about. What you said practically amounted to a charge of hedonism. Of
course much depends upon the way in which the word is applied, because
I suppose that the large majority of men are hedonists, in the sense
that they pursue as far as possible their own pleasure. But the
particular kind of hedonism of which you spoke, Epicureanism, bears the
sense of a certain degree of malingering. It implies that the person
who pursues the course which I indicated is for some reason or other
shirking his duty in the world. It is against this that I wish to
defend myself; I would say in the first place that what I was
recommending was a very different sort of thing. I was rather
attacking a certain sheepishness of character which seems to me to be
the danger of our present type of education. The practical ideal held
up before boys at our public schools is that they should be virtuous
and industrious; and that after they have satisfied both these claims,
they should amuse themselves in what is held to be a manly way; that
they should fill their vacant hours with open-air exercise and talk
about games; a little light reading is not objected to; but it is
tacitly assumed that to be interested in ideas, in literature, art, and
music is rather a dilettante business. I was reminded of a memorable
conversation I once had with a man of some note, a great landowner and
prominent politician. He was talking confidentially to me about his
sons and their professions. One of the boys manifested a really
remarkable artistic gift; he was a draughtsman of extraordinary skill,
and I said something about his taking up art seriously. The great man
said that it would never do. 'I consider it almost a misfortune,' he
added, 'that the boy is so clever an artist, because it would be out of
the question for him, in his position, to take up what is, after all,
rather a disreputable profession. I have talked to him seriously about
it, and I have said that there is no harm in his amusing himself in
that way; but he must have a serious occupation._'
"_That is a very fair instance of the way in which the pursuit of art
is regarded among our solid classes--as distinctly a trade for an
adventurer. It will be a long time before we alter that. But the
truth is that this kind of conventionalism is what makes us so stupid a
nation. We have no sort of taste for simplicity in life. A man who
lived in a cottage, occupied in quiet and intellectual pursuits, would
be held to be a failure, even if he lived in innocent happiness to the
age of eighty. My own firm belief is that this is all wrong. It opens
up all sorts of obscure and bewildering questions as to why we are sent
into the world at all; but my idea is that we are meant to be happy if
we can, and that a great many people miss happiness, because they have
not the courage to pursue it in their own way. I cannot believe myself
that the complicated creature, so frail of frame, so limitless in
dreams and hopes, is the result of a vortex. I cannot believe that we
can be created except by a power that in a certain degree resembles
ourselves. If we have remote dreams of love and liberty, of justice
and truth, I believe that those ideas must exist in a sublime degree in
the mind of our Maker. I believe, on the whole, though there are many
difficulties in the way of the theory, that life is meant for most of
us to be an educative process; that we are meant to quit the world
wiser, nobler, more patient than we entered it; why the whole business
is so intolerably slow, why we are so hampered by traditions and
instincts that retard the process, I cannot conceive; but my belief is
that we must as far as possible choose a course which leads us in the
direction of the thoughts that we conceive to be noble and true. We
may make mistakes, we may wander sadly from the way, but I believe that
it is our duty, our best hope, to try and perceive what it is that God
is trying to teach us. Now, our choice must be to a great extent a
matter of temperament. Some men like work, activity, influence,
relations with others. Well, if they sincerely believe that they are
meant to pursue these things, it is their duty to do so. Others, like
myself, seem to be gifted with a sensitiveness of perception, an
appreciation of beauty in many forms. I cannot believe that such an
organisation is given me fortuitously, and that I am merely meant to
suppress it. Of course the same argument could be used sophistically
by a man with strong sensual passions and appetites, who could
similarly urge that he must be intended to gratify them. But such
gratification leads both to personal disaster and to the increase of
unhappiness in the race. Such instincts as I recognise in myself seem
to me to do neither. I believe that poets, artists, and musicians, to
say nothing of religious teachers, have effected almost more for the
welfare of the race than statesmen, patriots, and philanthropists. Of
course the necessary work of the world has got to be done; but my own
belief is that a good deal more than is necessary is done, because
people pursue luxury rather than simplicity. I recognise to the full
the duty of work; but, to be quite honest, I think that a serious man
who will preach simplicity, disseminate ideas, suggest possibilities of
intellectual and artistic pleasure, can do a very real work. Such a
man must be disinterested; he must not desire fame or influence; he
must be content if he can sow the seeds of beauty in a few minds._
"_Now the Maudle and Postlethwaite school are not concerned with
anything of the kind. They merely desire to make a sort of brightly
polished mirror of their minds, capable of reflecting all sorts of
beautiful effects, and this is an essentially effeminate thing to do,
because it exalts the appreciation of sensation above all other aims;
that is the pursuit of artistic luxury, and it is, as you say, quite
inconsistent with good citizenship. But I do not think that my own
theory is in the least inconsistent with good citizenship. I have no
admiration for the citizenship the end of which is to make a
comfortable corner for oneself at the expense of others; I do not at
all believe that every man of ideals is bound to take a part in the
administration of the community. We can easily have too many
administrators; and that ends in the dismal slough of municipal
politics. After all, we must nowadays all be specialists, and a man
has as much right to specialise in beauty as he has to specialise in
Greek Grammar. In fact a specialist in Greek Grammar has as his
ultimate view the clearer and nicer appreciation of the shades of Greek
expression, and is merely serving a high ideal of mental refinement.
