THE BLUE BOAR,
STANTON HARDWICK,
April 25, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,--Since I last wrote I have been making pious pilgrimages
to some of the great churches hereabouts: to Gloucester, Worcester,
Tewkesbury, Malvern, Pershore. It does me good to see these great poems
in stone, beautiful in their first conception, and infinitely more
beautiful from the mellowing influences of age, and from the human
tradition that is woven into them and through them. There are few
greater pleasures than to make one's way into a Cathedral city, with
the grey towers visible for miles across the plain, rising high above
the house roofs and the smoke. At first one is in the quiet country;
then the roads begin to have a suburban air--new cottages rise by the
wayside, comfortable houses, among shrubberies and plantations. Then
the street begins; the houses grow taller and closer, and one has a
glimpse of some stately Georgian front, with pediment and cornice;
perhaps there is a cluster of factories, high, rattling buildings
overtopped by a tall chimney, with dusty, mysterious gear, of which one
cannot guess the purport, travelling upwards into some tall, blank
orifice. Then suddenly one is in the Close, with trees and flowers and
green grass, with quaint Prebendal houses of every style and date,
breathing peace and prosperity. A genial parson or two pace gravely
about; and above you soars the huge church, with pinnacle and parapet,
the jackdaws cheerily hallooing from the lofty ledges. You are a little
weary of air and sun; you push open the great door, and you are in the
cool, dark nave with its holy smell; you sit for a little and let the
spirit of the place creep into your mind; you walk hither and thither,
read the epitaphs, mourn with the bereaved, give thanks for the record
of long happy lives, and glow with mingled pain and admiration for some
young life nobly laid down. The monuments of soldiers, the sight of
dusty banners moving faintly in the slow-stirring air, always move me
inexpressibly; the stir and fury of war setting hither, like a quiet
tide, to find its last abiding-place. Then there is the choir to visit.
I do not really like the fashion which now generally prevails of paying
a small sum, writing your name in a book, and being handed over to the
guidance of some verger, a pompous foolish person, who has learnt his
lesson, delivers it like a machine, and is put out by any casual
question. I do not want to be lectured; I want to wander about, ask a
question if I desire it, and just have pointed out to me anything of
which the interest is not patent and obvious. The tombs of old knights,
the chantries of silent abbots and bishops, are all very affecting;
they stand for so much hope and love and recollection. Then sometimes
one has a glow at seeing some ancient and famous piece of history
presented to one's gaze. The figure of the grim Saxon king, with his
archaic beard and shaven upper-lip, for all the world like some
Calvinistic tradesman; or Edward the Second, with his weak, handsome
face and curly locks; or the mailed statue of Robert of Normandy, with
scarlet surcoat, starting up like a warrior suddenly aroused. Such
tombs send a strange thrill through one, a thrill of wonder and pity
and awe. What of them now? Sleepest thou, son of Atreus? Dost thou
sleep, and dream perchance of love and war, of the little life that
seemed so long, and over which the slow waves of time have flowed?
Little by little, in the holy walls, so charged with faith and
tenderness and wistful love, the pathetic vision of mortality creeps
across the mind, and one loses oneself in a dream of wonder at the
brief days so full of life, the record left for after time, and the
silence of the grave.
Then, when I have drunk my fill of sweet sights, I love to sit silent,
while the great bell hums in the roof, and gathering footsteps of young
and old patter through the echoing aisles. There is a hush of
expectation. A few quiet worshippers assemble; the western light grows
low, and lights spring to life, one after another, in the misty choir.
Then murmurs a voice, an Amen rises in full concord, and as it dies
away the slumberous thunder of a pedal note rolls on the air; the
casements whirr, the organ speaks. That fills, as it were, to the brim,
as with some sweet and fragrant potion, the cup of beauty; and the
dreaming, inquiring spirit sinks content into the flowing, the aspiring
tide, satisfied as with some heavenly answer to its sad questionings.
