Whatever I get becomes in the getting of it dross. It is not dross
really; it is the fact of my having got it which makes it dross to me.
It is mine, therefore it is no use. Let the Great Bear tumble down from
heaven, and let me find seven stars lying in my hand: what use are they
when they are there? Cast them out--give them to a beggar, and make
plans for Sirius. Of all the heartaches, that of Alexander when he
sighed for new worlds to conquer is the most human. Yet the typhoid
conquered him by Tigris. And his ambition was that of all of us in our
degree. The man who has bought an empire or won it wishes for more
empire, and the spinster who has seen her canary hatch out one egg, and
eat the other, says: ‘Oh that there had been two young ones!’ Vanity of
vanities; all is vanity.’ And because this preacher is not wise, but
knows what is the matter with himself and many others, he gives these
lamentable reflections on his thirtieth birthday.
Pray, then, that you may continue to want, not that you may continue to
get; for the getting in a manner comes of its own accord, and it is the
ability to want that we must keep alive. We may feel quite certain that
the world is big enough; there are plenty of things to want if only we
have the power of wanting. For wanting means just this--the _capacity of
growth_. To want no longer, means that one is old--old not only in years
(indeed, such an old age may come to an unbearded lad, in which case we
laugh, and say, ‘Look at that cynic of twenty’), but old in fibre,
inelastic, set, rigid. Nor does it, I think, much matter what one
wants--again I beg the patient reader to remember that I am not talking
of the great spiritual needs--as long as it is not harmful. But for any
sake try to be keen about something.
At this point my reflections, to tell the truth, touched me somewhat on
the raw, for what have I wanted every day for the last two years? That
which I cannot get--Margery. And yet how shall I say that I cannot get
her, when, if I knew all, I might know that these silent daily longings
of mine have brought me, perhaps, a little nearer to that dear spirit,
that without them I should have been a little more ill-tempered, a
little nastier, than I am. Anyhow, I want to want. For I do not yet
acquiesce, I cannot yet believe, that the world holds nothing for me but
that. Here am I walking along this road of life. All down it I meet
every day new faces, new people, new factors. One sees but a few yards
ahead; then there is a corner, and round that corner will come others,
looking like myself for that which their soul needs. Oh, hurrying
footsteps, coming ever nearer, is there not one among you all that will
stop when you reach me, and go no further in your quest? Is there not
one which shall, while still a great way off, strike on my ear as
distinct and utterly different from all others--one which I recognise,
though I have never yet seen her to whom that step belongs. Among these
miles of eager human eyes, shall not some day mine eyes seek other eyes,
and find there that which has been predestined for me by God? O Margery,
my dear friend, how you will welcome her (should I find her), for her
sake and for mine, when we meet in the everlasting habitations!
Another train of birthday reflections led to this conclusion: ‘Give up
the pursuit of anything which seems to you of doubtful gain.’ For there
are so many indisputably good and real pursuits in the world, that it
cannot possibly be worth while pursuing what may not be wholly good, and
may possibly be not wholly real. Here I have a certain small right to
speak, for in the last year I have given up something which seemed to me
of possibly doubtful gain, and I have found that it was a wise step.
That which I have given up is singularly known as ‘the world.’ I once
thought that it was a good thing to see hundreds of people, to multiply
acquaintances, to be able to say, ‘Charming party! ---- was there,
and ----, and ----,’ naming people who really concerned me as little as I
really concerned them; telling myself--even then, I think, I had some
secret notion of conscience-salving--that to live in the bubble and roar
of the world was stimulating. So no doubt it is, but a stimulant is not
necessarily healthy. Thus it seemed to me (one can only speak for one’s
self) to come under the head of ‘doubtful gain.’ But it is a quite
certain gain to study the habits of the ill-content Jackmanni--I am
sorry for introducing that again, but I cannot get over it--it is a
quite certain gain to read a good book; to try to learn the Fugues and
Preludes--provided, of course, the incidental pain to others is not more
than they should be reasonably asked to bear; to be in the open air,
and, above all, to do your work, whatever it is. If you have none, get
some. It hardly matters at all what it is, so long as it is harmless.
