from some Greek island, and how one day, when this desire was granted,
and I walked along hills set high above the blue AEgean, I was seized
with an instant yearning to be instead upon Ranmore Common in Surrey.
Yet at that moment a life's ambition was being fulfilled; I stood in a
scene of incomparable beauty, gazing down on those deep azure waters
whose voice is always to me as a lament for wandering Odysseus; the
lower slopes were rich with olive trees, powdering with silver the
tilled lands round a beautiful monastery lying there in its enchanted
rest. Dark cypresses rose amid white walls of villages, by the contrast
of their gloom making all bright colours glorious; away to the left,
where the shore verged westward tracing inimitable curves between field
and sea, lay slumbering a little white town with minarets and walled
gardens and tiny haven--a very place for Argonauts; and yet my thoughts
turned to the chalk downs of England and honeysuckle crowning the
unfruitful hollies. _Sed quia semper abest quod aves praesentia
temnis_;--Such desire has distracted Roman minds; the perversity is very
old; and perhaps only children find no disillusion in the accomplishment
of a dream.
For our feet have one country and our dreams another, and there is no
constancy in us. It is not alone in the bartering of one earthly scene
for its fellow that we suffer the sick thirst of change; but into the
rarest hour of achieved ideal to which hope promised her supreme
satisfaction, the same wayward longing will often find a way; as in a
sacred place amid the purest and most exquisite meditations of the soul,
there will suddenly flit inexplicable shadows of irreverence, with
echoes of incongruous voices from the abandoned world.
But now as the years pass and the penury of human love has made the home
woods and fields more dear, I feel that this unrest is drawing to its
end. For as the seasons pass over the uplands and the meadows, clothing
them with new splendours between the seed-time and the harvest, no
vision rises upon the memory dearer and more beneficent than theirs. As
the lover's fancy dwells upon the image of his beloved in this or that
environment, and thus or thus arrayed, so I see the woods and fields in
the various glories of the year and know not in which garb I love them
best. They have heard my laments, my confidences, all my broken
resolves: they are bound to me by so pure and intimate an affection that
all those grander wonders of the world should never draw me again from
this allegiance. Not for the vision of Himalaya piercing the heaven, or
the sunsets of Sienna, or the moonlight on the Taj Mahal, or for any
other beauty or any wonder shall I weary of the cornfields framed in
elms or the great horses turning in the furrow against the evening sky.
For with the growth of years our desires wander less, and are mercifully
contracted to the scope of our wearying powers. We haunt the same old
places and want the same old things, dwelling amongst them with an
increasing constancy of devotion. For we find that year by year the old
places and things are not really the same; something has touched them in
our absence; strange still agencies have intervened, long silences of
dissolution and the ineluctable fate of change. And so that perfect
sameness which we find unattainable takes on the quality of ideal and
demands the grown man's devotion, as the change that is forbidden casts
its resistless spell over the guarded and tethered child. The eyes of
youth are on the far end of the vista, those of age upon the near; the
old horse that has drawn the coulter through the clay is glad for the
four hedges of the paddock which irk the growing colt's desire. When
Richard Jefferies was asked why he walked the same lane day after day,
at first he was at a loss for a reply; but gradually the reason became
clear to him. It was because he had become aware of the iron law:
_Nothing twice_: he wanted the same old and loved things not twice but
endlessly; he was yearly more eager to be with them, and paint indelibly
upon his memory their delicate quiet beauty, their soft and perishable
charm.
That is how I also feel, as with the return of summer I wander out into
the old meadows and climb the familiar hills; I find myself hoping that
nothing is changed, and am stirred with sweet anxieties of reminiscence.
