along this coast were dreadful wreckers and plunderers themselves,
and made little account of burning a ship and knocking the
survivors on the head. The very parish, Germoe, in which Pengersick
stands, had as bad a name as any in Cornwall:
God keep us from rocks and shelving sands,
And save us from Breage and Germoe men's hands,
runs the old rhyme. And there is an evil old story of how a
treasure ship, the St. Andrew of Portugal, went ashore at Gunwalloe
in January 1526. There were thousands of cakes of copper and silver
on board, plate, pearls, jewels, chains, brooches, arras, satins,
velvets, sets of armour for the King of Portugal, and a huge chest
of coined gold.
The wretched crew got most of the treasure to land and stacked it
on the cliffs, when John Milliton of Pengersick, with a St. Aubyn
and a Godolphin, came down with sixty armed men, and took all the
treasure away. Complaints were made, and the three gentlemen
protested that they had but ridden down to save the crew, had found
them destitute, and had even given them money. But I daresay the
big guest-chamber of Pengersick was hung with Portuguese arras for
many a long year afterwards.
The Millitons died out, and their land passed by purchase or
marriage to the descendants of another of the three pious squires,
Godolphin of Godolphin--and belongs to-day to his descendant, the
Duke of Leeds.
One would have thought that men could not have borne to live so, in
such deadly insecurity. But probably they troubled their heads
little about the pirates, kept the women and children at home, and
set a retainer on the cliff in open weather, to scan the offing for
the light-rigged barques, while poorer folk took their chance. We
live among a different set of risks now, and think little of them,
as the days pass.
The life of the tower was simple and hardy enough--some fishing and
hunting, some setting of springes on the moor for woodcock and
rabbits, much farmwork, solid eating and drinking, and an
occasional carouse--a rude, plentiful, healthy life, perhaps not as
far removed from our own as we like to believe.
But the old tower spoke to me to-day of different things, of the
buried life of the past, of the strange drift of human souls
through the world for their little span of life, love, and sorrow,
and all so pathetically ignorant of what goes before and follows
after, why it so comes about, and what is the final aim of the will
we blindly serve. Here was a house of men, I said to myself, with
the same hopes and fears and fancies as myself, and yet none of
them, could I recall them, could give me any reason for the life we
thus hurriedly live, so much of it entirely joyful and delightful,
so much of it distasteful and afflicting. On a sunny day of summer,
with the sea a sapphire blue, set with great purple patches, the
scent of the gorse in the air, the sound of the clear stream in
one's ears, what could be sweeter than to live? and even on dark
days, when the wind volleys up from the sea, and the rain dashes on
the windows, and the gulls veer and sail overhead, the great guest-
room with its fire of wreckage, the women working, the children
playing about, must have been a pleasant place enough. But even to
the strongest and boldest of the old squires the end came, as the
waggon with the coffin jolted along the stony lane, and the bell of
Germoe came faintly over the hill.
But I could not think of that to-day, with a secret joy in my
heart; I thought rather of the splendid mystery of life, that seems
to screen from us something more gracious still--the steep velvet
sky full of star-dust, the flush of spring in sunlit orchards, the
soft, thunderous echoes of great ocean billows, the orange glow of
sunset behind dark woods: all that background of life; and then the
converse of friend with friend, the intercepted glance of wondering
eyes, the whispered message of the heart. All this, and a crowd of
other sweet images and fancies came upon me in a rush to-day, like
scents from a twilight garden, as I watched the old silvery tower
stand up bluff and square, with the dark moorland behind it, and
the little houses clustering about its feet.
