Produced by Don Lainson and Charles Aldarondo. HTML version
by Al Haines.
FROM A COLLEGE WINDOW
By
ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
Mens cujusque is est quisque
1906
NOTE.
Twelve of the essays included in this volume appeared in the _Cornhill
Magazine_. My best thanks are due to the proprietor and editor of the
_Cornhill Magazine_ for kind permission and encouragement to reprint
these. I have added six further papers, dealing with kindred subjects.
A. C. B.
CONTENTS
I. The Point of View
II. On Growing Older
III. Books
IV. Sociabilities
V. Conversation
VI. Beauty
VII. Art
VII. Egotism
IX. Education
X. Authorship
XI. The Criticism of Others
XII. Priest
XIII. Ambition
XIV. The Simple Life
XV. Games
XVI. Spiritualism
XVII. Habits
XVIII. Religion
I
THE POINT OF VIEW
I have lately come to perceive that the one thing which gives value to
any piece of art, whether it be book, or picture, or music, is that
subtle and evasive thing which is called personality. No amount of
labour, of zest, even of accomplishment, can make up for the absence of
this quality. It must be an almost wholly instinctive thing, I believe.
Of course, the mere presence of personality in a work of art is not
sufficient, because the personality revealed may be lacking in charm;
and charm, again, is an instinctive thing. No artist can set out to
capture charm; he will toil all the night and take nothing; but what
every artist can and must aim at, is to have a perfectly sincere point
of view. He must take his chance as to whether his point of view is an
attractive one; but sincerity is the one indispensable thing. It is
useless to take opinions on trust, to retail them, to adopt them; they
must be formed, created, truly felt. The work of a sincere artist is
almost certain to have some value; the work of an insincere artist is
of its very nature worthless.
I mean to try, in the pages that follow, to be as sincere as I can. It
is not an easy task, though it may seem so; for it means a certain
disentangling of the things that one has perceived and felt for oneself
from the prejudices and preferences that have been inherited, or stuck
like burrs upon the soul by education and circumstance.
It may be asked why I should thus obtrude my point of view in print;
why I should not keep my precious experience to myself; what the value
of it is to other people. Well, the answer to that is that it helps our
sense of balance and proportion to know how other people are looking at
life, what they expect from it, what they find in it, and what they do
not find. I have myself an intense curiosity about other people's point
of view, what they do when they are alone, and what they think about.
Edward FitzGerald said that he wished we had more biographies of
obscure persons. How often have I myself wished to ask simple, silent,
deferential people, such as station-masters, butlers, gardeners, what
they make of it all! Yet one cannot do it, and even if one could, ten
to one they would not or could not tell you. But here is going to be a
sedate confession. I am going to take the world into my confidence, and
say, if I can, what I think and feel about the little bit of experience
which I call my life, which seems to me such a strange and often so
bewildering a thing.
Let me speak, then, plainly of what that life has been, and tell what
my point of view is. I was brought up on ordinary English lines. My
father, in a busy life, held a series of what may be called high
official positions. He was an idealist, who, owing to a vigorous power
of practical organization and a mastery of detail, was essentially a
man of affairs. Yet he contrived to be a student too. Thus, owing to
the fact that he often shifted his headquarters, I have seen a good
deal of general society in several parts of England. Moreover, I was
brought up in a distinctly intellectual atmosphere.
I was at a big public school, and gained a scholarship at the
University. I was a moderate scholar and a competent athlete; but I
will add that I had always a strong literary bent. I took in younger
days little interest in history or polities, and tended rather to live
an inner life in the region of friendship and the artistic emotions. If
I had been possessed of private means, I should, no doubt, have become
a full-fledged dilettante. But that doubtful privilege was denied me,
and for a good many years I lived a busy and fairly successful life as
a master at a big public school. I will not dwell upon this, but I will
say that I gained a great interest in the science of education, and
acquired profound misgivings as to the nature of the intellectual
process known by the name of secondary education. More and more I began
to perceive that it is conducted on diffuse, detailed, unbusiness-like
lines. I tried my best, as far as it was consistent with loyalty to an
established system, to correct the faulty bias. But it was with a
profound relief that I found myself suddenly provided with a literary
task of deep interest, and enabled to quit my scholastic labours. At
the same time, I am deeply grateful for the practical experience I was
enabled to gain, and even more for the many true and pleasant
friendships with colleagues, parents, and boys that I was allowed to
form.
What a waste of mental energy it is to be careful and troubled about
one's path in life! Quite unexpectedly, at this juncture, came my
election to a college Fellowship, giving me the one life that I had
always eagerly desired, and the possibility of which had always seemed
closed to me.
