Nothing is more hopelessly wearisome than descriptions of travel;
even George Eliot could not make in her diaries Florence anything but
dull. I shall confine myself to sketching his route, to telling one
incident among the few he told me, and describing his return.
I had no more letters from him; but he has told me that he got to
Spitzbergen, and in a whaler to the edge of the great arctic
ice-field. He sailed to America and crossed it. From San Francisco he
visited Peru and the Amazon, on which river he spent a month. Then he
went to Africa, to what part I do not know, except that he came down
the Nile; and then he wandered through Asia Minor, Persia, and India;
he penetrated a little way into Thibet, and saw China and Japan; he
went up to the mouth of the Siberian rivers, travelling for three
months with a party of gipsies, who taught him many curious things,
such as their own language and freemasonry, the use of simples, the
properties of water, and the strange things that can be done with
even such things as docks and nettles, and other plants which we toss
away as weeds. He told me that in that branch of secret knowledge,
as in all others, there was a vast deal of nonsense but a solid
residuum of truth; and he said, half jestingly, that they had sworn
him a member of their brotherhood, and what was more, he had since
discovered many members of the brotherhood in civilized nations, even
in "kings' houses."
But I must suspend my account for a short time to relate the incident
to which I have just referred. It took place during his stay in
Teheran, while on his way home (1878), a period of about six weeks.
This city is situated in a lovely climate—hot, but not unbearable
for Europeans; houses, horses, and servants are extraordinarily
cheap. The house that Arthur took was situated in large gardens or
pleasure-grounds of the natural wilderness type that one finds in
the East, shrubberies relegated to certain limits, but within those
limits left absolutely to their own device and will, with the
exception of arched and shaded paths cut under the thick intertwined
leafage.
This whole place, with horses at his command, and seven servants,
with the whole expense of boarding, cost him, he has told me,
£40 for the entire six weeks that he was there; for he was very
weary of his rough tramping life, and resolutely determined to
recruit his energies by some deliberate luxury, a recipe far more
useful than the normal Englishman is at all inclined to admit,
thinking, as he does so erroneously, that "overtasking the body is
the best restorative for the overworked mind, and _vice versâ_,"
as Arthur said once, "whereas the two instruments, so to speak, have
but one blade though two handles."
The heat of the day was rather overpowering; that period he usually
spent dozing or reading in the court of the house, which was occupied
by a cool flashing fountain in the centre of an oasis of marble
pavement, streaked and veined. About seven it became cooler, and
then in the light native costume he used to ride leisurely about the
picturesque city or among the delightful houses scattered about in
the outskirts like his own.
One evening he was riding in this fashion down a lane running between
high brick walls, fringed with feathery trailing shrubs or gorgeous
red and white flowers, whose fragrance literally streamed into the
evening air, in that delicate dusk when the senses are lulled into
acquiescence, and the mind and emotions become so vivid and lustrous
in their play.
Riding along with his eyes half closed and lost in a delicious
reverie, his horse turned of its own accord to the left, and went for
some distance up an embowered road; Arthur suddenly roused himself
to find that he was passing close to a large sombre house, that had
evidently once been fortified, looming very impressively in the
languorous air; the gate had been opened for some purpose and not
closed again, and he was, in fact, trespassing in some private
grounds.
He checked his horse, looking curiously about him, and was just about
to return when he heard a voice apparently proceeding from the centre
of one of the shrubberies, asking him his business in Persian.
Looking in that direction he managed to distinguish two or three
indistinct figures seated on a low seat on a kind of terrace on his
left.
He rode up, and mustering up the little Persian he possessed,
apologized for his unintentional intrusion, mingling a good deal of
English, as he said, with his rather incoherent explanation.
He was aware that one of the figures disengaged itself from the
group, and coming up close to him, regarded him with some curiosity.
It was a tall man, paler in complexion than the natives are wont to
be, with large dreamy eyes, and an air of indifferent lassitude that
was rather fascinating.