VIII
VILLAGES
I wonder if any human being has ever expended as much sincere and
unrequited love upon the little pastoral villages about Cambridge
as I have. No one ever seems to me to take the smallest interest in
them or to know them apart or to remember where they are. It is
true that it takes a very faithful lover to distinguish instantly
and impeccably between Histon, Hinxton, Hauxton, Harston, and
Harlton; but to me they have all of them a perfectly distinct
quality, and make a series of charming little pastoral pictures in
the mind. Who shall justly and perfectly assess the beautiful
claims of Great and Little Eversden? I doubt if any inhabitant of
Cambridge but myself and one friend of mine, a good man and true,
could do it. Yet it is as pleasant to have a connoisseurship in
villages as to have a connoisseurship in wines or cigars, though it
is not so regarded.
What is the charm of them? That I cannot say. It is a mystery, like
the charm of all sweet things; and further, what is the meaning of
love for an inanimate thing, with no individuality, no personality,
no power of returning love? The charm of love is that one discerns
some spirit making signals back. "I like you to be here, I trust
you, I am glad to be with you, I wish to give you something, to
increase your joy, as mine is increased." That, or something like
that, is what one reads in the eyes and faces and gestures of those
whom one dares to love. One would otherwise be sadly and mournfully
alone if one could not come across the traces of something, some
one whose heart leaps up and whose pulse quickens at the proximity
of comrade and friend and lover. But even so there is always the
thought of the parting ahead, when, after the sharing of joy, each
has to go on his way alone.
Then, one may love animals; but that is a very strange love, for
the man and the animal cannot understand each other. The dog may be
a true and faithful comrade, and there really is nothing in the
world more wonderful than the trustful love of a dog for a man. One
may love a horse, I suppose, though the horse is a foolish creature
at best; one may have a sober friendship with a cat, though a cat
does little more than tolerate one; and a bird can be a merry
little playfellow: but the terror of wild animals for men has
something rather dreadful about it, because it stands for many
centuries of cruel wrong-doing.
And one may love, too, with a wistful sort of love the works of
men, pictures, music, statues; but that, I think, is because one
discerns a human figure at the end of a vista--a figure hurrying
away through the ages, but whom one feels one could have loved had
time and place only allowed.
But when it comes to loving trees and flowers, streams and hills,
buildings and fields, what is it that happens? I have a perfectly
distinct feeling about these little villages hereabouts. Some are
to me like courteous strangers, some like dull and indifferent
people, some like pleasant, genial folk whom I am mildly pleased to
see; but with some I have a real and devoted friendship. I like
visiting them, and if I cannot visit them, I think of them; when I
am far away the thought of them comes across me, and I am glad to
think of them waiting there for me, nestling under their hill, the
smoke going up above the apple-orchards.
One or two of them are particularly beloved because I visited them
first thirty years ago, when I was an undergraduate, and the
thought of the old days and the old friendships springs up again
like a sweet and far-off fragrance when I enter them. Yet I do not
know any of the people who live in these villages, though by dint
of going there often there are a few people by whom I am recognised
and saluted.
But let me take one village in particular, and I will not name it,
because one ought not to publish the names of those whom one loves.
What does it consist of? It straggles along a rough and ill-laid
lane, under a little wold, once a sheep-walk, now long ploughed up.
The soil of the wold is pale, so that in the new-ploughed fields
there rest soft, creamlike shadows when the evening sun falls
aslant. There are two or three substantial farmhouses of red brick,
comfortable old places, with sheds and ricks and cattle-byres and
barns close about them. And I think it is strange that the scent of
a cattle-byre, with its rich manure and its oozing pools, is not
ungrateful to the human sense. It ought to be, but it is not. It
gives one, by long inheritance, no doubt, a homelike feeling.