And surely within the enchanted boundaries of the counties where I
ramble, there is variety which not the hundred eyes of Argus could
exhaust. These fields and woodlands in high summer feast all the senses
with a surfeit of delights. How good it is to exercise in all its range
the fine mechanism of the body, suffering each part of it to indulge its
own hunger after beauty; to feel the texture of petals, and draw the
long grasses through the fingers; to breathe an air laden with the scent
of blossoms, passing from uplands fragrant with bean-flowers into
untilled regions odorous with pines; to hear the birds' chorus at
sunrise and the distant sound of reaping; to see innumerable marvels;
the belts of clover mantling wine-dark in the wind; the poppies in the
standing corn, the carmine yew-stems on the downs; above you the soft
grey clouds delicately floating; below you, as the day declines, some
distant lonely water emerging in its glory to be the mirror and refuge
of all heaven's light; to remember the gorse and broom and look forward
to the royal purple of the heather--all this is a consummation of pure
life, a high, sensuous pleasure penetrating to the inmost soul, and of
such exceeding price that to disdain its offerings or to pass incurious
before them, is to live in the blindness of the tribe of Genseric.
In such wanderings the mind is filled with slow and seasonable thoughts,
lasting as the trees and buildings of the country-side. Old deliberate
contemplations, perceptions after long regard ingathered from abundant
nature, theories leisurely compacted in sunshine or storm, to stand in
the fields of memory, crowned with beauty by the indulgent years. So in
the visible meadows stand the ancient barns, with roofs of umber tiles
parcel-gilded with old gold of lichen, and crowning their seasoned
timbers "as naturally as leaves"; restful structures of a quiet age,
capacious of dim space, unvexed by the glare of a hundred summers.
And if you ask what profit is here for one who must do battle in the
loud world, study for a while the artifice and industrious policy of
plants by which they attract to themselves the visitants they need or
with most masterful defence repel the importunate advance, and you will
return to the societies of men, even to their parliaments, enriched with
arts of prudence beyond the practice of Machiavel. Examine the dog-rose
upon the hedge, how by putting forth thorns it raises itself to the
light and ranges irresistible along the leafy parapets; see how the
flowers adapt their form and colour to the convenience of the bee or the
predilections of the bird; consider the furze armed with spines against
browsing muzzles, and be near when it casts its seed wide upon the
earth; and then say if among states or governments there is a wiser
economy or an intelligence more provident of its end. I myself have the
conceit that if time, revoking my sentence of superannuation, should
restore my lost years and add youth to the wisdom learned along the
hedges, even I, a very profitless weed, should not again so uncivilly
decay, but flower to another June and see my seed multiply around me.
Perhaps, if that might be, I should strive to learn thoroughly, and
bring science to bear upon experience. But, as I am, classifications and
dissections are repellent to my fancy. I cannot get to the hearts of
flowers by any Linnaean approach, but go rather by the old animistic way,
still honoured by Milton through his Genius of the Woods:
"When evening gray doth rise I fetch my round,
Over the mount and all this hallowed ground,
And early, ere the breath of odorous morn
Awakes the slumbering leaves."
So I greet the blossoms of hill and upland and water-meadow, knowing
them all by their country names, and sometimes fancying that they know
me back: all that is lacking is the tutelary power to guard their growth
and prolong their bright and fragrant lives. What fine old names they
have, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore;
archangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's
wound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain! I cannot
coldly divide so fine a company into bare genera and species, but
imagine for them high genealogies and alliances by an imaginative method
of my own: to me the lily and the onion shall never be connections.
If I must read books on flowers, I take down such a one as Nicholas
Culpeper's _Complete Herbal_, written from "my house in Spitalfields
next the Red Lion, September 5th, 1653." For here is a man who attempers
science with the quaintest fancies after the manner of his generation,
and delightfully misinterprets the real affinity of the flowers and the
heavens. "He that would know the operation of the herbs must look up to
the stars astrologically," says this master; and so to him briony is "a
furious martial plant," and brank ursine "an excellent plant under the
dominion of the moon." Of rosemary he says, "the sun claims privilege in
it, and it is under the celestial ram," and of viper's bugloss, "it is
a most gallant herb of the sun." The bay-tree rouses him to real
eloquence, though not for Apollo's sake. "It is a tree of the sun and
under the celestial sign of Leo, and resists witchcraft very potently,
as also all the evils that old Saturn can do to the body of man; for
neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning will hurt a man in the
place where a bay-tree is."
