pathetic and even beautiful. Here were these old pitiful creatures, so
deeply afflicted, condemned most of them to a lifelong seclusion, who
were recalling and living over again their childish sports and
delights. What dim memories of old spring days, before their sad
disabilities had settled upon them, were working in those aged and
feeble brains! What pleased me best was the obvious and light-hearted
happiness of the whole party, a compensation for days of starved
monotony. No party of school-children on a holiday could have been
more thoughtlessly, more intently gay. Here was a desolate company,
one would have thought, of life's failures, facing one of the saddest
and least hopeful prospects that the world can afford; yet on this day
at least they were full to the brim of irresponsible and complete
happiness and delight, tasting an enjoyment, it seemed, more vivid than
often falls to my own lot. In the presence of such happiness it seemed
so useless, so unnecessary to ask why so heavy a burden was bound on
their backs, because here at all events was a scene of the purest and
most innocent rapture. I went on my way full of wonder and even of
hope. I could not fathom the deep mystery of the failure, the
suffering, the weakness that runs across the world like an ugly crack
across the face of a fair building. But then how tenderly and wisely
does the great Artificer lend consolation and healing, repairing and
filling so far as he may, the sad fracture; he seems to know better
than we can divine the things that belong to our peace; so that as I
looked across the purple rolling plain, with all its wooded ridges, its
rich pastures, the smoke going up from a hundred hamlets, a confidence,
a quiet trust seemed to rise in my mind, filling me with a strange
yearning to know what were the thoughts of the vast Mind that makes us
and sustains us, mingled with a faith in some large and far-off issue
that shall receive and enfold our little fretful spirits, as the sea
receives the troubled leaping streams, to move in slow unison with the
wide and secret tides.
XVI
The Cripple
I went to-day to see an old friend whom I had not met for ten years.
Some time ago he had a bad fall which for a time crippled him, but from
which it was hoped he would recover; but he must have received some
obscure and deep-seated injury, because after improving for a time, he
began to go backwards, and has now to a great extent lost the use of
his limbs. He was formerly a very active man, both intellectually and
physically. He had a prosperous business in the country town on the
outskirts of which he lives. He was one of those tall spare men,
black-haired and black-eyed, capable of bearing great fatigue, full to
the brim of vitality. He was a great reader, fond of music and art;
married to a no less cultivated and active wife, but childless. There
never was a man who had a keener enjoyment of existence in all its
aspects. It used to be a marvel to me to see at how many points a man
could touch life, and the almost child-like zest which he threw into
everything which he did.
On arriving at the house, a pleasant old-fashioned place with a big
shady garden, I was shown into a large book-lined study, and there
presently crept and tottered into the room, leaning on two sticks, a
figure which I can only say in no respect recalled to me the
recollection of my friend. He was bent and wasted, his hair was white;
and there was that sunken look about the temples, that tracery of lines
about the eyes that tells of constant suffering. But the voice was
unaltered, full, resonant, and distinct as ever. He sat down and was
silent for a moment. I think that the motion even from one room into
another caused him great pain. Then he began to talk; first he told me
of the accident, and his journeys in search of health. "But the
comfort is," he added, "that the doctors have now decided that they can
do no more for me, and I need leave home no more." He told me that he
still went to his business every day--and I found that it was
prospering greatly--and that though he could not drive, he could get
out in a wheeled chair; he said nothing of his sufferings, and
presently began to talk of books and politics. Gradually I realised
that I was in the company of a thoroughly cheerful man. It was not the
cheerfulness that comes of effort, of a determined attempt to be
interested in old pursuits, but the abundant and overflowing
cheerfulness of a man who has still a firm grasp on life. He argued,
he discussed with the same eager liveliness; and his laugh had the
careless and good-humoured ring of a man whose mind was entirely
content.