But merely to go from dinner to dance is a doubtful gain. You would do
better--at least, I should--to talk to a friend for half an hour, and
then, if you wish for the crowd merely, as I often do, walk for ten
minutes up and down Piccadilly. For if that does not give you the food
you want, you may be sure you will not find it anywhere else.
Another most fascinating hobby, though I expect it is extremely easy to
give too much time to it, is the pursuit of health. Certainly it is more
easy of accomplishment to most people than the pursuit of happiness, and
the one, to a very large extent, implies the other. For the pursuers of
happiness, for the most part, are Hedonists. They think--and herein err
very greatly--that to multiply pleasure tends to make one happy. In
point of fact, it does nothing of the kind, for pleasures are to some
extent obtainable by most people, whereas happiness is almost completely
a matter of temperament. And the happy temperament cannot possibly have
anything to do with pleasures. No amount of pleasure will foster it at
all; whereas, if you have got the happy temperament, almost everything
by that mysterious alchemy is turned into pleasure--even as a rose-tree
turns that which its root-fibres suck from the earth into blossom. And
certainly health is a great help to happiness, for to be well--really
well--makes ‘the mere living,’ as Browning says, a joy, and at times it
seems enough to be alive. For which would you rather be--a bilious man,
with all the pleasures of the world at his disposal, or well, with ‘the
book of verses underneath the bough,’ and a thrush, maybe, singing of
what should be above you?
Keenness of perception, in fact, I soberly believe to be the greatest
cause of happiness (and so, necessarily, of pleasure, since happiness
turns the most trivial incidents and sensations of the moment into
pleasure) that is within our reach. And so inextricably is the mind and
soul bound up with the body, that--apart from great spiritual enthusiasm
or ecstasy--this keenness of perception can scarcely be reached except
through a certain cleanly healthiness. In fact, it presupposes a
temperament of almost divine serenity to enjoy a day on which one has
influenza; whereas there is a sort of health, which is probably within
the reach of most people, in which, from the heightened keenness of
perception it brings with it, the smallest things are causes of joy or
laughter.
This may sound a mere vain piece of optimism, but the truth of the
matter is that three-quarters of the world are not nearly so well as
they can and should be. Almost everybody, in fact, is greedy and lazy,
and laziness and greed are more certain progenitors of discontent than
any other ancestors I can think of. To eat rather more than one wants,
to drink rather more than one should, is to feel disinclined for one’s
work or one’s pleasure. And to be disinclined for a thing means, with
most of us, to miss the pleasure of the doing. But to be inclined for
work or pleasure implies that we find a nugget of happiness therein, for
it is this alchemy of inclination which turns trivial incidents to gold,
for the keenness turns the dross of mere achievement into happiness.
It is thus that the happy temperament may most readily be cultivated by
those who have not naturally got it. Some have it, a royal birthright,
worth more to its possessor than the piled crowns of the Great Powers;
but by others it has to be cultivated. And to cultivate keenness of
perception by means of health is the simplest and most practicable
method. And the organ in which ill-health mainly resides is, to put the
matter frankly, the liver, because, as a rule, we eat and drink too
much, avoid air as if it was strychnine, and do not take enough
exercise. Thus my prescription is worth trying: Eat and drink less, open
your windows more, and, if your work permits of it, be out-of-doors
more. It may, of course, be easily possible that, to do your work
properly, you have to sit in a stuffy room, and neglect your health
somewhat; if so, let your health take care of itself by all means, and
get through with your work. But short of that, let your health receive
the attention it deserves. It is a very sound investment, and will yield
you excellent returns.
