_How blest my lot, in these sweet fields assign'd Where Peace
and Leisure soothe the tuneful mind._
SCOTT, of Amwell, _Moral Eclogues_ (1773)
_Happiness_
Cricketers on village greens, haymakers in the evening sunshine,
small boats that sail before the wind--all these create in me
the illusion of Happiness, as if a land of cloudless pleasure, a
piece of the old Golden World, were hidden, not (as poets have
imagined), in far seas or beyond inaccessible mountains, but
here close at hand, if one could find it, in some undiscovered
valley. Certain grassy lanes seem to lead between the meadows
thither; the wild pigeons talk of it behind the woods.
_To-Day_
I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality,
into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom--in fact
into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet
unexplained Universe.
Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way
thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read,
I pottered, I talked, and took exercise; and I sat punctually
down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals.
_The Afternoon Post_
The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its
postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe,
and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite,
is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon
I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read
young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and
cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which
is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this
strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but
I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast
table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself
"Here it is!" when at night I hear wheels approaching along the
road. So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly
concerned with any other interest or ambition, I live on in my
quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live perhaps until the end.
Is it, indeed, merely the last great summons and revelation for
which I am waiting? I do not know.
_The Busy Bees_
Sitting for hours idle in the shade of an apple tree, near
the garden-hives, and under the aerial thoroughfares of those
honey-merchants--sometimes when the noonday heat is loud with
their minute industry, or when they fall in crowds out of the
late sun to their night-long labours-I have sought instruction
from the Bees, and tried to appropriate to myself the old
industrious lesson.
And yet, hang it all, who by rights should be the teachers and
who the learners? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian
insects, was there no lesson to be derived from the spectacle of
Me? Gazing out at me with myriad eyes from their joyless
factories, might they not learn at last--might I not finally
teach them--a wiser and more generous-hearted way to improve the
shining hour?
_The Wheat_
The Vicar, whom I met once or twice in my walks about the
fields, told me that he was glad that I was taking an interest
in farming. Only my feeling about wheat, he said, puzzled him.
Now the feeling in regard to wheat which I had not been able to
make clear to the Vicar was simply one of amazement. Walking one
day into a field that I had watched yellowing beyond the trees,
I found myself dazzled by the glow and great expanse of gold. I
bathed myself in the intense yellow under the intense blue sky;
how dim it made the oak trees and copses and all the rest of the
English landscape seem! I had not remembered the glory of the
Wheat; nor imagined in my reading that in a country so far from
the Sun there could be anything so rich, so prodigal, so
reckless, as this opulence of ruddy gold, bursting out from the
cracked earth as from some fiery vein below. I remembered how
for thousands of years Wheat had been the staple of wealth, the
hoarded wealth of famous cities and empires; I thought of the
processes of corn-growing, the white oxen ploughing, the great
barns, the winnowing fans, the mills with the splash of their
wheels, or arms slow-turning in the wind; of cornfields at
harvest-time, with shocks and sheaves in the glow of sunset, or
under the sickle moon; what beauty it brought into the northern
landscape, the antique, passionate, Biblical beauty of the
South!
_The Coming of Fate_
When I seek out the sources of my thoughts, I find they had
their beginning in fragile Chance; were born of little moments
that shine for me curiously in the past. Slight the impulse that
made me take this turning at the crossroads, trivial and
fortuitous the meeting, and light as gossamer the thread
that first knit me to my friend. These are full of wonder;
more mysterious are the moments that must have brushed me
with their wings and passed me by: when Fate beckoned and I
did not see it, when new Life trembled for a second on the
threshold; but the word was not spoken, the hand was not
held out, and the Might-have-been shivered and vanished, dim
as a into the waste realms of non-existence.
So I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm
of daily life, with its meetings and words and accidents. Why,
to-day, perhaps, or next week, I may hear a voice, and, packing
up my Gladstone bag, follow it to the ends of the world.
_My Speech_
"Ladies and Gentlemen," I began--The Vicar was in the chair;
Mrs. La Mountain and her daughters sat facing us; and in the
little schoolroom, with its maps and large Scripture prints,
its blackboard with the day's sums still visible on it, were
assembled the labourers of the village, the old family coachman
and his wife, the one-eyed postman, and the gardeners and
boys from the Hall. Having culled from the newspapers a few
phrases, I had composed a speech which I delivered with a
spirit and eloquence surprising even to myself, and which was
now enthusiastically received. The Vicar cried "Hear, Hear!",
the Vicar's wife pounded her umbrella with such emphasis, and
the villagers cheered so heartily, that my heart was warmed. I
began to feel the meaning of my own words; I beamed on the
audience, felt that they were all brothers, all wished well
to the Republic; and it seemed to me an occasion to express
my real ideas and hopes for the Commonwealth.
