IN the history of an infancy so cloistered and uniform as mine,
such a real adventure as my being publicly and successfully
kidnapped cannot be overlooked. There were several 'innocents' in
our village--harmless eccentrics who had more or less
unquestionably crossed the barrier which divides the sane from
the insane. They were not discouraged by public opinion; indeed,
several of them were favoured beings, suspected by my Father of
exaggerating their mental density in order to escape having to
work, like dogs, who, as we all know, could speak as well as we
do, were they not afraid of being made to fetch and carry. Miss
Mary Flaw was not one of these imbeciles. She was what the French
call a _detraquee_; she had enjoyed good intelligence and an active
mind, but her wits had left the rails and were careening about
the country. Miss Flaw was the daughter of a retired Baptist
minister, and she lived, with I remember not what relations, in a
little solitary house high up at Barton Cross, whither Mary Grace
and I would sometimes struggle when our pastoral duties were
over. In later years, when I met with those celebrated verses in
which the philosopher expresses the hope
In the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining,
May my lot no less fortunate be
Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining,
And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea
my thoughts returned instinctively, and they still return, to the
high abode of Miss Flaw. There was a porch at her door, both for
shelter and shade, and it was covered with jasmine; but the charm
of the place was a summer-house close by, containing a table,
encrusted with cowry-shells, and seats from which one saw the
distant waters of the bay. At the entrance to this grotto there
was always set a 'snug elbow-chair', destined, I suppose, for the
Rev. Mr. Flaw, or else left there in pious memory of him, since I
cannot recollect whether he was alive or dead.
I delighted in these visits to Mary Flaw. She always received us
with effusion, tripping forward to meet us, and leading us, each
by a hand held high, with a dancing movement which I thought
infinitely graceful, to the cowry-shell bower, where she would
regale us with Devonshire cream and with small hard biscuits that
were like pebbles. The conversation of Mary Flaw was a great
treat to me. I enjoyed its irregularities, its waywardness; it
was like a tune that wandered into several keys. As Mary Grace
Burmington put it, one never knew what dear Mary Flaw would say
next, and that she did not herself know added to the charm. She
had become crazed, poor thing, in consequence of a disappointment
in love, but of course I did not know that, nor that she was
crazed at all. I thought her brilliant and original, and I liked
her very much. In the light of coming events, it would be
affectation were I to pretend that she did not feel a similar
partiality for me.
Miss Flaw was, from the first, devoted to my Father's
ministrations, and it was part of our odd village indulgence that
no one ever dreamed of preventing her from coming to the Room. On
Sunday evenings the bulk of the audience was arranged on forms,
with backs to them, set in the middle of the floor, with a
passage round them, while other forms were placed against the
walls. My Father preached from a lectern, facing the audience. If
darkness came on in the course of the service, Richard Moxhay,
glimmering in his cream-white corduroys, used to go slowly
around, lighting groups of tallow candles by the help of a box of
lucifers. Mary Flaw always assumed the place of honour, on the
left extremity of the front bench, immediately opposite my
Father. Miss Marks and Mary Grace, with me ensconced and almost
buried between them, occupied the right of the same bench. While
the lighting proceeded, Miss Flaw used to direct it from her
seat, silently, by pointing out to Moxhay, who took no notice,
what groups of candles he should light next. She did this just as
the clown in the circus directs the grooms how to move the
furniture, and Moxhay paid no more attention to her than the
grooms do to the clown. Miss Flaw had another peculiarity: she
silently went through a service exactly similar to ours, but much
briefer. The course of our evening service was this: My Father
prayed, and we all knelt down; then he gave out a hymn and most
of us stood up to sing; then he preached for about an hour, while
we sat and listened; then a hymn again; then prayer and the
valediction.
