Things of Beauty
I SPENT most of last summer in London amid a political and economic world unutterably disheartening. At its nadir, I became suddenly conscious of a world of beauty about me. I still have that consciousness and am trying never to lose it.
It all began on the last day of the Economic Conference. Through its sweltering heat I had sat from morning till late afternoon. Instead of going home immediately, I stepped across Exhibition Road into the Victoria and Albert Museum and found my way to the Salting Bequest room of Chinese porcelains. I went there to rest and think, but stayed to admire and worship. For an hour I sat before a blue vase six or seven hundred years old, absorbing its beauty, the glory of its color, the grace of its curves, awed by the permanence of its contribution to life and the world. It typified for me the quiet, unobtrusive, enduring beauty always about us. The discouragements of the late Economic Conference seemed quite petty. I was a little ashamed of them and of myself. I forthwith forgot them and started a new page in my notebook entitled as is this sketch. I began to note things seen, heard, heard about, experienced, thought, felt, hoped for, dreamed, which would come under the category of beauty.
I was soon surprised at the number of entries. There was no artificial search on my part, for I wrote down only what came to me, but I found myself constantly more receptive. I was also soon astonished at the great number of different types of things noted. I found new beauties in mere words and sounds, and not only in their combinations with thought. I found that integrations of unlovely things often produced a previously ignored whole of beauty, and, on the other hand, that an unlovely whole often yielded by unconscious analysis beautiful components.
With this introduction I let my notebook speak for itself in the order of the insertions: —
A blue Chinese porcelain vase, Victoria and Albert Museum, Salting Bequest room.
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park on a rainy morning from the top of a bus.
The word combinations ‘Acton Vale,’ ‘Zlota Lipa.’
Alfred Noyes’s ‘Sherwood.’
View toward Whitehall from the bridge in St. James’s Park at dusk.
The last scene ofCavalcade.
Borrow’s dialogue in Laiengro about ‘ the wind on the heath.’
A little child relating a pleasant dream.
Kew Gardens.
Polished brass knockers on doors of dull dwellings.
Landseer’s lions at Trafalgar Square.
Any strong, gracefully arched bridge.
The prow of a boat.
The strong, assuring dignity of ‘O God, our help in ages past.’
The inexpressible religiousness of the Gregorian Chant.
Pietro Yon’s ‘Gesu Bambino.’
Bach’s ‘ Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,’
The lines: —
‘ Until some honourable deed be done.’
‘And caught the outstretched hands,’
‘Out of the cradle endlessly rocking.’
The words ‘Granada’ and ‘Monsalvat’ and ‘Isolde’ (spoken by a dying Tristan).
The hymn ‘ Where cross the crowded ways of life.’
The laughter of little children at play.
Rhodesian sunsets.
Captain Scott’s last letter to Barrie from his South Pole expedition.
The relations of Charles and Mary Lamb, following the tragedy.
Morning time; and tired shoulders of discouraged men, squaring themselves to another day.
The conception of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
A symphony concert, well conducted, in a large soft-toned hall, dimly lighted.
Sunday services at sea.
Hands of growing boys.
A child’s ambitions.
Evening chimes in a small town.
The increasing sense of responsibility in a small boy.
Curved streets in centres of small European towns.
Old Crome’s ’Mousehold Heath.
Vega on a clear night.
Corinthian columns actually supporting a fine entablature.
Lighthouses.
Memories of early morning hours of summer days, motoring with my family.
Memories of evening arrivals at warm, bright, comfortable hotels, after days of cold, rainy travel by auto.
Attended age, facing death, fearless and gentle.
The quiet restful dignity of old men’s clubs.
The care of the African natives for Livingstone’s body.
The death of Tiger Flowers, colored boxer, in a New York hospital, repeating ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’
The Lincoln Memorial, Washington.
A full-rigged sailing ship in mid-ocean, from a passing liner.
Courage amidst insignificance.
The monastic life, well lived.
Many a story of a sick child, such as: A social worker speaks to a little slum boy, hopelessly crushed by a drunken driver: ‘You know, when we die, we go to be with Jesus’; and the child replies, ‘I don’t want to go dead and be with Jesus; I want to play.’
Renan’s dedication of his Vie de Jesus to his sister Henrietta.
A neat, clean, simple balance sheet.
The line: ‘Euclid alone hath looked on beauty bare.’
The spire of Salisbury Cathedral.
The Sistine Madonna, alone in its room at Dresden.
St. Mark’s Square, Venice — late afternoon.
Occasional Oulad Nails.
The main foyer of the Pennsylvania Station, New York, from the steps to the east.
Taormina.
The windows of La Sainte-Chapelle.
The Court of the Bargello.
A Bruce Rogers title-page.
The curve of a ploughshare.
The angles of a propeller blade.
Ghirlandajo’s ‘Beatrice d’Este.’
My wife’s unquenchable joy in living.
Tea as an institution.
The sixth chord of ‘The heavens are telling,’ sung by a large male chorus.
P. C. Lutkin’s ‘Choral Blessing.’
The names ‘Fragonard,’ ‘Robin Hood,’ ‘Lavengro.’
The lines from Shelley: —
‘ Islanded in the immeasurable air.’ ’Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.’
Modesty, any time, any place, viewed from any angle.
Peaceful cooperation of dissentient groups toward worth-while ends.
Uncompromising doggedness of purpose when compromise is fatal to ends involved.
Memory of reading in Cracow about my wife and our two children standing on the Thames Embankment at Chelsea, Sunday evening, August 20, 1933, looking at the sunset; and the little girl saying, ‘Mother, this has been a good Sunday.’
Der Englische Garten, Munich,
Memory of September 15, 1933, going down Southampton Water toward the Deutschland, which was to bear us home to the States, with a sleek Cunarder on our right, bound for South Africa, and a long, spotless Dutch vessel that in several weeks would touch at Singapore, and on to Java.
Percy Grainger’s ‘Country Gardens,’ particularly several chords which sound lavender to me.
Strauss’s ‘Beautiful Blue Danube,’ played on summer evenings in the Stadtpark, Vienna — even though the Danube is neither beautiful nor blue at V ienna.
A direct blood transfusion between close friends.
Memory: leaving Tunis, April 1920, old lady and granddaughter weeping bitterly for hours as they gazed backward from the ship’s stern; but late in the afternoon, calm, dry-eyed, girl asleep on the grandmother’s lap, they sit in the prow, looking forward to Sicily.