to Nottingham, York and Hull. I lodged at Nottingham (with a fatuous
landlady) for that term and rather enjoyed the brighter air of
Nottingham and brighter spirits of the people, after Leeds. The Casey
family with their simple rather foreign habits (Mrs. Casey half-English,
half-German, Mr. Casey half-Irish, half-French) were my chief refuge
during that and later visits to Nottingham. To my Astronomy course, I
added Light and Sound. The limelight lantern became my companion, and
experiments—though they increased the labour of preparation—made the
lectures easier and more successful. By nature an abominably bad
speaker, I had at first found lecturing extremely difficult and a great
strain. My nervous disorganization increased the difficulty. Words would
not come. I suffered; and if possible my audiences suffered more! But by
degrees, by very slow degrees, I improved; practice and hard work over
my notes in preparation made a vocabulary more ready to my tongue; and
at last, by about the end of my seven years, I could get through an
hour’s talk without absolutely disgracing myself!
In this connection I may tell a story. One term (a little later on, I
think) I was lecturing at Barnsley. The place was a little local
theatre, unused at the time; but about the middle of the term it was
taken by a traveling company, and we had to move into another building.
The last evening of our occupation, some scenery was already up, and I,
having affixed my star diagrams to the shifts and side-scenes, was
lecturing from the stage when a belated stranger, a rough navvy or
collier—no doubt attracted by the theatrical bills already out—came
stumping down the middle gangway and ultimately dropped into a seat. He
remained quiet for a good time; and then—his patience fairly giving
out—he rose up and spoke. “Look ‘ere,” he said, “I’ve been sittin’ ‘ere
’alf an hour—and I haven’t understood a _word_ of what you’ve been
saying, _and I don’t believe you do neither_.”
I felt for the poor man—I deeply sympathized. He had come in no doubt on
the expectation of a theatrical treat—got in too without paying at the
door, which was _nuts_, as they say—and now—what had he come to?
There was a scene. Everybody jumped round on their seats. The local
Secretary—a tiny little man, a Frenchman, a dentist—approached the bold
stranger.
“You must sit down,” he said.
“_Shan’t_ sit down!”
“Den you must go out of de room.”
“_Shan’t_ go out of the room.”
“Den I shall have to _make_ you.”
The situation was too ludicrous—this tiny Gallic David and this huge and
beery Goliath! What might have happened we know not. Fortunately the
stranger took the better part, and said—
“I’m sure I don’t want to stay ’ere any longer”—and left us with
contempt to our Astronomy.
In the Spring term, January to April, 1877, I lodged at York—again an
improvement in climate. The lectures there were largely supported by
Unitarian, Quaker, and other dissenting groups flourishing in the very
shadow of the Cathedral. There were the Spences, the Smithsons, the
Wilkinsons, and the excellent ‘Mount’ school (‘Friends’) managed by Miss
Rous—whose girls were good pupils and great chums of mine.
In the end of April that year I went out to America. This was the
accomplishment of a long-slumbering intention. Ever since, in my rooms
at Cambridge, I had read that little blue book of Whitman, his writings
had been my companions, and had been working a revolution within me—at
first an intellectual revolution merely—but by degrees the wonderful
personality behind them, glowing through here and there, became more and
more real and living, and suffusing itself throughout rendered them
transparent to my understanding.
I began in fact to realize that, above all else, I had come in contact
with a great Man; not great thoughts, theories, views of life, but a
great Individuality, a great Life. I began to see and realize
correspondingly that ‘views’ and intellectual furniture generally were
not the important thing I had before imagined; that character and the
statement of Self, persistently, under diverse conditions were
all-important; that the body in Man (and this the Greek statuary had
helped me to realize), and the quality corresponding to body in all art
and behaviour, was radiant in meaning and beautiful beyond words; and
that the production of splendid men and women was the aim and only true
aim of State-policy. By day and night the presence of this Friend,
exhaled from his own book, had been with me—thus working, transforming,
drawing me wonderfully to seek him. America too, the United States,
began of necessity to compel my interest, and to form an additional
attraction across the Atlantic. I wrote to Whitman more than once, and
in 1876 obtained from him the complete (Centennial) Edition of his works
published in that year. Indeed I made every preparation to go out to the
States that summer, but circumstances rendered the voyage impossible.
