it seems an odd mixture at first glance; but it isn’t mine. mr. wilkie collins is responsible for the amazing hotch-potch. ‘what do you say,’ he asks in the moonstone, ‘what do you say when our county member, growing hot, at cheese and salad time, about the spread of democracy in england, burst out as follows: “if we once lose our ancient safeguards, mr. blake, i beg to ask you, what have we got left?” and what do you say to mr. franklin answering, from the italian point of view, “we have got three things left, sir—love, music, and salad”’? i confess that, when first i came upon this curious conglomeration, i thought that mr. franklin meant love, music, and salad to stand for a mere incomprehensible confusion, a meaningless jumble. i examined the sentence a second time, however, and began to suspect that there was at least some method in his madness. and now that i scrutinize it still more closely, i feel ashamed of my first hasty judgement. i can see that love, music, and salad are the fundamental elements of 217the solar system; and, as mr. franklin suggests, so long as they are left to us we can afford to smile at any political convulsions that may chance to overtake us.
love, music, and salad are the three biggest things in life. mr. franklin has not only outlined the situation with extraordinary precision, but he has placed these three basic factors in their exact scientific order. love comes first. indeed, we only come because love calls for us. we find it waiting with outstretched arms on arrival. it smothers our babyhood with kisses, and hedges our infancy about with its ceaseless ministry of doting affection. love is the beginning of everything; i need not labour that point. where there is no love there is neither music nor salad, nor anything else worth writing about.
mr. franklin was indisputably right in putting love first, and immediately adding music. you cannot imagine love without music. i am hoping that one of these days one of our philosophers will give us a book on the language that does not need learning. there is room for a really fine volume on that captivating theme. henry drummond has a most fascinating and characteristic essay on the evolution of language; but from my present standpoint it is sadly disappointing. from first to last drummond works on the assumption that 218human language is a thing of imitation and acquisition. the foundation of it all, he tells us, is in the forest. man heard the howl of the dog, the neigh of the horse, the bleat of the lamb, the stamp of the goat; and he deliberately copied these sounds. he noticed, too, that each animal has sounds specially adapted for particular occasions. one monkey, we are told, utters at least six different sounds to express its feelings; and darwin discovered four or five modulations in the bark of the dog. ‘there is the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of anger, as well as growling; the yelp or howl of despair, as when shut up; the baying at night; the bark of joy, as when starting on a walk with his master; and the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wishing for a door or window to be opened.’ drummond appears to assume that primitive man listened to these sounds and copied them, much as a child speaks of the bow-wow, the moo-moo, the quack-quack, the tick-tick, and the puff-puff. but in all this we leave out of our reckoning one vital factor. the most expressive language that we ever speak is the language that we never learned. as darwin himself points out, there are certain simple and vivid feelings which we express, and express with the utmost clearness, but without any kind of reference to our higher intelligence. ‘our cries of pain, fear, surprise, 219anger, together with their appropriate actions, and the murmur of a mother to her beloved child, are more expressive than any words.’
is not this a confession of the fact that the soul, in its greatest moments, speaks a language, not of imitation or of acquisition, but one that it brought with it, a language of its own? the language that we learn varies according to nationality. the speech of a chinaman is an incomprehensible jargon to a briton; the utterance of a frenchman is a mere riot of sound to a hindu. the language that we learn is affected even by dialects, so that a man in one english county finds it by no means easy to interpret the speech of a visitor from another. it is even affected by rank and position; the speech of the plough-boy is one thing, the speech of the courtier is quite another. so confusing is the language that we learn! but let a man speak in the language that needs no learning; and all the world will understand him. the cry of a child in pain is the same in iceland as in india, in hobart as in timbuctoo! the soft and wordless crooning of a mother as she lulls her babe to rest; the scream of a man in mortal anguish; the sudden outburst of uncontrollable laughter; the sigh of regret; the titter of amusement; and the piteous cry of a broken heart,—these know neither nationality nor rank nor station. they are the same in castle as in 220cottage; in tasmania as in thibet; in the world’s first morning as in the world’s last night. the most expressive language, the only language in which the soul itself ever really speaks, is a language without alphabet or grammar. it needs neither to be learned nor taught, for all men speak it, and all men understand.
was that, consciously or subconsciously, at the back of mr. franklin’s mind when he put music next to love? certain it is that, in that unwritten language which is greater than all speech, music is the natural expression of love. why is there music in the grove and the forest? it is because love is there. the birds never sing so sweetly as during the mating season. for awhile the male bird hovers about the person of his desired bride, and pours out an incessant torrent of song in the fond hope of one day winning her; and when his purpose is achieved, he goes on singing for very joy that she is his. and afterwards he ‘gallantly perches near the little home, pouring forth his joy and pride, sweetly singing to his mate as she sits within the nest, patiently hatching her brood.’ both in men and women it is at the approach of the love-making age that the voice suddenly develops, and it is when the deepest chords in the soul are first struck that the richest and fullest notes can be sung.
music, then, is the natural concomitant of love. 221that is why most of our songs are love-songs. if a man is in love he can no more help singing than a bird can help flying. you cannot love anything without singing about it. men love god; that is why we have hymn-books. men love women; that is why we have ballads. men love their country; that is why we have national anthems and patriotic airs.
but the stroke of genius in mr. franklin lay in the addition of the salad. if he had contented himself with love and music, he would have uttered a truth, and a great truth; but it would have been a commonplace truth. as it is, he lifts the whole thing into the realm of brilliance—and reality. for, after all, of what earthly use are love and music unless they lead to salad? when to love and music mr. franklin shrewdly added salad, he put himself in line with the greatest philosophers of all time. bishop butler told us years ago that if we allow emotions which are designed to lead to action to become excited, and no action follows, the very excitation of that emotion without its appropriate response leaves the heart much harder than it was before. and, more recently, our brilliant harvard professor, dr. william james, has warned us that it is a very damaging thing for the mind to receive an impression without giving that impression an adequate and commensurate expression. if you go to a 222concert, he says, and hear a lovely song that deeply moves you, you ought to pay some poor person’s tram fare on the way home. it is a natural as well as a psychological law. the earth, for example, receives the impression represented by the fall of autumn leaves, the descent of sap from the bough, and the widespread decay of wintry desolation. but she hastens to give expression to this impression by all the wealth and plenitude of her glorious spring array.
the new testament gives us a great story which exactly illustrates my point. it is a very graceful and tender record, full of love and music, but containing also something more than love and music. for when dorcas died all the widows stood weeping in the chamber of death, showing the coats that dorcas had made while she was yet with them. dorcas was a jewess. at one time she had been taught to regard the name of jesus as a thing to be abhorred and accursed. but later on a wonderful experience befell her. could she ever forget the day on which, amidst a whirl of spiritual bewilderment and a tempest of spiritual emotion, she had discovered, in the very messiah whom once she had despised, her saviour and her lord? it was a day never to be forgotten, a day full of love and music. how could she produce an expression adequate to that wonderful impression? not in words; for 223she was not gifted with speech. yet an expression must be found. it would have been a fatal thing for the delicate soul of dorcas if so turgid a flood of feeling had found no apt and natural outlet. and in that crisis she thought of her needle. she expressed her love for the lord in the occupation most familiar to her. it was a kind of storage of energy. dorcas wove her love for her lord into every stitch, and a tender thought into every stitch, and a fervent prayer into every stitch. and that spiritual storage escaped through warm coats and neat garments into the hearts and homes of these widows and poor folk along the coast, and they learned the depth and tenderness of the divine love from the deft finger-tips of dorcas.
salad is the natural and fitting outcome of love and music. i have already confessed that when first i came upon the triune conjunction i thought it rather an incongruous medley, a strange hotch-potch, an ill-assorted company. that is the worst of judging things in a hurry. the eye does the work of the brain, and does it badly. it is a common failing of ours. look at the torrent of toothless jokes that have been directed at the contrast between the romance of courtship and the domestic realities that follow. the former, according to the traditional estimate, consists of billing and cooing, of fervent protestations and radiant dreams, of romantic 224loveliness and honeyed phrases. the latter, according to the same traditional view, consists of struggle and anxiety, of drudgery and menial toil, of broken nights with tiresome children, of nerve-racking anxiety and an endless sequence of troubles. he who looks at life in this way makes precisely the same mistake that i myself made when i first saw mr. franklin’s love, music, and salad, and thought it a higgledy-piggledy hotch-potch. it is nothing of the kind. love naturally leads to music; and love and music naturally lead to salad. courtship leads to the cradle and the kitchen, it is true; but both cradle and kitchen are glorified and consecrated by the courtship that has gone before. our english homes, take them for all in all, are the loveliest things in the world.
the merry homes of england!
around their hearths by night,
what gladsome looks of household love
meet in the ruddy light!
there woman’s voice flows forth in song,
or childhood’s tale is told;
or lips move tunefully along
some glorious page of old.
here is a picture of love, music, and salad in perfect combination. and what a secret lies behind it! the fact is that the heathen world has nothing at all corresponding to our english sweethearting. 225men and women are thrown into each other’s arms by barter, by compact, by conquest, and in a thousand ways. in one land a man buys his bride; in another he fights as the brutes do for the mate of his fancy; in yet another he takes her without seeing her, it was so ordained. only in a land that has felt the spell of the influence of jesus would sweethearting, as we know it, be possible. the pure and charming freedom of social intercourse; the liberty to yield to the mystic magnetism that draws the one to the other, and the other to the one; the coy approach; the shy exchanges; the arm-in-arm walks, and the heart-to-heart talks; the growing admiration; the deepening passion; culminating at last in the fond formality of the engagement and the rapture of ultimate union; in what land, unsweetened by the power of the gospel, would such a procedure be possible? and the consequence is that our homes stand in such striking contrast to the homes of heathen peoples. ‘there are no homes in asia!’ mr. w. h. seward, the american statesman, exclaimed sadly, fifty years ago. it is scarcely true now, for christ is gaining on asia every day; and the missionaries confess that the greatest propagating power that the gospel possesses is the gracious though silent witness of the christian homes. human life is robbed of all animalism and baseness when true 226love enters. and there is no true love apart from the highest love of all.
salad may seem a prosaic thing to follow on the heels of love and music; but the salad that has been prepared by fingers that one thinks it heaven to kiss is tinged and tinctured with the flavour of romance. all through life, love makes life’s music. all through life, love and music lead to salad. and, all through life, love and music glorify the salad to which they lead. they transmute it by this magic into such a dish as many a king has sighed for all his days, but sighed in vain.