He was amazed to hear, at the conclusion of his lame peroration, a
voice of strange delicacy of intonation proceeding from the figure:
"An Englishman, I presume." The accent was a little affected, but the
speaker was evidently more English than Persian by training: "Not
only English," said Arthur to himself, "but London English of the
best kind."
He confessed his nationality, and, again apologizing, was about to
withdraw, when the stranger courteously invited him to join the
party. "It is very refreshing," he said, "to hear my native tongue
by chance; I can not resist the temptation of begging you to join us
for a little, that I may hear it once more; you will do me a great
kindness if you will accede to my request."
Seeing that the offer was sincere, Arthur dismounted, and walked to
the terrace with the other. The figures rose at their approach, and
Arthur could see that they were two boys of fifteen or sixteen, of
extraordinary beauty and delicacy, and a woman of about thirty-five,
as far as he could judge, evidently their mother.
His host spoke a few words in Persian, the purport of which he could
not catch, and, rapidly presenting him, requested him to be seated,
and produced some cigarettes of a very choice and fragrant kind.
They talked for a long time on general subjects—England, politics,
art, and literature. The stranger seemed well acquainted with
literature and events of a certain date, but not of later departures
in any branch; and finally, Arthur gave a short account of himself
and his wanderings, in which the others appeared most interested.
Before he went back to his house the stranger asked him, with some
earnestness, to return on the following day, which Arthur gladly
accepted. One of the boys conducted him to the gate, speaking a few
English sentences with that delicate and hesitating utterance that
combines with other personal attractions to give an almost unique
charm.
On the following day, and on several others, the invitation was
repeated and accepted. The stranger became more communicative, having
at first consistently maintained a courteous reserve.
The last day of Arthur's stay in his villa he went to see his new
friends. The boys had taken a great fancy to him, and used to wait
for his coming at the gate; but they would never come to his house,
though he asked them more than once. They were not permitted, they
said, to leave their own domain.
On this last evening his host was alone, and after some indifferent
conversation he told Arthur the following story, and made a proposal
which had a strange influence on the rest of his life:
"You may have wondered," he said, "at the cause which brought me
here, and keeps me here. I have often admired your courtesy, which
has made no attempts to discover my antecedents; it is not the usual
characteristic of our nation. If you are disposed to hear, I am
willing to give you a little autobiographical outline, which is a
necessary preface to a request which I am going to make of you."
He then mentioned his name and parentage—facts which I am not at
liberty to repeat. They surprised even Arthur when he heard them;
they surprised me, when he communicated them to me, even more.
He was the son of an English nobleman of high rank and wealth and
aristocratic traditions, and was reported to be long since dead.
Many people will no doubt remember the shock which the news of the
premature death of this individual, when announced in Europe, made.
It took place at Palermo in 1853. More than that I am not at liberty
to state.
"My reasons for this were as follows," said his host. "I meditated a
retirement from the world of a kind which should be absolute, which
should excite no inquiries, no interest, except a retrospective one.
To have merely disappeared would not have suited my purpose; search
would have been instituted. The connections and influence of my
family would have made such a plan liable to constant disaster. From
Palermo, after superintending the making of my tombstone, I came
straight back here, to a house which I had already prepared for
myself under an anonymous name. I travelled with the utmost secrecy;
I married, as you have seen, a native wife; and from that day to this
I have never beheld a European face but yours. Your arrival was so
unexpected as to shiver resolve and habit; but I have no reason
to regret, as far as I can see, my confidence. I feel that I can
unreservedly trust you.
"You will no doubt wonder as to my aim in executing this hazardous
and Quixotic project. I do not mind telling you now, at this lapse
of time, though I have never before opened my reasons to any one,
because I think that I observe in you traces of that temper which
led me to take the step.
"It seemed to me that Western life had got into a confusion and
complication from which nothing could deliver it. The principles now
incorporated with the very existence of the most influential men in
it seemed to me to be radically erroneous, and the disposition of the
Western mind is of a kind which augments with indefinite rapidity the
strength of any prevalent idea.
