Produced by Al Haines
THE THREAD OF GOLD
BY ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF QUIET"
_Quem locum nosti mihi destinatum?_
_Quo meos gressus regis?_
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W
1912
FIRST EDITION, . . . . . . . . . . November 1905
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . November 1905
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1906
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . October 1906
SECOND EDITION, . . . . . . . . . December 1906
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1907
THIRD EDITION, . . . . . . . . . . October 1907
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . November 1907
FOURTH EDITION (1/- net) . . . . . May 1910
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . October 1910
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1911
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . May 1911
Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . July 1912
[Transcriber's note: The source book had no Table of Contents and its
chapters were numbered only, not titled. However, its pages had
running headers which changed with each chapter. Those headers have
been converted to chapter titles, and collected here as the Table of
Contents.]
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction (1906)
Introduction
I. The Red Spring
II. The Deserted Shrine, The Manor House
III. Leucocholy
IV. The Flower
V. The Fens
VI. The Well and the Chapel
VII. The Cuckoo
VIII. Spring-time
IX. The Hare
X. The Diplodocus
XI. The Beetle
XII. The Farm-yard
XIII. The Artist
XIV. Young Love
XV. A Strange Gathering
XVI. The Cripple
XVII. Oxford
XVIII. Authorship
XIX. Hamlet
XX. A Sealed Spirit
XXI. Leisure
XXII. The Pleasures of Work
XXIII. The Abbey
XXIV. Wordsworth
XXV. Dorsetshire
XXVI. Portland
XXVII. Canterbury Tower
XXVIII. Prayer
XXIX. The Death-bed of Jacob
XXX. By the Sea of Galilee
XXXI. The Apocalypse
XXXII. The Statue
XXXIII. The Mystery of Suffering
XXXIV. Music
XXXV. The Faith of Christ
XXXVI. The Mystery of Evil
XXXVII. Renewal
XXXVIII. The Secret
XXXIX. The Message
XL. After Death
XLI. The Eternal Will
XLII. Until the Time
Conclusion
PREFACE
I sate to-day, in a pleasant hour, at a place called _The Seven
Springs_, high up in a green valley of the _Cotswold_ hills. Close
beside the road, seven clear rills ripple out into a small pool, and
the air is musical with the sound of running water. Above me, in a
little thicket, a full-fed thrush sent out one long-drawn cadence after
another, in the joy of his heart, while the lengthening shadows of bush
and tree crept softly over the pale sward of the old pasture-lands, in
the westering light of the calm afternoon.
These springs are the highest head-waters of the _Thames_, and that
fact is stated in a somewhat stilted Latin hexameter carved on a stone
of the wall beside the pool. The so-called _Thames-head_ is in a
meadow down below _Cirencester_, where a deliberate engine pumps up,
from a hidden well, thousands of gallons a day of the purest water,
which begins the service of man at once by helping to swell the scanty
flow of the _Thames_ and _Severn Canal_. But _The Seven Springs_ are
the highest hill-fount of Father _Thames_ for all that, streaming as
they do from the eastward ridge of the great oolite crest of the downs
that overhang _Cheltenham_. As soon as those rills are big enough to
form a stream, the gathering of waters is known as the _Churn_, which,
speeding down by _Rendcomb_ with its ancient oaks, and _Cerney_, in a
green elbow of the valley, join the _Thames_ at _Cricklade_.
It was of the essence of poetry to feel that the water-drops which thus
babbled out at my feet in the spring sunshine would be moving, how many
days hence, beside the green playing-fields at _Eton_, scattered,
diminished, travel-worn, polluted; but still, under night and stars,
through the sunny river-reaches, through hamlet and city, by
water-meadow or wharf, the same and no other. And half in fancy, half
in earnest, I bound upon the heedless waters a little message of love
for the fields and trees so dear to me.
What a strange parable it all made! the sparkling drops so soon lost to
sight and thought alike, each with its own definite place in the
limitless mind of God, all numbered, none forgotten; each
drop,--bright, new-born, and fresh as it appeared, racing out so
light-heartedly into the sun,--yet as old, and older, than the rocks
from which it sprang! How often had those water-drops been woven into
cloud-wreaths, through what centuries they had leapt and plunged among
sea-billows, or lain cold and dark in the ocean depths, since the day
when this mass of matter that we call the earth had been cut off and
sent whirling into space, a molten drop from the fierce vortex of its
central sun! And, what is the strangest thought of all, I can sit here
myself, a tiny atom spun from drift of storms, and concourse of frail
dust, and, however dimly and faintly, depict the course of things,
trace, through some subtle faculty, the movement of the mind of God
through the aeons; and yet, though I can send my mind into the past and
the future, though I can see the things that are not and the things
that are, I am denied the least inkling of what it all signifies, what
the slow movement of the ages is all aimed at, and even what the swift
interchange of light and darkness, pain and pleasure, sickness and
health, love and hate, is meant to mean to me--whether there _is_ a
purpose and an end at all, or whether I am just allowed, for my short
space of days, to sit, a bewildered spectator, at some vast and
unintelligible drama.
