ATHENS AND EGYPT
So there was Athens again, with its bugles and its Royal Babies, and its
eternal Acropolis, which custom never staled. Maggie jumped into the
Hellenic attitude at once, adoring the adorable, filling with the
laughter of her serious appreciation the comedy of the life there,
enjoying it all enormously, and finding ecstatic human interest in
Oriental situations. One day the M.P. for Megalopolis appeared in
Athens, and so, of course, I asked him to tea in the Grand Hotel, and
Maggie put in some extra lessons in modern Greek with the English
vice-consul, in order that a tongue-tied female should not mar the
entertainment. The M.P.’s remarks were mostly unintelligible to her, and
these I translated back for her benefit, and if she could find a phrase
that fitted she slowly enunciated it, and if not she said to him,
syllable by syllable, “I should like to see your wife and children, but
we are going to Egypt.” All the “circles” in Athens embraced at once her
cordial and eager humanity. She sketched all morning, and when I came to
the rendezvous, there would be a dozen young Greek urchins round her
canvas, to whom, as she washed in a lucent sky, she made careful and
grammatical remarks.... She captivated the heart of the archæologists,
and Dr. Dörpfeld who had proved himself so fatal to the theories of the
British School at Megalopolis, addressed his most abstruse arguments to
her as he announced that “die Enneakrounos, ich habe gewiss gefunden”
when he gave his out-of-door lectures. The English Minister, Sir Edwin
Egerton, used to wrap her shawl round her, as she left the Legation
after dinner, saying, “Now you look like a Tanagra figure,” and the
Queen asked her in strict confidence, whether the English aristocracy
really behaved as her brother said they behaved in that odd book called
_Dŏdō_. The answer to that was given in a performance we got up,
ostensibly for the amusement of the English governesses in Athens at
Christmas, of the _Duchess of Bayswater_. Of course we got it up
primarily because we wanted to act, and then it grew to awful
proportions. The English Mediterranean Fleet happened to come into the
Piræus about then, and Admiral Markham asked if a contingent of two
hundred blue-jackets or so might stand at the back of the English
governesses. On which, the style of the entertainment had to be recast
altogether, and we bargained that, if they came the performance should
consist of two parts. The first part should be supplied by sailors, who
would dance hornpipes, and sing songs, and the second part should
consist of _The Duchess of Bayswater_. That was agreed, and we engaged a
large public hall.
Then Regie Lister who was a Secretary of Legation, let slip to the Crown
Princess that we were getting up an entertainment for (and with) sailors
and English governesses, and she, under promise of discretion as regards
her relatives, was allowed to be one of the English governesses. With
truly Teutonic perfidiousness, she informed all the Kings and Queens
then in Athens what was going on, and just as the curtain was about to
go up for _The Duchess of Bayswater_ a message came from the palace
that the entire host of royalties was then starting to attend it. And so
there was a row of Kings and Queens and ten rows of English governesses,
and a swarm of English sailors. But we refused to cut out a topical
allusion to the Palace bugles.
And at precisely this point, the epoch of those absurd theatricals, the
sparkle and comedy of Athenian existence was overshadowed or enlightened
for me by the birth of a great friendship. Regie Lister had the greatest
genius for friendship of any man I ever met; no one, not even Alfred
Lyttelton, had a finer gift or a more irresistible charm for men and
women alike. The two, extraordinarily dissimilar in most respects, were
identical in this, that they compelled others to love them, because they
loved so magnificently themselves. Alfred Lyttelton, for all his
exuberant virility, had the feminine quality of giving himself instead
of taking, which is what I mean by magnificent love, and Regie’s genius
in friendship sprang from precisely the same abandonment. There they
diverged north and south, for Regie had practically none of the
manliness that was so characteristic of the other. But he had superbly
the qualities of his defects; in matters of intellect, the direct
masculine attack was represented by intuition and diplomacy and extreme
quickness, and in matters of affection by a certain robust tenderness,
quite devoid of sentimentality. All mankind, whether male or female, is
compounded of both sexes: the man without any womanly instincts would be
a mere monster; the woman without any grit of manliness in her, a mere
jelly-fish, and in Regie’s nature the woman had a large share. One
quality supposed to be a defect of women rather than men he was quite
without: he had no notion whatever of “spite,” and was incapable of
taking revenge on anyone who had annoyed or crossed him. Most shining
of all among his delightful gifts was his instinct of seeing the best in
everyone. Wherever he went in his diplomatic posts, Athens,
Constantinople, Copenhagen, Rome, Paris, or Tangiers, he found, without
the least “setting to work” about it, that there never was so heavenly a
place, nor so delightful an entourage. At heart he was really Parisian;
that city, with its keen kaleidoscopic gaiety, its intellectual and
artistic atmosphere, dry and defined as its own air, suited him best,
but this instinct to find everyone with whom he came in contact
delightful, brought out, as was natural, all that there was delightful
in them, and thus his instinct was justified. He was incapable of being
bored for more than a couple of minutes together, and would have found
something that could be commuted into cheerfulness in the trials of Job.
Whether he liked a person or not, he always gave his best, not with the
idea of making himself popular, but because that was the natural
expression of his temperament. His amiability made the ripe plums easily
drop for him, but when he had determined to get something which did not
come off its stalk for the wishing, he had indomitable perseverance, and
that rather rare gift of being able to sit down and think until a method
clarified itself.
With him, then, I struck up a friendship which dispensed with all the
preliminaries of acquaintanceship: there was no gradual drawing together
about it, it leaped into being, and there it remained, poised and
effortless. Often during the ensuing years after he had left Athens and
was at his post in some European capital, we did not meet for months
together, but when the meeting came, relations were taken up again,
owing to some flame-like quality in him which warmed you as soon as you
got near him, without break or sense of there having been a break.
Morning by morning he came down to the museum where I was studying
sculpture with his paints and sketching-block, and made the most
admirable pictures of some Greek head; we took excursions round Athens
up Hymettus or Pentelicus, we usually dined together at some house of an
evening, where he made cosmopolitan diplomatists act charades or play
some childish and uproarious game. Best of all was it to leave Athens,
and wander three or four days at a time in the Peloponnese. We cast
pennies into the Styx, we lost our way and our mules and their drivers
on the slopes of Cyllene, and were rescued by a priest who tucked up his
skirts, and hurled huge stones at the savage shepherd-dogs; we slept in
indescribable inns, where were all manner of beasts, we bathed in the
Eurotas, and lay that night among goats in a shed on the Langarda Pass,
and the sorriest surroundings were powerless to abate Regie’s enjoyment.