Reading in this old book of the ordinance and virtues of the familiar
herbs, I escape from the severities of botanical science into a maze of
queer fancies, well suited to those retrospective hours when we love
best what we least believe. And by the pleasant suggestion of astrology
I am led on to contemplate the starry heavens, which I do in the ancient
pastoral way, peopling them with mythical forms and connecting them with
the seasonable changes of rustic toil. I forget for the moment all the
discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler, and see eye to eye with
Cleostratus of Tenedos who nightly watched the stars from the sacred
slopes of Ida.
Much as the companionships of nature have meant for me, I would not have
any man content himself with these alone. It is not right to live the
slave of Pales, or become the rhapsode of docks and nettles. To be all
for the lower life, were it the fairest, is derogation; and Har and Heva
before they may enter into their kingdom of the flowers must first be
fallen spirits. But continually in the interludes of human endeavour to
rebathe the mind at these clear wells does indeed exceedingly purify and
strengthen against the returning and imminent encounter. Those long
retreats at Walden may not often be repeated, for man is either risen
too high or too far fallen to live well in the sole company of animals
and flowers. What sociologists call the consciousness of kind is as
vital to man as the consciousness of self; and to pine for adoption into
an alien kind is vain on this side transmigration.
Not seldom my wanderings in town and country lead me to quiet
churchyards, or to those vast cemeteries where the living have
established the dead in avenues and streets of tombs after their drear
suburban fashion. Solitude has ever persuaded to the contemplation of
death, and in these silent places I feel no shock of sadness but am
rather possessed by a familiar spirit of peace. As I wander from path to
path, my fancy is not lamed by mournful thoughts, but finds suggestion
amid the poor laconic histories by which these headstones appeal to him
that passes by.
It is with most men a natural desire to take their last rest in some
green God's acre, far from the smoke and turmoil of towns, lying in a
fair space amid a small company, where there is a wide prospect of
tilled lands, and the reapers cut the swathes against the very
churchyard wall. And this is my most usual aspiration; yet there are
times when I would not shrink in thought from the Valley of Ezekiel, and
would be content to be written a mere number in some city of the dead,
where at last after all the loneliness of life I should no longer be
kept apart, but be gathered to my fellows where they lie in their
thousands, and be received a member of their society. And though I well
know that it matters not a cummin-seed whether my bones are washed to
and fro on the bed of the sea or my ashes cast to the winds of heaven,
yet I humour this fancy, and find a quiet pleasure in the thought that
death at least may end this isolation.
And what if the propinquity of these poor remains be gage and promise of
a sympathy of souls unveiled and unhidden by false semblances of the
body? Then should death indeed be the crown of a long desire and give me
at the last the fellowship into which life denied initiation. Surely, as
Coleridge dreamed, there is a sex in souls, which, disengaged from the
coarse companionship of the flesh, shall see into each other's crystal
deeps. Thence, in new life, when the last recondite secret is withholden
no longer, there shall come forth those qualities and powers that
ennobled man and woman in mortality; they shall come forth in all their
several strength and beauty, divinely animate, and reflecting upon each
other bright rays and soft colours invisible upon these misty oceans of
our navigation.
It is not terrible to think, at times, on death, for that _danse
macabre_ which troubled the fancy of our forefathers is now danced out,
and the silent figure that knocks at every door comes not as a grinning
skeleton but as one of more gentle countenance than any art can express.
The natural change, which to William Blake was but the passing out of
one room into another, is well personified in the merciful figure with
the kind eyes, coming at the sounded hour to lead away into quietness.
My solitude has taught me to know well those noble efforts which art has
made to lift from our bowed backs the burden of the fear of death: I
like to look upon that youthful Thanatos carved upon a column from the
temple of the Ephesian Diana, and every year the red leaves of autumn
persuade my steps to that village rich in elms where lived one who also
saw death so, and laboured to draw the frightened eyes of men from the
hour-glass and the skull to the gracious vision of the deliverer and
friend. There hands which were dear to him have raised a place of
leave-taking upon a green slope, a house of farewell set upon the shore
to receive the last pledges from the living to the absolved and
unburdened dead.
