are talking in a very conventional way? Of course, I desire that
people should be better and happier, myself among the number; but how
am I to set about it? Most people's idea of being better and happier
is to make other people subscribe to make them richer. They want more
things to eat and drink and wear; they want success and respectability,
to be sidesmen and town councillors, and even Members of Parliament.
Nothing is more hopelessly unimaginative than ordinary people's aims
and ideas, and the aims and ideas, too, that are propounded from
pulpits. I don't want people to be richer and more prosperous; I want
them to be poorer and simpler. Which is the better man, the shepherd
there on the down, out all day in the air, seeing a thousand pretty
things, or the grocer behind his counter, living in an odour of lard
and cheese, bowing and fussing, and drinking spirits in the evening?
Of course, a wholesome-minded man may be wholesome-minded everywhere
and anywhere; but prosperity, which is the Englishman's idea of
righteousness, is a very dangerous thing, and has very little of what
is divine about it. If I had stuck to my work, as all my friends
advised me, what would have been the result? I should have had more
money than I want, and nothing in the world to live for but my work.
Of course, I know that I run the risk of being thought indolent and
unpractical. If I were a prophet, I should find it easy enough to
scold everybody, and find fault with the poor, peaceful world. But as
I am not, I can only follow my own line of life, and try to see and
love as many as I can of the beautiful things that God flings down all
round us. I am not a philanthropist, I suppose; but most of the
philanthropists I have known have seemed to me tiresome, self-seeking
people, with a taste for trying to take everything out of God's hands.
I am an individualist, I imagine. I think that most of us have to find
our way, and to find it alone. I do try to help a few quiet people at
the right moment; but I believe that every one has his own circle--some
larger, some smaller--and that one does little good outside it. If
every one would be content with that, the world would be mended in a
trice."
"I am glad that you, at least, admit that there is something to be
mended," I said.
"Oh, yes," said he, "the general conditions seem to me to want mending;
but that, I humbly think, is God's matter, and not mine. The world is
slowly broadening and improving, I believe. In these days, when we
shoot our enemies and then nurse them, we are coming, I believe, to see
even the gigantic absurdity of war; but all that side of it is too big
for me. I am no philosopher! What I believe we ought to do is to be
patient, kind, and courageous in a corner. Now, I will give you an
instance. I had a friend who was a good, hard-working clergyman; a
brave, genial, courageous creature; he had a town parish not far from
here; he liked his work, and he did it well. He was the friend of all
the boys and girls in the parish; he worked a hundred useful, humble
institutions. He was nothing of a preacher, and a poor speaker; but
something generous, honest, happy seemed to radiate from the man. Of
course, they could not let him alone. They offered him a Bishopric.
All his friends said he was bound to take it; the poor fellow wrote to
me, and said that he dared not refuse a sphere of wider influence, and
all that. I wrote and told him my mind--namely, that he was doing a
splendid piece of quiet, sober work, and that he had better stick to
it. But, of course, he didn't. Well, what is the result? He is
worried to death. He has a big house and a big household; he is a
welcome guest in country-houses and vicarages; he opens churches, he
confirms; he makes endless poor speeches, and preaches weak sermons.
His time is all frittered away in directing the elaborate machinery of
a diocese; and all his personal work is gone. I don't say he doesn't
impress people. But his strength lay in his personal work, his work as
a neighbour and a friend. He is not a clever man; he never says a
suggestive thing--he is not a sower of thoughts, but a simple pastor.
Well, I regard it as a huge and lamentable mistake that he should ever
have changed his course; and the motive that made him do it was a bad
one, only disguised as an angel of light. Instead of being the stoker
of the train, he is now a distinguished passenger in a first-class
carriage."
"Well," I said, "I admit that there is a good deal in what you say.
But if such a summons comes to a man, is it not more simple-minded to
follow it dutifully? Is it not, after all, part of the guiding of God?"