Brushing therefore to one side, and indeed quite forgetting my
safe principles, I began to refashion and new-model the State.
Most existing institutions were soon abolished; and then, on
their ruins, I proceeded to build up the bright walls and
palaces of the City within me--the City I had read of in Plato.
With enthusiasm, and, I flatter myself, with eloquence, I
described it all--the Warriors, that race of golden youth bred
from the State-ordered embraces of the brave and fair; those
philosophic Guardians, who, being ever accustomed to the highest
and most extensive views, and thence contracting an habitual
greatness, possessed the truest fortitude, looking down indeed
with a kind of disregard on human life and death. And then,
declaring that the pattern of this City was laid up in Heaven, I
sat down, amid the cheers of the uncomprehending little
audience.
And afterward, in my rides about the country, when I saw on
walls and the doors of barns, among advertisements of sales, or
regulations about birds' eggs or the movements of swine, little
weather-beaten, old-looking notices on which it was stated that
I would "address the meeting," I remembered how the walls and
towers of the City I had built up in that little schoolroom had
shone with no heavenly light in the eyes of the Vicar's party.
_Stonehenge_
They sit there forever on the dim horizon of my mind, that
Stonehenge circle of elderly disapproving Faces--Faces of the
Uncles and Schoolmasters and Tutors who frowned on my youth.
In the bright centre and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my
dance; but when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For
nothing ever placates them, nothing ever moves to a look of
approval that ring of bleak and contemptuous Faces.
_The Stars_
Battling my way homeward one dark night against the wind and
rain, a sudden gust, stronger than the others, drove me back
into the shelter of a tree. But soon the Western sky broke open;
the illumination of the Stars poured down from behind the
dispersing clouds.
I was astonished at their brightness, to see how they filled the
night with their soft lustre. So I went my way accompanied by
them; Arcturus followed me, and becoming entangled in a leafy
tree, shone by glimpses, and then emerged triumphant, Lord of
the Western sky. Moving along the road in the silence of my own
footsteps, my thoughts were among the Constellations. I was one
of the Princes of the starry Universe; in me also there was
something that was not insignificant and mean and of no account.
_Silvia Doria_
Beyond the blue hills, within riding distance, there is a
country of parks and beeches, with views of the far-off sea. I
remember in one of my rides coming on the place which was the
scene of the pretty, old-fashioned story of Silvia Doria.
Through the gates, with fine gate-posts, on which heraldic
beasts, fierce and fastidious, were upholding coroneted shields,
I could see, at the end of the avenue, the façade of the House,
with its stone pilasters, and its balustrade on the steep roof.
More than one hundred years ago, in that Park, with its
Italianized house, and level gardens adorned with statues and
garden temples, there lived, they say, an old Lord with his two
handsome sons. The old Lord had never ceased mourning for his
Lady, though she had died a good many years before; there were
no neighbours he visited, and few strangers came inside the
great Park walls. One day in Spring, however, just when the
apple trees had burst into blossom, the gilded gates were thrown
open, and a London chariot with prancing horses drove up the
Avenue. And in the chariot, smiling and gay, and indeed very
beautiful in her dress of yellow silk, and her great Spanish hat
with drooping feathers, sat Silvia Doria, come on a visit to her
cousin, the old Lord.
It was her father who had sent her--that he might be more free,
some said, to pursue his own wicked courses--while others
declared that he intended her to marry the old Lord's eldest
son.
In any case, Silvia Doria came like the Spring, like the
sunlight, into the lonely place. Even the old Lord felt himself
curiously happy when he heard her voice singing about the house;
as for Henry and Francis, it was heaven for them just to walk by
her side down the garden alleys.
And Silvia Doria, though hitherto she had been but cold toward
the London gallants who had courted her, found, little by
little, that her heart was not untouched.
But, in spite of her father, and her own girlish love of gold
and rank, it was not for Henry that she cared, not for the old
Lord, but for Francis, the younger son. Did Francis know of
this? They were secretly lovers, the old scandal reported; and
the scandal, it may be, had reached her father's ears.
For one day a coach with foaming horses, and the wicked face of
an old man at its window, galloped up the avenue; and soon
afterwards, when the coach drove away, Silvia Doria was sitting
by the old man's side, sobbing bitterly.
And after she had gone, a long time, many of the old, last-century
years, went by without any change. And then Henry, the eldest son,
was killed in hunting; and the old Lord dying a few years later,
the titles and the great house and all the land and gold came to
Francis, the younger son. But after his father's death he was but
seldom there; having, as it seemed, no love for the place, and
living for the most part abroad and alone, for he never married.