I became then a member of a small and definite society, with a few
prescribed duties, just enough, so to speak, to form a hem to my life
of comparative leisure. I had acquired and kept, all through my life as
a schoolmaster, the habit of continuous literary work; not from a sense
of duty, but simply from instinctive pleasure. I found myself at once
at home in my small and beautiful college, rich with all kinds of
ancient and venerable traditions, in buildings of humble and subtle
grace. The little dark-roofed chapel, where I have a stall of my own;
the galleried hall, with its armorial glass; the low, book-lined
library; the panelled combination-room, with its dim portraits of old
worthies: how sweet a setting for a quiet life! Then, too, I have my
own spacious rooms, with a peaceful outlook into a big close, half
orchard, half garden, with bird-haunted thickets and immemorial trees,
bounded by a slow river.
And then, to teach me how "to borrow life and not grow old," the happy
tide of fresh and vigorous life all about me, brisk, confident,
cheerful young men, friendly, sensible, amenable, at that pleasant time
when the world begins to open its rich pages of experience, undimmed at
present by anxiety or care.
My college is one of the smallest in the University. Last night in Hall
I sate next a distinguished man, who is, moreover, very accessible and
pleasant. He unfolded to me his desires for the University. He would
like to amalgamate all the small colleges into groups, so as to have
about half-a-dozen colleges in all. He said, and evidently thought,
that little colleges are woefully circumscribed and petty places; that
most of the better men go to the two or three leading colleges, while
the little establishments are like small backwaters out of the main
stream. They elect, he said, their own men to Fellowships; they resist
improvements; much money is wasted in management, and the whole thing
is minute and feeble. I am afraid it is true in a way; but, on the
other hand, I think that a large college has its defects too. There is
no real college spirit there; it is very nice for two or three sets.
But the different schools which supply a big college form each its own
set there; and if a man goes there from a leading public school, he
falls into his respective set, lives under the traditions and in the
gossip of his old school, and gets to know hardly any one from other
schools. Then the men who come up from smaller places just form small
inferior sets of their own, and really get very little good out of the
place. Big colleges keep up their prestige because the best men tend to
go to them; but I think they do very little for the ordinary men who
have fewer social advantages to start with.
The only cure, said my friend, for these smaller places is to throw
their Fellowships open, and try to get public-spirited and
liberal-minded Dons. Then, he added, they ought to specialize in some
one branch of University teaching, so that the men who belonged to a
particular department would tend to go there.
Well, to-day was a wet day, so I did what I particularly enjoy--I went
off for a slow stroll, and poked about among some of the smaller
colleges. I declare that the idea of tying them all together seemed to
me to be a horrible piece of vandalism. These sweet and gentle little
places, with a quiet, dignified history and tradition of their own, are
very attractive and beautiful. I went and explored a little college I
am ashamed to say I had never visited before. It shows a poor plastered
front to the street, but the old place is there behind the plaster. I
went into a tiny, dark chapel, with a high pillared pediment of carved
wood behind the altar, a rich ceiling, and some fine columned alcoves
where the dignitaries sit. Out of the gallery opens a venerable
library, with a regretful air of the past about its faded volumes in
their high presses, as though it sadly said, "I am of yesterday." Then
we found ourselves in a spacious panelled Hall, with a great oriel
looking out into a peaceful garden, embowered in great trees, with
smiling lawns. All round the Hall hung portraits of old
worthies--peers, judges, and bishops, with some rubicund wigged
Masters. I like to think of the obscure and yet dignified lives that
have been lived in these quaint and stately chambers. I suppose that
there used to be a great deal of tippling and low gossip in the old
days of the vinous, idle Fellows, who hung on for life, forgetting
their books, and just trying to dissipate boredom. One tends to think
that it was all like that; and yet, doubtless, there were quiet lives
of study and meditation led here by wise and simple men who have long
since mouldered into dust. And all that dull rioting is happily over.
The whole place is full of activity and happiness. There is, if
anything, among the Dons, too much business, too many meetings, too
much teaching, and the life of mere study is neglected. But it pleases
me to think that even now there are men who live quietly among their
books, unambitious, perhaps unproductive, but forgetting the flight of
time, and looking out into a pleasant garden, with its rustling trees,
among the sound of mellow bells. We are, most of us, too much in a fuss
nowadays to live these gentle, innocent, and beautiful lives; and yet
the University is a place where a poor man, if he be virtuous, may lead
a life of dignity and simplicity, and refined happiness. We make the
mistake of thinking that all can be done by precept, when, as a matter
of fact, example is no less potent a force. To make such quiet lives
possible was to a great extent what these stately and beautiful places
were founded for--that there should be in the busy world a corner where
activities should not be so urgent, and where life should pass like an
old dream, tinged with delicate colour and soft sound. I declare I do
not know that it is more virtuous to be a clerk in a bank, toiling day
by day that others should be rich, than to live in thought and
meditation, with a heart open to sweet influences and pure hopes. And
yet it seems to be held nowadays that virtue is bound up with practical
life. If a man is content to abjure wealth and to forego marriage, to
live simply without luxuries, he may spend a very dignified, gentle
life here, and at the same time he may be really useful. It is a thing
which is well worth doing to attempt the reconciliation between the old
and the young. Boys come up here under the impression that their
pastors and teachers are all about fifty; they think of them as
sensible, narrow-minded men, and, like Melchizedek, without beginning
of days or end of life. They suppose that they like marking mistakes in
exercises with blue pencil, and take delight in showing their power by
setting punishments. It does not often occur to them that schoolmasters
may be pathetically anxious to guide boys right, and to guard them from
evil. They think of them as devoid of passions and prejudices, with a
little dreary space to traverse before they sink into the tomb. Even in
homes, how seldom does a perfectly simple human relation exist between
a boy and his father! There is often a great deal of affection on both
sides, but little camaraderie. Little boys are odd, tiresome creatures
in many ways, with savage instincts; and I suppose many fathers feel
that, if they are to maintain their authority, they must be a little
distant and inscrutable. A boy goes for sympathy and companionship to
his mother and sisters, not often to his father. Now a Don may do
something to put this straight, if he has the will. One of the best
friends I ever had was an elderly Don at my own college, who had been a
contemporary of my father's. He liked young men; and I used to consult
him and ask his advice in things in which I could not well consult my
own contemporaries. It is not necessary to be extravagantly youthful,
to slap people on the back, to run with the college boat, though that
is very pleasant if it is done naturally. All that is wanted is to be
accessible and quietly genial. And under such influences a young man
may, without becoming elderly, get to understand the older point of
view.
