It is not possible to narrate these incidents of the mind in strict
order. I must now return to a period earlier than anything already
narrated, and pass in review other phases of my search from then up
till recently. So long since that I have forgotten the date, I used
every morning to visit a spot where I could get a clear view of the
east. Immediately on rising I went out to some elms; thence I could see
across the dewy fields to the distant hill over or near which the sun
rose. These elms partially hid me, for at that time I had a dislike to
being seen, feeling that I should be despised if I was noticed. This
happened once or twice, and I knew I was watched contemptuously, though
no one had the least idea of my object. But I went every morning, and
was satisfied if I could get two or three minutes to think unchecked.
Often I saw the sun rise over the line of the hills, but if it was
summer the sun had been up a long time.
I looked at the hills, at the dewy grass, and then up through the elm
branches to the sky. In a moment all that was behind me, the house, the
people, the sounds, seemed to disappear, and to leave me alone.
Involuntarily I drew a long breath, then I breathed slowly. My thought,
or inner consciousness, went up through the illumined sky, and I was
lost in a moment of exaltation. This only lasted a very short time,
perhaps only part of a second, and while it lasted there was no
formulated wish. I was absorbed; I drank the beauty of the morning; I
was exalted. When it ceased I did wish for some increase or enlargement
of my existence to correspond with the largeness of feeling I had
momentarily enjoyed. Sometimes the wind came through the tops of the
elms, and the slender boughs bent, and gazing up through them, and
beyond the fleecy clouds, I felt lifted up. The light coming across the
grass and leaving itself on the dew-drops, the sound of the wind, and
the sense of mounting to the lofty heaven, filled me with a deep sigh,
a wish to draw something out of the beauty of it, some part of that
which caused my admiration, the subtle inner essence.
Sometimes the green tips of the highest boughs seemed gilded, the light
laid a gold on the green. Or the trees bowed to a stormy wind roaring
through them, the grass threw itself down, and in the east broad
curtains of a rosy tint stretched along. The light was turned to
redness in the vapour, and rain hid the summit of the hill. In the rush
and roar of the stormy wind the same exaltation, the same desire,
lifted me for a moment. I went there every morning, I could not exactly
define why; it was like going to a rose bush to taste the scent of the
flower and feel the dew from its petals on the lips. But I desired the
beauty—the inner subtle meaning—to be in me, that I might have it, and
with it an existence of a higher kind.
Later on I began to have daily pilgrimages to think these things. There
was a feeling that I must go somewhere, and be alone. It was a
necessity to have a few minutes of this separate life every day; my
mind required to live its own life apart from other things. A great oak
at a short distance was one resort, and sitting on the grass at the
roots, or leaning against the trunk and looking over the quiet meadows
towards the bright southern sky, I could live my own life a little
while. Behind the trunk I was alone; I liked to lean against it; to
touch the lichen on the rough bark. High in the wood of branches the
birds were not alarmed; they sang, or called, and passed to and fro
happily. The wind moved the leaves, and they replied to it softly; and
now at this distance of time I can see the fragments of sky up through
the boughs. Bees were always humming in the green field; ring-doves
went over swiftly, flying for the woods.
Of the sun I was conscious; I could not look at it, but the boughs held
back the beams so that I could feel the sun’s presence pleasantly. They
shaded the sun, yet let me know that it was there. There came to me a
delicate, but at the same time a deep, strong, and sensuous enjoyment
of the beautiful green earth, the beautiful sky and sun; I felt them,
they gave me inexpressible delight, as if they embraced and poured out
their love upon me. It was I who loved them, for my heart was broader
than the earth; it is broader now than even then, more thirsty and
desirous. After the sensuous enjoyment always came the thought, the
desire: That I might be like this; that I might have the inner meaning
of the sun, the light, the earth, the trees and grass, translated into
some growth of excellence in myself, both of body and of mind; greater
perfection of physique, greater perfection of mind and soul; that I
might be higher in myself. To this oak I came daily for a long time;
sometimes only for a minute, for just to view the spot was enough. In
the bitter cold of spring, when the north wind blackened everything, I
used to come now and then at night to look from under the bare branches
at the splendour of the southern sky. The stars burned with brilliance,
broad Orion and flashing Sirius—there are more or brighter
constellations visible then than all the year: and the clearness of the
air and the blackness of the sky—black, not clouded—let them gleam in
their fulness. They lifted me—they gave me fresh vigour of soul. Not
all that the stars could have given, had they been destinies, could
have satiated me. This, all this, and more, I wanted in myself.
There was a place a mile or so along the road where the hills could be
seen much better; I went there frequently to think the same thought.
Another spot was by an elm, a very short walk, where openings in the
trees, and the slope of the ground, brought the hills well into view.
