its usual workaday look, the face it bears before the world; but I, I
had seen it in its golden dreams; I knew its secret, and it could not
deceive me; it had yielded to me unawares its sublimest confidence, and
however it might masquerade as a commonplace wood, a covert for game, a
commercial item in an estate-book, known by some homely name, I had seen
it once undisguised, and knew it as one of the porches of heaven.
29
_April 4, 1896._
It seems a futile task to say anything about the spring; yet poets and
romancers make no apologies for treating of love, which is an old and
familiar phenomenon enough. And I declare that the wonder of spring,
so far from growing familiar, strikes upon the mind with a bewildering
strangeness, a rapturous surprise, which is greater every year. Every
spring I say to myself that I never realised before what a miraculous,
what an astounding thing is the sudden conspiracy of trees and flowers,
hatched so insensibly, and carried out so punctually, to leap into life
and loveliness together. The velvety softness of the grass, the mist
of green that hangs about the copse, the swift weaving of the climbing
tapestry that screens the hedgerow-banks, the jewellery of flowers that
sparkle out of all sequestered places; they are adorable. But this early
day of spring is close and heavy, with a slow rain dropping reluctantly
out of the sky, a day when an insidious melancholy lies in wait for
human beings, a sense of inadequacy, a meek rebellion against all
activity, bodily or mental. I walk slowly and sedately along the sandy
roads fast oozing into mire. There is a sense of expectancy in the air;
tree and flower are dispirited too, oppressed with heaviness, and yet
gratefully conscious, as I am not, of the divine storage of that pure and
subtle element that is taking place for their benefit. “Praise God,” said
Saint Francis, “for our sister the water, for she is very serviceable to
us and humble and clean.” Yes, we give thanks! but, alas! to sit still
and be pumped into, as Carlyle said of Coleridge’s conversation, can
never be an enlivening process.
Yet would that the soul could gratefully recognise her own rainy days;
could droop, like Nature, with patient acquiescence, with wise passivity,
till the wells of strength and freshness are stored!
[Sidenote: SUBTLE SUPERIORITIES]
The particular form of melancholy which I find besets me on these sad
reflective mornings, is to compare my vague ambitions with my concrete
performances. I will not say that in my dreamful youth I cherished the
idea of swaying the world. I never expected to play a brave part on
the public stage. Political and military life—the two careers which
ripple communities to the verge, never came within the range of my
possibilities. But I think that I was conscious—as most intelligent young
creatures undoubtedly are—of a subtle superiority to other people. An
ingenious preacher once said that we cannot easily delude ourselves into
the belief that we are richer, taller, more handsome, or even wiser,
better, abler, and more capable than other people, but we can and do
very easily nourish a secret belief that we are more _interesting_ than
others. Such an illusion has a marvellous vitality; it has a delicate
power of resisting the rude lessons to the contrary which contact with
the world would teach us; and I should hardly like to confess how ill I
have learned my lesson. I realise, of course, that I have done little to
establish this superiority in the eyes of others; but I find it hard to
disabuse myself of the vague belief that if only I had the art of more
popular and definite expression, if only the world had a little more
leisure to look in sequestered nooks for delicate flowers of thought and
temperament, then it might be realized how exquisite a nature is here
neglected.
[Sidenote: THE HARD TRUTH]
In saying this I am admitting the reader to the inmost _penetralia_ of
thought. I frankly confess that in my robust and equable moments I do
recognise the broken edge of my life, and what a very poor thing I have
made of it—but, for all that, it is my honest belief that we most of us
have in our hearts that inmost shrine of egotism, where the fire burns
clear and fragrant before an idealised image of self; and I go further,
and say that I believe this to be a wholesome and valuable thing, because
it is of the essence of self-respect, and gives us a feeble impulse
in the direction of virtue and faith. If a man ever came to realise
exactly his place in the world, as others realise it, how feeble, how
uninteresting, how ludicrously unnecessary he is, and with what a
speedy unconcern others would accommodate themselves to his immediate
disappearance, he would sink into an abyss of gloom out of which nothing
would lift him. It is one of the divine uses of love, that it glorifies
life by restoring and raising one’s self-esteem.
