could not support the glare and oppressive vastness of an unrelieved
expanse of waters. I was aware of this in time, and fixed myself where
the view of the sea was inferior to what I should have preferred, if I
had come to the coast for a summer visit. Between my window and the sea
is a green down, as green as any field in Ireland; and on the nearer
half of this down, haymaking goes forward in its season. It slopes down
to a hollow, where the Prior of old preserved his fish, there being
sluices formerly at either end, the one opening upon the river, and the
other upon the little haven below the Priory, whose ruins still crown
the rock. From the Prior’s fish-pond, the green down slopes upwards
again to a ridge; and on the slope are cows grazing all summer, and half
way into the winter. Over the ridge, I survey the harbour and all its
traffic, the view extending from the light-houses far to the right, to a
horizon of sea to the left. Beyond the harbour lies another county,
with, first, its sandy beach, where there are frequent wrecks--too
interesting to an invalid,--and a fine stretch of rocky shore to the
left; and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of
boys flying their kites; lovers and friends taking their breezy walk on
Sundays; the sportsman with his gun and dog; and the washerwomen
converging from the farm-houses on Saturday evenings, to carry their
loads, in company, to the village on the yet further height. I see them,
now talking in a cluster, as they walk each with her white burden on her
head, and now in file, as they pass through the narrow lane; and finally
they part off on the village green, each to some neighbouring house of
the gentry. Behind the village and the heath, stretches the rail-road;
and I watch the train triumphantly careering along the level road, and
puffing forth its steam above hedges and groups of trees, and then
labouring and panting up the ascent, till it is lost between two
heights, which at last bound my view. But on these heights are more
objects; a windmill, now in motion and now at rest; a lime-kiln, in a
picturesque rocky field; an ancient church tower, barely visible in the
morning, but conspicuous when the setting sun shines upon it; a
colliery, with its lofty wagonway, and the self-moving wagons running
hither and thither, as if in pure wilfulness; and three or four farms,
at various degrees of ascent, whose yards, paddocks, and dairies I am
better acquainted with than their inhabitants would believe possible. I
know every stack of the one on the heights. Against the sky I see the
stacking of corn and hay in the season, and can detect the slicing away
of the provender, with an accurate eye, at the distance of several
miles. I can follow the sociable farmer in his summer-evening ride,
pricking on in the lanes where he is alone, in order to have more time
for the unconscionable gossip at the gate of the next farm-house, and
for the second talk over the paddock-fence of the next, or for the third
or fourth before the porch, or over the wall, when the resident farmer
comes out, pipe in mouth, and puffs away amidst his chat, till the wife
appears, with a shawl over her cap, to see what can detain him so long;
and the daughter follows, with her gown turned over head (for it is now
chill evening), and at last the sociable horseman finds he must be
going, looks at his watch, and, with a gesture of surprise, turns his
steed down a steep broken way to the beach, and canters home over the
sands, left hard and wet by the ebbing tide, the white horse making his
progress visible to me through the dusk. Then, if the question arises
which has most of the gossip spirit, he or I, there is no shame in the
answer. Any such small amusement is better than harmless--is
salutary--which carries the spirit of the sick prisoner abroad into the
open air, and among country people. When I shut down my window, I feel
that my mind has had an airing.
But there are many times when these distant views cannot be sought; when
we are too languid for any objects that do not present themselves near
at hand. Here, too, I am provided. I overlook gardens, and particularly
a well-managed market-garden, from which I have learned, and enjoyed,
not a little. From the radish-sowing in early spring, to the latest
turnip and onion cropping, I watch the growth of everything, and hence
feel an interest in the frosts and rain, which I should otherwise not
dream of. A shower is worth much to me when the wide potato-beds, all
dry and withering in the morning, are green and fresh in the evening
light; and the mistress of the garden, bringing up her pails of frothing
milk from the cow-house, looks about her with complacency, and comes
forth with fresh alacrity to cut the young lettuces which are sent for,
for somebody’s supper of cold lamb.
The usual drawback of a sea-side residence is the deficiency of trees. I
see none (except through the telescope) but one shabby sycamore, which
grows between my eye and the chimney of the baths in the haven. But this
is not a pure disadvantage. I may see less beauty in summer, but I also
see less dreariness in winter.
