diff options
Diffstat (limited to '39681-8.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 39681-8.txt | 5933 |
1 files changed, 5933 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/39681-8.txt b/39681-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e677c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/39681-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5933 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Corner of Harley Street, by Henry Bashford + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license + + +Title: The Corner of Harley Street + Being Some Familiar Correspondence of Peter Harding, M.D. + +Author: Henry Bashford + +Release Date: May 12, 2012 [EBook #39681] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER OF HARLEY STREET *** + + + + +Produced by Annie McGuire. This book was produced from +scanned images of public domain material from the Internet +Archive. + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: Book Cover] + + + + +THE CORNER OF HARLEY STREET + + + + +THE CORNER +OF HARLEY STREET + + +BEING SOME FAMILIAR +CORRESPONDENCE OF +PETER HARDING. M.D. + + +[Illustration] + + +BOSTON AND NEW YORK +HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY +1913 + + + + +CONTENTS + +I + + To Robert Lynn, M.R.C.S., + Applebrook, Devon March 4th 9 + +II + + To Horace Harding, + Trinity College, Cambridge March 11th 20 + +III + + To Miss Josephine Summers, + The Cottage, Potham, Beds. March 14th 32 + +IV + + To Colonel R. F. Morris, C.B., + 7th Division, Meerut, India March 15th 34 + +V + + To Hugh Pontrex, + Villa Rosa, Mentone March 23rd 45 + +VI + + To Miss Sarah Harding, + The Orphanage, Little Blessington, + Dorset March 31st 55 + +VII + + To Harry Carthew, + Trenant Hotel, Leeds April 8th 66 + +VIII + + To John Summers, M.B., + At Actonhurst, Granville Road, + Bristol April 12th 71 + +IX + + To Harry Carthew, + Trenant Hotel, Leeds April 15th 78 + +X + + To the Rev. Bruce Harding, + S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay April 20th 79 + +XI + + To Miss Josephine Summers, + The Cottage, Potham, Beds. April 22nd 87 + +XII + + To Tom Harding, + c/o the Rev. Arthur Jakes, Rugby April 24th 88 + +XIII + + To Hugh Pontrex, + Villa Rosa, Mentone May 3rd 95 + +XIV + + To Miss Molly Harding, + 91B, Harley Street, W. May 6th 109 + +XV + + To Miss Josephine Summers, + The Cottage, Potham, Beds. May 16th 116 + +XVI + + To Lady Wroxton, + The Manor House, Stoke Magna, + Oxon May 23rd 118 + +XVII + + To Miss Sarah Harding, + The Orphanage, Little Blessington, + Dorset June 7th 127 + +XVIII + + To Robert Lynn, M.R.C.S., + Applebrook, Devon June 25th 151 + +XIX + + To Hugh Pontrex, + Hotel Montana, Biarritz July 16th 157 + +XX + + To Horace Harding, + c/o Major Alec Cameron, Glen + Bruisk, Sutherland, N.B. Aug. 17th 166 + +XXI + + To Miss Josephine Summers, + The Cottage, Potham, Beds. Aug. 25th 177 + +XXII + + To Reginald Pole, + S.Y. Nautilus, Harwich Aug. 30th 179 + +XXIII + + To Miss Sarah Harding, + The Orphanage, Little Blessington, + Dorset Sept. 6th 195 + +XXIV + + To the Rev. Bruce Harding, + S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay Sept. 14th 202 + +XXV + + To Hugh Pontrex, + Villa Rosa, Mentone Oct. 3rd 219 + +XXVI + + To John Summers, M.B., + c/o the Rev. W. B. La Touche, + High Barn, Winchester Oct. 18th 231 + +XXVII + + To Miss Sarah Harding, + The Orphanage, Little Blessington, + Dorset Nov. 7th 242 + +XXVIII + + To Miss Josephine Summers, + The Cottage, Potham, Beds. Nov. 26th 249 + +XXXIX + + To the Rev. Bruce Harding, + S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay Dec. 2nd 251 + +XXX + + To Hugh Pontrex, + Villa Rosa, Mentone Dec. 25th 255 + + + + +I + +_To Robert Lynn, M.R.C.S., Applebrook, Devon._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _March_ 4, 1910. + +MY DEAR BOB, + +Your letter of this morning, like the cream that it was, rose naturally +to the surface of the little pile of correspondence that awaited me on +the breakfast-table; and if I didn't read it then, and am only answering +it now, in front of my dressing-room fire, there are more reasons than +one for this. You might even detect a little pathos, perhaps, in the +chief of these. For I can't help feeling that a younger man--myself, for +example, twenty years ago--would have been into it before you could say +scalpel, snatching his joy as one of your own parr will take a Wickham +on a clear pool before the half-pounder beside him has even decided to +inspect it. And if I have not done this, if I have learned the better +way, the art of lingering, the value of the "bouquet," well, there's a +rather forlorn piece of scalp in the opposite looking-glass to tell me +the reason why. + +So you see that I didn't rush headlong at your letter, tearing it open +with a feverish, if mature, forefinger. I even ignored the twinkle in my +wife's eye, and the more impertinent expression that Miss Molly was +permitting to rest upon her usually calm features. + +"Another lump, my pet," was all I said, and stirred my coffee with that +inscrutable calm so justly associated with Destiny, Wisdom, and the +Consulting Physician. + +"He's pretending not to be excited," explained Miss Molly to a college +friend across the table; and Claire, all chestnut mop and +black-stockinged legs (and convalescent, by the way, from the mumps), +gurgled suddenly over her Henty when she ought by rights to have been +completely breathless. + +Through the open window a pleasant breeze stirred lazily across the +table, decked with its stolen sweets from our own and our neighbours' +hyacinths. And in a welcome sunshine the windows of Sir Jeremy's +consulting-room beamed as merrily as their owner's eyes. + +"And not even one spark of enthusiasm," proceeded Molly. "Oh, who would +have a mere physician for a parent?" + +"For the elderly," I told her, "excitement is to be deprecated. Now if I +were twenty-four, perhaps----" + +"Twenty-three," put in Molly, adding, with very great distinctness, +"to-morrow." + +"And that reminds me," murmured Claire from her sofa under the window. + +So I opened the other envelopes first, those that contained the bills, +the appointments, the invitations, and the unpleasant letters, just as a +wise man should, who is at his best, and realizes it, tubbed and shaved +and over his breakfast bacon. And since Molly and her friend appeared to +have interrupted themselves in the midst of some earnest political +discussion, I begged them to resume this. For in making the +breakfast-table their judgment-bar they were setting an example, as I +reminded them, that the world would do well to follow. Breakfast-table +verdicts, breakfast-table sermons, breakfast-table laws, for true and +kindly sanity they might be safely backed, I observed, against any +product of the midnight oil that has emerged from the brain of +man--including even woman as produced by Newnham; or so, at any rate, +thought a middle-aged physician whose opinions were dear to me. Only, +of course, it would have to be a well-furnished table; and the +marmalade, if possible, should have been made at home. + +"You had better just _glance_ at it though, hadn't you?" asked +Esther--dear, wise Esther--from her throne behind the urn; after which +there was quite obviously nothing else to be done. Applebrook--glorious +postmark--it had already begun to weave its magic for me as I slipped a +knife into the comfortable envelope, and ran a well-mastered eye over +its contents. + +"Nothing of importance," I announced; "only fish." + +"_Only_ fish," scoffed Molly, well into her third muffin. + +And yet, though I have not actually read it till just now--my sacred ten +minutes before the dinner-gong summons me downstairs--your letter has +really followed me all day, even as Applebrook itself will follow a +returning angler down the evening moor, and ripple through his +after-supper dreams. It has blessed me, and made a dull day bright (for +the sun began to sulk again at noon), and the more so because my wisdom +kept it at a distance until just now. Applebrook--as I emerged from the +District Railway into that faint but inexorable smell of burnt coffee +and human unwashedness which broods over Whitechapel Road, the extra +bulge in my breast-pocket reminded me suddenly of wind-blown gorse and +all the hard-bitten, sunburnt heath that stands for Dartmoor. My step +quickened. I entered the hospital gates with a jauntier tread, and could +have sworn that a silver trout shot spectrally round the corner in front +of me. A poor presage for my lucidity in the afternoon march round the +wards, I can hear you murmur. But you are wrong there. For, on the +contrary, the points of my discourse made their bows to my memory with +unwonted briskness; and I contrived, I think, to keep the +notebook-pencils pretty busy. + +Yet the afternoon did contain one of those disquieting surprises that +used at one time to seem so catastrophic, and now appear only too +wonderfully uncommon. For some weeks past I have had a poor fellow in +one of my beds, a cheerful soul, for all he knew himself to be treading +a downhill road. His condition, rather an obscure one, and in any event +incurable, might have represented one of two causes. Week by week, to a +respectful and intelligent body of students, I have demonstrated the +signs and symptoms of this patient, and proved to them how, on the +whole, they must be taken to indicate B--shall we say?--as the root of +the mischief. And now to-day, before an expectant gathering, the +uncompromising knife of the pathologist in the post-mortem room has +revealed the precisely opposite. It was A all the time, and there was +nothing for it but to accept defeat, and retire strategically in as good +an order as might be. There was, at any rate, the consolation that the +mistake could not have affected the unhappy issue of the malady. It was +merely a sort of academic pride that was to suffer; and I suppose it is +only an acquired familiarity with death that could have made so small a +personal disaster even imaginable--for I don't think it ever really +became actual--under its great shadow. So I made my retreat--in fair +order, I believe, with baggage intact and a minimum of casualties. +Nevertheless I caught young Martyn, the wing three, you know--what +wouldn't I have given for his swerve thirty years ago!--smiling +significantly across at your son, who was very tactfully endeavouring to +appear oblivious. And it was Applebrook that fortified my powers of +forgiveness--Applebrook rippling peacefully over its immemorial granite. + +And so there's plenty of water, is there, and the colour has been just +right? And you have already been into a pounder, and landed him too. +That's good, for though we miss a lot of pounders in Applebrook--"a +pound, sir, if it weighed an ounce, and took half the cast away with +it"--we seldom land one. And am I game to come down on May 1st as usual? + +A day-dream, or dusk-dream, has been interrupted here--I might have +prophesied it--by one of those earnest, cadaverous persons whose pride +it is that they have never taken--never felt the need of it, they +usually add--a holiday in their lives. + +"Not for thirty-five years, sir," said this latest specimen to me just +now, rubbing his hands with counting-house pride. + +"God help you," I replied, which took him aback a little, and was not, I +admit, a tactful welcome to a prospective two guineas. But then, you +see, he had fetched me back from a dusk-dream. + +"Does that mean _you_ can't?" he inquired a little acidly. And really I +should not have been quite so abrupt with him, for his confession gave +me the right cue to his treatment. A holiday, in fact, was all that he +needed, though I doubted his ability to use one. So I assumed my +heaviest manner, as one must when it is to be unaccompanied by an +expensive prescription. + +"If you don't take one," I proceeded to tell him, "though you will +probably survive with the aid of iron, arsenic, and an occasional +Seidlitz powder, you will become eventually like those sorrowful civil +servants that may be met at almost any time in Somerset House or the +General Post Office. They have been pensioned for months, but there they +are, unable to inter themselves decently among the mashies and geraniums +of Wimbledon and Weybridge, haunting their former desks, poor forlorn +creatures, whose one bond of life has been severed--a torture to +themselves and their successors." + +While I was taking breath after this rather impressive harangue, he +stared at me gloomily. + +"It has always," he said, "been my one great desire to die in harness." + +After congratulating him on the possession of so modest, if somewhat +cheerless, an ambition, I asked him why he had come to see me. A +physician, to a man with such a goal, seemed, on the face of it, +something of a superfluity. But I learned that there was a wife at home, +poor soul. And it was her doctor, he said, who had recommended this +visit. + +"And I may tell you," he added, "that your opinion coincides with +theirs." He handed me his two guineas. "Where shall I go?" he asked. + +By now of course I could see that my advice was going to be useless; but +there was no better alternative. + +"Have you any hobbies?" I inquired. But he shook his head. No; he had +never had time for hobbies. And by to-morrow afternoon he will be +reading his _Financial News_ on Brighton Pier, and wondering when he can +decently return. + + * * * * * + +But the dressing-gong has sounded already, and the embers in my fire are +reddening into darkness. Outside, the wheels of a myriad motor-cars and +carriages pass ceaselessly, and repass; and from beyond and beneath +them, through the open window, comes the roar of London. I believe you +sigh for it sometimes, don't you, down there among your moorland +silences? Give me three weeks of it a year, and, as far as I am +concerned, you might monopolise the orchestra for the other forty-nine. +I don't particularly want my dinner, and I am still less inclined to +talk amiably with the two dull, but worthy, guests--may the gods of +hospitality forgive me--who are to sit at our board to-night. With the +tired girl-poet, I am praying instead; + + God, for the little streams that tumble as they run. + +For there are times when I think that the best thing about Harley Street +is that there are exactly twelve ways out of it, and this, I think, is +one of them. + +If to-morrow now were only the 1st of May, and that doorstep of mine +opened into Paddington, cheeriest of railway stations. By the way, +somebody ought to write an essay on the Personality of Railway Stations. +Liverpool Street, for example, smokes cheap cigarettes, and lives at +Walthamstow--does its baggage up with string, and takes dribbly children +to Clacton-on-Sea. And Paddington is a sun-tanned country squire, riding +a good thirteen stone, and with an eye for an apple. His luggage is of a +well-ripened leather, and he is a bit lavish with his tips. + + * * * * * + +But, alas, my door merely opens to admit the timid nose of a new maid +who announces the arrival of the visitors. Dressing-gowns must be shed, +and tails donned. I am grasping your hairy brown hand. Can you feel it? + +"Lucky dog," I am saying to you, "the wind's up-stream, and the trout +are hungry, and for all your scattered practice you can still nip down +for one perfect hour to Marleigh Pool--still feel your rod-point bending +to some heaven-sent troutling of the true fighting stock." Will I come? +Won't I! And till then I can merely remain London-bound. + + Your envious old friend, + P. H. + + + + +II + +_To Horace Harding, Trinity College, Cambridge._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _March_ 11, 1910. + +MY DEAR HORACE, + +Casting a remorseful eye at the date upon your letter, I perceive that +it is already almost a week since I resolved to sit down, and answer it +immediately; and the postscript that follows "your aff. son H." gazes at +me with a rebuking stare, as if to remind me how very far I have been +from bucking up, as you so tactfully suggested, and flooring the problem +with which you have presented me. And yet you mustn't suppose that I +have been altogether too careless or too busy to deal with it as you +wished. On the other hand, I have been dodging it round the ring of +everyday happenings ever since I first beheld it eyeing me beneath the +Trinity crest. For the fact of the matter is, my dear Horace, that your +revered Daddy has all along been more than doubtful about his ability to +stretch the fellow on the carpet. And now, at the end of a week's +somewhat cowardly--footwork, shall we call it?