Arthur went up to the University, Trinity College, Cambridge, in
1870; he did not distinguish himself there, or acquire more than he
had done at Winchester: "The one thing I learnt at Winchester that
has been useful to me since, was how to tie up old letters: my
house-master taught me how to do that—it was about all he was fit
for. The thing I learnt at Cambridge was to smoke: my cousin Fred
taught me that, and he was hardly fit for that."
As it was at Cambridge that I first met him, I will give a short
description of him as far as I can remember.
He was a tall, lounging fellow, rather clumsy in his movements, but
with a kind of stateliness about him; he looked, and was, old for his
years. He was a little short-sighted and wore glasses; without them
his brow had that puzzled, slightly bothered look often seen in
weak-sighted people. His face was not unattractive, though rather
heavy; his hair was dark and curly—he let it grow somewhat long from
indolence—and he had a drooping moustache. He was one of the men
who, without the slightest idea of doing so, always managed to create
rather an impression. As he lounged along the street with his hands
in his pockets, generally alone, people used to turn and look at him.
If he had taken a line of any kind he would have been known
everywhere—but he did nothing.
The occasion on which I met him first was in the rooms of a common
friend; there was a small gathering of men. He was sitting in a low
chair, smoking intently. It was the one occupation he loved; he
hardly said anything, though the conversation was very animated;
silence was his latest phase; but as it was his first term, and he
was not very well acquainted with the party, it appeared natural; not
that being surrounded by dukes and bishops would have made the
slightest difference to him if he had been disposed to talk, but he
was not talkative, and held his tongue.
There had been some discussion about careers and their relative
merits. One rather cynical man had broken in upon the ambitious
projects that were being advanced with, "Well, we must remember that
we are after all only average men."
"Yes," said Arthur, slowly, from the depths of his chair, "no doubt;
only not quite so average."
The gentleman addressed, who was a senior man, stared for a moment at
the freshman who had ventured to correct him, to whom he had not even
been introduced; but Arthur was staring meditatively at the smoke
rising from his pipe, and did not seem inclined to move or be moved,
so he concluded not to continue the discussion.
The only other thing I heard him say that night was as follows. An
ardent enthusiast on the subject of missions was present, who,
speaking of an Indian mission lately started and apparently wholly
ineffective, said, "But we must expect discouragement at first. The
Church has always met with that."
"Yes," said Arthur; "but we must also remember, what people are very
apt to forget, that ill success is not an absolute proof that God is
on our side."
These two remarks, slight as they were, struck me; and, indeed, I
have never quite forgotten that indefinable first impression of the
man. There was a feeling about him of holding great things in
reserve, an utter absence of self-consciousness, a sensation that he
did not value the opinions of other people, that he did not regulate
his conduct by them, which is very refreshing in these social days,
when everybody's doings and sayings are ventilated and discussed so
freely. He had none of the ordinary ambitions; he did not want a
reputation, I thought, on ordinary grounds; he struck me as liking
to observe and consider, not to do or say.
I am fond of guessing at character and forming impressions; and I
very soon found out that these were not mistaken. My way that night
lay with him as far as the gate of his college. We struck up a kind
of acquaintanceship, though I felt conscious that he did not in the
least care about doing so, that he probably would not give me another
thought. It seems strange, reflecting on that evening, that I should
now come to be his biographer.
However, I was interested in the type of character he displayed, and
did not let the acquaintance drop. I invited him to my rooms. He
would not come of his own accord at first, but by-and-by he got
habituated to me, and not unfrequently strolled in.
He never let any one into the secret of his motives; he never
confessed to any plans for the future, or to taking any interest in
one line of life more than another. He was well off and did not spend
much, except on his books, which were splendid. His rooms were untidy
to the last degree, but liberally supplied with the most varied
contrivances for obtaining a comfortable posture. Deep chairs and
sofas, with devices for books and light, and for writing in any
position. "When my mind is at work," he said to me once, "I don't
like to be reminded of my body at all. I want to forget that I have
one; and so I always say my prayers lying down."
He dressed badly, or rather carelessly, for he never gave the subject
a moment's thought. If his friends told him that a suit was shabby,
he appeared in a day or two in a new one, till that was similarly
noticed; then it was discarded altogether. He always wore one suit
till he had worn it out, never varying it. But he consulted fashion
to a certain extent. "My object," he said, "is to escape notice, to
look like every one else. I think of all despicable people, the
people who try to attract attention by a marked style of dress, are
perhaps the lowest."
His life at Cambridge was very monotonous, for he enjoyed monotony;
he used to say that he liked to reflect on getting up in the morning,
that his day was going to be filled by ordinary familiar things. He
got up rather late, read his subjects for an hour or two, strolled
about to see one or two friends, lunched with them or at home,
strolled in the afternoon, often dropping in to King's for the
anthem, went back to his rooms for tea, the one time at which he
liked to see his friends, read or talked till hall, and finally
settled down to his books again at ten, reading till one or two in
the morning.
