That "going back" about which I wrote in the second chapter to a place
where an unexpected beauty or charm has revealed itself, and has made
its image a lasting and prized possession of the mind, is not the same
thing as the revisiting a famous town or city, rich in many beauties and
old memories, such as Bath or Wells, for instance. Such centres have a
permanent attraction, and one who is a rover in the land must return to
them again and again, nor does he fail on each successive visit to find
some fresh charm or interest. The sadness of such returns, after a long
interval, is only, as I have said, when we start "looking up" those with
whom we had formed pleasant friendly relations. And all because of the
illusion that we shall see them as they were--that Time has stood still
waiting for our return, and by and by, to our surprise and grief, we
discover that it is not so; that the dear friends of other days, long
unvisited but unforgotten, have become strangers. This human loss is
felt even more in the case of a return to some small centre, a village
or hamlet where we knew every one, and our intimacy with the people has
produced the sense of being one in blood with them. It is greatest of
all when we return to a childhood's or boyhood's home. Many writers
have occupied themselves with this mournful theme, and I imagine that a
person of the proper Amiel-like tender and melancholy moralizing type
of mind, by using his own and his friends' experiences, could write a
charmingly sad and pretty book on the subject.
The really happy returns of this kind must be exceedingly rare. I am
almost surprised to think that I am able to recall as many as two, but
they hardly count, as in both instances the departure or exile from home
happens at so early a time of life that no recollections of the people
survived--nothing, in fact, but a vague mental picture of the place.
One was of a business man I knew in London, who lost his early home in a
village in the Midlands, as a boy of eight or nine years of age, through
the sale of the place by his father, who had become impoverished. The
boy was trained to business in London, and when a middle-aged man,
wishing to retire and spend the rest of his life in the country, he
revisited his native village for the first time, and discovered to his
joy that he could buy back the old home. He was, when I last saw him,
very happy in its possession.
The other case I will relate more fully, as it is a very curious one,
and came to my knowledge in a singular way.
At a small station near Eastleigh a man wearing a highly pleased
expression on his face entered the smoking-carriage in which I was
travelling to London. Putting his bag on the rack, he pulled out his
pipe and threw himself back in his seat with a satisfied air; then,
looking at me and catching my eye, he at once started talking. I had my
newspaper, but seeing him in that overflowing mood I responded readily
enough, for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy and who and
what he was. Not a tradesman nor a bagman, and not a farmer, though he
looked like an open-air man; nor could I form a guess from his speech
and manner as to his native place. A robust man of thirty-eight or
forty, with blue eyes and a Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman,
and yet he struck me as most un-English in his lively, almost eager
manner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in his speech.
From time to time his face lighted up, when, looking to the window, his
eyes rested on some pretty scene--a glimpse of stately old elm trees in
a field where cattle were grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk
stream, the paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of some
tree-hidden village. When he discovered that these hills and streams and
rustic villages had as great a charm for me as for himself, that I knew
and loved the two or three places he named in a questioning way, he
opened his heart and the secret of his present happiness.
He was a native of the district, born at a farmhouse of which his father
in succession to his grandfather had been the tenant. It was a small
farm of only eighty-five acres, and as his father could make no more
than a bare livelihood out of it, he eventually gave it up when my
informant was but three years old, and selling all he had, emigrated to
Australia. Nine years later he died, leaving a numerous family poorly
provided for; the home was broken up and boys and girls had to go out
and face the world. They had somehow all got on very well, and his
brothers and sisters were happy enough out there, Australians in mind,
thoroughly persuaded that theirs was the better land, the best country
in the world, and with no desire to visit England. He had never felt
like that; somehow his father's feeling about the old country had taken
such a hold of him that he never outlived it--never felt at home in
Australia, however successful he was in his affairs. The home feeling
had been very strong in his father; his greatest delight was to sit of
an evening with his children round him and tell them of the farm and the
old farm-house where he was born and had lived so many years, and where
some of them too had been born. He was never tired of talking of it,
of taking them by the hand, as it were, and leading them from place to
place, to the stream, the village, the old stone church, the meadows and
fields and hedges, the deep shady lanes, and, above all, to the dear
old ivied house with its gables and tall chimneys. So many times had
his father described it that the old place was printed like a map on his
mind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even after the
image of his boyhood's home in Australia had become faded and pale. With
that mental picture to guide him he believed that he could go to that
angle by the porch where the flycatchers bred every year and find their
nest; where in the hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the
elders grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and
watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse, every room and
passage in the old house. Through all his busy years that picture never
grew less beautiful, never ceased its call, and at last, possessed of
sufficient capital to yield him a modest income for the rest of his
life, he came home. What he was going to do in England he did not
consider. He only knew that until he had satisfied the chief desire of
his heart and had looked upon the original of the picture he had borne
so long in his mind he could not rest nor make any plans for the future.