Then there are many plastered, white-walled, irregular cottages,
very quaint and pretty, perhaps a couple of centuries old, very ill
built, no doubt, but enchanting to look at; there is a new
schoolhouse, very ugly at present, with its smart red brick and its
stone facings--ugly because it does not seem to have grown up out
of the place, but to have been brought there by rail; and there are
a few new yellow-brick cottages, probably much pleasanter to live
in than the old ones, but with no sort of interest or charm. The
whole is surrounded by little fields, orchards, closes, paddocks,
and a good many great elms stand up above the house-roofs. There is
one quaint old farm, with a moat and a dove-cote and a fine, old
mellow brick wall surrounded by little pollarded elms, very quiet
and characteristic; and then there is a big, ancient church, by
whom built one cannot divine, because there is no squire in the
village, and the farmers and labourers could no more build such a
church now than they could build a stellar observatory. It would
cost nowadays not less than ten thousand pounds, and there is no
record of who gave the money or who the architect was. It has a
fine tower and a couple of solid bells; it has a few bits of good
brass-work, a chandelier and some candlesticks, and it has a fine
eighteenth-century tomb in a corner, with a huge slab of black
basalt on the top, and a heraldic shield and a very obsequious
inscription, which might apply to anyone, and yet could be true of
nobody. Why the particular old gentleman should want to sleep
there, or who was willing to spend so much on his lying in state,
no one knows, and I fear that no one cares except myself.
There are a few little bits of old glass in the church, in the
traceries of the windows, just enough to show that some one liked
making pretty things, and that some one else cared enough to pay
for them. And then there is a solid rectory by the church,
inhabited for centuries by fellows of a certain Cambridge college.
I do not expect that they lived there very much. Probably they rode
over on Sundays, read two services, and had a cold luncheon in
between; perhaps they visited a sick parishioner, and even came
over on a week-day for a marriage or a funeral; and I daresay that
in the summer, when the college was deserted, they came and lived
there for a few weeks, rather bored, and longing for the warm
combination room and the college port and the gossip and stir of
the place.
That is really all, I think. And what is there to love in all that?
Well, it is a little space of earth in which life has been going on
for I daresay a thousand years. The whole place has grown slowly up
out of the love and care and work of man. Perhaps there were
nothing but little huts and hovels at first, with a tiny rubble
church; then the houses grew a little bigger and better. Perhaps it
was emptied again by the Black Death, which took a long toll of
victims hereabouts. Shepherds, ploughmen, hedgers, ditchers,
farmers, an ale-house-keeper, a shopkeeper or two, and a priest--
that has been the village for a thousand years. Patient, stupid,
toilsome, unimaginative, kindly little lives, I daresay. Not much
interested in one another, ill educated, gossipy, brutish,
superstitious, but surprised perhaps into sudden passions of love,
and still more surprised perhaps by the joys of fatherhood and
motherhood; with children of all ages growing up, pretty and
engaging and dirty and amusing and naughty, fading one by one into
dull and sober age, and into decrepitude, and the churchyard at the
end of all!
Well, I think all that pathetic and mysterious, and beautiful with
the beauty that reality has. I want to know who all the folks were,
what they looked like, what they cared about or thought about, how
they made terms with pain and death, what they hoped, expected,
feared, and what has become of them. Everyone as urgently and
vehemently and interestedly alive as I myself, and yet none of them
with the slightest idea of how they got there or whither they were
going--the great, helpless, good-natured, passive army of men and
women, pouring like a stream through the world, and borne away on
the wings of the wind. They were glad to be alive, no doubt, when
the sun fell on the apple-orchard, and the scent of the fruit was
in the air, and the bees hummed round the blossoms, when people
smile at each other and say kind and meaningless things; they were
afraid, no doubt, as they lay in pain in the stuffy attics, with
the night wind blustering round the chimney-stack, and hoped to be
well again. Then there were occasions and treats, the Sunday
dinner, the wedding, the ride in the farm-cart to Cambridge, the
visit of the married sister from her home close by. I do not
suppose they knew or cared what was happening in the world. War and
politics made little difference to them. They knew about the
weather, they cared perhaps about their work, they liked the Sunday
holiday--all very dim and simple, thoughts not expressed, feelings
not uttered, experience summed up in little bits of phrases. Yet I
like to think that they were pleased with the look of the place
without knowing why. I don't deceive myself about all this, or make
it out as idyllic. I don't exactly wish to have lived thus, and I
expect it was coarse, greedy, dull, ugly, a great deal of it; but
though I can think fine thoughts about it, and put my thoughts into
musical words, I do not honestly believe that my life, my hopes, my
feelings differ very much from the experience of these old people.