The difficulty is that one acquires habits and mannerisms; one is
crusty and gruff if interfered with. But, as Pater said, to acquire
habits is failure in life. Of course, one must realize limitations, and
learn in what regions one can be effective. But no one need be
case-hardened, smoke-dried, angular. The worst of a University is that
one sees men lingering on because they must earn a living, and there is
nothing else that they can do; but for a human-hearted, good-humoured,
and sensible man, a college life is a life where it is easy and
pleasant to practise benevolence and kindliness, and where a small
investment of trouble pays a large percentage of happiness. Indeed,
surveying it impartially--as impartially as I can--such a life seems to
hold within it perhaps the greatest possibilities of happiness that
life can hold. To have leisure and a degree of simple stateliness
assured; to live in a wholesome dignity; to have the society of the
young and generous; to have lively and intelligent talk; to have the
choice of society and solitude alike; to have one's working hours
respected, and one's leisure hours solaced--is not this better than to
drift into the so-called tide of professional success, with its dreary
hours of work, its conventional domestic background? No doubt the
domestic background has its interests, its delights; but one must pay a
price for everything, and I am more than willing to pay the price of
celibacy for my independence.
The elderly Don in college rooms, interested in Greek particles,
grumbling over his port wine, is a figure beloved by writers of fiction
as a contrast to all that is brave, and bright, and wholesome in life.
Could there be a more hopeless misconception? I do not know a single
extant example of the species at the University. Personally, I have no
love for Greek particles, and only a very moderate taste for port wine.
But I do love, with all my heart, the grace of antiquity that mellows
our crumbling courts, the old tradition of multifarious humanity that
has century by century entwined itself with the very fabric of the
place. I love the youthful spirit that flashes and brightens in every
corner of the old courts, as the wallflower that rises spring by spring
with its rich orange-tawny hue, its wild scent, on the tops of our
mouldering walls. It is a gracious and beautiful life for all who love
peace and reflection, strength and youth. It is not a life for fiery
and dominant natures, eager to conquer, keen to impress; but it is a
life for any one who believes that the best rewards are not the
brightest, who is willing humbly to lend a cheerful hand, to listen as
well as to speak. It is a life for any one who has found that there is
a world of tender, wistful, delicate emotions, subdued and soft
impressions, in which it is peace to live; for one who has learned,
however dimly, that wise and faithful love, quiet and patient hope, are
the bread by which the spirit is nourished--that religion is not an
intellectual or even an ecclesiastical thing, but a far-off and remote
vision of the soul.
I know well the thoughts and hopes that I should desire to speak; but
they are evasive, subtle things, and too often, like shy birds, will
hardly let you approach them. But I would add that life has not been
for me a dreamy thing, lived in soft fantastic reveries; indeed, it has
been far the reverse. I have practised activity, I have mixed much with
my fellows; I have taught, worked, organized, directed. I have watched
men and boys; I have found infinite food for mirth, for interest, and
even for grief. But I have grown to feel that the ambitions which we
preach and the successes for which we prepare are very often nothing
but a missing of the simple road, a troubled wandering among thorny
by-paths and dark mountains. I have grown to believe that the one thing
worth aiming at is simplicity of heart and life; that one's relations
with others should be direct and not diplomatic; that power leaves a
bitter taste in the mouth; that meanness, and hardness, and coldness
are the unforgivable sins; that conventionality is the mother of
dreariness; that pleasure exists not in virtue of material conditions,
but in the joyful heart; that the world is a very interesting and
beautiful place; that congenial labour is the secret of happiness; and
many other things which seem, as I write them down, to be dull and
trite commonplaces, but are for me the bright jewels which I have found
beside the way.