--he has decided to crawl +under the ropes, and make room for a lustier substitute. + +Shall you become a doctor? Well, I'm afraid, after all, that you must +tackle the question for yourself. As an American patient, with a +doubtful liver, observed to me this morning, the problem is right up +against you; and nobody else can defeat it in your stead. The thought of +this has cheered me so amazingly that from now onwards you may safely +imagine, I think, an almost contented physician, sitting plumply in a +front stall, smiling at the fight over contemplative finger-tips, and +merely tendering, between the rounds, some well-worn pieces of ring-side +advice. + +And so the peaks are challenging you, eh? The wig, the gaiters, the gold +_pince-nez_, and the bedside manner, they have risen up to bid you +choose your future path. For twenty-two years, you tell me, you haven't +greatly disturbed yourself about these things. You have accepted +parental orders: you have taken, in consequence, a respectable, if not +distinguished, degree in classics; you have mastered enough science to +rob your "first medical" of most of its fears; and you have obtained, by +the way, a Rugger "blue," of which you are, no doubt, a great deal more +proud. And now that all this has been accomplished you turn to your +former guide, and say to him, "Whither away?" And like Gilbert's poor +wit, I feel inclined to retort very truthfully that I do indeed wither +away. Behold, I have vanished. The mountain range is before you. Choose +your summit. + + * * * * * + +As if to point a moral, I have been here interrupted by a pitiful voice +over the telephone. Indeed for a week past, I have been its victim at +varying intervals. For Mrs. Cholmondeley, let us call her, cannot make +up her mind between the rival hygienic attractions of Cannes and +Torquay. As a matter of fact Camberwell or Camden Town would be equally, +probably more, effectual. Organically she is perfectly sound. For the +rest she is merely over-fed and under-occupied. She has deleted very +nearly every healthful activity from her list of physical employments. +And now those of her will are to be similarly abandoned; delegated to +paid assistants like myself. + +Cannes or Torquay? Well, I have refused the responsibility of deciding. +In league with her long-suffering family physician, I am endeavouring +to force her faculties to make this little effort by themselves. For I +doubt if the sorrowful gates of illness behold anything more entirely +pitiable than the spectacle of a will on crutches. + +Well then, having, as you see, completely foisted the ultimate issue +upon your own shoulders, it seems to me that there are three main +standpoints from which you must regard our profession before finally +deciding to embark upon it. To take the least important of these first, +you must bear in mind, I think, that while you should undoubtedly be +able to pay your way, and to make an honest living, yet the financial +rewards that medicine has to offer are scarcely worth considering. Given +an equal amount of capital, both in brain-power and pounds sterling, +your hours of work, your expenditure of energy, your capacity for +diagnosis and research, your readiness at the reading of human nature, +would bring you a far greater return of this world's goods in almost any +other occupation that you care to name--incomparably so in commerce. At +the same time I don't think that this point of view will detain you very +long; because, however little fathers may really know of their own sons +(and the sum of parental ignorance under this heading must be something +rather stupendous), I am quite sure that the financial laurel, _per se_, +has no overwhelming attraction for you. + +Having deigned then to consider the problem from this lowest and most +sordid standpoint, you should shift your ground, I think, and reflect +upon it from the midmost of my three Pisgahs, the scientific one. If I +haven't led you to this first, it is because you have probably scrambled +up it already, and paid no attention at all to the one that I have just +recommended to you. And in a sense your instinct will perhaps have taken +you by a straighter route to the heart of this matter than that which +your more prudent parent has indicated. Because ultimately it is from +this point that you will have to make your final decision. You must ask +yourself, with all the earnestness of a novice at his altar-vigil, "Am I +prepared to _know_?" + +For the long day of the charlatan and the quack is drawing at last to +its close, and their sun is even now setting in a blaze of +patent-medicine advertisements. Modern Europe has almost ceased to be +possible for the would-be Paracelsus; even America will not contain him, +I think, for very much longer. And through a dissolving mist of white +spats and atrocious Latin the eyes of humanity are turning slowly, but +very surely, towards the man who _knows_. Are you prepared to become +such a man? + +I fancy that I can see your forehead wrinkling a little here; so let me +explain myself in a parable. There is an old story, familiar in the +hospitals, of a bygone practitioner whose simple habit it was to tie a +piece of string about the waist of his patient. He would then ask the +sufferer to locate the pain. If this were above the string he +administered an emetic, if below a purgative; while if the pain and the +string coincided, the unhappy victim would receive both. Now it is +melancholy to reflect that this gentleman has never been without +disciples. And yet how difficult at times may it become to avoid such a +fate. Are you prepared to avoid it? + +Let me put the question in yet another shape. Some day a patient will +come to you--you may be quite certain that he will--at the end of a long +round or an exhausting afternoon at hospital; will complain to you of +his lamentable depression of spirits, his entire loss of appetite, his +slight but continual headache; and will show you, in confirmation of +these symptoms, nothing graver, let us say, than a dull eye and a +yellowish tongue. You will be tired; you will see at a glance that his +subjective troubles are altogether disproportionate to the objective +gravity of his complaint, and perhaps justifiably you will send him away +happy, or at any rate contented, in the belief that he is a bit +"liverish." But are you going to allow "liverish" to satisfy yourself? +"Of course not," you reply; and yet, believe me, my son, it will be a +very real temptation. Why bother, at a long day's end, to worry your +tired faculties into presenting to your mind as exact a mental picture +of the man's actual condition as they can draw? Nevertheless, unless you +do this, you will be treating him with less respect than your old +bicycle in the coach-house; as though, if it should creak or wheeze or +begin to run less smoothly, you would merely tell yourself that it was +"wheelish," and drop oil at random into its most convenient aperture. Do +you begin to see what I am driving at? + +And then you will probably turn upon me and say, "But to cultivate this +habit of forming proper mental pictures, I shall have to be at least a +chemist, a physicist, a pathologist, a bacteriologist, to say nothing of +a philosopher; and how can a single human being, however industrious, +contain as many persons as these?" And of course he cannot. Upon no +more than one branch of the tree of Healing will it be given to you to +climb out a little farther than your fellows; but, at any rate, you can +keep your eye upon the others. It is in this way alone that you can +become a scientific physician in the best and broadest sense. And you +can take my word for it that it will never be worth your while to become +any other sort of a sawbones--an exacting prospect? I agree with you. +And many an hour will come to you with the easy question, "Why lavish +all this time and trouble in gathering up some very trifling grain of +extra knowledge--knowledge that, in all probability, will never become +of the least importance in your hands?" + +And then, perhaps, a moment will flash into your life when this very +grain shall shape a million destinies. Are you prepared to live for that +moment? + +I am almost tempted to finish my letter at this question mark; and the +more so because the great public, or such of it as has been led away by +a certain school of literary sentimentalists, has plastered my final +mound of observation--shall we call it the human one?--with such a +viscid layer of adulation that it has become a little hard for a +self-respecting physician to take his stand there even for two and a +half moments. Has ever, I wonder, a doctor figured in fiction or drama +who, being neither a clown nor a fool, was not described as noble? Have +we not tracked him on his rounds through unconscionable horrors, and +wept big tears at his preposterous death-bed? No wonder such a fellow +finds it hard to get his bills paid. To offer him mere money would seem +little less than sacrilege. + +And yet, I think, you will agree with me that here is an aspect of +medicine worth consideration. To the seeing eye and the tender hand +there is no easier door into the warm heart of humanity. There is no +other profession that will lead you quite so close to reality. And by +this I don't mean realism in the modern sense, wherein, as it seems to +me, the altogether ugly looms so disproportionately large. For after +thirty years of tolerably wide opportunity I have still failed to find +the altogether ugly. And though of course you will meet ugliness in +plenty--a cancer that will find you shocked and, alas, largely +impotent--yet, if you look long enough, and carefully enough, how often +will you discover it to be but the shadow of some clearly shining +spiritual beauty. No, you need not fear, I think, to tread behind the +veil. + +And now let me round off my epistle with a brief reminiscence. In my +early twenties, just after I had qualified, I travelled down to a small +fishing-village in Cornwall to act there as locum tenens for a +practitioner who had finally broken down in health. The practice, mostly +among a poor population, was a scattered one, and I was kept fairly +busy; so busy, in fact, that beyond a hazy impression of buffeting +across estuaries in big-bottomed ferryboats, and driving, upon a wild +night or two, along as rough a coast-line as one could desire to see, I +remember very little of that month's experiences. + +One remains with me. And you must imagine a rather tumble-down, +twopenny-halfpenny cottage, half-way down a cobbled street, with its +front door opening directly into a tiny living-room. A youthful-looking +Hippocrates is backing out of it rather more awkwardly than usual. And +in front of him, still holding one of his hands, is a willowy, comely +Cornish lass, mother of three, with the most disturbingly moist-looking +eyes. In the background there would be, I think, a very old and rugged +woman, crooning over her youngest grandchild, just recovered, happily, +and rather miraculously, from a very tough attack of pneumonia. The +young man had been telling them, this simple family, that he was going +away now, back to London and the big hospital. And hence--dare I write +it?--hence these tears. + +"Ah, doctor," says the lassie, "'tis wisht you've made us. An' +whatever'll us do now if the little uns take bad?" + +"Oh, rot," says the blushing physician, jolted for the moment out of a +rather elaborate bedside manner--"nonsense, I mean. You'll get along all +right. There's another man coming. And I didn't do anything, you know, +really." + +"Didn't do nothen? D'you hear that, mother?" And the old woman looks up, +with her wrinkled cheeks and cavernous, sea-blue eyes. "D'you think us +don't know very well as you've saved the poor lamb's life?" + +And so, as Pepys would say, into the wet, bright street, and up the hill +to the surgery. She was under a misapprehension, of course. Presently, +if you take up medicine, you will learn that a doctor's part in the +treatment of pneumonia consists chiefly of a masterly inactivity. But a +boy of twenty-four can't hear words like that spoken to him, and remain +quite the same person; even if next week he is busy bashing hats in at a +Hospital Cup-tie. By the way, I got mine rather badly damaged last +Wednesday when Guy's won the cup again. And, I think, now you have read +this letter, that I can almost hear you murmuring, "No wonder." + + Your affect. father, + P. H. + + + + +III + +_To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _March_ 14, 1910. + +MY DEAR AUNT JOSEPHINE, + +I am very glad to learn that your health on the whole has not been much +worse since your visit to us last month. And I have no doubt that this +last week's sunshine will have already improved it. Claire is now quite +fit again after a mild attack of mumps, and goes back to Eastbourne in +two days' time. + +With regard to your rheumatism, there are, as you say, several kinds of +this complaint, or at any rate a good many affections that go popularly +under the same name. And I think that it is quite likely that the +wearing of a ring upon your third finger might very probably benefit +your own particular variety, though I am much more doubtful about its +efficacy in the case of your coachman's wife. Yes, there are two I's in +bacilli, as you point out, but I'm afraid that the article you read in +the paper is quite correct in stating that our insides contain a very +large number of these active little animals. Nor is the female sex +exempt, I'm sorry to say. But it is an idea that one soon gets used to, +and I doubt if the measures that you suggest will make a very great +difference either to their health or your own. But there was once a wise +old doctor who used to say that between milk and good sound blood there +was no difference but the colour. Personally I prefer it sweet. But the +sour kind is no doubt better than none at all. + +With best love from Esther and the girls, + + Your affect. nephew, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +IV + +_To Colonel R. F. Morris, C.B., 7th Division, Meerut, India._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _March_ 15, 1910. + +MY DEAR RUPERT, + +It gave me real joy to see your hand-writing again this morning on the +breakfast-table. Only last week I had been thinking that one of your +rare letters was about due. So you have just had the time of your life, +have you, during your last shoot in Kashmir, and find Meerut, as a +result, pretty deadly--and oh to be in England now that April's nearly +there? A pestilent thing, isn't it, this divine discontent? Only last +week I had a letter from old Bob Lynn. You remember Bob. You were his +fag, I think, for half a term. London, London, London--that was the +burden of his desire; and he with a trout stream, by turns cavernous and +romantic and sheerly lyrical, splashing his very doorstep! + +And now here are you, too, sighing for Pall Mall and the Park, whereas +I, who have them both, would hold six months at Meerut as a cheap price +indeed for those seven weeks of Kashmir forests. Is it racial, or +universal, or merely temperamental, I wonder, this passionate yearning +to be elsewhere--some uncrushable remnant of Romance? I give it up. I am +sure that it is a nuisance; and equally certain that it is in reality +the very salt of life. + +Coming home sometimes in a tube railway-carriage--the latest invention +of the modern impersonal Devil--I glance down the long line of returning +City faces. There they are, sleek, absorbed, consciously prosperous. And +I wonder if they are to be read as indications of an absolute content; +or do they conceal, by some stern effort of will, a restless desire for +snow mountains, forests, moors, streams, sunshine, anything in fact that +is the antithesis of Oxford Circus? It is hard to believe it; and yet I +am not so sure that it is even unlikely. For as Matthews, the alienist, +said to me the other day, the only _really_ contented people are usually +to be found in lunatic asylums. So we must give them the benefit of the +doubt. But it's news that you want and not surmise. + +And first of all let me reassure you, and with no shadow of professional +reserve, about your aunt--I was almost going to write your mother--Lady +Wroxton. For a month or two, it is true, I was really in anxiety about +her. Sir Hugh's death was a literal dividing in twain of every interest +of her life, and the very breadth and diversity of these was the +consequent measure of her suffering. But, as you know, that fine, +deep-founded will of hers could never really fail her. And even in the +darkest days of her first grief and almost complete insomnia it was +there for us inadequate physicians to work upon--our stay and hers. +Since then she has been resting down at Stoke, and has been progressing +slowly but steadily. I saw her last month for half an hour, and +Rochester, one of the best of G.P.'s, has written to me with increasing +confidence in each letter; so that I hope, when you return in the +autumn, you will find her again the strong, serene woman whom we both +love so well. + +As regards ourselves--well, if the ratio between happiness and history +that is supposed to hold good for nations is equally true of families, +ours must be singularly blessed. For, upon my soul, I find it very hard +to think of any at all. We are all a little older, of course, and both +Esther and I have made modest additions to our equipment--of grey hairs. +For me there is, at any rate, in this the compensation of that +increasing maturity of appearance which lends weight to my opinions in +the eyes of a good many of my patients. For Esther, I suppose, there is +none. But (I speak of course as a husband. And who should know better?) +they are not altogether unbecoming. + +And it is chiefly in the children that the march of time is being most +visibly displayed for us. Every month, or so it seems to us, they are +altering before our eyes. And the adventures, as a consequence, have +been chiefly theirs. Horace, for example, has filled out and solidified +to an alarming extent during the last year or so, tips the scale at +thirteen stone, ventures an occasional opinion on wine and the other +members of its trinity, and has succeeded in attaining his Rugger +"blue." It is his last year at Cambridge though and I'm afraid that the +memory of his one and only Varsity match at Queen's is