Yet to-day the soft sunshine, the babbling springs, the valley brimmed
with haze, the bird's sweet song, all seem framed to assure me that God
means us well, urgently, intensely well. "My Gospel," wrote one to me
the other day, whose feet move lightly on the threshold of life, "is
the Gospel of contentment. I do not see the necessity of asking myself
uneasy and metaphysical questions about the Why and the Wherefore and
the What." The necessity? Ah, no! But if one is forced, against
one's will and hope, to go astray in the wilderness out of the way, to
find oneself lonely and hungry, one must needs pluck the bitter berries
of the place for such sustenance as one can. I doubt, indeed, whether
one is able to compel oneself into and out of certain trains of
thought. If one dislikes and dreads introspection, one will doubtless
be happier for finding something definite to do instead. But even so,
the thoughts buzz in one's ears; and then, too, the very wonder about
such things has produced some of the most beautiful things in the
world, such as _Hamlet_, or Keats' _Ode to the Nightingale_, things we
could not well do without. Who is to decide which is the nobler,
wiser, righter course? To lose oneself in a deep wonder, with an
anxious hope that one may discern the light; or, on the other hand, to
mingle with the world, to work, to plan, to strive, to talk, to do the
conventional things? We choose (so we call it) the path that suits us
best, though we disguise our motives in many ways, because we hardly
dare to confess to ourselves how frail is our faculty of choice at all.
But, to speak frankly, what we all do is to follow the path where we
feel most at home, most natural; and the longer I live the more I feel
that we do the things we are impelled to do, the works prepared for us
to walk in, as the old collect says. How often, in real life, do we
see any one making a clean sweep of all his conditions and
surroundings, to follow the path of the soul? How often do we see a
man abjure wealth, or resist ambition, or disregard temperament,
_unexpectedly_? Not once, I think, to speak for myself, in the whole
of my experience.
This, then, is the _motif_ of the following book: that whether we are
conquerors or conquered, triumphant or despairing, prosperous or
pitiful, well or ailing, we are all these things through Him that loves
us. We are here, I believe, to learn rather than to teach, to endure
rather than to act, to be slain rather than to slay; we are tolerated
in our errors and our hardness, in our conceit and our security, by the
great, kindly, smiling Heart that bade us be. We can make things a
little easier for ourselves and each other; but the end is not there:
what we are meant to become is joyful, serene, patient, waiting
momently upon God; we are to become, if we can, content not to be
content, full of tenderness and loving-kindness for all the frail
beings that, like ourselves, suffer and rejoice. But though we are
bound to ameliorate, to improve, to lessen, so far as we can, the
brutal promptings of the animal self that cause the greatest part of
our unhappiness, we have yet to learn to hope that when things seem at
their worst, they are perhaps at their best, for then we are, indeed,
at work upon our hard lesson; and perhaps the day may come when,
looking back upon the strange tangle of our lives, we may see that the
time was most wasted when we were serene, easy, prosperous, and
unthinking, and most profitable when we were anxious, overshadowed, and
suffering. _The Thread of Gold_ is the fibre of limitless hope that
runs through our darkest dreams; and just as the water-drop which I saw
break to-day from the darkness of the hill, and leap downwards in its
channel, will see and feel, in its seaward course, many sweet and
gentle things, as well as many hard and evil matters, so I, in a year
of my pilgrimage, have set down in this book, a frank picture of many
little experiences and thoughts, both good and evil. Sometimes the
water-drop glides in the sun among mossy ledges, or lingers by the edge
of the copse, where the hazels lean together; but sometimes it is
darkened and polluted, so that it would seem that the foul oozings that
infect it could never be purged away. But the turbid elements, the
scum, the mud, the slime--each of which, after all, have their place in
the vast economy of things--float and sink to their destined abode; and
the crystal drop, released and purified, runs joyfully onwards in its
appointed way.
A. C. B.
CIRENCESTER, 8_th April_ 1907.
INTRODUCTION (1906)
I am glad to have the opportunity of saying a few words in my own name
about this book, because the original introduction seems to have misled
some of my readers; and as I have had many kind, encouraging, and
sacred messages about the book from very unexpected quarters, I should
like to add a few further words of explanation.
One of the difficulties under which literary art seems to me to labour
is that it feels bound to run in certain channels, to adopt stereotyped
and conventional media of expression. What can be more conventional
than the average play, or the average novel? People in real life do
not behave or talk--at least, this is my experience--in the smallest
degree as they behave or talk in novels or plays; life as a rule has no
plot, and very few dramatic situations. In real life the adventures
are scanty, and for most of us existence moves on in a commonplace and
inconsequent way. Misunderstandings are not cleared up, complexities
are not unravelled. I think it is time that more unconventional forms
of expression should be discovered and used; and at least, we can try
experiments; the experiment that I have here tried, is to present a
sort of _liber studiorum_, a portfolio of sketches and impressions.