And again, many years went by. The trees grew taller and darker
about the house; the yew hedges unclipt now, hung their branches
over the moss-grown paths; ivy almost smothered the statues; and
the plaster fell away in great patches from the discoloured
garden temples.
But at last one day a chariot drove up to the gates; a footman
pulled at the crazy bell, telling the gate-keeper that his
mistress wished to visit the Park. So the gates creaked open,
the chariot glittered up the avenue to the deserted place; and a
lady stepped out, went into the garden, and walked among its
moss-grown paths and statues. As the chariot drove out again,
"Tell your Lord," the lady said, smiling, to the lodge-keeper,
"that Silvia Doria came back."
_Bligh House_
To the West, in riding past the walls of Bligh, I remembered an
incident in the well-known siege of that house, during the Civil
Wars: How, among Waller's invading Roundhead troops, there
happened to be a young scholar, a poet and lover of the Muses,
fighting for the cause, as he thought, of ancient Freedom, who,
one day, when the siege was being more hotly urged, pressing
forward and climbing a wall, suddenly found himself in a quiet
old garden by the house. And here, for a time forgetting, as it
would seem, the battle, and heedless of the bullets that now and
then flew past him like peevish wasps, the young Officer stayed,
gathering roses--old-fashioned damask roses, streaked with red
and white--which, for the sake of a Court Beauty, there besieged
with her father, he carried to the house; falling, however,
struck by a chance bullet, or shot perhaps by one of his own
party. A few of the young Officer's verses, written in the
stilted fashion of the time, and almost unreadable now, have
been preserved. The lady's portrait hangs in the white drawing
room at Bligh; a simpering, faded figure, with ringlets and
drop-pearls, and a dress of amber-coloured silk.
_In Church_
"For the Pen," said the Vicar; and in the sententious pause that
followed, I felt that I would offer any gifts of gold to avert
or postpone the solemn, inevitable, hackneyed, and yet, as it
seemed to me, perfectly appalling statement that "the Pen is
mightier than the Sword."
_Parsons_
All the same I like Parsons; they think nobly of the Universe,
and believe in Souls and Eternal Happiness. And some of them, I
am told, believe in Angels--that there are Angels who guide our
footsteps, and flit to and fro unseen on errands in the air
about us.
_The Sound of a Voice_
As the thoughtful Baronet talked, as his voice went on sounding
in my ears, all the light of desire, and of the sun, faded from
the Earth; I saw the vast landscape of the world dim, as in an
eclipse; its populations eating their bread with tears, its rich
men sitting listless in their palaces, and aged Kings crying
"Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity!" lugubriously from their
thrones.
_What Happens_
"Yes," said Sir Thomas, speaking of a modern novel, "it
certainly does seem strange; but the novelist was right. Such
things do happen."
"But my dear Sir," I burst out, in the rudest manner, "think
what life is--just think what really happens! Why people
suddenly swell up and turn dark purple; they hang themselves on
meat-hooks; they are drowned in horse-ponds, are run over by
butchers' carts, and are burnt alive and cooked like mutton
chops!"
_A Precaution_
The folio gave at length philosophic consolations for all
the ills and misfortunes said by the author to be inseparable
from human existence--Poverty, Shipwreck, Plague, Love-Deceptions,
and Inundations. Against these antique Disasters I armed my soul;
and I thought it as well to prepare myself against another
inevitable ancient calamity called "Cornutation," or by other
less learned names. How Philosophy taught that after all it was
but a pain founded on conceit, a blow that hurt not; the reply
of the Cynic philosopher to one who reproached him, "Is it my
fault or hers?"; how Nevisanus advises the sufferer to ask
himself if he have not offended; Jerome declares it impossible
to prevent; how few or none are safe, and the inhabitants of
some countries, especially parts of Africa, consider it the
usual and natural thing; How Caesar, Pompey, Augustus, Agamemnon,
Menelaus, Marcus Aurelius, and many other great Kings and Princes
had all worn Actaeon's badge; and how Philip turned it to a jest,
Pertinax the Emperor made no reckoning of it; Erasmus declared it
was best winked at, there being no remedy but patience, _Dies
dolorem minuit_; Time, Age must mend it; and how according to
the best authorities, bars, bolts, oaken doors, and towers of
brass, are all in vain. "She is a woman," as the old Pedant
wrote to a fellow Philosopher....
_The Great Work_
Sitting, pen in hand, alone in the stillness of the library,
with flies droning behind the sunny blinds, I considered in my
thoughts what should be the subject of my great Work. Should I
complain against the mutability of Fortune, and impugn Fate and
the Constellations; or should I reprehend the never-satisfied
heart of querulous Man, drawing elegant contrasts between the
unsullied snow of mountains, the serene shining of stars, and
our hot, feverish lives and foolish repinings? Or should I
confine myself to denouncing contemporary Vices, crying "Fie!"
on the Age with Hamlet, sternly unmasking its hypocrisies, and
riddling through and through its comfortable Optimisms?