likely to be a +little chequered. For, as you probably know, it was a record defeat; and +though both teams were fairly matched as regarded the forwards, Oxford +was vastly superior in all other departments of the game, as the +sporting papers say. But it was a great spectacle for the onlookers. The +Oxford threes, magnificently set in motion by their stand-off half, +were quite an ideal picture of clever and unselfish attack. Time and +again they swept down the field, alert, speedy, and opportunist, in the +cleanest sense of the word. The weakness of the opposition flattered +them, no doubt. But it was a splendid and invigorating exhibition for +all that, and one that must have sent the blood tingling enviously down +a good many middle-aged arteries. For there's always something superbly +tonic about this particular match, emanating even more from the +surrounding crowd than from the actual struggle of healthy young +athletes that it has come to witness. There is no other large crowd +quite like it, so unanimously well-coloured, clean, and cheerful, so +lusty of shoulder and clear of eye. The winter air has set a colour in +the girls' cheeks, to be heightened presently by the instructed ardour +with which they follow the doings of their cousins and brothers, or +cousins' and brothers' friends. And even the old duffers among us seem +to don an infectious vitality as we greet our grey-haired friends by +rope and doorway. The strained eyes and late-night cheeks that are not +uncommon at such comparable gatherings as those at Lord's and Henley are +to be sought in vain at this mid-winter festival. And I can think of no +sounder answer to the modern cries of race-degeneracy than a stroll +round Queen's at half-time. "Ah, but that shows you merely the cream," +you may tell me. But then races, like milks, must be judged, I think, by +the cream that they produce. And this particular spectacle at Queen's is +sufficiently reassuring both as to quality and amount. + +Well, it was a great game, and I wish you could have been there to see +it. Molly, with the halo of Newnham still upon her, was as enthusiastic +as her tradition will allow, while Claire, on a special holiday from her +school at Eastbourne, was quite openly broken-hearted for poor Horace's +sake. However, he got enough hero-worshipping next day to soothe the +most wounded of defeated warriors. The more prosaic problem of how to +tackle his future is troubling him now; and I more than half suspect him +of designs on Medicine. + +Molly, on the other hand, is disturbed by no such uncertainty. She is +already on the committee of the W.S.P.U., which being interpreted means +the Women's Social and Political Union; and concerns herself vigorously +with the vexed questions of adult suffrage and the feminine vote. +Besides this she is assistant manager of a girls' club in Hoxton, and +combines an intense faith in the political future of her sex with an +ardent admiration for Mr. Wells and Mr. Shaw. Religiously, she is, for +the moment (to the acute distress of some of our nearer relatives), +inclining to an up-to-date form of polytheism; but hedges with an +occasional (rather unobtrusive) attendance at a more orthodox early +service. Fortunately she is inveterately addicted to the coldest of cold +baths, the roughest of towels, and a plentiful breakfast. Moreover +another phase of experience is presenting itself modestly, but with a +quite unmistakable sturdiness, to her consideration. He is a nice, +open-air sort of boy (_entre nous_, Bob Lynn junior. What fogies we are +getting, to be sure), untroubled about the constitution of his _ego_, +and frankly bored by politics, but with a passion for his microscope +that must be running, I think, a very neck-and-neck sort of race with +his admiration for Miss Molly. + +Tom, as you know, is still at Rugby; and about him we are all, that is +Esther and I and Jakes, his house-master, a little anxious. For it seems +that during the latter part of his Christmas holidays, which he spent +with a friend at Scarborough, he fell very deeply under the influence of +one of those ardent, but dangerous, people possessed of what they +describe as a passion for souls. This particular one, a sort of +nondescript with private means, was what he called, and what he has +tried to make Tom and his friend, an "out and outer." + +Obviously shyly, Tom sent us a programme of this man's meetings--he was +holding a mission to schoolboys--from which we gathered that his +particular spiritual preserves are confined to our larger public +schools. He was a little careful to emphasise this. Boys from elsewhere +were only permitted to hear him by special introduction. He has not +apparently been to a public school himself; but owns, or was once owned +by, one of the more recent colleges at Cambridge. I hope that I am not +writing this too bitterly, for I am trying to be kind to his motives. +But the results of his efforts upon Tom have been, up to the present, +rather devastating. The boy is quite clearly in earnest, has been indeed +very profoundly stirred. With one or two others he has started a meeting +for prayer in his house, has given up singing his comic songs, and has +been systematically tackling his fellows about their souls' health. + +Knowing a little bit about the boy, I should scarcely have been able to +believe all this, if Jakes hadn't written to me so very fully about the +matter. He is acting quite wisely, I think--has given full permission +and facilities for their little meetings, with a gentle word or two +about the inadvisability of too much publicity. Nevertheless a certain +amount of natural, and, as I can't help feeling, healthy hostility has +sprung up against the movement--a hostility that we both fear is being +interpreted by the boys, and their spiritual adviser, as persecution for +their Lord's sake. + +I doubt if you'll understand much of this. Your temperament has always +been too downright, too untroubled with spiritual questionings, too +simply aware of the "things we don't talk about." "Isn't this all rather +like cant?" I can imagine you wondering. But it isn't by any means all +cant. And that is what makes the whole question so difficult to deal +with. For into the warm nest of the boy's soul this holy blunderer has +thrust his easy, ignorant fingers, pulling out, as it were, the +fledgling spiritual secrets. They were not ready for the air and the +light and the winds. They were tucked away, as a wise Nature meant them +to be, under the protecting feathers of the natural boy's carelessness. +And now, since they have been plucked out into the open for all the +world to see, they must needs flap their premature wings in a sort of +pitiful, earnest foolishness. While we, who know so well what has really +happened, can only stand by, at whatever cost, to see that the +half-sprouted pinions may not beat themselves into some permanent +distortion or futility--may become, after all, those strong, supporting +structures that they were designed for at their birth. + +And all the while there will be the ever-present danger of the natural +boy himself discovering suddenly, in a dumb sort of way, that his +fledgling has been making (as he will most certainly put it) a little +fool of itself. And then how desperately likely will he be to disown it +altogether, to his lifelong incompleteness. Self-constituted missioners +to schoolboys should be required to possess a licence. And it should be +pretty difficult to obtain. + +Claire you will still find, I think, when you come home next autumn, +very much of the pure child, for all her fifteen and a half years. +Hockey and Henty bound her physical and mental horizons, and she writes +periodical letters to Tom urging the army as the only possible +profession for him. And now I must put a stop to what will seem in your +bachelor eyes the prosy outpourings of the typical family man. But then +your Kashmir precipices are not for all of us, you know; and I have only +just been giving you what you asked for. + + Yours as ever, + PETER HARDING. + +P.S.--There will of course be a spare bedroom and a well-stoked fire +here against your return next October. + + + + +V + +_To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _March_ 23, 1910. + +MY DEAR HUGH, + +Our exchange of letters, since you finally left our fickle climate, has +become so regular that I would apologise for not having written to you +since the New Year, were it not that by so doing I should be distilling +the poison of formality into the pot-luck of our correspondence. So I +won't. + +I am sorry to hear that the bronchitis has been bothering you again, +joining hands with _anno Domini_ to remind you of our human frailty. But +your fingers, I see, have lost none of their cunning, and I immensely +enjoyed your little exhibition of etchings at Obach's. Two of them I +have acquired, I am glad to say, and they are looking at me as I write. +And now I almost think that I shall have to take a third. It has drifted +into Obach's window, and for several days past its fascination has been +growing upon me. Three or four times in passing I have paused to +consider it; and on each occasion it has brightened far more than Bond +Street for me. + +It is the drawing of the little flower-girl who has forgotten her wares +to feast her eyes upon the silk gown in the shop-window. And there was a +time, I think, when an older, or younger, Pontrex would rather have +scorned to descend upon so well-worn a theme--it would have seemed a +descent in those days. And at first I thought that even now you had +thrown it in among the others as a kind of sop to the easy sentiments of +the majority. But I have learned better, I think, and discovered that +you have treated what is, after all, the perennially beautiful with all +your own scrupulous severity. + +I met such a little girl only to-day in Aldgate. She was not selling +flowers, and was singularly northern in type--coming home, I should +guess, from afternoon school. Moving mechanically through the maze of +hurrying passengers, she was obviously as deaf to the street-side +costers as to the more thunderous traffic of the dock-yard waggons. At +the corner of Houndsditch we almost collided, and she looked up for a +moment from her book. It was a healthy and piquant little face, if +typically town-bred, that she turned towards mine. But the look, if I +could have captured it on canvas, would have done more than immortalise +us both. For there was reflected in it--just for a moment--the very +dazzle itself of that authentic Wonder which some of us call Mysticism, +and some Romance; but which is only half named by them both. And I +should greatly have liked to ask her what book had wrought the miracle. +But the currents of crossing pedestrians separated us almost instantly, +though not so quickly as the look itself had bolted back into hiding, +leaving in its stead a very ordinary little schoolgirl extending the tip +of a small pink tongue. + +"'Ullo, fice," she said. + +So I blessed her, and went on my way rejoicing; and was quite ignorant, +for at least a quarter of an hour, of the very gorgeous pageant of smoke +and sunset that faced me towards Cheapside. For, like yourself, it is +always the humanity that these things frame that captures me first and +holds me longest. And I believe I would exchange any merely physical +panorama in the world for a new vista of the human soul. So greatly +indeed is this preference growing in me that, keenly as I love it, I +find my English landscape already rearranging itself in my memory. Where +it was once punctuated by trees or monuments or natural wonders, it is +now becoming mapped out for me by such trivial affairs as some passing +word of greeting or chance exchange of easy gossip. At this bend of the +road I met the decidedly tipsy old rascal who assured me that he had +made his début with Henry Irving. By that hedge two little girls gave me +a spontaneous, and consequently very sweet, small handful of half-ripe +blackberries. + +So your little flower-seller has gone to my heart; and if Esther will +let me--and I think that she will--I shall take her into my house as +well. Can I tell you more than this? My opinion on your technique is not +worth having, as you know very well. I only know that I am less +conscious of it in these latest etchings of yours than in any of the +others; and that too ought to count for praise, I think. And in any case +I mean it as such. For indeed it is rather refreshing just now to be +able, for once in a way, to ignore technique, or at any rate so +unconsciously to take it for granted that the message conveyed by it at +once, and alone, fills the mind. Because, _entre nous_, I seem lately to +have diagnosed in most of our galleries a small epidemic of--shall we +say?--hypertechnique. The origin of the malady cannot, I think, be very +deep-seated. But its outward and visible signs are rather striking +eruptions of a polymorphic type, for the most part somewhat grotesque, +and not infrequently even a little nauseous. And they are very modern. +Nothing quite like them has ever been seen before; unless--can it be +possible?--every age has known them, but time, in his mercy, has hidden +them in due season--a reflection that is not without a certain comfort, +since its corollary suggests the same process as being at work +to-day--unobtrusively, no doubt, but with equal certainty. As Wensley +said to me last week, if the authorities could only be induced to put +up, for example, Velasquez' Philip IV, or The Laughing Cavalier among +the annual exhibits of the New English Art Club, even the most +completely self-satisfied of Mr. John's young ladies would call out for +a catalogue to cover her nakedness. But, alas, Philip IV remains where +he is, and the neo-intellectuals of the art-world still perspire +admiration round their master's most recent visions, to drift hence, in +due season, that they may do homage to those "obscenities in lavender" +on the one hand, and the Bedlamite echoes of Van Gogh on the other, that +emerge annually from Paris to soil our walls in the name of progress. + +Poor Wensley, he is still chipping away at his unprofitable marble, +spending two years over a group that his conscience forbids him to +finish in as many months. Every year there are rumours that the Chantrey +trustees are to buy something from his studio. And every year they just +fail to do so for varying reasons. Poor Wensley, if ever a genius cut +life out of marble (and will never, I'm afraid, cut marble out of life) +it is he, hammering his years away in the purlieus of Chelsea. I have +seen a good deal of him lately, and once I am fairly inside his studio +find it very hard to escape those siren hands of his white-limbed men +and maidens under a good two hours. His group for this year's Academy, +if he has been able to finish it, will be as good as, if not better +than, anything that he has yet done, I think. May the gods be kind to +him, for he needs their pity in more ways than one. He is too good to be +allowed to fritter his life away in illustrating nursery books and +repairing mediocre saints; and there are times when one cannot help +feeling that his long knocking at the gates of official appreciation is +making him just a little bitter--brief times, for the next moment his +eye will be bright again and his smile so boyish as to make his fifty +years of struggle seem almost mythical. + +Leaving him there, with his beautiful, unwanted works about him, I +always encounter a certain wave of spiritual depression. For, look where +one will, one's eyes would seem to be confronted only with the +grotesque, the degenerate, the pernicious; so much so that it becomes +hard to realise them merely as the little unworthy successes of a very +passing hour. Our newest music would appear fain to wed itself to the +obscene imaginings of a decadent poesy, to find its loftiest inspiration +in pathological versions of Elektra and Salome. Our latest dances seek +to lift into the very publicity that he lives for the erotic beastliness +of some such vicious weakling as a Parisian apache. Our most up-to-date +novels probe the labyrinths of sexual perversity at a shilling a time +under the banner of an emancipated virility, and our Sunday newspapers +reap the dung-hills for their headlines. + +By this time, if it is on foot, my middle-Victorianism will nearly have +reached South Kensington Station, or, if it has been driving, Carter's +rosy-gilled countenance will be at the carriage-door wondering why it +doesn't get out. And so the wave will pass over me, and I shall be +rocking once again upon a more equable ocean. I shall behold your little +flower-girl hungering for her beautiful gown, and beside her +nine-tenths at least of her brothers and sisters, hands out for the real +beauty, and entirely impervious to the Wildes and the Strausses, the +Beardsleys, Johns, and Polaires. After all--let us remember it humbly +with thanksgiving--these people do not penetrate our homes. They are +doled out to us in public. We scan them in galleries. They are momentary +sensations in the circulating libraries. But we don't live with them. At +least I don't think we do, and in one way and another I have seen the +insides of a good many different homes. For a man may perhaps +temporarily subordinate his sense of decency to a well-meaning desire +for artistic fairness. He may accord a judicial word of praise to some +particularly masterly portrayal of a libertine's blotches or the pimples +of a fading