His wife soon entered; and we sat for a long time talking. I was
keenly moved by the relations between them; she displayed none of that
minute attention to his needs, none of that watchful anxiety which I
have often thought, tenderly lavished as it is upon invalids, must
bring home to them a painful sense of their dependence and
helplessness; and he too showed no trace of that fretful exigence which
is too often the characteristic of those who cannot assist themselves,
and which almost invariably arises in the case of eager and active
temperaments thus afflicted, those whose minds range quickly from
subject to subject, and who feel their disabilities at every turn. At
one moment he wanted his glasses to read something from a book that lay
beside him. He asked his wife with a gentle courtesy to find them.
They were discovered in his own breast-pocket, into which he could not
even put his feeble hand, and he apologised for his stupidity with an
affectionate humility which made me feel inclined to tears, especially
when I saw the pleasure which the performance of this trifling service
obviously caused her. It was just the same, I afterwards noticed, with
a young attendant who waited on him at luncheon, an occasion which
revealed to me the full extent of his helplessness.
I gathered from his wife in the course of the afternoon that though his
life was not threatened, yet that there was no doubt that his
helplessness was increasing. He could still hold a book and turn the
pages; but it was improbable that he could do so for long, and he was
amusing himself by inventing a mechanical device for doing this. But
she too talked of the prospect with a quiet tranquillity. She said
that he was making arrangements to direct his business from his house,
as it was becoming difficult for him to enter the office.
He himself showed the same unabated cheerfulness during the whole of my
visit, and spoke of the enjoyment it had brought him. There was not
the slightest touch of self-pity about his talk.
I should have admired and wondered at the fortitude of this gallant
pair, if I had seen signs of repression and self-conquest about them;
if they had relapsed even momentarily into repining, if they had shown
signs of a faithful determination to make the best of a bad business.
But I could discern no trace of such a mood about either of them.
Whether this kindly and sweet patience has been acquired, after hard
and miserable wrestlings with despair and wretchedness, I cannot say,
but I am inclined to think that it is not so. It seems to me rather to
be the display of perfect manliness and womanliness in the presence of
an irreparable calamity, a wonderful and amazing compensation, sent
quietly from the deepest fortress of Love to these simple and generous
natures, who live in each other's lives. I tried to picture to myself
what my own thoughts would be if condemned to this sad condition; I
could only foresee a fretful irritability, a wild anguish, alternating
with a torpid stupefaction. "I seem to love the old books better than
ever," my friend had said, smiling softly, in the course of the
afternoon; "I used to read them hurriedly and greedily in the old days,
but now I have time to think over them--to reflect--I never knew what a
pleasure reflection was." I could not help feeling as he said the
words that with me such a stroke as he had suffered would have dashed
the life, the colour, out of books, and left them faded and withered
husks. Half the charm of books, I have always thought, is the
inter-play of the commentary of life and experience. I ventured to ask
him if this was not the case. "No," he said, "I don't think it is--I
seem more interested in people, in events, in thoughts than ever; and
one gets them from a purer spring--I don't know if I can explain," he
added, "but I think that one sees it all from a different perspective,
in a truer light, when one's own desires and possibilities are so much
more limited." When I said good-bye to him, he smiled at me and hoped
that I should repeat my visit. "Don't think of me as unhappy," he
added, and his wife, who was standing by him, said, "Indeed you need
not;" and the two smiled at each other in a way which made me feel that
they were speaking the simple truth, and that they had found an
interpretation of life, a serene region to abide in, which I, with all
my activities, hopes, fears, businesses, had somehow missed. The pity
of it! and yet the beauty of it! as I went away I felt that I had
indeed trodden on holy ground, and seen the transfiguration of humanity
and pain into something august, tranquil, and divine.
XVII
Oxford
There are certain things in the world that are so praiseworthy that it
seems a needless, indeed an almost laughable thing to praise them; such
things are love and friendship, food and sleep, spring and summer; such
things, too, are the wisest books, the greatest pictures, the noblest
cities. But for all that I mean to try and make a little hymn in prose
in honour of Oxford, a city I have seen but seldom, and which yet
appears to me one of the most beautiful things in the world.
