to say that he had looked everywhere for help and had never found
it; that he was minded to live his own life and to see what would
come of it; that he thought the Older Man knew nothing of what he
was talking about, but was wrapping it all up in words; that he had
clearly recognised in the Older Man's intolerable prolixity several
clichés or ready-made phrases; that he hoped on reaching the Older
Man's age he would not have been so utterly winnowed of all
substance as to talk so aimlessly; and finally that he prayed God
for a personal development more full of justice, of life, and of
stuff than that which the Older Man appeared to have suffered or
enjoyed.
On hearing these words the Older Man leapt to his feet (which was
not an easy thing for him to do) and as one overjoyed grasped the
Younger Man by the hand, though the latter very much resented such
antics on the part of Age.
"That is it! That is it!" cried the Older Man, looking now far too
old for his years. "If I have summoned up in you that spirit I have
not done ill! Get you forward in that mood and when you come to my
time of life you will be as rotund and hopeful a fellow as I am
myself."
But having heard these words the Young Man left him in disgust.
The Older Man, considering all these things as he looked into the
fire when he was alone, earnestly desired that he could have told
the Young Man the exact truth, have printed it, and have produced a
proper Gospel. But considering the mountains of impossibility that
lay in the way of such public action, he sighed deeply and took to
the more indirect method. He turned to his work and continued to
perform his own duty before God and for the help of mankind. This,
on that evening, was for him a review upon the interpretation of the
word _haga_ in the Domesday Inquest. This kept him up till a
quarter past one, and as he had to take a train to Newcastle at
eight next morning it is probable that much will be forgiven him
when things are cleared.
ON THE DEPARTURE OF A GUEST
_C'est ma Jeunesse qui s'en va.
Adieu! la tres gente compagne--
Oncques ne suis moins gai pour ça
(C'est ma Jeunesse qui s'en va)
Et lon-lon-laire, et lon-lon-là
Peut-etre perd's; peut-etre gagne.
C'est ma Jeunesse qui s'en va._
(From the Author's MSS. In the library of the Abbey of Theleme.)
Host: Well, Youth, I see you are about to leave me, and since it is
in the terms of your service by no means to exceed a certain period
in my house, I must make up my mind to bid you farewell.
Youth: Indeed, I would stay if I could; but the matter lies as you
know in other hands, and I may not stay.
Host: I trust, dear Youth, that you have found all comfortable while
you were my guest, that the air has suited you and the company?
Youth: I thank you, I have never enjoyed a visit more; you may say
that I have been most unusually happy.
Host: Then let me ring for the servant who shall bring down your
things.
Youth: I thank you civilly! I have brought them down already--see,
they are here. I have but two, one very large bag and this other
small one.
Host: Why, you have not locked the small one! See it gapes!
Youth (_somewhat embarrassed_): My dear Host ... to tell the
truth ... I usually put it off till the end of my visits ... but the
truth ... to tell the truth, my luggage is of two kinds.
Host: I do not see why that need so greatly confuse you.
Youth (_still more embarrassed_): But you see--the fact is--I
stay with people so long that--well, that very often they forget
which things are mine and which belong to the house ... And--well,
the truth is that I have to take away with me a number of things
which ... which, in a word, you may possibly have thought your own.
Host (_coldly_): Oh!
Youth (_eagerly_): Pray do not think the worse of me--you know
how strict are my orders.
Host (_sadly_): Yes, I know; you will plead that Master of
yours, and no doubt you are right.... But tell me, Youth, what are
those things?
Youth: They fill this big bag. But I am not so ungracious as you
think. See, in this little bag, which I have purposely left open,
are a number of things properly mine, yet of which I am allowed to
make gifts to those with whom I lingered--you shall choose among
them, or if you will, you shall have them all.
Host: Well, first tell me what you have packed in the big bag and
mean to take away.
Youth: I will open it and let you see. (_He unlocks it and pulls
the things out_.) I fear they are familiar to you.