Dear God, in spite of May and June, how happy You allow me to be! How
You have allowed me, in consideration of my foolishness, to find in life
so much happiness! To-day, for instance, a golden sun was swung in a
blue sky when I awoke, and only half-dressed I breakfasted in this
shelter in the garden where I am writing now. Three yards off was the
Jackmanni with its purple buds, a little beyond a Crimson Rambler
climbing up an apple-tree. On the grass stood two green tubs briming
with nasturtiums; up the garden bed ran the row of sweet-peas. All
breakfast-time a thrush sat on the apple-bough and sang the song that
can never be learned, and which no one ever taught it. Then, still
out-of-doors, I sat and worked, and about twelve came a great bunch of
lilac from a neighbour. Lunch-time brought two friends, and after lunch
we hit little silly golfballs over the great back of the down with
matchless enthusiasm. And now I sit here again, as evening is beginning
to fall, and the birds which were mute in the heat of the day are tuning
up for evensong; again the thrush is on the apple-bough, and an
occasional silver flute of a note tells me that mating-time is not yet
over with the nightingales. The bees still hunt in the drowsy and
closing flowers, and swifts still race with shrill whistlings through
the divided air, but every moment the stillness of evening gains on the
beautiful noises of life, like a waveless tide creeping up the wrinkled
sand of the sea-shore. Already the sun is low, and soon the lengthening
shadows will cease to be shadows, and the velvet blue of the night will
darken in the turquoise-coloured skies. Already the night-flowering
stocks and the tobacco-plant are opening, and, as they open, spread
sweet webs of incense, low-lying from their heaviness, over the grass,
and the pale moths begin to hover over the flowers. Dusk comes, and its
cool benediction rests and recuperates the day--wearied earth, and it
and its little inhabitants rest with bowed heads a moment, like some
child at its mother’s knee, drinking in quiet. The pause has come, day
is over, it is not yet quite time to sleep; be still, then, cease to
move or worry or think. Lie open to the air and the stars, let your life
pause, breathe deep, make no effort, and the thrush and the stars and
the green things will communicate with that which is within you by
direct ways.
Then as dusk deepens into night thought comes back; but thought, too, is
driven inwards, going home to roost, and for a little while, as I walk
in this dewy grass by the sweet-peas, Margery will be leaning on my arm,
talking to me of the days that were--talking, too, in a way I do not
yet fully understand, of the days that will be. Outside on the road I
can hear unknown footsteps passing up and down, and every now and then
she seems to say to me, ‘Hush! Listen!’ But the steps pass on. It is not
yet.
AUGUST
I do not think that I have hitherto mentioned that, since I came here in
the spring, the house in which Dick and Margery spent those few weeks
together before he went out to South Africa has stood untenanted, and
often during the past months I have wandered slowly by it, noting with a
sort of pleasure, I think, that at any rate no one I knew lived there.
The feeling was, I am aware, utterly unreasonable, but it was of the
same childish and instinctive kind as that which prompts us to put away
and not use, or at least not let others use, some little object which
has been in any way closely connected with someone who is dead, whom we
have loved. I do not think this feeling is in the least defensible, for
it implies that we cut the dead off in ever so small a degree from the
living, and thus tend to keep alive the sting of death. For in that the
dead have once been intertwined with our ordinary workaday lives, it is
altogether a false sentiment which makes us separate them now, if we
believe at all, as I do most fully, that they still are about and around
us. All the same, it was with a certain surprise and shock that I saw
early in August that the signboard that the house was to let was taken
down, and that a few days later a furniture-van was drawn up at the
door. In fact, this very natural and reasonable event disturbed me to a
degree which I was totally unable to understand. It seemed dreadful,
somehow, that others should be at home there (it never occurred to me at
the time that it was highly unlikely that the house had stood vacant for
two years), so wholly was it consecrated in my mind to those two. At the
same time I realized my utter unreasonableness about the matter, and,
instead of trying to combat it, attempted to take a shorter cut, and
dismiss it as far as I could from the range of my conscious thoughts.
Yet for weeks it lurked there in the shade, and as the weeks went on,
though I never consciously dwelt on the thought, yet somehow the thought
seemed to grow there in the dusk of my mind, until I knew that all my
subconscious brain was full of it. More especially I desired to remain
in ignorance of who the intruders--for so I thought of them--were. As
long as they remained utterly vague and unknown, I could feel no
definite and incarnated resentment, but if once they were visualized I
felt that the growth in the shadow might peer out with poisonous leaves
into the sunlight of active and conscious thought.