He read very desultorily and widely. Thus he would read books on
Arctic voyages for ten days and talk of nothing else, then read
novels till he sickened for facts and fact till he sickened for
fiction; biographies, elementary science, poetry, general philosophy,
particularly delighting in any ideal theories of life and discipline
in state or association, but with a unique devotion to "Hamlet"
and "As You Like It," the "Pilgrim's Progress," and Emerson's
"Representative Men." He rarely read the Bible, he told me, and then
only in great masses at a sitting; and the one thing that he disliked
with an utter hatred was theology of a settled and orthodox type,
though next to the four books I have mentioned, "The Christian Year"
and "Ecce Homo" were his constant companions.
He did not care for history; he used to lament it. "I have but a
languid interest in facts, qua facts," he said; "and I try to arrive
at history through biography. I like to disentangle the separate
strands, one at a time; the fabric is too complex for me."
He had the greatest delight in topography. "That is why," he used to
say, "I delight in a flat country. The idea of _space_ is what I want.
I like to see miles at a glance. I like to see clouds league-long
rolling up in great masses from the horizon—cloud perspective. I
rejoice in seeing the fields, hedgerow after hedgerow, farm after
farm, push into the blue distance. It makes me feel the unity and the
diversity of life; a city bewilders and confuses me, but a great
tract of placid country gives me a broad glow of satisfaction."
He went for a walking tour in the fens, and returned enchanted. "By
Ely," he said, "the line crosses a gigantic fen—Whittlesea mere in
old days—and on a clear day you can see at least fifteen miles
either way. As we crossed it a great skein of starlings rose out of
a little holt, and streamed north; the herons or quiet cattle stood
along the huge dykes. You could see the scattered figures of old
labourers in the fields, and then for miles and miles the squat
towers, at which you were making, staring over the flat, giving you
a thrill every time you sighted them, and right away west the low
hills that must have been the sandy downs that blocked the restless
plunging sea; they must have looked for centuries over rollers and
salt marsh and lagoon, felt the tread of strange herds and beasts
about them till they have become the quiet slopes of a sunny park
or the simple appendages of a remote hill farm."
But his greatest delight was in music. He knew a smattering of it
scientifically, enough to follow up subjects and to a certain extent
to recognize chords. There occurs in one of his letters to me the
following passage, which I venture to quote. He is speaking of the
delight of pure sound as apart from melody:
"I remember once," he writes, "being with a great organist in a
cathedral organ-loft, sitting upon the bench at his side. He was
playing a Mass of Schubert's, and close to the end, at the last chord
but two—he was dying to a very soft close, sliding in handles all
over the banks of stops—he nodded with his head to the rows of pedal
stops with their red labels, as though to indicate where danger
lay. 'Put your hand on the thirty-two foot,' he said. There it
was '_Double open wood 32 ft._' And just as his fingers slid on to
the last chord, 'Now,' he said.
"Ah! that was it; the great wooden pipe close to my ear began to blow
and quiver; and hark! not sound, but sensation—the great rapturous
stir of the air; a drowsy thunder in the roof of nave and choir; the
grim saints stirred and rattled ill their leaded casements, while
the melodious roar died away as softly as it had begun, sinking to
silence with many a murmurous pulsation, many a throb of sighing
sound."
Organ-playing, organ music, was the one subject on which I have heard
him wax enthusiastic. His talk and his letters always become
rhetorical when he deals with music; his musical metaphors are always
carefully worked out; he compares a man of settled purpose, in whose
life the "motive was very apparent," to "the great lazy horns, that
you can always hear in the orchestra pouring out their notes hollow
and sweet, however loud the violins shiver or the trumpets cry." He
often went up to London to hear music. The St. James's Hall Concerts
were his especial delight. I find later a description of the effect
produced on him by Wagner.
"I have just come back from the Albert Hall, from hearing the
'Meistersänger,' Wagner himself conducting. I may safely say I
think that I never experienced such absolute artistic rapture before
as at certain parts of this; for instance, in the overture, at one
place where the strings suddenly cease and there comes a peculiar
chromatic waft of wind instruments, like a ghostly voice rushing
across. I have never felt anything like it; it swept one right away,
and gave one a sense of deep ineffable satisfaction. I shall always
feel _for the future_ that there is an existent region, _into which
I have now actually penetrated_, in which that entire satisfaction
is possible, a fact which I have always hitherto doubted. It is
like an initiation.
"But I can not bear the 'Tannhäuser;' it seems to paint with a
fatal fascination the beauty of wickedness, the rightness, so to
speak, of sensuality. I feel after it as if I had been yielding to
a luscious temptation; unnerved, not inspired."
In another letter he writes, "Music is the most hopeful of the arts;
she does not hint only, like other expressions of beauty—she takes
you straight into a world of peace, a world where law and beauty are
the same, and where an ordered discord, that is discord working by
definite laws, is the origin of the keenest pleasure."
I remember, during the one London season which he subsequently went
through, his settling himself at a Richter concert next me with an
air of delight upon his face. "Now," he said, "let us try and
remember for an hour or two that we have souls."