PROGRESS IN EMANCIPATION
I WAS with my Unitarian congregation for about a twelvemonth. My life
during that time, save so far as my intercourse with Mrs. Lane, and one
other friend presently to be mentioned, was concerned, was as sunless and
joyless as it had ever been. Imagine me living by myself, roaming about
the fields, and absorbed mostly upon insoluble problems with which I
never made any progress, and which tended to draw me away from what
enjoyment of life there was which I might have had.
One day I was walking along under the south side of a hill, which was a
great place for butterflies, and I saw a man, apparently about fifty
years old, coming along with a butterfly-net. He did not see me, for he
looked about for a convenient piece of turf, and presently sat down,
taking out a sandwich-box, from which he produced his lunch. His
occupation did not particularly attract me, but in those days, if I
encountered a new person who was not repulsive, I was always as eager to
make his acquaintance as if he perchance might solve a secret for me, the
answer to which I burned to know. I have been disappointed so many
times, and have found that nobody has much more to tell me, that my
curiosity has somewhat abated, but even now, the news that anybody who
has the reputation for intelligence has come near me, makes me restless
to see him. I accordingly saluted the butterfly-catcher, who returned
the salutation kindly, and we began to talk.
He told me that he had come seven miles that morning to that spot because
he knew that it was haunted by one particular species of butterfly which
he wished to get; and as it was a still, bright day, he hoped to find a
specimen. He had been unsuccessful for some years. Presupposing that I
knew all about his science, he began to discourse upon it with great
freedom, and he ended by saying that he would be happy to show me his
collection, which was one of the finest in the country.
“But I forget,” said he, “as I always forget in such cases, perhaps you
don’t care for butterflies.”
“I take much interest in them. I admire exceedingly the beauty of their
colours.”
“Ah, yes, but you don’t care for them scientifically, or for collecting
them.”
“No, not particularly. I cannot say I ever saw much pleasure in the mere
classification of insects.”
“Perhaps you are devoted to some other science?”
“No, I am not.”
“Well, I daresay it looks absurd for a man at my years to be running
after a moth. I used to think it was absurd, but I am wiser now.
However, I cannot stop to talk; I shall lose the sunshine. The first
time you are anywhere near me, come and have a look. You will alter your
opinion.”
Some weeks afterwards I happened to be in the neighbourhood of the
butterfly-catcher’s house, and I called. He was at home, and welcomed me
cordially. The first thing he did was to show me his little museum. It
was really a wonderful exhibition, and as I saw the creatures in lines,
and noted the amazing variations of the single type, I was filled with
astonishment. Seeing the butterflies systematically arranged was a
totally different thing from seeing a butterfly here and there, and gave
rise to altogether new thoughts. My friend knew his subject from end to
end, and I envied him his mastery of it. I had often craved the mastery
of some one particular province, be it ever so minute. I half or a
quarter knew a multitude of things, but no one thing thoroughly, and was
never sure, just when I most wanted to be sure. We got into
conversation, and I was urged to stay to dinner. I consented, and found
that my friend’s household consisted of himself alone. After dinner, as
we became a little more communicative, I asked him when and how he took
to this pursuit.
“It will be twenty-six years ago next Christmas,” said he, “since I
suffered a great calamity. You will forgive my saying anything about it,
as I have no assurance that the wound which looks healed may not break
out again. Suffice to say, that for some ten years or more my thoughts
were almost entirely occupied with death and our future state. There is
a strange fascination about these topics to many people, because they are
topics which permit a great deal of dreaming, but very little thinking:
in fact, true thinking, in the proper sense of the word, is impossible in
dealing with them. There is no rigorous advance from one position to
another, which is really all that makes thinking worth the name. Every
man can imagine or say cloudy things about death and the future, and feel
himself here, at least, on a level with the ablest brain which he knows.