Host: Oh! Youth! Youth! Must you take away all of these? Why, you
are taking away, as it were, my very self! Here is the love of
women, as deep and changeable as an opal; and here is carelessness
that looks like a shower of pearls. And here I see--Oh! Youth, for
shame!--you are taking away that silken stuff which used to wrap up
the whole and which you once told me had no name, but which lent to
everything it held plenitude and satisfaction. Without it surely
pleasures are not all themselves. Leave me that at least.
Youth: No, I must take it, for it is not yours, though from courtesy
I forbore to tell you so till now. These also go: Facility, the
ointment; Sleep, the drug; Full Laughter, that tolerated all
follies. It was the only musical thing in the house. And I must
take--yes, I fear I must take Verse.
HOST: Then there is nothing left!
YOUTH: Oh! yes! See this little open bag which you may choose from!
Feel it!
HOST (_lifting it_): Certainly it is very heavy, but it rattles
and is uncertain.
YOUTH: That is because it is made up of divers things having no
similarity; and you may take all or leave all, or choose as you
will. Here (_holding up a clout_) is Ambition: Will you have
that?...
HOST (_doubtfully_): I cannot tell.... It has been mine and yet
... without those other things....
YOUTH (_cheerfully_): Very well, I will leave it. You shall
decide on it a few years hence. Then, here is the perfume Pride.
Will you have that?
HOST: No; I will have none of it. It is false and corrupt, and only
yesterday I was for throwing it out of window to sweeten the air in
my room.
YOUTH: So far you have chosen well; now pray choose more.
HOST: I will have this--and this--and this. I will take Health
(_takes it out of the bag_), not that it is of much use to me
without those other things, but I have grown used to it. Then I will
take this (_takes out a plain steel purse and chain_), which is
the tradition of my family, and which I desire to leave to my son. I
must have it cleaned. Then I will take this (_pulls out a trinket_),
which is the Sense of Form and Colour. I am told it is of less value
later on, but it is a pleasant ornament ... And so, Youth, goodbye.
Youth (_with a mysterious smile_): Wait--I have something else
for you (_he feels in his ticket pocket_); no less a thing
(_he feels again in his watch pocket_) than (_he looks a trifle anxious
and feels in his waistcoat pockets_) a promise from my Master, signed
and sealed, to give you back all I take and more in Immortality! (_He
feels in his handkerchief pocket._)
Host: Oh! Youth!
Youth (_still feeling_): Do not thank me! It is my Master you
should thank. (_Frowns_.) Dear me! I hope I have not lost it!
(_Feels in his trousers pockets._)
Host (_loudly_): Lost it?
Youth (_pettishly_): I did not say I had lost it! I said I
hoped I had not ... (_feels in his great-coat pocket, and pulls
out an envelope_). Ah! Here it is! (_His face clouds over_.)
No, that is the message to Mrs. George, telling her the time has
come to get a wig ... (_Hopelessly_): Do you know I am afraid I
have lost it! I am really very sorry--I cannot wait. (_He goes
off_.)
ON DEATH
I knew a man once who made a great case of Death, saying that he
esteemed a country according to its regard for the conception of
Death, and according to the respect which it paid to that
conception. He also said that he considered individuals by much the
same standard, but that he did not judge them so strictly in the
matter, because (said he) great masses of men are more permanently
concerned with great issues; whereas private citizens are disturbed
by little particular things which interfere with their little
particular lives, and so distract them from the general end.
This was upon a river called Boutonne, in Vendée, and at the time I
did not understand what he meant because as yet I had had no
experience of these things. But this man to whom I spoke had had
three kinds of experience; first, he had himself been very probably
the occasion of Death in others, for he had been a soldier in a war
of conquest where the Europeans were few and the Barbarians many!
secondly, he had been himself very often wounded, and more than once
all but killed; thirdly, he was at the time he told me this thing an
old man who must in any case soon come to that experience or
catastrophe of which he spoke.
He was an innkeeper, the father of two daughters, and his inn was by
the side of the river, but the road ran between. His face was more
anxiously earnest than is commonly the face of a French peasant, as
though he had suffered more than do ordinarily that very prosperous,
very virile, and very self-governing race of men. He had also about
him what many men show who have come sharply against the great
realities, that is, a sort of diffidence in talking of ordinary
things. I could see that in the matters of his household he allowed
himself to be led by women. Meanwhile he continued to talk to me
over the table upon this business of Death, and as he talked he
showed that desire to persuade which is in itself the strongest
motive of interest in any human discourse.
