the Professor, “supposing they are equally good? That is just what I complain of in your art public. There is no reason in their admiration, but only prejudice and idolatrous devotion to great names. A bad picture by an Old Master is held in far higher estimation than a good one by a new hand. Why on earth—say on earth, for I hope it does not happen elsewhere—should such things be? It is only judges of art, as they call themselves, who are so blindly led. Nobody admires Count Robert of Paris because it was written by Sir Walter Scott, but because Sir Joshua Reynolds, forsooth, has perpetrated the portrait of a postboy pulling on his gaiters, he calls it a Colonel, and it’s No. 160 in the catalogue—let no dog bark, or venture to go ‘ow!’ Rubbish! Now, there are a score of similar monstrosities in that Exhibition—a very beautiful one, as a whole, I own—and yet because they are old, I am not to say they are ugly.”  

“I hope, my dear Professor,” said Mrs. Housewife slyly, “that you will always be restrained by this consideration when speaking of me.”  

“My dear madam,” and here he bowed, “there are some women to whom age only adds new beauties, as though the finger of Heaven, which is always beckoning to them, had touched and transfigured them. There are many such transferred to canvas in the Exhibition of which I speak. On the other hand, there are some old women hung up there who ought to be signs! There’s a street sketch, for instance, by no less a person than Peter Paul Rubens, called ‘The Rape of the Sabines,’ the figures of which are very mature. Lord Macaulay said of it that, if the ladies (none of whom can weigh less than seventeen stone) were like the portraits, two things astonished him in the historical transaction: first, that any man should desire to carry them off, and secondly, that any man should be found strong enough to do it. Again, there’s a picture by Giorgione, No. 227, which is really deserving of the highest credit, both for its prophetic inspiration and its good morals; it obviously prefigures a modern Refreshment Saloon, where the young ladies are waiting at the counters to serve the public with drink and viands, while, at the same time, it deprecates all meretricious attraction by representing those damsels as ill-favored as possible.”  

“Plain, though colored,” assented Mr. Caradog. “But if you want to see what malice a painter is capable of towards the nobler sex, contemplate the portrait of Peach Speare, No. 21, and with about that number of eggs to his knee breeches. It is by far the most humorous picture of the whole lot. Next to that (for time) is the ‘History of Yu-grain,’ by Filippino Lippi, doubtless priceless from its antiquity, but which would, even as a modern work, have had its value as an illustration to a comic periodical. In the ‘Angels Hovering in the Air,’ No. 273, by Botticelli, there are also fine strokes of humor. One has heard of an angel in the house, but three angels on the roof of a house have certainly not been heard of since the year 1471, when the great work in question was painted. There are also two angels by Il Moretto (Nos. 293 and 295), both evidently taking ‘sensation headers,’ whose attitude should be studied by all muscular Christians.”  

“My dear Caradog,” expostulated Mr. Bitter Aloes, “art, or at least high art, is too sacred a subject to be made a jest of. Everybody but yourself is conscious of the impropriety of doing so. I was standing opposite that dead-brown picture, No. 274, and observed to a friend that it looked as though it were sepia. ‘Sir,’ observed a bystander with grave face, who had just referred to his catalogue, ‘you have judged rightly; it is The Triumph of Scipio.’ I bowed my acknowledgments.”  

“Well, well, you may make fun of anything,” observed Housewife, “but an hour in that exhibition, rightly spent, is worth weeks of ordinary life. To see Arundel Mill by Constable is, for instance, to be transported into the country and anticipate the summer; to watch the waves of Fallsdacl is to be at the seaside; while, if human nature attracts you rather than landscape, you may behold youth made eternal by the brush of Gainsborough in that portrait (No. 108) of his nephew, Edward Gardiner, in my opinion the tenderest and most graceful that was ever drawn, and which puts the contrast, even the famous Blue Boy, in the cold shade. If you have anything cynical to say about that, Aloes” (for that gentleman was already parting his thin lips), “I had rather not hear it. Come, let us go upstairs.”  

“Why, one would really think he had loaned the picture and wanted to sell it,” muttered Aloes, as we adjourned to the drawing-room.  

Here we found my godson—for the housewives are not so unwise as to bring their boy to dessert, to the hurt of his own health and the interruption of their guests’ conversation—and the Professor and he at once foregathered as usual.  

“Now, Tom,” said he, “I’ve got a couple of riddles for you.”  

“New ones?” inquired the artless child, “or like that ‘Jack and Jill’ one?”  

“This is a boy that will be eaten by lions!” ejaculated the Professor. “I’ll write a storybook and make you the wicked character of it, young sir, I will! How dare you? ‘If they be not old, then what matters it how old they be,’ as Master Suckling (another boy who was too clever by half) expresses it. I don’t know whether they are new or not, but so far as I know, they have never been put in print. The first is a pretty one:

‘Divide a hundred and fifty by nought, at two-thirds of ten, so ends my riddle.’”  

“Why, if you divide anything by nought, it makes it nothing,” growled Mr. Bitter Aloes.  

“Does it?” rejoined the Professor. “Zach Macaulay’s schoolboy (only he was musical and not mathematical) would have been ashamed for such a display of ignorance. Young Tom will learn someday, Aloes, unless you make your way, that infinity is not nothing. C is fifty, is it not, and L is a hundred; divide them by nought, and we get COL. Add two-thirds of ten, and then we have COLENSO. That’s my riddle—COLENSO.”  

“The second is a little sum in arithmetic, so it is useless for Aloes to attempt it:

‘Two clerks are offered an addition to their salaries; one has a rise of five pounds every year, and the other of ten pounds every two years. Which of them has the better bargain, Master Tom, and by how much?’”  

—Chambers’s Journal