Visionaries. James Huneker
She took a key from her pocket and, going down several steps, beckoned to him. Baldur followed. His interest in this modern Cassandra and her bizarre words was too great for him to hesitate or to realize that he would get himself into some dangerous scrape. And was this truly the Mrs. Whistler whose tricks of telepathy and other extraordinary antics had puzzled and angered the wise men of two continents? He did not have much time for reflection. A grilled door opened, and presently he was in a room furnished very much like a physician's office. Electric bulbs, an open grate, and two bookcases gave the apartment a familiar, cheerful appearance. Baldur sat down on a low chair, and Mrs. Whistler removed her commonplace headgear. In the bright light she was younger than he had imagined, and her head a beautifully modelled one—broad brows, very full at the back, and the mask that of an emotional actress. Her smoke-coloured eyes were most remarkable and her helmet of hair blue black.
"And now that you are my guest at last, Mr. Baldur, let me apologize for the exercise of my art upon your responsive nerves;" she made this witch-burning admission as if she were accounting for the absence of tea. To his relief she offered him nothing. He had a cigarette between his fingers, but he did not care to smoke. She continued:—
"For some time I have known you—never mind how! For some time I have wished to meet you. I am not an impostor, nor do I desire to pose as the goddess of a new creed. But you, Irving Baldur, are a man among men who will appreciate what I may show you. You love, you understand, perfumes. You have even wished for a new art—don't forget that there are others in the world to whom the seven arts have become a thrice-told tale, to whom the arts have become too useful. All great art should be useless. Yet architecture houses us; sculpture flatters us; painting imitates us; dancing is pure vanity; literature and the drama, mere vehicles for bread-earning; while music—music, the most useless art as it should have been—is in the hands of the speculators. Moreover music is too sexual—it reports in a more intense style the stories of our loves. Music is the memory of love. What Prophet will enter the temple of the modern arts and drive away with his divine scourge the vile money-changers who fatten therein?" Her voice was shrill as she paced the room. A very sibyl this, her crest of hair agitated, her eyes sparkling with wrath. He missed the Cumæan tripod.
"There is an art, Baldur, an art that was one of the lost arts of Babylon until now, one based, as are all the arts, on the senses. Perfume—the poor, neglected nose must have its revenge. It has outlived the other senses in the æsthetic field."
"What of the palate—you have forgotten that. Cookery, too, is a fine art," he ventured. His smile irritated her.
"Yes, Frenchmen have invented symphonic sauces, they say. But again, eating is a useful art; primarily it serves to nourish the body. When man was wholly wild—he is a mere barbarian to-day—his sense of smell guarded him from his foes, from the beasts, from a thousand dangers. Civilization, with its charming odours of decay—have you ever ventured to savour New York?—cast into abeyance the keenest of all the senses. Little wonder, then, that there was no art of perfume like the arts of vision and sound. I firmly believe the Hindoos, Egyptians, and the Chinese knew of such an art. How account for the power of theocracies? How else credit the tales of the saints who scattered perfumes—St. Francis de Paul, St. Joseph of Cupertino, Venturini of Bergamo?"
"But," he interrupted, "all this is interesting, fascinating. What I wish to know is what form your art may take. How marshal odours as melodies in a symphony, as colours on a canvas?" She made an impatient gesture.
"And how like an amateur you talk. Melody! When harmony is infinitely greater in music! Form! When colour is infinitely greater than line! The most profound music gives only the timbre—melodies are for infantile people without imagination, who believe in patterns. Tone is the quality I wish on a canvas, not anxious drawing. So it is with perfumes. I can blend them into groups of lovely harmony; I can give you single notes of delicious timbre—in a word, I can evoke an odour symphony which will transport you. Memory is a supreme factor in this art. Do not forget how the vaguest scent will carry you back to your youthful dreamland. It is also the secret of spiritual correspondences—it plays the great rôle of bridging space between human beings."
"I sniff the air promise-crammed," he gayly misquoted. "But when will you rewrite this Apocalypse? and how am I to know whether I shall really enjoy this feast of perfume, if you can simulate the odour of iris as you did an hour ago?"
"I propose to show you an artificial paradise," she firmly asserted. In the middle of the room there was a round table, the top inlaid with agate. On it a large blue bowl stood, and it was empty. Mrs. Whistler went to a swinging cabinet and took from it a dozen small phials. "Now for the incantation," he jokingly said. In her matter-of-fact manner she placed the bottles on the table, and uncorking them, she poured them slowly into the bowl. He broke the silence:—
"Isn't there any special form of hair-raising invocation that goes with this dangerous operation?"
"Listen to this." Her eyes swimming with fire, she intoned:—
As I came through the desert thus it was,
As I came through the desert: Lo you there,
That hillock burning with a brazen glare;
Those myriad dusky flames with points aglow
Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro;
A Sabbath of the serpents, heaped pell-mell
For Devil's roll-call and some fête in Hell:
Yet I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
He did not seem to hear. From out the bowl there was stealing a perfume which overmastered his will and led him captive to the lugubrious glade of the Druids. …
III
THE CIRCUS OF CANDLES
Comme d'autres esprits voguent sur la musique,
Le míen, ô mon amour! nage sur ton parfum.
—Baudelaire.
He was not dreaming, for he saw the woman at the bowl, saw her apartment. But the interior of his brain was as melancholy as a lighted cathedral. A mortal sadness encompassed him, and his nerves were like taut violin strings. It was within the walls of his skull, that he saw—his mundane surroundings did not disturb his visions. And the waves of dolour swept over his consciousness. A mingling of tuberoses, narcissus, attar of roses, and ambergris he detected in the air—as triste as a morbid nocturne of Chopin. This was followed by a blending of heliotrope, moss-rose, and hyacinth, together with dainty touches of geranium. He dreamed of Beethoven's manly music when whiffs of apple-blossom, white rose, cedar, and balsam reached him. Mozart passed roguishly by in strains of scarlet pimpernel, mignonette, syringa, and violets. Then the sky was darkened with Schumann's perverse harmonies as jasmine, lavender, and lime were sprayed over him. Music, surely, was the art nearest akin to odour. A superb and subtle chord floated about him; it was composed of vervain, opoponax, and frangipane. He could not conceive of a more unearthly triad. It was music from Parsifal. Through the mists that were gathering he savoured a fulminating bouquet of patchouli, musk, bergamot, and he recalled the music of Mascagni. Brahms strode stolidly on in company with new-mown hay, cologne, and sweet peas. Liszt was interpreted as ylang-ylang, myrrh, and maréchale; Richard Strauss, by wistaria, oil of cloves, chypre, poppy, and crab-apple.
Suddenly there developed a terrific orchestration of chromatic odours: ambrosia, cassia, orange, peach-blossoms, and musk of Tonkin, magnolia, eglantine, hortensia, lilac, saffron, begonia, peau d'Espagne, acacia, carnation, liban, fleur de Takeoka, cypress, oil of almonds, benzoin, jacinth, rue, shrub, olea, clematis, the hediosma of Jamaica, olive, vanilla, cinnamon, petunia, lotus, frankincense, sorrel, neroli from Japan, jonquil, verbena, spikenard, thyme, hyssop, and decaying orchids. This quintessential medley was as the sonorous blasts of Berlioz, repugnant and exquisite; it swayed the soul of Baldur as the wind sways the flame. There were odours like wingèd dreams; odours as the plucked sounds of celestial harps; odours mystic and evil, corrupt and opulent; odours recalling the sweet, dense smell of chloroform; odours evil, angelic, and anonymous. They painted—painted