About this time he made the acquaintance of some neighbours whom he
approved, and found companions for Edward Bruce in the boys of the
family, who were home for the holidays. The boy brightened up so much
under the new surroundings, that Arthur determined to get a boy of
the same age to educate with Edward, and he accordingly inserted an
advertisement in the _Times_. I have it before me now, in the
fast-yellowing paper.
"A gentleman is anxious to find a companion to be educated with his
adopted son; he offers him board and teaching free, but must see,
personally, both the parent or guardian and the boy whom it is
proposed to send."
But the advertisement was withdrawn, as a friend of mine, a certain
General Ellis, not very well off, and with a large family, offered
to send a boy of his to Tredennis—an offer which Arthur accepted
provisionally. He had the boy to stay with him for a fortnight, and
at the end of the time agreed to take him.
As the boys were not to go to a public school, and as neither of them
looked forward to teaching as a career, the object of their teaching
was to make them as quick in grasp of a subject as possible, as
enthusiastic as possible, and as cultivated. Arthur favoured me with
a letter, or rather a treatise, upon their education, fragments of
which I submit to my readers.
"My aim will be to make them, generally speaking, as adequate as
possible to playing a worthy part in the world. I want them to be as
open-minded on all subjects as possible, to have no fixed prejudices
on any subject, and yet to have an adequate basis of knowledge on
important matters, enough not to leave them at the mercy of any new
book or theory on any subject which handles its facts in at all a
one-sided way—so that on reading a brilliant but narrow book on any
point, they may be able to say, 'This and that argument have weight,
they are valid; but he has suppressed this, and distorted that,
which, if seen fairly and in a good light, would go far to contradict
the other.' Then they must be without _prejudice_; they must not close
their eyes or turn their backs on any view, because it is 'dangerous'
or 'damaging' or 'subversive' or 'unpractical.' They must not be
afraid to face an idea because of its probable consequences if its
truth is proved. They must not call anything common or unclean.
"For this they must have a basis of knowledge on these points;
history, political economy, philosophy, science. The first three I am
fairly competent to give them; that is to say, I am studying these
hard myself now, and I can, at any rate, keep well ahead of them; and
I have managed to win their educational confidence, which is a great
thing. They take for granted that a thing which is dull is necessary,
and follow me with faith; while, I am thankful to say, they are keen
enough not to want driving when a thing is interesting.
"Then they must know French and German, and a modicum of Greek and
Latin. These last I teach them by a free use of translations;
rudiments of grammar first, and then we attack the books, and let
grammar be incidental. We don't compose in any of these languages;
it's a mere waste of time.
"I teach them logic and Euclid, and get them taught some mathematics.
Then as to science, by reading myself with them we get on very well
together. And I have bought a few chemicals, and we try experiments
freely, which is very satisfactory.
"Music I teach them both, and harmony. They don't much like it, but
they will be glad some day. I make them practise regularly. I don't
believe any but very exceptionally gifted boys like that; but they
are so awfully thankful when they get to my age if they have been
kept at it.
"Then as to the external παιδεία, there is my difficulty. I am
not allowed to take any active exertion myself, and, indeed, it tells
on me if I do, so that I have become a kind of thermometer, hopeless
and headachy and listless the next day, if I overdo myself the very
least; so that I have merely to encourage them by precept, not by
example. They have ponies and bicycles, and scamper about all over
the country. Edward has been brought home once in a cart, but not
seriously damaged; and I like to leave them to themselves in these
things—they won't damage themselves a bit the less for fussing and
fretting over them, and they will lose ever so much independence and
go. Then I teach them to shoot, and they are very fair shots with a
pea-gun. And we also do a little carpentering, so we are well
employed. They aren't showy performers at any game, but, as they
won't be at school, that makes very little difference to them; it is
handiness in general sports that is valuable afterward.
"You would think that this was a tremendous programme, but it is not;
it is mostly reading and talking, with a certain amount of writing.
They have to analyse a chapter of a book of some kind every day;
sometimes history, sometimes philosophy. We do both history and
philosophy as much as possible by means of biographies. Lewes's book
is an excellent text-book, and not a bit too advanced if you will
talk it over with them carefully; clever boys are never really
puzzled by meanings of words. In history we get the greatest man we
can find in a period, and work out his view of all current events;
and they have to write dialogues in character, and enjoy it immensely
too. I don't press them to read for themselves very much, and I don't
make ordinary English literature their task-books, because one always
may be boring a boy, and I don't want to run the risk of boring them
with things that I want them to enjoy as much as I did.
"I read to them for an hour or so every evening—novels, plays,
anything that they seem to like. They are at liberty to choose.