Mary Flaw went through this ritual, but on a smaller scale. We
all knelt down together, but when we rose from our knees, Miss
Flaw was already standing up, and was pretending, without a
sound, to sing a hymn; in the midst of our hymn, she sat down,
opened her Bible, found a text, and then leaned back, her eyes
fixed in space, listening to an imaginary sermon which our own
real one soon caught up, and coincided with for about three-
quarters of an hour. Then, while our sermon went peacefully on,
Miss Flaw would rise, and sing in silence (if I am permitted to
use such an expression) her own visionary hymn; then she would
kneel down and pray, then rise, collect her belongings, and
sweep, in fairy majesty, out of the chapel, my Father still
rounding his periods from the pulpit. Nobody ever thought of
preventing these movements, or of checking the poor creature in
her innocent flightiness, until the evening of the great event.
It was all my own fault. Mary Flaw had finished her imaginary
service earlier than usual. She had stood up alone with her hymn-
book before her; she had flung herself on her knees alone, in the
attitude of devotion; she had risen; she had seated herself for a
moment to put on her gloves, and to collect her Bible, her hymn-
book and her pocket-handkerchief in her reticule. She was ready
to start, and she looked around her with a pleasant air; my
Father, all undisturbed, booming away meanwhile over our heads. I
know not why the manoeuvres of Miss Flaw especially attracted me
that evening, but I leaned out across Miss Marks and I caught
Miss Flaw's eye. She nodded, I nodded; and the amazing deed was
done, I hardly know how. Miss Flaw, with incredible swiftness,
flew along the line, plucked me by the coat-collar from between
my paralysed protectresses, darted with me down the chapel and
out into the dark, before anyone had time to say 'Jack Robinson'.
My Father gazed from the pulpit and the stream of exhortation
withered on his lips. No one in the body of the audience stirred;
no one but himself had clearly seen what had happened. Vague rows
of 'saints' with gaping countenances stared up at him, while he
shouted, 'Will nobody stop them? as we whisked out through the
doorway. Forth into the moist night we went, and up the lampless
village, where, a few minutes later, the swiftest of the
congregation, with my Father at their head, found us sitting on
the doorstep of the butcher's shop. My captor was now quite
quiet, and made no objection to my quitting her,--'without a
single kiss or a goodbye', as the poet says.
Although I had scarcely felt frightened at the time, doubtless my
nerves were shaken by this escapade, and it may have had
something to do with the recurrence of the distressing visions
from which I had suffered as a very little child. These came
back, with a force and expansion due to my increased maturity. I
had hardly laid my head down on the pillow, than, as it seemed to
me, I was taking part in a mad gallop through space. Some force,
which had tight hold of me, so that I felt myself an atom in its
grasp, was hurrying me on over an endless slender bridge, under
which on either side a loud torrent rushed at a vertiginous depth
below. At first our helpless flight,--for I was bound hand and
foot like Mazeppa,--proceeded in a straight line, but presently
it began to curve, and we raced and roared along, in what
gradually became a monstrous vortex, reverberant with noises,
loud with light, while, as we proceeded, enormous concentric
circles engulfed us, and wheeled above and about us. It seemed as
if we,--I, that is, and the undefined force which carried me,--
were pushing feverishly on towards a goal which our whole
concentrated energies were bent on reaching, but which a frenzied
despair in my heart told me we never could reach, yet the
attainment of which alone could save us from destruction. Far
away, in the pulsation of the great luminous whorls, I could just
see that goal, a ruby-coloured point waxing and waning, and it
bore, or to be exact it consisted of the letters of the word
CARMINE.
This agitating vision recurred night after night, and filled me
with inexpressible distress. The details of it altered very
little, and I knew what I had to expect when I crept into bed. I
knew that for a few minutes I should be battling with the chill
of the linen sheets, and trying to keep awake, but that then,
without a pause, I should slip into that terrible realm of storm
and stress in which I was bound hand and foot, and sent galloping
through infinity. Often have I wakened, with unutterable joy, to
find my Father and Miss Marks, whom my screams had disturbed,
standing one on each side of my bed. They could release me from
my nightmare, which seldom assailed me twice a night--but how to
preserve me from its original attack passed their understanding.
