THOUGHTS AND FANCIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3829, 2 August 1927, Page 65

THOUGHTS AND FANCIES.

I am indebted to “ Carmencita,” one of the latest-joined members of the Cosy Corner Club, for making acquaintance with a present-day writer of distinction and charm—Grace Rhys. I had indeed met with her name, and knew that she was a writer of some literary standing; but books are so many and time for reading after one’s own pleasure so limited, that I had not come to know her. However, “ Carmencita’s ” quotation of Grace Rhys’s essay entitled “A Brother of St. Francis ” made me curious to see what Grace Rhys might have to say about such an unpromising subject as the pig, and what her quality of thought and style might be. I had a premonition that I should find her congenial. So the next time I was changing a book in the Carnegie Library I looked on the English essayists’ shelf for “ Rhys,” and found the little volume from which Carmencita quotes. .’lt was first published in 1920. and contains a large number of short essays. Some are very short, a page or two in length, a few only half a page. The authoress says in a short preface that “Essays” seems almost too formal a word for these writings, “ though they are truly attempts at expressing thought and the emotion of thought. I say emotion, because it seems to me that when we are most closely in contact with life, there comes, sometimes, a sort of stir, like the trembling of the water in the pool of Bethesda, and out of such inner movement a thought may be born. It is just this instant and circumstance of thought that I have tried to lay hold of

and render again. Each note or essay has been set down under the influence of that same movement of life. Nothing has been added that is not born out of a woman’s experience as she faces her ordinary everyday life.” As I feel "sure that a good many readers of these pages will be pleased with Grace Rhys’s tone of thought, I will fill my ppace this week with selections from her book of essays, which is entitled “About Many Things.” Her name indicates Welsh origin, and I think there is something Celtic in the quality of her imagination. I should judge that she grew up in Wales and in the country. Her essays show close observation of" natural things and imaginative insight. convey very strongly the note of personality which belongs to the true essayist; they are original without any straining after effect; thoughtful, sincere, and infused with poetic fancy. But I will let the essays speak for themselves. Here is what Grace Rhys says of the number six in nature •

“ Six has always been a neglected number. Everyone knows the dignity, the fatality that are attached to number three. Tlic Welsh bards could scarcely make a poem without it. Nine, as the square of three, has always been revered. IVe know that the ninth wave is the largest, the most terrible. As for seven, it is easily king among the numbers. Seven notes in the scale, seven days in the week, seven colours in the rainbow, and seven archangels. Thus it is that six, overshadowed by the. majesty of its sister numbers, has never had the honour that belongs to it by right, and here and now I desire to instate it. For is it not the water-number?

“ Water is altogether the slave, the servant of number six. Wherever it is found, whether in vapour or any other shape, it is ruled by number six. Wherever and on whatever star water appears, let the cold but visit it, and ice flowers and ice patterns must appear also; and wherever they are seen, there the number six rules, the patterns, infinite in variety, must all be six-rayed, six-starred, sixsided; the ice flowers must be six-petalled one and all. The block of ice. you pass in the fishmonger’s shop is just as inherently and mathematically the slave of six. Such a block is far from being simple thing it appears; any sun-ray falling upon it will unlock the crystal charm. The warm beam steals within, tlie shining points appear; six-petalled flowers of many shapes, made of water with ice walls, begin to form ; give the sun time, and the whole block will be cloven and split into blossom ; for it is built on the crystal plan ; its architecture exactly miraculous. And, the snow! We all know that the snowfalls in flower shapes and crystal wheels, all six-pointed.” Turning to flowers, Grace Rhys says that she searched among flowers of the i 'idow and hedgerow without finding a six-petalled one; five was the ruling number, seen inNthe petals of buttercup, redrobin, and hawthorn flowers; in the five-toothed ■ tubes of clover heads, and in numerous other flowers. The flowers seemed unfaithful to the xvater on which they depended for sustenance. “Then an idea came to me. AV hat if I went down to the water? I went, and behold! there stood the tall iris declaring the power of the water in noble, yellow, flag-like petals, threes and sixes. The water plantains, the flowering rushes, the actinocarpus, with its floating leaves and its fruit like a six-pointed star; the bog asphodel, with its sixrayed flower that loves to stand nitli wet feet —they all declared the power of the water. So do the bulb flowers that depend so greatly on water that thev 7 will grow in a vessel of clean stones if they but touch the water between. Each fresh discovery seemed more enchanting than the last. What is it fills the mind with a half-passionate excitement when it first catches a glimpse of such mysteries as these? It is almost as though for one heavenly moment one laid hold of the trailing garment of the great mother of us all.” From ** The Foot of the Wind : “ There are three things that leave the same track behind them: the feet of ; the wind on the loose sand, raising it in curves and ridges; the feet oi the ' wind on the water; and the feet of the water'on the sand. ‘‘ : “It was an October day, fine and i warm after a stormy night, when I first

really noticed the track of the wind on the sand dunes of Ynyslas. There, even unde? the thinly growing rushes, the sand was patterned with symmetrical curves and ridges exactly like those left by the tide on the shore. I was filled with wonder. The invisible was here made visible. Water and wind, then, were brother and sister, and moved and stepped alike. For a moment it was as though I had seen the footprints of an invisible companion treading beside my own.”