"I don't know that they would 'go down' at present—certainly not
among their compeers. They talk quite naturally and straightforwardly
about all kinds of topics of general interest, and they are
tremendously keen about their games, but I think some people might
call them prigs. However, I keep them in a constant and wholesome
contempt of their own abilities, and never let them despise or
criticize anyone unfavourably; not by 'rebuking' it, but by
indicating a point of view—and one can always find one—in which
the person under fire is infinitely their superior.
"And they are as affectionate as they can be—they like one another
and me; and they aren't easily disturbed by circumstances, not having
had their morbid sensibilities developed, their innocent perceptions
dimmed by alcoholic or other dissipations."
I select, rather at random, one or two other passages from his
letters at this time.
"I have just been reading Emerson's Essays. They certainly kindle
one's belief in the greatness of life and the nobility of little
things; but, after all, the great refreshment of such books to me
is—not that they give me new working ideas; I hardly know a book
that has ever done that; the stock of ideas is almost constant in the
world; but because they show that others are on the same track of
admiration and hope as one's self for a goal only hinted at and
conjectured to be glorious—on the same track, and farther advanced
upon it; like older people, they fill in with experience what one has
only guessed at. I find myself saying, 'I expect that life will be
like this and that: it will confirm this and that idea in startling
ways:' and then one of these great souls comes softly to me, and
says, 'It is true.'"
And again:
"There are a great number of conventional ideas which are largely
current, not only conversationally and among ordinary people,
but in books—good and sensible books, written by people of
experience—which are, in my opinion, radically and absolutely
false, and yet no one takes the trouble to question them. I am always
coming across them. Such as this: _No one is more incapable of
affection than a profligate._ This, in my judgement, is a ludicrous
error, though it is the statement of no less a moral physician than
Lacordaire. If by affection you mean 'sustained, pure, disinterested
emotion,' such as patriotism—well and good; but affection!—the two
most affectionate persons I have ever known were thoroughly
dissolute; and I mean by affection, not a slobbering sentimental
passion of a purely sensual type, but an affection quite untainted,
to all appearances leading them to make considerable sacrifices for
the sake of it, and causing them the acutest misery when not
reciprocated. In so far as profligates are selfish brutal natures,
as they often are, it is true; but that is not the case with half
of them. They are not unfrequently people of infirm will, strong
affections, and a violent animal nature. It is selfishness, regard to
personal _comfort_ at all hazards, which is the hopeless nature,
and can not be raised except through pain.
"Speaking of Lacordaire, another favourite position of his will
illustrate my point. He was constantly inveighing in his seminary
against desultory reading. Homer, Plutarch, Racine, Bossuet, and a
few other books, are all he wishes a man to have read. He calls
miscellaneous reading a subtle dissipation, a moral poison.
"It seems to me to depend entirely upon temperament. Some natures are
like _mills_, converting everything that comes in their way into grist;
and in that case, no doubt, it is deleterious. They are people of
slow-revolving mind, to whom statements in books are of the nature of
authorities. Lacordaire was one, I think.
"But there are others who are like sieves; who want a constant
passing of materials of all kinds over them to let a little fall
through; people who draw from a huge jumble of miscellaneous facts,
theories, and thoughts, a little sediment of truth of the precise
size to suit them. Such a person was Macaulay.
"I believe that interference does more harm than good. If you thrust
books upon a mind of the first type, the result is confusion and
weariness. If you deny them to the latter, all you get is poverty of
ideas, and morbidity, and mawkishness. I make a rule never to
interfere with anybody's reading."
Four years passed. I went during that time once to Tredennis—in the
summer, when I took my scanty holiday; for I was in a Government
office where only six weeks were allowed. Arthur was generally away
in the summer. He took Edward Bruce to several friends' houses;
to his own home in Hampshire, now for a long time in the hands of
strangers. He wanted to make him a real Englishman. It was arranged
that he should go to Cambridge in October. He matriculated at
Trinity, Arthur's own college; and he was looking forward with great
delight to the prospect.
I went down to stay at Tredennis for a week in July. I got to the
house through the quiet sultry lanes about the middle of the
afternoon, having started very early from town. As I came up the
little drive I could see through the trees an animated game of
lawn-tennis proceeding on the lawn in front of the house, between two
flannelled combatants. At the sound of the wheels they broke off the
game, and Edward came up to greet me. He was now nearly nineteen, and
had lost none of the beauty of his boyhood; a small brown moustache
which fringed his upper lip being, to my eyes, almost the only sign
of his advancing years. He introduced me to his friend, a young Eton
man, possessed of that frank nonchalance which it is the privilege of
that institution to bestow. I inquired where Arthur was. Edward told
me that he had gone down to the stream for a stroll. "We'll go down
and find him," he said, putting his arm in mine, with that same
demonstrativeness that had always characterized him, and that won
people to him so quickly.