It is, then, from College Windows that I look forth. But even so,
though on the one hand I look upon the green and sheltered garden, with
its air of secluded recollection and repose, a place of quiet pacing to
and fro, of sober and joyful musing; yet on another side I see the
court, with all its fresh and shifting life, its swift interchange of
study and activity; and on yet another side I can observe the street
where the infinite pageant of humanity goes to and fro, a tide full of
sound and foam, of business and laughter, and of sorrow too, and
sickness, and the funeral pomp of death.
This, then, is my point of view. I can truthfully say that it is not
gloomy, and equally that it is not uproarious. I can boast of no deep
philosophy, for I feel, like Dr. Johnson's simple friend Edwards, that
"I have tried, too, in my time, to be a philosopher, but--I don't know
how--cheerfulness was always breaking in." Neither is it the point of
view of a profound and erudite student, with a deep belief in the
efficacy of useless knowledge. Neither am I a humorist, for I have
loved beauty better than laughter; nor a sentimentalist, for I have
abhorred a weak dalliance with personal emotions. It is hard, then, to
say what I am; but it is my hope that this may emerge. My desire is but
to converse with my readers, to speak as in a comfortable tete-a-tete,
of experience, and hope, and patience. I have no wish to disguise the
hard and ugly things of life; they are there, whether one disguises
them or not; but I think that unless one is a professed psychologist or
statistician, one gets little good by dwelling upon them. I have always
believed that it is better to stimulate than to correct, to fortify
rather than to punish, to help rather than to blame. If there is one
attitude that I fear and hate more than another it is the attitude of
the cynic. I believe with all my soul in romance: that is, in a certain
high-hearted, eager dealing with life. I think that one ought to expect
to find things beautiful and people interesting, not to take delight in
detecting meannesses and failures. And there is yet another class of
temperament for which I have a deep detestation. I mean the assured,
the positive, the Pharisaical temper, that believes itself to be
impregnably in the right and its opponents indubitably in the wrong;
the people who deal in axioms and certainties, who think that
compromise is weak and originality vulgar. I detest authority in every
form; I am a sincere republican. In literature, in art, in life, I
think that the only conclusions worth coming to are one's own
conclusions. If they march with the verdict of the connoisseurs, so
much the better for the connoisseurs; if they do not so march, so much
the better for oneself. Every one cannot admire and love everything;
but let a man look at things fairly and without prejudice, and make his
own selection, holding to it firmly, but not endeavouring to impose his
taste upon others; defending, if needs be, his preferences, but making
no claim to authority.
The time of my life that I consider to have been wasted, from the
intellectual point of view, was the time when I tried, in a spirit of
dumb loyalty, to admire all the things that were said to be admirable.
Better spent was the time when I was finding out that much that had
received the stamp of the world's approval was not to be approved, at
least by me; best of all was the time when I was learning to appraise
the value of things to myself, and learning to love them for their own
sake and mine.
Respect of a deferential and constitutional type is out of place in art
and literature. It is a good enough guide to begin one's pilgrimage
with, if one soon parts company from it. Rather one must learn to give
honour where honour is due, to bow down in true reverence before all
spirits that are noble and adorable, whether they wear crowns and bear
titles of honour, or whether they are simple and unnoted persons, who
wear no gold on their garments.
Sincerity and simplicity! if I could only say how I reverence them, how
I desire to mould my life in accordance with them! And I would learn,
too, swiftly to detect the living spirits, whether they be young or
old, in which these great qualities reign.
For I believe that there is in life a great and guarded city, of which
we may be worthy to be citizens. We may, if we are blest, be always of
the happy number, by some kindly gift of God; but we may also, through
misadventure and pain, through errors and blunders, learn the way
thither. And sometimes we discern the city afar off, with her radiant
spires and towers, her walls of strength, her gates of pearl; and there
may come a day, too, when we have found the way thither, and enter in;
happy if we go no more out, but happy, too, even if we may not rest
there, because we know that, however far we wander, there is always a
hearth for us and welcoming smiles.
I speak in a parable, but those who are finding the way will understand
me, however dimly; and those who have found the way, and seen a little
of the glory of the place, will smile at the page and say: "So he, too,
is of the city."
The city is known by many names, and wears different aspects to
different hearts. But one thing is certain--that no one who has entered
there is ever in any doubt again. He may wander far from the walls, he
may visit it but rarely, but it stands there in peace and glory, the
one true and real thing for him in mortal time and in whatever lies
beyond.