And on one unique and memorable day we hunted for the temple at Bassae
in a thick fog, and almost despaired of finding it, when out of the
heart of the enshrouding mist there came the roar of a great wind that
tore the fog into tatters, and lo, not a hundred yards away was the
grave grey temple. The flying vapours vanished, chased like frightened
sheep along steaming hillsides and through the valleys below, and all
the Peloponnese swam into sight, from the Gulf of Corinth to the western
sea, and from the west to the bays of the south, and from the south to
the waters of Nauplia.... Did two more ecstatic pilgrims ever behold the
shrine of Apollo?
For the next three winters slices of Egypt were sandwiched between
visits to Greece. I started with Greece, went on with Maggie, or on
other occasions joined her at Luxor, and came back to Greece, living,
after Regie’s departure for Constantinople, at the Legation with Sir
Edwin Egerton, the most hospitable of mankind. But the magic of Egypt,
potent and compelling as it was, was a waving of a black wand compared
to the joyful spell of Greece. “All who run may read; only run” was the
Greek injunction: “All who read must run away” seemed the equivalent in
the Nilotic incantation. To get under the spell of Greece implied a
rejuvenation into a world that was like dawn on dewdrops and gave so
sunny an answer to the “obstinate questionings” that there was no need
even to ask what the riddle had been.
“All is beauty,
And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
What further can be sought for or declared?”
That glittered from the fading shores of Attica, and then after a few
miles of sea, there arose the low and sinister coast, and as you began
to guess at the mystery of the desert-bounded land you quaked at the
conclusion. There was something old and evil there and as tired as
Ecclesiastes: it preached _Vanitas Vanitatum_ instead of singing the
sunny love-spell of Greece, and while its mouth mumbled the syllables,
its relentless hands reared the pyramids which must stand for ever to
the astonishment of the world as a monument of unimaginative
construction and lost labour. There too it set the Sphinx whose totally
blank and meaningless face, innocent of any riddle except that of its
own soullessness, defies the rising glory of the sun and the moon of
lovers to instil any spark of animation into its stony countenance. What
monsters to an Attic pilgrim were these gods conceived not in the kindly
image of humanity but as out of some incestuous menagerie! Here was no
deep-bosomed Hera, queen of gods and men, for the royalty of motherhood;
no helmeted Athene for the royalty of wisdom; no Aphrodite for the
excellence of love sent her herald Eros to announce her epiphany from
the wine-dark sea. The Egyptian artificers hewed no images of joy and
mirth, they set no Faun nor Satyr dancing in the twilight, no Hermes
held the winds in the flower-like pinions of his heels, or nursed the
god after whom the Bacchantes revelled, with the smile that so quivered
on his mouth that next moment surely the vitality with which he tingled,
would break through that momentary marble arrest. Far other were these
incongruous composite divinities, all as dead as a hangman’s noose, all
incapable of summoning up one quiver of a kindly mirth. As by some
disordered dream of a religious maniac the hawk-faced god had a cobra
for symbol of his divinity; a cow or a cat or a lion had mated with a
man and the offspring sat there, bleak and appalling, to be worshipped.
And in matter of material, for the glow of the white Pentelic that holds
the sunshine in solution within, even as a noble vintage is redolent of
Provençal summers, these monstrous forms were presented in dead black
basalt, a frozen opacity of ink.
Into these tight-fisted inexorable hands were given the jail-keys of
death. Egypt was ever the land of graves, _Memento Mori_, the sad gospel
of its religion. A little honey, a little pulse, blue-glazed images of
slaves who might still toil for their master in that dim underworld,
images of food in the chambers of the dead, were all that the pious
could provide for the desolate whimpering soul, feeble as a moth, that
went forth on its lonely journey through dubious twilight. The crowns
and the sceptres, the gold and precious stones that were buried with the
kings were but a mockery to them of all that they had quitted; the
mightiest monument that Pharaoh had raised was no more than a flickering
beacon behind him as he trod the dark passage, which cast in front the
shadow of the man that he had been. The gigantic and hopeless art, bound
hand and foot by the fetters of hieratic tradition could do no more than
multiply monoliths, incredulous of its own greatness and untinged with
the living colour of humanity. Yet out of this mere piling up of dead on
dead there arose a musty necromantic magic, awful and old and corrupt,
that sat like a vulture on the sandbanks and was wafted, eternally
fecund, down the waters of the Nile. All the way up to Luxor, where we
settled down for a time, through the splendour of noon and the last ray
of sunset that turns the stream into a sheet of patinated bronze, there
was present that underlying sense of woe; and to this day my nightmares
are set on the Nile in the sweet scent of bean fields beneath the waving
of mimosa and of palms, where, by the terrible river there crouches some
abominable granite god.
I have given a wrong notion of this curious psychic horror if I have
represented it as interfering with enjoyment and interest. It lay
couched and in concealment, seldom stirring, and belonged I suppose to
that subconscious world which, somewhere within us, is absorbed in its
own constructive energies, and only rarely lets news of itself rise,
like a bubble through dark water, into our controlled and effective
consciousness. But cell by cell was stored with its bitter honey, and my
bees must have been busy, for when a few years later I began to write a
book called _The Image in the Sand_ I found the combs full and ready for
my despoiling. How such invention as is implied in writing a book,
exercises itself in others, I do not know, but I have a very clear idea
of my own case. The material, the stuff out of which the threads are
woven, or, if you will, the stock-pot out of which the pottage comes,
has long been simmering and stewing before the planning, the conscious
invention begins. These two stages, so I take it, are widely severed
from each other; the storing and the stewing have long preceded this
rummage and inspection of what the author wants for his purpose. But
there is, practically always, a second pot on the fire, subconsciously
stewing, the contents of which concern him not at all, while he is
exercising such culinary art as may be his over the contents of the
first. Thus, while subconsciously I was gathering and shredding into
this second pot, some of these secret and bitter herbs of Egypt to be
used years afterwards, my conscious cooking powers were altogether
absorbed with the stuff I had long before collected in Greece. In other
words, I was busy with writing _The Vintage_ while my subconscious mind
was just as busy on its own office of making ready for _The Image in the
Sand_. Every morning, and all morning, as we went up the Nile in the
post-boat, I used to carry book and pen and ink to some sequestered
corner where the sun beat full on me, and, while the sandbanks and the
vultures and the wicked old spell of Egypt were working on my
subconscious mind, I exuded on to paper what I had captured of the
sunnier spell of Greece. I fancy that this must be a mental process
common to most people, and that nobody writes of the interests and
experiences which at the moment absorb him. They have to be kept and
stored and stewed before they are fit for use; the harvest in fact has
long been completed before the grain is ground, or before the baker,
later still, is at his oven.