My Father, in his tenderness, thought to exorcize the demon by
prayer. He would appear in the bedroom, just as I was first
slipping into bed, and he would kneel at my side. The light from
a candle on the mantel-shelf streamed down upon his dark head of
hair while his face was buried in the coverlid, from which a loud
voice came up, a little muffled, begging that I might be
preserved against all the evil spirits that walk in darkness and
that the deep might not swallow me up.
This little ceremony gave a distraction to my thoughts, and may
have been useful in that way. But it led to an unfortunate
circumstance. My Father began to enjoy these orisons at my
bedside, and to prolong them. Perhaps they lasted a little too
long, but I contrived to keep awake through them, sometimes by a
great effort. On one unhappy night, however, I gave even worse
offense than slumber would have given. My Father was praying
aloud, in the attitude I have described, and I was half sitting,
half lying in bed, with the clothes sloping from my chin.
Suddenly a rather large insect--dark and flat, with more legs
than a self-respecting insect ought to need--appeared at the
bottom of the counterpane, and slowly advanced. I think it was
nothing worse than a beetle. It walked successfully past my
Father's sleek black ball of a head, and climbed straight up at
me, nearer, nearer, until it seemed all a twinkle of horns and
joints. I bore it in silent fascination until it almost tickled
my chin, and then I screamed 'Papa! Papa!' My Father rose in
great dudgeon, removed the insect (what were insects to him!) and
then gave me a tremendous lecture.
The sense of desperation which this incident produced I shall not
easily forget. Life seemed really to be very harassing when to
visions within and beetles without there was joined the
consciousness of having grievously offended God by an act of
disrespect. It is difficult for me to justify to myself the
violent jobation which my Father gave me in consequence of my
scream, except by attributing to him something of the human
weakness of vanity. I cannot help thinking that he liked to hear
himself speak to God in the presence of an admiring listener. He
prayed with fervour and animation, in pure Johnsonian English,
and I hope I am not undutiful if I add my impression that he was
not displeased with the sound of his own devotions. My cry for
help had needlessly, as he thought, broken in upon this holy and
seemly performance. 'You, the child of a naturalist,' he remarked
in awesome tones, '_you_ to pretend to feel terror at the advance
of an insect?' It could but be a pretext, he declared, for
avoiding the testimony of faith in prayer. 'If your heart were
fixed, if it panted after the Lord, it would take more than the
movements of a beetle to make you disturb oral supplication at
His footstool. Beware! for God is a jealous God and He consumes
them in wrath who make a noise like a dog.'
My Father took at all times a singular pleasure in repeating that
'our God is a jealous God'. He liked the word, which I suppose he
used in an antiquated sense. He was accustomed to tell the
'saints' at the Room,--in a very genial manner, and smiling at
them as he said it,--'I am jealous over you, my beloved brothers
and sisters, with a godly jealousy.' I know that this was
interpreted by some of the saints,--for I heard Mary Grace say so
to Miss Marks--as meaning that my Father was resentful because
some of them attended the service at the Wesleyan chapel on
Thursday evenings. But my Father was utterly incapable of such
littleness as this, and when he talked of 'jealousy' he meant a
lofty solicitude, a careful watchfulness. He meant that their
spiritual honour was a matter of anxiety to him. No doubt when he
used to tell me to remember that our God is a jealous God, he
meant that my sins and shortcomings were not matters of
indifference to the Divine Being. But I think, looking back, that
it was very extraordinary for a man, so instructed and so
intelligent as he, to dwell so much on the possible anger of the
Lord, rather than on his pity and love. The theory of extreme
Puritanism can surely offer no quainter example of its fallacy
than this idea that the omnipotent Jehovah--could be seriously
offended, and could stoop to revenge, because a little, nervous
child of nine had disturbed a prayer by being frightened at a
beetle.
