UPTON,
March 5, 1904.
MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have been thinking over your last letter: and by
the merest chance I stumbled yesterday on an old diary; it was in
1890--a time, do you remember, when our paths had drifted somewhat
apart; you had just married, and I find a rather bitter entry, which it
amuses me to tell you of now, to the effect that the marriage of a
friend, which ought to give one a new friend, often simply deprives one
of an old one--"nec carus aeque nec superstes integer," I add. Then I
was, I suppose, hopelessly absorbed in my profession; it was at the
time when I had just taken a boarding-house, and suffered much from the
dejection which arises from feeling unequal to the new claims.
It amuses me now to think that I could ever have thought of losing your
friendship; and it was only temporary; it was only that we were fully
occupied; you had to learn camaraderie with your wife, for want of
which one sees dryness creep into married lives, when the first divine
ardours of passion have died away, and when life has to be lived in the
common light of day. Well, all that soon adjusted itself; and then I,
too, found in your wife a true and congenial friend, so that I can
honestly say that your marriage has been one of the most fortunate
events of my life.
But that was not what I meant to write to you about; the point is this.
You say that personality is a stubborn thing. It is indeed. I find
myself reflecting and considering how much one's character really
changes as life goes on; in reading this diary of fourteen years ago,
though I have altered in some superficial respects, I was confronted
with my unalterable self. I have acquired certain aptitudes; I have
learnt, for instance, to understand boys better, to sympathise with
them, to put myself in their place, to manage them. I don't think I
could enunciate my technique, such as it is. If a young master, just
entering upon the work of a boarding-house, asked my advice, I could
utter several maxims which he would believe (and rightly) to be the
flattest and most obvious truisms; but the value of them to me is that
they are deduced from experience, and not stated as assumptions. The
whole secret lies in the combination of them, the application of them
to a particular case; it is not that one sees a thing differently, but
that one knows instinctively the sort of thing to say, the kind of line
to pursue, the kind of statement that appeals to a boy as sensible and
memorable, the sort of precautions to take, the delicate adjustment of
principles to a particular case, and so forth. It is, I suppose,
something like the skill of an artist; he does not see nature more
clearly, if indeed as clearly, as he did when he began, but he knows
better what kind of stroke and what kind of tint will best produce the
effect which he wishes to record. Of course both artist and
schoolmaster get mannerised; and I should be inclined to say in the
latter case that a schoolmaster's success (in the best sense) depends
almost entirely upon his being able to arrive at sound principles and
at the same time to avoid mannerism in applying them. For instance, it
is of no use to hold up for a boy's consideration a principle which is
quite outside his horizon; what one has to do is to try and give him a
principle which is just a little ahead of his practice, which he can
admire and also believe to be within his reach.
Besides this experience which I have acquired, I have acquired a
similar experience in the direction of teaching--I know now the sort of
statement which arrests the attention and arouses the interest of boys;
I know how to put a piece of knowledge so that it appears both
intelligible and also desirable to acquire.
Then I have learnt, in literary matters, the art of expression to a
certain extent. I can speak to you with entire frankness and
unaffectedness, and I will say that I am conscious that I can now
express lucidly, and to a certain extent attractively, an idea. My
deficiency is now in ideas and not in the power of expressing them. I
have quality though not quantity. It amuses me to read this old diary
and see how impossible I found it to put certain thoughts into words.
But apart from these definite acquirements, I cannot see that my
character has altered in the smallest degree. I detect the same little,
hard, repellent core of self, sitting enthroned, cold, unchanging, and
unchanged, "like a toad within a stone," to borrow Rossetti's great
simile. I see exactly the same weaknesses, the same pitiful ambitions,
the same faults. I have learnt, I think, to conceal them a little
better; but they are not eradicated, nor even modified. Even with
regard to their concealment, I have a terrible theory. I believe that
the faults of which one is conscious, which one admits, and even the
faults of which one faintly suspects oneself, and yet supposes that one
conceals from the world at large, are the very faults that are
absolutely patent to every one else. If one dimly suspects that one is
a liar, a coward, or a snob, and gratefully believes that one has not
been placed in a position which inevitably reveals these
characteristics in their full nakedness, one may be fairly certain that
other people know that one is so tainted.
The discouraging point is that one is not similarly conscious of one's
virtues. I take for granted that I have some virtues, because I see
that most of the people whom I meet have some sprinkling of them, but I
declare that I am quite unable to say what they are. A fault is patent
and unmistakable. The old temptation comes upon one, and one yields as
usual; but with one's virtues, if they ever manifest themselves, one's
own feeling is that one might have done better. Moreover, if one tries
deliberately to take stock of one's good points, they seem to be only
natural and instinctive ways of behaving; to which no credit can
possibly attach, because by temperament one is incapable of acting
otherwise.
Another melancholy fact which I believe to be true is this--that the
only good work one does is work which one finds easy and likes. I have
one or two patiently acquired virtues which are not natural to me, such
as a certain methodical way of dealing with business; but I never find
myself credited with it by others, because it is done, I suppose,
painfully and with effort, and therefore unimpressively.
I look round, and the same phenomenon meets me everywhere. I do not
know any instance among my friends where I can trace any radical change
of character. "Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula
saeculorum."
Indeed the only line upon which improvement is possible seems to me to
be this--that a man shall definitely commit himself to a course of life
in which he shall be compelled to exercise virtues which are foreign to
his character, and any lapses of which will be penalised in a
straightforward, professional way. If a man, for instance, is
irritable, impatient, unpunctual, let him take up some line where he is
bound to be professionally bland, patient, methodical. That would be
the act of a philosopher; but, alas, how few of us choose our
profession from philosophical motives!
And even so I should fear that the tendencies of temperament are only
temporarily imprisoned, and not radically cured; after all, it fits in
with the Darwinian theory. The bird of paradise, condemned to live in a
country of marshes, cannot hope to become a heron. The most he can hope
is that, by meditating on the advantages which a heron would enjoy, and
by pressing the same consideration on his offspring, the time may come
in the dim procession of years when the beaks of his descendants will
grow long and sharp, their necks pliant, their legs attenuated.
And anyhow, one is bound in honour to have a try; and the hopefulness
of my creed (you may be puzzled to detect it) lies in the fact that one
HAS a sense of honour about it all; that one's faults are repugnant,
and that missing virtues are desirable--possunt quia posse videntur!
Thank you for the photographs. I begin to realise your house; but I
want some interiors as well; and let me have the view from your
terrace, though I daresay it is only sea and sky.--Ever yours,