"Ah!" said my host, "that is a hard question, I admit. But a man must
look deep into his heart, and face a situation of the kind bravely and
simply. He must be quite sure that it is a summons from God, and not a
temptation from the world. I admit that it may be the former. But in
the case of which I have just spoken, my friend ought to have seen that
it was the latter. He was made for the work he was doing; he was
obviously not made for the other. And to sum it up, I think that God
puts us into the world to live, not necessarily to get influence over
other people. If a man is worth anything, the influence comes; and I
don't call it living to attend public luncheons, and to write
unnecessary letters, because public luncheons are things which need not
exist, and are only amusements invented by fussy and idle people. I am
not at all against people amusing themselves. But they ought to do it
quietly and inexpensively, and not elaborately and noisily. The only
thing that is certain is that men must work and eat and sleep and die.
Well, I want them to enjoy their work, their food, their rest; and then
I should like them to enjoy their leisure hours peacefully and quietly.
I have done as much in my twenty years of business as a man in a
well-regulated state ought to do in the whole of his life; and the rest
I shall give, God willing, to leisure--not eating my cake in a corner,
but in quiet good fellowship, with an eye and an ear for this wonderful
and beautiful world." And my companion smiled upon me a large, gentle,
engaging smile.
"Yes," I said, "you have answered well, and you have given me plenty to
think about. And at all events you have a point of view, and that is a
great thing."
"Yes," said he, "a great thing, as long as one is not sure one is
right, but ready to learn, and not desirous to teach. That is the
mistake. We are children at school--we ought not to forget that; but
many of us want to sit in the master's chair, and rap the desk, and
cane the other children."
And so our talk wandered to other things; then we were silent for a
little, while the birds came home to their roosts, and the trees
shivered in the breeze of sunset; till at last the golden glow gathered
in the west, and the sun went down in state behind the crimson line of
sea.
XXII
The Pleasures of Work
I desire to do a very sacred thing to-day: to enunciate a couple of
platitudes and attest them. It is always a solemn moment in life when
one can sincerely subscribe to a platitude. Platitudes are the things
which people of plain minds shout from the steps of the staircase of
life as they ascend; and to discover the truth of a platitude by
experience means that you have climbed a step higher.
The first enunciation is, that in this world we most of us do what we
like. And the corollary to that is, that we most of us like what we do.
Of course, we must begin by taking for granted that we most of us are
obliged to do something. But that granted, it seems to me that it is
very rare to find people who do not take a certain pleasure in their
work, and even secretly congratulate themselves on doing it with a
certain style and efficiency. To find a person who has not some
species of pride of this nature is very rare. Other people may not
share our opinion of our own work. But even in the case of those whose
work is most open to criticism, it is almost invariable to find that
they resent criticism, and are very ready to appropriate praise. I had
a curiously complete instance of this the other day. In a parish which
I often visit, the organ in the church is what is called presided over
by the most infamous executant I have ever heard--an elderly man, who
seldom plays a single chord correctly, and whose attempts to use the
pedals are of the nature of tentative and unsuccessful experiments.
His performance has lately caused a considerable amount of indignation
in the parish, for a new organ has been placed in the church, of far
louder tone than the old instrument, and my friend the organist is
hopelessly adrift upon it. The residents in the place have almost made
up their minds to send a round-robin to the Vicar to ask that the
_pulsator organorum_, the beater of the organ, as old Cathedral
statutes term him, may be deposed. The last time I attended service,
one of those strangely appropriate verses came up in the course of the
Psalms, which make troubled spirits feel that the Psalter does indeed
utter a message to faithful individual hearts. "_I have desired that
they, even my enemies,_" ran the verse, "_should not triumph over me;
for when my foot slipped, they rejoiced greatly against me._" In the
course of the verse the unhappy performer executed a perfect fandango
on the pedals. I looked guiltily at the senior churchwarden, and saw
his mouth twitch.