I do not wish to single out particular buildings, but to praise the
whole effect of the place, such as it seemed to me on a day of bright
sun and cool air, when I wandered hour after hour among the streets,
bewildered and almost intoxicated with beauty, feeling as a poor man
might who has pinched all his life, and made the most of single coins,
and who is brought into the presence of a heap of piled-up gold, and
told that it is all his own.
I have seen it said in foolish books that it is a misfortune to Oxford
that so many of the buildings have been built out of so perishable a
vein of stone. It is indeed a misfortune in one respect, that it
tempts men of dull and precise minds to restore and replace buildings
of incomparable grace, because their outline is so exquisitely blurred
by time and decay. I remember myself, as a child, visiting Oxford, and
thinking that some of the buildings were almost shamefully ruinous of
aspect; now that I am wiser I know that we have in these battered and
fretted palace-fronts a kind of beauty that fills the mind with an
almost despairing sense of loveliness, till the heart aches with
gratitude, and thrills with the desire to proclaim the glory of the
sight aloud.
These black-fronted blistered facades, so threatening, so sombre, yet
screening so bright and clear a current of life; with the tender green
of budding spring trees, chestnuts full of silvery spires,
glossy-leaved creepers clinging, with tiny hands, to cornice and
parapet, give surely the sharpest and most delicate sense that it is
possible to conceive of the contrast on which the essence of so much
beauty depends. To pass through one of these dark and smoke-stained
courts, with every line mellowed and harmonised, as if it had grown up
so out of the earth; to find oneself in a sunny pleasaunce, carpeted
with velvet turf, and set thick with flowers, makes the spirit sigh
with delight. Nowhere in the world can one see such a thing as those
great gate-piers, with a cognisance a-top, with a grille of iron-work
between them, all sweetly entwined with some slim vagrant creeper, that
give a glimpse and a hint--no more--of a fairy-land of shelter and
fountains within. I have seen such palaces stand in quiet and stately
parks, as old, as majestic, as finely proportioned as the buildings of
Oxford; but the very blackness of the city air, and the drifting smoke
of the town, gives that added touch of grimness and mystery that the
country airs cannot communicate. And even fairer sights are contained
within; those panelled, dark-roofed halls, with their array of
portraits gravely and intently regarding the stranger; the chapels,
with their splendid classical screens and stalls, rich and dim with
ancient glass. The towers, domes, and steeples; and all set not in a
mere paradise of lawns and glades, but in the very heart of a city,
itself full of quaint and ancient houses, but busy with all the
activity of a brisk and prosperous town; thereby again giving the
strong and satisfying sense of contrast, the sense of eager and
every-day cares and pleasures, side by side with these secluded havens
of peace, the courts and cloister, where men may yet live a life of
gentle thought and quiet contemplation, untroubled, nay, even
stimulated, by the presence of a bustling life so near at hand, which
yet may not intrude upon the older dream.
I do not know whether my taste is entirely trustworthy, but I confess
that I find the Italianate and classical buildings of Oxford finer than
the Gothic buildings. The Gothic buildings are quainter, perhaps, more
picturesque, but there is an air of solemn pomp and sober dignity about
the classical buildings that harmonises better with the sense of wealth
and grave security that is so characteristic of the place. The Gothic
buildings seem a survival, and have thus a more romantic interest, a
more poetical kind of association. But the classical porticos and
facades seem to possess a nobler dignity, and to provide a more
appropriate setting for modern Oxford; because the spirit of Oxford is
more the spirit of the Renaissance than the spirit of the Schoolmen;
and personally I prefer that ecclesiasticism should be more of a
flavour than a temper; I mean that though I rejoice to think that sober
ecclesiastical influences contribute a serious grace to the life of
Oxford, yet I am glad to feel that the spirit of the place is liberal
rather than ecclesiastical. Such traces as one sees in the chapels of
the Oxford Movement, in the shape of paltry stained glass, starved
reredoses, modern Gothic woodwork, would be purely deplorable from the
artistic point of view, if they did not possess a historical interest.