He said to me that those who affected to despise the consideration
of Death knew nothing of it; that they had never seen it close and
might be compared to men who spoke of battles when they had only
read books about battles, or who spoke of sea-sickness though they
had never seen the sea. This last metaphor he used with some pride,
for he had crossed the Mediterranean from Provence to Africa some
five or six times, and had upon each occasion suffered horribly;
for, of course, his garrison had been upon the edge of the desert,
and he had been a soldier beyond the Atlas. He told me that those
who affected to neglect or to despise Death were worse than children
talking of grown-up things, and were more like prigs talking of
physical things of which they knew nothing.
I told him then that there were many such men, especially in the
town of Geneva. This, he said, he could well believe, though he had
never travelled there, and had hardly heard the name of the place.
But he knew it for some foreign town. He told me, also, that there
were men about in his own part of the world who pretended that since
Death was an accident like any other, and, moreover, one as certain
as hunger or as sleep, it was not to be considered. These, he said,
were the worst debaters upon his favourite subject.
Now as he talked in this fashion I confess that I was very bored. I
had desired to go on to Angouléme upon my bicycle, and I was at that
age when all human beings think themselves immortal. I had desired
to get off the main high road into the hills upon the left, to the
east of it, and I was at an age when the cessation of mundane
experience is not a conceivable thing. Moreover, this innkeeper had
been pointed out to me as a man who could give very useful
information upon the nature of the roads I had to travel, and it had
never occurred to me that he would switch me off after dinner upon a
hobby of his own. To-day, after a wider travel, I know well that all
innkeepers have hobbies, and that an abstract or mystical hobby of
this sort is amongst the best with which to pass an evening. But no
matter, I am talking of then and not now. He kept me, therefore,
uninterested as I was, and continued:
"People who put Death away from them, who do not neglect or despise
it but who stop thinking about it, annoy me very much. We have in
this village a chemist of such a kind. He will have it that, five
minutes afterwards, a man thinks no more about it." Having gone so
far, the innkeeper, clenching his hands and fixing me with a
brilliant glance from his old eyes, said:
"With such men I will have nothing to do!"
Indeed, that his chief subject should be treated in such a fashion
was odious to him, and rightly, for of the half-dozen things worth
strict consideration, there is no doubt that his hobby was the
chief, and to have one's hobby vulgarly despised is intolerable.
The innkeeper then went on to tell me that so far as he could make
out it was a man's business to consider this subject of Death
continually, to wonder upon it, and, if he could, to extract its
meaning. Of the men I had met so far in life, only the Scotch and
certain of the Western French went on in this metaphysical manner:
thus a Breton, a Basque, and a man in Ecclefechan (I hope I spell it
right) and another in Jedburgh had already each of them sent me to
my bed confused upon the matter of free will. So this Western
innkeeper refused to leave his thesis. It was incredible to him that
a Sentient Being who perpetually accumulated experience, who grew
riper and riper, more and more full of such knowledge as was native
to himself and complementary to his nature, should at the very
crisis of his success in all things intellectual and emotional,
cease suddenly. It was further an object to him of vast curiosity
why such a being, since a future was essential to it, should find
that future veiled.
He presented to me a picture of men perpetually passing through a
field of vision out of the dark and into the dark. He showed me
these men, not growing and falling as fruits do (so the modern
vulgar conception goes) but alive throughout their transit: pouring
like an unbroken river from one sharp limit of the horizon whence
they entered into life to that other sharp limit where they poured
out from life, not through decay, but through a sudden catastrophe.
"I," said he, "shall die, I do suppose, with a full consciousness of
my being and with a great fear in my eyes. And though many die
decrepit and senile, that is not the normal death of men, for men
have in them something of a self-creative power, which pushes them
on to the further realisation of themselves, right up to the edge of
their doom."
I put his words in English after a great many years, but they were
something of this kind, for he was a metaphysical sort of man.