The only coherence they possess is that, at the time when they were
written, I was much preoccupied with the wonder as to whether an
optimistic view of life was justified. The world is a very mysterious
place, and at first sight it presents a sad scene of confusion. The
wrong people often seem to be punished; blessings, such as those heaped
upon the head of the patriarch Job, do not seem to be accumulated upon
the righteous. In fact, the old epigram that prosperity is the
blessing of the Old Testament, adversity the blessing of the New, seems
frequently justified. But, after all, the only soul-history that one
knows well enough to say whether or not the experience of life is
adapted to the qualities of the particular soul, is one's own history;
and, speaking for myself, I can but say, looking back upon my life,
that it does seem to have been regulated hitherto by a very tender and
intimate kind of guidance, though I did not always see how delicate the
adaptation of it was at the time. The idea of this book, that there is
a certain golden thread of hope and love interwoven with all our lives,
running consistently through the coarsest and darkest fabric, was what
I set out to illustrate rather than to prove. Everything that bore
upon this fact, while the book was being written, I tried to express as
simply and as lucidly as I could. The people who have thought the book
formless or lacking in structure, are perfectly right. It is not, and
it did not set out to be, a finished picture, with a due subordination
of groups and backgrounds. To me personally, though a finished picture
is a beautiful and an admirable thing, the loose, unconsidered sketches
and studies of an artist have a special charm. Of an artist, I say;
have I then a claim to be considered an artist? I cannot answer that
question, but I will go further and say that the sketches of the
humblest amateur have an interest for me, which their finished pictures
often lack. One sees a revelation of personality, one sees what sort
of things strike an individual mind as beautiful, one sees the method
with which it deals with artistic difficulties. The most interesting
things of the kind I have ever seen are the portfolios of sketches by
Leonardo da Vinci in the Royal library at Windsor; outlines of heads,
features, flowers, backgrounds, strange engines of war, wings of
birds--the _debris_, almost, of the studio--are there piled up in
confusion. And in a lesser degree the same is true of all such
collections, though perhaps this shows that one is more interested in
personality than in artistic performance.
A good many people, too, have a gift for presenting a simple impression
of a beautiful thing, who have not the patience or the power of
combination necessary for working out a finished design; and surely it
is foolish to let the convention of art overrule a man's capacities?
To allow that, to acquiesce in silence, to say that because one cannot
express a thing in a certain way, one will not express it at all, seems
to me to be making an instinct into a moral sanction. One must express
whatever one desires to express, as clearly and as beautifully as
possible, and one must take one's chance as to whether it is a work of
art. To hold one's tongue, if anything appears to be worth saying,
because one does not know the exact code of the professionals, is as
foolish as if a man born in a certain class of society were to say that
he would never go to any social gathering except those of his precise
social equals, because he was afraid of making mistakes of etiquette.
Etiquette is not a matter of principle; it was not one of the things of
which Moses saw the pattern in the Mount! The only rule is not to be
pretentious or assuming, not to claim that one's efforts are
necessarily worthy of admiration and attention.
There is a better reason too. Orthodoxy in art is merely compliance
with the instinctive methods of great artists, and no one ever
succeeded in art who did not make a method of his own. Originality is
like a fountain-head of fresh water; orthodoxy is too often only the
unimpeachable fluid of the water company. The best hope for the art
and literature of a nation is that men should try to represent and
express things that they have thought beautiful in an individual way.
They do not always succeed, it is true; sometimes they fail for lack of
force, sometimes for lack of a sympathetic audience. I have found, in
the case of this book, a good deal of sincere sympathy; and where it
fails, it fails through lack of force to express thoughts that I have
felt with a profound intensity. I have had critics who have frankly
disliked the book, and I do not in the least quarrel with them for
expressing their opinion; but one does not write solely for the
critics; and on the other hand, I can humbly and gratefully say that I
have received many messages, of pleasure in, and even gratitude for,
the book which leave me in no sort of doubt that it was worth writing;
though I wish with all my heart that it had been worthier of its
motive, and had been better able to communicate the delight of my
visions and dreams.
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.
MAGDALENE COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE, 24_th November_ 1906.
THE THREAD OF GOLD
INTRODUCTION
I have for a great part of my life desired, perhaps more than I have
desired anything else, to make a beautiful book; and I have tried,
perhaps too hard and too often, to do this, without ever quite
succeeding; by that I mean that my little books, when finished, were
not worthy to be compared with the hope that I had had of them. I
think now that I tried to do too many things in my books, to amuse, to
interest, to please persons who might read them; and I fear, too, that
in the back of my mind there lay a thought, like a snake in its
hole--the desire to show others how fine I could be. I tried honestly
not to let this thought rule me; whenever it put its head out, I drove
it back; but of course I ought to have waited till it came out, and
then killed it, if I had only known how to do that; but I suppose I had
a secret tenderness for the little creature as being indeed a part of
myself.
But now I have hit upon a plan which I hope may succeed. I do not
intend to try to be interesting and amusing, or even fine. I mean to
put into my book only the things that appear to me deep and strange and
beautiful; and I can happily say that things seem to me to be more and
more beautiful every day. As when a man goes on a journey, and sees,
in far-off lands, things that please him, things curious and rare, and
buys them, not for himself or for his own delight, but for the delight
of one that sits at home, whom he loves and thinks of, and wishes every
day that he could see;--well, I will try to be like that. I will keep
the thought of those whom I love best in my mind--and God has been very
good in sending me many, both old and young, whom I love--and I will
try to put down in the best words that I can find the things that
delight me, not for my sake but for theirs. For one of the strangest
things of all about beauty is, that it is often more clearly perceived
when expressed by another, than when we see it for ourselves. The only
difficulty that I see ahead is that many of the things that I love best
and that give me the best joy, are things that cannot be told, cannot
be translated into words: deep and gracious mysteries, rays of light,
delicate sounds.
