I must here record one curious circumstance which I have never
explained even to my own satisfaction.
He had been at Cambridge about two years, when, in the common consent
of all his friends, his habits and behaviour seemed to undergo a
complete and radical change.
I have never discovered what the incident was that occasioned this
change; all I know is that suddenly, for several weeks, his geniality
of manner and speech, his hilarity, his cheerfulness, entirely
disappeared; a curious look of haunting sadness, not defined, but
vague, came over his face; and though he gradually returned to his
old ways, yet I am conscious myself, and others would support me in
this, that he was never quite the same again; he was no longer young.
The only two traces that I can discover in his journals, or letters,
or elsewhere, of the facts are these.
He always in later diaries vaguely alludes to a certain event which
changed his view of things in general; "ever since," "since that
November," "for now nearly five years I have felt." These and similar
phrases constantly occur in his diary. I will speak in a moment of
what nature I should conjecture it to have been.
A packet of letters in his desk were marked "to be burnt unopened;"
but at the same time carefully docketed with dates: these dates were
all immediately after that time, extending over ten days.
The exact day was November 8, 1872. It is engraved in a small silver
locket that hung on his watch-chain, where he was accustomed to have
important days in his life marked, such as the day he adopted his
boy, his mother's death. It is preceded by the Greek letters ΒΠ,
which from a certain entry in his diary I conceive to be
βάπτισμα πυρὸς, "the baptism of fire."
Lastly, in a diary for that year, kept with fair regularity up till
November 8, there here intervenes a long blank, the only entry being
November 9: "Salvum me fac, Dne."
I took the trouble, incidentally, to hunt up the files of a Cambridge
journal of that date, to see if I could link it on to any event, and
I found there recorded, in the course of that week, what I at first
imagined to be the explanation of the incidents, and own I was a good
deal surprised.
I found recorded some Revivalist Mission Services, which were then
held in Cambridge with great success. I at once concluded that he
underwent some remarkable spiritual experience, some religious
fright, some so-called conversion, the effects of which only
gradually disappeared. The contagion of a Revivalist meeting is a
very mysterious thing. Like a man going to a mesmerist, an individual
may go, announcing his firm intention not to be influenced in the
smallest degree by anything said or done. Nay more, he may think
himself, and have the reputation of being, a strong, unyielding
character, and yet these are the very men who are often most
hopelessly mesmerized, the very men whom the Revival most
absolutely—for the occasion—enslaves. And thus, knowing that one
could form no _prima facie_ judgments on the probabilities in such a
matter, I came to the conclusion that he had fallen, in some degree,
under the influence of these meetings.
But in revising this book, and carefully recalling my own and
studying others' impressions, I came to the conclusion that it was
impossible that this should be the case.
1. In the first place, he was more free than any man I ever saw from
the influence of contagious emotions; he dissembled his own emotions,
and contemned the public display of them in other people.
2. He had, I remember, a strange repugnance, even abhorrence, to
public meetings in the later days at Cambridge. I can now recall that
he would accompany people to the door, but never be induced to enter.
A passage which I will quote from one of his letters illustrates
this.
"The presence of a large number of people has a strange, repulsive
physical effect on me. I feel crushed and overwhelmed, not stimulated
and vivified, as is so often described. I can't listen to a concert
comfortably if there is a great throng, unless the music is so good
as to wrap one altogether away. There is undoubtedly a force abroad
among large masses of people, the force which forms the basis of the
principle of public prayer, and I am conscious of it too, only it
distresses me; moreover, the worst and most afflicting nightmare I
have is the sensation of standing sightless and motionless, but with
all the other senses alert and apprehensive, in the presence of a
vast and hostile crowd."
3. He never showed the least sign of being influenced in the
direction of spiritual or even religious life by this crisis. He
certainly spoke very little at all for some time to any one on any
subject; he was distrait and absent-minded in society—for the
alteration was much observed from its suddenness—but when he
gradually began to converse as usual, he did not, as is so often the
case in similar circumstances, do what is called "bearing witness to
the truth." His attitude toward all enthusiastic forms of religion
had been one, in old days, of good-natured, even amused tolerance. He
was now not so good-natured in his criticisms, and less sparing of
them, though his religious-mindedness, his seriousness, was
undoubtedly increased by the experience, whatever it was.