"What I mean is this. May I explain by a quotation? A sentence from a
certain review of the poet Coleridge's life and work is as follows:
'Devoted as he was to mystic and ideal contemplation, to abstractions
of mind and spirit, he naturally became untrustworthy in every
relation of life.'
"That represents, in an exaggerated form, the ideal of the Western
mind. They are, though they would not so name themselves, gross
materialists; and the tendency is increasing on them daily and
yearly. Those who protest occasionally against current thought, who
appear like prophets with bitter invective and words of warning on
their lips, are swept away by the tide, and write of trade and
treaties, of wars of principle and convenience. The very divines are
tainted. 'Live your life to the uttermost,' they cry.
"And in the Western mind the tendency once rooted gathers force from
every quarter. As a necessary concomitant of the restless habit, the
enshrining of the 'effective man' in their proudest temples, comes an
extreme deference to other people, a heated straining of the ears to
catch the murmurs of that vague uncertain heart—Public Opinion. And
why? It follows: if it is in this life alone that triumphs must be
won—if on this stage alone the drama is to be played out, and the
time is short—it is that imperious will that you must conciliate;
therefore employ every power to gain the art of so doing.
"So intent are the Westerns on this drama, so wrapped up in the
actors, so anxious to declaim and strut, that they forget to what end
the play exists: they have left the spectators out for whom alone
the scenes are enacted, and who, though apparently so silent and
motionless, are the _raison d'être_ of the whole performance.
The play must and will continue through the ages; but the wise, the
enlightened, beat down, and in one sharp encounter overcome, the
lower desire of being seen and applauded, and are content to sit
and watch—the nobler task.
"For we must remember that it is not the drama itself, tragedy or
comedy, fascinating as it be, that we are here to watch—but the
mind of the Being that animates the whole, can be here descried and
here alone, as in a mirror faintly: it is not only the man who fumes
and paces up and down for a few moments and then is called away; but
the vast Existence behind, that knows what the play means and will
not tell us, and that pushes the players on and off as He will.
"And here we find ourselves, with our tiny and uncertain space of
time bounded by the Infinities at either end, with the huge puzzle
set before us. A method has been invented, is now traditional, of
closing the eyes easily and thoughtlessly to the whole; and we are
content to catch that contagion from our predecessors: we eat and
drink, we work and play, and stifle the restless questioning that
springs up so resolutely in our spaces of solitude here; and what
will it do in the immeasurable hereafter?
"When I lived in England I was for a short time the member of a
professional circle of men engaged on high educational aims. They
held, so far as any teachers can be said to hold, many futures in
their hands. We know that lives teach more than words; and how did
these men set themselves to live?
"First, to perform their work with rigid accuracy: I will do them
justice—to do it _perfectly_; but granted that, as speedily as
possible: and, their work over, to amuse themselves—literally: to
play games that they enjoyed with childish keenness, and fill up all
the day with them; to read the papers; to play whist; to smoke in
the sun; to get through a certain amount of general reading for
conversational purposes, and to gossip about one another and their
doings, and talk about their work, in which, it must be confessed,
they were enthusiastically interested, only in a gossipy detailed
way, amassing incident rather than arriving at principles. There
was only one who was engaged in serious work of a kind involving
scientific research, and he forfeited much of his doctrinal and all
his social influence thereby; 'A man should stick to his work,' they
said, 'not pretend to do one thing while he is thinking about
another.'
"A low ideal, faithfully carried out, is the most effective; not
because the high ideal is high, but because so few are capable of
carrying it out; and in that Western world success in aims proposed
is the highest that a man can aspire to.
"And suppose we do make ourselves famous, what then? how do we use
our fame? To make life happier? It might be so, but is it? No, for
ordinary minds the strain is too strong. 'I will gain fame,' the pure
young soul said once, 'as an engine of power, that I may have a
platform where men will listen to me;' but the effort of struggling
thither has been too much, and once arrived there, what is his
object now? merely to remain there, and among the crowd of pushing
selfish figures, that have lost in the fight the very signs of their
humanity, _monstrari digito_, to have the gaze of men, to feel
somebody.