We crossed one or two adjacent fields which sloped down to the
stream, conspicuous by its fringe of alder and hazel; and after
crossing by a gravel-pit, we came on a level reach of it, all stifled
with high water-plants, figwort, and loosestrife, and willow-herb,
and great sprawling docks, till, down by a little runnel where it
took a sudden turn round a shoal of gravel, we came upon the faint
fragrance of a cigarette; then Flora ran forward to meet us; and, on
turning the corner, we found a great long figure lying on the bank,
with hat half pulled over his eyes, gazing dreamily up into the
shifting willow leaves and the blue above.
Our voices, which had been drowned by the sound of the running water,
aroused him, and he sat up, and, on seeing me, got slowly to his feet
with a delightful smile of welcome on his face. "How are you, my dear
man?" he said. "I didn't expect you so early, or I should have been
at home to meet you—in fact, I should have driven down to Truro,
only I am not quite the thing to-day."
I looked rather anxiously at him, to see how he appeared to be, and
was much struck with the change in him. There had crept into his face
what has been called a look of "doom." The Stuarts are said to have
had it. I can not describe it in any other way. It was that of a man
waiting for something, bravely and calmly, but still with a certain
sort of apprehension. He looked very solemn and grave when he was not
speaking, and he was apt to get a kind of brooding look, which did
not disperse till one spoke to him. He was thinner, too, and paler,
though the old lock of hair still dangled over his forehead, and his
eyes had the old affectionate look.
He was playful and humorous in a quiet way. I have forgotten what we
talked about—we discussed people and things vaguely; I can only
remember one little remark he made which struck me as being highly
characteristic. I had said, in reply to some question as to one of
our friends, "Oh, he's perfectly crazy." "Yes," said Arthur, mildly:
"he has certainly got some curious mannerisms."
I ventured to remonstrate with him about the cigarette, but he said
gravely that he had given up thinking about his health, it was so
very inferior, and that he had come to the conclusion that nothing
in moderation made him either better or worse; "and an occasional
cigarette," he said, "adds so much to my general serenity, that I
feel sure it is perfectly justifiable."
I had a very delightful week there. He talked a good deal, when he
was in the mood, about the books he had been reading and the thoughts
he had been thinking; but his physical languor at times, especially
in the mornings, was very painful to see. He did not get up till very
late, and complained to me more than once of a terrible listlessness
and dejection to which he was liable during the earlier part of the
day. But he spoke little of his own sufferings, or rather _malaise_,
which I gathered was very great, only saying once or twice, "It is
fortunate how habituated one gets to things, even to enduring
discomfort. If I can only get my mind occupied, it hardly ever
distracts me now." And again—"I think the only really valuable
experiences are those that we can not lay down and take up at will,
but which continue with us, invariable, unaltering, day after day,
meeting us at every moment and tempering every mood." And once—"In
spite of everything, I would not for an instant go back. I have every
now and then, on breezy sunny mornings or after rain, an intense gush
of yearning for the peculiar unconscious delight—the index of
perfect physical health—of childhood; but I never deliberately wish
that things were otherwise. I enjoy nature more, far more, than ever
I did. The signs of spring are a deep and constant joy to me. I can
lie down by the stream, and watch the water flowing and the flowers
bending and stirring and the animals that run busily about, and be
absolutely absorbed, without a thought of myself or even other
people. This I never could do before, and it has been sent me, I
often think, as a kind of alleviation. I have had it ever since I
settled here at Tredennis; and altogether I feel the stronger and
the more content for all this suffering and the inevitable end, which
can not be far off. No; I wouldn't change, even with you, my dear
Chris, or even with Edward"—as that superb piece of physical
vitality crossed the lawn.
"When I first came," he told me, "quite at first, I seemed to have
lost my hold of nature—to be discordant and out of joint with her.
On those bright still mornings we so often have here in the early
summer, I seemed to be only a sad spectator, not a part of it all.
The sunset over the hills there, and the deliberate red glow of the
creek, all seemed to mock me. Even Edward, fond as he was of me,
seemed to have no real connection with me. I was isolated and
despairing. But very gradually, like the dispersing of a cloud, it
came back. I began again to feel myself a performer in the drama, not
a gloomy spectator of it—there must be the sufferer, the condemned,
to make the tragedy complete, and they may be enacted well—till the
sense of God's Fatherhood came back to me. So that I can be and feel
myself a part of the vast economy, diseased and inefficient though I
am—feel that I am one with the life that throbs in the trees and
water, and that forces itself up at every cranny and nestles in every
ledge—can wait patiently for my move, the transference of my vital
energy—as strong as ever, it seems to me, though the engines are
weaker—to some other portion of the frame of things."
He spoke of spiritualism with great contempt. "The more I see of
spiritualists and the less I see of phenomena," he said, "the more
discontented with it I am. It is nothing but a fashionable
drawing-room game."