This year, however, 1877, gave me the long-desired opportunity. I have
recorded in another place[7] the main outlines of my visit to Whitman on
this occasion, so on that subject I need not say anything further here,
except that Whitman as a concrete personality entirely filled out and
corroborated the conception of him which one had derived from reading
_Leaves of Grass_. The Rev. W. H. Channing, who was then acting as
Unitarian Minister at Leeds, insisted on giving me letters of
introduction to various friends of his on that side—Emerson, O. W.
Holmes, Russell Lowell, Charles Norton of Harvard and others—of which I
made use. Emerson was very charming and friendly. I stayed one night at
his house and dined with him and his wife and his daughter Ellen. His
failure of memory for names was considerable, and at times painful, and
there was the fixed look of age often in his eye; but otherwise he was
active in body and full of fun and enjoyment of intellectual life. His
eyes greyish-blue, the corners of his lips often drawn upward—altogether
a wonderful bird-like look about his face, enhanced by his way of
jerking his head forward—the look sometimes very straight and intense,
then followed by a charming placid smile like moonlight on the sea. His
domestic life seemed admirable. I took a turn in the garden with him in
the afternoon and a drive afterwards—saw the ‘Minute Man’ and the ‘old
Manse’ where his grandfather lived. Then in his library he talked much
about books and authors—handling his books in a caressing loving way—and
showed me his Upanishad translations, and his verses “If the red slayer
thinks he slays,” etc. He expressed his admiration for Carlyle and
Tennyson; his want of the same for Matthew Arnold; and his plain
contempt of Lewes’ Life of Goethe. His conversation generally seemed
very _literary_ in character and I could not get him to express any
views or ideas about America’s place and progress. When I spoke of Walt
Whitman he made an odd whinnying sound: “Well, I thought he had some
merit at one time: there was a good deal of promise in the first
edition—_burt_ he is a wayward fanciful man. I saw him in New York and
asked him to dine at my Hotel. He shouted for a ‘tin mug’ for his beer.
Then he had a _noisy_ fire engine society. And he took me there and was
like a boy over it, as if there had never been such a thing before.”
Emerson also took exception to Whitman’s metre.
O. W. Holmes did not please me so well—a good-natured little spiteful
creature, one might say, with shovel underlip and bright grey-blue eyes
under a low brow, a dapper active man of seventy—his vanity qualified by
geniality and humour. No ideas whatever about America. “As to Whitman,
well, Lord Napier said _He_ was the one thing that interested him in the
States. And then Lord Houghton at dinner one day came plump out in his
favour—but Willie Everett made such a fierce attack in reply that
conversation was silenced.” And he knew that Rossetti and others in
England thought much of him; but he could only say that in America he
was not known. Then he told the story about him and Lowell and
Longfellow sitting in judgment on Walt Whitman![8]
One of the men who interested me most in Boston neighborhood was
Professor Benjamin Pierce—Astronomical Professor at Harvard—a fine
capable man. We had a long talk on Astronomy, very helpful, and he gave
me a fine set of drawings published by the Observatory.
One day at New York I met Bryant the poet. It was at his editorial
office. Though eighty-four years old he was walking down there daily and
getting through much work. He was infirm and aged-looking of course, but
still wonderfully active; forehead narrowing above, and high like a sort
of promontory, straight brow, and eyes sunken but opening out on you
occasionally, straight nose inclining to a hook, and high bridge, white
hair like a thin fall of spray over neck, ears and mouth. A very
literary person—and manners extremely undemonstrative, even
unsympathetic.
But it was Whitman I came out to see, and he in interest and grandeur of
personality out-towered them all.
The other thing that fascinated me in America was Niagara. I stayed
there four days all alone, looking at the Falls all the time, _feeling_
their earth-shaking roar under my feet by day and in bed at night, and
watching that strange calm sentinel, that column of white spray which,
like a great spirit, exhales itself into the immense height of the sky
over the roaring gulf, and which, rainbow-tinted in the sun, or
glistening mysterious in the moon by night, seems to overlook the land
for far and wide around. It was the only thing I saw which seemed quite
to match Whitman in spirit.