Every winter then, for those three years, and indeed for one year more,
tragic and final--I went across to Egypt from Greece, firm in the
protection of the sunny gods when I started, and hastening to swing the
incense again when I returned. And I must surely have been inoculated
with the poison of the darker deities, so that for two years I was
immune from their attacks, or perhaps Maggie’s excavations in the temple
of Mut in Karnak were so thrilling and surprising that “the plague was
stayed,” or perhaps I made some truce and reconciliation with the
hawk-faced gods and the cats and the baboons, or perhaps (as seemed most
probable of all) I had imagined a vain thing when for the first time I
thought that the iron of these malignant conceptions had entered into my
soul, for the early months of the new year in 1895 and 1896 were weeks
of incessant exhilaration, the glory of which was this concession, given
to Maggie by the Ministry of Antiquities, that she might conduct the
excavation of a temple.
Did ever an invalid plan and carry out so sumptuous an activity? She was
wintering in Egypt for her health, being threatened with a crippling
form of rheumatism; she was suffering also from an internal malady,
depressing and deadly: a chill was a serious thing for her, fatigue must
be avoided, and yet with the most glorious contempt of bodily ailments
which I have ever seen, she continued to employ some amazing mental
vitality that brushed disabilities aside, and, while it conformed to
medical orders, crammed the minutes with such sowings and reapings as
the most robust might envy. When I got to Egypt in the first of these
three years she had already obtained permission to excavate the temple
of Mut in the horse-shoe lake at Karnak, with the proviso that the
museum at Gizeh was to claim anything it desired out of the finds; she
had got together sufficient funds to conduct a six weeks’ exploration
with a moderate staff of workers, and there she was with her fly-whisk
and her white donkey, using a dozen words of Arabic to the workers with
astonishing effect. She had begun by trenching the site diagonally in
order to cut across any walls that were covered by the soil, and another
diagonal soon gave the general plan of the unknown temple. All the local
English archæologists were, so to speak, at her feet, partly from the
entire novelty of an English girl conducting an excavation of her own,
but more because of her grateful and enthusiastic personality, and M.
Naville, who was engaged at Deir-el-Bahari across the river, came and
sat like a benignant eagle on a corner stone, while Mr. Newberry
deciphered some freshly exposed inscription. I was given a general
supervision, with the object of discovering the most economical method
of clearing, of arranging the “throws” of earth (so that those going to
the chucking heap should not use the same path as those returning with
empty baskets, a plan which entailed collisions and much pleasant
conversation between the workmen who were going to and fro) and with
making a plan to scale of the temple. A friend of Maggie’s kept an eye
wide open for possible thefts of small objects, but the genius, the
organizer, the chairman of it all was Maggie. After a morning there, she
had to get back to Pagnon’s Hotel, lunch quietly and rest afterwards,
but presently she would be out again, cantering on her white donkey
without fatigue owing to her admirable seat, with a tea-basket on the
crupper, and Mohammed the devoted donkey-boy trotting behind with
encouraging cries so that the donkey should not lapse into that jog-trot
which was so bad for tea-things. At sunset, the work was over, and we
made our leisurely way back to the hotel. Maggie rested a tired body
before dinner, but exercised an indefatigible mind, working at what was
familiarly known as “her philosophy,” which eventually took shape in her
book, _The Venture of Rational Faith_, or scribbling at one of the
charming animal stories, which she published later under the title of
_Subject to Vanity_. Then after dinner, the old habits reasserted
themselves and we played games with pencil and paper, producing poetical
answers to preposterous questions or rooking each other at picquet. Each
Saturday, she jingled out with money-bags to the temple of Mut, and paid
her workmen, while her native overseer checked the tale of piastres, and
waved the whisk to keep the flies off his mistress.
Sometimes there were days off, when one of the three was left in charge,
and the two others went far through the fertile land, or ferrying across
the Nile, spent the day with M. Naville at Deir-el-Bahari to see what
fresh sculptured wall had been reclaimed from the blown sand of the
desert, showing the pictured ivory and gold which the expedition of
Queen Hatasoo had brought back from the mysterious land of Punt; or we
crawled dustily into some newly discovered malodorous tomb in the valley
where the kings of Egypt were buried, or visited Professor Petrie at the
Ramesseum and exchanged the news of fresh finds. Sometimes I took a
holiday from the remote and swarming past, and with a horse in place of
the demurer donkey, went far out into the desert on the other side of
the Nile. Pebbles and soft sand, hard sand and rocks succeeded each
other in slope and level, and the horse whinnied as he sniffed the utter
emptiness of the unbreathed air. One kite hung, a remote speck in the
brazen sky, and the silence and the solitude wove the unutterable spell
of the desert. There, out of sight of all that makes the planet
habitable, your horse alone made the link with the ephemeral living
world; all else was as it had been through uncounted centuries, and as
it would remain for centuries to come, until the spinning earth grew
still. In the desert the past and the future are one, and the present,
dwindled to a microscopical point, is but a shadow of time in the
timeless circle of eternity. Old wicked Egypt was no more than that; the
dynasties were whisked away like an unquiet fly, that persists for a
little, but not for long.
Luxor would be full of southerly-going dahabeahs and English tourists
during this month of January, and I can see Maggie waving her long
fine-fingered hands in impotent despair, as I brought her an invitation
from some friend that she and I would dine on one of these dahabeahs
to-night or next night or the night after. “How am I to get on with my
work,” exclaimed this outraged invalid, “with all these interruptions?