It seems to me purely conventional to accept as valuable the work of a
commentator on Sophocles, because it is traditionally respectable, and
to say that a commentator on sunsets, as I once heard a poet described,
is an effeminate dilettante. It is the motive that matters.
Personally, I think that a man who has drifted into writing a
commentary on Sophocles, because he happens to find that he can earn a
living that way, is no more worthy of admiration than a man who earns
his living by billiard-marking. Neither are necessary to the world.
But the commentator and the billiard-marker are alike admirable, if
they are working out a theory, if they think that thus and thus they
can best help on the progress of the world._
"_My own desire is, so to speak, to be a commentator on life, in one
particular aspect. I think the world would be all the better if there
were a finer appreciation of what is noble and beautiful, a deeper
discrimination of motives, a larger speculation as to the methods and
objects of our pilgrimage. I think the coarseness of the intellectual
and spiritual palate that prevails widely nowadays is not only a
misfortune, I think it is of the nature of sin. If people could live
more in the generous visions of poets, if they could be taught to see
beauty in trees and fields and buildings, I think they would be happier
and better. Most people are obliged to spend the solid hours of the
day in necessary work. The more sordid that work is, the more
advisable it is to cultivate a perception of the quality of things.
Every one has hours of recreation in every day; the more such hours are
filled with pleasant, simple, hopeful, beautiful thoughts, the better
for us all._
"_Of course I may be quite wrong; I may be meant to find out my
mistake; but I seem to discern in the teaching of Christ a desire to
make men see the true values of life, to appreciate what is beautiful
and tender in simple lives and homely relationships. The teaching of
Christ seems to me to be uniquely and essentially poetical, and to
point to the fact that the up-lifting of the human heart in admiration,
hope, and love, is the cure for some, at least, of our manifold ills.
