MY father was a doctor in a country town. Strictly speaking it was not a
town, and yet it was something more than a village. His practice
extended over a district with a radius of five or six miles from his
house; he drove a gig and dispensed his own medicines. My mother was the
youngest daughter of a poor squire who owned two or three hundred acres
and lived at what was called the Park, which was really nothing more than
two or three fields generally laid for hay, a small enclosure being
reserved for a garden. We were not admitted into county society, and my
mother would not associate with farmers and tradesfolk. She was a good
woman, affectionate to her children and husband, but never forgot that—so
she thought—she had married below her station. She had an uncle who had
been in the Indian Army, and his portrait in full regimentals hung in the
dining-room. How her heart warmed to the person who inquired who that
officer was! When she went home, it was never to her ‘home,’ but to the
‘Park.’
My father’s income was not more than eight or nine hundred a year, and
his expenses were heavy, but nevertheless my mother determined that I
should go to the university, and I was accordingly sent to a grammar
school. I had not been there more than three years, and was barely
fourteen years old, when my father was pitched out of his gig and killed.
He had insured his life for two thousand pounds, which was as much as he
could afford, and my mother had another two thousand pounds of her own.
Her income therefore was less than two hundred a year. She could not
teach, she would not let lodgings, nor was she wanted at the Park. She
therefore took a cottage, small but genteel, at a rental of ten pounds a
year, and managed as best she could. The furniture was partly sold, but
the regimental portrait was saved. Unhappily, as the cottage ceilings
were very low, it was not an easy task to hang it. The only place to be
found for it, out of the way of the chairs, was opposite the window, in a
parlour about twelve feet square, called the drawing-room; but it was too
long even there, and my great-uncle’s legs descended behind the sofa, and
could not be seen unless it was moved. ‘The cottage is a shocking
come-down,’ said my mother to the rector, ‘but it is not vulgar; it is at
least a place in which a lady can live.’ Of course the university was
now out of the question, and at fifteen I left school. I had read a
little Virgil, a little Horace, and a book or two of Homer. I had also
got through the first six books of Euclid after a fashion, and had
advanced as far as quadratic equations in algebra, but had no
mathematical talent whatever. My mother would not hear of trade as an
occupation for me, and she could not afford to make me a soldier, sailor,
doctor, lawyer, or parson. At last the county member, at the request of
her father, obtained for me a clerkship in the Stamps and Taxes
Department. These were the days before competitive examinations. She
was now able to say that her son was in H. M. Civil Service. I had
eighty pounds a year, and lodged at Clapton with an aunt, my father’s
sister.
Although I had been only half-educated, I was fond of reading, and I had
plenty of time for it. I read good books, and read them with enthusiasm.
I was much taken with the Greek dramatists, especially with Euripides,
but my only means of access to them was through translations. My aunt
had another nephew who came to see her now and then. He had obtained an
open exhibition at Oxford, and one day I found that he had a Greek
Euripides in his pocket, and that he needed little help from a
dictionary. He sometimes brought with him a college friend, and well do
I remember a sneer from this gentleman about the poor creatures whose
acquaintance with Æschylus was derived from Potter. I did not look at a
translation again for some time.
The men at my office were a curious set. The father of one was a leader
of the lowest blackguards in a small borough, who had much to do with
determining elections there; another bore the strongest resemblance to a
well-known peer; and another was the legitimate and perfectly scoundrel
offspring of a newspaper editor. I formed no friendships with any of my
colleagues, but one of them I greatly envied. He was deaf and dumb, the
son of a poor clergyman, and had an extraordinary passion for botany.
Every holiday was devoted to rambling about the country near London. He
cared little for anything but his favourite science, but that he
understood, and he never grew tired of it. I took no account of his
deafness and dumbness; the one thing I saw was his mastership over a
single subject. Gradually my incompleteness came to weigh on me like a
nightmare. I imagined that if I had learned any craft which required
skill, I should have been content. I was depressed when I looked at the
watchmaker examining my watch. I should have walked the streets erect if
there had been one thing which I could do better than anybody I met.
There was nothing: I stood for nothing: no purpose was intended by God
through me. I was also constitutionally inaccurate—this was another of
my troubles—and nothing short of the daily use of a fact made me sure of
it. No matter how zealously I went over and over again a particular
historical period, I always broke down the moment my supposed
acquisitions were tested by questions or conversation. I have read a
book with the greatest attention I could muster, and have found, when I
have seen a simple examination paper on it, that I could not have got a
dozen marks. Of what value, then, were my notions on matters demanding
far greater concentration of thought? Accuracy I fancied might be
acquired, but I was mistaken. It is a gift as much as the art of writing
sublime poetry. I struggled and struggled with pencil and précis, but I
did not improve. My cousin’s before-mentioned friend took delight in
checking, like an accountant, what was said to him, especially by me, and
although I saw that this for the most part was a mere trick, I could not
deny that it proved continually that my so-called opinions were not worth
a straw. The related virtues of accuracy, strength of memory, and clear
definition, are of great importance, but I over-estimated them. I see
now that human affairs are so complicated, that had I possessed the
advantages bestowed on my cousin and his companion, they would not have
prevented delusions, all the more perilous, perhaps, because I should
have been more confident. However, at the time of which I am speaking, I
was wretched, and believed that my wretchedness was entirely due to
deficiencies and weaknesses, from which my friends were free. No sorrow
of genius is greater than the daily misery of the man with no gifts, who
is not properly equipped, and has desires out of all proportion to his
capacity.