He came first to London and found, on examining the map of Hampshire,
that the village of Thorpe (I will call it), where he was born, is three
miles from the nearest station, in the southern part of the county.
Undoubtedly it was Thorpe; that was one of the few names of places his
father had mentioned which remained in his memory always associated
with that vivid image of the farm in his mind. To Thorpe he accordingly
went--as pretty a rustic village as he had hoped to find it. He took a
room at the inn and went out for a long walk--"just to see the place,"
he said to the landlord. He would make no inquiries; he would find his
home for himself; how could he fail to recognize it? But he walked for
hours in a widening circle and saw no farm or other house, and no ground
that corresponded to the picture in his brain.
Troubled at his failure, he went back and questioned his landlord, and,
naturally, was asked for the name of the farm he was seeking. He had
forgotten the name--he even doubted that he had ever heard it. But there
was his family name to go by--Dyson; did any one remember a farmer Dyson
in the village? He was told that it was not an uncommon name in that
part of the country. There were no Dysons now in Thorpe, but some
fifteen or twenty years ago one of that name had been the tenant of Long
Meadow Farm in the parish. The name of the farm was unfamiliar, and when
he visited the place he found it was not the one he sought.
It was a grievous disappointment. A new sense of loneliness oppressed
him; for that bright image in his mind, with the feeling about his
home, had been a secret source of comfort and happiness, and was like a
companion, a dear human friend, and now he appeared to be on the point
of losing it. Could it be that all that mental picture, with the details
that seemed so true to life, was purely imaginary? He could not believe
it; the old house had probably been pulled down, the big trees felled,
orchard and hedges grabbed up--all the old features obliterated--and the
land thrown into some larger neighbouring farm. It was dreadful to
think that such devastating changes had been made, but it had certainly
existed as he saw it in his mind, and he would inquire of some of the
old men in the place, who would perhaps be able to tell him where his
home had stood thirty years ago.
At once he set about interviewing all the old men he came upon in his
rounds, describing to them the farm tenanted by a man named Dyson about
forty years ago, and by and by he got hold of one who knew. He listened
for a few minutes to the oft-repeated story, then exclaimed, "Why, sir,
'tis surely Woodyates you be talking about!"
"That's the name! That's the name," he cried. "Woodyyates-how did I ever
forget it! You knew it then--where was it?"
"I'll just show you," said the old man, proud at having guessed rightly,
and turning started slowly hobbling along till he got to the end of the
lane.
There was an opening there and a view of the valley with trees, blue in
the distance, at the furthest visible point. "Do you see them trees?"
he said. "That's where Harping is; 'tis two miles or, perhaps, a little
more from Thorpe. There's a church tower among them trees, but you
can't see it because 'tis hid. You go by the road till you comes to the
church, then you go on by the water, maybe a quarter of a mile, and you
comes to Woodyates. You won't see no difference in it; I've knowed it
since I were a boy, but 'tis in Harping parish, not in Thorpe."
Now he remembered the name--Harping, near Thorpe--only Thorpe was the
more important village where the inn was and the shops.
In less than an hour after leaving his informant he was at Woodyates,
feasting his eyes on the old house of his dreams and of his exiled
father's before him, inexpressibly glad to recognize it as the very
house he had loved so long--that he had been deceived by no false image.
For some days he haunted the spot, then became a lodger at the
farm-house, and now after making some inquiries he had found that the
owner was willing to sell the place for something more than its market
value, and he was going up to London about it.
At Waterloo I wished him happiness in his old home found again after
so many years, then watched him as he walked briskly away--as
commonplace-looking a man as could be seen on that busy crowded
platform, in his suit of rough grey tweeds, thick boots, and bowler
hat. Yet one whose fortune might be envied by many even among the
successful--one who had cherished a secret thought and feeling, which
had been to him like the shadow of a rock and like a cool spring in a
dry and thirsty land.
And in that host of undistinguished Colonials and others of British
race from all regions of the earth, who annually visit these shores on
business or for pleasure or some other object, how many there must be
who come with some such memory or dream or aspiration in their hearts!
A greater number probably than we imagine. For most of them there is
doubtless disappointment and disillusion: it is a matter of the heart,
a sentiment about which some are not given to speak. He too, my
fellow-passenger, would no doubt have held his peace had his dream not
met with so perfect a fulfilment. As it was he had to tell his joy to
some one, though it were to a stranger.