In the dejected reveries of such languorous spring days as these, no such
robust egotism as I have above represented comes to my aid. I see myself
stealing along, a shy, tarnished thing, a blot among the fresh hopes and
tender dreams that smile on every bank. The pitiful fabric of my life
is mercilessly unveiled; here I loiter, a lonely, shabby man, bruised
by contact with the word, dilatory, dumb, timid, registering tea-table
triumphs, local complacencies, provincial superiorities—spending
sheltered days in such comfortable dreams as are born of warm fires,
ample meals, soft easy-chairs, and congratulating myself on poetical
potentialities, without any awkward necessities of translating my dreams
into corrective action—or else discharging homely duties with an almost
sacerdotal solemnity, and dignifying with the title of religious quietism
what is done by hundreds of people instinctively and simply and without
pretentiousness. If I raved against my limitations, deemed my cage a
prison, beat myself sick against the bars, I might then claim to be a
fiery and ardent soul; but I cannot honestly do this; and I must comfort
myself with the thought that possibly the ill-health, which necessitates
my retirement, compensates for the disabilities it inflicts on me, by
removing the stimulus which would make my prison insupportable.
In this agreeable frame of mind I drew near home and stood awhile on
the deserted bowling-green with its elder-thickets, its little grassy
terraces, its air of regretful wildness, so often worn by a place that
has been tamed by civilisation and has not quite reverted to its native
savagery. A thrush sang with incredible clearness, repeating a luscious
phrase often enough to establish its precision of form, and yet not often
enough to satiate—a triumph of instinctive art.
These thrushes are great favourites of mine; I often sit, on a dewy
morning, to watch them hunting. They hop lightly along, till they espy a
worm lying in blissful luxury out of his hole; two long hops, and they
are upon him; he, using all his retractile might, clings to his home, but
the thrush sets his feet firm in the broad stride of the Greek warrior,
gives a mighty tug—you can see the viscous elastic thread strain—and
the worm is stretched writhing on the grass. What are the dim dreams of
the poor reptile, I wonder; does he regret his cool burrow, “and youth
and strength and this delightful world?”—no, I think it is a stoical
resignation. For a moment the thrush takes no notice of him, but surveys
the horizon with a caution which the excitement of the chase has for
an instant imprudently diverted. Then the meal begins, with horrid
leisureliness.
But it is strange to note the perpetual instinctive consciousness
of danger which besets birds thus in the open; they must live in a
tension of nervous watchfulness which would depress a human being into
melancholia. There is no absorbed gobbling; between every mouthful the
little head with its beady eyes swings right and left to see that all is
clear; and he is for ever changing his position and seldom fronts the
same way for two seconds together.
Do we realise what it must be to live, as even these sheltered birds do
in a quiet garden, with the fear of attack and death hanging over them
from morning to night?
[Sidenote: THE BONDAGE OF A BIRD]
Another fact that these thrushes have taught me is the extreme narrowness
of their self-chosen world. They are born and live within the compass
of a few yards. We are apt to envy a bird the power of changing his
horizon, of soaring above the world, and choosing for his home the
one spot he desires. Think what our life would be if, without luggage,
without encumbrances, we could rise in the air and, winging our way out
to the horizon, choose some sequestered valley, and there, without house,
without rates and taxes, abide, with water babbling in its channel and
food abundant. Yet it is far otherwise. One of my thrushes has a white
feather in his wing; he was hatched out in a big syringa which stands
above the bowling-green; and though I have observed the birds all about
my few acres carefully enough I have never seen this particular thrush
anywhere but on the lawn. He never seems even to cross the wall into
the garden; he has a favourite bush to roost in, and another where he
sometimes sings: at times he beats along the privet hedge, or in the
broad border, but he generally hops about the lawn, and I do not think he
has ever ventured beyond it. He works hard for his living too; he is up
at dawn, and till early afternoon he is generally engaged in foraging. He
will die, I suppose, in the garden, though how his body is disposed of is
a mystery to me.