“I went on gazing gloomily into dark emptiness, till all life became
nothing for me. I did not care to live, because there was no assurance
of existence beyond. By the strangest of processes, I neglected the
world, because I had so short a time to be in it. It is with absolute
horror now that I look back upon those days, when I lay as if alive in a
coffin of lead. All passions and pursuits were nullified by the
ever-abiding sense of mortality. For years this mood endured, and I was
near being brought down to the very dust.
“At last, by the greatest piece of good fortune, I was obliged to go
abroad. The change, and the obligation to occupy myself about many
affairs, was an incalculable blessing to me. While travelling I was
struck with the remarkable and tropical beauty of the insects, and
especially of the butterflies. I captured a few, and brought them home.
On showing them to a friend, learned in such matters, I discovered that
they were rare, and I had a little cabinet made for them. I looked into
the books, found what it was which I had got, and what I had not got.
“Next year it was my duty to go abroad again, and I went with some
feeling akin to pleasure, for I wished to add to my store. I increased
it considerably, and by the time I returned I had as fine a show as any
private person might wish to possess. A good deal of my satisfaction,
perhaps, was unaccountable, and no rational explanation can be given of
it. But men should not be too curious in analysing and condemning any
means which Nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be
coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies, or fossils. And yet my
newly-acquired passion was not altogether inexplicable. I was the owner
of something which other persons did not own, and in a little while, in
my own limited domain, I was supreme. No man either can study any
particular science thoroughly without transcending it; and it is an utter
mistake to suppose that, because a student sticks to any one branch, he
necessarily becomes contracted.
“However, I am not going to philosophise; I do not like it. All I can
say is, that I shun all those metaphysical speculations of former years
as I would a path which leads to madness. Other people may be able to
occupy themselves with them and be happy; I cannot. I find quite enough
in my butterflies to exercise my wonder, and yet, on the other hand, my
study is not a mere vacant, profitless stare. When you saw me that
morning, I was trying to obtain an example which I have long wanted to
fill up a gap. I have looked for it for years, but have missed it. But
I know it has been seen lately where we met, and I shall triumph at
last.”
A good deal of all this was to me incomprehensible. It seemed mere
solemn trifling compared with the investigation of those great questions
with which I had been occupied, but I could not resist the contagion of
my friend’s enthusiasm when he took me to his little library and
identified his treasures with pride, pointing out at the same time those
in which he was deficient. He was specially exultant over one minute
creature which he had caught himself, which he had not as yet seen
figured, and he proposed going to the British Museum almost on purpose to
see if he could find it there.
When I got home I made inquiries into the history of my entomologist. I
found that years ago he had married a delicate girl, of whom he was
devotedly fond. She died in childbirth, leaving him completely broken.
Her offspring, a boy, survived, but he was a cripple, and grew up
deformed. As he neared manhood he developed a satyr-like lustfulness,
which was almost uncontrollable, and made it difficult to keep him at
home without constraint. He seemed to have no natural affection for his
father, nor for anybody else, but was cunning with the base, beastly
cunning of the ape. The father’s horror was infinite. This thing was
his only child, and the child of the woman whom he worshipped. He was
excluded from all intercourse with friends; for, as the boy could not be
said to be mad, he could not be shut up. After years of inconceivable
misery, however, lust did deepen into absolute lunacy, and the crooked,
misshapen monster was carried off to an asylum, where he died, and the
father well-nigh went there too.
Before I had been six months amongst the Unitarians, I found life even
more intolerable with them than it had been with the Independents. The
difference of a little less belief was nothing. The question of
Unitarianism was altogether dead to me; and although there was a phase of
the doctrine of God’s unity which would now and then give me an
opportunity for a few words which I felt, it was not a phase for which my
hearers in the least cared or which they understood.
Here, as amongst the Independents, there was the same lack of personal
affection, or even of a capability of it—excepting always Mrs. Lane—and,
in fact, it was more distressing amongst the Unitarians than amongst the
orthodox. The desire for something like sympathy and love absolutely
devoured me. I dwelt on all the instances in poetry and history in which
one human being had been bound to another human being, and I reflected
that my existence was of no earthly importance to anybody. I could not
altogether lay the blame on myself. God knows that I would have stood
against a wall and have been shot for any man or woman whom I loved, as
cheerfully as I would have gone to bed, but nobody seemed to wish for
such a love, or to know what to do with it.
