Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay Read Free Book Online

should tell you. Yes, I can believe, but you could not. … I can even believe that traveller from Bavaria, who last week saw a beautiful young man transformed into a goat.
    I should like to sit in a coffee-house; one used tohear, from all accounts, the most ridiculous tales there. Everything was largened out of all reason and likelihood, like a flea under a magnifying glass, becoming thereby worthy of credence. But coffee-houses have degenerated, they are used now for rapid meals, and there is less time for tales. I am told that they still tell fine tales in taverns, and that after a short time in a tavern, a man can believe anything. Yes, but I do not need taverns; I can believe anything on tomato-juice.
    It is good to believe so much. The only drawback is that I never have that fine truculent moment when I say to my informant, “You lie.”

Bird in the Box
    He Lives in elegant retirement in a house of dark tortoise-shell, behind an oval china door on which is painted a blue lake, a blue and pink sky, three transparent pink mountains, a rocky shore, three red-roofed houses, three slim bending trees, and two sailing-boats. A small lake paradise, you think, and wonder what it does there, so sweetly, gaily set in shining gold-flecked dark-umber shell. Then you lightly touch a spring, and lo, a miracle. The door of lake and mountains springs back, opening wide, revealing its inner side, on which winds a broad reach of blue water (lake or river?) with more pink mountains, more small red roofed houses on the shore. This tiny china land and waterscape springs up from over a golden floor, a broidered mesh of woven flowers and leaves, like one of those enflowered golden meads in Paradise where, it is said, the blessed saints walk in bliss; and simultaneously there rises from this shining bed a bird. You will not credit this most extravagant sight, and I myself, as Herodotus was wont to say, am slow to believe it, but it is, nevertheless, the truth. An iridescent bird, a bird of shining blue and green, peacock-hued, tiny, he springs up, he flaps blue wings, he opens a small beak, he sings, turning this way and that, like aprima donna, against the oval background of pink mountains and blue lake. A stream, a fountain, of sweet pure lovely shrillness cascades into the air, unearthly, celestial, like the songs of angels which the blessed saints, walking on the golden floor, doubtless hear. This (approximately) is the tune that he sings 1 :

    And, having sung it, folds his wings and retires, lying suddenly, swiftly down on his side on the golden meadow, which opens to receive his small form, and the china door snaps shut on gold-broidered floor and vanished bird. The sweet echo of that piping cadence still lilts upon the silent air; I hold in my hand a mute shell box, dark umber, flecked with gold, inset with an oval door, the outside of a closed door, whereon blue lake and transparent pink mountains and slim trees delicately smile, lying firmly, reticently, over the strange secret within, over music fallen dumb and a blue bird sunk asleep beneath a flowery golden floor.
    A bird of pleasure indeed. Like Walton’s nightingale, he breathes such sweet music out of his little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight (when the very labourer sleeps securely) should hear (as I have very often) the clear airs, the sweet descant, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of his voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, Lord, what music hast thou provided for the Saints in Heaven, when thou affordest men such music on earth! And this makes me (as it made Walton) the less to wonder at the many aviaries in Italy.
    So much for the bird of pleasure, of which very much more might be said. In brief, how infinitely am I taken with this agreeable cheat! Like the phoenix, like the sun, he sinks into his golden bed only to rise again. Call him, and he will