In the year of grace 1890, and in the beautiful autumn of that year, I
was a freshman at Oxford. I remember how my tutor asked me what lectures
I wished to attend, and how he laughed when I said that I wished to
attend the lectures of Mr. Walter Pater. Also I remember how, one
morning soon after, I went into Ryman's to order some foolish engraving
for my room, and there saw, peering into a portfolio, a small, thick,
rock-faced man, whose top-hat and gloves of bright dog-skin struck one
of the many discords in that little city of learning or laughter. The
serried bristles of his moustachio made for him a false-military air. I
think I nearly went down when they told me that this was Pater.
Not that even in those more decadent days of my childhood did I admire
the man as a stylist. Even then I was angry that he should treat English
as a dead language, bored by that sedulous ritual wherewith he laid out
every sentence as in a shroud--hanging, like a widower, long over its
marmoreal beauty or ever he could lay it at length in his book, its
sepulchre. From that laden air, the so cadaverous murmur of that
sanctuary, I would hook it at the beck of any jade. The writing of Pater
had never, indeed, appealed to me, all' aiei, having regard to the couth
solemnity of his mind, to his philosophy, his rare erudition, tina phôta
megan kai kalon edegmen [I received some great and beautiful light]. And
I suppose it was when at length I saw him that I first knew him to be
fallible.
At school I had read Marius the Epicurean in bed and with a dark
lantern. Indeed, I regarded it mainly as a tale of adventure, quite as
fascinating as Midshipman Easy, and far less hard to understand, because
there were no nautical terms in it. Marryat, moreover, never made me
wish to run away to sea, whilst certainly Pater did make me wish for
more 'colour' in the curriculum, for a renaissance of the Farrar
period, when there was always 'a sullen spirit of revolt against the
authorities'; when lockers were always being broken into and marks
falsified, and small boys prevented from saying their prayers, insomuch
that they vowed they would no longer buy brandy for their seniors. In
some schools, I am told, the pretty old custom of roasting a fourth-form
boy, whole, upon Founder's Day still survives. But in my school there
was less sentiment. I ended by acquiescing in the slow revolution of its
wheel of work and play. I felt that at Oxford, when I should be of age
to matriculate, a 'variegated dramatic lifé was waiting for me. I was
not a little too sanguine, alas!
How sad was my coming to the university! Where were those sweet
conditions I had pictured in my boyhood? Those antique contrasts? Did
I ride, one sunset, through fens on a palfrey, watching the gold
reflections on Magdalen Tower? Did I ride over Magdalen Bridge and hear
the consonance of evening-bells and cries from the river below? Did I
rein in to wonder at the raised gates of Queen's, the twisted pillars of
St. Mary's, the little shops, lighted with tapers? Did bull-pups snarl
at me, or dons, with bent backs, acknowledge my salute? Any one who
knows the place as it is, must see that such questions are purely
rhetorical. To him I need not explain the disappointment that beset me
when, after being whirled in a cab from the station to a big hotel, I
wandered out into the streets. On aurait dit a bit of Manchester through
which Apollo had once passed; for here, among the hideous trains and the
brand-new bricks--here, glared at by the electric-lights that hung from
poles, screamed at by boys with the Echo and the Star--here, in a riot
of vulgarity, were remnants of beauty, as I discerned. There were only
remnants.
Soon also I found that the life of the place, like the place, had
lost its charm and its tradition. Gone were the contrasts that made it
wonderful. That feud between undergraduates and dons--latent, in the
old days, only at times when it behoved the two academic grades to unite
against the townspeople--was one of the absurdities of the past. The
townspeople now looked just like undergraduates and the dons just like
townspeople. So splendid was the train-service between Oxford and London
that, with hundreds of passengers daily, the one had become little
better than a suburb of the other. What more could extensionists demand?