"All this I throw aside, and go straight to God. All around us in
natural things—in the curve of that rose-stem and the passionate
flush of its petals—in those white bells there, looking as if blown
out of veined foam—in the luscious scents that wind and linger
round the garden, He has set, as in a language, the secrets of His
being and ours, of our why and wherefore, if we could but read them.
Like the characters and monuments of a bygone age staring from a
waste of sand or the front of a precipice, these words and phrases
seem to say, not 'There was a king who was mighty, but whose throne
is cut down,' but 'There lives a God who would be all tenderness if
He could, and is more beautiful in His nature than anything you have
ever seen or dreamed of. Win your way to Him, if you can; do not let
Him go till you have His secret. That is a talisman indeed, that
shall shut you in palaces of delight where no torment shall touch
you.'
"And not a selfish paradise. We are but as others, we mystics; it is
only that we take—or rather are led, for it is no will of ours, but
an imperious voice that calls us—the straight and flowery road to
God, pressing through but one hedge of thorns, while you and others
struggle to Him along the dusty road that winds and wanders. But our
paradise would be no paradise if we did not know that our brothers
were coming, coming; the beauty that we behold, sheer ugliness if we
did not believe that you will some day share it too.
"Yes, I am a mystic—have joined the one brotherhood that is eternal
and all-embracing, as young as love and as old as time—the society
that no man suspects till he is close upon it, or hopes to enter till
he finds himself in a moment within the sacred pale. I would that I
could tell you with what different eyes we look on life and death,
God and nature, from this divine vantage-ground on which we stand,
and you would imperil all, run through fire and water, to win it too;
but you must find the way yourself—no man can show it you. If you
enter—and you are destined to enter this side the grave—it will
come when you are least expecting it. In the middle of those that
cry 'Lo, here is Christ and there,' He himself will touch you on the
shoulder, and show you better things than these.
"Oh, if I could only help you there at once—open the door! But my
words would bear other and commoner meanings in your ear; if I opened
the door, you would not see the light. Ay, and I do not wish it; for
every step outside you take is apportioned you; you need them, that
you may appreciate, when you have it, the rest within.
"And now for my request. You need not answer now; you may have a year
to think of it.
"You have seen my two boys. Outwardly they are alike, inwardly very
different—that you could not see.
"The younger will join me soon; he is far advanced upon the way
already, though he little suspects it. I have no fears for him. God
is drawing him.
"But the elder—like as he is in face, form, disposition—will need
another discipline. He must tread the winding road, the road of other
men. His trial will be a sharp one; through many paths he will have
to be taught the truth. I could hardly bear it, when I look at the
tender face, the dreamy eyes, and feel his caressing hand, thinking
of the horrors he must look upon, if I did not know that all will be
well.
"Will you undertake a charge for me? I could not play a part in the
world again, even if I would. I have lost my hold on men. I do not
realize what are their hopes and fears, their ideals, and most of
all, their whims and caprices; and, what is more, I could never
appreciate them now. Ten years' isolation is enough to spoil one for
that; in ten years many social traditions and commonplaces of life
have changed. I should have to ask the reasons for many things. I
should never feel them instinctively, as those do who have grown old
along with them.
"And so I can not undertake the task of guiding him in this harsh
world that he must enter. I have known, however, for some time that
it would be undertaken and accomplished for me. You have been sent to
me, later than I thought, but still sent. I have been waiting; I have
been true to my creed, and have not been impatient.
"I intrust him to you as I intrust the fairest possession I have,
knowing that you will feel the responsibility. You will find him
passionately affectionate, and in danger there; quick to anger, and
in danger there; personally fascinating and beautiful, and in danger
there; and in these three things his trial will be. But he does not
resent nor brood; he is docile, apt to listen, eager to comprehend;
and he is truthful and sincere."
