Things near & far Chapter 23: Part 23

and strange it was to think that within a foot or two of those closely curtained windows the common life of London moved on the common pavement, as supremely unaware of what was being done within an arm’s length as if our works had been the works of the other side of the moon. All this was very fine; an addition and a valuable one, as I say, to the phantasmagoria that was being presented to me. But as for anything vital in the secret order, for anything that mattered two straws to any reasonable being, there was nothing of it, and less than nothing. Among the members there were, indeed, persons of very high attainments, who, in my opinion, ought to have known better after a year’s membership or less; but the society as a society was pure foolishness concerned with impotent and imbecile Abracadabras. It knew nothing whatever about anything and concealed the fact under an impressive ritual and a sonorous phraseology. It had no wisdom, even of the inferior or lower kind, in its leadership; it exercised no real scrutiny into the characters of those whom it admitted, and so it is not surprising that some of its phrases and passwords were to be read one fine morning in the papers, their setting being one of the most loathsome criminal cases of the twentieth century. And yet it had and has an interest of a kind. It claimed, I may say, to be of very considerable antiquity, and to have been introduced into England from abroad in a singular manner. I am not quite certain as to the details, but the _mythos_ imparted to members was something after this fashion. A gentleman interested in occult studies was looking round the shelves of a second-hand bookshop, where the works which attracted him were sometimes to be found. He was examining a particular volume--I forget whether its title was given--when he found between the leaves a few pages of dim manuscript, written in a character which was strange to him. The gentleman bought the book, and when he got home eagerly examined the manuscript. It was in cipher; he could make nothing of it. But on the manuscript--or, perhaps, on a separate slip laid next to it--was the address of a person in Germany. The curious investigator of secret things and hidden counsels wrote to this address, obtained full particulars, the true manner of reading the cipher and, as I conjecture, a sort of commission and jurisdiction from the Unknown Heads in Germany to administer the mysteries in England. And hence arose, or re-arose, in this isle the Order of the Twilight Star. Its original foundation was assigned to the fifteenth century. I like the story; but there was not one atom of truth in it. The Twilight Star was a stumer--or stumed--to use a very old English word. Its true date of origin was 1880–1885 at earliest. The “Cipher Manuscript” was written on paper that bore the watermark of 1809 in ink that had a faded appearance. But it contained information that could not possibly have been known to any living being in the year 1809, that was not known to any living being till twenty years later. It was, no doubt, a forgery of the early ’eighties. Its originators must have had some knowledge of Freemasonry; but, so ingeniously was this occult fraud “put upon the market” that, to the best of my belief, the flotation remains a mystery to this day. But what an entertaining mystery; and, after all, it did nobody any harm. It must be said that the evidence of the fraudulent character of the Twilight Star does not rest merely upon the fact that the Cipher Manuscript contained a certain piece of knowledge that was not in existence in the year 1809. Any critical mind, with a tinge of occult reading, should easily have concluded that here was no ancient order from the whole nature and substance of its ritual and doctrine. For ancient rituals, whether orthodox or heterodox, are founded on one _mythos_ and on one _mythos_ only. They are grouped about some fact, actual or symbolic, as the ritual of Freemasonry is said to have as its centre certain events connected with the building of King Solomon’s Temple, and they keep within their limits. But the Twilight Star embraced all mythologies and all mysteries of all races and all ages, and “referred” or “attributed” them to each other and proved that they all came to much the same thing; and that was enough! That was not the ancient frame of mind; it was not even the 1809 frame of mind. But it was very much the eighteen-eighty and later frame of mind. I must say that I did not seek the Order merely in quest of odd entertainment. As I have stated in the chapter before this, I had experienced strange things--they still appear to me strange--of body, mind and spirit, and I supposed that the Order, dimly heard of, might give me some light and guidance and leading on these matters. But, as I have noted, I was mistaken; the Twilight Star shed no ray of any kind on my path. * * * * * It was towards the end of 