As for me, I was disheartened. Bitter were the comparisons I drew
between my coming to Oxford and the coming of Marius to Rome. Could it
be that there was at length no beautiful environment wherein a man might
sound the harmonies of his soul? Had civilisation made beauty, besides
adventure, so rare? I wondered what counsel Pater, insistent always upon
contact with comely things, would offer to one who could nowhere find
them. I had been wondering that very day when I went into Ryman's and
saw him there.
When the tumult of my disillusioning was past, my mind grew clearer. I
discerned that the scope of my quest for emotion must be narrowed. That
abandonment of one's self to life, that merging of one's soul in bright
waters, so often suggested in Pater's writing, were a counsel impossible
for to-day. The quest of emotions must be no less keen, certainly, but
the manner of it must be changed forthwith. To unswitch myself from my
surroundings, to guard my soul from contact with the unlovely things
that compassed it about, therein lay my hope. I must approach the Benign
Mother with great caution. And so, while most of the freshmen 'were
doing her honour with wine and song and wreaths of smoke, I stood aside,
pondered. In such seclusion I passed my first term--ah, how often did
I wonder whether I was not wasting my days, and, wondering, abandon my
meditations upon the right ordering of the future! Thanks be to Athene,
who threw her shadow over me in those moments of weak folly!
At the end of term I came to London. Around me seethed swirls, eddies,
torrents, violent cross-currents of human activity. What uproar!
Surely I could have no part in modern life. Yet, yet for a while it was
fascinating to watch the ways of its children. The prodigious life of
the Prince of Wales fascinated me above all; indeed, it still fascinates
me. What experience has been withheld from His Royal High-ness? Was ever
so supernal a type, as he, of mere Pleasure? How often he has watched,
at Newmarket, the scud-a-run of quivering homuncules over the vert on
horses, or, from some night-boat, the holocaust of great wharves by
the side of the Thames; raced through the blue Solent; threaded les
coulisses! He has danced in every palace of every capital, played in
every club. He has hunted eleplants through the jungles of India, boar
through the forests of Austria, pigs over the plains of Massachusetts.
From the Castle of Abergeldie he has led his Princess into the frosty
night, Highlanders lighting with torches the path to the deer-larder,
where lay the wild things that had fallen to him on the crags. He has
marched the Grenadiers to chapel through the white streets of Windsor.
He has ridden through Moscow, in strange apparel, to kiss the catafalque
of more than one Tzar. For him the Rajahs of India have spoiled their
temples, and Blondin has crossed Niagara along the tight-rope, and the
Giant Guard done drill beneath the chandeliers of the Neue Schloss.
Incline he to scandal, lawyers are proud to whisper their secrets in
his ear. Be he gallant, the ladies are at his feet. Ennuyé, all the wits
from Bernal Osborne to Arthur Roberts have jested for him. He has been
'present always at the focus where the greatest number of forces unite
in their purest energy,' for it is his presence that makes those forces
unite.
'Ennuyé?' I asked. Indeed he never is. How could he be when Pleasure
hangs constantly upon his arm! It is those others, overtaking her only
after arduous chase, breathless and footsore, who quickly sicken of her
company, and fall fainting at her feet. And for me, shod neither with
rank nor riches, what folly to join the chase! I began to see how small
a thing it were to sacrifice those external 'experiences,' so dear to
the heart of Pater, by a rigid, complex civilisation made so hard to
gain. They gave nothing but lassitude to those who had gained them
through suffering. Even to the kings and princes, who so easily gained
them, what did they yield besides themselves? I do not suppose that, if
we were invited to give authenticated instances of intelligence on the
part of our royal pets, we could fill half a column of the Spectator. In
fact, their lives are so full they have no time for thought, the highest
energy of man. Now, it was to thought that my life should be dedicated.