The fact that the word 'Carmine' appeared as the goal of my
visionary pursuits is not so inexplicable as it may seem. My
Father was at this time producing numerous water-colour drawings
of minute and even of microscopic forms of life. These he
executed in the manner of miniature, with an amazing fidelity of
form and with a brilliancy of colour which remains unfaded after
fifty years. By far the most costly of his pigments was the
intense crimson which is manufactured out of the very spirit and,
essence of cochineal. I had lately become a fervent imitator of
his works of art, and I was allowed to use all of his colours,
except one; I was strictly forbidden to let a hair of my paint-
brush touch the little broken mass of carmine which was all that
he possessed. We believed, but I do not know whether this could
be the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold at
a guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my shibboleth of
self-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art and
wealth could combine to produce. I imagined, for instance, that
at Belshazzar's feast, the loftiest epergne of gold, surrounded
by flowers and jewels, carried the monarch's proudest possession,
a cake of carmine. I knew of no object in the world of luxury
more desirable than this, and its obsession in my waking hours is
quite enough, I think, to account for 'carmine' having been the
torment of my dreams.
The little incident of the beetle displays my Father's mood at
this period in its worst light. His severity was not very
creditable, perhaps, to his good sense, but without a word of
explanation it may seem even more unreasonable than it was. My
Father might have been less stern to my lapses from high conduct,
and my own mind at the same time less armoured against his
arrows, if our relations had been those which exist in an
ordinary religious family. He would have been more indulgent, and
my own affections might nevertheless have been more easily
alienated, if I had been treated by him as a commonplace child,
standing as yet outside the pale of conscious Christianity. But
he had formed the idea, and cultivated it assiduously, that I was
an _ame d'elite_, a being to whom the mysteries of salvation had
been divinely revealed and by whom they had been accepted. I was,
to his partial fancy, one in whom the Holy Ghost had already
performed a real and permanent work. Hence, I was inside the
pale; I had attained that inner position which divided, as we
used to say, the Sheep from the Goats. Another little boy might
be very well-behaved, but if he had not consciously 'laid hold on
Christ', his good deeds, so far, were absolutely useless. Whereas
I might be a very naughty boy, and require much chastisement from
God and man, but nothing--so my Father thought--could invalidate
my election, and sooner or later, perhaps even after many
stripes, I must inevitably be brought back to a state of grace.
The paradox between this unquestionable sanctification by faith
and my equally unquestionable naughtiness, occupied my Father
greatly at this time. He made it a frequent subject of
intercession at family prayers, not caring to hide from the
servants misdemeanours of mine, which he spread out with a
melancholy unction before the Lord. He cultivated the belief that
all my little ailments, all my aches and pains, were sent to
correct my faults. He carried this persuasion very far, even
putting this exhortation before, instead of after, an instant
relief of my sufferings. If I burned my finger with a sulphur
match, or pinched the end of my nose in the door (to mention but
two sorrows that recur to my memory), my Father would solemnly
ejaculate: 'Oh may these afflictions be much sanctified to him!'
before offering any remedy for my pain. So that I almost longed,
under the pressure of these pangs, to be a godless child, who had
never known the privileges of saving grace, since I argued that
such a child would be subjected to none of the sufferings which
seemed to assail my path.
What the ideas or conduct of 'another child' might be I had,
however, at this time no idea, for, strange as it may sound, I
had not, until my tenth year was far advanced, made acquaintance
with any such creature. The 'saints' had children, but I was not
called upon to cultivate their company, and I had not the
slightest wish to do so. But early in 1859 I was allowed, at
last, to associate with a child of my own age. I do not recall
that this permission gave me any rapture; I accepted it
philosophically but without that delighted eagerness which I
might have been expected to show. My earliest companion, then,
was a little boy of almost exactly my own age. His name was
Benny, which no doubt was short for Benjamin. His surname was
Jeffries; his mother--I think he had no father--was a solemn and
shadowy lady of means who lived in a villa, which was older and
much larger than ours, on the opposite side of the road. Going to
'play with Benny' involved a small public excursion, and this I
was now allowed to make by myself--an immense source of self-
respect.