But I will keep out of my book all the things, so far as I can, which
bring me mere trouble and heaviness; cares and anxieties and bodily
pains and dreariness and unkind thoughts and anger, and all
uncleanness. I cannot tell why our life should be so sadly bound up
with these matters; the only comfort is that even out of this dark and
heavy soil beautiful flowers sometimes spring. For instance, the
pressure of a care, an anxiety, a bodily pain, has sometimes brought
with it a perception which I have lacked when I have been bold and
joyful and robust. A fit of anger too, by clearing away little clouds
of mistrust and suspicion, has more than once given me a friendship
that endures and blesses me.
But beauty, innocent beauty of thought, of sound, of sight, seems to me
to be perhaps the most precious thing in the world, and to hold within
it a hope which stretches away even beyond the grave. Out of silence
and nothingness we arise; we have our short space of sight and hearing;
and then into the silence we depart. But in that interval we are
surrounded by much joy. Sometimes the path is hard and lonely, and we
stumble in miry ways; but sometimes our way is through fields and
thickets, and the valley is full of sunset light. If we could be more
calm and quiet, less anxious about the impression we produce, more
quick to welcome what is glad and sweet, more simple, more contented,
what a gain would be there! I wonder more and more every day that I
live that we do not value better the thought of these calmer things,
because the least effort to reach them seems to pull down about us a
whole cluster of wholesome fruits, grapes of Eschol, apples of
Paradise. We are kept back, it seems to me, by a kind of silly fear of
ridicule, from speaking more sincerely and instantly of these delights.
I read the _Life_ of a great artist the other day who received a title
of honour from the State. I do not think he cared much for the title
itself, but he did care very much for the generous praise of his
friends that the little piece of honour called forth. I will not quote
his exact words, but he said in effect that he wondered why friends
should think it necessary to wait for such an occasion to indulge in
the noble pleasure of praising, and why they should not rather have a
day in the year when they could dare to write to the friends whom they
admired and loved, and praise them for being what they were. Of course
if such a custom were to become general, it would be clumsily spoilt by
foolish persons, as all things are spoilt which become conventional.
But the fact remains that the sweet pleasure of praising, of
encouraging, of admiring and telling our admiration, is one that we
English people are sparing of, to our own loss and hurt. It is just as
false to refrain from saying a generous thing for fear of being thought
insincere and what is horribly called gushing, as it is to say a hard
thing for the sake of being thought straightforward. If a hard thing
must be said, let us say it with pain and tenderness, but faithfully.
And if a pleasant thing can be said, let us say it with joy, and with
no less faithfulness.
Now I must return to my earlier purpose, and say that I mean that this
little book shall go about with me, and that I will write in it only
strange and beautiful things. I have many businesses in the world, and
take delight in many of them; but we cannot always be busy. So when I
have seen or heard something that gives me joy, whether it be a new
place, or, what is better still, an old familiar place transfigured by
some happy accident of sun or moon into a mystery; or if I have been
told of a generous and beautiful deed, or heard even a sad story that
has some seed of hope within it; or if I have met a gracious and kindly
person; or if I have read a noble book, or seen a rare picture or a
curious flower; or if I have heard a delightful music; or if I have
been visited by one of those joyful and tender thoughts that set my
feet the right way, I will try to put it down, God prospering me. For
thus I think that I shall be truly interpreting his loving care for the
little souls of men. And I call my book _The Thread of Gold_, because
this beauty of which I have spoken seems to me a thing which runs like
a fine and precious clue through the dark and sunless labyrinths of the
world.
And, lastly, I pray God with all my heart, that he may, in this matter,
let me help and not hinder his will. I often cannot divine what his
will is, but I have seen and heard enough to be sure that it is high
and holy, even when it seems to me hard to discern, and harder still to
follow. Nothing shall here be set down that does not seem to me to be
perfectly pure and honest; nothing that is not wise and true. It may
be a vain hope that I nourish, but I think that God has put it into my
heart to write this book, and I hope that he will allow me to
persevere. And yet indeed I know that I am not fit for so holy a task,
but perhaps he will give me fitness, and cleanse my tongue with a coal
from his altar fire.
I
The Red Spring
Very deep in this enchanted land of green hills in which I live, lies a
still and quiet valley. No road runs along it; but a stream with many
curves and loops, deep-set in hazels and alders, moves brimming down.
There is no house to be seen; nothing but pastures and little woods
which clothe the hill-sides on either hand. In one of these fields,
not far from the stream, lies a secluded spot that I visit duly from
time to time. It is hard enough to find the place; and I have
sometimes directed strangers to it, who have returned without
discovering it. Some twenty yards away from the stream, with a ring of
low alders growing round it, there is a pool; not like any other pool I
know. The basin in which it lies is roughly circular, some ten feet
across. I suppose it is four or five feet deep. From the centre of
the pool rises an even gush of very pure water, with a certain hue of
green, like a faintly-tinted gem. The water in its flow makes a
perpetual dimpling on the surface; I have never known it to fail even
in the longest droughts; and in sharp frosty days there hangs a little
smoke above it, for the water is of a noticeable warmth.