They speak of interrupted development, an attempt to put back the
shadow on the dial, to return to a narrower and more rigid tone, to put
old wine into new bottles, which betrays a want of confidence in the
expansive power of God. I hate with a deep-seated hatred all such
attempts to bind and confine the rising tide of thought. I want to see
religion vital and not formal, elastic and not cramped by precedent and
tradition. And thus I love to see worship enshrined in noble classical
buildings, which seem to me to speak of a desire to infuse the
intellectual spirit of Greece, the dignified imperialism of Rome into
the more timid and secluded ecclesiastical life, making it fuller,
larger, more free, more deliberate.
But even apart from the buildings, which are after all but the body of
the place, the soul of Oxford, its inner spirit, is what lends it its
satisfying charm. On the one hand, it gives the sense of the dignity
of the intellect; one reflects that here can be lived lives of stately
simplicity, of high enthusiasm, apart from personal wealth, and yet
surrounded by enough of seemly dignity to give life the charm of grave
order and quiet solemnity. Here are opportunities for peaceful and
congenial work, to the sound of mellodious bells; uninterrupted hours,
as much society of a simple kind as a man can desire, and the whole
with a background of exquisite buildings and rich gardens. And then,
too, there is the tide of youthful life that floods every corner of the
place. It is an endless pleasure to see the troops of slim and alert
young figures, full of enjoyment and life, with all the best gifts of
life, health, work, amusement, society, friendship, lying ready to
their hand. The sense of this beating and thrilling pulse of life
circulating through these sombre and splendid buildings is what gives
the place its inner glow; this life full of hope, of sensation, of
emotion, not yet shadowed or disillusioned or weary, seems to be as the
fire on the altar, throwing up its sharp darting tongues of flame, its
clouds of fragrant smoke, giving warmth and significance and a fiery
heart to a sombre shrine.
And so it is that Oxford is in a sort a magnetic pole for England; a
pole not, perhaps, of intellectual energy, or strenuous liberalism, or
clamorous aims, or political ideas; few, perhaps, of the sturdy forces
that make England potently great, centre there. The greatness of
England is, I suppose, made up by her breezy, loud-voiced sailors, her
lively, plucky soldiers, her ardent, undefeated merchants, her tranquil
administrators; by the stubborn adventurous spirit that makes itself at
home everywhere, and finds it natural to assume responsibilities. But
to Oxford set the currents of what may be called intellectual emotion,
the ideals that may not make for immediate national greatness, but
which, if delicately and faithfully nurtured, hold out at least a hope
of affecting the intellectual and spiritual life of the world. There
is something about Oxford which is not in the least typical of England,
but typical of the larger brotherhood that is independent of
nationalities; that is akin to the spirit which in any land and in
every age has produced imperishable monuments of the ardent human soul.
The tribe of Oxford is the tribe from whose heart sprang the Psalms of
David; Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Virgil, Dante and Goethe are all
of the same divine company. It may be said that John Bull, the sturdy
angel of England, turns his back slightingly upon such influences; that
he regards Oxford as an incidental ornament of his person, like a seal
that jingles at his fob. But all generous and delicate spirits do her
a secret homage, as a place where the seeds of beauty and emotion, of
wisdom and understanding, are sown, as in a secret garden. Hearts such
as these, even whirling past that celestial city, among her poor
suburbs, feel an inexpressible thrill at the sight of her towers and
domes, her walls and groves. _Quam dilecta sunt tabernacula_, they
will say; and they will breathe a reverent prayer that there may be no
leading into captivity and no complaining in her streets.
XVIII
Authorship
I found myself at dinner the other day next to an old friend, whom I
see but seldom; a quiet, laborious, able man, with the charm of perfect
modesty and candour, who, moreover, writes a very beautiful and lucid
style. I said to him that I conceived it to be my mission, whenever I
met him, to enquire what he was writing, and to beg him to write more.