When first I saw Compton it was a cloudless noon in August, the day of
days in which to come alone into this silent place. Out of the fiery
heat beaten from wall and path like a blinding spray of light, it is a
passage into a dimness of cool space, an air glaucous as the shade of
olives. There from the circuit of a dome look down kind faces of
immortal youth, in form and habit too tranquil for our life, but made
homely to us by the mercy in their eyes, and some quality of the white
soft hands which draws all weariness and all pain towards them. To me it
was as though some furious struggle in the waves were over, and swooning
out of life I had awakened upon a floor of translucent ocean, where, in
a gracious and tempered light, beings of a compassion too intense for
earth, each with a gesture that was not yet a touch, were charming all
the bruises of the lost battle away. Surely this is true vision of
things to come, and to such mercy we shall awaken. It cannot be that
when the eyes reopen they shall see the forms of dark apparitors, or
that the ears shall hear AEacus and Rhadamanthys speaking in dim halls
their cold, irrevocable dooms. No, but there shall be a pause and
respite upon the way from one to another life, and none may be conceived
more grateful than this rest, as it were a sojourn beneath waters of
Eunoe, where a flood of dear memories foreboding good shall absolve us
from the mortal sin of fear.
* * * * *
Turning back over these pages, I am conscious that I have failed to give
real experiences their proper life. Describing solitude I have been
dull; I have fixed the rushing flames of emotion in poor flamboyant
lines. I have written far more than any reader but yourself will have
cared to follow; but now at any rate the confession is over, and in the
future I shall work, and use my sight for a worthier end than
introspection. It has been said that the tale of any life is
interesting if sincerely told; and it may be that the most ordinary
lives have the advantage, because it is the common experience which
touches most hearts. For the greater part mine has been a common life,
unglorified by hazards in the field, or bright fulfilment of ambition;
it had been better for its peace if it might wholly have kept the
comfortable, usual way.
I sometimes wonder whether the printing of these pages will reveal to me
any kinsmen in affliction, for such there must be going westward alone,
and I wish that for a moment we might foregather as we pass, to compare
the marvels of our isolation. Then perhaps I might be urged to higher
effort, hearing stories more pitiful than mine, tales of silent courage
under ban of excommunion to shame me from the very thought of despair.
Poets have metaphorically given colours to souls; mine, I feel, is only
grey, the common hue of shadows; but it was steeped in gloom by a
veritable pain and evils really undergone. And as I reflect upon what I
have written, and try to imagine it read by some brisk person utterly
content with life, I can well understand that the whole thing would
appear to him incredible, too preposterously strange for belief, a
rigmarole of sick fancies beyond the power of hellebore. So be it: I
expect small comprehension and no mercy, for indeed I have written
caring little for such consequence, yielding to that human thirst for
utterance which only confession can slake; as one eases pain by a moan
though there are none to hear it. It is not altogether a grateful task.
For hardly, and then only in a fortunate hour, to one whose years and
feelings have been interwoven with his own, will even a healthy man tell
the tale of his hidden emotion; and mine is the deeper reticence of a
habit which has ever held closely to the recipe of fernseed. To entrust
a confidence to one of unproven sympathy, is to risk a profitless
embarrassment. It has been most truly said that both parties to such
impulsive avowals, whenever they afterwards meet, must feel a constraint
as of confederacy in misdemeanour.
I have hope that though I came late to the steady labour of the
vineyard, I may yet earn my wage and begin the new day with the rest.
Like Joseph Poorgrass I can now almost regard my diffidence as an
interesting study, and agree with the rustic man of calamities that
destiny might have made things even worse. Certainly the pain grows less
fierce; I can go more readily among my fellows for all but social ends.