Everything in my little memories seems to run askew; obviously I
ought to have been extremely stirred and broadened by this
earliest association with a boy of my own age! Yet I cannot truly
say that it was so. Benny's mother possessed what seemed to me a
vast domain, with lawns winding among broad shrubberies, and a
kitchen-garden, with aged fruit-trees in it. The ripeness of this
place, mossed and leafy, was gratifying to my senses, on which
the rawness of our own bald garden jarred. There was an old brick
wall between the two divisions, upon which it was possible for us
to climb up, and from this we gained Pisgah-views which were a
prodigious pleasure. But I had not the faintest idea how to
'play'; I had never learned, had never heard of any 'games'. I
think Benny must have lacked initiative almost as much as I did.
We walked about, and shook the bushes, and climbed along the
wall; I think that was almost all we ever did do. And, sadly
enough, I cannot recover a phrase from Benny's lips, nor an
action, nor a gesture, although I remember quite clearly how some
grown-up people of that time looked, and the very words they
said.
For example, I recollect Miss Wilkes very distinctly, since I
studied her with great deliberation, and with a suspicious
watchfulness that was above my years. In Miss Wilkes a type that
had hitherto been absolutely unfamiliar to us obtruded upon our
experience. In our Eveless Eden, Woman, if not exactly _hirsuta et
horrida_, had always been 'of a certain age'. But Miss Wilkes was
a comparatively young thing, and she advanced not by any means
unconscious of her charms. All was feminine, all was impulsive,
about Miss Wilkes; every gesture seemed eloquent with girlish
innocence and the playful dawn of life. In actual years I fancy
she was not so extremely youthful, since she was the responsible
and trusted headmistress of a large boarding-school for girls,
but in her heart the joy of life ran high. Miss Wilkes had a
small, round face, with melting eyes, and when she lifted her
head, her ringlets seemed to vibrate and shiver like the bells of
a pagoda. She had a charming way of clasping her hands, and
holding them against her bodice, while she said, 'Oh, but--really
now?' in a manner inexpressibly engaging. She was very earnest,
and she had a pleading way of calling out: 'O, but aren't you
teasing me?' which would have brought a tiger fawning to her
crinoline.
After we had spent a full year without any social distractions,
it seems that our circle of acquaintances had now begun to
extend, in spite of my Father's unwillingness to visit his
neighbours. He was a fortress that required to be stormed, but
there was considerable local curiosity about him, so that by-and-
by escalading parties were formed, some of which were partly
successful. In the first place, Charles Kingsley had never
hesitated to come, from the beginning, ever since our arrival. He
had reason to visit our neighbouring town rather frequently, and
on such occasions he always marched up and attacked us. It was
extraordinary how persistent he was, for my Father must have been
a very trying friend. I vividly recollect that a sort of cross-
examination of would-be communicants was going on in our half-
furnished drawing-room one weekday morning, when Mr. Kingsley was
announced; my Father, in stentorian tones, replied: 'Tell Mr.
Kingsley that I am engaged in examining Scripture with certain of
the Lord's children.' And I, a little later, kneeling at the
window, while the candidates were being dismissed with prayer,
watched the author of _Hypatia_ nervously careening about the
garden, very restless and impatient, yet preferring this ignominy
to the chance of losing my Father's company altogether. Kingsley,
a daring spirit, used sometimes to drag us out trawling with him
in Torbay, and although his hawk's beak and rattling voice
frightened me a little, his was always a jolly presence that
brought some refreshment to our seriousness.