Or with Job, should I question the Universe, and puzzle my sad
brains about Life--the meaning of Life on this apple-shaped
Planet?
_My Mission_
But when in modern books, reviews, and thoughtful magazines I
read about the Needs of the Age, its Complex Questions, its
Dismays, Doubts, and Spiritual Agonies, I feel an impulse to go
out and comfort it, to still its cries, and speak earnest words
of Consolation to it.
_The Birds_
But how can one toil at the great task with this hurry and
tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush,
and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate
cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the
Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar--but
what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out;
the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down
again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills his sleepy song in the
noonday heat; the drone of the Greenfinch lulls me into dreamy
meditations. Then suddenly from his tree-trunks and forest
recesses comes the Green Woodpecker, and mocks at me an impudent
voice full of liberty and laughter.
Why should all the birds of the air conspire against me? My
concern is with the sad Human Species, with lapsed and erroneous
Humanity, not with that inconsiderate, wandering, feather-headed
race.
_High Life_
Although that immense Country House was empty and for sale, and
I had got an order to view it, I needed all my courage to walk
through the lordly gates, and up the avenue, and then to ring
the door-bell. And when I was ushered in, and the shutters were
removed to let the daylight into those vast apartments, I
sneaked through them, cursing the dishonest curiosity which had
brought me into a place where I had no business. But I was
treated with such deference, and so plainly regarded as a
possible purchaser, that I soon began to believe in the opulence
imputed to me. From all the novels describing the mysterious and
glittering life of the Great which I had read (and I had read
many), there came to me the enchanting vision of my own
existence in this Palace. I filled the vast spaces with the
shine of jewels and stir of voices; I saw a vision of ladies
sweeping in their tiaras down the splendid stairs.
But my Soul, in her swell of pride, soon outgrew these paltry
limits, O no! Never could I box up and house and localize under
that lowly roof the Magnificence and Ostentation of which I was
capable.
Then for one thing there was stabling for only forty horses; and
of course, as I told them, this would never do.
_Empty Shells_
They lie like empty seashells on the shores of Time, the old
worlds which the spirit of man once built for his habitation,
and then abandoned. Those little earth-centred, heaven-encrusted
universes of the Greeks and Hebrews seem quaint enough to us,
who have formed, thought by thought from within, the immense
modern Cosmos in which we live--the great Creation of granite,
planned in such immeasurable proportions, and moved by so
pitiless a mechanism, that it sometimes appals even its own
creators. The rush of the great rotating Sun daunts us; to think
to the distance of the fixed stars cracks our brain.
But if the ephemeral Being who has imagined these eternal
spheres and spaces, must dwell almost as an alien in their icy
vastness, yet what a splendour lights up for him and dazzles in
those great halls! Anything less limitless would be now a
prison; and he even dares to think beyond their boundaries, to
surmise that he may one day outgrow this vast Mausoleum, and
cast from him the material Creation as an integument too narrow
for his insolent Mind.
_Dissatisfaction_
For one thing I hate Spiders--I dislike all kinds of Insects.
Their cold intelligence, their empty, stereotyped, unremitted
industry repel me. And I am not altogether happy about the
future of the Human Race; when I think of the slow refrigeration
of the Earth, the Sun's waning, and the ultimate, inevitable
collapse of the Solar System, I have grave misgivings. And all
the books I have read and forgotten-the thought that my mind is
really nothing but a sieve--this, too, at times disheartens me.
_A Fancy_
More than once, though, I have pleased myself with the notion
that somewhere there is good Company which will like this little
Book--these Thoughts (if I may call them so) dipped up from that
phantasmagoria or phosphorescence which, by some unexplained
process of combustion, flickers over the large lump of soft gray
matter in the bowl of my skull.
_They_
Their taste is exquisite; They live in Georgian houses, in
a world of ivory and precious china, of old brickwork and
stone pilasters. In white drawing rooms I see Them, or on
blue, bird-haunted lawns. They talk pleasantly of me, and
their eyes watch me. From the diminished, ridiculous picture
of myself which the glass of the world gives me, I turn for
comfort, for happiness, to my image in the kindly mirror of
those eyes.
Who are They? Where, in what paradise or palace, shall I ever
find Them? I may walk all the streets, ring all the door-bells
of the World, but I shall never find them. Yet nothing has
value for me save In the crown of Their approval; for Their
coming--which will never be--I build and plant, and for Them
alone I secretly write this little Book, which They will never
read.
