UPTON,
Nov. 29, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,--To-day the world is shrouded in a thick, white, dripping
mist. Glancing up in the warm room where I sit, I see nothing but grey
window spaces. "How melancholy, how depressing," says my generally
cheerful friend, Randall, staring sadly out into the blank air. But I
myself do not agree. I am conscious of a vague, pleasurable excitement;
a sense, too, of repose. This half light is grateful and cooling alike
to eye and brain. Then, too, it is a change from ordinary conditions,
and a change has always something invigorating about it. I steal about
with an obscure sense that something mysterious is happening. And yet
imagine some bright spirit of air and sunshine, like Ariel, flitting
hither and thither above the mist, dipping his feet in the vapour, as a
sea-bird flies low across the sea. Think of the pity he would feel for
the poor human creatures, buried in darkness below, creeping hither and
thither in the gloom.
It is pleasurable enough within the house, but still more pleasurable
to walk abroad; the little circle of dim vision passes with you, just
revealing the road, the field, the pasture in which you walk.
There is a delightful surprise about the way in which a familiar object
looms up suddenly, a dim remote shape, and then as swiftly reveals the
well-known outline. My path takes me past the line, and I hear a train
that I cannot see roar past. I hear the sharp crack of the fog signals
and the whistle blown. I pass close to the huge, dripping signals;
there, in a hut beside a brazier, sits a plate-layer with his pole,
watching the line, ready to push the little disc off the metals if the
creaking signal overhead moves. In another lonely place stands a great
luggage train waiting. The little chimney of the van smokes, and I hear
the voices of guards and shunters talking cheerily together. I draw
nearer home, and enter the college by the garden entrance. The black
foliage of the ilex lowers overhead, and then in a moment, out of an
overshadowing darkness, rises a battlemented tower like a fairy castle,
with lights in the windows streaming out with straight golden rays into
the fog. Below, the arched doorway reveals the faintly-lighted arches
of the cloisters. The hanging, clinging, soaking mist--how it heightens
the value, the comfort of the lighted windows of studious, fire-warmed
rooms.
And then what a wealth of pleasant images rises in the mind. I find
myself thinking how the reading of certain authors is like this
mist-walking; one seems to move in a dreary, narrow circle, and then
suddenly a dim horror of blackness stands up; and then, again, in a
moment one sees that it is some familiar thought which has thus won a
stateliness, a remote mystery, from the atmosphere out of which it
leans.
Or, better still, how like these fog-wrapped days are to seasons of
mental heaviness, when the bright, distant landscape is all swallowed
up and cherished landmarks disappear. One walks in a vain shadow; and
then the surprises come; something, which in its familiar aspect stirs
no tangible emotion, in an instant overhangs the path, shrouded in dim
grandeur and solemn awe. Days of depression have this value, that they
are apt to reveal the sublimity, the largeness of well-known thoughts,
all veiled in a melancholy magnificence. Then, too, one gains an
inkling of the sweetness of the warm corners, the lighted rooms of
life, the little centre of brightness which one can make in one's own
retired heart, and which gives the sense of welcome, the quiet delights
of home-keeping, the warmth of the contented mind.
And, best of all, as one stumbles along the half-hidden street a shape,
huge, intangible, comes stealing past; one wonders what strange
visitant this is that comes near in the gathering darkness. And then in
a moment the vagueness is dispelled; the form, the lineaments, take
shape from the gloom, and one finds that one is face to face with a
familiar friend, whose greeting warms the heart as one passes into the
mist again.--Ever yours,