II
ON GROWING OLDER
The sun flares red behind leafless elms and battlemented towers as I
come in from a lonely walk beside the river; above the chimney-tops
hangs a thin veil of drifting smoke, blue in the golden light. The
games in the Common are just coming to an end; a stream of long-coated
spectators sets towards the town, mingled with the parti-coloured,
muddied figures of the players. I have been strolling half the
afternoon along the river bank, watching the boats passing up and down;
hearing the shrill cries of coxes, the measured plash of oars, the
rhythmical rattle of rowlocks, intermingled at intervals with the harsh
grinding of the chain-ferries. Five-and-twenty years ago I was rowing
here myself in one of these boats, and I do not wish to renew the
experience. I cannot conceive why and in what moment of feeble
good-nature or misapplied patriotism I ever consented to lend a hand. I
was not a good oar, and did not become a better one; I had no illusions
about my performance, and any momentary complacency was generally
sternly dispelled by the harsh criticism of the coach on the bank, when
we rested for a moment to receive our meed of praise or blame. But
though I have no sort of wish to repeat the process, to renew the
slavery which I found frankly and consistently intolerable, I find
myself looking on at the cheerful scene with an amusement in which
mingles a shadow of pain, because I feel that I have parted with
something, a certain buoyancy and elasticity of body, and perhaps
spirit, of which I was not conscious at the time, but which I now
realize that I must have possessed. It is with an admiration mingled
with envy that I see these youthful, shapely figures, bare-necked and
bare-kneed, swinging rhythmically past. I watch a brisk crew lift a
boat out of the water by a boat-house; half of them duck underneath to
get hold of the other side, and they march up the grating gravel in a
solemn procession. I see a pair of cheerful young men, released from
tubbing, execute a wild and inconsequent dance upon the water's edge; I
see a solemn conference of deep import between a stroke and a coach. I
see a neat, clean-limbed young man go airily up to a well-earned tea,
without, I hope, a care, or an anxiety in his mind, expecting and
intending to spend an agreeable evening. "Oh, Jones of Trinity, oh,
Smith of Queen's," I think to myself, "tua si bona noris! Make the best
of the good time, my boy, before you go off to the office, or the
fourth-form room, or the country parish! Live virtuously, make honest
friends, read the good old books, lay up a store of kindly
recollections, of firelit rooms in venerable courts, of pleasant talks,
of innocent festivities. Very fresh is the cool morning air, very
fragrant is the newly-lighted bird's-eye, very lively is the clink of
knives and forks, very keen is the savour of the roast beef that floats
up to the dark rafters of the College Hall. But the days are short and
the terms are few; and do not forget to be a sensible as well as a
good-humoured young man!"
Thackeray, in a delightful ballad, invites a pretty page to wait till
he comes to forty years: well, I have waited--indeed, I have somewhat
overshot the mark--and to-day the sight of all this brisk life, going
on just as it used to do, with the same insouciance and the same
merriment, makes me wish to reflect, to gather up the fragments, to see
if it is all loss, all declension, or whether there is something left,
some strength in what remains behind.
I have a theory that one ought to grow older in a tranquil and
appropriate way, that one ought to be perfectly contented with one's
time of life, that amusements and pursuits ought to alter naturally and
easily, and not be regretfully abandoned. One ought not to be dragged
protesting from the scene, catching desperately at every doorway and
balustrade; one should walk off smiling. It is easier said than done.
It is not a pleasant moment when a man first recognizes that he is out
of place in the football field, that he cannot stoop with the old
agility to pick up a skimming stroke to cover-point, that dancing is
rather too heating to be decorous, that he cannot walk all day without
undue somnolence after dinner, or rush off after a heavy meal without
indigestion. These are sad moments which we all of us reach, but which
are better laughed over than fretted over. And a man who, out of sheer
inability to part from boyhood, clings desperately and with apoplectic
puffings to these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen
to young men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to
hear one enforcing on another the amusement to be gained from watching
the old buffer's manoeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness.
One can indeed give amusement without loss of dignity, by being open to
being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way,
without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But that is the most that
ought to be attempted. Perhaps the best way of all is to subside into
the genial and interested looker-on, to be ready to applaud the game
you cannot play, and to admire the dexterity you cannot rival.
What then, if any, are the gains that make up for the lack of youthful
prowess? They are, I can contentedly say, many and great. In the first
place, there is the loss of a quality which is productive of an
extraordinary amount of pain among the young, the quality of
self-consciousness. How often was one's peace of mind ruined by
gaucherie, by shyness, by the painful consciousness of having nothing
to say, and the still more painful consciousness of having said the
wrong thing in the wrong way! Of course, it was all immensely
exaggerated. If one went into chapel, for instance, with a straw hat,
which one had forgotten to remove, over a surplice, one had the feeling
for several days that it was written in letters of fire on every wall.
I was myself an ardent conversationalist in early years, and, with the
charming omniscience of youth, fancied that my opinion was far better
worth having than the opinions of Dons encrusted with pedantry and
prejudice. But if I found myself in the society of these petrified
persons, by the time that I had composed a suitable remark, the slender
opening had already closed, and my contribution was either not uttered
at all, or hopelessly belated in its appearance. Or some deep
generalization drawn from the dark backward of my vast experience would
be produced, and either ruthlessly ignored or contemptuously corrected
by some unsympathetic elder of unyielding voice and formed opinions.