In the same afternoon I fell in with the organist, in the course of a
stroll, and discoursed to him in a tone of gentle condolence about the
difficulties of a new instrument. He looked blankly at me, and then
said that he supposed that some people might find a change of
instrument bewildering, but that for himself he felt equally at home on
any instrument. He went on to relate a series of compliments that
well-known musicians had paid him, which I felt must either have been
imperfectly recollected, or else must have been of a consolatory or
even ironical nature. In five minutes, I discovered that my friend was
the victim of an abundant vanity, and that he believed that his
vocation in life was organ-playing.
Again, I remember that, when I was a schoolmaster, one of my colleagues
was a perfect byword for the disorder and noise that prevailed in his
form. I happened once to hold a conversation with him on disciplinary
difficulties, thinking that he might have the relief of confiding his
troubles to a sympathising friend. What was my amazement when I
discovered that his view of the situation was, that every one was
confronted with the same difficulties as himself, and that he obviously
believed that he was rather more successful than most of us in dealing
with them tactfully and strictly.
I believe my principle to be of almost universal application; and that
if one could see into the heart of the people who are accounted, and
rightly accounted, to be gross and conspicuous failures, we should find
that they were not free from a certain pleasant vanity about their own
qualifications and efficiency. The few people whom I have met who are
apt to despond over their work are generally people who do it
remarkably well, and whose ideal of efficiency is so high that they
criticise severely in themselves any deviation from their standard.
Moreover, if one goes a little deeper--if, for instance, one cordially
re-echoes their own criticisms upon their work--such criticisms are apt
to be deeply resented.
I will go further, and say that only once in the course of my life have
I found a man who did his work really well, without any particular
pride and pleasure in it. To do that implies an extraordinary degree
of will-power and self-command.
I do not mean to say that, if any professional person found himself
suddenly placed in the possession of an independent income, greater
than he had ever derived from his professional work, his pleasure in
his work would be sufficient to retain him in the exercise of it. We
have most of us an unhappy belief in our power of living a pleasurable
and virtuous life of leisure; and the desire to live what is called the
life of a gentleman, which character has lately been defined as a
person who has no professional occupation, is very strong in the hearts
of most of us.
But, for all that, we most of us enjoy our work; the mere fact that one
gains facility, and improves from day to day, is a source of sincere
pleasure, however far short of perfection our attempts may fall; and,
generally speaking, our choice of a profession is mainly dictated by a
certain feeling of aptitude for and interest in what we propose to
undertake.
It is, then, a happy and merciful delusion by which we are bound. We
grow, I think, to love our work, and we grow, too, to believe in our
method of doing it. We cannot, a great preacher once said, all delude
ourselves into believing that we are richer, handsomer, braver, more
distinguished than others; but there are few of us who do not cherish a
secret belief that, if only the truth were known, we should prove to be
more interesting than others.
To leave our work for a moment, and to turn to ordinary social
intercourse. I am convinced that the only thing that can account for
the large number of bad talkers in the world is the wide-spread belief
that prevails among individuals as to their power of contributing
interest and amusement to a circle. One ought to keep this in mind,
and bear faithfully and patiently the stream of tiresome talk that
pours, as from a hose, from the lips of diffuse and lengthy
conversationalists. I once made a terrible mistake. I complimented,
from the mere desire of saying something agreeable, and finding my
choice of praiseworthy qualities limited, an elderly, garrulous
acquaintance on his geniality, on an evening when I had writhed
uneasily under a steady downpour of talk. I have bitterly rued my
insincerity. Not only have I received innumerable invitations from the
man whom the Americans would call my complimentee, but when I am in his
company I see him making heroic attempts to make his conversation
practically continuous. How often since that day have I sympathised
with St James in his eloquent description of the deadly and poisonous
power of the tongue! A bore is not, as is often believed, a merely
selfish and uninteresting person. He is often a man who labours
conscientiously and faithfully at an accomplishment, the exercise of
which has become pleasurable to him. And thus a bore is the hardest of
all people to convert, because he is, as a rule, conscious of virtue
and beneficence.
On the whole, it is better not to disturb the amiable delusions of our
fellow-men, unless we are certain that we can improve them. To break
the spring of happiness in a virtuous bore is a serious responsibility.