Oh, the humiliations under which this weakness has bent me! Often and
often I have thought that I have discovered somebody who could really
comprehend the value of a passion which could tell everything and venture
everything. I have overstepped all bounds of etiquette in obtruding
myself on him, and have opened my heart even to shame. I have then found
that it was all on my side. For every dozen times I went to his house,
he came to mine once, and only when pressed: I have languished in
sickness for a month without his finding it out; and if I were to drop
into the grave, he would perhaps never give me another thought. If I had
been born a hundred years earlier, I should have transferred this burning
longing to the unseen God and have become a devotee. But I was a hundred
years too late, and I felt that it was mere cheating of myself and a
mockery to think about love for the only God whom I knew—the forces which
maintained the universe.
I am now getting old, and have altered in many things. The hunger and
thirst of those years have abated, or rather, the fire has had ashes
heaped on it, so that it is well-nigh extinguished. I have been repulsed
into self-reliance and reserve, having learned wisdom by experience; but
still I know that the desire has not died, as so many other desires have
died, by the natural evolution of age. It has been forcibly suppressed,
and that is all. If anybody who reads these words of mine should be
offered by any young dreamer such a devotion as I once had to offer, and
had to take back again refused so often, let him in the name of all that
is sacred accept it. It is simply the most precious thing in existence.
Had I found anybody who would have thought so, my life would have been
redeemed into something which I have often imagined, but now shall never
know.
I determined to leave, but what to do I could not tell. I was fit for
nothing, and yet I could not make up my mind to accept a life which was
simply living. It must be a life, through which some benefit was
conferred upon my fellow-creatures. This was mainly delusion. I had not
then learned to correct this natural instinct to be of some service to
mankind by the thought of the boundlessness of infinity and of Nature’s
profuseness. I had not come to reflect that, taking into account her
eternities, and absolute exhaustlessness, it was folly in me to fret and
fume, and I therefore clung to the hope that I might employ myself in
some way which, however feebly, would help mankind a little to the
realisation of an ideal. But I was not the man for such a mission. I
lacked altogether that concentration which binds up the scattered powers
into one resistless energy, and I lacked faith. All I could do was to
play the vagrant in literature, picking up here and there an idea which
attracted me, and presenting it to my flock on the Sunday; the net result
being next to nothing.
However, existence like that which I had been leading was intolerable,
and change it I must. I accordingly resigned, and with ten pounds in my
pocket, which was all that remained after paying my bills, I came to
London, thinking that until I could settle what to do, I would try and
teach in a school. I called on an agent somewhere near the Strand, and
after a little negotiation, was engaged by a gentleman who kept a private
establishment at Stoke Newington.
Thither I accordingly went one Monday afternoon in January, about two
days before the term commenced. When I got there, I was shown into a
long schoolroom, which had been built out from the main building. It was
dark, save for one candle, and was warmed by a stove. The walls were
partly covered with maps, and at one end of the room hung a diagram
representing a globe, on which an immense amount of wasted ingenuity had
been spent to produce the illusion of solidity. The master, I was told,
was out, and in this room with one candle I remained till nine o’clock.
At that time a servant brought me some bread and cheese on a small tray,
with half-a-pint of beer. I asked for water, which was given me, and she
then retired. The tray was set down on the master’s raised desk, and
sitting there I ate my supper in silence, looking down upon the
dimly-lighted forms, and forward into the almost absolute gloom.
At ten o’clock a man, who seemed as if he were the knife and
boot-cleaner, came and said he would show me where I was to sleep. We
passed through the schoolroom into a kind of court, where there was a
ladder standing against a trap-door. He told me that my bedroom was up
there, and that when I got up I could leave the ladder down, or pull it
up after me, just as I pleased.