It was now near midnight, and I could bear with such discussions no
longer; my fatigue was great and the hour at which I had to rise
next day was early. It was, therefore, in but a drowsy state that I
heard him continue his discourse. He told me a long story of how he
had seen one day a company of young men of the New Army, the
conscripts, go marching past his house along the river through a
driving snow. He said that first he heard them singing long before
he saw them, that then they came out like ghosts for a moment
through the drift, that then in the half light of the winter dawn
they clearly appeared, all in step for once, swinging forward,
muffled in their dark blue coats, and still singing to the lift of
their feet; that then on their way to the seaport, they passed again
into the blinding scurry of the snow, that they seemed like ghosts
again for a moment behind the veil of it, and that long after they
had disappeared their singing could still be heard.
By this time I was most confused as to what lesson he would convey,
and sleep had nearly overcome me, but I remember his telling me that
such a sight stood to him at the moment and did still stand for the
passage of the French Armies perpetually on into the dark, century
after century, destroyed for the most part upon fields of battle. He
told me that he felt like one who had seen the retreat from Moscow,
and he would, I am sure, had I not determined to leave him and to
take at least some little sleep, have asked me what fate there was
for those single private soldiers, each real, each existent, while
the Army which they made up and of whose "destruction" men spoke,
was but a number, a notion, a name. He would have pestered me, if my
mind had still been active, as to what their secret destinies were
who lay, each man alone, twisted round the guns after the failure to
hold the Bridge of the Beresina. He might have gone deeper, but I
was too tired to listen to him any more.
This human debate of ours (and very one-sided it was!) is now
resolved, for in the interval since it was engaged the innkeeper
himself has died.
ON COMING TO AN END
Of all the simple actions in the world! Of all the simple actions in
the world!
One would think it could be done with less effort than the heaving
of a sigh.... Well--then, one would be wrong.
There is no case of Coming to an End but has about it something of
an effort and a jerk, as though Nature abhorred it, and though it be
true that some achieve a quiet and a perfect end to one thing or
another (as, for instance, to Life), yet this achievement is not
arrived at save through the utmost toil, and consequent upon the
most persevering and exquisite art.
Now you can say that this may be true of sentient things but not of
things inanimate. It is true even of things inanimate.
Look down some straight railway line for a vanishing point to the
perspective: you will never find it. Or try to mark the moment when
a small target becomes invisible. There is no gradation; a moment it
was there, and you missed it--possibly because the Authorities were
not going in for journalism that day, and had not chosen a dead calm
with the light full on the canvas. A moment it was there and then,
as you steamed on, it was gone. The same is true of a lark in the
air. You see it and then you do not see it, you only hear its song.
And the same is true of that song: you hear it and then suddenly you
do not hear it. It is true of a human voice, which is familiar in
your ear, living and inhabiting the rooms of your house. There comes
a day when it ceases altogether--and how positive, how definite and
hard is that Coming to an End.
It does not leave an echo behind it, but a sharp edge of emptiness,
and very often as one sits beside the fire the memory of that voice
suddenly returning gives to the silence about one a personal force,
as it were, of obsession and of control. So much happens when even
one of all our million voices Comes to an End.
It is necessary, it is august and it is reasonable that the great
story of our lives also should be accomplished and should reach a
term: and yet there is something in that hidden duality of ours
which makes the prospect of so natural a conclusion terrible, and it
is the better judgment of mankind and the mature conclusion of
civilisations in their age that there is not only a conclusion here
but something of an adventure also. It may be so.
Those who solace mankind and are the principal benefactors of it, I
mean the poets and the musicians, have attempted always to ease the
prospect of Coming to an End, whether it were the Coming to an End
of the things we love or of that daily habit and conversation which
is our life and is the atmosphere wherein we loved them. Indeed this
is a clear test whereby you may distinguish the great artists from
the mean hucksters and charlatans, that the first approach and
reveal what is dreadful with calm and, as it were, with a purpose to
use it for good while the vulgar catchpenny fellows must liven up
their bad dishes as with a cheap sauce of the horrible, caring
nothing, so that their shrieks sell, whether we are the better for
them or no.
The great poets, I say, bring us easily or grandly to the gate: as
in that _Ode to a Nightingale_ where it is thought good (in an
immortal phrase) to pass painlessly at midnight, or, in the glorious
line which Ronsard uses, like a salute with the sword, hailing "la
profitable mort."