Action, apart from its absorption of time, would war otherwise against
the pleasures of intellect, which, for me, meant mainly the pleasures
of imagination. It is only (this is a platitude) the things one has not
done, the faces or places one has not seen, or seen but darkly, that
have charm. It is only mystery--such mystery as besets the eyes of
children--that makes things superb. I thought of the voluptuaries I
had known--they seemed so sad, so ascetic almost, like poor pilgrims,
raising their eyes never or ever gazing at the moon of tarnished
endeavour. I thought of the round, insouciant faces of the monks at
whose monastery I once broke bread, and how their eyes sparkled when
they asked me of the France that lay around their walls. I thought,
pardie, of the lurid verses written by young men who, in real life, know
no haunt more lurid than a literary public-house. It was, for me,
merely a problem how I could best avoid 'sensations,' 'pulsations,'
and 'exquisite moments' that were not purely intellectual. I would not
attempt to combine both kinds, as Pater seemed to fancy a man might. I
would make myself master of some small area of physical life, a life of
quiet, monotonous simplicity, exempt from all outer disturbance. I would
shield my body from the world that my mind might range over it, not hurt
nor fettered. As yet, however, I was in my first year at Oxford. There
were many reasons that I should stay there and take my degree, reasons
that I did not combat. Indeed, I was content to wait for my life.
And now that I have made my adieux to the Benign Mother, I need wait no
longer. I have been casting my eye over the suburbs of London. I have
taken a most pleasant little villa in ----ham, and here I shall make my
home. Here there is no traffic, no harvest. Those of the inhabitants
who do anything go away each morning and do it elsewhere. Here no vital
forces unite. Nothing happens here. The days and the months will pass by
me, bringing their sure recurrence of quiet events. In the spring-time
I shall look out from my window and see the laburnum flowering in the
little front garden. In summer cool syrups will come for me from the
grocer's shop. Autumn will make the boughs of my mountain-ash scarlet,
and, later, the asbestos in my grate will put forth its blossoms of
flame. The infrequent cart of Buszard or Mudie will pass my window at
all seasons. Nor will this be all. I shall have friends. Next door,
there is a retired military man who has offered, in a most neighbourly
way, to lend me his copy of the Times. On the other side of my house
lives a charming family, who perhaps will call on me, now and again.
I have seen them sally forth, at sundown, to catch the theatre-train;
among them walked a young lady, the charm of whose figure was ill
concealed by the neat waterproof that overspread her evening dress.
Some day it may be...but I anticipate. These things will be but the cosy
accompaniment of my days. For I shall contemplate the world.
I shall look forth from my window, the laburnum and the mountain-ash
becoming mere silhouettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall look
forth and, in nay remoteness, appreciate the distant pageant of the
world. Humanity will range itself in the columns of my morning paper. No
pulse of life will escape me. The strife of politics, the intriguing of
courts, the wreck of great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes,
national griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, even, and the
mysterious suicides of land-agents at Ipswich--in all such phenomena I
shall steep my exhaurient mind. Delicias quoque bibliothecae experiar.
Tragedy, comedy, chivalry, philosophy will be mine. I shall listen to
their music perpetually and their colours will dance before my eyes. I
shall soar from terraces of stone upon dragons with shining wings
and make war upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall swoop into
recondite valleys and drive the pigmies, shrieking little curses, to
their caverns. It may be my whim to wander through infinite parks where
the deer lie under the clustering shadow of their antlers and flee
lightly over the grass; to whisper with white prophets under the elms or
bind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, thread my way through
the acacias. I shall swim down rivers into the sea and outstrip all
ships. Unhindered I shall penetrate all sanctuaries and snatch the
secrets of every dim confessional.
Yes! among books that charm, and give wings to the mind, will my days be
spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with
such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to
give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the
recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow
quarterly and had that succès de fiasco which is always given to a young
writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only
Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who
crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already
I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong to the Beardsley period.
Younger men, with months of activity before them, with fresher schemes
and notions, with newer enthusiasm, have pressed forward since then.
Cedo junioribus. Indeed, I stand aside with no regret. For to be
outmoded is to be a classic, if one has written well. I have acceded to
the hierarchy of good scribes and rather like my niche.
Chicago, 1895.