For the rest the broad, free life—Washington, New York, Philadelphia,
Boston, Albany, and the rivers and steamboats—the rough freedom and ease
and independence—rougher and better a good deal than exists now—the
hearty welcomes and general friendliness were pleasant and inspiring.
On my way down the Hudson I stopped at Esopus and stayed with John
Burroughs a night or two. We took a long walk in the primitive woods
back of his house, while he talked of Whitman and bird-lore—a tough
reserved farmer-like exterior, some old root out of the woods one might
say—obdurate to wind and weather—but a keen quick observer close to
Nature and the human heart, and worth a good many Holmes and Lowells.
I was alone all this time, and felt lonely, among all these people; but
as it was the same in England there was nothing remarkable about it! I
returned in July to my life of lodgings and lectures; and in September
was put on another lecturing round—to Sheffield, Chesterfield, and part
of the time York and Barnsley.
This itinerant life in lodgings was a little dull and unfruitful it must
be confessed; the only relief from the importunities of
lodging-landladies being the futile hospitalities of commercial
villa-dom. Both experiences however had their comic side. At Nottingham
my landlady—a widow of course—used to aggravate me much, when I first
came downstairs of a morning, by jumping out upon me from a side-door
with “What’ll you have for dinner to-day?” This query, unannounced by
any morning greeting or salutation, and flung at me _every day_ even
before I had had breakfast, was a complete poser. If I suggested
anything, the suggestion was met by insuperable difficulties. _She_ made
no suggestions. And there we used to stand staring at each other in a
kind of dismay which at that early hour in the morning was sadly
demoralizing! On one occasion I wanted a box made—for some of my
books—and I asked this foolish widow to recommend me a joiner for the
purpose. She mentioned some man’s name; and I, to make sure, queried:
“Is he a good workman? would he make a strong and serviceable article?”
“He made my husband’s coffin, Sir,” she replied with an air of triumph!
And once more I was completely silenced—for I really could not ask
whether it had lasted well or otherwise.
My first experiences of lodging in Sheffield were about equally bad. I
took a lodging at the top end of Glossop Road. It was a good part of the
town; but the weather was awful. For three successive days it rained
blacks mingled with water! The sky was dark. Lamps had to be lighted
indoors. Then my lodging-place people were most doleful—three timid
little old maids, like bunnie-rabbits. No. 1, the youngest and most
presentable, waited on me; No. 3 I never saw, she lived in the kitchen
below; No. 2 haunted in the passage or on the stairs half-way between.
No. 1 would come in and ask me what I would have for dinner. “Chop and
potatoes,” I would say. Then she would put her head out of the door and
say to the one in the passage “The gentleman says he will have chop and
potatoes.” Then I could hear the one in the passage say to No. 3 in the
kitchen “The gentleman says he will have chop and potatoes.” Then a sort
of echo came up from below in a deep tone “Chop and potatoes.” Then No.
1 would begin again with the second course. “Rice pudding.” “The
gentleman says he will have rice pudding.” And so it went on, also for
three days, everything that I said was circulated round the house and
echoed back again from below! It was too much. If this was Sheffield I
could stand it no longer—and I fled away and took rooms at
Chesterfield—dullest alas! of earthly places, but with a rather better
climate.
Perhaps I rather liked the quietude of Chesterfield—where it was hardly
necessary to know anybody. There were good country walks out towards the
moors, and once or twice I got as far as Barlow, half-way to
Millthorpe—of which place, needless to say, I had then never heard. I
penetrated, during my stay in Chesterfield, into the cottage of a
plasterer, a dear old man, S. Ashmore, and became familiar in his
household—the only permanent alliance I made in Chesterfield.
