The Dwarf Giant

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

I CANNOT help irreverently wondering at times what the Folk-Lorelei of some centuries hence will make out of the fairy tales of Mr. Frank R. Stockton. I willingly leave this bewildering speculation, however, to pay a debt of gratitude to Mr. Stockton, of many years’ standing, for one of his fairy stories has helped me more than half the volumes of philosophy I have read. It was written in the most charming, whimsical Stocktonese, and was all about Giant Dwarfs, Ordinary People, and Dwarf Giants.

It seems that the King of the Dwarfs was considered a giant, and therefore was much looked up to, as he was head and shoulders taller than his countrymen. Of course he was not a real giant; for though quite the largest and handsomest person in the kingdom, he shared the essential littleness of his people, and was, instead, a Giant Dwarf.

Now, when his daughter had arrived at the age of sixteen (she, too, was a Giant Dwarf), the king decided that she should devote a month or two to her education. But as there was in his own realm no institution of learning which came up to his enlarged ideas, he determined to take the princess to a neighboring kingdom where Ordinary People lived, and enter her in the great university which was devoted exclusively to the education of the young prince of that nation. So with the princess and a small retinue of dwarfs he set out. When he arrived at the capital, however, he found to his intense chagrin that he, the Giant Dwarf, was no taller than an Ordinary Person, and that, far from receiving the attention to which his rank entitled him, he was looked upon as a traveling showman, and his daughter was refused permission to enter the university. The rage of the King of the Dwarfs can be imagined. Day after day he strode through the streets, telling his wrongs to every one he met, and protesting that he was not an Ordinary Person at all, but a Giant Dwarf.

One lucky day he happened on another foreigner, who at first looked noway different from an Ordinary Person, but, on watching him closely, you gradually became aware of several peculiarities. In the first place, he had a habit of unconsciously looking upward from time to time ; and then there was a calmness in his eyes when he gazed at the Ordinary People about, a largeness of manner and nobility of gesture, that under the circumstances were almost grotesque. He was, in reality, a Dwarf Giant, and through his sympathetic aid the daughter of the Giant Dwarf obtained permission to spend a week at the young prince’s university; in the end, as happens in every well-regulated fairy tale, she married the prince.

The moral of this story did not occur to me when I read it; and not till long afterward, in a wholly unexpected fashion, did I realize it with any distinctness, — not, in fact, till Nicholas Boylston made it all clear.

Every one liked Boylston, but I am not quite sure that he returned the compliment unreservedly. He was a rather shy fellow, and in a noisy crowd always the quietest. He detested the conventions of society, and yet his own unassuming manners were the perfection of good taste. The only way in which he distressed those of us in whose particular circle he nominally belonged was by constantly wandering about with queerlooking people whom we did not know, and who seemed to us hopelessly commonplace. If you took a country walk of a Sunday afternoon, you were sure to find Boylston strolling along with one of his odd fish, gravely discussing some problem of Idealism; or if you happened to row up the river, and shot into an unexpected nook, there was Boylston sprawled on the grassy bank, his hat over his face, with some pale enthusiast reading him manuscript verses.

One day, as he was about to start off and was tucking a book in his pocket, I complained bitterly. “ Why on earth do you prowl around with Thingabob ? ” I protested ; “ he’s so confoundedly ordinary ! ” (I think I wanted him to play tennis with me.)

“ My dear fellow,” he replied, — his voice was always very pleasant and grave, — “in the first place, you don’t know anything about Thingabob; and in the second, I have the best of reasons, — he’s a Dwarf Giant.”

I could have hugged Boylston on the spot. Not only had he given me, as he said, the best of reasons, but, by a miracle of coincidence, for the phrase was unmistakable, he too had read, when he was a boy, the particular Stockton tale I had once loved and almost forgotten. Best of all, however, he had recovered for me a term which was in itself a justification, if any were needed, for one or two of my own friends. And since then, oddly enough, the persons whom I have most delighted in, although I could never, like Boylston, feel quite at home with them, have been Dwarf Giants.

Possibly you will not recognize a Dwarf Giant when you first meet him, for not until, by long practice, you have obtained clearness of vision will you be able to detect him among a crowd of Ordinary People ; but in time you will come to know him.

One evening I was in a front seat at the Globe Theatre, waiting for the curtain to rise. During the overture, a flimsy, nondescript affair, I grew tired of looking at the people as they rustled in, and turned to watch the orchestra. It was the usual theatre orchestra: a group of ill-assorted men, indiscriminately clothed in shiny black, blowing and fiddling in a perfunctorily blatant fashion. But I soon picked out the ’cellist who sat directly in front of me. He was over sixty, I should judge, and although his shoulders stooped as he leaned slightly forward in his chair, I could see that he must be taller than the others. His face was smoothly shaven, clean-cut, and very white except where an old scar traced a thin, even line across one high cheek-bone, and his thick irongray hair was brushed smoothly back from his forehead. His black suit, although very old, was immaculately brushed, and hung about him loosely with an air of reminiscent, almost forgotten distinction. I soon differentiated the sound of his ’cello from that of the other instruments. His playing was not the perfunctory performance of his companions ; there was a breadth and sweetness in his tone, a suave cleanness and dignity in his phrasing, that when you noticed his share of it alone came near redeeming the overture ; and yet you could see that he did not care for what he was obliged to play, but did it that way simply because he unconsciously could not bring himself to do it differently.