Of course I have books and pictures and intellectual fancies and
ideas; but that is only an elaborate game that I play, the things I
notice and recognise: but I expect the old hearts and minds were at
work, too, noticing and observing and recording; and all my
flourish of talk and thought is only a superficial affair.
And what consecrates and lights up the little place for me, touches
it with golden hues, makes it moving, touching, beautiful, is the
thought of all that strange, unconscious life, the love and hate,
the fear and the content, the joy and sorrow, that has surged to
and fro among the thatched roofs and apple-orchards so many
centuries before I came into being, and will continue when I am
trodden into the dust.
When I came here first thirty years ago, exploring with a friend
long dead the country-side, it was, I am sure, the same thought
that made the place beautiful. I could not then put it into words;
I have learned to do that since, and word-painting is a very
pleasant pastime. It was a hot, bright summer day--I recall the
scent of the clover in the air--and there came on me that curious
uplifting of the heart, that wonder as to what all the warmth and
scent, the green-piled tree, the grazing cows, the children
trotting to and fro, could possibly mean, or why it was all so
utterly delightful. It was not a religious feeling, but there was a
sense of a great, good-natured, beauty-loving mind behind it all--a
mind very like our own, and yet even then with a shadow striking
across it--the shadow of pain and grief and hollow farewells.
I was not a very contented boy in those days, in some bewilderment
of both mind and heart, having had my first experience that life
could be hard and intricate. The world was sweeter to me, though
not so interesting as it now is; but I had just the same deep
desire as I have now, though it has not been satisfied, to find
something strong and secure and permanent, some heart to trust
utterly and entirely, something that could understand and comfort
and explain and reassure, a power which one could clasp hands with,
as a child lays its delicate finger in a strong, enfolding palm,
and never be in any doubt again. It is one's weakness which is so
tiring, so disappointing; and yet I do not want a careless,
indifferent, brutal, healthy strength at all. It is the strength of
love and peace that I want, not to be afraid, not to be troubled.
It is all somewhere, I do not doubt:
Yet, oh, the place could I but find!
I have been through my village this very day. The sun was just
beginning to slope to the west; the sun poured out his rays of gold
from underneath the shadow of a great, dark, up-piled cloud--the
long rays which my nurse used to tell me were sucking up water, but
which I believed to be the eye of God. The trees were bare, but the
elm-buds were red, and the willow-rods were crimson with spring;
the little stream bubbled clearly off the hill; and the cottage
gardens were full of up-thrusting blades; while the mezereons were
all aflame with bloom. Life moving, pausing, rushing past! I
wonder. When I pass the gate, if I see the dawn of that other
morning, I cannot help feeling that I shall want to see my little
village again, to loiter down the lane among the white-gabled
houses. Shall I be much wiser then than I am now? Shall I have seen
or heard something which will set my anxious mind at rest? Who can
tell me? And yet the old, gnarled apple-boughs, with the blue sky
behind them, and the new-springing grass all seem to hold the
secret, which I want as much to interpret and make my own as when I
wandered through the hamlet under the wold more than thirty years
ago.
IX
DREAMS
There is a movement nowadays among the philosophers who study the
laws of thought, to lay a strong emphasis upon the phenomena of
dreams; what part of us is it that enacts with such strange zest
and vividness, and yet with so mysterious a disregard of ordinary
motives and conventions, the pageant of dreams? Like many other
things which befall us in daily life, dreams are so familiar a
fact, that we often forget to wonder at the marvellousness of it
all. The two points about dreams which seem to me entirely
inexplicable are: firstly, that they are so much occupied with
visual impressions, and secondly, that though they are all self-
invented and self-produced, they yet contrive to strike upon the
mind with a marvellous freshness of emotion and surprise. Let us
take these two points a little more in detail.