This spring is strongly impregnated with iron, so strongly that it has
a sharp and medical taste; from what secret bed of metal it comes I do
not know, but it must be a bed of great extent, for, though the spring
runs thus, day by day and year by year, feeding its waters with the
bitter mineral over which it passes, it never loses its tinge; and the
oldest tradition of the place is that it was even so centuries ago.
All the rest of the pool is full of strange billowy cloudlike growths,
like cotton-wool or clotted honey, all reddened with the iron of the
spring; for it rusts on thus coming to the air. But the orifice you
can always see, and that is of a dark blueness; out of which the pure
green water rises among the vaporous and filmy folds, runs away briskly
out of the pool in a little channel among alders, all stained with the
same orange tints, and falls into the greater stream at a loop, tinging
its waters for a mile.
It is said to have strange health-giving qualities; and the water is
drunk beneath the moon by old country folk for wasting and weakening
complaints. Its strength and potency have no enmity to animal life,
for the water-voles burrow in the banks and plunge with a splash in the
stream; but it seems that no vegetable thing can grow within it, for
the pool and channel are always free of weeds.
I like to stand upon the bank and watch the green water rise and dimple
to the top of the pool, and to hear it bickering away in its rusty
channel. But the beauty of the place is not a simple beauty; there is
something strange and almost fierce about the red-stained water-course;
something uncanny and terrifying about the filmy orange clouds that
stir and sway in the pool; and there sleeps, too, round the edges of
the basin a bright and viscous scum, with a certain ugly radiance, shot
with colours that are almost too sharp and fervid for nature. It seems
as though some diligent alchemy was at work, pouring out from moment to
moment this strangely tempered potion. In summer it is more bearable
to look upon, when the grass is bright and soft, when the tapestry of
leaves and climbing plants is woven over the skirts of the thicket,
when the trees are in joyful leaf. But in the winter, when all tints
are low and spare, when the pastures are yellowed with age, and the
hillside wrinkled with cold, when the alder-rods stand up stiff and
black, and the leafless tangled boughs are smooth like wire; then the
pool has a certain horror, as it pours out its rich juice, all overhung
with thin steam.
But I doubt not that I read into it some thoughts of my own; for it was
on such a day of winter, when the sky was full of inky clouds, and the
wood murmured like a falling sea in the buffeting wind, that I made a
grave and sad decision beside the red pool, that has since tinged my
life, as the orange waters tinge the pale stream into which they fall.
The shadow of that severe resolve still broods about the place for me.
How often since in thought have I threaded the meadows, and looked with
the inward eye upon the green water rising, rising, and the crowded
orange fleeces of the pool! But stern though the resolve was, it was
not an unhappy one; and it has brought into my life a firm and tonic
quality, which seems to me to hold within it something of the
astringent savour of the medicated waters, and perhaps something of
their health-giving powers as well.
II
The Deserted Shrine, The Manor House
I was making a vague pilgrimage to-day in a distant and unfamiliar part
of the country, a region that few people ever visit, and saw two things
that moved me strangely. I left the high-road to explore a hamlet that
lay down in a broad valley to the left; and again diverged from the
beaten track to survey an old grange that lay at a little distance
among the fields. Turning a corner by some cottages, I saw a small
ancient chapel, of brown weathered stone, covered with orange lichen,
the roof of rough stone tiles. In the narrow graveyard round it, the
grass grew long and rank; the gateway was choked by briars. I could
see that the windows of the tiny building were broken. I have never
before in England seen a derelict church, and I clambered over the wall
to examine it more closely. It stood very beautifully; from the low
wall of the graveyard, on the further side, you could look over a wide
extent of rich water-meadows, fed by full streams; there was much
ranunculus in flower on the edges of the water-courses, and a few
cattle moved leisurely about with a peaceful air. Far over the
meadows, out of a small grove of trees, a manor-house held up its
enquiring chimneys. The door of the chapel was open, and I have seldom
seen a more pitiful sight than it revealed. The roof within was of a
plain and beautiful design, with carved bosses, and beams of some dark
wood. The chapel was fitted with oak Jacobean woodwork, pews, a
reading-desk, and a little screen. At the west was a tiny balustraded
gallery. But the whole was a scene of wretched confusion. The
woodwork was mouldering, the red cloth of the pulpit hung raggedly
down, the leaves of the great prayer-book fluttered about the pavement,
in the draught from the door. The whole place was gnawed by rats and
shockingly befouled by birds; there was a litter of rotting nests upon
the altar itself. Yet in the walls were old memorial tablets, and the
passage of the nave was paved with lettered graves. It brought back to
me the beautiful lines--
"En ara, ramis ilicis obsita,
Quae sacra Chryses nomina fert deae,
Neglecta; jamdudum sepultus
Aedituus jacet et sacerdos."