I have tried to put incoherency coherently, and I feel I am drawing with
definite outline that which was necessarily ill-defined; but in no other
way, except by words of definite meaning, can one indicate any
impression, however mist-like. Let me, then, say at once that what I
have said is overstated in the sense that if one tries to draw the
actual phantoms of a nightmare they are overstated, because to state
them at all is to lose the pervading vagueness, for hard outline. On the
other hand, again, what I have written down is, I think, understated,
since I try in vain to convey by words the vague and abiding disquiet I
felt at the thought of the owner of the furniture-van that unloaded at
the door. Only, as I have said, this all lurked in the shadow, and
though it grew, yet by persistent refusal to think directly of it, and
by persistently endeavouring to continue in ignorance of whom the new
tenants were, the dark growth never emerged into sunlight.
But it seems a curious irony of fate that so soon after I have written
about the road to happiness this phantasmal and unreal ghost should
‘arise to poison joy.’ This, at any rate, is not exaggerated language,
for the thought of the house tenanted once more lay like a shadow over
my spirits. I was wholly unable (or at any rate I thought I was, which
comes to the same thing) to banish the shadow from my mind, and it
haunted both waking and sleeping thoughts with a dull never-ceasing
weight. I, who hardly ever dream, and then only of astounding and
mirthful adventure, groped nightly about ill-lit passages, which I
believed to be passages in that house, in intolerable apprehension.
Sometimes, so it seemed to me, certain rooms were vividly lit inside,
and through cracks below the door, or through the chink of the door
ajar, I saw that there were bright lights inside the rooms, which yet
cast no filtering illumination into the passages through which I had to
feel my way. At other times the whole house was wrapped in a misty
obscurity, which was not the light of early morning nor yet the dusk of
falling night, but something almost palpable to the touch; it was as if
the gray veil of the future brushed across my eyes, some unseen hand
stirring it, as if to lift it away, and in my dreams my eyes would
strain into the darkness for the light that should show me what agencies
moved about me.
These dreams, which were very persistent and occurred in dim sequence
many times during the night, always opened in the same way. On falling
asleep I passed straight into the nebulous atmosphere I have tried to
describe, and was walking up to Margery’s house. For the darkness, I
never could see more of it than its square shape, a blot against the
blotted sky; the door was always open, and the groping in the passages
began. I was conscious always of many presences close round me, but the
dusk hid them, and into the lighted rooms I never could enter, for it
was somehow forbidden. Then one night an entirely new dream came,
sandwiched between the dreams of dusk, and in that I was going along the
road to the house, not wrapped in obscurity, but in brilliant sunshine.
Birds trilled in the bushes, flowers of extraordinary brilliance grew in
the hedgerows, and I thought with an upleap of exultation that the
passages would be blind no longer. Then I turned the corner and came on
the house, and though I knew it was the right one, yet it had changed
almost beyond recognition. The steps that led to the front-door were
cracked and moss-ridden; the creepers had so grown that they hung in
curtains over the windows; an indescribable air of age had passed over
it. But the room over the front-door--Margery’s room--was untouched by
the gray hand of Time: the walls were still smooth, and it seemed to me
the bricks newly-pointed; the creepers were cut back from the window,
which was wide open, and from inside came a voice singing. It sang a
song that Margery always loved, and though the voice was like hers, yet
it was not quite like.
It was with the wildest hopes and expectations that I entered the house,
but once again, though all was bright outside, the passages were dark.
But I groped my way upstairs, and saw that the door of Margery’s room
stood open, and there, framed in the misty obscurity, stood a figure
that must be hers. Line for line it repeated that form I knew so well;
the slight bend of the neck, the outward sweep of the shoulders, were
all hers. And in the darkness I gazed and gazed, for the veil seemed to
brush upwards against my eyes, but it did not lift, and in an agony I
cried out, ‘Margery, Margery, is it you?’ And my own voice, I suppose,
awoke me, for I found myself seated up in bed, and the night outside was
still very dark and hot, and I heard the hissing of steady rain on the
shrubs.