[Sidenote: THE SOUL OF A THRUSH]
He takes the limitations of his life just as he finds them; he never
seems to think he would like to be otherwise; but he works diligently
for his living, he sings a grateful song, he sleeps well, he does not
compare himself with other birds or wish his lot was different—he has no
regrets, no hopes, and few cares. Still less has he any philanthropic
designs of raising the tone of his brother thrushes, or directing a
mission among the quarrelsome sparrows. Sometimes he fights a round or
two, and when the spring comes, stirred by delicious longings, he will
build a nest, devote the food he would like to devour to his beady-eyed,
yellow-lipped young, and die as he has lived. There is a good deal to be
said for this brave and honest life, and especially for the bright and
wholesome music which he makes within the thickets. I do not know that it
can be improved upon.
30
_Aug. 19, 1898._
[Sidenote: GOD’S ACRE]
There is a simple form of expedition of which I am very fond; that is the
leisurely visiting of some rustic church in the neighbourhood. They are
often very beautifully placed—sometimes they stand high on the ridges
and bear a bold testimony to the faith; sometimes they lie nestled in
trees, hidden in valleys, as if to show it is possible to be holy and
beautiful, though unseen. Sometimes they are the central ornament of a
village street; there generally seems some simple and tender reason for
their position; but the more populous their neighbourhood, the more they
have suffered from the zeal of the restorer. What I love best of all is a
church that stands a little apart, sheltered in wood, dreaming by itself,
and guarding its tranquil and grateful secret—“_secretum meum mihi_,” it
seems to say.
I like to loiter in the churchyard ground to step over the hillocks, to
read the artless epitaphs on slanting tombs; it is not a morbid taste,
for if there is one feeling more than another that such a visit removes
and tranquillises, it is the fear of death. Death here appears in its
most peaceful light; it seems so necessary, so common, so quiet and
inevitable an end, like a haven after a troubled sea. Here all the sad
and unhappy incidents of mortality are forgotten, and death appears only
in the light of a tender and dreamful sleep.
Better still is the grateful coolness of the church itself; here one can
trace in the epitaphs the fortunes of a family—one can see the graves
of old squires who have walked over their own fields, talked with their
neighbours, shot, hunted, eaten, drunk, have loved and been loved, and
have yielded their place in the fulness of days to those that have come
after them. Very moving, too, are the evidences of the sincere grief,
which underlies the pompous phraseology of the marble monument with
its urns and cherubs. I love to read the long list of homely virtues
attributed by the living to the dead in the depth of sorrow, and to
believe them true. Then there are records of untimely deaths,—the young
wife, the soldier in his prime, the boy or girl who have died unstained
by life, and about whom clings the passionate remembrance of the happy
days that are no more. Such records as those do not preach the lesson
of vanity and decay, but the lesson of pure and grateful resignation,
the faith that the God who made the world so beautiful, and filled it so
full of happiness, has surprises in store for His children, in a world
undreamed of.
[Sidenote: THE MONUMENT]
One monument in a church not far from Golden End always brings tears to
my eyes; there is a chapel in the aisle, the mausoleum of an ancient
family, where mouldering banners and pennons hang in the gloom; in the
centre of the chapel is an altar-tomb, on which lies the figure of a
young boy, thirteen years old, the inscription says. He reclines on one
arm, he has a delicately carved linen shirt that leaves the slender neck
free, and he is wrapped in a loose gown; he looks upward toward the east,
his long hair falling over his shoulders, his thin and shapely hand
upon his knee. On each side of the tomb, kneeling on marble cushions on
the ledge, are his father and mother, an earl and countess. The mother,
in the stately costume of a bygone court, with hair carefully draped,
watches the face of the child with a look in which love seems to have
cast out grief. The earl in armour, a strongly-built, soldier-like
figure, looks across the boy’s knee at his wife’s face, but in his
expression—I know not if it be art—there seems to be a look of rebellious
sorrow, of thwarted pride. All his wealth and state could not keep his
darling with him, and he does not seem to understand. There have they
knelt, the little group, for over two centuries, waiting and watching,
and one is glad to think that they know now whatever there is to know.
Outside the golden afternoon slants across the headstones, and the birds
twitter in the ivy, while a full stream winds below through the meadows
that once were theirs.