He dwelt a good deal on the subjective interpretation of nature. One
evening—we had been listening to the owls crying—he said,
abstractedly:
"We put strange meanings enough, God knows, into faces that never
owned them. We hear dreary hopelessness in the moaning of the wind;
wild sorrow in the tossing of the trees; and read into the work-a-day
cries of birds, content, humour, melancholy, and a thousand other
unknown feelings."
He spoke much about the country and its effect on people. "Wisdom,"
he said, "is generally reared among fields and woody places, and when
she is nearly grown she wanders into the cities of men, to see if she
can not rule there; and then the test really comes. If she is genuine
and strong, she says her say and makes her protest, and passes back
again, uncontaminated, into the quiet villages, as pure and free as
ever. That is the case with genius. But if the spring of her energy
is not all her own—is not quite untainted, she parts with her
old grace and glory, losing it in hard unloving talk, in selfish
intercourse, in striving after the advantages of comfort and wealth.
She stays, and is dissipated—she is conformed to the image of the
world. That is what happens to mere talent."
The only other conversation with him that impressed itself very
distinctly upon my mind was about religion. He had been thinking—so
he told me—very deeply about Christianity, its strength and
weakness. "Its weakness, nowadays," he said, "is the mistake of
confusing it with the principles advocated by any one of the bodies
that profess to represent it. When one sees in the world so many
bodies—backed by wealth, tradition, prestige—shouting, 'We are the
only authorized exponents of Christ's truth; we are the only genuine
succession of the apostles;' when we see Churches who claim and
make much of possessing the succession (which they have in reality
forfeited by secession), and yet demand the right to be heretical
if the main stream is, as they say, 'corrupted' (for once introduce
that principle, and you can never limit subdivision, and equitable
subdivision too)—it is no wonder weaker intellects are confused and
distressed, and from their inability to decide between five or six
sole possessors of the truth, fall outside teaching and encouragement
altogether, though they could have got what they wanted in any of
these bodies.
"But, in spite of the hopeless strife of Churches, the fundamental
attraction of Christianity for human nature remains every bit as
strong—to be able to say to all people, 'Imagine and idealize the
best human being possible; put into him all the best qualities of all
the best people you have ever known—give him strength, sympathy,
power beyond the most powerful on earth, and add to that a great
deep individual affection for _you yourself_, of a kind that is
never moved by insults, or chilled by coldness, or diverted by
ingratitude;'—say to them, 'And he has been waiting quietly for
you for years, for the least sign of affection on your part, never
disgusted, never impatient, always ready to turn and welcome you.'
"Think what a hold you establish, saying this, over all people
conscious of unhappiness of any kind, over all those refined natures
coarsening under a vile _entourage_, over all unsatisfied hearts
craving for a friend that their surroundings can not give them, over
all who have lost delight for whatever cause in common familiar
things, and have nowhere to turn. When one reflects how many human
beings fall under one or other of these heads, one does not wonder
at it."
I returned to London, feeling wonderfully refreshed and invigorated,
both in body and mind, by my visit. Then, as ever, I could not help
feeling a subtle influence in Arthur's conversation and presence,
that defied analysis and yet was undoubtedly there. He seemed to
encourage one to hope, or rather believe, in the ultimate tendency to
good in all things, to wait and watch the developments and the bents
of life, rather than to fret over particular events—and this without
a vague optimism that refuses to take count of what is unsatisfactory
and foul, but looking causes and consequences fairly in the face. "I
never quite understood the parable of the tares," he said to me, just
before I went, "till I found these words in a book the other day:
'The root of the common darnel (_lolium_) or dandelion, with
saltpeter, make a very cheap and effective sheep-drench. It can be
applied successfully in cases of fluke.'"
In October, 1883, as had been arranged, Edward went up to Trinity
College, Cambridge. I had a short letter from Arthur telling me. It
ended characteristically thus: "I don't in the least care that Edward
should be distinguished academically. I do care very much what sort
of a character he is. What one does, matters so very much less than
how one does it. It is the method, not the thing, which shows what
the man is. I shall be very much disgusted if he _means_ to work and
doesn't, but merely drifts; whereas, if he is idle on principle, I
don't much care. 'Do what you mean to do,' is what I have always told
him. If I hear that he is doing fairly well and making friends, and
finds himself at home, I shall be content, but nothing more. But if I
hear that he is influential and takes his own line, I shall be very
much pleased, even if that line is not quite the most respectable, or
that influence is not now for the best."
This letter was dated November 1st. On November the 9th, Edward Bruce
was killed by a fall from a dog-cart, driving into Cambridge from
Ely. He had driven over there with a friend, a pleasant but somewhat
reckless man. They had dined at Ely, and were returning in the
evening, both in the highest spirits. Edward was driving; the horse
took fright, in a little village called Drayton, at a dog that ran
across the road. Edward was thrown out on to his head, and, entangled
in the reins, was dragged for some distance. The other escaped with a
few bruises.