The next winter—1878–9—I really did manage to settle in Sheffield, in
Holland Terrace, Highfields—three old maids again for landladies!—but
rather better conditions generally. I lectured at Nottingham and Hull
and Chesterfield, so had a good deal of traveling, and added a new
course of lectures—“Pioneers of Science”—which was popular on account of
its more discursive character: a brief history of scientific progress
illustrated by biographies of the great men. The courses on “Sound” and
“Light” went on as well; also that on “Astronomy”—which last was a
popular subject in Sheffield. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico._ The evening
students were very enthusiastic. Many of them bought telescopes, and we
had outdoor meetings at night, with all sorts of optical gear, for the
purpose of observing the heavenly bodies. One elderly enthusiast was
quite sure he had discovered a comet, and was not satisfied till he had
written to Greenwich Observatory, and even then (seeing that they could
not find it) he was not satisfied. The Sheffield students too formed a
Students’ Association, and discussed subjects among themselves,
organized excursions, and hunted up fresh pupils—all very good. From the
first I was taken with the Sheffield people. Rough in the extreme,
twenty or thirty years in date behind other towns, and very uneducated,
there was yet a heartiness about them, not without shrewdness, which
attracted me. I felt more inclined to take root here than in any of the
Northern towns where I had been.
But during all this lecturing period my health had been bad, and getting
worse instead of better; and now I was approaching a crisis in regard to
it. The state of my nerves was awful; they were really in a quite
shattered condition. My eyes, which even in Cambridge days had been
weak, kept getting worse. There was no disease or defect—I had been to
three first-rate oculists and they all agreed about that. It was simply
extreme sensitiveness—probably the optic nerve itself. A strong light
from a lamp or candle was quite painful. I could hardly read more than
an hour a day—certainly not two hours. It caused a pain in the nerve,
which seemed to mount to and disorganize the brain. I was conscious that
the refusal of my eyes to read was in all probability a kindly
indication that I would be much better without reading—but this would
mean giving up the lectures—so here I was again!
As long as the lectures went on I was in perpetual suffering with my
eyes, and anxiety—sometimes being really unable to prepare the work
before me. Then on this came the strain of lecturing—traveling to a
place with a great box of apparatus, arriving there three or four hours
before the time of the meeting, getting all one’s apparatus and
experiments ready (in some wretched schoolroom with _no_ assistance),
having often in those days to make my oxygen gas myself for the lantern;
to rush out when all was ready for a cup of tea, to return in time to
take an hour’s preliminary _class_, and then to give the lecture; all
this was terribly exhausting. But it by no means ended there. After the
lecture some local manufacturer and patron would carry one off to his
residence for the night, there to meet a few friends at supper, and to
talk and be talked to till the small hours of the morning. When one got
to bed—a vibrating mass of nerves—sleep was out of the question. There
were all the pupils and their faces, and their needs and their
personalities; there were the tiresome patrons and committee people, in
endless dance on my brain. Often and often I never slept a wink—only to
get up the next day and go through a similar round. Often and often when
I got back to my lodgings I had to lie on my back on the sofa for
hours—not even then to sleep—but simply to rest and soothe the
nerve-pain throughout my body. I felt my life was becoming wrecked and I
remember at last swearing a great oath to myself that somehow or other I
would get out of it and find my health again.
And behind it all there was that other need—which I have already
mentioned more than once—that of my affectional nature, that hunger
which had indeed hunted me down since I was a child. I can hardly bear
even now to think of my early life, and of the idiotic social reserve
and Britannic pretence which prevailed over all that period, and still
indeed to a large extent prevails—especially among the so-called
well-to-do classes of this country—the denial and systematic ignoring of
the obvious facts of the heart and of sex, and the consequent desolation
and nerve-ruin of thousands and thousands of women, and even of a
considerable number of men. I came home in the summer to Brighton to
find my sisters, for the most part unmarried, wearing out their lives
and their affectional capacities with nothing to do, and nothing to care
for: a little music, a little painting, a walk up and down the
Promenade; but the primal needs of life unspoken and unallowed;
suffering (as one can now see all this commercial age has been doomed to
suffer) from a state of society which has set up gold and gain in the
high place of the human heart, and to make more room for these has
disowned and dishonoured love. It is curious—and interesting in its
queer way—to think that almost the central figure of the drawing-room in
that later Victorian age (and one may see it illustrated in the pages of
_Punch_ of that period) was a young or middle-aged woman lying supine on
a couch—while round her, amiably conveying or consuming tea and coffee,
stood a group of quasi-artistic or intellectual men. The conversation
ranged, of course, over artistic and literary topics, and the lady did
her best to rise to it; but the effort probably did her no good. For the
real trouble lay far away. It was of the nature of _hysteria_—and its
meaning is best understood by considering the derivation of that word. I
had two sisters—who each of them for some twenty years led that supine,
and one may say tragic, life; so I had good occasion—beside what may
have lain within my own experience—to understand it pretty thoroughly.