But the other visitors who came in Kingsley's wake and without
his excuse--how they disturbed us! We used to be seated, my
Father at his microscope, I with my map or book, in the down-
stairs room we called the study. There would be a hush around us
in which you could hear a sea-anemone sigh. Then, abruptly, would
come a ring at the front door; my Father would bend at me a
corrugated brow, and murmur, under his breath, 'What's that?' and
then, at the sound of footsteps, would bolt into the verandah,
and around the garden into the potting-shed. If it was no visitor
more serious than the postman or the tax-gatherer, I used to go
forth and coax the timid wanderer home. If it was a caller, above
all a female caller, it was my privilege to prevaricate,
remarking innocently that 'Papa is out!'
Into a paradise so carefully guarded, I know not how that serpent
Miss Wilkes could penetrate, but there she was. She 'broke bread'
with the Brethren at the adjacent town, from which she carried on
strategical movements, which were, up to a certain point, highly
successful. She professed herself deeply interested in
microscopy, and desired that some of her young ladies should
study it also. She came attended by an unimportant man, and by
pupils to whom I had sometimes, very unwillingly, to show our
'natural objects'. They would invade us, and all our quietness
with chattering noise; I could bear none of them, and I was
singularly drawn to Miss Marks by finding that she disliked them
too.
By whatever arts she worked, Miss Wilkes certainly achieved a
certain ascendancy. When the knocks came at the front door, I was
now instructed to see whether the visitor were not she, before my
Father bolted to the potting-shed. She was an untiring listener,
and my Father had a genius for instruction. Miss Wilkes was never
weary of expressing what a revelation of the wonderful works of
God in creation her acquaintance with us had been. She would gaze
through the microscope at awful forms, and would persevere until
the silver rim which marked the confines of the drop of water
under inspection would ripple inwards with a flash of light and
vanish, because the drop itself had evaporated. 'Well, I can only
say, how marvellous are Thy doings!' was a frequent ejaculation
of Miss Wilkes, and one that was very well received. She learned
the Latin names of many of the species, and it seems quite
pathetic to me, looking back, to realize how much trouble the
poor woman took. She 'hung', as the expression is, upon my
Father's every word, and one instance of this led to a certain
revelation.
My Father, who had an extraordinary way of saying anything what
Came into his mind, stated one day,--the fashions, I must suppose,
being under discussion,--that he thought white the only becoming
colour for a lady's stockings. The stockings of Miss Wilkes had
up to that hour been of a deep violet, but she wore white ones in
future whenever she came to our house. This delicacy would have
been beyond my unaided infant observation, but I heard Miss Marks
mention the matter, in terms which they supposed to be secret, to
her confidante, and I verified it at the ankles of the lady. Miss
Marks continued by saying, in confidence, and 'quite as between
you and me, dear Mary Grace', that Miss Wilkes was a 'minx'. I
had the greatest curiosity about words, and as this was a new
one, I looked it up in our large 'English Dictionary'. But there
the definition of the term was this:--'Minx: the female of
minnock; a pert wanton.' I was as much in the dark as ever.
Whether she was the female of a minnock (whatever that may be) or
whether she was only a very well-meaning schoolmistress desirous
of enlivening a monotonous existence, Miss Wilkes certainly took
us out of ourselves a good deal. Did my Father know what danger
he ran? It was the opinion of Miss Marks and of Mary Grace that
he did not, and in the back-kitchen, a room which served those
ladies as a private oratory in the summer-time, much prayer was
offered up that his eyes might be opened ere it was too late. But
I am inclined to think that they were open all the time, that, at
all events, they were what the French call 'entr'ouvert', that
enough light for practical purposes came sifted in through his
eyelashes. At a later time, being reminded of Miss Wilkes, he
said with a certain complaisance, 'Ah, yes! she proffered much
entertainment during my widowed years!' He used to go down to her
boarding-school, the garden of which had been the scene of a
murder, and was romantically situated on the edge of a quarried
cliff; he always took me with him, and kept me at his side all
through these visits, notwithstanding Miss Wilkes' solicitude that
the fatigue and excitement would be too much for the dear child's
strength, unless I rested a little on the parlour sofa.