Arthur was acquainted with the terrible news by telegraph. He came up
to Cambridge at once, ill and broken with the shock as he was. They
told me that he looked terribly pale, but with a quiet self-possessed
manner he made all arrangements and settled all bills. The poor boy
was buried in the north-west corner of the cemetery at Cambridge.
Arthur put up a little tablet to him at Trinity and at St. Uny
Trevise.
In Memory of
E. B.,
BORN AT TEHERAN;
DIED AT CAMBRIDGE, NOV. 9, 1883.
"What I do thou knowest not now, but
thou shalt know hereafter."
Arthur had an interview with Edward's companion on the fatal
occasion. I subjoin the latter's account of it. He requested me, when
I wrote to him to ask him for some particulars relating to Edward
Bruce, to make what use I wished of the letter.
"I can't describe the effect the accident had on me. It half drove me
mad, I think. I was very much attached to Edward Bruce, as, indeed,
we all were. I don't attempt to condone the fault. It was due
entirely to my carelessness. I pressed him to drive faster than he
was willing to do. I laughed at his scruples. I whipped the horse on
myself. I never clearly knew what happened—for I was stunned
myself—till I woke up and was told.
"When Mr. Hamilton came to see me, I was sitting in my room, over my
breakfast, which I could not eat. His card was brought in by my gyp,
and it made me faint and sick. He came in with his hand out, looking
very pale, but smiling just as he used to smile, only more sadly.
'Don't reproach me,' I said; 'I can't bear it.' 'Reproach you!' he
said—and I shall never forget the tone of affectionate wonder with
which it came, or the relief it was to me to hear it—'Reproach you!
I know how you loved him.' I broke down at that, and cried
wretchedly. I found him sitting by me. He put his hand on my shoulder
and stroked my hair. 'I have only one more thing to say,' he said, at
last. 'You will not mind my saying it, will you? Eddy had told me all
about you—he was very open with me—that you were not doing justice
to your opportunities here, not fulfilling your own ideals and
possibilities. All I ask of you is to let this be the impulse to
rise; do not let any morbid or fantastic remorse stand in your way,
and baffle you. You know that he would have been the first to have
forgiven any share of the fault that may be yours. What I wish most
earnestly for you—it is what he, if he had lived, would have wished
most—is that you should become a nobler man—as you can, I know; as
you will, I believe.' I could not speak, or answer him then; but I
have tried to do what he begged me. Perhaps you do not know—I hope
you do not—what a struggle an attempt to forget is. I could not have
believed that a memory could hang so heavily round my neck.
"He wrote to me once after, and sent me Edward's riding-whip and
flask. I never saw him again. From what Edward told me, and from the
little I saw of him myself, I knew that he was the humblest and
gravest of men. In his dealing with me, he showed himself the most
truly loving."
I was at Tredennis for a week just after this. At the end of that
time he begged me not to stay—he could bear it better alone. My
impression was that he was like a man half dazed with grief. He sat
very silent, and would do nothing; if he ever spoke, it was with
evident effort. He did not appear to be ill, only crushed and
overwhelmed. Once he broke down. He was looking over some books, and
found a notebook of Edward's, of some subject they had been reading
together. Edward had tired of the subject, and the last page was
occupied with a pen-and-ink sketch of Arthur himself, the discovery
of which, done as it had been during working hours, had been the
occasion of some affectionate strictures. He shut the book up
quickly, and literally moaned.
Then, after a little, his frosty silence broke up, and he wrote me
several letters about his boy, very full and detailed, with numbers
of little stories, and ending with a passionate burst of grief at the
loss. They are too private for publication.
One very notable one, some six months after, must be given here.
"People talk and write about instantaneous momentary _conversions_—I
never realized what was meant till a week ago. Day after day, all
that time, I had been filled with gloomy, reproachful, or bitter
thoughts of God and the providence which took Edward from me. It was
intolerable that he should be swept away into silence, leaving me
so worn and hopeless, and, worst of all, so dissatisfied and
discontented with the hand that did it—my vaunted philosophy
failing and giving out utterly. I _knew_ it was right, but could
not _feel_ it.
"But last night as I sat, as I have so often done, burning and racked
with recollection and regret, a kind of peace stole over me. It was
quite sudden, quite abnormal; not that afterglow of hope that
sometimes follows a dark plunge of despair, but a gentle firm trust
that seemed, without explaining, yet to make all things plain; not
ebbing and flowing, not changing with physical sensation or mental
weariness, but deep, abiding, sustaining. You may think it rash of me
thus, after so short an interval, to write so assuredly of it; but
even if I lost the sense (and I shall not) the memory of that moment
would support me; 'If I go down into hell, thou art there also,' is
the only sentence that expresses it.