And then there was the crushing sense, at the conclusion of one of
these interviews, of having been put down as a tiresome and heavy young
man. I fully believed in my own liveliness and sprightliness, but it
seemed an impossible task to persuade my elders that these qualities
were there. A good-natured, elderly friend used at times to rally me
upon my shyness, and say that it all came from thinking too much about
myself. It was as useless as if one told a man with a toothache that it
was mere self-absorption that made him suffer. For I have no doubt that
the disease of self-consciousness is incident to intelligent youth.
Marie Bashkirtseff, in the terrible self-revealing journals which she
wrote, describes a visit that she paid to some one who had expressed an
interest in her and a desire to see her. She says that as she passed
the threshold of the room she breathed a prayer, "O God, make me worth
seeing!" How often used one to desire to make an impression, to make
oneself felt and appreciated!
Well, all that uneasy craving has left me. I no longer have any
particular desire for or expectation of being impressive. One likes, of
course, to feel fresh and lively; but whereas in the old days I used to
enter a circle with the intention of endeavouring to be felt, of giving
pleasure and interest, I now go in the humble hope of receiving either.
The result is that, having got rid to a great extent of this pompous
and self-regarding attitude of mind, I not only find myself more at
ease, but I also find other people infinitely more interesting. Instead
of laying one's frigate alongside of another craft with the intention
of conducting a boarding expedition, one pays a genial visit by means
of the long-boat with all the circumstance of courtesy and amiability.
instead of desiring to make conquests, I am glad enough to be
tolerated. I dare, too, to say what I think, not alert for any symptoms
of contradiction, but fully aware that my own point of view is but one
of many, and quite prepared to revise it. In the old days I demanded
agreement; I am now amused by divergence. In the old days I desired to
convince; I am now only too thankful to be convinced of error and
ignorance. I now no longer shrink from saying that I know nothing of a
subject; in old days I used to make a pretence of omniscience, and had
to submit irritably to being tamely unmasked. It seems to me that I
must have been an unpleasant young man enough, but I humbly hope that I
was not so disagreeable as might appear.
Another privilege of advancing years is the decreasing tyranny of
convention. I used to desire to do the right thing, to know the right
people, to play the right games. I did not reflect whether it was worth
the sacrifice of personal interest; it was all-important to be in the
swim. Very gradually I discovered that other people troubled their
heads very little about what one did; that the right people were often
the most tiresome and the most conventional, and that the only games
which were worth playing were the games which one enjoyed. I used to
undergo miseries in staying at uncongenial houses, in accepting
shooting invitations when I could not shoot, in going to dances because
the people whom I knew were going. Of course one has plenty of
disagreeable duties to perform in any case; but I discovered gradually
that to adopt the principle of doing disagreeable things which were
supposed to be amusing and agreeable was to misunderstand the whole
situation. Now, if I am asked to stay at a tiresome house, I refuse; I
decline invitations to garden parties and public dinners and dances,
because I know that they will bore me; and as to games, I never play
them if I can help, because I find that they do not entertain me. Of
course there are occasions when one is wanted to fill a gap, and then
it is the duty of a Christian and a gentleman to conform, and to do it
with a good grace. Again, I am not at the mercy of small prejudices, as
I used to be. As a young man, if I disliked the cut of a person's
whiskers or the fashion of his clothes, if I considered his manner to
be abrupt or unpleasing, if I was not interested in his subjects, I set
him down as an impossible person, and made no further attempt to form
acquaintance.
Now I know that these are superficial things, and that a kind heart and
an interesting personality are not inconsistent with boots of a
grotesque shape and even with mutton-chop whiskers. In fact, I think
that small oddities and differences have grown to have a distinct
value, and form a pleasing variety. If a person's manner is
unattractive, I often find that it is nothing more than a shyness or an
awkwardness which disappears the moment that familiarity is
established. My standard is, in fact, lower, and I am more tolerant. I
am not, I confess, wholly tolerant, but my intolerance is reserved for
qualities and not for externals. I still fly swiftly from long-winded,
pompous, and contemptuous persons; but if their company is unavoidable,
I have at least learnt to hold my tongue. The other day I was at a
country-house where an old and extremely tiresome General laid down the
law on the subject of the Mutiny, where he had fought as a youthful
subaltern. I was pretty sure that he was making the most grotesque
misstatements, but I was not in a position to contradict them. Next the
General was a courteous, weary old gentleman, who sate with his
finger-tips pressed together, smiling and nodding at intervals.
Half-an-hour later we were lighting our candles. The General strode
fiercely up to bed, leaving a company of yawning and dispirited men
behind. The old gentleman came up to me and, as he took a light, said
with an inclination of his head in the direction of the parting figure,
"The poor General is a good deal misinformed. I didn't choose to say
anything, but I know something about the subject, because I was private
secretary to the Secretary for War."
That was the right attitude, I thought, for the gentlemanly
philosopher; and I have learnt from my old friend the lesson not to
choose to say anything if a turbulent and pompous person lays down the
law on subjects with which I happen to be acquainted.