Won’t it do, if we ask them to tea at the temple?” That certainly
usually “did” quite well, for while Maggie was making tea, the cry of
“Antica!” would arise from the diggers, and she popped the lid on the
teapot, and we turned to see what had been unearthed. Once it was the
statue of the Rameses of the Exodus, which would tremendously excite the
visitor, but left us cold, for he was already plentifully represented.
Or it might be a scribe of the eighteenth dynasty whom to-day you may
see in the museum at Gizeh, and better even than that was a superb Saite
head, such as I may behold at this moment if I raise my eyes from the
page, or best of all it was the image of Sen-mut himself, to see which,
again, you must go to Gizeh. That was the crown and culmination of the
digging and worthy of an archæological digression.
Sen-mut, we knew, was the architect of our temple, and of the temple of
Deir-el-Bahari across the river, and the mysterious thing in connection
with him was that wherever his name and his deeds appeared in
hieroglyphic inscriptions they had always been defaced, and an
inscription about King Thothmes III, nephew and successor of Queen
Hatasoo, to whose reign the activities of Sen-mut belonged had been
superimposed. Sometimes the deletion was not quite thorough and you
could read Sen-mut’s name below some dull chronicle of King Thothmes.
What the reason for these erasures had been was hitherto only
conjecture: now, on the close of this bright January afternoon the
riddle was solved, and we found ourselves the accidental recoverers of a
scandal nearly four thousand years old. For Sen-mut was but a common
man, “not mentioned in writing” (i.e. with no ancestral records), and he
speaking from the inscription on the back of this statue of himself
which he had dedicated told us that, “I filled the heart of the Queen
(Hatasoo) in very truth gaining the heart of my mistress daily ... and
the mistress of the two lands (Upper and Lower Egypt) was pleased with
that which came forth from my mouth, the Priest of Truth, Sen-mut. I
knew her comings in the Royal house, _and was beloved of the ruler_.”
Here then was the reason for all these erasures: there had been a
scandal about the intimacy between this “common man” and the Queen; so,
when she died, and her nephew succeeded, he caused all mention of
Sen-mut to be erased, and covered up the blank spaces with majestic
records of his own achievements. It was his design to destroy all
evidence of this disreputable or at least undignified affair, and hammer
and chisel, at his order, were busy to delete all hint of Aunt Hatasoo’s
indiscretions. Pious King Thothmes was all but successful in this piece
of family pride: only just one record escaped his erasing hand. But now,
four thousand years later, Maggie dug up that solitary omission.
I know that there must have been clouds on these halcyon days of winter,
but they passed and prevailing sunlight was dominant again. Once Maggie
got a chill as she lingered by the horse-shoe lake, and developed a
congestion of the lungs, but when she was allowed to leave her bed again
and go out, she was carried in a sort of litter, by her own express
decree, to the beloved excavation again, and made a delighted progress
round the fresh clearing, ordering that some mason must be at once
employed in piecing together the huge lion-headed statues which had been
discovered in the fore-court of the temple, and in setting them in place
again. She was more dubious about certain abominable baboons that
crouched in a small chamber within the temple, whose awful ugliness
seemed better left alone.... Then over us both passed the cloud of
slightly disquieting letters from my mother. My father was overtired,
and _Would_ go on working: he had attacks of breathlessness if he rode,
a sense of oppression on his chest that was not mitigated by his remedy
of thumping it. But no one, least of all the sufferer, took these things
at all seriously. Maggie got better, my father received no alarming
report from his doctor, and my mother, as these clouds seemed to melt,
added them to her general list of the workings of “unreasonable fear,”
that ghostly enemy of hers, whom she was for ever combating and holding
at arm’s length, but never quite slaying.
Arthur, during these Græco-Egyptian years, had slid into the groove of a
career; he was a house-master at Eton, prosperous and popular, though
from time to time his own cloud beset him, and out of it he would
announce that the burden of his work was quite intolerable, and that he
could not possibly stand it for another term. But this was a fruitful
Jeremiad, for it relieved his mind, and he buckled to with renewed
energy and that amazing gift of getting through a task more quickly than
anybody else could have done it, without the slightest loss of
thoroughness, and he added to the work that was incident to his
profession an immense literary activity of his own, producing several
volumes of verse, and experimentalizing in those meditative essays in
which before long he found his own particular _métier_. Hugh, in the
same way, after studying at Llandaff under Dean Vaughan, had taken
orders in the English Church and was attached to the Eton Mission at
Hackney Wick, so that of the three sons I was the only one who had not
settled down to any career. By this time archæology, as a scholastic
profession, was already closed to me, for Cambridge could not go on
giving me grants indefinitely, and in order to crown my days of
classical learning with a final failure, King’s had not decorated with a
fellowship either the work I sent in on the Roman occupation of Chester,
or on certain aspects of the cult of Asclepios. So, in deference to my
father’s wishes, I took the first step towards getting a post in the
Education Office, collected and sent in testimonials, and craved
employment there as an inspector or examiner, I forget which. This
regularized matters: that was a respectable employment, and by sending
in those testimonials I was doing my best to be respectably employed,
and pending appointment I could go on writing, thus treading the path
that by now I fully meant to pursue. At no time was it definitely agreed
that I should become anything so irregular as a writer of novels, and I
suppose that if I had been appointed to a post in the Education Office,
I should have taken it up. But those in whose hands the appointment
rested thought that the author of _Dodo_ would be a very indifferent
educator, in spite of these brilliant panegyrics from his tutors, and
for aught I know those testimonials are dustily filed there still.
But neither Arthur nor Hugh thought of their present vocations in their
present form as their lives’ work; Arthur, at any rate, had not the
slightest intention, as events proved, of plucking the rewards which his
profession as schoolmaster was soon to offer him, and when
headmasterships came within his reach he did not put his hand out to
them. Hugh’s case was only a little different; the direct service of God
was now his choice and his passion, but as evolution of that progressed
in him, it took him out of the English Church altogether. No one ever
questioned that his joining the Roman communion and taking orders there
was anything but a matter of irresistible conviction with him, but what
would have happened had that conviction taken hold on him before my
father’s death it is impossible to say. I cannot imagine any human
relation, any _pietas_ restraining Hugh when he had the firm belief that
it was by divine guidance that he so acted: on the other hand I cannot
imagine what the effect on my father would have been; whether he could
have beaten down his own will in the matter, as my mother did, and have
accepted this without reserve at all, or whether it would have been to
him, as the death of Martin had been, an event unadjustable,
unbridgable, unintelligible, a blow without reason, to be submitted to
in a silence which, had it been broken, must have been resolved into
bewildered protest.