"But I shall not lose it; it has been with me in many moods—and my
moods are many and very variable, as you know. I can't express it in
words; but I feel no more doubt about Edward's well-being, no more
inclination to fret or murmur, besides an all-embracing and pervading
sense of satisfied content that penetrates everywhere and applies
itself to everything; those are the chief manifestations.
"It is as if he had come to me himself and whispered that all was
well, or, better still, as if the great Power that held both him and
me and all men within His grasp, had sent His messenger to strengthen
me. My friend, all the struggles and miseries of my life have paled
to nothing in the light of this. If this is to be won by suffering,
pray that you may suffer; though I feel, indeed, as if I had not
earned or deserved a tenth part of it—it is the free gift of God.
It is to this that we shall all come."
He still lived at Tredennis; spending much of his time in visiting
and talking to the people round about, the cottagers and farmers.
He was very weak in the mornings, and mostly read, or often was too
feeble even for that; but later in the day his strength used somewhat
to revive, and he would walk along the lanes with Flora, now growing
older and more sedate, trotting by him. He was known and loved in
the circle of the hills. "Oh, sir," as a poor woman said to me,
with tears in her eyes, after he was gone, "I can't tell you how it
was—he spoke very little of Him—but he seemed to remind me of the
Lord Jesus, if I am not wrong to say it, more than all Mr. Robert's
sermons or the pictures in the school-house. He was so kind and
gentle; he seemed to bring God with him!"
But the end was not far off. He got very much weaker in the spring:
he suffered from violent paroxysms of pain, depriving him of sight
and power of speech, and wearing him out terribly. On the 21st of
April I was telegraphed for; he wished to see me.
I came in the evening; he was conscious, and seemed glad to see me,
though he was very weak. He said to me, "When I was at Cambridge, my
windows overlooked a space of grass, very evenly green in the spring;
but in a hot summer the lines of old foundations and buildings
used to come out, burning the grass above them with the heat they
retained; it is just the same," he added, "with things that I thought
I had forgotten—they come out very truthfully now."
He often spoke to me of his grief that he had never seen Edward's
face after he left Tredennis to go to Cambridge, for he had been
fearfully disfigured, cut and bruised by the accident, and he had
no picture of him; "But perhaps it is because I was too fond of his
face," he said.
He had several terrible spasms while I was with him, and the doctor
said that if he had such another he could not last out the night.
Once, after waking from the prolonged and weary sleep of prostration
which used to follow these collapses, he said to me, with a smile,
"I saw him."
Once he said, "I have just dreamed of a tall man, who came to me and
said, 'You will be surprised when you meet Edward; he is delighting
everyone there with his conversation; he is so much wiser; and he has
grown so much handsomer," adding, with a smile, "though I still think
that an impossibility."
About six o'clock on the morning of the 24th he seemed very uneasy in
his sleep. On waking, he said, "I should like to receive the
Sacrament."
I confess that I thought that he was wandering; he had given up this
religious observance for years. He repeated it, adding, "I am not
wandering; I know what I am saying."
I went at once to the rectory. The rector was away, and I was
directed to the curate, who lived in the village.
I went straight to him, and made my request. He refused to comply. I
will do him the justice to say that he appeared to be profoundly
concerned and distressed. "I can't act without my rector in this," he
said. "I daren't take the responsibility. He hasn't attended the
Communion for years; I know his opinions are distinctly unchristian;
and in my last talk to the rector, he confessed to me that if Mr.
Hamilton (speaking hypothetically) were to present himself for
Communion, he should be obliged to refuse him."
I spoke very hastily, and I think unfairly. Mr. J—— tried to
remonstrate, but I would not hear him.
When I came back, Arthur was asleep. As soon as he awoke, before he
was quite conscious, he said, "It is like a river; it flows very
smoothly, and carries me off my feet; but the sun is on it, and it is
very clear."
I told him about the _rencontre_. He smiled faintly, and said, "Ask
him to come and see me, at any rate; he can't refuse that." I sent
the message at once.
At nine o'clock he had a fearful spasm; so terrible that I could not
endure to see it, and left the room. While I was down-stairs, the
curate arrived. He had come of his own accord, bringing the vessels
with him. It had been, he pleaded, only a momentary hesitation.
In half an hour I was told that he would like to see us. The doctor
was with him; as we entered, he told me, "He can not last an hour."
Then, to the curate, "You may begin the service, if you like, though
I doubt if he can hear you; he certainly will not be able to
receive."
He was very gray about the eyes and temples, and looked fearfully
exhausted. His eyes were closed. The curate began in a quiet voice,
rather agitated. When he was near the end, Arthur opened his eyes
fully and saw him. The curate went forward. Arthur held out his hand.
"Thank you for coming," he said.
The curate grasped his hand, and said, "Can you forgive me for not
coming at once?"