After the curtain had fallen on the first act, I leaned over and said to him, “ That orchestration was vile, — you did n’t care for it ? ”

“ Natürlich ! ” he answered, smiling at me without the least surprise.

Then we had a long half-whispered talk with each other across the railing, and at last he told me much about himself, although only that which concerned his profession ; for there was a fine reserve in his courtesy, and I was far from feeling like committing an impertinence. He told me that he had begun with the ’cello when he was a hoy ; that years ago he had played for a little while in the great Gewandhaus Orchestra at Leipzig, but his health had broken down (he looked like a man who had at one time been nearly engulfed) ; that once he had studied orchestration with Robert Franz, and once he had met and talked with Robert Schumann. He spoke of them with deep respect, yet quietly, as with a simple belief that, after all, they were his own kinsmen. We discussed many great moderns, — he was very patient. I remember saying to him, “ And Wagner ? ”

“ Prächtig ! erstaunend ! pöbelhaft ! " he whispered back.

Then the leader rattled his baton, the trivial music began again, and my friend turned to his ’cello, smiling, — to me, henceforth, a Dwarf Giant. A month later, when I went again to the theatre, he was gone, and a fat little man sat in his chair, looking very vulgar and jolly.

Finally, I must pay my tribute to the greatest Dwarf Giant I have ever had the honor of meeting. I am willing to do it only because I feel sure that he will never see this. If he should, however, it would not disturb his high serenity ; he would understand the motive which prompts me, and with rare magnanimity forgive the unwarranted liberty I take.

Several years ago, a friend came to me asking if I knew any one who wished to exchange lessons in English for instruction in Hebrew. The proposition was so unusual that I could think of no one, unless some enthusiast should turn up who wished to read the book of Job in the original. My friend told me that he had learned of a little old man who was trying to publish a book of philosophy, over which he had spent many years; but he wrote only in Hebrew, and was too poor to pay for having his work translated, — too poor even to pay for lessons in English. To support himself he kept a little cobbler shop. The picture thus called up was a strangely discrepant one for our nineteenth - century America, — it belonged more to another world, another century ; he should have lived in Rijnsburg, where in 1660 another philosopher of his great race, Baruch Spinoza, was a polisher of lenses. But as my friend and I could think of no solution of the Hebrew-English problem, I soon drove the haunting figure of the cobbler from my mind.

Fortunately he found other friends, great-hearted men who, touched by his lifelong devotion to the noblest of speculations, his heroic self-sacrifice, and the dignity of his claim, helped him finally to publish his book. After that, he was obliged to canvass for it himself ; and among a list of names that were given him of those who might perhaps purchase his work was my own.

One morning there came a rap at my door. At an impatient “ Come in ! ” it opened softly, and a little old man entered. I cannot quite tell why I was at once sure who he was. I scarcely noticed the long black frock coat buttoned tightly about his shrunken figure ; the queer silk hat, ancient and worn and neat, which he held in a black-cotton-gloved hand ; the small frayed white lawn cravat; for his wonderful face riveted my attention. It was aged and hollow-cheeked; his gray beard and hair were very thin ; his Jewish nose was higharched and sensitive ; his eyes, however, small and deep-set, were startlingly brilliant. His whole face was singularly colorless; the expression was a disquieting complexus of keen intellectuality, unspeakable sadness, and calm nobility. Without a single good feature, with a face old and haggard and unearthly, he yet seemed to me, at the moment, absolutely beautiful.

He bowed and addressed me as “ Herr Doctor.” Now, when some persons bestow on you a title you do not rightly possess, you take a distorted, irritated pleasure in promptly setting them right; when a very few others do it, however, you instinctively feel that the question involved is, not your dignity, but theirs. So I accepted the phrase and bowed in return. Our interview was short, and I cannot write about it: we found very little to say to each other, — indeed, there was really nothing to be said. I purchased his book, and he thanked me gently and with a rare simplicity, wholly unconscious that I was the one who should feel gratitude. Then the little old philosopher went out, leaving me with an impression which it is beyond me to describe.

Of his book, The Disclosure of the Universal Mysteries, I am not qualified to speak, but here are one or two comments from men better fitted to judge. “ Much in it reminds me of Spinoza,” writes Professor Duncan of Yale, “ and impresses one as being the production of a vigorous mind that has worked on the profound questions of philosophy in isolation from the general currents of modern speculation. It is all the more noteworthy from this fact.” Professor William James writes of the book to Professor Seligman of Columbia : “ There is a spiritedness about his whole attempt, a classic directness and simplicity in the style of most of it, and a bold grandeur in his whole outlook, that give it a very high æsthetic quality ; ” and then, to the author himself : “ You are really a first cousin of Spinoza, and if you had written your system then, it is very likely that I might now be studying it with students, just as Spinoza now is studied.”

Here, then, is a Dwarf Giant of the most perfect type, dwarfed solely through an accident of birth, — in this case through being born an anachronism. As Nicholas Boylston once said of his queer friends to me, “ You set out to scoff, and at last, with a heartache for them, thank God you have known them.”

But you will often find a Dwarf Giant nearer home than you suspect, though not so often as you will find Giant Dwarfs. These last are a noisy people, and usually to be avoided. But some night a friend whom you think you know well will come to your room and sit in the firelight a long time silent. Then, little by little, he will betray himself. He will tell you thoughts of his that reveal a greater nature than you imagined he had ; that reveal a soul so much greater than your own that you feel small and helpless beside him. His face, however plain, will light up with an unexpected nobility, a new and larger beauty. And you will know that you have entertained a Dwarf Giant unawares.