Then the stately pomp moves slowly to its place--so familiar, perhaps
trivial an act to those who perform it, so grave and beautiful a thing
to those who see it. The holy service proceeds with a sense of
exquisite deliberation, leading one, as by a ladder, through the
ancient ways, up to the message of to-day. Through psalm and canticle
and anthem the solemnity passes on; and perhaps some single slender
voice, some boyish treble, unconscious of its beauty and pathos, thrown
into relief, like a fountain springing among dark rocks, by the slow
thunders of the organ, comes to assure the heart that it can rest, if
but for a moment, upon a deep and inner peace, can be gently rocked, as
it were, in a moving boat, between the sky and translucent sea. Then
falls the rich monotone of prayer; and the organ wakes again for one
last message, pouring a flood of melody from its golden throats, and
dying away by soft gradations into the melodious bourdon of its close.
Does this seem to you very unreal and fantastic? I do not know; it is
very real to me. Sometimes, in dreary working hours, my spirit
languishes under an almost physical thirst for such sweetness of sound
and sight. I cannot believe that it is other than a pure and holy
pleasure, because in such hours the spirit soars into a region in which
low and evil thoughts, ugly desires, and spiteful ambitions, die, like
poisonous flowers in a clear and wholesome air. I do not say that it
inspires one with high and fierce resolution, that it fits one for
battling with the troublesome world; but it is more like the green
pastures and waters of comfort; it is pleasure in which there is no
touch of sensual appetite or petty desire; it is a kind of heavenly
peace in which the spirit floats in a passionate longing for what is
beautiful and pure. It is not that I would live my life in such
reveries; even while the soft sound dies away, the calling of harsher
voices makes itself heard in the mind. But it refreshes, it calms, it
pacifies; it tells the heart that there is a peace into which it is
possible to enter, and where it may rest for a little and fold its
weary wings.
Yet even as I write, as the gentle mood lapses and fades, I find myself
beset with uneasy and bewildering thoughts about the whole. What was
the power that raised these great places as so essential and vital a
part of life? We have lost it now, whatever it was. Churches like these
were then an obvious necessity; kings and princes vied with each other
in raising them, and no one questioned their utility. They are now a
mere luxury for ecclesiastically minded persons, built by slow
accretion, and not by some huge single gift, to please the pride of a
county or a city; and this in days when England is a thousandfold
richer than she was. They are no longer a part of the essence of life;
life has flowed away from their portals, and left them a beautiful
shadow, a venerable monument, a fragrant sentiment. No doubt it was
largely superstition that constructed them, a kind of insurance paid
for heavenly security. No one now seriously thinks that to endow a
college of priests to perform services would affect his spiritual
prospects in the life to come. The Church itself does not countenance
the idea. Moreover, there is little demand in the world at large for
the kind of beauty which they can and do minister to such as myself.
The pleasure for which people spend money nowadays has to have a
stirring, exciting, physical element in it to be acceptable. If it were
otherwise, then our cathedrals could take their place in the life of
the nation; but they are out of touch with railways, and newspapers,
and the furious pursuit of athletics. They are on the side of peace and
delicate impressions and quiet emotions. I wish it were not so; but it
would be faithless to believe that we are not in the hand of God still,
and that our restless energies develop against His will.
And then there falls a darker, more bewildering thought. Suppose that
one could bring one of the rough Galilean fishermen who sowed the seed
of the faith, into a place like this, and say to him, "This is the
fruit of your teaching; you, whose Master never spoke a word of art or
music, who taught poverty and simplicity, bareness of life, and an
unclouded heart, you are honoured here; these towers and bells are
called after your names; you stand in gorgeous robes in these storied
windows." Would they not think and say that it was all a terrible
mistake? would they not say that the desire of the world, the lust of
the eye and ear, had laid subtle and gentle hands on a stern and rugged
creed, and bade it serve and be bound?
"Thy nakedness involves thy Spouse
In the soft sanguine stuff she wears."
So says an eager and vehement poet, apostrophising the tortured limbs,
the drooping eye of the Crucified Lord; and is it true that these
stately and solemn houses, these sweet strains of unearthly music,
serve His purpose and will? Nay, is it not rather true that the serpent
is here again aping the mildness of the dove, and using all the
delicate, luxurious accessories of life to blind us to the truth?
I do not know; it leaves me in a sad and bewildered conflict of spirit.
And yet I somehow feel that God is in these places, and that, if only
the heart is pure and the will strong, such influences can minister to
the growth of the meek and loving spirit.--Ever yours,