courtesan. But he will seldom bear them home in his bosom to +set up among his _lares_ and _penates_. And since it is by these that we +must judge (for they are the heart-judgment of the race), my billow of +pessimism drops behind me and expends itself in foam upon the rocks. + +No, it is our Thackerays and Fieldings, our Dickenses and Shakespeares, +that we still escort, hats off, to the true and formative intimacy of +our firesides. Our Blyths and Waleses and Victoria Crosses--my +classification is mainly themic--are for furtive journeys on the +underground, and a hasty burying in obscure corners; where a sanitary +Providence no doubt arranges for them some useful and inconspicuous +destiny. + +Well, the hour is late, and I must stop. I can hear footsteps in the +hall, and in comes Molly, looking very gay, if a little sleepy, in her +newest evening frock. She has just been with some rather dull girls (Ah, +Molly, Molly, they are non-Shavians, I admit, but just talk to them +about horses!) to see a play. "The--_what_ was the name, my dear?" + +"'The Scarlet Pimpernel,'" confesses Molly. + +I look surprised--even incredulous--remembering certain sweeping +damnations of a month or two ago. "But surely," I venture timidly, +"isn't that the very--er--acme of provincial melodrama?" + +The words have a strangely familiar sound, and Molly appears to +recognise them. + +"Of course it is," she says. "I was _taken_ there." + +The expression suggests ropes and cart-tails, and I commiserate with her +appropriately. + +"Poor Molly, and of course you--you----" + +But my courage fails me, and I dare not finish the question. She tosses +her dark head a little. + +"W-well," she stammers, and then, being very honest with herself, stops +short, and begins to grow a little pink. I gasp, half rising from my +chair. + +"Surely," I exclaim, "you--you don't mean to say you actually _enjoyed_ +it?" + +There is a moment's appalled stillness; and then, very rosy, she stoops +suddenly to kiss my forehead. + +"Daddy," she says, "you're an old _beast_." + + Ever yrs., + PETER HARDING. + + + + +VI + +_To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _March_ 31, 1910. + +MY DEAR SALLY, + +If the proprietors of a very excellent emulsion of cod liver oil did not +send me (as they do) a little memorandum book at the beginning of each +year, I should find letter-writing to my sister considerably more +difficult. The book is not spacious enough to be called a diary, and the +lines allotted to each day are merely sufficient to contain the baldest +records of two or three dry facts. But while it is less than a diary, +for the keeping of which, if it weren't for you, I'm afraid that I +should never have had even the desire, it is entirely valuable as a +means to an end. And may the aforesaid proprietors wax therefore as fat +and well-liking as their advertised babies. For although you may never +have thought of it, oh sister mine, it was by no means an easy condition +that you imposed upon me in exchange for your consent to my wedding. + +"One letter a month, Peter," I can see your stern uplifted finger even +now, "one letter a month you must faithfully promise me, or Esther shall +only capture you over my dead body." + +And although in those glorious days it seemed but a little bargain to +set one's hand to, yet I may now reveal to your horrified gaze--as +regards the pre-emulsion period at any rate--visions of a haggard +physician battering his cranium in a desperate effort to jog his memory +for news. A little reflection will secure you from considering this to +be an affront. For the very existence of such visions is the most +eloquent testimony to the state of his brotherly affections; and to +prevent your instantly taking the next train to town, I can assure you +positively that the wing of a merciful providence (the liver wing) took +him under its protection at the psychological moment. Thanks to the cod, +its oil, and the emulsion thereof, his memory has been propped up just +when he began to need it most. And this is why I can assure you most +positively that, although ourselves and our daffodils are shrivelling +to-day in the bitterest of easterly winds, but three short weeks ago we +were picking primroses in the woods of Upper Basildon. + +We were staying of course with Uncle Jacob, who was celebrating his +seventy-sixth birthday and the fourth anniversary of his retirement from +the judicial bench in contravening all the known rules of health--or, at +any rate, the modern conception of them. Esther and Molly went down on +the Friday night, and I joined them on Saturday, his birthday. + +It was a lovely warm morning, with just enough briskness in the air to +remind one that winter was still fighting a rearguard action, and just +enough warmth in the sun to make one quite certain that it would end in +a general defeat. Slipping into Portland Road Station in golfing kit, I +caught an early train at Paddington, and was down at Goring soon after +ten, where Esther and Molly met me in the pony-trap. We were to spend +the day upon some private links upon the downs above Streatley, a +beautiful, invigorating piece of country, and an offshoot, I think, of +the Berkshire Ridgeway. From a strictly golfing point of view the course +is, I suppose, an easy one. To players like myself, of the occasional +order, too delighted at achieving anything that may decently be called a +stroke to mind very much about a little pulling or slicing, the +penalties, no doubt, are scarcely severe enough. But there are +possibilities, at any rate, of some grand, exhilarating drives; the +greens are capital; and there is seldom the nerve-racking ordeal of +playing off before a multitude of cynical observers. + +Instead, this particular course is filled for me with memories of +elemental foursomes, innocent of caddies, unwitnessed by any living +creature other than some simple sheep or an occasional pony, but filled +to the brim with such dramatic fluctuations of chance and skill as are +unknown to (or at any rate unremembered by) your poor plus 1 players at +Richmond or St. Andrews. For golf, like her fairer sister cricket, +reveals her wild and fickle heart in a truer lovableness at such places +as this. Kneeling on immaculate turf, you may salute her queenly +finger-tips at Hoylake or Sandwich or Rye--as her sister's at Lord's. +But to know her as she is--to know them both as they really are--to +snatch kisses from their sweet and rosy lips, to look deep into their +honest, if baffling eyes, you must woo them, afar from fashion, by +brae-side and village green. + +And yet--and yet--well, perhaps that's just how we duffers always did +talk. Like amateur mountaineers, we are fain to conceal our lack of +craft in an admiration of extraneous circumstances--such as the view, +for instance. And indeed the view from almost any of these particular +eighteen holes is of the most comforting type that I know--a wide, +pastoral expanse, silvered here and there with water, and apparently +melting upon its horizons into a veiled and delicate endlessness. Upon +such a view I would quite willingly close my eyes for the last time. And +when the day comes for me to retire it will be to the arm of some such +westward hill as this that I shall trust my agéd pilgrimage. + +Grindelwald, Como, Cap Martin--they are good enough company for a mile +or two of the road. To have known them has been a real privilege, and to +meet them again would be an equal joy. But for the long, all-weathers' +tramp, for the comfortable silences of true comradeship, and above all +for those last hobbling footsteps of the journey, give me some little +hill like this above English cornlands. + +And, taking everything into consideration, I can really find very little +in the way of an emotional demand that the view, for example, from the +fourth hole of this particular course doesn't amply satisfy. For eyes +necessarily accustomed to close studies and narrower outlooks there is +space enough and to spare, and grandeur too, if they are content to +accept it from above rather than below, and to feast upon those +heavenly Himalayas and ethereal Pacifics that Nature and a south-west +wind will always provide for the untravelled. As an echo, or perhaps +fountain, of which sentiments let me extract for you three verses from a +weekly paper upon my table. They are entitled--it is the Prayer Book +heading of the traveller's psalm--"Levavi oculos." + + Mahomed, when the mountains stood + Aloof from his so strong desire, + Mahomed, being great and good-- + And likewise free--concealed his ire. + And since their will might not be bent, + Mahomed to the mountains went. + + I too, a clerk in Bedford Row, + Long years the mountains yearned to see, + And since to them I could not go, + Besought that they might come to me. + "If Faith," I said, "can mountains move, + How surely should they come for Love." + + And lo, to-day I watch them crowd, + Range upon range, above my head, + Cordilleras of golden cloud, + And snow-white Andes, captive-led, + Yea, Himalayas, crowned with snow, + Above my head in Bedford Row. + +Wiser than Mahomed, like this little clerk, I begin to think that I can +see myself enthroned, in my retirement, and letting my mountains be +brought to my door. Moreover to old age, a little timid of loneliness, +such a view as this would be completely reassuring. Cottages, +manor-houses, Oxford with her dreaming spires, they are all contained +within its broad and kindly grasp. Life, human life, trivial, cheery, +part and parcel of the ages, has not here been sacrificed to any merely +scenic splendour; while beneath it, if still flowing through it, lies +the fierce and jovial memory of Briton and Saxon and Dane, their frames +long since a part of this quiet crucible, and all but the heroic of +their memories--a peaceable reflection--distilled into oblivion. + +Yes, one might do a great deal worse, I think, than retire to Streatley. +At any rate that is Uncle Jacob's opinion, and he has been there a year. + +"View?" he remarked, when I pointed it out to him, "God bless my soul, +it's the finest view in England. Let me see, where are they? Aha, just +there. No, that's not them. _There_ they are--the Wittenham Clumps. My +honour, I think. Fore!" + +When you have stayed here so long as an afternoon and evening, you will +perceive that as St. Paul's to Ludgate Hill or the cross to Banbury, so +are the Wittenham Clumps to Streatley. They are, at any rate, its +soundest conversational investment. + +We celebrated the evening with a feast to which Uncle Jacob had bidden +several of his fellow-bachelors--Esther and Molly being the only ladies +honoured with an invitation. Uncle Jacob, who has never, I should think, +for the last thirty years consumed less than five glasses of port a +night, accompanied, upon normal occasions, by two cigars, and followed, +a little later, by a couple of large whiskies-and-sodas, was in great +form, and very anecdotal. He did full justice to an excellent repast, +and was knocking at our bedroom door at seven the next morning to summon +us for early service. + +"After that, sir, you may loaf, lounge, practise approach shots in the +garden, play billiards, or pick primroses. But every able-bodied person +must attend divine service at least once on Sundays while he is a guest +under my roof." And so there he was, pink from his morning tub, and with +an autocratic twinkle in an eye as clear as yours. I have often, I'm +afraid, in a horrid, professional sort of way, contemplated Uncle Jacob, +who is typical of a distinct class of prosperous old gentlemen, albeit +not a large one. All my training and instincts tell me that he eats too +much, and drinks too much. And I know that, until his retirement, his +life, as a county-court judge, was almost wholly sedentary. And yet here +he is at seventy-six, cheerful, vigorous, and very pleasantly +self-satisfied--so apparently sound himself, in fact, as to be perhaps +just a little bit intolerant of the frailties of others. Personally I am +always tempted--a little unfairly, since he is really a trifle +exceptional--to wield him as a bludgeon over the misguided pates of +fanatical vegetarians. But, on the other hand, how just as reasonably +might not some head-strong _bon viveur_ wield him over mine, who am of +course a preacher of the simple life. No, I think that Uncle Jacob has +three things to thank for the blithe appearance that he cuts before the +world: his forefathers' healthy and athletic simplicity; the fact that +both by temperament and profession he has lived an objective, rather +than a subjective, life; and finally the truth--Medicine's most +comfortable axiom--that Nature, given half a chance, will always come up +smiling. He is lusty _malgré lui_. + +Apart from this little visit in the country I have been very busy; and +some difficult and rather critical cases have tied me to town ever +since. Horace, after some hesitation, has decided to take up medicine, +and is working already for his first and second examinations at +Cambridge, where he will now, I think, stay an extra year. Next month +Esther and I are snatching a week with old Bob Lynn at Applebrook, when +young Calverley will look after my patients, and I shall, I hope, land +trout for a little while instead of fees. Molly is well and very +stately, biding her time, politically speaking, with a stern eye on Mr. +Asquith and a doubtful one on Mr. Balfour. Claire decided after all that +she would like to postpone her confirmation until next year. She came up +for a week-end, at her mistress's wish, to consult about it. + +"You see, Daddy," she told me thoughtfully, "I'm not _frightfully_ keen +on it"; and then after contemplating her toes for a moment, "It's not +that I want to be wicked exactly, only I like feeling sort of comfy." + +When Mummy came in we had a little talk about it, and it emerged, I +think, that being "comfy" meant retaining certain rights as to dormitory +feasts and midnight expeditions that were believed to be incompatible +with the confirmed conscience. Next year it would be different. Well, I +suppose next year it will; and having preached her a little sermon, +which she accepted very gracefully, we ended in a compromise. She was to +be as good as she could, but need not take the irrevocable step till she +felt quite ready for it--somewhere about next Easter. + +Meanwhile she has discovered Mr. Stanley Weyman, and is doubtful if +there is anything in all literature to compare with "Under the Red +Robe," though one of the girls thinks "Count Hannibal" almost as good. + +Tom's letters are terse, and, as I told you last month, we are still +rather troubled about him. + +My love to the orphans, with their proper little plaits and their shiny +cheeks. And that they may continue to rejoice their matron's heart is +the prayer of + + Her affectionate brother + PETER. + + + + +VII + +_To Harry Carthew, Trenant Hotel, Leeds._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _April_ 8, 1910. + +MY DEAR CARTHEW, + +I believe every word you tell me about yourself--that you are feeling, +that is to say, pumped-out, uncertain, doubtful each morning if you can +get through the day without breaking down, and as a result of it all, +very wretched and depressed. At the same time I can only assure you, and +I think you must accept my word as a trained man, that you are +physically sound, and indeed at this very moment a "first-class life." + +I know how difficult it is to believe all this when one is suffering as +you are now. But believe me, it is the gospel truth, and one that you +must reiterate daily, and if need be hourly, to yourself. Remember that +all this is just a phase of experience. Twelve months from now you will +be laughing at the memory of it. Twelve years hence it will have ceased +even to be a memory. And if you could only observe your troubles from +without, as I do, you would see at once how very understandable they +are. + +For here are you, a busy enough barrister at all times, plunging +headlong into the sea of electioneering, from which, after a very stormy +month or two, you emerge to find heavy arrears of work awaiting you at +chambers, to say nothing of two unexpectedly prolonged and arduous cases +in the courts. In addition to these things you have been, as you tell +me, caught up a little in the present whirlwind of rubber speculation, +and have had rather disquieting reports of Eric's health in Switzerland. + +Now I know you to be a healthy disbeliever in drugs, the possessor of a +scepticism, in this respect, that I largely share. And I'm not going to +wind up this letter with a prescription. But you tell me that your cases +are now well in hand, and that you have four clear days before the Leeds +Sessions begin; and therefore, if you will let me, I am going to assume +the sceptre of the autocrat, and commandeer them for your good. First, +then, select a bedroom with a south aspect, and have your bed pulled up +beneath the window in such a manner that, being propped up with pillows, +you can survey some little portion of the outside world. Having done +this, prepare to stop in it for thirty-six hours. The preparation will +be simple. Procure a round table and a selection of suitable books. What +these should be I daren't prescribe. Let me suggest widely that most of +them should deal rather with abstracts than concretes, that some of them +should therefore be books of poetry, but that a volume of Jacobs' +stories should by all means be included. Select one newspaper only, and +that