That is my own theory of life, and I do not see that it is effeminate,
or even unpractical; and it is a mere caricature of it to call it
Epicurean. What does complicate life is the feeble acceptance of
conventional views, the doing of things, not because one hopes for
happiness out of them, not even because one likes them, but because one
sees other people doing them. Even in the most sheltered existence,
like my own, there are plenty of things which provide a bracing tonic
against self-satisfaction. There are the criticism and disapproval of
others, contempt, hostility; there are illness, and sorrow, and the
fear of death. No one of a sensitive nature can hope to live an
untroubled life; but to court unhappiness for the sake of its tonic
qualities seems to me no more reasonable than to refuse an anaesthetic
on the ground that it is interfering with natural processes._
"_I don't know that I expect to convert you; but at least I am glad to
make my position clear. I don't assume that I am in the right. I only
know that I am trying to do what appears to me to be right, trying to
simplify the issues of life, to unravel the tangle in which so many
people seem to me to acquiesce helplessly and timidly._"
XXXVI
The Mill--The Stream's Pilgrimage
There were days, of course, when Hugh's reflections took an
irrepressibly optimistic turn. Such was a bright day in the late
summer, when the sun shone with a temperate clearness, and big white
clouds, like fragments torn from some aerial pack of cotton-wool, moved
blithely in the sky. Hugh rode--he was staying at his mother's
house--to a little village perched astride on a great ridge. He
diverged from the road to visit the ancient church, built of massive
stone and roofed with big stone-tiles; up there, swept by strong winds,
splashed by fierce rains, it had grown to look like a crag rather than
a building. By the side of it ran a little, steep, narrow lane, which
he had never explored; he rode cautiously down the stony track, among
thick hazel copses; occasionally, through a gap, he had a view of a
great valley, all wild with wood; once or twice he passed a timbered
farmhouse, with tall brick chimneys. The country round about was much
invaded by new, pert houses, but there were none here; and Hugh
supposed that this road, which seemed the only track into the valley,
was of so forbidding a steepness that it had not occurred to any one to
settle there. The road became more and more precipitous, and at the
very bottom, having descended nearly three hundred feet, Hugh found
himself in a very beautiful place. He thought he had never seen
anything more sweetly, more characteristically English. On one side
was a rough field, encircled by forest on all sides; here stood some
old wooden sheds and byres; and one or two green rides passed
glimmering into the thick copse, with a charming air of mystery, as
though they led to some sequestered woodland paradise. To the right
was a mill, with a great pond thick with bulrushes and water-lilies,
full of water-birds, coots and moorhens, which swam about, uttering
plaintive cries. The mill was of wood, the planks warped and
weather-stained, the tiled root covered with mosses; the mill-house
itself was a quaint brick building, with a pretty garden, full of
old-fashioned flowers, sloping down to the pool; a big flight of
pigeons circled round and round in the breeze, turning with a sudden
clatter of wings; behind the house were small sandstone bluffs, fringed
with feathery ashes, and the wood ran up steeply above into the sky.
It looked like an old steel-engraving, like a picture by Morland or
Constable. The blue smoke went up from the chimneys in that sheltered
nook, rising straight into the air, lending a rich colour to the trees
behind. Hugh thought it would be a beautiful place to live in, so
remote from the world, in that still valley, where the only sound was
the wind in the copses, the trickle of the mill-leat, and the slow
thunder of the dripping wheel within. Yet he supposed that the simple
people who lived there were probably unconscious of its beauty, and
only aware that the roads which led to the spot were inconveniently
steep. Still, it was hard to think that the charm of the place would
not pass insensibly into the hearts, perhaps even into the faces, of
the dwellers there.
He stood for a little to see the bright water leaping clear and fresh
from the sluice. There was a delicious scent of cool river-plants
everywhere. It was hard not to think that the stream, bickering out in
the sun from the still pool, had a sense of joy and delight. It was
passing, passing; Hugh could trace in thought every mile of the way;
down the wooded valley it was bound, running over the brown gravel, by
shady wood-ends and pasture-sides; then it would pass out into the
plain, and run, a full and brimming stream, between high sandy banks,
half hidden by the thick, glossy-leaved alders. Hugh knew the broad
water-meadows down below, with the low hills on either side, where big
water-plants grew in marshy places, and where the cattle moved slowly
about through the still hours. Soon the stream would be running by the
great downs--it was a river now, bearing boats upon it--till it passed
by the wharves and beneath the bridges of the little town, and out into
the great sea-flat, meeting, with how strange a wonder, the
upward-creeping briny tide, with its sharp savours and its wholesome
smell; till it flowed at last by the docks, where the big steamers lay
unlading, blowing their loud sea-horns, past weed-fringed piers and
shingly beaches, until it was mingled with the moving deep, where the
waves ran higher on the blue sea-line, and the great buoy rolled and
dipped above the shoal.
And then, perhaps, it would be drawn up again in twisted wreaths of
mist, rising in vapour beneath the breathless sun, to float back,
perhaps, in clouds over the earth, and begin its little pilgrimage
again.
Was the same true, he wondered, of himself, of everything about him?