Apart from their present professions both Arthur and Hugh were moving
towards the pursuit, that of authorship, which was soon to take at least
equal rank with their other work. Within ten years it was as an
essayist, a writer of delicate meditative prose that Arthur was most
widely known, and to this he devoted the flower of his energy, while
Hugh served his Church not as a parish priest, but as preacher and as
writer of propagandist novels, novels with the purpose of showing the
dealings of God through His Church. As works of art his sermons far
transcended his books, an opinion which no one I think who ever listened
to that tumultuous eloquence could doubt. They carried his untrammelled
message; while he preached, he could say with supreme instinctive art
all that in novel-writing he had more indirectly to convey: his sermons
had an overwhelming sincerity which made the delivery of them flawless
and flame-like. When he wrote he was never quite so inspired: the
message was the same, but it had to be wrapt about with the allegory of
ordinary life, he had to convey it in terms of country houses or
historical episode, and the sermon which was the underlying intention
was often a handicap to the art of story-telling. But it was towards his
books that his inclination tended; his joy of achievement lay in the
written, not in the spoken word.
Then came the closing summer of this period, after which the whole stage
and manner of life was altered altogether. That year I had stayed late
in the south, going on from Athens to Capri, and laying the foundation
then of that Italian castle of dreams, which was afterwards to take a
more solid form. Maggie had supplemented Egypt with a cure at
Aix-les-Bains, but in August we were all together again at Addington,
and once more, as before Nellie’s death, and never since then, there
were hundreds of small cones on the cedar that scattered the
sulphur-like powder. Arthur came there before he went to Scotland, Hugh
had a holiday release from the Eton mission, Maggie was established
there deep in the collation of the results from the digging at Luxor.
Soon my father and mother were to start on a tour through Ireland, and
when September saw their departure, Maggie and I stayed on for a little
and then drifted off on different visits. We were all free to stop at
home if we liked, and ask friends there; Addington was just an ark for
any wandering family doves, picnicky as my mother said, but there it
was.... Maggie and I saw my father and mother off, and as from my first
remembered days and ever afterwards when he wished “good night” or “good
bye,” he kissed me, and said, “God bless you, and make you a good boy
always.” Then, after he got into the carriage, he waved his hands with
some affectionate and despairing gesture, saying, “I can’t bear leaving
you nice people here,” and the carriage turned, and went up the slope in
front of the house. A very few days afterwards, Maggie and I went off on
our ways, leaving Beth at the front door, saying, “Eh, pray-a-do come
back soon.”
I had trysted with a friend to spend a few days at Addington early in
October, and arrived there to find a letter from him that he was
prevented, and I was in two minds as to whether to stop here alone, or
go off on some other visit for the Sunday. That scarcely seemed worth
while, for I had learned that my father and mother were leaving Ireland
that day, and would spend the Sunday with Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden. The
Irish tour therefore was over, and they would be back on Monday. Beth
and I talked about it, and she said, “Nay, don’t you go away to-day, you
be here for when your Papa and Mamma get back. Have a quiet Sunday, you
and me.”
It was arranged so: and after lunch on Sunday I went out for a long walk
through the myriad paths of the Park, where the beeches were russeting
and the squirrels gathering the nuts, and came home in time to have tea
with Beth. There was a telegram for me on the hall-table, and glancing
at the sender’s name first I saw it was from Mrs. Gladstone.
“Your father passed over quite peacefully this morning,” it said. “Can
you come with Maggie?”
I did not comprehend at first what it meant. My father was a very bad
sailor, and it was quite possible that Mrs. Gladstone had merely
telegraphed the little news that he was comfortably back in England. For
one or two or three long seconds which seemed like hours, I tried to
think that this was what she meant. But then my father had crossed not
“this morning” but on Friday: and why should I “come with Maggie”? I
suppose that the comprehension of the real meaning of this message was
only a matter of a moment, and I think the envelope of the telegram was
scarcely crumpled up in my hand before I knew. Just then, Beth, having
seen my entry from the window of her room, came down to tell me that
she had got tea ready. And she saw that something had happened, for her
hands made a quivering motion, and then were clasped.
“Is there any trouble?” she asked.
* * * * *
I could get up to London that night, but not to Chester. I slept in the
Euston Hotel and went on by an early train next morning.
My father and mother had arrived at Hawarden on Saturday: he was very
well and in tremendously good spirits, and sat up late that night
talking with Mr. Gladstone. They had all gone to early communion on
Sunday morning, returned for breakfast, and walked again to church for
the eleven o’clock service. Mrs. Gladstone and they were in a pew
together, and during the Confession, my father sank back from his
upright kneeling, and did no more than sigh.... He bowed himself before
his Lord, as he met Him face to face....
INDEX
Addington, Easter holidays at, 179
last family gathering at, 321
liberty and leisure at, 251
non-ecclesiastical ritual at, 102
Sunday routine at, 183
Aix-les-Bains, Maggie Benson at, 321
Algeria, a tour in, 276
Algiers, visits to, 254, 276
“American nouns” and how played, 93
Anderson, Mary, a tribute to, 235
author’s meeting with, 235
Archæological researches in Greece and Egypt, _et seq._, 286
studies at Cambridge, 255
Athens, a representation of the _Duchess of Bayswater_ at, 301
author in, 279, 303
royalty at a theatrical performance in, 304.