The winter beauty of the coast is a great consideration. The snow does
not lie; at least rarely for more than a very few hours; and then it has
no time to lose its lustre. When I look forth in the morning, the whole
land may be sheeted with glittering snow, while the myrtle-green sea
swells and tumbles, forming an almost incredible contrast to the summer
aspect of both, and even to the afternoon aspect; for before sunset the
snow is gone, except in the hollows; all is green again on shore, and
the waves are lilac, crested with white. My winter pleasures of this
kind were, at first, a pure surprise to me. I had spent every winter of
my life in a town; and here, how different it is! The sun shines into
my room from my hour of rising till within a few minutes of dusk, and
this, almost by settled custom, till February, our worst month. The
sheeny sea, swelling in orange light, is crossed by fishing-boats, which
look black by contrast, and there is none of the deadness of winter in
the landscape; no leafless trees, no locking up with ice; and the air
comes in through my open upper sash brisk, but sun-warmed. The robins
twitter and hop in my flower-boxes, outside the window; and the
sea-birds sit on the water, or cluster on the spits of sand left by the
tide. Within-doors, all is gay and bright with flowering narcissus,
tulips, crocus, and hyacinths. And at night, what a heaven! What an
expanse of stars above, appearing more steadfast, the more the Northern
Lights dart and quiver! And what a silvery sheet of moonlight below,
crossed by vessels more black than those which looked blackest in the
golden sea of the morning! It makes one’s very frame shiver with a
delicious surprise to look, (and the more, the oftener one looks,) at a
moonlit sea through the telescope; at least, it is so with one who can
never get near the object in any other way. I doubt whether there be any
inland spectacle so singular and stirring, except that which is common
to both, a good telescopic view of the planets. This transcends all. It
is well to see by day, the shadows of walkers on the wet sands; the
shadows of the sails of a windmill on the sward; the shadow of rocks in
a deep sea cave; but far beyond this is it to see the shadow of the disk
of Saturn on his rings. How is it that so many sick prisoners are
needlessly deprived of all these sights; shut up in a street of a town?
What is there there, that can compensate them for what they lose?
There is some set-off to the winter privileges I have spoken of, in an
occasional day of storms; perhaps two or three in each season. These are
very dreary while they last; though, considering the reaction, the next
fine day, salutary on the whole. On these days, the horror of the winds
is great. One’s very bed shakes under them; and some neighbour’s house
is pretty sure to be unroofed. The window-cushions must be removed,
because nothing can keep out the rain, not even the ugly array of cloths
laid over all the sashes. The rain and spray seem to ooze through the
very glass. The wet comes through to the ceiling, however perfect the
tiling. The splash and dash against the panes are wearing to the
nerves. Balls of foam drive, like little balloons, over the garden; and,
sooner or later in the day, we see the ominous rush of men and boys to
the rocks and the ridge, and we know that there is mischief. We see
either a vessel labouring over the bar, amidst an universal expectation
that she will strike; or we see, by a certain slope of the masts, that
she is actually on the rocks; or she drives wilfully over to the sands,
in spite of all the efforts of steam-tugs and her own crew; and then
come forth the life-boats, which we cannot help watching, but which look
as if they must themselves capsize, and increase the misery instead of
preventing it. Then, when the crew are taken from the rigging, and
carried up to the port, ensues the painful sight of the destruction of
the vessel; parties, or files of women, boys, and men, passing along the
ridge or the sands with the spoils; bundles of sailcloth, armsful of
spars, shoulder-loads of planks; while, in the midst, there is sure to
be a report, false or true, of a vessel having foundered, somewhere near
at hand. On such days, it is a relief to bar the shutters at length, and
close the curtains, and light the lamp, and, if the wind will allow, to
forget the history of the day. Still more thankful are we to go to
bed--I can hardly say to rest--for invalids are liable to a return in
the night of the painful impressions of noon, with exaggerations, unless
the agitation has been such as to wear them out with fatigue. But, as I
said, such days are very few. Two or three such in a year, and two or
three weeks of shifting sea-fog in spring, are nearly all the drawbacks
we have; nearly the only obscurations of Nature’s beauties.
