That Very Mab

Mute stood the draper for a space,
The mystery to probe,
Alas! in that his hour of grace,
His eyes forsook the Seraph's face,
And rested on his robe.

And wildly did he seek in vain
To guess the strange material,
And golden fancies filled his brain,
And hopes of unimagined gain
Woke at the sight ethereal.

Then, suffered not by fate austere
The impulse to discard,
He never paused to idly veer
About the bush; but calm and clear
He said: 'How much a yard?'

A bright and tremulous lustre shone
Through the dull, dingy Strand,
From parting wings seraphic thrown;
And then, mute, motionless, alone,
Men saw the merchant stand.

In town to-day his memory's cold,
No more his name on 'Change is,
Idle his mart, his wares are sold,
And men forget his fame of old,
Who now in Earlswood ranges.

Yet evermore, with toil and care
He ponders on devices
For stuffs superlatively rare,
Celestial fabrics past compare,
At reasonable prices.

To him the padded wall and dead
With gorgeous colour gleams,
And huge advertisements are spread,
And lurid placards, orange, red,
Drive through his waking dreams.'

'Thank you,' said Queen Mab, 'that is very interesting; but I can't help being sorry for the merchant. For, after all, you know, it was his nature to. Is it not time, now, for us to go back?'

CHAPTER VIII. – THE BEAUTIFUL

'Tweet!' cried the sparrows, 'it is nothing!
It only looks like something.
Tweet! that is the beautiful.
Can you make anything of it?
I can't?'

    Hans Andersen.

'How exceedingly successful,' observed Queen Mab one day, 'the Permanent Scarecrows have been!'

'The Permanent Scarecrows?' said the Owl.

The winged and gifted pair had been on another visit to London, and Mab had found rows on rows of stucco houses, where she had left green fields, running brooks, and hedges white with may, on the northern side of the Strand.

'Yes 'said Mab 'you hardly ever see a crow now, where, in my time, the farmers were so much plagued by the furtive bird. But, as the crows have been thoroughly frightened off, and as there are now no crops to protect, I do think they might remove the permanent scarecrows.'

'Your Majesty's meaning,' said the Owl, 'is beginning to dawn on me. True, in your time there were no statues in London, and the mistake into which you have fallen is natural. You went away before the great development of British Art, and British Sculpture, and British worship of Beauty. The monuments you notice are expressive of our love of loveliness, our devotion to all that is fair. These objects of which you complain are not meant to alarm predatory fowls (though well calculated for that purpose) but to commemorate heroes, often themselves more or less predatory.'

'Do you mean to tell me?' asked Mab, 'that that big burly scarecrow, about to mend a gigantic quill with a blunt sword, was a hero?'

'He was indeed,' said the Owl, 'though I admit that you would never have guessed it from his effigy.'

'And that other scarecrow, all claws and beak, who blocks up the narrow street where the Dragon worshippers throng? Was he a hero?'

'He is believed by some to be the Dragon himself,' said the Owl; 'but no one knows for certain, not even the sculptor.'

'And the Barber's Block with the stuffed dog, looking into the Park?'

'He was a poet,' said the Owl, 'and expressed so much contempt for men that they retorted by that ridiculous caricature. Would you believe it, English sculptors actually quarrelled among themselves as to who made that singular and, for its original purpose, most successful scarecrow!'

'I don't wonder,' remarked the Queen, 'that birds of taste are rare in the Metropolis, and that, on the Embankment especially, a rook would be regarded as a kind of prodigy. Nowhere has the manufacture of permanent scarecrows been conducted with more ingenious success. But tell me, my accomplished fowl, have Britons any other arts? Long ago the men used to paint themselves blue, but, as far as I have remarked, the women are now alone in staining their cheeks with a curious purplish dye and their locks with ginger colour.'

'Among the Arts,' said the Owl, 'the modern English chiefly excel in painting. To-morrow, by the way, the shrine of Loveliness begins to open its gates. The successful worshippers, are admitted to varnish their offerings to Beauty, while the unsuccessful are sent away in disgrace, with their sacrifices. Suppose we go and examine this curious scene.'

'In Polynesia,' replied Mab, 'no well-meant offering is rejected by the gods.'

'The Polynesian gods,' answered the Owl, 'are too indiscriminate.'

On the next morning any one whose eyes were purged with euphrasy and rue might have observed an owl and a fairy queen fluttering in the smoky air above Burlington House. Here a mixed multitude of men and women, young and old, were thronging about the gates, some laughing, some lamenting. A few entered with proud and happy steps, bearing quantities of varnish to the goddess; others sneaked away with pictures under their arms, or hastily concealed the gifts rejected at the shrine of Beauty in the hospitable shelter of four-wheeled cabs.

'Let us enter,' said the Owl, 'and behold how wisely the Forty Priests of Beauty (or the Forty Thieves, as their enemies call them) and the Thirty Acolytes have arranged the gifts of the faithful.

Lightly the unseen pair fluttered past the servants of Beauty, nobly attired in gold and scarlet. They found themselves in a series of stately halls, so covered with pictures in all the hues of the aniline rainbow, that Queen Mab winked, and suffered from an immortal headache.

'How curious it is,' said Queen Mab, 'that of all the many thousand offerings only a very few, namely, those hung at a certain height from the floor, are really visible to any one who is neither a fairy nor a bird.'

'The pieces which you observe,' remarked the Owl, 'are almost in every case the work of the Forty Priests of Beauty, of the Thirty Acolytes, and of their cousins, their sisters, and their aunts. Those other attempts, almost invisible, as you say, to anyone but a bird or a fairy, have been produced by other worshippers not yet admitted to the Holy Band.'

'Then,' asked the Queen, 'are the Forty Priests by far the most expert in devising objects truly beautiful, and really worthy of the Goddess of Beauty?'

'On that subject,' said the Owl, 'your Majesty will be able to form an opinion after you have examined the sacrifices at the shrine.'

Swiftly as Art Critics the winged spectators flew, invisible, round the galleries, and finally paused, breathless, on the gigantic group of St. George and the Dragon, then in the Sculpture Room.