Certainly the disparity of the sexes and the absolute non-recognition of
sexual needs—non-recognition either in life or in thought—weighed
terribly hard upon the women of that period.[9]
Another cause, increasing the hardship of disparity, was the growing
disinclination of men (of the upper classes) to get married. Partly this
arose, no doubt, from their growing realization of the perils and
complications of matrimony; but partly also it arose from an increase in
the number of men of what may be called an intermediate type, whose
temperament did not lead them very decisively in the direction of
marriage—or even led them away from it; men who did not feel the romance
in that direction which alone can make marriage attractive, and perhaps
justifiable. There have of course been, in all ages, thousands and
thousands of women who have not felt that particular sort of romance and
attraction towards men, but only to their own kind; and in all ages
there have been thousands and thousands of men similarly constituted in
the reverse way; but they have been, by the majority, little understood
and recognized. Now however it is coming to be seen that they also—both
classes—have their part to play in the world.
For my part I have always had excellent and enduring alliances among
women, and life would indeed be sadly wanting and impoverished without
their friendship and society; but since the days when I sat a boy of
nine or ten under the table, apparently playing with my marbles, while
my elder sisters and their girl friends were talking freely and
unconsciously with each other about some ball of the night before, and
their partners in the dances, and their conversations—the workings of
the feminine mind and nature have always been perfectly open and clear
to me. By a sort of intuition (partly no doubt inborn) I never had any
difficulty in following these workings. They enshrined no mystery for
me. This fact has always caused me to find women’s society interesting;
but naturally it did not conduce to headlong adorations and marriage!
The romance of my life went elsewhere.
Whether such a state of affairs may be desirable or undesirable, whether
it may indicate a high moral nature or a low moral nature, and so forth,
are questions which (in a land where _everything_ is either moral or
immoral) are sure to be asked. But in a sense they are quite beside the
mark. They do not alter the fact; and that has always been the same
since my earliest days.[10] But it will be evident enough—to any one who
takes the trouble to think what these things mean—that to a person of my
emotional nature the conditions which brought about—to a comparatively
late age—the absence of marriage, or its equivalent, were a fruitful
source of trouble and nervous prostration. I realized in my own person
some of the sufferings which are endured by an immense number of modern
women, especially of the well-to-do classes, as well as by that large
class of men of whom I have just spoken, and to whom the name of
Uranians is often given.
Certainly my isolation was in a sense my own fault—due partly to reserve
and partly to ignorance. When at a later time I broke through this
double veil, I soon discovered that others of like temperament to myself
were abundant in all directions, and to be found in every class of
society; and I need not say that from that time forward life was changed
for me. I found sympathy, understanding, love, in a hundred unexpected
forms, and my world of the heart became as rich in that which it needed
as before it had seemed fruitless and barren.
The Uranian temperament in Man closely resembles the normal temperament
of Women in this respect, that in both Love—in some form or other—is the
main object of life. In the normal Man, ambition, moneymaking, business,
adventure, etc., play their part—love is as a rule a secondary matter.
The majority of men (for whom the physical side of sex, if needed, is
easily accessible) do not for a moment realize the griefs endured by
thousands of girls and women—in the drying up of the well-springs of
affection as well as in the crucifixion of their physical needs. But as
these sufferings of women, of one kind or another, have been the great
inspiring cause and impetus of the Women’s Movement—a movement which is
already having a great influence in the reorganization of society; so I
do not practically doubt that the similar sufferings of the Uranian
class of men are destined in their turn to lead to another wide-reaching
social organization and forward movement in the direction of Art and
Human Compassion.
V
BRADWAY AND _TOWARDS DEMOCRACY_
Everything, one sometimes thinks, has its Compensation. The soul of man
is so vast, so endless, that no matter on what side or sides it be
hemmed in or thwarted, it will find its outlet in some fresh
direction—all the more powerfully perhaps for its temporary and local
obstruction. This is true of bodies of people, and it is true also of
individuals.