How different are “the seasons, and their change,” to us, and to the
busy inhabitants of towns! How common is it for townspeople to observe,
that the shortest day is past without their remembering it was so near!
or the equinox, or even the longest day! Whereas, we sick watchers have,
as it were, a property in the changes of the seasons, and even of the
moon. It is a good we would not sell for any profit, to say to
ourselves, at the end of March, that the six months of longest days are
now before us; that we are entering upon a region of light evenings,
with their soft lulling beauties; and of short nights, when, late as we
go to rest, we can almost bid defiance to horrors, and the depressions
of darkness. There is a monthly spring of the spirits too, when the
young moon appears again, and we have the prospect of three weeks’
pleasure in her course, if the sky be propitious. I have often smiled in
detecting in myself this sense of property in such shows; in becoming
aware of a sort of resentment, of feeling of personal grievance, when
the sky is not propitious; when I have no benefit of the moon for
several nights together, through the malice of the clouds, or the
sea-haze in spring. But, now I have learned by observation where and
when to look for the rising moon, what a superb pleasure it is to lie
watching the sea-line, night after night, unwilling to shut the window,
to leave the window-couch, to let the lamp be lighted, till the punctual
and radiant blessing comes, answering to my hope, surpassing my
expectation, and appearing to greet me with express and consolatory
intent! Should I actually have quitted life without this set of
affections, if I had not been ill? I believe it. And, moreover, I
believe that my interest in these spectacles of Nature has created a new
regard to them in others. I see a looking out for the rising moon among
the neighbours, who have possessed the same horizon-line all their
lives, but did not know its value till they saw what it is to me. I
observe the children from the cottage swinging themselves up to obtain a
peep over the palings, when they see me on the watch in the window; and
an occasional peep at a planet, through my telescope, appears to dress
the heavens in quite a new light to such as venture to take a look.
They do not know, however, anything of my most thrilling experience of
these things--for it happens when they are all at rest. I keep late
hours, (for the sake of husbanding my seasons of ease;) and now and then
I have nerve enough to look abroad for my last vision of the day, an
hour after midnight, when the gibbous moon,--having forsaken the
sea,--slowly surmounts the priory ruins on the high rock, appearing in
the black-blue heaven like a quite different planet from that which I
have been watching,--and from that which I shall next greet, a slender
crescent in the light western sky, just after sunset. To go from this
spectacle to one’s bed is to recover for the hour one’s health of soul,
at least: and the remembrance of such a thrill is a cordial for future
sickly hours which strengthens by keeping.
I have a sense of property too in the larks which nestle in all the
furrows of the down. It is a disquietude to see them start up and soar,
with premature joy, on some mild January day, before our snows and
storms have begun, when I detect in myself a feeling of duty to the
careless creatures,--a longing to warn them, by my superior wisdom, that
they must not reckon yet on spring. And on April mornings, when the
shadows are strong in the hollows, and some neighbour’s child sends me
in a handful of primroses from the fields, I look forth, as for my due,
to see the warblers spring and fall, and to catch their carol above the
hum and rejoicing outcry of awakening Nature. If the yellow butterflies
do not come to my flower-box in the sunny noon, I feel myself wronged.
But they do come,--and so do the bees: and there are times when the
service is too importunate,--when the life and light are more than I can
bear, and I draw down the blind, and shut myself in with my weakness,
and with thoughts more abstract. But when, in former days, had simple,
natural influences such power over me? How is it that the long-suffering
sick, already deprived of so much, are ever needlessly debarred from
natural and renovating pleasures like these?
Watch the effect upon them of a picture, or a print of a breezy
tree,--of a gushing stream,--of a group of children swinging on a gate
in a lane. If they do not (because they cannot) express in words the
thirst of their souls for these images, observe how their eyes wistfully
follow the portfolio or volume of plates which ministers this scenery to
them. Observe how, in looking at portraits, their notice fastens at once
on any morsel of back-ground which presents any rural objects. Observe
the sad fondness with which they cherish flowers,--how reluctantly it is
admitted that they fade. Mark the value of presents of bulbs,--above the
most splendid array of plants in flower, which kind people love to send
to sick prisoners. Plants in bloom are beautiful and glorious; but the
pleasure to a prisoner is to see the process of growth. It is less the
bright and fragrant flower that the spirit longs for than the spectacle
of vegetation.
Blessings on the inventors and improvers of fern-houses! We feel towards
them a mingling of the gratitude due to physicians, and appropriate to
the Good People. We find under their glass-bells fairy gifts, and
prescriptions devised with consummate skill. In towns, let the sick
prisoner have a fern-house as a compensation for rural pleasures; and in
the country as an addition to them.