Again, there is another gain that results from advancing years. I think
it is true that there were sharper ecstasies in youth, keener
perceptions, more passionate thrills; but then the mind also dipped
more swiftly and helplessly into discouragement, dreariness, and
despair. I do not think that life is so rapturous, but it certainly is
vastly more interesting. When I was young there were an abundance of
things about which I did not care. I was all for poetry and art; I
found history tedious, science tiresome, politics insupportable. Now I
may thankfully say it is wholly different. The time of youth was the
opening to me of many doors of life. Sometimes a door opened upon a
mysterious and wonderful place, an enchanted forest, a solemn avenue, a
sleeping glade; often, too, it opened into some dusty work-a-day place,
full of busy forms bent over intolerable tasks, whizzing wheels, dark
gleaming machinery, the din of the factory and the workshop. Sometimes,
too, a door would open into a bare and melancholy place, a hillside
strewn with stones, an interminable plain of sand; worst of all, a
place would sometimes be revealed which was full of suffering, anguish,
and hopeless woe, shadowed with fears and sins. From such prospects I
turned with groans unutterable; but the air of the accursed place would
hang about me for days. These surprises, these strange surmises,
crowded in fast upon me. How different the world was from what the
careless forecast of boyhood had pictured it! How strange, how
beautiful, and yet how terrible! As life went on the beauty increased,
and a calmer, quieter beauty made itself revealed; in youth I looked
for strange, impressive, haunted beauties, things that might deeply
stir and move; but year by year a simpler, sweeter, healthier kind of
beauty made itself felt; such beauty as lies on the bare, lightly
washed, faintly tinted hillside of winter, all delicate greens and
browns, so far removed from the rich summer luxuriance, and yet so
austere, so pure. I grew to love different books too. In youth one
demanded a generous glow, a fire of passion, a strongly tinged current
of emotion; but by degrees came the love of sober, subdued reflection,
a cooler world in which, if one could not rest, one might at least
travel equably and gladly, with a far wider range of experience, a
larger, if a fainter, hope. I grew to demand less of the world, less of
Nature, less of people; and, behold, a whole range of subtler and
gentler emotions came into sight, like the blue hills of the distance,
pure and low. The whole movement of the world, past and present, became
intelligible and clear. I saw the humanity that lies behind political
and constitutional questions, the strong, simple forces that move like
a steady stream behind the froth and foam of personality. If in youth I
believed that personality and influence could sway and mould the world,
in later years I have come to see that the strongest and fiercest
characters are only the river-wrack, the broken boughs, the torn
grasses that whirl and spin in the tongue of the creeping flood, and
that there is a dim resistless force behind them that marches on
unheeding and drives them in the forefront of the inundation. Things
that had seemed drearily theoretical, dry, axiomatic, platitudinal,
showed themselves to be great generalizations from a torrent of human
effort and mortal endeavour. And thus all the mass of detail and human
relation that had been rudely set aside by the insolent prejudices of
youth under the generic name of business, came slowly to have an
intense and living significance. I cannot trace the process in detail;
but I became aware of the fulness, the energy, the matchless interest
of the world, and the vitality of a hundred thoughts that had seemed to
me the dreariest abstractions.
Then, too, the greatest gain of all, there comes a sort of patience. In
youth mistakes seemed irreparable, calamities intolerable, ambitions
realizable, disappointments unbearable. An anxiety hung like a dark
impenetrable cloud, a disappointment poisoned the springs of life. But
now I have learned that mistakes can often be set right, that anxieties
fade, that calamities have sometimes a compensating joy, that an
ambition realized is not always pleasurable, that a disappointment is
often of itself a great incentive to try again. One learns to look over
troubles, instead of looking into them; one learns that hope is more
unconquerable than grief. And so there flows into the gap the certainty
that one can make more of misadventures, of unpromising people, of
painful experiences, than one had ever hoped. It may not be, nay, it is
not, so eager, so full-blooded a spirit; but it is a serener, a more
interesting, a happier outlook.
And so, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, striking a balance of my
advantages and disadvantages, I am inclined to think that the good
points predominate. Of course there still remains the intensely human
instinct, which survives all the lectures of moralists, the desire to
eat one's cake and also to have it. One wants to keep the gains of
middle life and not to part with the glow of youth. "The tragedy of
growing old," says a brilliant writer, "is the remaining young;" that
is to say, that the spirit does not age as fast as the body. The
sorrows of life lie in the imagination, in the power to recall the good
days that have been and the old sprightly feelings; and in the power,
too, to forecast the slow overshadowing and decay of age. But Lord
Beaconsfield once said that the worst evil one has to endure is the
anticipation of the calamities that do not happen; and I am sure that
the thing to aim at is to live as far as possible in the day and for
the day. I do not mean in an epicurean fashion, by taking prodigally
all the pleasure that one can get, like a spendthrift of the happiness
that is meant to last a lifetime, but in the spirit of Newman's hymn--
"I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me."