of an unsensational character. Let me recommend, without prejudice +to political convictions, the "Morning Post." As regards Eric, consign +him mentally, as you have done actually, to the wisdom of his headmaster +and the school doctor. And for the rest, commend your affairs to the +discretion of your broker. Now as to diet--for twenty-four hours you +must live on milk, and milk alone, no matter how hungry you may become. +The hunger will by no means be hurtful, and you can console yourself by +remembering that your bodily tissue-waste, while in bed, will be +comparatively small. So much for the first day. For breakfast, upon the +second, have a bowl of bread and milk. Lunch in bed on some sole or +plaice, followed by a rice pudding and some stewed fruit. Rise at three, +spend an hour in the garden if the day is warm enough, and have tea at +half-past four. Being in the provinces, this meal may be accompanied by +two boiled eggs without creating undue attention. Have a warm bath, +followed by a cold sponge-down, at seven o'clock, when you must retire +to bed, supping on bread and milk at half-past eight, and taking +thereafter some effective, but not too violent aperient, such as five +grains of calomel, let us say, an hour later. + +On the third day, having breakfasted in bed upon a cup of tea, two +rounds of buttered toast and a boiled egg, you may rise at eleven, and +take an hour's walk. For lunch you should have some boiled fish, +potatoes, stewed fruit and custard. In the afternoon you should take +another hour's walk, and have a cup of tea and some toast at half-past +four. Dine in your room at half-past seven upon some clear soup, sole, a +nicely grilled chop with some mashed potatoes, and any sort of sweet +that you may fancy. Having dined, drink a cup of coffee, and smoke your +first cigar among your fellow-men downstairs. Upon the fourth day, +arise, and have a cold tub. Don some old and comfortable tweeds, eat the +biggest breakfast of which you are capable, seize a stout stick, take an +early train, and spend the day in the country, eating when and what you +like, and drinking, if you can get it, some good home-brewed ale. Go to +bed early, and I will promise you that, upon the morning of the fifth, +you will arrive in court at any rate relatively cheerful. A fortnight's +holiday, when the sessions are over, will complete the good work. + + Yrs. very sincerely, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +VIII + +_To John Summers, M.B., at Actonhurst, Granville Road, Bristol._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _April_ 12, 1910. + +MY DEAR JACK, + +I expect that, by this time, a good long night and twenty-four hours' +reflection will have restored your equanimity. For I can't imagine that +much more would be necessary, although I can sympathise, with a very +sincere fellow-feeling. Bless you, my boy, it's happened to all of +us--and goes on happening too, if that's any comfort to you. + +Why even young Calverley, who was in here just now, and who looks, as +you know, almost supernaturally solemn for his five-and-thirty years, +was the victim of a similar experience only last week, under +circumstances far less considerate than yours. For the old lady--the +scene was somewhere near Cadogan Square, and it was his second +visit--received him in person, sitting very bolt upright. + +"You're very young," she told him. "I _don't_ like you. And you don't +understand my case." + +So you see your experience has not been by any means unique; and I +really don't think that you have any ethical ground for complaint. The +lady considered you, quite erroneously of course, to be too +inexperienced, and having told you so in a letter that is by no means +ungraceful, has called in another practitioner. He may be, as you say, +an ignorant old rotter. But that is irrelevant. And the fact that you +are a locum tenens doesn't, I think, alter the situation. + +After all, we are merely the servants of the public, in spite of our +M.D.'s and our hospital appointments. And we must face the fact with as +much philosophy as we can gather about us. If they don't want us, well, +they won't have us, and there's the bitter end of it. Coming fresh from +the hospital, where one has been, perhaps, a house-surgeon or +house-physician, into the entirely different atmosphere of private +practice, it is sometimes a bit hard to realise this, and the process is +always a painful one. For between the house-surgeon, clad in white, +backed up by the accumulated authority and tradition of his hospital, +surrounded by satellite nurses, and perhaps (dare I breathe it?) a wee +bit lordly, and the very young man, in a new frock-coat, who will be +ushered next week by a curious parlour-maid into a private drawing-room, +there is all the difference in the world. + +Moreover you seem to have got yourself into the sort of practice that +for a young man is perhaps the most difficult to manage--a practice +consisting almost entirely of prosperous and middle-class patients. I am +not using the term middle-class--it is one that I particularly hate--in +any derogatory sense, but _faute de mieux_ as describing the very large +stratum of society that pivots upon the shop-counter or the offices +behind it. It is a stratum, as you will be sure to find out pretty soon, +as kindly, honest, and really considerate as any other, and no less +lacking in heroism and endurance. But it is one that has not yet fully +acquired perhaps the habit of emotional suppression--the latest to be +developed in social evolution--and is consequently a little addicted to +superlatives, and still somewhat over-respectful, no doubt, to such mere +externals as eloquence and millinery in other people. On the other hand +it possesses an extremely accurate appreciation of the cash value of +services rendered, and its consideration for a gentleman is by no means +going to interfere with this when he comes before them as a salesman of +physic and incidentally of advice. Moreover--and it's no good being +hypersensitive about it--we mustn't forget that we too, as a profession, +have but lately differentiated ourselves from the ranks of retail +commerce--so lately, in fact, that the barber tradition is far from +being entirely defunct. + +I can remember very well, for instance, in my first locum, a fortnight +after I had qualified, standing behind the counter of a little surgery +in Shadwell in response to a patient who had tapped upon it loudly with +the edge of his shilling, and summoned me with a call of "Shop." Would I +take out his tooth for sixpence? No, I wouldn't. A shilling was the +recognised fee for this operation. Well, what about ninepence? No, not +even for ninepence. + +"Orl right, guv'nor, 'eave away then," and the shilling went into the +till, while the tooth, neatly wrapped in paper, was borne homewards for +domestic inspection. Nor are such incidents by any means uncommon even +to-day, and they add excellent lessons to those of Winchester and New. + +Then, too, you mustn't overlook the fact that mere youth itself is under +a greater disadvantage in medicine than in almost any other profession. +The idea of a young advocate may fire the imagination. The idea of a +young doctor only suggests distrust. A young lawyer, having the keener +wit of youth, may be a safe adviser in our legal dilemmas. The young +officer is the marrow of our army and navy. We may even venture to +entrust our souls for spiritual guidance to some earnest young priest. +But when it comes to our bodies, to the actual tenements that contain +us, to such intimate events as percussion, palpation, the administration +of tonics, or the insertion of knife and forceps--why then, you know, we +must really insist upon maturity. + +Your mere boys may administer our properties, or defend our countries, +or even dally gently with our souls. But when it comes to our actual +flesh and blood--well, we prefer the assistant or the locum to confine +his attentions to the servants, the children, or the very poor. There +are exceptions to the rule, no doubt. But I'm afraid that you will find +it a very general one. I know that I did. And about the only comfort to +be extracted from it is the fact that it may be regarded as an excellent +medium for the acquirement of humility. And that's why, if your brothers +in the Church or the Army become more lowly in spirit than yourself, it +must be taken to argue in them a greater endowment of natural grace. +For their teaching, in this respect, is not likely, I think, to be more +thorough than yours. At the same time, there are, as you have just been +finding out, some rather bitter moments for the newly fledged medico. I +remember once, when I was about twenty-four, I think, and doing a locum +in Portsmouth, being called up for the third night in succession to +attend a confinement. It was three o'clock in the morning, and the +night-bell stirred me out of the profoundest depths of slumber. Very +weary, and very bleary, I remember cursing myself by all my gods for +having set my hand to so laborious a plough as the pursuit of healing. +But later, walking grimly down the empty streets in a pallid drizzle of +rain, a certain sense of heroism came to my rescue. After all, it _was_ +rather a noble thing to be doing; and no doubt my patient would be +proportionately grateful. As a matter of solemn fact, on setting eyes +upon me, she lifted up her voice, and wept incontinently. + +It was a perfectly natural thing to do, of course, in the light of after +reflection. She had expected to see the genial, middle-aged physician +who had so often attended her; and behold, in his stead, a pale-faced +boy who might very nearly have been her son! It was no wonder that she +burst into tears. But it was rather a blow for the poor hero. +Afterwards, I think, having both made the best of a bad job, and +observed an all-wise Nature introduce to us an entirely normal baby, we +became quite friendly. And you will generally find, if you know your +work, and refrain from dogma, that a little patience will heal most of +these differences, while the cause of them, alas, will depart readily +enough. It is good, no doubt, to be considered a wise old codger. But +the pearl that pays for it is of great price. So don't be in too much of +a hurry to part with it. + + Your affect. uncle, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +IX + +_To Harry Carthew, Trenant Hotel, Leeds._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _April_ 15, 1910. + +MY DEAR CARTHEW, + +I am very glad. But let me put it to you, sir--that _is_ the phrase, +isn't it?--that you really cured yourself. + + Yrs. very sincerely, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +X + +_To the Rev. Bruce Harding, S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _April_ 20, 1910. + +MY DEAR BRUCE, + +The whole subject is so difficult, and one's opinions upon it, in cold +ink as it were, are so liable to be misread, that I wish we could have +had a quiet talk about it instead. But of course, since you cannot leave +the school until the May holiday begins, and will have, if you decide to +take so radical a step, to write to the boys' parents in India and +Egypt, this is quite impossible. From your letter I seem to gather that +this was your intention at the time of writing, and it is a decision in +which I can sympathise with you very deeply. + +For the whole ten years during which the school has been in your charge +it has, to your almost certain knowledge, and according also to the +testimony of many of your old pupils, been absolutely free from this +"moral canker," as you describe it, that you have just discovered in it +now. And even for a preparatory school, like yours, this is a record for +which you are right to be profoundly thankful. It is one also that +naturally throws up into a blacker relief the present condition of +affairs. Moreover, having discovered its sphere to be at present fairly +circumscribed--confined apparently to a single coterie of some half a +dozen boys--the obvious course, as you say, would seem to be a prompt +and thorough excision, _pro bono publico_. + +And yet I believe that there's a better way--so much better that I am +sure, before receiving this, you will have already found it, and +abandoned your first decision. You won't expel the youngsters. You'll +create instead a public feeling that will cure them. And you'll +distribute them in such a way that each will be surrounded by it to his +best advantage. I feel so certain that you'll have already made up your +mind to do this that I won't put in any special pleading on behalf of +these particular nippers or their parents abroad, although I sincerely +believe that in taking so drastic a step as you suggest in your letter +you would not only be magnifying their offence out of all proportion, +but that the result all round would be more than harmful. + +Instead, the point that I would most urgently put before you--in spite +of many an old drawn battle upon the subject--is that the present little +crisis would be an excellent excuse for reconsidering your position as +regards giving to your scholars some definite physiological instruction. +Because I am quite convinced that at least three-quarters of your moral +canker would more properly be defined as physiological curiosity and +that the whole problem is only secondarily one of actual perversity. Now +your custom up to the present has had, I'll admit, a great deal to +recommend it. For your boys come to you very young, usually at the age +of nine or ten, shy and imaginative enough perhaps, but for the most +part mentally sexless, and with an almost entirely objective outlook +upon life. In other words, their inquisitiveness is eccentric rather +than concentric. It's a happy condition, and one, as you say, that must +be dealt with exceedingly carefully. When they leave you, somewhere +about fourteen or fifteen years old, you usually take the opportunity of +the good-bye interview to give them some warnings as to confronting +moral dangers. But purposely, for fear of prematurely dissipating a +desirable innocence, or awakening what you call an illegitimate +curiosity, you keep your advice to generalities in all but the rarest +instances. The possible stimulus to dangerous self-exploration in some +unsuspecting youngster has always outweighed for you the advantages of a +too direct explanation. + +And this is where, in spite of your ten years' immunity, I feel sure +that your methods have fallen short of the best. Self-exploration is +only dangerous when it's blind, and if self-curiosity is ever +illegitimate--and I don't see why it should be--we both know that some +day or another it is going to become inevitable. We know more, because +we are fully aware that some day or another it is going to be satisfied. +And for the life of me I cannot see why mere physiological ignorance +shouldn't be dispelled in the same routine that is employed for +dispelling any other sort of ignorance, mathematical, historical, or +what you will. It can be done, I am quite certain, without rubbing a +particle off the sweet bloom of childhood, and it will go a very long +way in preserving from a much ruder handling that of adolescence and +early manhood. For it seems to me that the very fact of refraining from +any definite instruction upon what, after all, from the purely physical +point of view, is the bed-rock of our _raison d'être_, lends the +subject in advance precisely that air of unnecessary and even shameful +mystery which is responsible for about nine-tenths of our prudery on the +one hand, and our obscenity on the other. + +There's so little original in these reflections, they represent the +attitude of so large a number of ordinarily thoughtful persons, that +they may probably bore you. But, on the other hand, although there's a +good deal of educational spade-work still before us, the day will +certainly come, I think, when we shall treat and teach sexual phenomena +in the same sane and self-consciousless way as we treat and teach the +principles of personal cleanliness and physical hygiene. It will be a +great day--may it come soon--and with its dawning will disappear not +only the entire stock-in-trade of a not uncommon type of smoking-room +raconteur, but a very considerable portion of actual and imaginative +immorality. For if you cover up anything long enough, and refer to it +slyly enough, you can be certain in the end of making its exposure +indecent. If gloves became _de rigueur_ for a couple of centuries we +should raise prurient titters at the mention of a knuckle. No; it's air +and sunlight and the salt of a bracing sanity in these matters that is +our crying need. + +"The sea," says Mr. Stacpoole in his clever romance "The Blue Lagoon," +"is a great purifier," and proceeds, in a little piece of delicate and +absolutely true psychology, to describe how Dick, the derelict boy on +the coral island, instinctively ran naked with his sister in the +presence of winds and waves, although some impulse, born probably of +memory, bade him cover himself inland. But his decency was the same in +either place. + +And it's the sea air of a healthy knowledge and acceptance of these +matters that we ought to be pumping through our schoolrooms, our +dormitories, and our heart-to-heart talks with our children. Approach +them frankly enough, and with no semblance of shamefacedness, and we +needn't be afraid, I think, of any evil consequences. The guilty smile, +the illicit joke, become disarmed in advance when their