Was it all a never-ending, an unwearying pilgrimage? Was death itself
but the merging of the atom in the element, and then, perhaps, the race
began again? On such a day as this, of bright sun and eager air, it
seemed sweet to think that it was even so. This soul-stuff, that one
called oneself, wafted out of the unknown, strangely entangled with the
bodily elements, would it perhaps mingle again with earthly conditions,
borne round and round in an endless progression? Yet, if this was so,
why did one seem, not part of the world, but a thing so wholly distinct
and individual? To-day, indeed, Hugh seemed to be akin to the earth,
and felt as though all that breathed or moved and lived had a
brotherly, a sisterly greeting for him. As he moved slowly on up the
steep road, a child playing by the wayside, encouraged perhaps by a
loving brightness that rose from Hugh's heart into his face, nodded and
smiled to him shyly. Hugh smiled back, and waved his hand. That
childish smile came to him as a confirmation of his blithe mood; there
were others, then, bound on the same pilgrimage as himself, who wished
him well, and shared his happiness. To pass thus smiling through the
world, heedless as far as might be of weariness and sorrow, taking the
simple joys that flowed so freely, if only one divested oneself of the
hard and dull ambitions that made life into a struggle and a
contest--that was, perhaps, the secret! There would be days, no doubt,
of gloom and heaviness; days when life would run, like the stream which
he could hear murmuring below him, through dark coverts, dripping with
rain; days of frost, when nature was leafless and benumbed, and when
the rut was barred with icy spikes. But one could live in hope and
faith, waiting for the summer days, when life ran swift and bright;
under a pale sunset sky, till the streaks of crimson light died into a
transparent green; and the stream ran joyfully, under the stars,
wondering what sweet unfamiliar place might stand revealed, when the
day climbed slowly in the east, and the dew globed itself upon the
fresh grass, in the invigorating sweetness, the cool fragrance of the
dawn.
XXXVII
A Garden Scene--The Wine of the Soul
One hot cloudless day of summer, Hugh took a train, and, descending at
a quiet wayside station, walked to a little place deep in the country,
to see the remains of an ancient house which he was told had a great
beauty. He found the place with some difficulty. The church, to which
he first directed his steps, was very ancient and almost ruinous. It
was evidently far too big for the needs of the little hamlet, and it
was so poorly endowed that it was difficult to find any one who would
take the living. A great avenue of chestnuts, with a grass-grown walk
beneath, led up to the porch. He entered by a curious iron-bound door,
under a Norman arch of very quaint workmanship. The church was of
different dates, and the very neglect which it suffered gave it an
extreme picturesqueness. One of its fine features was a brick chapel,
built at the east end of one of the aisles, where an old baron lay in
state, in black armour, his eyes closed quietly, his pointed beard on
his breast, his hands folded, as though he lay praying to himself. The
heavy marble pillars of the shrine were carved with a stiff ornament of
vine-leaves and grape-clusters, and the canopy rose pompously to the
roof, with its cognisances and devices. There were many monuments in
the church, on which Hugh read the history of the ancient family, now
engulphed in a family more wealthy and ancient still; the latest of the
memorials was that of a lady, whose head, sculptured by Chantrey, with
its odd puffs of hair, had a discreet and smiling mien, as of one who
had known enough sorrow to purge prosperity of its grossness. From the
churchyard there led a little path, which skirted a wide moat of dark
water, full of innumerable fish, basking in the warmth; in the centre
of the moat stood a dark grove of trees, with a thick undergrowth.
Suddenly, through an opening, Hugh saw the turrets of an ancient
gatehouse, built of mellow brick, rising into the sunlight, with an
astonishing sweetness and nobleness of air; below was a lawn, bordered
by yew-hedges, where a party of people, ladies in bright dresses and
leisurely men, were sitting talking with a look of smiling content. It
was more like a scene in a romance than a thing in real life. Hugh
stood unobserved beneath a tree, and looked long at the delightful
picture; and then presently wandered further by a grassy lane, with
high hedges full of wild roses and elder-blooms, where the air had a
hot, honied perfume. He came in a moment to a great clear stream
running silently between banks full of meadow-sweet and loosestrife.