It is better, perhaps, both in matters of work and in matters of social
life, to encourage our friends to believe in themselves. We must not,
of course, encourage them in vicious and hurtful enjoyment, and there
are, of course, bores whose tediousness is not only not harmless, but a
positively noxious and injurious quality. There are bores who have but
to lay a finger upon a subject of universal or special interest, to
make one feel that under no circumstances will one ever be able to
allow one's thoughts to dwell on the subject again; and such a person
should be, as far as possible, isolated from human intercourse, like a
sufferer from a contagious malady. But this extremity of noxiousness
is rare. And it may be said that, as a rule, one does more to increase
happiness by a due amount of recognition and praise, even when one is
recognising rather the spirit of a performance than the actual result;
and such a course of action has the additional advantage of making one
into a person who is eagerly welcomed and sought after in all kinds of
society.
XXIII
The Abbey
The fresh wind blew cheerily as we raced, my friend and I, across a
long stretch of rich fen-land. The sunlight, falling somewhat dimly
through a golden haze, lay very pleasantly on the large pasture-fields.
There are few things more beautiful, I think, than these great level
plains; they give one a delightful sense of space and repose. The
distant lines of trees, the far-off church towers, the long dykes, the
hamlets half-hidden in orchards, the "sky-space and field-silence,"
give one a feeling of quiet rustic life lived on a large and simple
scale, which seems the natural life of the world.
Our goal was the remains of an old religious house, now a farm. We
were soon at the place; it stood on a very gentle rising ground, once
an island above the fen. Two great columns of the Abbey Church served
as gate-posts. The house itself lay a little back from the road, a
comfortable cluster of big barns and outhouses, with great walnut trees
all about, in the middle of an ancient tract of pasture, full of
dimpled excavations, in which the turf grew greener and more compact.
The farm-house itself, a large irregular Georgian building covered with
rough orange plaster, showed a pleasant tiled roof among the barns,
over a garden set with venerable sprawling box-trees. We found a
friendly old labourer, full of simple talk, who showed us the orchard,
with its mouldering wall of stone, pierced with niches, the line of dry
stew-ponds, the refectory, now a great barn, piled high with heaps of
grain and straw. We walked through byres tenanted by comfortable pigs
routing in the dirt. We hung over a paling to watch the creased and
discontented face of an old hog, grunting in shrill anticipation of a
meal. Our guide took us to the house, where we found a transept of the
church, now used as a brew-house, with the line of the staircase still
visible, rising up to a door in the wall that led once to the
dormitory, down the steps of which, night after night, the shivering
and sleepy monks must have stumbled into their chilly church for
prayers. The hall of the house was magnificent with great Norman
arches, once the aisle of the nave.
The whole scene had the busy, comfortable air of a place full of
patriarchal life, the dignity of a thing existing for use and not for
show, of quiet prosperity, of garnered provender and well-fed stock.
Though it made no deliberate attempt at beauty, it was full of a seemly
and homely charm. The face of the old fellow that led us about,
chirping fragments of local tradition, with a mild pride in the fact
that strangers cared to come and see the place, wore the contented,
weather-beaten look that comes of a life of easy labour spent in the
open air. His patched gaiters, the sacking tied round him with a cord
to serve as an apron, had the same simple appropriateness. We walked
leisurely about, gathering a hundred pretty impressions,--as the old
filbert-trees that fringed the orchard, the wall-flowers, which our
guide called the blood-warriors, on the ruined coping, a flight of
pigeons turning with a sharp clatter in the air. At last he left us to
go about his little business; and we, sitting on a broken
mounting-block in the sunshine, gazed lazily and contentedly at the
scene.