subject is +treated in the same matter-of-fact and unmysterious fashion as those of +geography or astronomy. And that is why, on the whole, I am opposed to +the average "purity" volumes that are published for purposes of sexual +instruction. For though they acknowledge this to be the solution of a +large portion of the problem, they are so written, circulated, and +advertised as to suggest rather an initiation into the unspeakable than +a straightforward piece of natural history. And I suspect, as a +consequence, that their sales are considerably larger among the prurient +than the pious. An older generation was brought up on "Reading without +tears." The next should have a companion volume "Biology without shame." + +Forgive this sermon, but I have been confronted just lately with such a +lot of human mental wreckage, the direct result, in my opinion, of the +half-religious, half-fearful shrouds with which we always swaddle up +these questions, that I rejoice in an opportunity for their wholesale +condemnation. It was Mrs. Craigie, I think, who said that every girl of +eighteen should read "Tom Jones." And one can see why, for it is a clean +and wholesome history, if a little unspiritual. But her education, like +her brother's, should not be left haphazard to the chance reading of a +novel, or to the unnecessary blushes with which she ponders certain +passages of Scripture. + +Well, good-bye, old man, and God bless you. Chat it all over with the +young sinners, and then work out a little course of lectures upon the +reproduction of species. If you have never talked collectively to a +roomful of boys upon the subject before, you will be surprised at the +rapt interest and genuine solemnity with which they will attend to what +you have to tell them. And the purity of your school won't suffer, I +think, by its change of foundations. + + Your affect. cousin, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +XI + +_To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _April_ 22, 1910. + +MY DEAR AUNT JOSEPHINE, + +I am glad to hear that the ring has been so completely successful in +driving away the pains from your joints. I haven't actually heard of the +wearing of a ring round the waist for pains elsewhere. But, as you say, +it sounds a distinctly hopeful idea. With regard to the pills, so much +depends, of course, on what you mean by being worth a guinea. If you are +to measure these benefits in actual cash, I believe this amounts to +about three farthings. But perhaps that is an unfair standard. No, I +don't think that there is the least risk in taking four. I am sorry to +hear of your gardener's troubles. But I should hardly have thought that +it would be necessary to send him to Torquay. Has it ever occurred to +you to suggest that he should sign the pledge? + + Your affect. nephew, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +XII + +_To Tom Harding, c/o the Rev. Arthur Jake Rugby._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _April_ 24, 1910. + +MY DEAR TOM, + +I have been expecting this letter of yours for a good many weeks. It +would be almost true, I think, to say that I have been hoping for it. +And yet each week of delay has been making, I believe, for safety. So +strongly have I been feeling this last, indeed, that now your letter has +actually come, and actually contains to so large an extent the sort of +material that I expected to find in it, I am more than glad that you +have hesitated so long before writing it. One must always stand away a +little from the burning bush to discuss its relations with an everyday +world. Close beneath it, in the first apprehension of its significance, +there is no room for anything but adoration. And I am afraid this letter +of mine, had you received it then, would have seemed to you, if not even +a little blasphemous, at any rate lacking in true reverence. For +although you haven't told me so, I expect that I shouldn't be far wrong +in hazarding a guess that for the first month or two after your +experience at Scarborough you told yourself that your father, and +perhaps even your mother, were a little wanting in a true understanding +of the miracle that had befallen you. It was all so new, so +overwhelming; it threw such a strange light not only upon your own +individual life, past and to come, but upon the sum total of all other +life as well, that you felt its wonder to be almost incompatible with +the humdrum, commonplace existence that we and most of our friends +appeared to be leading. + +Had we known it, as it was then shining upon you, surely we should have +been so different! You felt, I think, as if you had suddenly found us +out. And though you didn't love us any the less for this--perhaps even +loved us more, in another kind of way--you were quite sure that if you +hadn't actually outstripped us by this single leap into the light, we +had at any rate dropped down a little from the high plane on which, till +then, you had never doubted that we lived. + +How, for example, in a world that teemed with sin, could the governor be +so keen on catching trout? How was it, with these dark, tremendous +millions hemming him in, that you had never seen him hand away a tract, +or preach the Word in season? How came it, alas, that he could even +sometimes say "damn" when he broke a bootlace, or waste some +unreturnable hour over a rubber of bridge? Of course with the mater it +was different. Maters _are_ different, and I'm glad you thought of that, +Tom. But come now, didn't it run somehow in this way? Why naturally it +did, and it meant that your discovery had already begotten another. It +meant that you had suddenly realised the weak humanity of your parents. +But you must try to be kind to it. + +And that's how it is with all great discoveries, Tom, in every branch of +life. First one is struck with their extraordinary, their dazzling, +simplicity. Belief--life; acceptance--salvation; and you had never +somehow thought of it before! How simple, and by its very simplicity how +god-like, how utterly convincing! + +And then, in this new irrefragable conception, everything (even the +governor) has to be reconsidered, appraised, condemned, readjusted, and +inspired afresh. What is this going to mean to me personally? What does +it mean to other people? And again, what responsibility towards them +does its possession entail on myself? These are the inevitable questions +that follow. The putting of them is the second stage in the general +process. The very fact of their being put at all shows the discovery to +be already at work. And the answers, if the discovery is worth anything +at all, and we have postulated it to be a great one, can be of only one +kind. I must pursue it to the end. I must follow out its leading as far +as my humanity will let me. And I must communicate the results to my +fellows according to the best of my abilities. That is the third stage, +and it is coterminous with life, Tom. Because, you see, all great +discoveries, like yours, contain within them the germ-cells of a +thousand others. To discover one or two of these, to nourish them, and +perhaps even, if one is very fortunate, to enable them in some degree to +fructify, is more than a life-work for most of us. + +So true is this, and so endless and apparently diverse appear to be +their various possibilities, that we are apt very easily (especially in +middle life) to forget the splendid, sweeping simplicity of the initial +idea, just as we are equally apt to overrate, perhaps, the importance of +those particular germs that we have, by temperament and circumstance, +elected to serve, and to underrate the value of those to which our +neighbours have been attracted. And it is because of the first of these +things that I want to thank you for your letter, and tell you how very +much I value it. You have reminded me again of something that I would +never like to forget. You have re-created for me the right atmosphere. +Belief _is_ life, Tom, in a great many more senses than one. Hang on to +that like a limpet, and the peace of heart that means strength of hand +will never leave you. But it's because of the second of these things +that I want you to hesitate just a little longer before you commit +yourself to the proposition in your letter. + +To be a lay evangelist, something like the gentleman whose services you +attended, may be as high and noble a life as any that the world has to +offer you. As I conceive it, lived to its greatest advantage, it must be +an exceedingly difficult one, which should only of course make it the +more worth living. But to say that it is the _best_ worth living, while +it may be true for yourself, is certainly not true as a general +principle. There is no one sort of life that is the best worth living. +And in considering the question, as you certainly must, I think you +ought to be very careful to keep this before your mind. Ways in life +are not to be selected like articles from a shop-window. You cannot ask +for the best, and go away with it in your pocket. The best worth living +life is already inside you. And your new discovery is not going to +determine its nature--heredity and a thousand other things have already +done that--but rather its quality. You may be cut out for a lay, or any +other kind of evangelist. I hadn't somehow suspected it in you. But I +may easily have been wrong. Yet I think you mustn't take any definite +vows upon your shoulders--at any rate, for some time--and probably, I +suspect, for several years. + +Promises of this sort, you see, are so very much better left unmade. For +in the first place, the remembrance of them is more than likely to blur +the gladness, and consequent usefulness, with which you will obey your +temperament and tendencies in later years, should these determine for +you some different course. And in the second, they may even, standing +upon some mistaken scruple of conscience, succeed in forcing you, +against your real calling, into an altogether unsuitable career. + +Meanwhile you need have no fears, I think, in leading your normal, +probationary life. You have the opportunity of University education +before you. And that, at any rate, can do you no harm, and will probably +be of extreme use to you, whatever your ultimate decision. You want to +find out the truth, to impart the truth, and to help your fellow-men to +lead better lives. Very well then, if there's a God, Tom, as you and I +believe, you must be just the material that He would most greatly care +to use. So why not leave it at that for a little while? Want to do the +right thing, and so do the next one; and you'll find, I think, that the +precise nature of your own particular right thing, evangelist or +engineer, will pretty certainly settle itself. + + Your aff. father, + P. H. + + + + +XIII + +_To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone._ + + + c/o DR. ROBERT LYNN, + APPLEBROOK, DEVON, + _May_ 3, 1910. + +MY DEAR HUGH, + +I have just come back to read your letter from one of those super-days +of which even the happiest life can contain, I imagine, no more than a +handful. Of merely good days I can remember many enough--a sufficient +number, at any rate, to absorb very happily the memory of their less +favoured brethren. And several of them remain distinct by virtue of some +outstanding incident or emotion that they contained or inspired. But +most, I think, have become blended into a general peaceable impression +of past contentment. To use a popular Americanism, they were good times, +and usually real good times at that. + +But of these super-days, these Olympians among mundane experiences, no +man can expect very many, and I have been, I suspect, as fortunate as +most--in any case so fortunate as to be more than grateful, +notwithstanding the tiny, struggling sense in me (a legacy of +superstition, I suppose, from some far-back ancestors) that so exquisite +an enjoyment must surely prelude some equivalent disaster. They are not, +as a rule, I think, critical days, at any rate in the ordinarily +accepted sense of the term, though I can remember perhaps a couple that +in a small fashion might answer this description. + +The first of them was in my fifteenth year, and was the last day (at the +end of six weeks' strict training) of the House Races at school. Our +four had started bottom of the river, and day by day had crept up until, +in the evening of this particular one, we were to row the favourites, +School House, for the cup. When I call them the favourites, they were +this merely in a sporting sense. Because, I think, the succession of +good fights put up by our own insignificant little house, added to a +certain reputation for conceit that most School Houses would seem to +possess, had won pretty nearly the whole of the rest of the school to +our support. As a very junior and inferior oarsman (and I was more than +conscious of this at the time, I remember) I can claim no particular +share, other than an accidental one, in this series of victories. I had +been one of two candidates for the post of bow, and being a few pounds +heavier than my opponent, had managed to secure the thwart. But my mere +undeservedness did not lessen--in fact, I think, it enhanced--the almost +miraculous sweetness of those wonderful twelve hours. To be gazed at +surreptitiously by yet smaller boys in a patently envious admiration; to +be patted on the back by older ones who had never hitherto noticed my +existence; to be let out of school half an hour earlier by the +form-master, with a jocose phrase about privileged heroes--all these +things wove a magic round my way that no anxiety about the coming race +was strong enough to mar, and that has survived a good many years. Of +the race itself I can remember, curiously, nothing but the peculiar +hollow echo of our oars as we came through the Town Bridge, and the bare +fact that we succeeded in winning, to the supposed vast humiliation of +our superior enemies. But what I do remember most distinctly is being +invited to tea with the captain, a big man and a monitor. It was a +splendid, god-like meal, in which the six weeks' abstention (mistaken, +no doubt, but none the less heroic) from sweets and pastries was +utterly forgotten. And there stands out to me the doughnut that +dismissed them to oblivion, a doughnut of so succulent a clamminess that +it is unlikely, I think, ever to have had its peer--a very Lycidas among +doughnuts. + +The second day that occurs to me is that in which, playing through, for +the first time in many years, to the Finals, the Hospital XV was +defeated after a gruelling ninety minutes by the team that represented +Guy's. This must have been some eight or nine years later, and its +essence is contained in my memory by five perfect minutes, gloriously +relaxed, tired but hard, in a hot bath at Richmond. + +Now looking back, I know these to have been super-days, and they were, +as I have explained, in a very minor sense critical perhaps. But they +were exceptions, I think, to the general rule. For though the critical +day, the long-looked-forward-to, the apparently, and indeed, +chronologically speaking, the really important day may be a good one, +and contain great things, yet in later life, at any rate, there is an +inseparable anxiety about it of which the super-day knows nothing. The +day one qualified, for example, and became by one scratch of the pen +licensed to sign death-certificates, exempt from serving on fire +brigades, and worth (on paper) from three to five guineas a week as a +locum tenens, was, no doubt, a notable one. The day one proposed oneself +in a kind of stammering paralysis as a possible husband to the only +possible girl--and was unbelievably accepted; the marriage day; the day +when one was appointed to the hospital staff; the day when, in a cool +and blinded room, one stooped to kiss the tired but joyful eyes of the +first baby's mother--these are the dates over which, most probably, the +outside historian would choose to pour the vials of his fancy. But I +doubt if in any life these are ever the super-days. They are days to +remember; but at the same time they are days that one is glad to have +seen closed. They have beheld Destiny too visibly hanging on so +desperately fine a balance. + +No, they come, these gift-days from the gods, even as they list; and +they refuse to be classified. The most constant feature about them, I +think, is that they rather generally appear during a holiday. And this, +I believe, is because they depend so much on a certain purely bodily +fitness. I hesitate a little to be very dogmatic about this, because the +older one grows the more spiritual, and consequently deeper, becomes +their joy. And yet, for the majority of us, at any rate, I am certain +that the temple must be at least in passable order if the spirit within +is to look abroad with an unworried heart, and thoroughly spring-cleaned +before its householder, free from domestic cares, can roam joyously at +will to find those rarer flowers that he's so seldom free enough to +seek. And there lies my stock argument for all misguided religious +workers who won't take holidays, and incidentally the real damnation of +all systems of monastic self-mortification. A sound body not only means +a sound mind, but an untrammelled spirit. For a spirit that has +constantly to be down on its knees stopping up some leak in the basement +cannot possibly find much time for walking in the garden with God. And +if it's a self-made or self-permitted leak, it hasn't even the excuse of +being engaged in some