Grace Rhys goes on to tell of the wind’s foot on the clouds; the mackerel skies that repeat the wave pattern; and of cloud shadows trailing along the hills, and concludes:

‘•'The fish’s back, the shell, even the rocks sometimes carry the wind and water pattern most beautifully printed upon them. I have looked for the wind ripple in leaves and Howers, but cannot find it printed anywhere. But it is to be seen in June passing over the tops of meadows where the grass is deep.” The pig is called “ a brother of St. Francis,” because to that most lovable of saints all creatures were brethren, and the things of inanimate NatiuiP too: the air and the water, the wind and the light—rail things by which we live were seen as brothers and sisters of man.

“When talking to a wise friend a while ago I told her of the feeling of horror which had invaded me when ■watching a hippopotamus. ‘ Look at a pig,’ said the friend. ‘To think the same power should have created it that created, a star.’

“Those who love beauty and peace arc often tempted to scamp their thinking, to avoid the elemental terrors that bring night into the mind. Yet if the fearful things of life are there why not pluck up heart and look at them. Better have no Bluebeard’s chamber in the mind. Better go boldly in and see what hangs on the wall. So salt, so medicinal is truth, that even the bitterest draught may be made wholesome to the gentlest soul. So I would recommend anyone who can bear the weight of thinking to leave the flower garden and go down and spend an hour by the pigstv.”

The pig is truly an ugly creature. Plainly he belongs to an older world, “ the older world when first the mud and slime rose and moved, anj roaring, found a voice; aye, and no doubt enjoyed life, and in harsh and fearful sound praised the Creator at the sunrising.” The pig shows his origin by loving mud; but, allowed his liberty he will choose the clean mud of pond or stream. Humans arc often dirty—look at the dens of Txmdon. As for his other vices, gluttony, fierceness, and the rest, are tlinv not paralleled in human life? “The nig pushes his brother from the trough. Why, that is a commonplace of our life. There is a whole school of so-called philosophers and political economists busied in elevating the pig’s shove into a social and political necessity.” The authoress concludes :—

“Clearly, then, the pig is our good little brother, and we have no right to be disgusted at him. Clearlv stir own feet are planted in the clay. Clearlv we, too. have arisen from that fearful bed, and the slime of it clings to us still. . . . But let us (even those of us who have courage to know the worst of man) take heart. In the terror of our origin, in the struggle to stand unon our feet, to cleanse ourselves and cast an eye heaven-

ward, our glory is come by. The darker our naisance, the greater the terrors that have brooded round that strife, the more august and puissant shines the angel* in man.”

‘‘Arachne, or the Housekeeper,” is an appreciation of the work of the ordinary woman in her home. She is an artist, whose works are meant fo be demolished, whose labours must be perpetually renewed. “Her enemy of enemies is dust; dust that forever rises in the footsteps of man. Out of doors sweet Mother Nature, who abhors dust, lays her live green carpet wherever she possibly can, and securely binds it down. When her green carpet fails, the true terrors of dust are seen ; we get the charging dust storm a mile high, rattling like giant artillery, and slaying all before it. Within doors, but for the cleansing hand of the housekeeper, life would be hideous.” Unpaid and undervalued as are the services of the housewife, “ there is about her something of the priestess, something of mystery and dignity ; is she not an artist of life, weaving the indestructible out of the destructible? . . - She is the lifegiver and life-preserver.” Space allows of only one or two more short quotations. “ It matters little about scars, however, so that the life is unhurt. For what is the growing point of the mind? It is the living finger that the soul holds up to God. Clap an extinguisher on that growing point, and you may get sideways growths indeed, but never the predestined stature and grace. It is astonishing how the pressure of an ever so little insincerely held belief does thwart the mind. No yoke the bodv can bear is as grievous as the yoke of a lying belief upon the sotil.”

Spoken of the shaping power of thought and desire: — “ Even one fine taste will correct a plain exterior. I believe if an uglv common vouth bo but sincere and determined in his intellectual life, by the time be is 50 the very bones of his head will have risen up into a temple to do him honour. “ One desire is enough to adorn a countenance: have vou not seen a child with a passion for flowers gather something of (lower softness on its face? The dreamer will cause you to see visions. The compassionate countenance is like the open sky. “ And what if a man turn bis face toward a heavenly ideal? What if be set his steps c.n the hither end of the long radiant path that leads to perfection? Whv. then, lie will carry visibly in the daylight an illuminated brow. I have seen faces that secmeJ to me like the door into another world. He and His Beloved, are they not one? ”