_In the Pulpit_
The Vicar had certain literary tastes; in his youth he had
written an _Ode to the Moon_; and he would speak of the
difficulty he found in composing his sermons, week after week.
Now I felt that if I composed and preached sermons, I should by
no means confine myself to the Vicar's threadbare subjects--should
preach the Wrath of God, and sound the Last Trump in
the ears of my Hell-doomed congregation, cracking the heavens
and dissolving the earth with the eclipses and thunders and
earthquakes of the Day of Judgment. Then I might refresh them
with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach
of Reason--Predestination, Election, the Co-existences and
Co-eternities of the incomprehensible Triad. And with what a
holy vehemence would I exclaim and cry out against all forms
of doctrinal Error--all the execrable hypotheses of the great
Heresiarchs! Then there would be many ancient and learned and
out-of-the-way Iniquities to denounce, and splendid, neglected
Virtues to inculcate--Apostolic Poverty, and Virginity, that
precious jewel, that fair garland, so prized in Heaven, but so
rare on earth.
For in the range of creeds and morals it is the highest peaks
that shine for me with a certain splendour: it is toward those
radiant Alps that, if I were a Clergyman, I would lead my flock
to pasture.
_Human Ends_
I really was impressed, as we paced up and down the avenue, by
the Vicar's words and weighty, weighed advice. He spoke of the
various professions; mentioned contemporaries of his own who had
achieved success: how one had a Seat in Parliament, would be
given a Seat in the Cabinet when his party next came in; another
was a Bishop with a Seat in the House of Lords; a third was a
Barrister who was soon, it was said, to be raised to the Bench.
But in spite of my good intentions, my real wish to find,
before it is too late, some career or other for myself (and
the question is getting serious), I am far too much at the
mercy of ludicrous images. Front Seats, Episcopal, Judicial,
Parliamentary Benches--were all the ends then, I asked my self,
of serious, middle-aged ambition only things to sit on?
_Lord Arden_
"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar, "I should shut up that
great House; it's too big--what can a young unmarried man...?"
"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar's wife (and Mrs. La
Mountain's tone showed how much she disapproved of that young
Nobleman), "if I were Lord Arden, I should live there, and do my
duty to my tenants and neighbours."
"If I were Lord Arden," I said; but then it flashed vividly
into my mind, suppose I really were this opulent young Lord?
I quite forgot to whom I was talking; my memory was occupied
with the names of people who had been famous for their enormous
pleasures; who had filled their Palaces with guilty revels, and
built Pyramids, Obelisks, and half-acre Tombs, to soothe their
Pride. My mind kindled at the thought of these Audacities. "If
I were Lord Arden!" I cried....
_The Starry Heaven_
"But what are they really? What do they say they are?" the small
young lady asked me. We were looking up at the Stars, which were
quivering that night in splendid hosts above the lawns and
trees.
So I tried to explain some of the views that have been held
about them. How people first of all had thought them mere
candles set in the sky, to guide their own footsteps when the
Sun was gone; till wise men, sitting on the Chaldean plains, and
watching them with aged eyes, became impressed with the solemn
view that those still and shining lights were the executioners
of God's decrees, and irresistible instruments of His Wrath; and
that they moved fatally among their celestial Houses to ordain
and set out the fortunes and misfortunes of each race of newborn
mortals. And so it was believed that every man or woman had,
from the cradle, fighting for or against him or her, some great
Star, Formalhaut, perhaps, Aldebaran, Altaïr: while great Heroes
and Princes were more splendidly attended, and marched out to
their forgotten battles with troops and armies of heavenly
Constellations.
But this noble old view was not believed in now; the Stars were
no longer regarded as malignant or beneficent Powers; and I
explained how most serious people thought that somewhere--though
just where they did not know--above the vault of Sky, was to be
found the final home of earnest men and women; where, as a
reward for their right views and conduct, they were to rejoice
forever, wearing those diamonds of the starry night arranged in
glorious crowns. This notion, however, had been disputed by
Poets and Lovers: it was Love, according to these young
astronomers, that moved the Sun and other Stars; the
Constellations being heavenly palaces, where people who had
adored each other were to meet and live always together after
Death.
Then I spoke of the modern and real immensity of the unfathomed
Skies. But suddenly the vast meaning of my words rushed into my
mind; I felt myself dwindling, falling through the blue. And
yet, in these silent seconds, there thrilled through me in the
cool sweet air and night no chill of death or nothingness; but
the taste and joy of this Earth, this orchard-plot of earth,
floating unknown, far away in unfathomed space, with its Moon
and meadows.