equally necessary occupation. + +Yet apart from this, there isn't a doubt, I think, that these super-days +stand out in memory, and gain their constructive force less by reason of +their muscular exaltation than by virtue of their spiritual vision. For +even in the days of the doughnut and the hot bath this last wasn't +altogether absent. The doughnut marked the closing of an epoch and the +dawn of its successor. It meant the passage--and to a certain extent +the conscious passage, too--of an irresponsible childhood into a region +of honourable reputation. It was a doughnut that had been bestowed by +the hands of a captain. While the hot bath, careless of defeat, merely +whispered how great had been the game. And in their successors of later +years this spiritual factor has tended to emphasise itself in an +ever-growing proportion. Wordsworth might almost have selected the +theme, I think, for an Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Middle +Age. I can remember one such day on Butser Hill, during a snatched +week-end in Hampshire, and another that is summed up for me in a bend of +heather-bordered road, turning, at a hot day's end, towards +Stronachlacher and a green lawn above Loch Katrine. + +And now, with an equal unexpectedness, there has come the latest of them +all. + +You know how it goes on a holiday--the holiday, that is, of a man to +whom holidays are rare and very blessed. For the first day your mind has +not yet freed itself from town and toil and the hundred other interests +for which they stand. Nor has your body quite overcome the lassitude +inspired by pavements, and encouraged by taxi-cabs and broughams. Your +host, too, wants to learn the latest tidings from the great metropolis; +what So-and-so thinks of the political situation; the prevailing opinion +on stocks and shares; the last pronouncements on art and music; the +newest good thing in plays. And perhaps even, if you chance to be of the +same profession, you fall to talking shop. Not even the magic of +plunging streams and deep, rock-shaded pools is quite sufficient, for +the moment, to dispel the urban atmosphere that still clings about you. +Your unused muscles remind you of the reason for their flabbiness. Your +eye, too long engaged upon other sights, is not yet quick enough to mark +the swift rise among those ripples at the tail of the pool. And you +return from your first day's fishing a little annoyed with yourself, +aching as regards the wrist and thigh, and more often than not with a +light or empty bag. Yet even so, mark the change in your after-dinner +talk! Smoking there round the hall fire, surrounded by rods and guns and +cases of fish and game, you no longer deliver yourself of opinions on +the rubber market or the precise value of the latest vaccine. You +discuss instead the reason why you missed that pounder under Applebrook +Bridge. And you sit for long minutes staring through a blue tobacco haze +into the wood-fire's heart, presumably thinking, but in reality doing +nothing of the kind. For though the gates of your brain are open, it is +to speed rather than receive impressions. And by to-morrow the +overcrowded hostel of your mind will be standing with doors ajar for its +lustier moorland visitors. + +So it has been with me, Hugh, and to-day, the third of my holiday, has +been one of those great ones of which I have been writing. Talking +sleepily in bed last night to Esther I had announced an intention, +received by her with a discreet appearance of belief, of sallying out +early to try a couple of those big pools at the junction of the +Applebrook and Dart. But the servant with the shaving water found us +both comfortably asleep at half-past eight, with two silvery morning +hours unfished except in dreams. Dear me, but what a glorious air, and +how divine a whisper, too frail to be called a scent, of delicately +browning trout! + +For old Bob had been up betimes, and, in spite of a powder of frost on +the riverside gorse and alders, had succeeded in beguiling half a dozen +plump little troutlings into providing the _hors-d'oeuvre_ to a +substantial three-decker breakfast. The family had already made their +meal, by the time we got downstairs, and old Bob, ruddy and contented, +surveyed us approvingly from the hearthrug. + +"If the sun didn't find you yesterday," he chuckled, "I fancy the breeze +did," and Mrs. Bob murmured something to Esther about hazeline ointment. +A long round would prevent Bob from doing any more fishing for the rest +of the day, but a touch of south in the wind had decided him that Esther +and I must settle upon the East Dart for our third day's sport. + +"The wind should help you," he said; "and you ought to have a pretty +good time," and became forthwith a prophet, though not concerning trout. +I'm not going to bother you with details of our angling. It was very +arduous, for the wind changed almost as soon as we had started, and blew +down the steep valley at a good many miles an hour. But it was at least +exciting, and we lunched in a hail-storm on sandwiches and fruit pies, +conveyed to us across the moor by Nancy on her pony. + +Do you remember Nancy Lynn, a blush-rose little baby-girl a dozen years +ago? But I'm sure you do, and I wish you could have seen her to-day as +she rode down to us along the steep path to the river, straddle-legged +on her Dartmoor pony, bareheaded, and the colour of a ripe +chestnut--lustiest of little animals, but with eyes, as she cuddled her +pony's nose, that have already learned to spell mother, and sometimes +wonder what it means. + +After lunch, Esther went home with her to meet some friends of Mrs. Lynn +at tea, and I was to fish a mile or two further up stream, returning +later in the evening. But smoking my pipe under the stone wall that had +sheltered our meal, it was a long time before I again took up my rod. +And instead I sat there under the clearing sky--a great gulf now of +tear-washed blue, deepening into an immeasurable calm behind these +trivial clouds--and watched the two of them making their leisurely way +along the hill. And seen thus, at a little distance, they might very +easily have been sisters. There was the same spring in their boyish +tread, and, could I have seen it, I have no doubt that there was the +same kind of look in their clear, contented eyes. For what Nancy now +was, Esther so obviously once had been. And what Esther had become, +Nancy in her kind would also grow to be--and subtly, to some small +extent, because of Esther. Indeed it might almost have been Esther as +she was, walking pleasantly with Esther as she is, the child's instinct +of living only each moment's life, clinging happily to the woman's +deeper philosophy of doing precisely the same. I wonder if you see what +I'm driving at. It all looks so commonplace on paper. They were really +of course two ordinary people, a young girl and a woman, disappearing +down a path. But to an elderly physician (a thousand feet up, and on a +super-day, mind you) they seemed suddenly to be something rather more. +For swinging hands as they walked, half-way between the changing water +and the changeless Tor, it was as though now they held visibly between +them some mystical arm's-length of the secret core of life--something +that was at once common to their age and youth, and was yet apart from +both; something, independent of circumstance, that was swinging for a +benediction over the years that lay between them. And I'll tell you what +it was, Hugh, or at any rate what I knew it to be this afternoon. It was +just the Ultimate Truth about things. And behold it was very good! + +So that's why I've written you this letter in answer to your sad one of +this evening. + +For though there is said to be a kind of comfort, I believe, in +realising that others are suffering like ourselves, I doubt if this is +ever a comfort worth having. And, on the other hand, there is a certain +amount of real satisfaction in knowing, at the end of a blank day, that +your neighbour, at any rate, has had a bit of luck. And so because you +write to me _de profundis_, your bronchial mucous membrane being more +than usually congested, I'm deliberately crowing to you from my little +hill-top. But there's another reason, Hugh. Do you remember, twelve +years ago, facing me on Believer Bridge, and holding out to me a lean +brown hand to grasp? I was there this afternoon, and that nice sunburnt +girl has now got a family of six. + +"Peter," you said to me, "this has been a great day. It has been worth +living for. I wouldn't have missed it for whatever's got to come. And if +you're a real pal you won't let me forget that." + +And so I have reminded you. That was one of _your_ super-days, and you +chose to make it your throne of judgment upon life. And you were right, +Hugh, because you judged by the best, and life, like genius, must always +be greater than even its highest gifts to us. Some day, when I too am +glowering upon it from the windward side of a bronchitis-kettle, I hope +there'll be an equally tactful fellow to remind me of this. Perhaps +you'll be the fellow. + + Ever yours, + P. H. + + + + +XIV + +_To Miss Molly Harding, 91B Harley Street, London, W._ + + + c/o DR. ROBT. LYNN, + APPLEBROOK, DEVON, + _May_ 6, 1910. + +MY DEAR HOUSEKEEPER, + +Twenty years ago your mother and I came down here for a fortnight's +fishing to stay, just as we are staying now, and in the same month, too, +with Bob Lynn and his wife. I remember that we wondered for quite six +weeks if we could properly afford to do this. The house, you see--not +91B, but the tiny one at the end of Devonshire Street--had been so very +costly in its demand for furniture, for rent, for wear and tear. The +practice was so uncertain, seemed so desperately slow in growing. Was it +safe to leave it? Would it be still there when we returned? And if +not----? + +So we argued, and knew all the time that there was a far more important +consideration than any of these tucked away in the upstairs part of our +minds. Was it safe to leave her at only ten months old? Would she know +us again when we came back? Could any one in the world take a great +enough care of her? + +Perhaps you have never guessed what an important little person she was; +and perhaps, even now, you decline, in that very calm and unimpassioned +habit of yours, to believe it. But that must be because you have never +properly studied the evidence. I wonder if you have ever seen, for +instance, the clothes that she wore--such little clothes, but just look +at them, every stitch as delicate as a tendril, and every dimple and +pucker as soft as a wild bird's nest. There's never more than one person +in the world who can make clothes like that; and nobody, not even her +husband, knows where she learned the secret. And if this were only the +husk, what then about the plump little kernel inside? + +I can remember the long discussions, and how at last two cold-blooded +physicians, the one in Devonshire and the other in town, had their own +way, and forced a mother from her babelet for two long, if +health-giving, weeks. I can remember the arrival of a Miss Sarah +Harding--admirablest of lay-mothers (God bless them all)--to take up her +awful charge; and the hour or so during which she received instructions +enough to cause a less iron brain to melt upon its pan. But she was a +wonderful woman even then, and _somebody_ had to take care of the child. + +And now, with a trifling difference or two, here's history repeating +itself in the oddest manner possible, father and mother flown down again +to Devonshire, and somebody offering, in their absence, to take care of +Miss Molly--but for rather longer than a paltry two weeks; and please +what do we think of it? + +By the same post, too, comes a brief, apologetic sort of letter from the +candidate himself. He had meant to wait for another year or so before +suggesting himself as even a possible caretaker, only as it happened +last night at Lady Pearson's she was looking, etc. etc.--and you know +how these things will get the better of a chap, etc. etc.--and, well, +there it was, don't you know; and now it is all upon the knees of the +gods. Or of one little goddess, did he mean to say? Because that of +course is where it really is, as you both know very well indeed, in +spite of your pretty letters to us, which have made your mother and me +feel at once very elderly and happy and anxious (in a not too unpleasant +sense) and also--do you mind?--vicariously honoured. + +I doubt if I am looking at the matter quite eye to eye with the W.S.P.U. +when I say this; but you'll have to forgive me, I think, especially as +it's your Daddy's opinion that you ask for, and not theirs. So I'll tell +you just what I felt when I read your letter, and comprehended its +tidings. + +1. Dear me, is she really as old as that? + +2. Then what am I? + +3. _O tempus edax rerum!_ + +4. But it's really rather gratifying. + +5. Because after all there are so many nice girls in the world. + +6. And yet it's _my_ girl that he would like to marry. + +7. _Our_ girl, please. (This from Esther.) + +You see how primitive we become in these little crises of life. + +And I think, if you really want to have my very particular message to +you about this, it is--don't mind being a little primitive yourself. + +On the whole, perhaps, I am not able to prescribe this as often as I +should like; and chiefly because, I suppose, the young couples that come +to me for an opinion on matrimony are not as a rule normal young +couples. They have usually been sent, that is to say, by some wise or +anxious guardian who has foreseen for them some probable disaster. And +often enough I have had to beseech them for their own good and for the +unborn others to let their reason lay aside their passion--not without +tears. + +Now, I believe I know you well enough to be right in saying that +the--shall I call it the strictly eugenic?--side of the question is not +likely to suffer from your neglect. Newnham and the W.S.P.U. will have +taken care of that. Nor is there anything, in the present case, to +trouble you from this point of view. For Arthur Lynn is a sound, +healthy, athletic young man, four years your senior, of good stock and +sufficiently satisfactory means and prospects. Both physically and in +every other way he would be a desirable husband for you. And all this, +as I gather from your letter, you have been very carefully, and very +rightly, considering. Moreover you can be quite sure--you probably _are_ +quite sure--that there is no one whom your mother and I would sooner +have for a son-in-law, as I am writing to tell him this evening. + +No, my dear, I don't think that your danger lies in a too slender +application of reason to the problem before you. It lurks, if anywhere, +in a too great disregard of what is often supposed to be its +antithesis. And I should like you to have written to me, not only that +you were 'naturally pleased, of course, if a little perplexed,' but that +you were _thrilled_. To which, no doubt, you will reply that in the +first place you're not the sort of young woman that indulges in thrills, +and in the second that, had you done so, you would certainly never have +committed the fact to paper. But I should have read it between the +lines. Ah, Molly, don't ever be _too_ afraid of thrills. For at the +worst (the most _bourgeois_) they are at any rate evidences of life, not +only within but without--some all-pervading force, short-circuited for a +moment through your own awakened consciousness to that old, old world on +which you stand; while at the best--well, who shall say from what unseen +Vessel the current has its birth? + + Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, + I would speak my heart out; heaven is my need. + +Was it like that with you, Molly? Because that is how I would have it +for you, my dear. And I think it is worth waiting for, not for a week +only, as you have suggested to Arthur, but for far longer than that. You +will tell me, very likely, and with perfect truth, to remember that +wherever marriages may be said to have their hypothetical origin, in +actual practice they must needs evolve upon earth. And that's a side of +the question, no doubt, that a good many people are inclined to forget. +But you're not one of them. And I should like you to give Heaven a +chance, not only for your own sake, but for your future husband's, +whoever he may ultimately be. Husbands need a little halo, you see, at +any rate to begin with. And that's why I should like you to wait +awhile--say six months or so--even at the risk of causing young Lynn a +little gentle (but quite harmless) unhappiness. And when--and if--he +comes to you then (for you mustn't allow him to promise) let your heart +have no doubt in its yes. + + Your affect. father, + P. H. + + + + +XV + +_To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _May_ 16, 1910. + +MY DEAR AUNT JOSEPHINE, + +It is certainly very wrong of Claire not to have written to thank you +for the mittens. As you say, colds in the head are quite common in the +months of May and June, and I have no doubt that if she wears them, as +you suggest, whenever she goes out to play, they will keep her hands +very warm indeed. I hope that you will hear from her in a day or two. +With regard to the vicar's boy, I think, from what I remember of him, +that you can quite safely leave him in the hands of the vicar's very +wise housekeeper and your own excellent doctor. I doubt too if he would +ever really constantly wear the flannel cholera-belt