We attempted to picture something of the life of the Benedictines who
built the house. It must have been a life of much quiet happiness. We
tried to see in imagination the quaint clustered fabrics, the ancient
church, the cloister, the barns, the out-buildings. The brethren must
have suffered much from cold in winter. The day divided by services,
the nights broken by prayers; probably the time was dull enough, but
passed quickly, like all lives full of monotonous engagements. They
were not particularly ascetic, these Benedictines, and insisted much on
manual labour in the open air. Probably at first the monks did their
farm-work as well; but as they grew richer, they employed labourers,
and themselves fell back on simpler and easier garden-work. Perhaps
some few were truly devotional spirits, with a fire of prayer and
aspiration burning in their hearts; but the majority would be quiet
men, full of little gossip about possible promotions, about lands and
crops, about wayfarers and ecclesiastics who passed that way and were
entertained. Very few, except certain officials like the Cellarer, who
would have to ride to market, ever left the precincts of the place, but
laid their bones in the little graveyard east of the church. We make a
mistake in regarding the life and the buildings as having been so
picturesque, as they now appear after the long lapse of time. The
church was more venerable than the rest; but the refectory, at the time
of the dissolution, cannot have been long built; still, the old tiled
place, with its rough stone walls, must have always had a quaint and
irregular air.
Probably it was as a rule a contented and amiable society. The regular
hours, the wholesome fatigue which the rule entailed, must have tended
to keep the inmates in health and good-humour. But probably there was
much tittle-tattle; and a disagreeable, jealous, or scheming inmate
must have been able to stir up a good deal of strife in a society
living at such close quarters. One thinks loosely that it must have
resembled the life of a college at the University, but that is an
entire misapprehension; for the idea of a college is liberty with just
enough discipline to hold it together, while the idea of a monastery
was discipline with just enough liberty to make life tolerable.
Well, it is all over now! the idea of the monastic life, which was to
make a bulwark for quiet-minded people against the rougher world, is no
longer needed. The work of the monks is done. Yet I gave an
affectionate thought across the ages to the old inmates of the place,
whose bones have mouldered into the dust of the yard where we sat. It
seemed half-pleasant, half-pathetic to think of them as they went about
their work, sturdy, cheerful figures, looking out over the wide fen
with all its clear pools and reed-beds, growing old in the familiar
scene, passing from the dormitory to the infirmary, and from the
infirmary to the graveyard, in a sure and certain hope. They too
enjoyed the first breaking of spring, the return of balmy winds, the
pushing up of the delicate flowers in orchard and close, with something
of the same pleasure that I experience to-day. The same wonder that I
feel, the same gentle thrill speaking of an unattainable peace, an
unruffled serenity that lies so near me in the spring sunshine,
flashed, no doubt, into those elder spirits. Perhaps, indeed, their
heart went out to the unborn that should come after them, as my heart
goes out to the dead to-day.
And even the slow change that has dismantled that busy place, and
established it as the quiet farmstead that I see, holds a hope within
it. There must indeed have been a sad time when the buildings were
slipping into decay, and the church stood ruined and roofless. But how
soon the scars are healed! How calmly nature smiles at the eager
schemes of men, breaks them short, and then sets herself to harmonise
and adorn the ruin, till she makes it fairer than before, writing her
patient lesson of beauty on broken choir and tottering wall, flinging
her tide of fresh life over the rents, and tenderly drawing back the
broken fragments into her bosom. If we could but learn from her not to
fret or grieve, to gather up what remains, to wait patiently and wisely
for our change!
So I reasoned softly to myself in a train of gentle thought, till the
plough-horses came clattering in, and the labourers plodded gratefully
home; and the sun went down over the flats in a great glory of orange
light.
XXIV
Wordsworth
I believe that I was once taken to Rydal Mount as a small boy, led
there meekly, no doubt, in a sort of dream; but I retain not the
remotest recollection of the place, except of a small flight of stone
steps, which struck me as possessing some attractive quality or other.
And I have since read, I suppose, a good many descriptions of the
place; but on visiting it, as I recently did, I discovered that I had
not the least idea of what it was like. And I would here shortly speak
of the extraordinary kindness which I received from the present
tenants, who are indeed of the hallowed dynasty; it may suffice to say
that I could only admire the delicate courtesy which enabled people,
who must have done the same thing a hundred times before, to show me
the house with as much zest and interest, as if I was the first pilgrim
that had ever visited the place.