On the whole, then, I should say that the coincidence of the revival
is merely fortuitous. It remains to seek what the cause was.
We must look for it, in a character so dignified as Arthur's, in some
worthy cause, some emotional failure, some moral wound. I believe the
following to be the clew; I can not develop it without treading some
rather delicate ground.
He had formed, in his last year at school, a very devoted friendship
with a younger boy; such friendships like the εἰσπνήλας and the
ἀϊτάς of Sparta, when they are truly chivalrous and absolutely
pure, are above all other loves, noble, refining, true; passion at white
heat without taint, confidence of so intimate a kind as can not even
exist between husband and wife, trust such as can not be shadowed,
are its characteristics. I speak from my own experience, and others
will, I know, at heart confirm me, when I say that these things are
infinitely rewarding, unutterably dear.
Arthur left Winchester. A correspondence ensued between the two
friends. I have three letters of Arthur's, so passionate in
expression, that for fear of even causing uneasiness, not to speak
of suspicion, I will not quote them. I have seen, though I have
destroyed, at request, the letters of the other.
This friend, a weak, but singularly attractive boy, got into a bad
set at Winchester, and came to grief in more than one way; he came
to Cambridge in three years, and fell in with a thoroughly bad set
there. Arthur seems not to have suspected it at first, and to have
delighted in his friend's society; but such things as habits betray
themselves, and my belief is that disclosures were made on November
8, which revealed to Arthur the state of the case. What passed I
can not say. I can hardly picture to myself the agony, disgust,
and rage (his words and feelings about sensuality of any kind were
strangely keen and bitter), loyalty fighting with the sense of
repulsion, pity struggling with honour, which must have convulsed
him when he discovered that his friend was not only yielding, but
deliberately impure.
The other's was an unworthy and brutal nature, utterly corrupted at
bottom. He used to speak jestingly of the occurrence. "Oh yes!" I
have heard him say; "we were great friends once, but he cuts me now;
he had to give me up, you see, because he didn't approve of me.
Justice, mercy, and truth, and all the rest of it."
It was certainly true; their friendship ended. I find it hard to
realize that Arthur would voluntarily have abandoned him; and yet I
find passages in his letters, and occasional entries in his diaries,
which seem to point to some great stress put upon him, some enormous
burden indicated, which he had not strength to attempt and adopt.
"May God forgive me for my unutterable selfishness; it is irreparable
now," is one of the latest entries on that day in his diary. I
conceive, perhaps, that his outraged ideal was too strong for his
power of forgiveness. He was very fastidious, always.
How deep the blow cut will be shown by these following extracts:
"I once had my faith in human nature rudely wrecked, and it has never
attempted a long voyage again. I hug the coast and look regretfully
out to sea; perhaps the day may come when I may strike into it ...
believe in it always if you can; I do not say it is vanity ... the
shock blinded me; I can not see if I would."
And again—
"Moral wounds never heal; they may be torn open by a chance word, by
a fragment of print, by a sentence from a letter; and there we have
to sit with pale face and shuddering heart, to bleed in silence and
dissemble it. Then, too, there is that constant dismal feeling which
the Greeks called ὕπουλος: the horrible conviction, the grim
memory lurking deep down, perhaps almost out of sight, thrust away by
circumstance and action, but always ready to rise noiselessly up and
draw you to itself."
"'A good life, and therefore a happy one,' says my old aunt, writing
to me this morning; it is marvellous and yet sustaining what one can
pass through, and yet those about you—those who suppose that they
have the key, if any, to your heart—be absolutely ignorant of it.
'He looks a little tired and worn: he has been sitting up late;' 'all
young men are melancholy: leave him alone and he will be better in a
year or two,' was all that was said when I was actually meditating
suicide—when I believe I was on the brink of insanity."
All these extracts are from letters to myself at different periods.
Taking them together, and thus arranged, my case seems irresistible;
still I must concede that it is all theory—all inference: I do not
wholly know the facts, and never shall.