When one awakes from a vivid dream one generally has the impression
of a scene of some kind, which has been mainly received through the
medium of the eye. I suppose that this varies with different
people, but my own dreams are rather sharply divided into certain
classes. I am oftenest a silent spectator of landscapes of
ineffable beauty, such as a great river, as blue as sapphire,
rolling majestically down between vast sandstone cliffs, or among
wooded hills, piled thick with trees rich in blossom; or I see
stately buildings crowded together among woodlands, with long
carved fronts of stone and airy towers. These dreams are peculiarly
uplifting and stimulating, and I wake from them with an
extraordinary sense of beauty and wonder; or else I see from some
window or balcony a great ceremony of some quite unintelligible
kind proceeding, a procession with richly dressed persons walking
or riding, or a religious pomp taking place in a dim pillared
interior. All such dreams pass by in absolute silence. I have no
idea where I am, nor what is happening, nor am I curious to know.
No voice is upraised, and there is no one at hand to converse with.
Then again there are dreams of which the substance is animated and
vivid conversation. I have long and confidential talks with people
like the Pope or the Tsar of Russia. They ask my advice, they quote
my books, and I am surprised to find them so familiar and
accessible. Or I am in a strange house with an unknown party of
guests, and person after person comes up to tell me all kinds of
interesting facts and details. Or else, as often happens to me, I
meet people long since dead; I dream constantly, for instance,
about my father. I see him by chance at a railway station, we
congratulate ourselves upon the happy accident of meeting; he takes
my arm, he talks smilingly and indulgently; and the only way in
which the knowledge that he is dead affects the dream is that I
feel bewildered at having seen so little of him of late, and even
ask him where he has been for so long that we have not met oftener.
Very occasionally I hear music in a dream. I well remember hearing
four musicians with little instruments like silver flutes play a
quartet of infinite sweetness; but most of my adventures take place
either among fine landscapes or in familiar conversation.
At one time, as a child, I had an often repeated dream. We were
then living in an old house at Lincoln, called the Chancery. It was
a large rambling place, with some interesting medieval features,
such as a stone winding staircase, a wooden Tudor screen, built
into a wall, and formerly belonging to the chapel of the house,
There were, moreover, certain quite unaccountable spaces, where the
external measurements of passages did not correspond with the
measurement of rooms within. This fact excited our childish
imagination, and probably was the origin of the dream.
It always began in the same way. I would appear to be descending a
staircase which led up into a lobby, and would find that a certain
step rattled as I trod upon it. Upon examination the step proved to
be hinged, and on opening it, the head of a staircase appeared,
leading downwards. Though, as I say, the dream was often repeated,
it was always with the same shock of surprise that I made the
discovery. I used to squeeze in through the opening, close the step
behind me, and go down the stairs; the place was dimly lighted with
some artificial light, the source of which I could never discover.
At the bottom a large vaulted room was visible, of great extent,
fitted with iron-barred stalls as in a stable. These stalls were
tenanted by animals; there were dogs, tigers, and lions. They were
all very tame, and delighted to see me. I used to go into the
stalls one by one, feed and play with the animals, and enjoy myself
very much. There was never any custodian to be seen, and it never
occurred to me to wonder how the animals had got there, nor to whom
they belonged. After spending a long time with my menagerie, I used
to return; and the only thing that seemed of importance to me was
that I should not be seen leaving the place. I used to raise the
step cautiously and listen, so as to be sure that there was no one
about; generally in the dream some one came down the stairs over my
head; and I then waited, crouched below, with a sense of delightful
adventure, until the person had passed by, when I cautiously
extricated myself. This dream became quite familiar to me, so that
I used to hope in my mind, on going to bed, that I might be about
to see the animals. but I was often disappointed, and dreamed of
other things. This dream visited me at irregular intervals for I
should say about two or three years, and then I had it no more; but
the singular fact about it was that it always came with the same
sense of wonder and delight, and while actually dreaming it, I
never realised that I had seen it before.