For more than six years I trod the pavement, never stepping once upon
mother earth--for the parks are but pavement disguised with a growth of
grass. Then the worst was over. Say I the worst? No, no; things far
worse were to come; the struggle against starvation has its cheery side
when one is young and vigorous. But at all events I had begun to earn a
living; I held assurance of food and clothing for half a year at a time;
granted health, I might hope to draw my not insufficient wages for many a
twelvemonth. And they were the wages of work done independently, when
and where I would. I thought with horror of lives spent in an office,
with an employer to obey. The glory of the career of letters was its
freedom, its dignity!
The fact of the matter was, of course, that I served, not one master, but
a whole crowd of them. Independence, forsooth! If my writing failed to
please editor, publisher, public, where was my daily bread? The greater
my success, the more numerous my employers. I was the slave of a
multitude. By heaven's grace I had succeeded in pleasing (that is to
say, in making myself a source of profit to) certain persons who
represented this vague throng; for the time, they were gracious to me;
but what justified me in the faith that I should hold the ground I had
gained? Could the position of any toiling man be more precarious than
mine? I tremble now as I think of it, tremble as I should in watching
some one who walked carelessly on the edge of an abyss. I marvel at the
recollection that for a good score of years this pen and a scrap of paper
clothed and fed me and my household, kept me in physical comfort, held at
bay all those hostile forces of the world ranged against one who has no
resource save in his own right hand.
But I was thinking of the year which saw my first exodus from London. On
an irresistible impulse, I suddenly made up my mind to go into Devon, a
part of England I had never seen. At the end of March I escaped from my
grim lodgings, and, before I had time to reflect on the details of my
undertaking, I found myself sitting in sunshine at a spot very near to
where I now dwell--before me the green valley of the broadening Exe and
the pine-clad ridge of Haldon. That was one of the moments of my life
when I have tasted exquisite joy. My state of mind was very strange.
Though as boy and youth I had been familiar with the country, had seen
much of England's beauties, it was as though I found myself for the first
time before a natural landscape. Those years of London had obscured all
my earlier life; I was like a man town-born and bred, who scarce knows
anything but street vistas. The light, the air, had for me something of
the supernatural--affected me, indeed, only less than at a later time did
the atmosphere of Italy. It was glorious spring weather; a few white
clouds floated amid the blue, and the earth had an intoxicating
fragrance. Then first did I know myself for a sun-worshipper. How had I
lived so long without asking whether there was a sun in the heavens or
not? Under that radiant firmament, I could have thrown myself upon my
knees in adoration. As I walked, I found myself avoiding every strip of
shadow; were it but that of a birch trunk, I felt as if it robbed me of
the day's delight. I went bare-headed, that the golden beams might shed
upon me their unstinted blessing. That day I must have walked some
thirty miles, yet I knew not fatigue. Could I but have once more the
strength which then supported me!
I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that which
I now became there was a very notable difference. In a single day I had
matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I suddenly entered
into conscious enjoyment of powers and sensibilities which had been
developing unknown to me. To instance only one point: till then I had
cared very little about plants and flowers, but now I found myself
eagerly interested in every blossom, in every growth of the wayside. As
I walked I gathered a quantity of plants, promising myself to buy a book
on the morrow and identify them all. Nor was it a passing humour; never
since have I lost my pleasure in the flowers of the field, and my desire
to know them all. My ignorance at the time of which I speak seems to me
now very shameful; but I was merely in the case of ordinary people,
whether living in town or country. How many could give the familiar name
of half a dozen plants plucked at random from beneath the hedge in
springtime? To me the flowers became symbolical of a great release, of a
wonderful awakening. My eyes had all at once been opened; till then I
had walked in darkness, yet knew it not.
Well do I remember the rambles of that springtide. I had a lodging in
one of those outer streets of Exeter which savour more of country than of
town, and every morning I set forth to make discoveries. The weather
could not have been more kindly; I felt the influences of a climate I had
never known; there was a balm in the air which soothed no less than it
exhilarated me. Now inland, now seaward, I followed the windings of the
Exe. One day I wandered in rich, warm valleys, by orchards bursting into
bloom, from farmhouse to farmhouse, each more beautiful than the other,
and from hamlet to hamlet bowered amid dark evergreens; the next, I was
on pine-clad heights, gazing over moorland brown with last year's
heather, feeling upon my face a wind from the white-flecked Channel. So
intense was my delight in the beautiful world about me that I forgot even
myself; I enjoyed without retrospect or forecast; I, the egoist in grain,
forgot to scrutinize my own emotions, or to trouble my happiness by
comparison with others' happier fortune. It was a healthful time; it
gave me a new lease of life, and taught me--in so far as I was
teachable--how to make use of it.