Even now I find that I am gaining a certain power, instinctively, I
suppose, in making the most of the day and hour. In old days, if I had
a disagreeable engagement ahead of me, something to which I looked
forward with anxiety or dislike, I used to find that it poisoned my
cup. Now it is beginning to be the other way; and I find myself with a
heightened sense of pleasure in the quiet and peaceful days that have
to intervene before the fateful morning dawns. I used to awake in the
morning on the days that were still my own before the day which I
dreaded, and begin, in that agitated mood which used to accompany the
return of consciousness after sleep, when the mind is alert but
unbalanced, to anticipate the thing I feared, and feel that I could not
face it. Now I tend to awake and say to myself, "Well, at any rate I
have still to-day in my own hands;" and then the very day itself has an
increased value from the feeling that the uncomfortable experience lies
ahead. I suppose that is the secret of the placid enjoyment which the
very old so often display. They seem so near the dark gate, and yet so
entirely indifferent to the thought of it; so absorbed in little
leisurely trifles, happy with a childlike happiness.
And thus I went slowly back to College in that gathering gloom that
seldom fails to bring a certain peace to the mind. The porter sate,
with his feet on the fender, in his comfortable den, reading a paper.
The lights were beginning to appear in the court, and the firelight
flickered briskly upon walls hung with all the pleasant signs of
youthful life, the groups, the family photographs, the suspended oar,
the cap of glory. So when I entered my book-lined rooms, and heard the
kettle sing its comfortable song on the hearth, and reflected that I
had a few letters to write, an interesting book to turn over, a
pleasant Hall dinner to look forward to, and that, after a space of
talk, an undergraduate or two were coming to talk over a leisurely
piece of work, an essay or a paper, I was more than ever inclined to
acquiesce in my disabilities, to purr like an elderly cat, and to feel
that while I had the priceless boon of leisure, set in a framework of
small duties, there was much to be said for life, and that I was a poor
creature if I could not be soberly content.
Of course I know that I have missed the nearer ties of life, the
hearth, the home, the companionship of a wife, the joys and interests
of growing girls and boys. But if a man is fatherly and kind-hearted,
he will find plenty of young men who are responsive to a paternal
interest, and intensely grateful for the good-humoured care of one who
will listen to their troubles, their difficulties, and their dreams. I
have two or three young friends who tell me what they are doing, and
what they hope to do; I have many correspondents who were friends of
mine as boys, who tell me from time to time how it goes with them in
the bigger world, and who like in return to hear something of my own
doings.
And so I sit, while the clock on the mantelpiece ticks out the pleasant
minutes, and the fire winks and crumbles on the hearth, till the old
gyp comes tapping at the door to learn my intentions for the evening;
and then, again, I pass out into the court, the lighted windows of the
Hall gleam with the ancient armorial glass, from staircase after
staircase come troops of alert, gowned figures, while overhead, above
all the pleasant stir and murmur of life, hang in the dark sky the
unchanging stars.
III
BOOKS
The one room in my College which I always enter with a certain sense of
desolation and sadness is the College library. There used to be a story
in my days at Cambridge of a book-collecting Don who was fond of
discoursing in public of the various crosses he had to bear. He was
lamenting one day in Hall the unwieldy size of his library. "I really
don't know what to do with my books," he said, and looked round for
sympathy. "Why not read them?" said a sharp and caustic Fellow
opposite. It may be thought that I am in need of the same advice, but
it is not the case. There are, indeed, many books in our library; but
most of them, as D. G. Rossetti used to say in his childhood of his
father's learned volumes, are "no good for reading." The books of the
College library are delightful, indeed, to look at; rows upon rows of
big irregular volumes, with tarnished tooling and faded gilding on the
sun-scorched backs. What are they? old editions of classics, old
volumes of controversial divinity, folios of the Fathers, topographical
treatises, cumbrous philosophers, pamphlets from which, like dry ashes,
the heat of the fire that warmed them once has fled. Take one down: it
is an agreeable sight enough; there is a gentle scent of antiquity; the
bumpy page crackles faintly; the big irregular print meets the eye with
a pleasant and leisurely mellowness. But what do they tell one? Very
little, alas! that one need know, very much which it would be a
positive mistake to believe. That is the worst of erudition--that the
next scholar sucks the few drops of honey that you have accumulated,
sets right your blunders, and you are superseded. You have handed on
the torch, perhaps, and even trimmed it. Your errors, your patient
explanations, were a necessary step in the progress of knowledge; but
now the procession has turned the corner, and is out of sight.
Yet even here, it pleases me to think, some mute and unsuspected
treasure may lurk unknown. In a room like this, for over a couple of
centuries, stood on one of the shelves an old rudely bound volume of
blank paper, the pages covered with a curious straggling cipher; no one
paid any heed to it, no one tried to spell its secrets. But the day
came when a Fellow who was both inquisitive and leisurely took up the
old volume, and formed a resolve to decipher it. Through many baffling
delays, through many patient windings, he carried his purpose out; and
the result was a celebrated Day-book, which cast much light upon the
social conditions of a past age, as well as revealed one of the most
simple and genial personalities that ever marched blithely through the
pages of a Diary.