"You were doing your duty," said Arthur; adding, with a half-smile,
"and you are doing it now," as he saw the open book.
Then he began to wander. I heard him say this: "He seems to halt.
Yes! but it is only seeming."
Then for ten minutes he was very still. Then he gave an uneasy
movement, and half raised himself.
"He is going," said the doctor.
Suddenly he opened his eyes. "All three," he said. They were his last
words. The curate began to say a prayer; we none of us interrupted
him. There was a convulsive movement, and all was over. The doctor
went out. We cried like children by the bed.
RECAPITULATION
I had rather intended to say no more; to let the Life speak for
itself. I had imagined that a moral destroyed, rather than enhanced,
the effect of a story; that a descriptive catalogue rather interfered
with one's appreciation of a picture than otherwise; but a friend to
whom I showed my little collection, and to whose opinion I greatly
defer, expressed surprise at the abruptness of the close. "You seem
to leave the end," he said, "tangled and unravelled; one wants the
threads just gathered together again." So I will try and discharge
this task.
The difficulty is not to arrive at a deterministic theory of life for
most men. Anyone who will take things as he finds them, and fairly
come to a conclusion about them, not hampered by fetters of authority
or tradition, but independently arriving at his own solution, must
inevitably arrive at this; there is no logical escape. But the
difficulty lies in the application of this determinism to life. So
many people persist in saying that it is only a logical account of
the existence of the world, only an ontological solution, not a
life-philosophy. The best man, who can not confute it, only says
mournfully that it will not do for an ethical system; nothing good
can come out of it in practice.
The writer is one of those who believe that truth, however painful,
is essentially practical. That truth when seen must be applied, must
be worked out into life, is his cherished idea. But he, as much as
anyone, has felt the usual (alas!) and bitter consequences of
determinism; has seen the victim of the thought sit, as it were,
with his hands tied; has seen the determinist sink into temporary
fatalism, and has seen effort relaxed and ideals growing hourly dim.
He was beginning to suffer in this manner himself when, at Cambridge,
he met Arthur; and met in him not only an inspiring acquaintance, an
encouraging friend, but a man who was far ahead of him on the same
path where he had only ventured to imprint a few trembling footsteps,
and then draw back appalled at the sombre prospect. Arthur was like
one further up the pass, who had turned a corner, so to speak, and
saw the road plain.
He found a thoroughgoing determinist who was still faithful to the
voice of duty, still striving upwards; he found that his theories,
far from giving him a sense of gloom and hopelessness, rather
bestowed on him a frank expectant habit of soul; a readiness to weigh
circumstances, however small, to overlook nothing as trivial or
common; and a serene trust in an invisible all-ruling Father
(παντοκράτωρ, as he used to say), who really was
ordering the world in the smallest details when He seemed to be
ordering it least, and who wished the best for His children—far
better than they had insight to wish for themselves, and who
thus could be trusted not to be inflicting any useless blow, any
meaningless torment, even when things looked blackest and the world
most unintelligible.
I do not maintain that Arthur never flagged or swerved from this; the
letter on page 164 will show it was far otherwise: but this was his
deliberate habit of mind; this was the ideal that he was faithful to,
with all allowances for a humanity, and a humanity sorely tried.
He was an ambitious man by nature; I am sure of that: _that_ he
conquered. He was indolent by nature, averse to detail, and motion,
and change: _that_ he conquered by deliberate rough travel. He
disliked new people: _that_ he set himself to conquer. In the prime
of his life, being of a nature to which health and ordinary enjoyments
of life were very delightful and precious, death was suddenly and
hopelessly set before him; he loved and was disappointed; and the
one charge that was given him, the education of his friend's boy,
was overwhelmed and ended in a moment by a little act of boyish
carelessness. Keenly sensitive to physical pain, the last years of
his life were racked with it, every week, almost every day.
Such are the materials of a life. Apparently self-regarding in idea,
and prematurely cut short in fact, it has left results on a small
circle of friends that will never die. And why?
Because, in spite of every trial and every rebuff, he preserved at
heart a serenity that was not thoughtlessness, a cheerfulness that
was not hilarity, a humour that was not cynicism. The biographer has
thought fit to give expression to his darkest hours, and they were
not few; they may appear in the life to have the preponderance,
but he would not cut them out. No life is inspiriting that is not
occasionally weak and faulty. What would David be without his sins;
Peter, without his fall? There was no depth of the despairing spirit,
I say it deliberately, that Arthur had not sounded—and he had not
been, as it were, lowered—deaf, blind, and unconscious—into the
abysmal deeps; it was with an eye alert to mark every ledge of the
dark walls, an ear quick to catch the smallest murmur from below, a
sense keen to experience and record every new depth gained, every
qualm of heart-sickness encountered. Naturally prone to serious
contemplation of life's enigmas, there was not one that life did not
bring with shocking vividness to his touch.