Athleticism, benefits of, 149
_Babe, B.A., The_, 301, 302
Bambridge, Mr., as pianist, 145
his part in a performance of Haydn’s Toy Symphony, 201
Beaconsfield, Lord, offers Bishopric of Truro to author’s father, 62
Beesly, A. H., classics master at Marlborough, 155
_obiter dicta_ of, 160
Benson, Arthur Christopher, (brother), 22
a mystical “Chapter” and its warden, 99
a nursery reminiscence of, 25
and his brother Hugh, 128
as actor: a hilarious kitchen-maid, 177
as author, 178, 320
as butterfly collector, 95
at Eton, 87, 123, 251
contributes a poem to _Cambridge Fortnightly_, 231
gains an Eton scholarship at King’s, 126
holiday activities of, 92
house-master at Eton, 318
piscatorial exploits of, 54
schooldays at East Sheen, 30
Benson, E. F., a fellowship examination at Eton, 114
a first in the Classical Tripos, 245
a fit of demoniacal possession, 59
a (neglected) untrained faculty for visualizing, 143
a ride with Gladstone, 271
a squirrel at prayers, 23
a trip to Switzerland, 129
an attack of jaundice, 209
an instance of his fatal habit of inversion, 28
and his brother Hugh, 128
and the food question at school, 83
applies for post in Education Office, 319
archæological studies at Cambridge: an inspiring tutor, 255
at Marlborough, 137, 196
attends children’s parties at White Lodge, Richmond Park, 86
“Benson’s lies,” 86 _et seq._
“Beth” on his want of tact, 107
birth of, 13
birthday celebrations at Rugby, 32
Bishop Wordsworth’s gift to, 52
boredom of Sundays at Addington, 183
botanical studies in Cornwall, 64
butterfly and moth collecting, 146
Chester, archæological exploration at, 266
childhood days: impressions of, 13 _et seq._
climbs the Matterhorn, 241
compulsory study in Switzerland, 135
conducts Haydn’s Toy Symphony, 201
confirmation at Marlborough, 163
Cornwall, a new home in, 62 _et seq._
curricula at Lincoln, 40
cycles with “O. B.,” 222
death of his brother Martin, 78
death of his sister Nellie, 252
disquieting letters from his mother, 252, 317
_Dodo_, publication of, 292
edits _The Marlburian_, 194
Empress Frederick and, 284
enjoyments during a foggy Christmas, 175
excavations at Megalopolis, 288
fails in a scholarship examination, 125
father appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, 163
first view of the Parthenon, 279
first visit to Crystal Palace, 111
friendship with Regie Lister, 305 _et seq._
games and school matches at Marlborough, 203
Greece, the spell of, 308
hide-and-seek at Lincoln, 35
his father, 13, 42, 62, 102 (_see_ also Benson, Edward White)
his mother, 18 _et seq._, 27, 29, 40, 58, 61,
102, 106 (_see_ also Benson, Mrs.)
holidays in the Lake District, 209
hoop-bowling at Marlborough, 200
in Algiers, 254, 276, 277
in Athens, 279 _et seq._, 303 _et seq._
in Egypt, 254
influence of A. H. Beesly on, 155 _et seq._
journeys to Truro for opening of Cathedral, 235
lacks effective ambition, 123
Lambeth and Addington, 163 _et seq._
lean years at school, 108 _et seq._
learns to swim, 56
liberty and leisure at Addington, 251
Lincoln, reminiscences of, 52 _et seq._
love of music, 58, 68, 112, 152
lure of the mountains, 130
meets Mary Anderson, 235
Mrs. Gladstone’s telegram announcing death of his father, 322
natural history studies of, 65, 66, 96
parental encouragement of hobbies, 57
poetical efforts of, 93, 121
Pontresina, a trip to, and his brother Hugh, 263
private schooldays, and holidays, 80 _et seq._
Reeve, the Rev. J. A., a pen picture of, 73
revisits Marlborough, 235
_Rubicon, The_, published, and adverse critiques, 296 _et seq._
scholarships at King’s, 230, 263
schooldays at East Sheen, 80, 108, 114
schoolfellows expelled, 89
“Sieges--the most dangerous game since the world began,” 39
_Sketches from Marlborough_, publication of, 232
Sundays at Lincoln and at Addington, 46, 183
Swiss mountain-climbing, 41 _et seq._
the charm of the sea, 56
the passing-bell at Marlborough, 209
the tragedy of a stickleback, 67
tours Normandy and Brittany, 244
Turkish delight, midnight revels, and the sequel, 115 _et seq._
Wellington and the beginning, 13 _et seq._
widening horizons of, 147 _et seq._
wins a foundation scholarship, 145
Benson, Edward White (father), a wet holiday in the Lake District, 209
accompanies author to Marlborough, 137
Algerian tours of, 254, 276, 277
and his son Hugh, 127
and Robert Browning, 237
and the erection of Truro Cathedral, 101
and the Lincoln judgment, 250, 253
appointed Bishop of Truro, 62
as picture-hanger, 25
becomes Archbishop of Canterbury, 163
Chancellor of Lincoln, 32
death of his eldest son, 78
dinner parties at Lambeth Palace, 237
Easter visits to Florence, 181
frequent fits of depression, 103, 105, 180
headmaster of Wellington College, 13
his death at Hawarden Church, 322
his dislike of tobacco, 238
his sternness, and the cause, 103
holiday “leisure” of, 132, 133, 210, 278
last farewell to his children, 321
love of the classics, 181
Press reviews of _The Rubicon_, and, 300
Queen Victoria and, 277
relentless Sundays of, 183
tour through Ireland, 321
visits Carthage, 278
Benson, Maggie (sister), 22, 25, 54, 127, 178, 275
conducts excavations of a Karnak temple, 312, 315
develops congestion of the lungs in Egypt, 317
guinea-pig rearing by, 93
her _Venture of Rational Faith_, 314
ill-health of, 312
in Athens, 303
prizes at Truro High School, 127
publishes _Subject to Vanity_, 314
researches in Chemistry, 94
trips to Algiers and to Egypt, 254, 276
Benson, Martin (brother), 22, 23, 25, 30
at Winchester, 124
death of, 78
precocity of, 75
Benson, Mrs. (mother), a stanza by, 94
and her children, 40, 106, 167
at Addington, 179
death of, 254
death of her daughter Nellie, 252
fear as her enemy, 173, 318
friendship with Mr. Gladstone, 165
her subscriptions as “honorary member,” 99, 100
how she whiled away a wet afternoon, 212
informs author of the _Dodo_ “boom,” 294
letters to “Beth” on illness and death of her son Martin, 76, 77
religious instincts of, 78, 102, 168, 175
smokes a pipe on the Alps, 240
Benson, Nellie (sister), 22, 65, 98, 99, 251
an article in _Temple Bar_ by, 177