Such a contemplation does not withdraw one from life or tend to give a
false view of its energies; it does not forbid one to act, to love, to
live; it only gilds with a solemn radiance the cloud that overshadows us
all, the darkness of the inevitable end. Face to face with the _lacrimæ
rerum_ in so simple and tender a form, the heavy words _Memento Mori_
fall upon the heart not as a sad and harsh interruption of wordly dreams
and fancies, but as a deep pedal note upon a sweet organ, giving
strength and fulness and balance to the dying away of the last grave and
gentle chord.
31
If any one whose eye may fall upon these pages be absolutely equable
of temperament, serene, contented, the same one day as another, as Dr.
Johnson said of Reynolds, let him not read this chapter—he will think it
a mere cry in the dark, better smothered in the bed-clothes, an unmanly
piece of morbid pathology, a secret and sordid disease better undivulged,
on which all persons of proper pride should hold their peace.
Well, it is not for him that I write; there are books and books, and
even chapters and chapters, just as there are people and people. I
myself avoid books dealing with health and disease. I used when younger
to be unable to resist the temptation of a medical book; but now I am
wiser, and if I sometimes yield to the temptation, it is with a backward
glancing eye and a cautious step. And I will say that I generally put
back the book with a snap, in a moment, as though a snake had stung me.
But there will be no pathology here—nothing but a patient effort to look
a failing in the face, and to suggest a remedy.
[Sidenote: FEARS]
I speak to the initiated, to those who have gone down into the dark
cave, and seen the fire burn low in the shrine, and watched aghast
the formless, mouldering things—hideous implements are they, or mere
weapons?—that hang upon the walls.
Do you know what it is to dwell, perhaps for days together, under the
shadow of a fear? Perhaps a definite fear—a fear of poverty, or a fear
of obloquy, or a fear of harshness, or a fear of pain, or a fear of
disease—or, worse than all, a boding, misshapen, sullen dread which has
no definite cause, and is therefore the harder to resist.
[Sidenote: DREAMS]
These moods, I say it with gratitude for myself and for the encouragement
of others, tend to diminish in acuteness and in frequency as I grow
older. They are now, as ever, preluded by dreams of a singular kind,
dreams of rapid and confused action, dreams of a romantic and exaggerated
pictorial character—huge mountain ranges, lofty and venerable buildings,
landscapes of incredible beauty, gardens of unimaginable luxuriance,
which pass with incredible rapidity before the mind. I will indicate
two of these in detail. I was in a vessel like a yacht, armed with a
massive steel prow like a ram, which moved in some aerial fashion over
a landscape, skimming it seemed to me but a few feet above the ground.
A tall man of benignant aspect stood upon the bridge, and directed the
operations of the unseen navigator. We ascended a heathery valley, and
presently encountered snow-drifts, upon which the vessel seemed to settle
down to her full speed; at last we entered a prodigious snowfield, with
vast ridged snow-waves extending in every direction for miles; the vessel
ran not over but through these waves, sending up huge spouts of snow
which fell in cool showers upon my head and hands, while the tinkle of
dry ice fragments made a perpetual low music. At last we stopped and I
descended on to the plateau. Far ahead, through rolling clouds, I saw the
black snow-crowned heights of a mountain, loftier than any seen by human
eye, and for leagues round me lay the interminable waste of snow. I was
aroused from my absorption by a voice behind me; the vessel started again
on her course with a leap like a porpoise, and though I screamed aloud
to stop her, I saw her, in a few seconds, many yards ahead, describing
great curves as she ran, with the snow spouting over her like a fountain.
The second was a very different scene. I was in the vine-clad alleys
of some Italian garden; against the still blue air a single stone pine
defined itself; I walked along a path, and turning a corner an exquisite
conventual building of immense size, built of a light brown stone,
revealed itself. From all the alleys round emerged troops of monastic
figures in soft white gowns, and a mellow chime of exceeding sweetness
floated from the building. I saw that I too was robed like the rest; but
the gliding figures outstripped me; and arriving last at a great iron
portal I found it closed, and the strains of a great organ came drowsily
from within.