Outside the sun fell peacefully on the mellow walls, and the starlings
twittered in the roof; but inside the deserted shrine there was a sense
of broken trust, of old memories despised, of the altar of God shamed
and dishonoured. It was a pious design to build the little chapel
there for the secluded hamlet; and loving thought and care had gone to
making the place seemly and beautiful. The very stone of the wall, and
the beam of the roof cried out against the hard and untender usage that
had laid the sanctuary low. Here children had been baptized, tender
marriage vows plighted, and the dead laid to rest; and this was the
end. I turned away with a sense of deep sadness; the very sunshine
seemed blurred with a shadow of dreariness and shame.
Then I made my way, by a stony road, towards the manor-house; and
presently could see its gables at the end of a pleasant avenue of
limes; but no track led thither. The gate was wired up, and the drive
overgrown with grass. Soon, however, I found a farm-road which led up
to the house from the village. On the left of the manor lay prosperous
barns and byres, full of sleek pigs and busy crested fowls. The teams
came clanking home across the water-meadows. The house itself became
more and more beautiful as I approached. It was surrounded by a moat,
and here, close at hand, stood another ancient chapel, in seemly
repair. All round the house grew dense thickets of sprawling laurels,
which rose in luxuriance from the edge of the water. Then I crossed a
little bridge with a broken parapet; and in front of me stood the house
itself. I have seldom seen a more perfectly proportioned or
exquisitely coloured building. There were three gables in the front,
the central one holding a beautiful oriel window, with a fine oak door
below. The whole was built of a pale red brick, covered with a grey
lichen that cast a shimmering light over the front. Tall chimneys of
solid grace rose from a stone-shingled roof. The coigns, parapets and
mullions were all of a delicately-tinted orange stone. To the right
lay a big walled garden, full of flowers growing with careless
richness, the whole bounded by the moat, and looking out across the
broad green water-meadows, beyond which the low hills rose softly in
gentle curves and dingles.
A whole company of amiable dogs, spaniels and terriers, came out with
an effusive welcome; a big black yard-dog, after a loud protesting
bark, joined in the civilities. And there I sat down in the warm sun,
to drink in the beauty of the scene, while the moor-hens cried
plaintively in the moat, and the dogs disposed themselves at my feet.
The man who designed this old place must have had a wonderful sense of
the beauty of proportion, the charm of austere simplicity. Generation
after generation must have loved the gentle dignified house, with its
narrow casements, its high rooms. Though the name of the house, though
the tale of its dwellers was unknown to me, I felt the appeal of the
old associations that must have centred about it. The whole air, that
quiet afternoon, seemed full of the calling of forgotten voices, and
dead faces looked out from the closed lattices. So near to my heart
came the spirit of the ancient house, that, as I mused, I felt as
though even I myself had made a part of its past, and as though I were
returning from battling with the far-off world to the home of
childhood. The house seemed to regard me with a mournful and tender
gaze, as though it knew that I loved it, and would fain utter its
secrets in a friendly ear. Is it strange that a thing of man's
construction should have so wistful yet so direct a message for the
spirit? Well, I hardly know what it was that it spoke of; but I felt
the care and love that had gone to the making of it, and the dignity
that it had won from rain and sun and the kindly hand of Nature; it
spoke of hope and brightness, of youth and joy; and told me, too, that
all things were passing away, that even the house itself, though it
could outlive a few restless generations, was indeed _debita morti_,
and bowed itself to its fall.
And then I too, like a bird of passage that has alighted for a moment
in some sheltered garden-ground, must needs go on my way. But the old
house had spoken with me, had left its mark upon my spirit. And I know
that in weary hours, far hence, I shall remember how it stood, peering
out of its tangled groves, gazing at the sunrise and the sunset over
the green flats, waiting for what may be, and dreaming of the days that
are no more.
III
Leucocholy
I have had to taste, during the last few days, I know not why, of the
cup of what Gray called Leucocholy; it is not Melancholy, only the pale
shadow of it. That dark giant is, doubtless, stalking somewhere in the
background, and the shadow cast by his misshapen head passes over my
little garden ground.
I do not readily submit to this mood, and I would wish it away. I
would rather feel joyful and free from blame; but Gray called it a good
easy state, and it certainly has its compensations. It does not, like
Melancholy, lay a dark hand on duties and pleasures alike; it is
possible to work, to read, to talk, to laugh when it is by. But it
sends flowing through the mind a gentle current of sad and weary images
and thoughts, which still have a beauty of their own; it tinges one's
life with a sober greyness of hue; it heightens perception, though it
prevents enjoyment. In such a mood one can sit silent a long time,
with one's eyes cast upon the grass; one sees the delicate forms of the
tender things that spring softly out of the dark ground; one hears with
a poignant delight the clear notes of birds; something of the spring
languors move within the soul. There is a sense, too, of reaching out
to light and joy, a stirring of the vague desires of the heart, a
tender hope, an upward-climbing faith; the heart sighs for a peace that
it cannot attain.