1900 that I perceived that as I had lost sight of the admirable Syon, so Bagdad was wearing badly enough. I have seen from the train the architecture of the “White City” in these recent years. It was never anything at its best, assuredly; never anything save foolishness. Still, lit up on a summer night, with its extravagant towers and walls, pavilions and domes and minarets, with all its fretted and fantastic work, with its still lakes and pouring waterfalls; in those old days before the war I have no doubt that it symbolised joy and enchantment to young and simple hearts. But afterwards, when long neglect had told upon it, when winter rains had wept upon its walls and soot showers had drifted on its pavilions, when the summer suns had scorched its whiteness, and black March winds had torn its feigned embroideries and false ornaments, when many autumn storms had beat upon its plaster battlements and the waterfalls were stilled and the lakes were become obscene pits of slime and rubbish--what an ugly mockery it stood there, an idiot’s city fallen into ruin, a scenic fairyland in evil days. So my Bagdad became like the “White City,” magic down at heel, its enchantments silly and clumsy tricks, its mystic architecture a shabby sham, its strange encounters, meetings with people who turned out to be bores or worse than bores. You know the story of the fairy gold: at night the man who had had happy commerce with the People of the Hills found himself enriched with boundless and wonderful treasure; but in the morning the marvel of gold had all turned into a heap of dead leaves; such was my case. And here I am moved to wonder, as I often wonder, whether what we call “fairy tales” do not in fact contain a curious wisdom and the secrets of a very strange and mysterious psychology. Take this old tale of the fairy gold and its transmutation into ugly rubbish, as an example. To most of us it is a tale and nothing more than a tale; without any reason, without any meaning, without any sort of sense or significance in it. We accept it just as a piece of picturesque fancy and nothing more; the turning of the magic gold into leaves was just a happy notion of the unknown and remote individual who made up the story. But suppose that there is something more than this: rather, something quite different from this. I am well aware, of course, of the various explanations of the fairy mythology; the fairies are the gods of the heathen come down in the world: Diana become Titania. Or the fairies are a fantasy on the small, dark people who dwelt in the land and under the land before the coming of the Celts; or they are “elementals,” spirits of the four elements: there are all these accounts, and, for all I know, all may be true, each in its measure. But is it possible that there is, now and then, a more hidden and interior sense in some of the tales of the fairyland and the fairies? I am inclined to think that this may be so; that the stories may be--occasionally, not always by any means--the veils of certain rare interior experiences of mankind; experiences, I may say, which are best avoided. The gold faded into dead leaves; it may be more than an idle tale. At any rate, it was a very dismal disenchantment to me when I woke up and found that I was not the Commander of the Faithful, that the fair Circassian was, in fact, a native not of Circassia but of Clapham, that Bagdad was not Bagdad at all, but a London “Exhibition” fallen into very bad repair and urgently in need of tacks and whitewash. The Palace was not habitable; rain was coming in through cracks and rents in the marble that was plaster on the head of him who for a time had been Haroun Alraschid, who now began to suspect that his real style and title was Silly Fool. And then I went on the stage, which is a world of illusion certainly, but of a much less harmful illusion than that of plaster-Bagdad and fairy gold and the hall under the hill. I have wondered at times why there is no good novel of the stage. But a little consideration shews that there can be no such thing. George Moore wrote long ago a clever book called “A Mummer’s Wife.” It is a capital book, and I should think a very faithful impression of a “Cloches de Corneville” touring company in the early ’eighties. I would say of an individual “Cloches de Corneville” company, for the characters strike one as portraits of particular people; there is nothing of the universal about the book, nothing of the essence of the stage life. And it is probably impossible to write the real novel of the stage, for the good reason that the stage is not one but many. In the old days, in the days of the Crummles Company, it would have been easier. The actor of those days was supposed, till he had proved his supreme eminence in one particular line of business, to be capable of all. He was to play “Hamlet,” he was also to go on in the Farce, he was to dance a hornpipe between the acts, he was always to be ready with a song;