This too, was a favourite thinking-place. Another was a wood, half an
hour’s walk distant, through part of which a rude track went, so that
it was not altogether inclosed. The ash-saplings, and the trees, the
firs, the hazel bushes—to be among these enabled me to be myself. From
the buds of spring to the berries of autumn, I always liked to be
there. Sometimes in spring there was a sheen of blue-bells covering
acres; the doves cooed; the blackbirds whistled sweetly; there was a
taste of green things in the air. But it was the tall firs that pleased
me most; the glance rose up the flame-shaped fir-tree, tapering to its
green tip, and above was the azure sky. By aid of the tree I felt the
sky more. By aid of everything beautiful I felt myself, and in that
intense sense of consciousness prayed for greater perfection of soul
and body.
Afterwards, I walked almost daily more than two miles along the road to
a spot where the hills began, where from the first rise the road could
be seen winding southwards over the hills, open and uninclosed. I
paused a minute or two by a clump of firs, in whose branches the wind
always sighed—there is always a movement of the air on a hill.
Southwards the sky was illumined by the sun, southwards the clouds
moved across the opening or pass in the amphitheatre, and southwards,
though far distant, was the sea. There I could think a moment. These
pilgrimages gave me a few sacred minutes daily; the moment seemed holy
when the thought or desire came in its full force.
A time came when, having to live in a town, these pilgrimages had to be
suspended. The wearisome work on which I was engaged would not permit
of them. But I used to look now and then, from a window, in the evening
at a birch-tree at some distance; its graceful boughs drooped across
the glow of the sunset. The thought was not suspended; it lived in me
always. A bitterer time still came when it was necessary to be
separated from those I loved. There is little indeed in the more
immediate suburbs of London to gratify the sense of the beautiful. Yet
there was a cedar by which I used to walk up and down, and think the
same thoughts as under the great oak in the solitude of the sunlit
meadows. In the course of slow time happier circumstances brought us
together again, and, though near London, at a spot where there was easy
access to meadows and woods. Hills that purify those who walk on them
there were not. Still I thought my old thoughts.
I was much in London, and, engagements completed, I wandered about in
the same way as in the woods of former days. From the stone bridges I
looked down on the river; the gritty dust, the straws that lie on the
bridges, flew up and whirled round with every gust from the flowing
tide; gritty dust that settles in the nostrils and on the lips, the
very residuum of all that is repulsive in the greatest city of the
world. The noise of the traffic and the constant pressure from the
crowds passing, their incessant and disjointed talk, could not distract
me. One moment at least I had, a moment when I thought of the push of
the great sea forcing the water to flow under the feet of these crowds,
the distant sea strong and splendid; when I saw the sunlight gleam on
the tidal wavelets; when I felt the wind, and was conscious of the
earth, the sea, the sun, the air, the immense forces working on, while
the city hummed by the river. Nature was deepened by the crowds and
foot-worn stones. If the tide had ebbed, and the masts of the vessels
were tilted as the hulls rested on the shelving mud, still even the
blackened mud did not prevent me seeing the water as water flowing to
the sea. The sea had drawn down, and the wavelets washing the strand
here as they hastened were running the faster to it. Eastwards from
London Bridge the river raced to the ocean.
The bright morning sun of summer heated the eastern parapet of London
Bridge; I stayed in the recess to acknowledge it. The smooth water was
a broad sheen of light, the built-up river flowed calm and silent by a
thousand doors, rippling only where the stream chafed against a chain.
Red pennants drooped, gilded vanes gleamed on polished masts,
black-pitched hulls glistened like a black rook’s feathers in sunlight;
the clear air cut out the forward angles of the warehouses, the
shadowed wharves were quiet in shadows that carried light; far down the
ships that were hauling out moved in repose, and with the stream
floated away into the summer mist. There was a faint blue colour in the
air hovering between the built-up banks, against the lit walls, in the
hollows of the houses. The swallows wheeled and climbed, twittered and
glided downwards. Burning on, the great sun stood in the sky, heating
the parapet, glowing steadfastly upon me as when I rested in the narrow
valley grooved out in prehistoric times. Burning on steadfast, and ever
present as my thought. Lighting the broad river, the broad walls;
lighting the least speck of dust; lighting the great heaven; gleaming
on my finger-nail. The fixed point of day—the sun. I was intensely
conscious of it; I felt it; I felt the presence of the immense powers
of the universe; I felt out into the depths of the ether. So intensely
conscious of the sun, the sky, the limitless space, I felt too in the
midst of eternity then, in the midst of the supernatural, among the
immortal, and the greatness of the material realised the spirit. By
these I saw my soul; by these I knew the supernatural to be more
intensely real than the sun. I touched the supernatural, the immortal,
there that moment.