Blessings on the writers of voyages and travels; and not the less for
their not having contemplated our case in describing what they have
seen! A school-boy’s or a soldier’s eagerness after voyages and travels
is nothing to that of an invalid. We are insatiable in regard to this
kind of book. To us it is scenery, exercise, fresh air. The new
knowledge is quite a secondary consideration. We are weary of the aspect
of a chest of drawers,--tired of certain marks on the wall, and of many
unchangeable features of our apartment; so that when a morning comes,
and our eyes open on these objects, and we foresee the seasons of pain
or bodily distress, or mental depression, which we know must come round
as regularly as the hours, we loathe the prospect of our day. Things
clear up a little when we rise, and we think we ought to be writing a
letter to such-a-one, which has been on our conscience for some time.
While the paper and ink are being brought, we put out our hand for that
book,--arrived or laid in sight this morning. It is a Journal of
Travels to the Polar Sea, or over the Passes of the Alps,--or in the
Punjâb,--or in Central or South America. Here the leaves turn over
rapidly;--there we linger, and read one paragraph again and again,
dwelling fondly on some congregation of images, to be seen by our bodily
eyes no more:--on we go till stopped by the fluttering and
distress,--the familiar pain, or the leaden down-sinking of the spirits,
and wonder that our trying time has come so soon, before the letter is
written. It has not come soon;--it is only that some hours of our
penance have been beguiled,--that we have been let out of our prison for
a holiday, and are now brought back to our schooling. But the good does
not end here. We see everything with different eyes,--the chest of
drawers,--the walls,--the bookshelves, and the pattern of the rug. We
have been seeing the Northern Lights and icebergs: we have been watching
for avalanches, or for the sun-rise from Etna, or gazing over the
Pampas, or peering through the primeval forest; and fragments of these
visions freshen the very daylight to us.
Blessings, above all, on Christopher North! We cannot but wonder
whether he ever cast a thought upon such as we are when breasting the
breeze on the moors, or pressing up the mountain-side, or watching
beside the trout-stream; or summoning the fowls of heaven, and passing
them in review into his Aviary;--or, especially, whether he had any
thought of recreating us when he sent forth his “Recreations” within
reach of our hands. If he did not think of sick prisoners in issuing his
vital, breezy book, he has missed a pleasure worthy of a heart like his.
He pities the town-dwellers who might relish nature and will not: but
his pity for them must be destitute of the zest which pity derives from
a consciousness of helpfulness. He can hardly help those to country
privileges who will not help themselves. But has he remembered the
chamber-dwellers,--the involuntary plodders within narrow bounds,--few
in comparison with the other class, it is true, but, if estimated by
emotion--by experience in which his heart can sympathise, not less
entitled to his regards?
Whether he thought of us or not, he has recreated us. Whether he is now
conscious of the fact or not, his spirit has come, many a time while his
tired body slept, and opened our prison-doors, and led us a long flight
over mountain and moor, lake and lea, and dropped us again on our beds,
refreshed and soothed, to dream at least of having felt the long-lost
sensation of health once more. Blessings on him then, as the kindest of
the friendly ghosts who use well their privilege of passing in and out
of all secret and sorrowful places, as they go to and fro on the earth!
If he has ministered to us with more or less deliberate intent, he needs
not to be told with what heartiness we drink his health in the first
full draught of the spring west wind--how cordially we pledge him in the
sparkling thunder-shower, or the brimming harvest-moon.
O! if every one who sorrows for us would help us to assert our claim to
Nature’s nursing, we should soon have our solace and our due. We have
not all the vigour and spirit,--nor even the inclination, in our morbid
state, to turn our faces to the fountain of solace--the fresh waters
which cool the spirit when fretted by its tormenting companion. We
cannot infallibly keep alive in our weak selves the love of Nature which
would lead us to repose ourselves upon her, and forget the evils which
even she cannot cure. But this should be done for us. When our sentence
is passed, clear and irreversible, the next thing is to make it as
lenient as possible in its operation; and especially by seeing that it
is through no oversight that, if the outward man must decay, the inward
man is not renewed day by day. This renewal, say some, must be by grace.
Well, Nature is God’s grace, meant to abound to all,--and not least to
those whom, by his chastening, he may be humbly supposed to love.
LIFE TO THE INVALID.
“There is a pause near death when men grow bold
Toward all things else.”
ROBERT LANDOR.
