UPTON,
July 22, 1904.
MY DEAR HERBERT,--. . . I took a lonely walk to-day, and returned
through a new quarter of the town. When I first knew it, thirty years
ago, there was a single house here--an old farm, with a pair of pretty
gables of mellow brick, and a weathered, solid, brick garden-wall that
ran along the road; an orchard below; all round were quiet fields; a
fine row of elms stood at the end of the wall. It was a place of no
great architectural merit, but it had grown old there, having been
built with solidity and dignity, and having won a simple grace from the
quiet influences of rain and wind and sun. Very gradually it became
engulphed. First a row of villas came down to the farm, badly planned
and coarsely coloured; then a long row of yellow-brick houses appeared
on the other side, and the house began to wear a shy, regretful air,
like a respectable and simple person who has fallen into vulgar
company. To-day I find that the elms have been felled; the old wall, so
strongly and firmly built, is half down; the little garden within is
full of planks and heaps of brick, the box hedges trodden down, the
flowers trampled underfoot; the house itself is marked for destruction.
It made me perhaps unreasonably sad. I know that population must
increase, and that people had better live in convenient houses near
their work. The town is prosperous enough; there is work in plenty and
good wages. There is nothing over which a philanthropist and a social
reformer ought not to rejoice. But I cannot help feeling the loss of a
simple and beautiful thing, though I know it appealed to few people,
and though the house was held to be inconvenient and out of date. I
feel as if the old place must have acquired some sort of personality,
and must be suffering the innocent pangs of disembodiment. I know that
there is abundance of the same kind of simple beauty everywhere; and
yet I feel that a thing which has taken so long to mature, and which
has drunk in and appropriated so much sweetness from the gentle hands
of nature, ought not so ruthlessly and yet so inevitably to suffer
destruction.
But it brought home to me a deeper and a darker thing still--the sad
change and vicissitude of things, the absence of any permanence in this
life of ours. We enter it so gaily, and, as a child, one feels that it
is eternal. That is in itself so strange--that the child himself, who
is so late an inmate of the family home, so new a care to his parents,
should feel that his place in the world is so unquestioned, and that
the people and things that surround him are all part of the settled
order of life. It was, indeed, to me as a child a strange shock to
discover, as I did from old schoolroom books, that my mother herself
had been a child so short a time before my own birth.
Then life begins to move on, and we become gradually, very gradually,
conscious of the swift rush of things. People round us begin to die,
and drop out of their places. We leave old homes that we have loved. We
hurry on ourselves from school to college; we enter the world. Then, in
such a life as my own has been, the lesson comes insistently near. Boys
come under our care, little tender creatures; a few days seem to pass
and they are young and dignified men; a few years later they return as
parents, to see about placing boys of their own; and one can hardly
trace the boyish lineaments in the firm-set, bearded faces of manhood.
Then our own friends begin to be called away; faster and faster runs
the stream; anniversaries return with horrible celerity; and soon we
know that we must die.
What is one to hold on to in such a swift flux of things? The pleasures
we enjoy at first fade; we settle down by comfortable firesides; we
pile the tables with beloved books; friends go and come; we acquire
habits; we find out our real tastes. We learn the measure of our
powers. And yet, however simple and clear our routine becomes, we are
warned every now and then by sharp lessons that it is all on
sufferance, that we have no continuing city; and we begin to see, some
later, some earlier, that we must find something to hold on to,
something eternal and everlasting in which we can rest. There must be
some anchor of the soul. And then I think that many of us take refuge
in a mere stoical patience; we drink our glass when it is filled, and
if it stands empty we try not to complain.
Now I am turning out, so to speak, the very lining of my mind to you.
The anchor cannot be a material one, for there is no security there; it
cannot be purely intellectual, for that is a shifting thing too. The
well of the spirit is emptied, gradually and tenderly; we must find out
what the spring is that can fill it up. Some would say that one's faith
could supply the need, and I agree in so far as I believe that it must
be a species of faith, in a life where our whole being and ending is
such an impenetrable mystery. But it must be a deeper faith even than
the faith of a dogmatic creed; for that is shifting, too, every day,
and the simplest creed holds some admixture of human temperament and
human error.
To me there are but two things that seem to point to hope. The first is
the strongest and deepest of human things, the power of love--not, I
think, the more vehement and selfish forms of love, the desire of youth
for beauty, the consuming love of the mother for the infant--for these
have some physical admixture in them. But the tranquil and purer
manifestations of the spirit, the love of a father for a son, of a
friend for a friend; that love which can light up a face upon the edge
of the dark river, and can smile in the very throes of pain. That seems
to me the only thing which holds out a tender defiance against change
and suffering and death.
And then there is the faith in the vast creative mind that bade us be;
mysterious and strange as are its manifestations, harsh and indifferent
as they sometimes seem, yet at worst they seem to betoken a loving
purpose thwarted by some swift cross-current, like a mighty river
contending with little obstacles. Why the obstacles should be there,
and how they came into being, is dark indeed. But there is enough to
make us believe in a Will that does its utmost, and that is assured of
some bright and far-off victory.
A faith in God and a faith in Love; and here seems to me to lie the
strength and power of the Christian Revelation. It is to these two
things that Christ pointed men. Though overlaid with definition, with
false motive, with sophistry, with pedantry, this is the deep secret of
the Christian Creed; and if we dare to link our will with the Will of
God, however feebly, however complainingly, if we desire and endeavour
not to sin against love, not to nourish hate or strife, to hold out the
hand again and again to any message of sympathy or trust, not to
struggle for our own profit, not to reject tenderness, to believe in
the good faith and the good-will of men, we are then in the way. We may
make mistakes, we may fail a thousand times, but the key of heaven is
in our hands. . . .--Ever yours,