I have given this in a continuous speech, much as Arthur told it me
a few months ago, though it was the essence of a conversation. The
quiet man, with his dreamy eyes fixed on his face, he told me, and
the fragrant Eastern garden seemed from moment to moment of the
strange adventure to swim and become vague and phantasmal; but again
the quiet air of certainty with which questions were asked and
statements made gave him a curious sense of security, and an impulse
to accept the indicated path, together with a sense of shrinking from
such a responsibility.
"I do not, as I told you," said the other, "want your answer now, but
this day one year hence, August 19, 1879, I shall claim it. And I
have no doubt," he added with a smile, "of what that answer will be.
But I beg of you do not give the question a hasty consideration and
then reverse your decision. Do not attempt to decide. Let your choice
be guided by circumstances; they are the safest guide, for they are
not of our own making.
"I do not suppose," he continued, "that I shall ever see you again on
earth, as you proceed with your journey to-morrow; and indeed I think
it will perhaps be as well that this should be our last conversation,
so that nothing else should interfere to blur the impression.
"One last word then." He paused for a moment, and the stillness was
broken only by the faintest stir of odorous wind among the
spice-trees and a waft of distant evening noises.
"You are treading a path, though you do not realize it, which it is
not given to many men to tread. You have had your first intimation of
the goal to-day, and the future will not be wanting in indications of
the same; but, as I have said, you will suddenly, when you least
expect it, step inside the circle, and everything will be changed.
"To you I wish to intrust a future that I can not mould myself, to be
moulded, not for me, but for the great Master of all. You are the
chosen instrument for this. My work lies in another region, which you
will realize on that day when all things are made plain.
"Only remember that your destiny is high and arduous, and that a
single false step may throw you from a precipice that has taken years
to scale once, and that must be scaled again. For you walk among the
clouds, or very near them; you are not defiled by any gross habitual
sin; your heart is pure, and you have known suffering. You are a true
novice.
"In a year, as I have said, I shall claim your answer. And now
farewell for a season. When we next meet we shall have a larger
common ground; we shall be master and pupil no longer.
"You shall see the boy once again, by his wish and my own. He shall
go with you to your house to-night, and travel with you the first
stage to-morrow. I have arranged for his return."
He then conducted Arthur into the house, where he bade adieu to the
mistress and to the younger son; the elder, his charge that was to
be, meeting him as he came out, and accompanying him home. The boy
had formed a great attachment to him, and the idea of their future
relations sent a strange and unwonted glow into Arthur's mind, so
that he parted from him on the next day, "with wonder in his heart,"
and something very like an ache too.
This last episode will appear to my readers to be so fantastic as to
give the work at once a fictional character; they will say that on
some real lines I have constructed a romance of the wildest type,
and that Arthur is no longer an interesting personality, because as
a rule he is too ordinary to be ideal, in the last two chapters too
illusory to be real.
All I can urge is this: the chapters shall be their own defence. If I
had wished to present my readers with nothing but a dry chronicle of
facts I should have toned this down to something more prosaic. But
every one who has had any experience of life will know that her
surprises are sometimes very bewildering; that fiction is nothing but
uncommon experience made ordinary, or heaped inartistically upon a
single character.
It may be said that the man was mentally affected, in the latter
scene; in the former, that Arthur himself was the victim of a mental
disorder; but he left such vivid and detailed descriptions of both
events that I have been enabled to give one (the letter) exactly
as it stands, and the interview in Teheran is taken directly from
diaries—a little amplified and reconstructed, it is true, but only
when interpreted by the light of later events.
And this must be always the task of the true biographer; for the
biographer has to take a life _en masse_, and disentangling the
predominant and central threads, cast the rest away; in this process
rejecting facts and incidents whose isolated interest is often
greater than the interest of what he retains, because it is on the
latter that the pearls of life are, so to speak, strung.
In this case the two incidents I have kept are both so pregnant of
influence upon his later life, so necessary to the logical
development of his principles, that, in spite of their romantic, not
to say wild, character, I have retained them.