Further, I believe that some will be found to say, "The teaching of
this life is so selfish; it is all self-contemplation, miserable
self-weariness, gloomy reveries bounded by the narrowest horizons.
If ever he turns to others' evil case, it is with the melancholy
satisfaction of the hypochondriac, who finds his own symptoms
repeated with less or greater variations in others' cases." To these
I could only reply, "You have totally misunderstood the life. It is
not a selfish one. The deepest self-communings are necessary to one
who would know human nature, because self is the only human creature
that can be known with a perfect intimacy. 'No one but yourself can
tell,' as Arthur once wrote to me, 'what ruled the lines in your
face.'" But Arthur, above all others that I have ever known, had
passed from the particular to the general. Plato's praise of love
was based on the principle that the philosopher passed from the love
of one fair form to the love of abstract beauty. The fault is that
so many never pass the initiation. Arthur did cross the threshold;
he passed from the contemplation of his own suffering to the
consideration of the root of all human suffering. He found his best
comfort in doing all he could (and God allowed him little latitude)
to alleviate the sufferings of others. I have letters from various of
his friends, dealing, with his firm and faithful touch, with crisis
after crisis in their lives. No one who had trusted him with his
confidence once, ever shrank from doing it again. I am forced to
admit that, far more than many of his authorized brethren, he
discharged the priestly office. He was self-constituted, or rather
called, to be a priest of God.
The great mystery of _effectiveness_ he never solved, I think, quite
to his own satisfaction. His life has solved it for me ever since I was
able to regard it _en masse_. It was a great puzzle to him what to
make, for instance, of infants who died at or before birth. "'Saved
from this wicked world' is such a horrible statement in such cases,"
he used to say. "If that is the best that can happen to us, what
_can_ we make of life?" And so he was always very urgent about the
influence of example opposed to the influence of precept. "My
father," he said to me, "once spoke to me rather sharply about not
attending at family prayers. He did not attend very closely himself.
I was an observant boy, and I knew it. The very fact that he should
have noticed me proved it. So all I felt was that prayer didn't
matter really, but that, however I felt, I must behave as if I was
devout; whereas, if he had prayed in rapt fervency, unconscious of
anything, I should have been ashamed, I think, to wander. I should
have perceived the beauty of prayer. Ah, my dear friend," he added,
"never speak to a child about a thing unless you _know_ you always
do it yourself, and even then with extreme and tender caution."
Acting then, on this principle, he did not give us lectures and
rules: but we saw how a man was meeting life, not shirking any of its
problems, and beset by most of its trials. And we wondered what was
the secret spring of his well-being; and when we came to examine it,
we were amazed to find that it was in the strength of principles
resulting from a rigid and logical classification of phenomena.
So much is said nowadays about the dissidence of the spiritual and
intellectual worlds. Many people, conscious of intellect, are yet
strangely at sea when they are told of their _spiritual_ side. There
appears to be nothing within them answering to that description.
There are, indeed, certain qualities or characteristics, but those
seem not to exist independent of their intellectual and physical
economies, but to permeate both. They do not understand that what is
meant is the faculty of emotional generalization. _That_ they could
understand. Arthur arrived at his principles purely through logical
methods and intellectual operations. He could not, he often
confessed, separate the intellectual and the spiritual. From some
expressions, however, which dropped from him in a letter, part of
which is given on p. 209, I am vaguely aware that he was
reconsidering that point (and it has been suggested to me that such
an explanation will suit his last words); but, in any case, he was of
the greatest possible comfort to us who knew him, because he was an
instance (the only one) of a man who had arrived at his principles
from a purely intellectual basis.
And let me, finally, correct the impression, if I have by chance, in
developing this latter point, given any colour to the idea that his
character was hard, logical, unaffectionate, unloving. Arthur was
the tenderest, most sympathetic, most loving soul I have ever met;
nothing else would explain his influence. He was not demonstrative,
and was often misunderstood. His tendency was to dissimulate the
strongest of his feelings. Yet I have seen him turn red and pale at
the sight of a letter in the handwriting of a friend he loved; I have
seen him literally tremble with emotion when Edward Bruce, in his
impulsive boyish way, would, with eager demonstrative affection,
throw his arm round his neck, or take his hand. The tears gather in
my eyes as I write, when I recall a few words of his a few days
before he died, when he called me to him. It was after one of those
terrible paroxysms of pain. He was very white and feeble, but
smiling. He took my hand, and said, "What a wonderful thing it is
that pain takes away one's power of thinking of anything except
people. It hurries one away, somewhere, deep, deep down; yet one can
bear to touch the bottom. But when loving anyone carries one away,
one goes down deeper and deeper, and yet feels that there is a
fathomless gulf beyond."