In the South West of London stands a cathedral, which, from outside,
looks like a child’s castle of bricks. But when you go inside you see
nothing at first but a large emptiness—a ceiling somewhere up in the
clouds supported by huge marble columns. There is always a smell of
incense in the air, and there is a little painted figure before which,
night and day, burn three rows of candles. Sometimes, on Saints’ Days,
other rows of candles are lighted before other painted figures—St.
Andrew, St. Patrick, St. George—making centres of bright light in the
dimness of the great interior.
Near this cathedral are blocks of tenement buildings where families
dwell, one on top of the other, like books in a bookcase. These
buildings are full of children: boys and girls and babies.
On the top floor of one of these blocks lived Thomas Henry Titt, aged
twelve. Thomas Henry’s father kept a shop round the corner where you saw
sausages and onions frying in the window. His mother was dead. He had an
elder sister who mended his clothes and helped their father in the shop.
Thomas was known as Tom-Tit; and he looked rather like a bird, for he
had thin arms and legs, sharp little eyes, a crest of bright hair, and a
pointed nose.
Like every imaginative child, Tom-Tit had a secret: a passion for the
sea, which he had never seen. His ocean was in his mind’s eye, and he
hoped as no one ever hoped before that one day he might behold the
reality of his dream. In the darkness of night Tom-Tit, alone in his
attic, lying awake on his mattress, gazed out upon a heaving
cornflower-blue coloured ocean—as blue as the flowers which the woman
sold at the end of his street. And this ocean was full of shining
fishes. There was no land in sight—ever.
Thomas Henry Titt loved the candles that burned before the painted
figure in the cathedral. In the winter, when he was small, he had often
held his little frozen hands to the warmth of them, when nobody was
looking. But as he grew older the candles began to have for him a deeper
significance. During evening service he would creep into a corner by one
of the pillars, listening to the organ and watching the kneeling people
in the distance near the shining altar. Then, when the music stopped and
the people were gone, he would steal out and patter along to the rows of
candles. There his heart would light up, even as they, and he would
thrill with a strange, unaccountable happiness.
Gradually Tom-Tit began to connect these candles with his desire for the
sea. The two facts became one in his mind. It was as if, by the light of
the former, he could see the blue waves of the other.
Underneath the rows of burning candles was a rack full of new ones. Tom
often saw people drop a coin into a box, take one, fix it upon a spike
among the rest, and light it. And a longing overcame him to possess for
his own one of these new candles. Perhaps, at the bottom of his mind,
was the idea that if he took it home and lighted it, it would bring him
nearer to his ultimate ambition—to see the sea. He determined to realise
his desire.
Then came a winter day when Tom-Tit’s head ached, shivers ran up and
down his spine, and he felt very ill. Therefore his sister bade him stay
in bed, and he did so until she had left the house with her father. But
then, despite his fever, the craving to possess that candle overcame
obedience. So, gripping a penny, he rose, staggered downstairs, and out
into the road. The cold air cooled his body and numbed his pains. He
slipped unnoticed into the cathedral and leaned for a moment against the
wall, for his head was swimming and he could not see. Then he recovered,
and his eyes sparkled as he beheld the candles flickering like golden
flowers before the wooden figure at the end of the aisle. The
surrounding air was a golden haze. The smell of incense was sweet.
He tottered to the box of new candles, dropped in his penny, and took
one. Then he dragged himself home, feeling worse and worse at every
step, but gloriously glad within, because of the candle in his pocket.
All day he lay on his bed, too ill to sit up, nursing his treasure. “I
shall be well to-night,” he thought, “and when it’s dark I’ll light it.”
In the evening his father and sister returned, found him in a state of
high fever, and sent for the doctor. He, when he saw Tom-Tit, said that
he would come back in the morning and remove him to the hospital if he
were not better.
He gave Tom a sleeping draught before he left.
When his father and sister had gone to bed, Thomas Henry, feeling drowsy
and less hurt with pain, pulled out his candle half melted already by
the heat of his hands, lit it, and set it on a chair by his side. Then
he lay gazing at it, until the whole world was but a golden flame with a
blue root.
Then a wonderful thing happened. He did not see the candle any more. His
first idea was that the wind must have blown it out, for a great wind
was blowing. Where could he be? He opened his eyes, which must have been
closed, and lo! he was in a little wooden boat on a cornflower-blue sea!
The boat was rocking from side to side like the baby’s cradle on the
floor below—a mechanical rock, rock, rock, rock, from side to side. He
scooped up a handful of the sea, and, just as he had expected, it was
bright blue. He could see blue shining fishes swimming round the boat,
so he caught them in his fingers where they wriggled about and made blue
reflections until he threw them back again into the blue water.
And all the time, though he could not see it, the candle was burning at
his side—burning lower, and lower, and lower.
From horizon to horizon the cobalt ocean stretched around him—not a
speck of land anywhere. He was perfectly happy there staring down
through the blue fathoms and feeling the wind blow. He had never been so
happy in his life before.
Then the candle went out.
In the morning they found a little pool of grease on the chair—and
Tom-Tit was dead.
But this is not really a sad story, because Thomas Henry did what many
thousands of people never do, even though they live to be a hundred and
three—he realised his ambition. He saw the sea. And he was not
disillusioned; for the sea that he saw was just as beautiful as the sea
which he imagined: the reality matched the dream.