_My Map_
The "Known World" I called the map which I amused myself making
for the children's schoolroom. It included France, England,
Italy, Greece, and all the old shores of the Mediterranean; but
the rest I marked "Unknown"; sketching into the East the
doubtful realms of Ninus and Semiramis; changing back Germany
into the Hyrcanian Forest; and drawing pictures of the supposed
inhabitants of these unexplored regions, Dog-Apes, Satyrs,
Cannibals, and Misanthropes, Cimmerians involved in darkness,
Amazons, and Headless Men. And all around the Map I coiled the
coils, and curled the curling waves of the great Sea _Oceanum_,
with the bursting cheeks of the four Winds, blowing from the
four imagined hinges of the Universe.
_The Snob_
As I paced in fine company on that Terrace, I felt chosen,
exempt, and curiously happy. There was a glamour in the air, a
something in the special flavour of that moment that was like
the consciousness of Salvation, or the smell of ripe peaches on
a sunny wall.
I know what you're going to call me, Reader. But I am not to be
bullied and abashed by words. And after all, why not let oneself
be dazzled and enchanted? Are not Illusions pleasant, and is
this a world in which Romance hangs on every tree?
And how about your own life? Is that, then, so full of golden
visions?
_Companions_
Dearest, prettiest, and sweetest of my retinue, who gather
with delicate industry bits of silk and down from the bleak
world to make the soft nest of my fatuous repose; who ever
whisper honied words in my ear, or trip before me holding up
deceiving mirrors--is it Hope, or is it not rather Vanity,
that I love the best?
_Edification_
"I must really improve my Mind," I tell myself, and once more
begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and
toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears
off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange
birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh
in the tumbling chimneys.
_The Rose_
The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her
garden, and was fond of telling how it had grown from a cutting
she had brought years before from Italy, when she was first
married. She and her husband had been travelling back in their
carriage from Rome (it was before the time of railways), and on
a bad piece of road south of Siena they had broken down, and had
been forced to pass the night in a little house by the roadside.
The accommodation was wretched of course; she had spent a
sleepless night, and rising early had stood, wrapped up, at her
window, with the cool air blowing on her face, to watch the
dawn. She could still, after all these years, remember the blue
mountains with the bright moon above them, and how a far-off
town on one of the peaks had gradually grown whiter and whiter,
till the moon faded, the mountains were touched with the pink
of the rising sun, and suddenly the town was lit as by an
illumination, one window after another catching and reflecting
the sun's beams, till at last the whole little city twinkled and
sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars.
That morning, finding they would have to wait while their
carriage was being repaired, they had driven in a local
conveyance up to the city on the mountain, where they had been
told they would find better quarters; and there they had stayed
two or three days. It was one of the miniature Italian cities
with a high church, a pretentious piazza, a few narrow streets
and little palaces, perched all compact and complete, on the top
of a mountain, within an enclosure of walls hardly larger than
an English kitchen garden. But it was full of life and noise,
echoing all day and all night with the sounds of feet and
voices.
The Café of the simple inn where they stayed was the meeting-place
of the notabilities of the little city; the _Sindaco_, the
_avvocato_, the doctor, and a few others; and among them they
noticed a beautiful, slim, talkative old man, with bright black
eyes and snow-white hair--tail and straight and still with
the figure of a youth, although the waiter told them with
pride that the _Conte_ was _molto vecchio_--would in fact be
eighty in the following year. He was the last of his family, the
waiter added--they had once been great and rich people--but he
had no descendants; in fact the waiter mentioned with complacency,
as if it were a story on which the locality prided itself, that
the _Conte_ had been unfortunate in love, and had never married.
The old gentleman, however, seemed cheerful enough; and it was
plain that he took an interest in the strangers, and wished to
make their acquaintance. This was soon effected by the friendly
waiter; and after a little talk the old man invited them to
visit his villa and garden which were just outside the walls of
the town. So the next afternoon, when the sun began to descend,
and they saw in glimpses through doorways and windows blue
shadows beginning to spread over the brown mountains, they went
to pay their visit. It was not much of a place, a small,
modernized stucco villa, with a hot pebbly garden, and in it a
stone basin with torpid gold fish, and a statue of Diana and her
hounds against the wall. But what gave a glory to it was a
gigantic rose-tree which clambered over the house, almost
smothering the windows, and filling the air with the perfume
of its sweetness. Yes, it was a fine rose, the _Conte_ said
proudly when they praised it, and he would tell the Signora
about it. And as they sat there, drinking the wine he offered
them, he alluded with the cheerful indifference of old age to
his love-affair, as though he took for granted that they had
heard of it already.
"The lady lived across the valley there beyond that hill. I was
a young man then, for it was many years ago. I used to ride over
to see her; it was a long way, but I rode fast, for young men,
as no doubt the Signora knows, are impatient. But the lady was
not kind, she would keep me waiting, oh, for hours; and one day
when I had waited very long I grew very angry, and as I walked
up and down in the garden where she had told me she would see
me, I broke one of her roses, broke a branch from it; and when I
saw what I had done, I hid it inside my coat--so--and when I
came home I planted it, and the Signora sees how it has grown.