To-day I walked slowly and pensively by little woods and pastures,
taking delight in all the quiet life I saw, the bush pricked with
points of green, the boughs thickened with small reddening buds, the
slow stream moving through the pasture; all the tints faint, airy, and
delicate; the life of the world seemed to hang suspended, waiting for
the forward leap. In a little village I stood awhile to watch the
gables of an ancient house, the wing of a ruined grange, peer solemnly
over the mellow brick wall that guarded a close of orchard trees. A
little way behind, the blunt pinnacles of the old church-tower stood
up, blue and dim, over the branching elms; beyond all ran the long,
pure line of the rising wold. Everything seemed so still, so serene,
as a long, pale ray of the falling sun, which laboured among flying
clouds, touched the westward gables with gold--and mine the only
troubled, unquiet spirit. Hard by there was an old man tottering about
in a little garden, fumbling with some plants, like Laertes on the
upland farm. His worn face, his ragged beard, his pitifully-patched
and creased garments made him a very type of an ineffectual sadness.
Perhaps his thoughts ran as sadly as my own, but I do not think it was
so, because the minds of many country-people, and of almost all the
old, of whatever degree, seem to me free from what is the curse of
delicately-trained and highly-strung temperaments--namely, the
temptation to be always reverting to the past, or forecasting the
future. Simple people and aged people put that aside, and live quite
serenely in the moment; and that is what I believe we ought all to
attempt, for most moments are bearable, if one only does not import
into them the weight of the future and the regret of the past. To
seize the moment with all its conditions, to press the quality out of
it, that is the best victory. But, alas! we are so made that though we
may know that a course is the wise, the happy, the true course, we
cannot always pursue it. I remember a story of a public man who bore
his responsibilities very hardly, worried and agonised over them,
saying to Mr Gladstone, who was at that time in the very thick of a
fierce political crisis: "But don't you find you lie awake at night,
thinking how you ought to act, and how you ought to have acted?" Mr
Gladstone turned his great, flashing eyes upon his interlocutor, and
said, with a look of wonder: "No, I don't; where would be the use of
that?" And again I remember that old Canon Beadon--who lived, I think,
to his 104th year--said to a friend that the secret of long life in his
own case was that he had never thought of anything unpleasant after ten
o'clock at night. Of course, if you have a series of compartments in
your brain, and at ten o'clock can turn the key quietly upon the room
that holds the skeletons and nightmares, you are a very fortunate man.
But still, we can all of us do something. If one has the courage and
good sense, when in a melancholy mood, to engage in some piece of
practical work, it is wonderful how one can distract the great beast
that, left to himself, crops and munches the tender herbage of the
spirit. For myself I have generally a certain number of dull tasks to
perform, not in themselves interesting, and out of which little
pleasure can be extracted, except the pleasure which always results
from finishing a piece of necessary work. When I am wise, I seize upon
a day in which I am overhung with a shadow of sadness to clear off work
of this kind. It is in itself a distraction, and then one has the
pleasure both of having fought the mood and also of having left the
field clear for the mind, when it has recovered its tone, to settle
down firmly and joyfully to more congenial labours.
To-day, little by little, the cloudy mood drew off and left me smiling.
The love of the peaceful and patient earth came to comfort me. How
pure and free were the long lines of ploughland, the broad back of the
gently-swelling down! How clear and delicate were the February tints,
the aged grass, the leafless trees! What a sense of coolness and
repose! I stopped a long time upon a rustic-timbered bridge to look at
a little stream that ran beneath the road, winding down through a rough
pasture-field, with many thorn-thickets. The water, lapsing slowly
through withered flags, had the pure, gem-like quality of the winter
stream; in summer it will become dim and turbid with infusorial life,
but now it is like a pale jewel. How strange, I thought, to think of
this liquid gaseous juice, which we call water, trickling in the cracks
of the earth! And just as the fish that live in it think of it as
their world, and have little cognisance of what happens in the acid,
unsubstantial air above, except the occasional terror of the dim,
looming forms which come past, making the soft banks quiver and stir,
so it may be with us; there may be a great mysterious world outside of
us, of which we sometimes see the dark manifestations, and yet of the
conditions of which we are wholly unaware.
And now it grew dark; the horizon began to redden and smoulder; the
stream gleamed like a wan thread among the distant fields. It was time
to hurry home, to dip in the busy tide of life again. Where was my sad
mood gone? The clear air seemed to have blown through my mind, hands
had been waved to me from leafless woods, quiet voices of field and
stream had whispered me their secrets; "We would tell, if we could,"
they seemed to say. And I, listening, had learnt patience, too--for
awhile.
IV
The Flower
I have made friends with a new flower. If it had a simple and
wholesome English name, I would like to know it, though I do not care
to know what ugly and clumsy title the botany books may give it; but it
lives in my mind, a perfect and complete memory of brightness and
beauty, and, as I have said, a friend.
It was in a steep sea-cove that I saw it. Round a small circular basin
of blue sea ran up gigantic cliffs, grey limestone bluffs; here and
there, where they were precipitous, slanted the monstrous wavy lines of
distorted strata, thrust up, God alone knows how many ages ago, by some
sharp and horrible shiver of the boiling earth. Little waves broke on
the pebbly beach at our feet, and all the air was full of pleasant
sharp briny savours. A few boats were drawn up on the shingle;
lobster-pots, nets, strings of cork, spars, oars, lay in pleasant
confusion, by the sandy road that led up to the tiny hamlet above. We
had travelled far that day and were comfortably weary; we found a
sloping ledge of turf upon which we sat, and presently became aware
that on the little space of grass between us and the cliff must once
have stood a cottage and a cottage garden. There was a broken wall
behind us, and the little platform still held some garden flowers
sprawling wildly, a stunted fruitbush or two, a knotted apple-tree.