I ascended and found a little chamber, duly furnished with a chest of
drawers, bed, and washhand-stand. It was tolerably clean and decent; but
who shall describe what I felt! I went to the window and looked out.
There were scattered lights here and there, marking roads, but as they
crossed one another, and now and then stopped where building had ceased,
the effect they produced was that of bewilderment with no clue to it.
Further off was the great light of London, like some unnatural dawn, or
the illumination from a fire which could not itself be seen. I was
overcome with the most dreadful sense of loneliness. I suppose it is the
very essence of passion, using the word in its literal sense, that no
account can be given of it by the reason.
Reflecting on what I suffered, then, I cannot find any solid ground for
it, and yet there are not half-a-dozen days or nights of my life which
remain with me like that one. I was beside myself with a kind of terror,
which I cannot further explain. It is possible for another person to
understand grief for the death of a friend, bodily suffering, or any
emotion which has a distinct cause, but how shall he understand the worst
of all calamities, the nameless dread, the efflux of all vitality, the
ghostly, haunting horror which is so nearly akin to madness?
It is many years ago since that evening, but while I write I am at the
window still, and the yellow flare of the city is still in my eyes. I
remember the thought of all the happy homes which lay around me, in which
dwelt men who had found a position, an occupation, and, above all things,
affection. I know the causelessness of a good deal of all those panic
fears and all that suffering, but I tremble to think how thin is the
floor on which we stand which separates us from the bottomless abyss.
The next morning I went down into the schoolroom, and after I had been
there for some little time, the proprietor of the school made his
appearance. He was not a bad man, nor even unkind in his way, but he was
utterly uninteresting, and as commonplace as might be expected after
having for many years done nothing but fight a very uphill battle in
boarding the sons of tradesfolk, and teaching them, at very moderate
rates, the elements of Latin, and the various branches of learning which
constitute what is called a commercial education. He said that he
expected some of the boys back that day; that when they came, he should
wish me to take my meals with them, but that meanwhile he would be glad
if I would breakfast with him and his wife. This accordingly I did.
What his wife was like I have almost entirely forgotten, and I only saw
her once again. After breakfast he said I could go for a walk, and for a
walk I went; wandering about the dreary, intermingled chaos of fields
with damaged hedges, and new roads divided into building plots.
Meanwhile one or two of the boys had made their appearance, and I
therefore had my dinner with them. After dinner, as there was nothing
particular to do, I was again dismissed with them for a walk just as the
light of the winter afternoon was fading. My companions were dejected,
and so was I! The wind was south-easterly, cold, and raw, and the smoke
came up from the region about the river and shrouded all the building
plots in fog. I was now something more than depressed. It was
absolutely impossible to endure such a state of things any longer, and I
determined that, come what might, I would not stop. I considered whether
I should leave without saying a word—that is to say, whether I should
escape, but I feared pursuit and some unknown legal proceedings.
When I got home, therefore, I sought the principal, and informed him that
I felt so unwell that I was afraid I must throw up my engagement at once.
He naturally observed that this was a serious business for him; that my
decision was very hasty—what was the matter with me? I might get better;
but he concluded, after my reiterated asseverations that I must go, with
a permission to resign, only on one condition, that I should obtain an
equally efficient substitute at the same salary. I was more agitated
than ever. With my natural tendency to believe the worst, I had not the
least expectation of finding anybody who would release me.
The next morning I departed on my errand. I knew a poor student who had
been at college with me, and who had nothing to do, and to him I betook
myself. I strove—as even now I firmly believe—not to make the situation
seem any better than it was, and he consented to take it. I have no
clear recollection of anything that happened till the following day,
excepting that I remember with all the vividness of actual and present
sensuous perception lugging my box down the ladder and sending for a cab.
I was in a fever lest anything should arrest me, but the cab came, and I
departed. When I had got fairly clear of the gates, I literally cried
tears of joy—the first and the last of my life. I am constrained now,
however, to admit that my trouble was but a bubble blown of air, and I
doubt whether I have done any good by dwelling upon it.