The turrets of the gatehouse looked pleasantly over the trees of the
little park that lay on the other side of the stream. The air was
still but fresh. The trees stood silent, with the metallic look of
high summer upon their stiff leaves, as though seen in a picture. The
whole landscape seemed to have a consecration of quiet joy and peace
over it. It seemed a place made for the walks of rustic lovers, on
summer evenings, under a low-hung moon. The whole scene, the homely
bridge, the murmur of the water in the pool, the blossoming hedges, had
a sense of delicate romance about it. It seemed to stand for so much
happiness, and to draw Hugh into the charmed circle.
The difficulty was somehow to believe that the place was in reality a
centre of real and ordinary life; it seemed almost impossibly beautiful
and delicious to Hugh, like a play enacted for his sole benefit, a
sweet tale told. Those gracious persons in the garden seemed like
people in a scene out of Boccaccio, whose past and whose future are
alike veiled and unknown, and who just emerge, in the light of art, as
a sweet company seen for an instant, and yet somehow eternally there.
But the thought that they were persons like himself, with cares,
schemes, anxieties, appeared inconceivable; that was one of the curious
illusions of life, that the world through which one moved seemed to
group itself for one's delight into a pleasant vision, which had no
concern for oneself except to brighten and enhance the warm sunlit day
with an indescribable grace and beauty. How hard to think that it was
all changing and shifting, even while one gazed! that the clear water,
lapsing through the sluice, was passing onwards, and could never again
be at that one sweet point of its seaward course; that the roses were
fading and dying beside him; that the pleasant group on the lawn must
soon break up, never perhaps to reassemble. If one could but arrest
the quiet flow of things for a moment, suspend it for a period, however
brief! That was after all the joy of art, that it caught such a moment
as that, while the smiling faces turned to each other, while the sun
lay warm on the brickwork, and made it immortal!
There came into Hugh's mind the thought that this deep thirst for peace
might somehow yet be satisfied. How could he otherwise conceive of it,
how could he dream so clearly of it, if it were not actually there? He
thought that there must be a region where the pulse of time should
cease to beat, where there should be no restless looking backwards and
forwards, but where the spirit should brood in an unending joy; but
now, the world thrust one forward, impatient, unsatisfied; even as he
gazed, the shadows had shifted and lengthened, and the thought of the
world, that called him back to care and anxiety, began to overshadow
him. Was it a phantom that mocked him? or was it not rather a type, an
allegory of something unchanged and unchangeable, that waited for him
beyond? And then, in that still afternoon, there came to him a sense
that occasionally visited him, and that seemed, when it came, the
truest and best thing in the world, the vision of an unseen Friend, to
Whom he was infinitely dear, closer to Him even than to himself, Who
surrounded and enveloped him with care and concern and love; Who
brought him tenderly into the fair green places of the earth, such as
he had visited to-day, whispered him the secret of it all, and only did
not reveal it in its fulness, because the time for him to know it was
not yet, and because the very delay arose from some depth of
unimaginable love. In such a mood as this, Hugh felt that he could
wait in utter confidence; that he could drink in with glad eyes and
ears the beautiful and delicate things that were shown to him, the
rich, luxuriant foliage, the dim sun-warmed stream, the silent trees,
the old towers. There seemed to him nothing that he could not bear,
nothing that he could not gladly do, when so tender a hand was leading
him. He knew indeed that he would again be impatient, restless,
wilful; but for the moment it was as though he had tasted of some
mysterious sacrament; that the wine of some holy cup had been put to
his lips; that he knew that he was not alone, but in the very heart of
a wise and patient God.
XXXVIII
The Lakes--On the Fell--Peace
It was in the later weeks of a hot, still midsummer that Hugh escaped
from Cambridge to the Lakes. He did not realise, until he found
himself driving in the cool of the evening beside Windermere, how
parched and dry his very mind had become in the long heats of the
sun-dried flats. Sometimes the road wound down to the very edge of the
water, lapping deliciously among the stones; sometimes it skirted the
pleasaunces of a cool sheltered villa which lay embowered in trees,
blinking contentedly across the lake. The sight of the great green
hills with their skirts clothed with wood, with trees straggling
upwards along the water-courses, the miniature crags escaping from
oak-coppices, the black heads of bleak mountains, filled him with an
exquisite and speechless delight.