My own flower, or the bushes on which it grew, had once, I think,
formed part of the cottage hedge; but it had found a wider place to its
liking, for it ran riot everywhere; it scaled the cliff, where, too,
the golden wall-flowers of the garden had gained a footing; it fringed
the sand-patches beyond us, it rooted itself firmly in the shingle.
The plant had rough light-brown branches, which were now all starred
with the greenest tufts imaginable; but the flower itself! On many of
the bushes it was not yet fully out, and showed only in an abundance of
small lilac balls, carefully folded; but just below me a cluster had
found the sun and the air too sweet to resist, and had opened to the
light. The flower was of a delicate veined purple, a five-pointed
star, with a soft golden heart. All the open blossoms stared at me
with a tranquil gaze, knowing I would not hurt them.
Below, two fishermen rowed a boat quietly out to sea, the sharp
creaking of the rowlocks coming lazily to our ears in the pauses of the
wind. The little waves fell with a soft thud, followed by the crisp
echo of the surf, feeling all round the shingly cove. The whole place,
in that fresh spring day, was unutterably peaceful and content.
And I too forgot all my busy schemes and hopes and aims, the tiny part
I play in the world, with so much petty energy, such anxious
responsibility. My purple-starred flower approved of my acquiescence,
smiling trustfully upon me. "Here," it seemed to say, "I bloom and
brighten, spring after spring. No one regards me, no one cares for me;
no one praises my beauty; no one sorrows when these leaves grow pale,
when I fall from my stem, when my dry stalks whisper together in the
winter wind. But to you, because you have seen and loved me, I whisper
my secret." And then the flower told me something that I cannot write
even if I would, because it is in the language unspeakable, of which St
Paul wrote that such words are not lawful for a man to utter; but they
are heard in the third heaven of God.
Then I felt that if I could but remember what the flower said I should
never grieve or strive or be sorrowful any more; but, as the wise
Psalmist said, be content to tarry the Lord's leisure. Yet, even when
I thought that I had the words by heart, they ceased like a sweet music
that comes to an end, and which the mind cannot recover.
I saw many other things that day, things beautiful and wonderful, no
doubt; but they had no voice for me, like the purple flower; or if they
had, the sea wind drowned them in the utterance, for their voices were
of the earth; but the flower's voice came, as I have said, from the
innermost heaven.
I like well to go on pilgrimage; and in spite of weariness and rainy
weather, and the stupid chatter of the men and women who congregate
like fowls in inn-parlours, I pile a little treasure of sights and
sounds in my guarded heart, memories of old buildings, spring woods,
secluded valleys. All these are things seen, impressions registered
and gratefully recorded. But my flower is somehow different from all
these; and I shall never again hear the name of the place mentioned, or
even see a map of that grey coast, without a quiet thrill of gladness
at the thought that there, spring by spring, blooms my little friend,
whose heart I read, who told me its secret; who will wait for me to
return, and indeed will be faithfully and eternally mine, whether I
return or no.
V
The Fens
I have lately become convinced--and I do not say it either
sophistically, to plead a bad cause with dexterity, or resignedly, to
make the best out of a poor business; but with a true and hearty
conviction--that the most beautiful country in England is the flat
fenland. I do not here mean moderately flat country, low sweeps of
land, like the heaving of a dying groundswell; that has a miniature
beauty, a stippled delicacy of its own, but it is not a fine quality of
charm. The country that I would praise is the rigidly and
mathematically flat country of Eastern England, lying but a few feet
above the sea, plains which were once the bottoms of huge and ancient
swamps.
In the first place, such country gives a wonderful sense of expanse and
space; from an eminence of a few feet you can see what in other parts
of England you have to climb a considerable hill to discern. I love to
feast my eyes on the interminable rich level plain, with its black and
crumbling soil; the long simple lines of dykes and water-courses carry
the eye peacefully out to a great distance; then, too, by having all
the landscape compressed into so narrow a space, into a belt of what
is, to the eye, only a few inches in depth, you get an incomparable
richness of colour. The solitary distant clumps of trees surrounding a
lonely farm gain a deep intensity of tint from the vast green level all
about them; and the line of the low far-off wolds, that close the view
many miles away, is of a peculiar delicacy and softness; the eye, too,
is provided with a foreground of which the elements are of the
simplest; a reedy pool enclosed by willows, the clustered buildings of
a farmstead; a grey church-tower peering out over churchyard elms; and
thus, instead of being checked by near objects, and hemmed in by the
limited landscape, the eye travels out across the plain with a sense of
freedom and grateful repose. Then, too, there is the huge perspective
of the sky; nowhere else is it possible to see, so widely, the slow
march of clouds from horizon to horizon; it all gives a sense of
largeness and tranquillity such as you receive upon the sea, with the
additional advantage of having the solid earth beneath you, green and
fertile, instead of the steely waste of waters.