I had no real love of art and did not understand it. I went to concerts,
but the only part of a sonata or symphony which took hold of me was that
which was melodious. The long passages with no striking theme in them
conveyed nothing to me, and as to Bach, excepting now and then, his music
was like a skilful recitation of nonsense verses. The _Marseillaise_ on
a barrel-organ was intelligible, but gymnastics on strings—what did they
represent? With pictures the case was somewhat different. I often left
Clapton early in order that I might have half an hour at Christie’s in
quiet, and I have spent many pleasant moments in those rooms on sunny
mornings in May and June before De Wint’s and Turner’s landscapes. But I
knew nothing about them. Without previous instruction I should probably
have placed something worthless on the same level with them, and I could
not fix my attention on them long. A water-colour by Turner, on which
all his power had been expended, an abstract of years and years of toil
and observation, was unable to detain me for more than five minutes, and
in those five minutes I very likely did not detect one of its really
distinguishing qualities. As to the early religious pictures of the
Italian school, I cared nothing either for subject or treatment, and
would have given a cartload of them for a drawing by Hunt of a bird’s
nest. Wanting an ear for music and an eye for pictorial merit, I
believed, or affected to believe, that the raptures of people who
possessed the ear and eye were a sham. It irritated me to hear my aunt
play, although she had been well taught in her youth and was a skilful
performer. I know she would have liked to feel that she gave me some
pleasure, and that her playing was admired, but I was so openly
indifferent to it that at last she always shut the piano if I happened to
come into the room while she was practising. I remember saying to her
when she was talking to me about one of Mozart’s quartets she had just
heard, that music was immoral, inasmuch as it provoked such enormous
insincerity. It is strange that, although spite was painful to me,
especially towards her, I could not help indulging in it.
My failings gradually wrought in me confirmed bitterness. I persuaded
myself that the interest which people appeared to take in me was mere
polite pretence. There may be enough selfishness in the world to explain
misanthropy, but there is never enough to justify it, and what we imagine
to be indifference to us is often merely the reserve caused by our own
refusal to surrender ourselves to legitimate and generous emotions.
Oddly enough, I frequently made hasty and spasmodic offers of intimate
friendship to people who were not prepared for them, and the natural
absence of immediate response was a further reason for scepticism. A man
to whom I was suddenly impelled was in want of money, and I pressed ten
pounds upon him. He could not pay me at the appointed time, whereupon I
set him down as an ungrateful brute, and moralised like Timon.
There was at that time living in London a lady whom I must call Mrs. A.
She was the widow of a professor at Cambridge who had died young, and she
might have been about five-and-thirty or forty years old. My cousin, who
had known her husband, introduced me to her. She was not handsome; the
cheek-bones were a little too prominent, and her face was weather-worn,
but not by wind and sun. Nevertheless it was a quietly victorious face.
Her ways were simple and refined. She had travelled much, as far even as
Athens, and was complete mistress of Italian and French. Her voice
struck me—it was so musical, and adapted itself so delicately to varying
shades of thought and emotion. I have often reflected how little we get
out of the voice in talking. How delightful is the natural modulation
which follows the sense, and how much the sense gains if it is so
expressed rather than in half-inarticulate grunts, say, between the
inspirations and expirations of a short pipe!
Mrs. A. took much notice of me, and her attitude towards me was singular.