About this time, the question of my education came up for
discussion in the household, as indeed it well might. Miss Marks
had long proved practically inadequate in this respect, her
slender acquirements evaporating, I suppose, like the drops of
water under the microscope, while the field of her general duties
became wider. The subjects in which I took pleasure, and upon
which I possessed books, I sedulously taught myself; the other
subjects, which formed the vast majority, I did not learn at all.
Like Aurora Leigh,
I brushed with extreme flounce
The circle of the universe,
especially zoology, botany and astronomy, but with the explicit
exception of geology, which my Father regarded as tending
directly to the encouragement of infidelity. I copied a great
quantity of maps, and read all the books of travels that I could
find. But I acquired no mathematics, no languages, no history, so
that I was in danger of gross illiteracy in these important
departments.
My Father grudged the time, but he felt it a duty to do something
to fill up these deficiencies, and we now started Latin, in a
little eighteenth-century reading-book, out of which my
Grandfather had been taught. It consisted of strings of words,
and of grim arrangements of conjunction and declension, presented
in a manner appallingly unattractive. I used to be set down in
the study, under my Father's eye, to learn a solid page of this
compilation, while he wrote or painted. The window would be open
in summer, and my seat was close to it. Outside, a bee was
shaking the clematis-blossom, or a red-admiral butterfly was
opening and shutting his wings on the hot concrete of the
verandah, or a blackbird was racing across the lawn. It was
almost more than human nature could bear to have to sit holding
up to my face the dreary little Latin book, with its sheepskin
cover that smelt of mildewed paste.
But out of this strength there came an unexpected sudden
sweetness. The exercise of hearing me repeat my strings of nouns
and verbs had revived in my Father his memories of the classics.
In the old solitary years, a long time ago, by the shores of
Canadian rapids, on the edge of West Indian swamps, his Virgil had
been an inestimable solace to him. To extremely devout persons,
there is something objectionable in most of the great writers of
antiquity. Horace, Lucretius, Terence, Catullus, Juvenal,--in
each there is one quality or another definitely repulsive to a
reader who is determined to know nothing but Christ and him
crucified. From time immemorial, however, it has been recognized
in the Christian church that this objection does not apply to
Virgil. He is the most evangelical of the classics; he is the one
who can be enjoyed with least to explain away and least to
excuse. One evening my Father took down his Virgil from an upper
shelf, and his thoughts wandered away from surrounding things; he
travelled in the past again. The book was a Delphin edition of
1798, which had followed him in all his wanderings; there was a
great scratch on the sheep-skin cover that a thorn had made in a
forest of Alabama. And then, in the twilight, as he shut the
volume at last, oblivious of my presence, he began to murmur and
to chant the adorable verses by memory.
Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,
he warbled; and I stopped my play, and listened as if to a
nightingale, until he reached
tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvan.
'Oh Papa, what is that?' I could not prevent myself from asking.
He translated the verses, he explained their meaning, but his
exposition gave me little interest. What to me was beautiful
Amaryllis? She and her love-sick Tityrus awakened no image
whatever in my mind.
But a miracle had been revealed to me, the incalculable, the
amazing beauty which could exist in the sound of verses. My
prosodical instinct was awakened quite suddenly that dim evening,
as my Father and I sat alone in the breakfast-room after tea,
serenely accepting the hour, for once, with no idea of
exhortation or profit. Verse, 'a breeze mid blossoms playing', as
Coleridge says, descended from the roses as a moth might have
done, and the magic of it took hold of my heart forever. I
persuaded my Father, who was a little astonished at my
insistence, to repeat the lines over and over again. At last my
brain caught them, and as I walked in Benny's garden, or as I
hung over the tidal pools at the edge of the sea, all my inner
being used to ring out with the sound of
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvan.