By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
WHEN Juliet made her immortal remark concerning the unimportance of names, she was very evidently labouring under great excitement; and it is pertinent to remark too that, being a woman, she came of a sex accustomed from time immemorial to change its name. Besides, in spite of her exclamation: “O Romeo, Romeo—wherefore art thou Romeo?” it is clear from the context that she was really thinking of her lover’s surname, rather than his Christian name:
“Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”
In fact, like any woman in love, she had already forgotten her own surname, and desired, above all things in the world, to write her name, and work it in stitchery as: Juliet Montague. There is little doubt that in the seclusion of her chamber, she had already dipped her seldom-used quill into her ink-horn, and written it over thus many times:
Juliet Montague
Juliet Montague
Juliet Montague
……
…….
…….
And, if I be wrong in this, of this I am quite sure—that for Romeo, at all events, there was only one name by which to call a woman, the name of Juliet. Indeed, I would venture almost to say that true love knows its affinity by no other sign so surely as the first sound of the destined name. You remember how in Paradise, Rossetti heard the lovers
“Saying each to each
Their heart-remembered names.”
“Their souls were in their names!” says George Meredith, when Richard cried out the name of “Lucy,” and Lucy the name of “Richard.” Their souls—and their inexorable futures!
So was it with Dante when he first saw her who was called “‘Beatrice’ by those who knew not wherefore.” And so, I believe, it is with every man and woman. In fact, I should hardly count it a fancy if it were told me that in our cradles some spirit whispers into the still sensitive porcelain of our ears the name to which our lives shall answer as to the master-word of some dead magician.
We do not know the name—till we hear it, and, meanwhile, may have many mistaken fancies about it. Some beautiful girl of our acquaintance may be so full of charm for us as to cause us so to fall in love with her that we imagine hers to be the destined name. But, after a while that prescience in our ears saves us from the illusion. The ear does not give back that fairy chime when we hear her name, which it can give only to the sound of the name of names. Often our ears seem on the point of vibrating, as a woman tells us her name for the first name, but, after all—it was a false alarm of beauty, and we still go on seeking for the sound that alone can ring true. It may be that, in despair of ever hearing it, we content ourselves with another name; but that is a dangerous course, for one never knows when the fairy name may be spoken in our ears, calling us irresistibly to follow.
Thus I have known of men who were quite sure that their fate-name was Ann, tired out with waiting to hear it, marry another of the name of Mary—and then on their honeymoon, at last hear the name of Ann calling in their ears, with cruel unpunctuality. If only Ann had appeared and spoken her mystic name a month before—how different all would have been! And one could give others examples of other names heard too late.
One of the strangest stories of the kind is that of a friend of mine, which I propose to tell. From a mere boy the name of Irene had for him a prophetic beauty. Whenever he saw a beautiful face he felt certain that the only name worthy of it must be—Irene.He said to himself that he would marry no woman whose name was not Irene, and, that if a little girl-child should come to them she must be called Irene. It will not in any way spoil my story to say that he is long since happily married to a wife whose name is—not Irene, and that his offspring consisting only of three boys, he has had no opportunity to make use of his name beautiful. But this is merely a parenthesis. Long before life brought him to these conclusions, he dreamed of, and even deliberately sought, his Irene. Strange as it may sound nowadays, among all his researches he never came upon a girl whose name was Irene; nor did any gentle accident ever bring a single Irene into his orbit. Every other woman’s name in the appendix to the dictionary he seemed, at one time or another, to encounter—but Irene never!
You can hardly wonder that this negation of Irenes in his experience tended to deepen his original superstition; and make him more certain than ever that life was thus sifting out for him the other names one by one, till at last no other name was left but—Irene.
Meanwhile, he carried ever in his heart a picture of what the girl answering to the name of Irene would be like. The name to him suggested a combination of tall lithe grace, exquisite refinement, blonde hair in coiled masses of gold, blue eyes domestically kind, a gift for arranging flowers—and a hundred other ideal characteristics which may best be symbolised by an Easter lily.
An Easter lily—with a light upon it seeming to fall from some hidden window in heaven: in fact a creature exquisitely blended of celestial purity and skillful house-wifery.
How much more the name Irene meant to him I need not say—because I cannot; for the name of every man’s love is as we have quoted before, as that of Dante’s Beatrice. She is called Jane or Elizabeth or Kate—or Irene—by those who know not wherefore. Only one man in the world knows why Jane is called Jane, only one man knows why Irene is called Irene.
The least superstitious must admit it strange that, with all his eager listening for his predestined name, even, one might say, with all his experimental pursuit of it, he never met it till at last…. Well, I am anticipating. Being a man of leisure, he visited many countries, seeking his name; there was not a country of Europe in which he had not sought it, and even in Asia he had pursued it like a rare butterfly.
Common materialistic friends of his maintained that it was quite a common name. “If it be so common,” he said, “how is it that in all my wanderings I have never yet met a woman with that name?”
At last a friend suggested that he had not tried America!
“America!” he exclaimed, “America! wonderful country I know—but is it likely that in so new a world, a world so busy making its own beautiful names, that I shall find this rare old name of an ancient world? Surely I might as well expect to dig up a Roman coin in some back garden in Omaha!”
“Never mind!” said the friend of my friend. “Try America.”
So it was that my friend came at last to America, seeking his beautiful name.
Being a man of some public significance, he was asked, upon landing, what his business was in The Land of Promises; and, being a man of simple mind, he answered that he came seeking a woman of the name of—Irene. The assembled reporters shook their heads, and looked at him, as though he was crazy. No such name had ever been heard of in America. Of course, he was crazy; and so the papers had a day’s fun with the eccentric Englishman, and then his numerous excellent introductions started him upon that most generous pilgrimage in the world—the pilgrimage of the American Continent.
His introductions, I say, were excellent. I wonder if that was the reason why, though the best and most beautiful homes of America were thus thrown open to him, visiting here and visiting there, he never once heard the name he was journeying to hear.
At length three months had gone by, and no name remotely resembling the name he loved had sounded in his ears. He was indeed planning to sail back to Europe in a few days, when in a great Western town—I may as well say Chicago—a circumstance occurred which changed his intention.
No one who has visited America can fail to have been struck by the number and quality of the beautiful homes, so generously thrown open to him, and by the singular purity of atmosphere which pervades them; a purity so entirely free from priggishness—no negative purity, but a purity which one might call elemental, a purity, so to say, of joyous power, a purity as full of laughter and strength as a racing upland breeze. One has sometimes heard that there is no American home. To one sojourner in America at least this means the strangest of misrepresentations; for, on the contrary, one might almost go so far as to say that in no other country in the world is there such a genuine home-life as in America. And I venture to think that in no American city is this home-life to be found in fairer development than in Chicago. In such a home, one never-to-be-forgotten evening, my friend found himself a guest. Those who talk of American bad taste, of American ignorance of, or disregard for, the beautiful things of life should be taken to see that home. The gracious order of it, the unobtrusive richness, the organic beauty of it, as distinct from a conscious æstheticism, immediately impressed a nature very sensitive to such conditions; and the moment my friend met the only daughter of the household he knew at once from whom all this harmony proceeded. His host and hostess were charming simple people, the polo-playing son-and-heir was a delightful fellow; but it was evident that the harmony did not proceed from them.
No! it very evidently came from this tall, lithe girl, with that heavy crown of gold upon her head, those kind blue domestic eyes, and that supernal light upon her exquisitely blonde features. As my friend looked at her, sitting by her side at the dinner-table, he felt that here at last was the woman he had been seeking so long, for, in every particular she answered to the dream of his long-sought Irene. In her father’s introduction to him, however, he had not quite caught her name; so he sat through dinner in a fever of attention, hoping every moment to hear it pronounced again. But by one of those exceptions to the usual which do occur, no occasion for the direct use of her name occurred throughout the dinner, and he being as yet so new an acquaintance, and afraid besides lest he should hear the wrong name, had not courage to ask it. However, after dinner, it being a summer night, coffee was served on the veranda, and here he found both his courage and his opportunity. There was a sentimental crescent moon in the sky, and the veranda was filled with romantic lights and shadows. Miss Stanbery and my friend had found themselves a little away from the rest. She had seemed hardly less drawn to him than he to her, and at last he felt that, without violating the proprieties of a guest, he might ask her Christian name.
She bent her beautiful head, with a lovely shyness, and answered that her name was—
“Ireen.”
“Ireen?” said my friend, leaning toward her beauty in the twilight.
“It is a beautiful name.”
To himself he was saying how strangely like, and yet how strangely unlike, it was to the name of which she seemed the ideal embodiment.
“Ireen,” he said over to himself, and the drums of his ears almost chimed back—but alas! failed quite to chime.
“Ireen? Ireen?” he said over and over to himself, trying to make the name sound right, and, when he found it impossible, he looked again at her young loveliness, and wondered to himself if her name was not near enough to the name he loved.
But in the end his superstition prevailed, and reluctantly he bade good-bye to Ireen Stanbery, and took train for New York, and boarded his liner, and sailed back to Europe sad at heart.
A year went by, and having given up all hopes of finding his Irene, he married, as I have said, a lady of the name of——, and was very happy—that is as happy as a man or woman can be who has married the wrong name.
He had been married about three years, when he chanced one evening to be dining in London with an American gentleman.
They compared notes on America.
“Do you know the Stanberys of Chicago?” asked my friend, among other questions.
“O yes! aren’t they delightful people? And what a beautiful girl Irene is—she was married six months ago by the way.”
“What name did you call her?” asked my friend.
“Irene.”
“Irene! Why I thought they called her Ireen!”
“So they do—but didn’t you know that that is the American way of pronouncing ‘Irene’?”
“Indeed, I didn’t,” gasped my friend, and in his soul he said “O that I had known!”
The moral of which is that it is very hard to lose one’s love through a mispronunciation.