If the Signora admires it, I must give her a cutting to plant
also in her garden; I am told the English have beautiful gardens
that are green, and not burnt with the sun like ours."
The next day, when their mended carriage had come up to fetch
them, and they were just starting to drive away from the inn,
the _Conte's_ old servant appeared with the rose-cutting neatly
wrapped up, and the compliments and wishes for a _buon viaggio_
from her master. The town collected to see them depart, and the
children ran after their carriage through the gate of the little
city. They heard a rush of feet behind them for a few moments,
but soon they were far down toward the valley; the little town
with all its noise and life was high above them on its mountain
peak.
She had planted the rose at home, where it had grown and
flourished in a wonderful manner, and every June the great mass
of leaves and shoots still broke out into a passionate splendour
of scent and scarlet colour, as if in its root and fibres there
still burnt the anger and thwarted desire of that Italian lover.
Of course the old _Conte_ must have died many years ago; she had
forgotten his name, and had even forgotten the name of the
mountain city that she had stayed in, after first seeing it
twinkling at dawn in the sky, like a nest of stars.
_The Vicar of Lynch_
When I heard through country gossip of the strange happening at
Lynch which had caused so great a scandal, and led to the
disappearance of the deaf old Vicar of that remote village, I
collected all the reports I could about it, for I felt that at
the centre of this uncomprehending talk and wild anecdote there
was something with more meaning than a mere sudden outbreak of
blasphemy and madness.
It appeared that the old Vicar, after some years spent in the
quiet discharge of his parochial duties, had been noticed to
become more and more odd in his appearance and behaviour; and
it was also said that he had gradually introduced certain
alterations into the Church services. These had been vaguely
supposed at the time to be of a High Church character, but
afterwards they were put down to a growing mental derangement,
which had finally culminated at that notorious Harvest Festival,
when his career as a clergyman of the Church of England had
ended. On this painful occasion the old man had come into church
outlandishly dressed, and had gone through a service with
chanted gibberish and unaccustomed gestures, and prayers which
were unfamiliar to his congregation. There was also talk of a
woman's figure on the altar, which the Vicar had unveiled at a
solemn moment in this performance; and I also heard echo of
other gossip--gossip that was, however, authoritatively
contradicted and suppressed as much as possible--about the use
of certain other symbols of a most unsuitable kind. Then a few
days after the old man had disappeared--some of the neighbours
believed that he was dead; some, that he was now shut up in an
asylum for the insane.
Such was the fantastic and almost incredible talk I listened to,
but in which, as I say, I found much more meaning than my
neighbours. For one thing, although they knew that the Vicar had
come from Oxford to this remote College living, they knew
nothing of his work and scholarly reputation in that University,
and none of them had probably ever heard of--much less read--an
important book which he had written, and which was the standard
work on his special subject. To them he was simply a deaf,
eccentric, and solitary clergyman; and I think I was the only
person in the neighbourhood who had conversed with him on the
subject concerning which he was the greatest living authority in
England.
For I had seen the old man once--curiously enough at the time of
a Harvest Festival, though it was some years before the one
which had led to his disappearance. Bicycling one day over the
hills, I had ridden down into a valley of cornfields, and then,
passing along an unfenced road that ran across a wide expanse of
stubble, I came, after getting off to open three or four gates,
upon a group of thatched cottages, with a little, unrestored
Norman church standing among great elms, I left my bicycle and
walked through the churchyard, and as I went into the church,
through its deeply-recessed Norman doorway, a surprisingly
pretty sight met my eyes. The dim, cool, little interior was
set out and richly adorned with an abundance of fruit and
vegetables, yellow gourds, apples and plums and golden wheat
sheaves, great loaves of bread, and garlands of September
flowers. A shabby-looking old clergyman was standing on the top
of a step-ladder, finishing the decorations, when I entered. As
soon as he saw me he came down, and I spoke to him, praising the
decorations, and raising my voice a little, for I noticed that
he was somewhat deaf. We talked of the Harvest Festival, and as
I soon perceived that I was talking with a man of books and
University education, I ventured to hint at what had vividly
impressed me in that old, gaudily-decorated church--its pagan
character, as if it were a rude archaic temple in some corner of
the antique world, which had been adorned, two thousand years
ago, by pious country folk for some local festival. The old
clergyman was not in the least shocked by my remark; it seemed
indeed rather to please him; there was, he agreed, something of
a pagan character in the modern Harvest Festival--it was no
doubt a bit of the old primitive Vegetation Ritual, the old
Religion of the soil; a Festival, which, like so many others,
had not been destroyed by Christianity, but absorbed into it,
and given a new meaning. "Indeed," he added, talking on as if
the subject interested him, and expressing himself with a
certain donnish carefulness of speech that I found pleasant to
listen to, "the Harvest Festival is undoubtedly a survival of
the prehistoric worship of that Corn Goddess who, in classical
times, was called Demeter and Ioulo and Ceres, but whose cult as
an Earth-Mother and Corn-Spirit is of much greater antiquity.