an attack of pleurodynia, 209
and her father, 105
ascends the Zienal Rothhorn, 243
at Truro High School, 126
Bishop Wordsworth and, 52
death of, 252
distributes prizes at Marlborough, 206
Benson, Robert Hugh (brother), a mountain climb--and the sequel, 264
a play by, 177
as henchman to a mystical “Chapter,” 99
as preacher, 320
at Cambridge, 250
attached to Eton Mission, Hackney Wick, 318
“Beth” and, 211
childish piety of, 101
early journalistic efforts of, 93
family caricatures by, 210
his father and, 127
joins the Roman church, 102, 319
lays a stone for erection of Truro Cathedral, 101
propagandist novels by, 320
skating in a fog, 176
studies at Llandaff, 318
takes orders, 102
wins a scholarship at Eton, 210
Berne, a day and night at, 129
“Beth” (_see_ Cooper, Elizabeth)
Bird’s-nesting in Cornwall, 65
Biskra, a Royal bereavement: news received at, 277
Bosanquet, R. Carr, 226
Bramston, Miss, as authoress, 41, 42
in Cornwall, 76
Braun, Miss, 75
“Brewing” at Marlborough: function described, 140
Browning, Oscar, 45, 221 _et seq._
contributes a poem to _Cambridge Fortnightly_, 231
his At-Homes at Cambridge, 224
Browning, Robert, author’s meeting with, 237
Bubb, Mr., Clerk of Works of Truro Cathedral, 101
Burton, Willie, 60, 61
Butterflies and moths, holiday collection of, 95, 146
Calverley, Charles Stuart, 259
_Cambridge Fortnightly_, the, 232
Cambridge University: author at, 213 _et seq._
King’s College, 213
Canterbury, Archbishop of (_see_ Benson, Edward White)
Capri, a visit to, 321
Carter, Mrs., organist of Kenwyn Church: a boyish romance, 68
Carthage, a visit to, 278
Cathedral, the first post-Reformation, 100
“Chapter,” a mystical, 99
Chemistry, holiday researches in, 94
Chester, archæological researches at, 267
“Chitchat” literary society, 226
Clarence, Duke of, and “O. B.,” death of, 222, 276
Constantine, Crown Prince of Greece (afterwards King “Tino”), 283
Cooper, Elizabeth (“Beth”), 15, 18, 22, 33, 36, 38,
42, 74, 96, 107, 128, 321, 322
and Hugh Benson, 18, 127
and the Archbishop, 221
games at Addington, 251
her love for Mrs. Benson, 211
Mrs. Benson’s letter announcing illness and death of Martin, 77, 78
Copeland, May, 60
Cornwall, the charms of, 62
Crawford, Lady, entertains Archbishop and Mrs. Benson, 180
Crystal Palace, the, first visit to, 111
Cunningham, Dr., a story of, 228
_Daily Chronicle_, the, an unfavourable review of _The Rubicon_ in, 299
Decemviri Debating Society, the, 229
Deir-el-Bahari, archæological explorations at, 310, 314
Delphi, French excavations at, 289
Dickinson, G. Lowes, 231
_Dodo_, Lucas Malet’s frank letters on, 291
publication of, 292
read by Mrs. Benson and by Henry James, 272
the infancy of, 178
Dörpfeld, Dr., and Miss Maggie Benson, 303
and the fourth century Greek theatres, 288
_Duchess of Bayswater_, a representation of, in Athens, 304
Easedale Rectory, a wet holiday in, 209
East Sheen, author’s schooldays at, 80 _et seq._
Edgar, Mr., headmaster of Temple Grove School, 114
a bad report from, 117
Edhem Pasha, 281
Egerton, Sir Edwin, 285
and Miss Maggie Benson, 303
as host, 308
Egypt, visits to, 254, 308
Epidaurus, a visit to, 289
Eton, a second failure for scholarship at, 125
Arthur Benson at, 87, 124, 250, 318
Etretat, holidays at, 86
Fal, the, bathing in, 100
Ford, Lionel, headmaster of Harrow, 226
Frederick, Empress, and author, 284
Friendships of schoolboys, how made and how retained, 151
Fry, Roger, and the _Cambridge Fortnightly_, 231
Geoghehan, Mr., fourth form master at East Sheen school, 83
George V (then Duke of York) dines at Lambeth Palace, 238
(then Prince of Wales) and the death of the Duke of Clarence, 277
George, King of Greece, 281
an audience with, 282
and his sister’s hat, 288
George, Prince (of Greece), 284
Germany, Crown Princess of, and Oscar Browning, 222
Giles, Mrs., her day-school and the scholars, 41, 60
Gimmelwald, arrival at, 133
Gladstone, Mrs., a fateful telegram from, 322
Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., a dissertation on blotting-paper squeezes, 267
and the Chester archæological researches, 261
friendship with Mrs. Benson, 166
Golf on the snow and in a fog, 176
Goodhart, Arthur, at King’s College, 226
Greece, the Court of, 283
author in, 286 _et seq._
the spell of, 308
Greek theatres, German theory regarding, 286
Guinea-pigs reared by Maggie Benson, 93, 94
Halsbury, Lord, at Lambeth Palace, 167
Handel Festival at Crystal Palace, 110, 113
Hare, Thomas, 86
Harrison, Mrs. (“Lucas Malet”), reads _Dodo_, 290
Hatasoo, Queen, and Sen-mut, 316
Hawarden, author interviews Mr. Gladstone at, 267
Gladstone’s tribute to Mrs. Benson at, 166
Hawarden Church, tragic death of the Archbishop in, 323
Headlam, Walter, at King’s College, 226
Henry VI, and King’s College, Cambridge, 213
Hobbies as a preservative of youth, 58
_Image in the Sand, The_, 311
Irish tour of the Archbishop and Mrs. Benson, 321
Irving, Harry, recitations at Marlborough Penny Readings, 202
James, Henry, earlier and later works of, 272
reads _Dodo_, 272
James, Monty, Provost of Eton, as mimic, 226, 229
readings from Dickens by, 229
Jungfrau, the, an ascent of, in thick snow, 249
first glimpse of, 130
Karnak, excavations in the temple of Mut, 312
Kenwyn Church and its organist, 72
Kenwyn Vicarage, 63
King, Dr., Bishop of Lincoln, trial of, 250
King’s College, Cambridge, a notable life-fellow of, 221
eccentric, Fellows of, 214 _et seq._
glee-singing at, 217
life at, 226 _et seq._
the chapel, 233
Lake district, the, a wet holiday in, 209
Lambeth Palace, dinner parties at, 237
Mrs. Benson as hostess at, 164
Leigh, Augustus Austen, Vice-Provost of King’s, 216
Lincoln and early emotions, 32 _et seq._
and demoniacal possession, 52 _et seq._
Sundays at, 45
the Cathedral, 45 _et seq._
trial, the, Archbishop Benson and, 249, 253
Lister, Regie, and a theatrical performance in Athens, 304
author and, 306
his genius for friendship, 305
Llandaff, Hugh Benson at, 318
Luxor, a stay at, 310
Lyttelton, Alfred, the secret of his popularity, 305
“Malet, Lucas” (_see_ Harrison, Mrs.)