“Man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which
the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders: he
will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is
sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of
time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches,
but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is
base and frivolous in his own life, and be content with all places,
and any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in
the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath
already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.”
EMERSON.
Can we not all remember the time when, on first taking to heart Milton,
and afterwards Akenside,--(before knowing anything of Dante,) we
conceived the grandest moment of possible existence to be that of a
Seraph, poised on balanced wings, watching the bringing out of a world
from chaos, its completion in fitness, beauty and radiance, and its
first motion in its orbit, when sent forth by the creative hand on its
everlasting way? How many a young imagination has dwelt on this image
till the act appeared to be almost one of memory,--till the vision
became one of the persuasives to entertain the notion of human
pre-existence, in which we find one or another about us apt to delight!
To me, this conception was, in my childhood, one of eminent delight; and
when, years afterwards, I was involved in more than the ordinary toil
and hurry of existence, I now and then recurred to the old image, with a
sort of longing to exchange my function,--my share of the world-building
in which we all have to help, for the privilege of the supposed seraph.
Was there nothing prophetic, or at least provident, in this? Is not
sequestration from the action of life a different thing to me from what
it would have been if there had been no preparation of the imagination?
Though I, and my fellows in lot, must wait long for the seraphic powers
which would enable us fully to enjoy and use our position, we have the
position; and it is for us to see how far we can make our privilege
correspond to the anticipation.
Nothing is more impossible to represent in words, even to one’s self in
meditative moments, than what it is to lie on the verge of life and
watch, with nothing to do but to think, and learn from what we behold.
Let any one recall what it is to feel suddenly, by personal experience,
the full depth of meaning of some saying, always believed in, often
repeated with sincerity, but never till now _known_. Every one has felt
this, in regard to some one proverb, or divine scriptural clause, or
word of some right royal philosopher or poet. Let any one then try to
conceive of an extension of this realisation through all that has ever
been wisely said of man and human life, and he will be endeavouring to
imagine our experience. Engrossing, thrilling, overpowering as the
experience is, we have each to bear it alone; for each of us is
surrounded by the active and the busy, who have a different gift and a
different office;--and if not, it is one of those experiences which are
incommunicable. If we endeavour to utter our thoughts on the folly of
the pursuit of wealth, on the emptiness of ambition, on the surface
nature of distinctions of rank, &c. we are only saying what our hearers
have had by heart all their lives from books,--through a long range of
authors, from Solomon to Burns. Spoken moralities really reach only
those whom they immediately concern;--and they are such as are saying
the same things within their own hearts. We utter them under two
conditions:--sometimes because we cannot help it; and sometimes under a
sense of certainty that a human heart somewhere is needing the sympathy
for which we yearn.
You, my fellow-sufferer, now lying on your couch, the newspaper dropping
from your hand, while your eyes are fixed on the lamp, are you not
smiling at the thought that you have preserved, up to this time, more or
less of that faith of your childhood--that everything that is in print
is true? Before we had our present leisure for reflection, we read one
newspaper,--perhaps occasionally one on the other side. We found
opposition of views; but this was to be expected from diversities of
minds and position. Now the whole press is open to us, and we see what
is said on all sides. What an astonishing result! We hear that Cabinet
Ministers are apt to grow nervous about newspaper commentaries on their
conduct. To us this seems scarcely possible, seeing, as we do, that,
though every paper may be useful reading for the suggestions and other
lights it affords, every one is at fault, as a judge. Every one forgets,
actually or politicly, that it is in possession of only partial
information, generally speaking; we find no guarding intimation to the
reader, that there may be information behind which might alter the
aspect of the question. Such notice may be too much to expect of diurnal
literature; but the confusion made by the positiveness of all parties,
proceeding on their respective faulty grounds of fact--a positiveness
usually proportioned to the faultiness of the grounds--is such as might,
one would think, relieve Cabinet Ministers who have their work at heart,
from any very anxious solicitude about the judgments of the press, in
regard to unfinished affairs. Meantime, what a work is done! Amidst the
flat contradictions of fact, and oppositions of opinion,--amidst the
passion which sets men’s wits to work to conceive of and propose all
imaginable motives and results, what an abundance of light is struck
out! From a crowd of falsehoods, what a revelation we have of the truth,
which no one man, nor party of men, could reveal!--of the wants, wishes,
and ideas of every class or coterie of society that can speak for
itself, and of some that cannot!