So I lay down again, and must have gone to sleep immediately, for,
without conscious pause, I was back in the dark passages as usual. But
once again on that same night a new factor appeared in my dreams, for
the presences, though still invisible, were inaudible no longer, and
their footsteps passed about and around me very close. For a long time I
listened, but heard none that concerned me; but at last there came one
which I knew to be Dick’s, and with it went another that was Margery’s,
and they passed near me and went out--I suppose to the garden. It never
occurred to me to follow, for I was outside their lives somehow, and if
we came near each other it was that they came near to me. After that the
steps of many strangers passed and repassed, and then once more I heard
Margery’s footstep alone. But when it came close I knew it was not
Margery’s, but like it, as the singing voice was like hers. Then slowly,
as at the hint of dawn, the dim passages began to grow bright, and I
looked to see where Margery was. But the brightness as it grew showed me
only the walls and furniture of my own room, and through the open window
came in the pale light of early day, as the morning breeze flapped the
blind.
Now, by this time the dreams of the dark passages had lasted about a
week, and the days betwixt the nights had been full of a corresponding
depression; for by night it was the darkness that troubled me, and by
day the shadow of the new folk who were coming to live there. Then came
that night which I have described, and simultaneously both the dream of
the dark passages and the depression by day ceased entirely and
altogether. I went back at once to the dreamless nights to which I was
accustomed, and my days were once more a mosaic of happy hours. But the
heaviness of those days and the ill-defined fear of those nights was so
blackening to the spirit that at the time I soberly thought that some
madness had begun to lay its finger on my brain; and now that I no
longer fear that, I find myself wondering what could have induced this
melancholy. The weather, it is true, was extremely hot and depressing,
and for the whole week it is also true I was working against time at a
piece of work I did not wish to do. Before I had been a day at it, I
knew that it was distasteful; before I had been two at it, I felt sure
it was not worth while to do it at all.
Now, being temporarily bored with one’s work is one thing; radical
disapproval is another. It may easily happen that, to bring about a
situation rightly, several chapters of what seems to one at the time
(and very likely is) sorry stuff have to be hammered into shape. Due
preparation for the situation has to be made without giving the
situation away; only when it comes the reader should say to himself:
‘Of course it must be so; why didn’t I think of it?’ But radical
disapproval is a far different matter. It is rank immorality to go on
spending time and pains over what is worthless or worse, and that rank
immorality I committed. Then, when the work in question, the oppressive
weather, and the disordered dreams, which began simultaneously, also
ended simultaneously, I felt that it was highly probable that they were
all bound up together. Certainly, it is more than possible that they all
reacted on each other--that the thunder in the skies led to a general
depression that made my immorality sit heavy on me, and induced a gloom
by day that was carried over into the night. Again, the fact that I
slept in the shadows brought shadows into the day; and the fact that I
spent the hours unprofitably, and knew it, predisposed to gloomy
visions. At the same time, the persistence of the same dream was
curious, and the society that collects nightmares are at liberty to put
it on a pin. Such, however, is the record of what happened during the
first week of August.
Thereafter ensued three spoilt days, spoilt not by outside agencies,
but by fussy stupidity on my part. To the ordinary citizen such spoiling
means nothing, for in all probability he will never experience it, and
thus to him the trials of these three days are senseless. But given that
your household comprises only a plain (very plain) cook, and what would
be called in London a ‘general’--though such have no idea of
campaign--it will appeal to the minority to know that the question of
what one wanted for ten days at Bayreuth, and perhaps a week’s wandering
in Germany, was crucial. It was no use saying vaguely--as I suppose one
does to a valet--‘I shall be away for ten days; pack’; but seriatim I
had to think of all that I should conceivably want. The result was that
early on the second day I found that I had packed all the necessaries of
life, and had to unpack them all again. This, and the subsequent
repacking, took the whole of the third day. Even then, since I had to
leave at cockcrow to catch the evening boat to Ostend, there were many
things insoluble. Were there baths at Bayreuth, or should I take an
indiarubber bath? Were there washerwomen, or should I take as much
linen as there were days? _Seigneur, quelle vie!_