Mann, Dr., 234
Marie, Princess (of Greece), 284
Markham, Admiral, and a theatrical performance in Athens, 304
Marlborough College, an indulgent house-master, 194
author at, 137
author promoted to sixth form, 190
life at, 138
Penny Readings at, 201
the racket-court, 158
unsuccessful scholarship examination at, 125
_Marlburian_, the, 199
Mary, Princess, Duchess of Teck, a children’s party at White Lodge, 86
Matterhorn, ascent of: a perilous descent, 241
Megalopolis, archæological excavations at, 288
Middleton, Professor, and his love of archæology, 255 _et seq._
Miles, Eustace, a hoop-bowling run with author, 200
a unique alliance with author, 196
his aptitude for study, 243
Mill, John Stuart, 86
Mommsen, Professor, and the Chester archæological researches, 267
Mountain-climbing, 131, 241 _et seq._
Murren, lawn tennis at, 134
Mycenæ, a visit to, 289
Myers, F. W., an original verse by--and a parody, 261
Naville, M., his explorations at Deir-el-Bahari, 313
Newberry, Mr., and the Karnak excavations, 313
Nicholas, Prince (of Greece), 284
Nixon, J. E., Latin prose lecturer, 216, 231 _et seq._
Nocton expeditions to, 55
“O. B.” (_see_ Browning, Oscar)
Okes, Dr., Provost of King’s, 216
Olga, Queen, 283
and _Dodo_, 304
Olympia visited by author, 289
Pain, Barry, his parody in _Cambridge Fortnightly_, 231
_Pall Mall Gazette_ reviews author’s _Rubicon_, 297
Pan-Anglican conference at Lambeth: a story of, 239
Parker, butler at Truro, 127
Parody and parodists, 260
Penny Readings at Marlborough, 201
Perran, picnics at, 100
Petrie, Professor, visits to, 314
Pharsala, battle of: Edhem Pasha’s epigram of, 281
Photography, first efforts at, 95
“Pirates”--the game described, 96
Pitt Club, Cambridge University, 226
Piz Palu, a horrible experience on the, 263
Poetry, author’s early efforts in, 93, 121
“Poetry games,” 93
Pontresina, an unpleasant adventure at, 263
Press-cuttings, unfavourable, 297
Printing press, a primitive, 94
Prior, Mr., of East Sheen school, 83
Racket Court, Marlborough College, 161
Rawlings, Mr., first form teacher at East Sheen school, 83
Reeve, Rev. J. A., reminiscences of, 73
Riffel-Alp, climbing: a perilous descent, 241
Riseholme, enjoyable days at, 53
Rotten Row, exercise in, 164
_Rubicon, The_, publication of: Press reviews, 296
Russell, Mrs., author’s music-teacher, and a tribute to, 80, 111
_St. James’s Budget_ and _The Rubicon_, 299
St. Mary’s Church, Truro, 100
St. Paul’s Cathedral, Passion music at, 112
_Saturday Magazine_, the, 56, 92, 176
a Swiss edition of, 243
Savernake Forest, butterfly collecting in, 146
Schilthorn, the ascent of, 134
Sen-mut, Egyptian architect, 316
Sermon paper, a new use for, 92, 177
Sharpe, Mr., objects to hoop-bowling, 200
Sidgwick, Arthur (uncle), 30
Sidgwick, Henry (uncle), an astronomical poem by, 93
visits Wellington, 30
Sidgwick, Mrs., 18, 30
Sidgwick, William (uncle), 30
Skating under difficulties, 176
Skegness, a visit to, 56
_Standard_ the, a review of author’s _Rubicon_, 297
Staunton Prize, the, conditions of, 146
Stephen, J. K., as parodist, 257
death of, 263
inaugurates the “T. A. F.,” 328
personality of, 259
Sundays at Addington, 183
at Lincoln, 44
Switzerland, holidays in, 129
“T. A. F.,” the, at Cambridge, 229
Tait, Lucy, a tour in Algeria, 276
her devotion to Mrs. Benson, 254
Teck, Duchess of (_see_ Mary, Princess)
Teck, Duke of, a cigar and a squib, 86
Temple, Bishop (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), 56
Tennant, Miss Margot, 266
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, at Lambeth Palace, 238
Thothmes, King, and the temple hieroglyphic inscriptions, 316
Thun, lake of, 130
Tobogganing under difficulties, 175
Torquay, summer holidays at, 56
Toswill, Mr., a zealous Alpinist, 240
“Trojan Queen’s Revenge, The,” and its author, 156
Truro, author’s father appointed Bishop of, 62
erection of the Cathedral at, 100
Truro Cathedral, opening of, 235
Tuck, Mrs., 75
_Vanity Fair_ reviews _The Rubicon_, 297
Vaughan, Dean, of Llandaff, 318
Victoria, Queen, and the Archbishop’s Algerian tour, 277
and the see of Truro, 62
_Vintage, The_, how and where written, 311
Voltaire, M., French master at East Sheen, 80, 83
Waldstein, Dr., 255
Waterfield, Ottiwell, and his private school at East Sheen, 80 _et seq._
as elocutionist, 80, 109
Waterfield, Mrs., 110, 111
Wellington College, and its headmaster, 13
the dining-room, 23
Westminster, Duke of, an interview with, 266
White Lodge, Richmond Park, children’s parties at, 86
Wilde, Oscar, a tale of, 300
Wordsworth, Bishop, of Lincoln, 52
Wordsworth, Mrs., and family, 52
Wordsworth, William, Jim Stephen’s parodies of, 260
_World, The_, on _The Rubicon_, 307
Zienal Rothhorn, the, author’s ascent of, 243
End of Project Gutenberg's Our Family Affairs, 1867-1896, by E. F. Benson