He said smilingly that he was very much occupied in his work, which is
teaching, and found little time to write; "besides," he said, "I think
that one writes too much." He went on to say that though he loved
writing well enough when he was in the mood for it, yet that the labour
of shaping sentences, and lifting them to their places, was very severe.
I felt myself a little rebuked by this, for I will here confess that
writing is the one pleasure and preoccupation of my own life, though I
do not publish a half of what I write. It set me wondering whether I
did indeed write too much; and so I said to him: "You mean, I suppose,
that one gets into the habit of serving up the same ideas over and over
again, with a different sauce, perhaps; but still the same ideas?"
"Yes," he said, "that is what I mean. When I have written anything
that I care about, I feel that I must wait a long time before the
cistern fills again."
We went on to talk of other things; but I have since been reflecting
whether there is truth in what my friend said. If his view is true of
writing, then it is surely the only art that is so hampered. We should
never think that an artist worked too much; we might feel that he did
not perhaps finish his big pictures sufficiently; but if he did not
spare labour in finishing his pictures, we should never find fault with
him for doing, say, as Turner did, and making endless studies and
sketches, day after day, of all that struck him as being beautiful. We
should feel indeed that some of these unconsidered and rapid sketches
had a charm and a grace that the more elaborate pictures might miss;
and in any case we should feel that the more that he worked, the firmer
and easier would become his sweep of hand, the more deft his power of
indicating a large effect by an economy of resource. The musician,
too: no one would think of finding fault with him for working every day
at his art; and it is the same with all craftsmen; the more they
worked, the surer would their touch be.
Now I am inclined to believe that what makes writing good is not so
much the pains taken with a particular piece of work, the retouching,
the corrections, the dear delays. Still more fruitful than this labour
is the labour spent on work that is never used, that never sees the
light. Writing is to me the simplest and best pleasure in the world;
the mere shaping of an idea in words is the occupation of all others I
most love; indeed, to speak frankly, I plan and arrange all my days
that I may secure a space for writing, not from a sense of duty, but
merely from a sense of delight. The whole world teems with subjects
and thoughts, sights of beauty and images of joy and sorrow, that I
desire to put into words; and to forbid myself to write would be to
exercise the strongest self-denial of which I am capable. Of course I
do not mean that I can always please myself. I have piles of
manuscripts laid aside which fail either in conception or expression,
or in both. But there are a dozen books I would like to write if I had
the time.
To be honest, I do not believe in fretting too much over a piece of
writing. Writing, laboriously constructed, painfully ornamented, is
often, I think, both laborious and painful to read; there is a sense of
strain about it. It is like those uneasy figures that one sees in the
carved gargoyles of old churches, crushed and writhing for ever under a
sense of weight painfully sustained, or holding a gaping mouth open,
for the water-pipe to discharge its contents therethrough. However
ingenious these carvings are, they always give a sense of tension and
oppression to the mind; and it is the same with laboured writers; my
theory of writing rather is that the conception should be as clear as
possible, and then that the words should flow like a transparent
stream, following as simply as possible the shape and outline of the
thought within, like a waterbreak over a boulder in a stream's bed.
This, I think, is best attained by infinite practice. If a piece of
work seems to be heavy and muddy, let it be thrown aside ungrudgingly;
but the attempt, even though it be a failure, makes the next attempt
easier.
I do not think that one can write for very long at a time to much
purpose; I take the two or three hours when the mind is clearest and
freshest, and write as rapidly as I can; this secures, it seems to me,
a clearness and a unity which cannot be attained by fretful labour, by
poking and pinching at one's work. One avoids by rapidity and ardour
the dangerous defect of repetition; a big task must be divided into
small sharp episodes to be thus swiftly treated. The thought of such a
writer as Flaubert lying on his couch or pacing his room, the racked
and tortured medium of his art, spending hours in selecting the one
perfect word for his purpose, is a noble and inspiring picture; but
such a process does not, I fear, always end in producing the effect at
which it aims; it improves the texture at a minute point; it sacrifices
width and freedom.