The noblest or the most perfect of English elegies leaves, as a sort
of savour after the reading of it, no terror at all nor even too
much regret, but the landscape of England at evening, when the smoke
of the cottages mixes with autumn vapours among the elms; and even
that gloomy modern _Ode to the West Wind_, unfinished and
touched with despair, though it will speak of--
... that outer place forlorn
Which, like an infinite grey sea, surrounds
With everlasting calm the land of human sounds;
yet also returns to the sacramental earth of one's childhood where
it says:
For now the Night completed tells her tale
Of rest and dissolution: gathering round
Her mist in such persuasion that the ground
Of Home consents to falter and grow pale.
And the stars are put out and the trees fail.
Nor anything remains but that which drones
Enormous through the dark....
And again, in another place, where it prays that one may at the last
be fed with beauty---
... as the flowers are fed
That fill their falling-time with generous breath:
Let me attain a natural end of death,
And on the mighty breast, as on a bed,
Lay decently at last a drowsy head,
Content to lapse in somnolence and fade
In dreaming once again the dream of all things made.
The most careful philosophy, the most heavenly music, the best
choice of poetic or prosaic phrase prepare men properly for man's
perpetual loss of this and of that, and introduce us proudly to the
similar and greater business of departure from them all, from
whatever of them all remains at the close.
To be introduced, to be prepared, to be armoured, all these are
excellent things, but there is a question no foresight can answer
nor any comprehension resolve. It is right to gather upon that
question the varied affections or perceptions of varying men.
I knew a man once in the Tourdenoise, a gloomy man, but very rich,
who cared little for the things he knew. This man took no pleasure
in his fruitful orchards and his carefully ploughed fields and his
harvests. He took pleasure in pine trees; he was a man of groves and
of the dark. For him that things should come to an end was but part
of an universal rhythm; a part pleasing to the general harmony, and
making in the music of the world about him a solemn and, oh, a
conclusive chord. This man would study the sky at night and take
from it a larger and a larger draught of infinitude, finding in this
exercise not a mere satisfaction, but an object and goal for the
mind; when he had so wandered for a while under the night he seemed,
for the moment, to have reached the object of his being.
And I knew another man in the Weald who worked with his hands, and
was always kind, and knew his trade well; he smiled when he talked
of scythes, and he could thatch. He could fish also, and he knew
about grafting, and about the seasons of plants, and birds, and the
way of seed. He had a face full of weather, he fatigued his body, he
watched his land. He would not talk much of mysteries, he would
rather hum songs. He loved new friends and old. He had lived with
one wife for fifty years, and he had five children, who were a
policeman, a schoolmistress, a son at home, and two who were
sailors. This man said that what a man did and the life in which he
did it was like the farmwork upon a summer's day. He said one works
a little and rests, and works a little again, and one drinks, and
there is a perpetual talk with those about one. Then (he would say)
the shadows lengthen at evening, the wind falls, the birds get back
home. And as for ourselves, we are sleepy before it is dark.
Then also I knew a third man who lived in a town and was clerical
and did no work, for he had money of his own. This man said that all
we do and the time in which we do it is rather a night than a day.
He said that when we came to an end we vanished, we and our works,
but that we vanished into a broadening light.
Which of these three knew best the nature of man and of his works,
and which knew best of what nature was the end?
* * * * *
Why so glum, my Lad, or my Lass (as the case may be), why so heavy
at heart? Did you not know that you also must Come to an End?
Why, that woman of Etaples who sold such Southern wine for the
dissipation of the Picardian Mist, her time is over and gone and the
wine has been drunk long ago and the singers in her house have
departed, and the wind of the sea moans in and fills their hall. The
Lords who died in Roncesvalles have been dead these thousand years
and more, and the loud song about them grew very faint and dwindled
and is silent now: there is nothing at all remains.
It is certain that the hills decay and that rivers as the dusty
years proceed run feebly and lose themselves at last in desert
sands; and in its aeons the very firmament grows old. But evil also
is perishable and bad men meet their judge. Be comforted.