For there is no doubt that this Vegetation Spirit has been
worshipped from the earliest times by agricultural peoples; the
wheat fields and ripe harvests being naturally suggestive of the
presence amid the corn of a kindly Being, who, in return for due
rites and offerings, will vouchsafe nourishing rains and golden
harvests." He mentioned the references in Virgil, and the
description in Theocritus of a Sicilian Harvest Festival--these
were no doubt familiar to me; but if I was interested in the
subject, I should find, he said, much more information collected
in a book which he had written, but of which I had probably
never heard, about the Vegetation Deities in Greek Religion. As
it happened I knew the book, and felt now much interested in my
chance meeting with the distinguished author; and after
expressing this as best I could, I rode off, promising to visit
him again. This promise I was never able to fulfil; but when
afterwards, on my return to the neighbourhood, I heard of that
unhappy scandal, my memory of this meeting and our talk enabled
me to form a theory as to what had really happened.
It seemed plain to me that the change had been too violent for
this elderly scholar, taken from his books and college rooms and
set down in the solitude of this remote valley, amid the
richness and living sap of Nature. The gay spectacle, right
under his old eyes, of growing shoots and budding foliage, of
blossoming and flowering, and the ripening of fruits and crops,
had little by little (such was my theory) unhinged his brains.
More and more his thoughts had come to dwell, not on the
doctrines of the Church in which he had long ago taken orders,
but on the pagan rites which had formed his life-long study,
and which had been the expression of a life not unlike the
agricultural life amid which he now found himself living. So as
his derangement grew upon him in his solitude, he had gradually
transformed, with a maniac's cunning, the Christian services,
and led his little congregation, all unknown to themselves, back
toward their ancestral worship of the Corn-Goddess. At last he
had thrown away all disguise, and had appeared as a hierophant
of Demeter, dressed in a fawn skin, with a crown of poplar
leaves, and pedantically carrying the mystic basket and the
winnowing fan appropriate to these mysteries. The wheaten posset
he offered the shocked communicants belonged to these also, and
the figure of a woman on the altar was of course the holy
Wheatsheaf, whose unveiling was the culminating point in that
famous ritual.
It is much to be regretted that I could not recover full and
more exact details of that celebration in which this great
scholar had probably embodied his mature knowledge concerning a
subject which has puzzled generations of students. But what
powers of careful observation could one expect from a group of
labourers and small farmers? Some of the things that reached my
ears I refused to believe--the mention of pig's blood for
instance, and especially the talk of certain grosser symbols,
which the choir boys, it was whispered, had carried about the
church in ceremonious procession. Village people have strange
imaginations; and to this event, growing more and more monstrous
as they talked it over, they must themselves have added this
grotesque detail. However, I have written to consult an Oxford
authority on this interesting point, and he has been kind enough
to explain at length that although at the _Haloa_, or winter
festival of the Corn-Goddess, and also at the _Chloeia_, or
festival in early spring, some symbolization of the reproductive
powers of Nature would be proper and appropriate, it would have
been quite out of place at the _Thalysia_, or autumn festival of
thanksgiving. I feel certain that a solecism of this nature--the
introduction into a particular rite of features not sanctioned
by the texts--would have seemed a shocking thing, even to the
unhinged mind of one who had always been so careful a scholar.
_Tu Quoque Fontium_
Just to sit in the Sun, to bask like an animal in its heat--this
is one of my country recreations. And often I reflect what a
thing after all it is still to be alive and sitting here, above
all the buried people of the world, in the kind and famous
Sunshine.
Beyond the orchard there is a place where the stream, hurrying out
from under a bridge, makes for itself a quiet pool. A beech-tree
upholds its green light over the blue water; and there, when I
have grown weary of the sun, the great glaring indiscriminating
Sun, I can shade myself and read my book. And listening to this
water's pretty voices I invent for it exquisite epithets, calling
it _silver-clean_ or _moss-margined_ or _nymph-frequented_, and
idly promise to place it among the learned fountains and pools
of the world, making of it a cool green thought for English exiles
in the dust and glare of Eastern deserts.
_The Spider_
What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind?
To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to
a barrel full of floating froth and refuse?
No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung
on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with
dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the
Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny
Soul.