Then into the dream falls a sudden sense of despair like an ashen
cloud; a feeling of incredible agony, intensified by the beauty of the
surrounding scene, that agony which feverishly questions as to why so
dark a stroke should fall when the mind seems at peace with itself
and lost in dreamy wonder at the loveliness all about it. Then the
vision closes, and for a time the mind battles with dark waves of
anguish, emerging at last, like a diver from a dim sea, into the waking
consciousness. The sickly daylight filters through the window curtains
and the familiar room swims into sight. The first thought is one of
unutterable relief, which is struck instantly out of the mind by the
pounce of the troubled mood; and then follows a ghastly hour, when every
possibility of horror and woe intangible presses in upon the battling
mind. At such moments a definite difficulty, a practical problem would
be welcome—but there is none; the misery is too deep for thought, and
even, when after long wrestling, the knowledge comes that it is all a
subjective condition, and that there is no adequate cause in life or
circumstances for this unmanning terror—even then it can only be silently
endured, like the racking of some fierce physical pain.
[Sidenote: WOE]
The day that succeeds to such a waking mood is almost the worst part
of the experience. Shaken and dizzied by the inrush of woe, the mind
straggles wearily through hour after hour; the familiar duties are
intolerable; food has no savour; action and thought no interest; and if
for an hour the tired head is diverted by some passing event, or if,
oppressed with utter exhaustion, it sinks into an unrefreshing slumber,
repose but gives the strength to suffer—the accursed mood leaps again, as
from an unseen lair, upon the unnerved consciousness, and tears like some
strange beast the helpless and palpitating soul.
When first, at Cambridge, I had the woeful experiences above recorded,
I was so unused to endurance, so bewildered by suffering, that I think
for awhile I was almost beside myself. I recollect going down with some
friends, in a brief lull of misery, to watch a football match, when the
horror seized me in the middle of a cheerful talk with such vehemence,
that I could only rush off with a muttered word, and return to my rooms,
in which I immured myself to spend an hour in an agony of prayer. Again
I recollect sitting with some of the friends of my own age after hall;
we were smoking and talking peacefully enough—for some days my torment
had been suspended—when all at once, out of the secret darkness the
terror leapt upon me, and after in vain resisting it for a few moments,
I hurried away, having just enough self-respect to glance at my watch
and mutter something about a forgotten engagement. But worst of all was
a walk taken with my closest friend on a murky November day. We started
in good spirits, when in a moment the accursed foe was upon me; I hardly
spoke except for fitful questions. Our way led us to a level crossing,
beside a belt of woodland, where a huge luggage train was jolting and
bumping backwards and forewards. We hung upon the gate; and then, and
then only, came upon me in a flash an almost irresistible temptation to
lay my head beneath the ponderous wheels, and end it all; I could only
pray in silence, and hurry from the spot in speechless agitation. What
wonder if I heard on the following day that my friend complained that I
was altering for the worse—that I had become so sullen and morose that it
was no use talking to me.
Gradually, very gradually, the aching frost of the soul broke up and
thawed; little trifling encouraging incidents—a small success or two,
an article accepted by a magazine, a friendship, an athletic victory,
raised me step by step out of the gloom. One benefit, even at the time,
it brought me—an acute sensitiveness to beauty both of sight and sound.
I used to steal at even-song into the dark nave of King’s Chapel, and
the sight of the screen, the flood of subdued light overflowing from the
choir, the carven angels with their gilded trumpets, penetrated into the
soul with an exquisite sweetness; and still more the music—whether the
low prelude with the whispering pedals, the severe monotone breaking
into freshets of harmony, the swing and richness of the chants, or the
elaborate beauty of some familiar magnificat or anthem—all fell like
showers upon the arid sense. The music at King’s had one characteristic
that I have never heard elsewhere; the properties of the building are
such that the echo lingers without blurring the successive chords—not
“loth to die,” I used to think, as Wordsworth says, but sinking as it
were from consciousness to dream, and from dream to death.
[Sidenote: THE BROTHERHOOD OF SORROW]
One further gain—the greater—was that my suffering did not, I think,
withdraw me wholly into myself and fence me from the world; rather it
gave me a sense of the brotherhood of grief. I was one with all the
agonies that lie silent in the shadow of life; and though my suffering
had no tangible cause, yet I was initiated into the fellowship of those
who _bear_. I _understood_;—weak, faithless, and faulty as I was, I was
no longer in the complacent isolation of the strong, the successful, the
selfish, and even in my darkest hour I had strength to thank God for
that.
32
_Oct. 21, 1898._