For those who live much apart learn at last to see men not as
individuals but in groups: to them it is the type which counts, the
_forma specifica per formam individualem translucens_, of which the
scholastic jargon speaks. Those with whom I come in casual contact
appear to me now in a vague, diffused light like the atmosphere of some
other world. Dwelling upon none with the eyes of intimacy, and passing
swiftly from this to that, I find each but the harmless variant of a
species; if I lingered or came too near, doubtless old apprehensions
would oppress me still. It is a disadvantage of this outlook that the
fascination of detail is lost, and that I have less sense for the
personal in life. But if I grow old I shall regain the interest in
particular things and persons with which age is consoled amid many
miseries; for while youth grows earnest over some riddle of high art or
the occultation of Aldebaran, age is happily absorbed in the arrangement
of a room or discussing the destinies of a single household.
Meanwhile, though uncongenial to my kind as entering little into their
pleasures, I like to be near them in their grief or happiness, standing
unnoticed in the wind of their fortune's wheel. At least I am not soured
or malevolent, and when there is dancing toward, I am in the crowd upon
the margin of the green. I have abandoned social obligations because I
am unfitted to perform them well, and society high and low exists by
their cheerful fulfilment. But I no longer rail at social law or decline
to see anything but evil in conventions devised by the wisdom and
refinement of centuries. If I refuse invitations and leave calls unpaid,
it is because I am socially bankrupt: were I solvent I should redeem all
debts.
I decline therefore to denounce Chesterfield and deify Thoreau: there
was exaggeration in both men, and though my sympathies are rather with
the recluse of Walden pond, it is quite probable that Chesterfield was
the more useful of the two. I am a bad player, I have not the high
spirits or the conversational skill which each should contribute to the
social game. And in almost any sport the incompetent confer a benefit by
standing out: at least, that is the opinion which I hear the average
player express. If I lived in the backwoods where any guest is welcome,
it might be my duty to act differently. But my ways are cast in places
where there is no need for social press-gangs, and the highways and
hedges are left unsearched. If therefore by abstention I gain a
qualified peace for myself, and confer positive benefit on others, I may
go my way without serious reproach.
And I did wisely not to marry, for I should have clung too closely to my
study for the happiness of any woman. I once saw an advertisement in
the newspaper inserted by a discontented young wife whose husband was a
recluse and would not take her out of evenings. She wanted to
communicate with congenial people, and, like a desperate sailor
marooned, was driven to wave her signal in the sight of the casual eye.
This frank confession of abandonment made a profound impression upon me.
I thought to myself, "Master recluse, you are a pilferer and have
filched a life. I am yet more solitary in my estate, and if I followed
your example, should be guilty of a greater wrong." There are, indeed,
hours when I feel embittered at the thought that for one innocent defect
a whole life should be amerced of joy; the finality of loss appals: all
is so irrevocable; _le vase est imbibe, l'etoffe a pris son pli_.
Avoided not without cause by those who were my natural associates, I
grow impenetrable of access, and even in my own family unfamiliar. The
resentment that welled up in the man who told the story of Henry
Ryecroft obtains the mastery, and I feel one in spirit with that lonely
analyst of disillusions. Sometimes a worse darkness gathers round, till
I long for one of those intense and all-absorbing creeds which somehow
seem to tend the brightest hearth-fires which earth knows: for
philosophy, though it invented the void, never built a little Gidding.
It is then that I feel like the suppliant of the old Babylonian prayer,
"one whose kin are afar off, whose city is distant," and all that
appears before my sight is one scroll of wrongs which this evil heritage
has inflicted upon me. It has made my best years rich in misery; it has
cut me off from marriage; it has compelled me, one hating vain
complaint, to live querulously in the optative mood. Neither poverty nor
sickness could chastise more heavily; for poverty is strong in numbers
and sickness rich in sympathy, but diffidence reaps laughter and is
alone. When such thoughts win dominion over the mind I could envy what
sufferer you will his most awful punishment. For in his agony be sure
there is movement and action; his limbs are torn, yet he is dragged
onward: by his very writhing in the bonds he confesses his life. But I
lie in some dead waste where nothing moves and all is mist without
horizon, lost in an abhorred blankness of dismay to which no positive
suffering may be likened. Thither comes no fierce provocation to quicken
into Promethean scorn; life lies whelmed in blackness unlit by flashes
of defiance or the cold splendour of disdain.