When, weary of walking on the pavements, I went to rest in the National
Gallery, I sat and rested before one or other of the human pictures. I
am not a picture lover: they are flat surfaces, but those that I call
human are nevertheless beautiful. The knee in Daphnis and Chloe and the
breast are like living things; they draw the heart towards them, the
heart must love them. I lived in looking; without beauty there is no
life for me, the divine beauty of flesh is life itself to me. The
shoulder in the Surprise, the rounded rise of the bust, the exquisite
tints of the ripe skin, momentarily gratified the sea-thirst in me. For
I thirst with all the thirst of the salt sea, and the sun-heated sands
dry for the tide, with all the sea I thirst for beauty. And I know full
well that one lifetime, however long, cannot fill my heart. My throat
and tongue and whole body have often been parched and feverish dry with
this measureless thirst, and again moist to the fingers’ ends like a
sappy bough. It burns in me as the sun burns in the sky.
The glowing face of Cytherea in Titian’s Venus and Adonis, the heated
cheek, the lips that kiss each eye that gazes on them, the desiring
glance, the golden hair—sunbeams moulded into features—this face
answered me. Juno’s wide back and mesial groove, is any thing so lovely
as the back? Cythereals poised hips unveiled for judgment; these called
up the same thirst I felt on the green sward in the sun, on the wild
beach listening to the quiet sob as the summer wave drank at the land.
I will search the world through for beauty. I came here and sat to rest
before these in the days when I could not afford to buy so much as a
glass of ale, weary and faint from walking on stone pavements. I came
later on, in better times, often straight from labours which though
necessary will ever be distasteful, always to rest my heart with
loveliness. I go still; the divine beauty of flesh is life itself to
me. It was, and is, one of my London pilgrimages.
Another was to the Greek sculpture galleries in the British Museum. The
statues are not, it is said, the best; broken too, and mutilated, and
seen in a dull, commonplace light. But they were shape—divine shape of
man and woman; the form of limb and torso, of bust and neck, gave me a
sighing sense of rest. These were they who would have stayed with me
under the shadow of the oaks while the blackbirds fluted and the south
air swung the cowslips. They would have walked with me among the
reddened gold of the wheat. They would have rested with me on the
hill-tops and in the narrow valley grooved of ancient times. They would
have listened with me to the sob of the summer sea drinking the land.
These had thirsted of sun, and earth, and sea, and sky. Their shape
spoke this thirst and desire like mine—if I had lived with them from
Greece till now I should not have had enough of them. Tracing the form
of limb and torso with the eye gave me a sense of rest.
Sometimes I came in from the crowded streets and ceaseless hum; one
glance at these shapes and I became myself. Sometimes I came from the
Reading-room, where under the dome I often looked up from the desk and
realised the crushing hopelessness of books, useless, not equal to one
bubble borne along on the running brook I had walked by, giving no
thought like the spring when I lifted the water in my hand and saw the
light gleam on it. Torso and limb, bust and neck instantly returned me
to myself; I felt as I did lying on the turf listening to the wind
among the grass; it would have seemed natural to have found butterflies
fluttering among he statues. The same deep desire was with me. I shall
always go to speak to them; they are a place of pilgrimage; wherever
there is a beautiful statue there is a place of pilgrimage.
I always stepped aside, too, to look awhile at the head of Julius
Cæsar. The domes of the swelling temples of his broad head are full of
mind, evident to the eye as a globe is full of substance to the sense
of feeling in the hands that hold it. The thin worn cheek is entirely
human; endless difficulties surmounted by endless labour are marked in
it, as the sandblast, by dint of particles ceaselessly driven, carves
the hardest material. If circumstances favoured him he made those
circumstances his own by marvellous labour, so as justly to receive the
credit of chance. Therefore the thin cheek is entirely human—the sum of
human life made visible in one face—labour, and endurance, and mind,
and all in vain. A shadow—of deep sadness has gathered on it in the
years that have passed, because endurance was without avail. It is
sadder to look at than the grass-grown tumulus I used to sit by,
because it is a personality, and also on account of the extreme folly
of our human race ever destroying our greatest.
Far better had they endeavoured, however hopelessly, to keep him living
till this day. Did but the race this hour possess one-hundredth part of
his breadth of view, how happy for them! Of whom else can it be said
that he had no enemies to forgive because he recognised no enemy?
Nineteen hundred years ago he put in actual practice, with more
arbitrary power than any despot, those very principles of humanity
which are now put forward as the highest culture. But he made them to
be actual things under his sway.
The one man filled with mind; the one man without avarice, anger,
pettiness, littleness; the one man generous and truly great of all
history. It is enough to make one despair to think of the mere brutes
butting to death the great-minded Cæsar. He comes nearest to the ideal
of a design-power arranging the affairs of the world for good in
practical things. Before his face—the divine brow of mind above, the
human suffering-drawn cheek beneath—my own thought became set and
strengthened. That I could but look at things in the broad way he did;
that I could not possess one particle of such width of intellect to
guide my own course, to cope with and drag forth from the
iron-resisting forces of the universe some one thing of my prayer for
the soul and for the flesh.