She was not quite old enough to be motherly to me, but she was too old
for restrictions on her intercourse with me, and her wide experience and
wisdom well qualified her to be my directress. Often when I went to her
house nobody was there, and she would talk to me with freedom on all
sorts of subjects. I did not fall in love with her, but she was still
attractive as a woman, and difference of sex, delightful manners, subtle
intellect, expressive grey eyes, and lovely black hair streaked with
white, might have taught me much which I could have learned from no
ordinary friend. My cousin often went with me to Mrs. A.’s, but I was
never at rest when he was there. I fancied then that if I could have
rendered a dozen lines of Gray’s _Elegy_ into correct Greek, life would
have nothing more to give me. Mrs. A. was too well-behaved to encourage
conversation in my cousin’s presence which disclosed my inferiority to
him, but without premeditation it sometimes turned where I could not
follow. As I have said, she had travelled in Greece. She understood
something of modern Greek, and she and my cousin one evening fell to
comparing it with ancient Greek. I sat sulky and dumb. At last she
turned to me, and asked me smilingly why I was so quiet. I replied that
I did not understand a word of what they were saying (which was untrue),
and that if they would talk about Stamps and Taxes I could join. She
divined in an instant what was the matter with me, and diverted the
discussion so that it might be within my reach. ‘I must confess,’ she
said, ‘that my knowledge of philology is no better than yours. Philology
demands the labour of a life. I often wonder what the teacher, student,
and school history of England will be at the end of another thousand
years. Perhaps, however, in another thousand years books will no longer
be written except on physics. Men will say, “What have we to do with the
Wars of the Roses?” and as to general literature, they will become weary
of tossing over and over again the same old ideas and endeavouring to
imagine new variations of passion. The literary man will cease from the
land. Something of this sort must come to pass, unless the human race is
to be smothered.’ My cousin said he prayed that her prophecy might come
true, but I remained hard and stockish. Her sweet temper, however, could
not be disturbed, and she announced that she was going to see Rachel, the
great actress, and invited us both to accompany her. I refused, on the
ground that I knew nothing of French (also untrue). She assured me that
if I would read the play beforehand I should be in no difficulty. I was
really touched by her kindness, but the devil in me would not let me
yield. I missed the opportunity of seeing Rachel, just as I missed many
other opportunities of more importance. Oh! when I look back now over my
life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not
take, my heart is like to break. The curse for me has not been plucking
forbidden fruit, but the refusal of divine fruit offered me by heavenly
angels.
Mrs. A.’s circle of acquaintances widened during the two or three years
of my friendship with her. She often pressed me to meet them, but I
nearly always held back. I told her that I did not care for mere
acquaintances, and that certainly not more than one or two of her
visitors would shed a tear if they heard she was dead. ‘To possess one
or two friends,’ she said, ‘who would weep at my departure would be quite
enough. It is as much as anybody ought to demand, but you are mistaken
in supposing that those who would not break their hearts for us may not
be of value, and even precious. We are so made that the attraction which
unites us to our fellow-creatures is, and ought to be, of varying
intensity, and there is something to be obtained from a weaker bond which
is not to be had from a stronger. I like the society of Mrs. Arnold and
Madame Sorel. I enjoy the courtesy which is not
slipper-and-dressing-gown familiarity, and their way of looking at
things, especially Madame Sorel’s, is different from mine and instructs
me. Forgive me for reminding you that in our Father’s house are many
mansions, and if we wish to be admitted to some of them we must wear our
best clothes, and when we are inside we must put on our company manners.’
She was quite right; Mrs. Arnold and Madame Sorel could have given me
just what I needed.
My visits to Mrs. A. became less and less frequent, and at last
altogether ceased. It was actually painful to me to neglect her, but I
forced myself to it, or to put it more correctly the Demon of pure
Malignity, for there is such a demon in Hell, drove me to it.
Some years afterwards I wrote to her asking her if she could get work for
a starving man whom she had known in other days, and she helped him to
obtain it. Two years after she had done this kind office, and had shown
she had not forgotten me, she died, and I went to her funeral in Brompton
Cemetery. It was a cold day, and black fog hung over London. When the
coffin was lowered into the grave I wept many tears. I had been guilty
of a neglect which was wicked injustice, and I could never hear her say
she had forgiven me. I understood the meaning of atonement, and why it
has been felt in all ages that, by itself, reformation is insufficient.
I attempted an expiation, which I need not describe. It is painful, but
the sacrifice which I trust I shall offer to the end of my days brings me
a measure of relief.
About a twelvemonth after Mrs. A.’s death I fell sick with inflammation
of the lungs. Once before, when I was ill, I declined my aunt’s
attendance. I said that I did not believe it was possible for mere
friendship or affection to hold out against long watching, and that there
must come a time when the watcher would be relieved by the death of the
patient. I declared that nothing was more intolerable to me than to know
that anybody sacrificed the least trifle on my behalf, and that if my
aunt really wished me to get better she would at once send for a paid
nurse. I had a paid nurse, but Alice, our servant, told me afterwards
that my poor aunt cried a good deal when she saw her place taken by a
stranger. She was now nearly seventy, but she offered herself again, and
I thankfully accepted her, stipulating of course that she should be
helped. I wondered how she could retain her love for me, how she could
kiss me so tenderly morning and night, and apparently not remember my
unkindness to her. But therein lies the difference between a man and a
woman. Woman is Christian. A woman’s love will sweep like a river in
flood over a wrong which has been done to it and bury it for ever.
I am not regenerate, but who is ever regenerate? My insignificance and
defects do not worry me as they did: I do not kick at them, and I am no
longer covetous of other people’s talents and virtues. I am grateful for
affection, for kindness, and even for politeness. What a tremendous
price do we have to pay for what we so slowly learn, and learn so late!