that you have been +making for him; and in any case, I think a temporary abstinence from +butter-scotch would be an even more effective measure. Your doctor is +quite right about the tomatoes. There is no evidence to show that they +cause cancer. But of course one must always be careful not to eat too +many of them. No, the gravel from which, I am sorry to hear, the new +lay-reader suffers has nothing to do with that which is found in +gardens. And it is quite sufficient, as you say, to account for a little +occasional hastiness in his temper. We are all glad to hear that you +have been so busy and comparatively well, and both Esther and Molly join +me in sending you their best love. + + Your affect. nephew, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +XVI + +_To Lady Wroxton, The Manor House, Stoke Magna, Oxon._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _May_ 23, 1910. + +MY DEAR LADY WROXTON, + +I was very glad, as were we all, to hear from you again after so long a +silence, and gladder still to learn that the pleasant peacefulness of +Stoke is doing its good work on your behalf so surely, if still a little +slowly. For both from your own letter and that of Dr. Rochester I can +see that the spirit of you is climbing back again towards the light, +less lonely than you would have thought possible six months ago, and +into an air as clear even as that which you and your husband breathed +together before he was taken from you. I think that I know how hard must +be the ascent, although in my own perhaps too peaceful life I have had +little enough experience of these swift and terrible bereavements, that +will come to me also, I must suppose, in their due time. And it is only +from the share, sometimes completely professional, sometimes rather +more intimate than this, that I have been called upon to take in such +experiences of others that I seem to have learned a very little about +the tides of grief. + +Looking down upon the dead face, touching the cold hand, lifting up the +leaden arm, one cannot help feeling how utterly dead a dead man looks, +an impression enormously deepened, as a rule, by the circumstances of +the last days. For in these his external, his spiritual activities have +been, of necessity almost, set aside, and perhaps temporarily forgotten +in the paramount appeals of his body itself. Now this organ, now that, +must be attended to, supported, cleansed, stimulated, implored, as it +were, to fulfil its duty towards the struggling economy of the whole. +And as an almost inevitable result their slender responses, their final +refusals, have obsessed both patient and friends to the exclusion of +everything else. The bodily case, so long taken for granted, and now so +fast giving way, has become no longer a subordinate, but the predominant +factor in its owner's entity. So that when the body, _Imperator et Dux_ +of these later hours, at length lays down its sceptre, it's a small +wonder if all else has appeared to die with it. Nor for a time can the +formulæ of the churches seem anything but unreal, however humbly a +schooled faith may try to accept their verity. The dead thing beneath +the sheet seems to weigh down the balance with a fact too stark for +disputation. Of the earth earthy, it is committed to the earth, +resolving presently into its elements--and who shall tell its number any +more? + +Between mere friends, the friend taken and the friend left, this bodily +dissolution has perhaps a less grim significance, or makes, at any rate, +a smaller demand on faith. We loved our friend for his ways, his wit, +his kindliness, his character, and not very particularly for his cast of +feature or mould of physique. But where friendship has allied itself +with passion, where the actual flesh has meant much, where souls have +spoken, not only in sight and speech, but in touch and fast embrace, the +death of the flesh must necessarily seem to involve so infinitely +more--enough almost to justify mediæval thought in demanding, for its +consolation, a belief in the resurrection of the body. And as a result +the well-meant advice of physicians and friends must appear at these +times to be entirely inadequate--I was almost going to say +impertinent--because it must necessarily be only half informed. + +And yet I am not sure that we, standing at a distance (and perhaps even +because of this), have not, after all, the real comfort in our hands. To +you, from whose close touch the alabaster box has slipped, its breaking +has seemed to mean the end of all things. You were so near to it. And +how irreparable was its fracture no eyes but yours could tell. So what +can we others say to you that can be of any value in your sorrow? + +Well, we can at least say this--that its perfume is still upon the air, +its real gift to us and our great and permanent possession. It may be +easier for us--his mere friends--to declare thus that we haven't really +lost him. But given a little time it will become possible even to you, +who were heart of his heart. And if there's no older--and perhaps +colder--truism than this, yet it has a very sound and, I believe, an +actually physical basis. For if we grant, as we needs must, that the +material body is ever changing, cell replacing cell by a continuous +process of wasting and repair, so that the substance containing us +to-day is by no means identical with that which contained us, as it +were, yesterday, why then the cells that called out for the physical +sight and touch of those other cells that surrounded him we loved must +necessarily pass also upon their journey, and with them, to a very great +extent, their anguish of unsatisfied desire. This is why, I think, +nothing becomes more absolutely obliterated than a dead passion that has +been merely bodily; and why also, in most other cases where passion has +been a factor, the diminution of grief must be regarded as a completely +natural process and one that implies no shadow of disloyalty. It merely +means that the sense of loss has been transferred to another and more +spiritual plane, where, lo! it even appears at times to have been +scarcely a loss at all; but instead a withdrawal, so obviously transient +as to be itself an evidence of some certain, if incomprehensible +reunion. With his memories so thronging, with the visible and abiding +evidences of his activities so implicit in the growth of his successors, +how little, after all, has become the value of the vessel that contained +him! Am I right? Isn't it going with you somehow in this fashion? + +But, dear me, if your power of sleep were not returning to you so +rapidly, you would be imagining this some subtle form of prescription by +epistle. + +And that was one of the best bits of news in your letter, besides being +the chief reason why you mustn't, I think, come back to town just yet, +even at the risk of disappointing Hilary and Norah. For Sleep's a fickle +goddess when she once goes wandering, and the way to woo her home is not +to woo her at all. Seek her not, and she will come stealing back to you +round the corner to know the reason why. And there's no place like the +country and some quiet garden therein in which to declare your war of +independence. + +For, as I told you before, sleeplessness _per se_ has never killed +anybody yet; and where nothing but the rising and setting of stars, and +the opening and closing of flowers need call for your attention, you can +very comfortably afford to snap your fingers at it in defiance. But in +town it would be different. Your days would become, in spite of +yourself, so automatically exacting that you would of necessity demand +respite from your nights--the very demand that, just at present, you +mustn't be obliged to make. At Stoke, on the other hand, it doesn't +matter (and the more you insist on this the better), it doesn't matter a +bit where, when, or how much, you sleep. The very air of the place is a +far too bewitching, and incidentally a quite adequate, substitute; +while for dreams you have the whole cycle of field and garden husbandry +spread out before your eyes, as little changing as the downs themselves, +and like them pretty nearly "half as old as time." So watch it for a +year, day in and day out, and leave the turmoils and telephones of +London to such unfortunate and envious friends as P. H., of medicinal +memory. + +As regards the girl you sent up to me from the village last Friday, I +have taken her into one of my wards at the Hospital, where I fancy a +little careful dieting will soon set her right again. At the same time I +may take the opportunity of examining the defaulting organ by means of a +very ingenious instrument just devised by two of my junior colleagues. +It's a toy--it's going to be much more than that--that would have +delighted your husband's heart, and by its means, down a bent tube, +inserted through her mouth, fitted with a tiny electric lamp and +reflectors at the angles, I shall be able not only to peep into her +stomach, but to survey it as thoroughly and particularly as I am now +able to inspect her tongue. Even so do the youngsters show us the way! + +Yes, you are quite right. Anæmia, dyspepsia, gastric ulcer seem to be +the special afflictions of the under-housemaid. And it's the damnable +habit of providing her with "kitchen" tea, and "kitchen" butter, and +"kitchen" food of all sorts that is largely responsible for this, not +only directly, but indirectly, in that it tempts her to indulge in +various kinds of unhealthy in-between meals. Surely the servants who +work for us, and feed us, and keep us clean, should be at least as well +and as carefully fed as ourselves, even if they wouldn't be quite happy, +perhaps, to sit at our own tables. And the careless (and I'm afraid +doubtful) ladies who think otherwise should be made to undergo a spell +of domestic dieting in their own establishments. + +Esther and Molly, who are at home, join me in sending you their very +best love and hopes for a near-at-hand complete recovery; and, if you +can really put up with them, nothing will make Tom and Claire happier +than to spend a week or two of their summer holidays at Stoke. + + Your sincere friend, + PETER HARDING. + +P.S.--You must try to forgive me for this rambling and rather +inconsequent letter, but I have been both inflicting and enduring, for +the last ten days, a superfluity of full-dress lectures. So I have been +writing to you, as a result, in my mental shirtsleeves. + + + + +XVII + +_To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset._ + + + HOTEL MODERNE, LOURDES, + _June_ 7, 1910. + +MY DEAR SALLY, + +I have just encountered one of those strange half-accidents that crop up +like rocks in the quiet stream of one's everyday life just where a rock +is the least likely to be. You turn the bend from Tuesday into +Wednesday, and hey presto, before you know what's happened, your little +canoe has been shot out of the main current into some unsuspected +channel, whence it emerges presently as from a waking dream. + +Last week as I went into the club between an afternoon at the hospital +and two evening visits in Kensington, I met Bettany, of whom you may +perhaps have heard me speak. A quite successful Government official, he +contrives also to edit one of the leading Roman Catholic newspapers and +incidentally to organise with conspicuous ability periodical pilgrimages +to various Continental shrines. He is a man who has always interested +me, partly because he has seemed to me to possess in a very marked +degree one of the strongest and most challenging characteristics of his +Church--the habit, even in matters of religion, of completely +dissociating the man from his function. A ladder for the faith of other +people need not necessarily have any faith of its own--and be an +extremely serviceable ladder for all that. In his particular case, a +belief in the miraculous powers of those relics and waters to which he +enables the faithful so comfortably to travel, is not, I think, _de +fide_--demanded by his Church. In any case he does not possess it, but +regards the whole phenomenon through his gold-rimmed spectacles with an +entirely amiable, and of course very discreet, scepticism. At the same +time his talent for organisation and his unique knowledge of Continental +hotels and railways are entirely at the disposal of his more credulous +brethren. And his name must be known in this connection to many +thousands of Catholics on both sides of the Channel. + +On this particular evening he told me that he was extremely busy making +the final arrangements for what promised to be the largest English +pilgrimage that has yet travelled to Lourdes. And then, remembering +suddenly, I suppose, that I was a doctor of medicine, he sat bolt +upright and said, "By George, you're the very man that can help me." For +it seemed that there were so many invalids going out with the party--at +least forty, he told me--some of whom were in a very bad way, that it +had appeared desirable to take a medical man in case of emergencies upon +the long journey. And did I know of anyone who would care to go? He had +already made some inquiries, he said, among Catholic medical friends, +but hadn't as yet found anyone who had been able to undertake the +duties. He was not in a position to offer anything more than travelling +expenses; and he was beginning, as a consequence, to feel rather +doubtful about finding a man in time. It was not essential, he +considered, that the accompanying physician should be himself a +Catholic, provided that he was reasonably sympathetic; and then, reading +my thoughts, I suppose, he asked me if I should be sufficiently +interested to make the little trip myself. + +Well at first, of course, this seemed quite out of the question; but on +looking through my engagements I began to think that with a certain +amount of arrangement it might become possible after all. We were to +leave Charing Cross at ten o'clock on Friday morning, and would be home +by the following Thursday night. And it was to be quite understood that +I was coming not as an official, but only as a visitor who would be +willing, if necessary, to render aid _en route_--all of which goes to +account for the address upon my notepaper, and the fact that I seem at +this moment to be very much more than eight hundred miles from Harley +Street. + +Joining the train at Charing Cross, it was quite obvious to me that a +very considerable proportion of the party was Irish--the sing-song +western accent was everywhere--and that a comparatively large number of +priests would be travelling with us. Most of these I have since +discovered to be genial, even hilarious, souls, drawn, as it appears, +from every stratum of society, and differing, as a consequence, very +greatly both in real education and superficial polish. + +It was not until we got on board at Folkestone that I had a first +opportunity of becoming acquainted with the sick people of the assembly; +and by this time I was already conscious of being surrounded by some +curious, indefinable atmosphere, that was walling us away from what to +me, with my half-Protestant, half-scientific upbringing, represented +the everyday world. I doubt if many of my fellow-pilgrims felt this. But +I am certain that the other passengers on the boat did. And it was both +odd and a trifle amusing to observe the blank expressions upon numerous +well-fed and monocled countenances on their way to a normal Paris. Yet +from my own point of view I had to admit that there was a good deal of +excuse for them. For we might all, as it seemed to me, very easily have +stepped out of the Middle Ages. + +Of the more obvious invalids there were none, as far as I could see, who +stood the smallest chance of benefiting, in a material sense, from their +visit to Lourdes. There were two blind girls, both cases of congenital +organic disease--and who both chanced, by the way, to be among the very +few sufferers from sea-sickness. There was a little boy from a Sussex +village, a case of infantile paralysis, brought by his mother in the +fervent hope, as she told me, that Our Lady would use him as a means to +convert an extremely Nonconformist community. There was an older girl, +similarly affected; and an elderly man, travelling quite alone, in +almost the last stages of cancer of the throat. With this poor fellow, +who was almost too weak to stand unaided, I had a long and very +pathetic conversation. He knew himself to be past all human aid, and was +journeying from his home on the east coast to the shrine upon the Gave +as to his last anchorage upon life. And I doubt, even so, if he had any +real belief in its efficacy for himself. But his journey, a really +enormous effort for a man in his condition, would at any rate show that +he had had courage enough to make the trial. His is the only case that +has given me cause for any immediate anxiety, and were it not for his +extraordinary pluck and will-power I should be more than doubtful about +getting him home alive. + +Of the other invalids, none were sufficiently apparent to disclose +themselves to me in a cursory tour round the ship with Bettany; and +after making the poor cancer patient as cosy as possible in the special +train that was waiting for us at Boulogne, I repaired to the very +comfortable carriage reserved for us, and shared an excellent lunch with +Bettany, his lady secretary, and another member of the committee. The +journey to Paris was uneventful, and after manoeuvring round its +southern suburbs, we found ourselves about seven o'clock in the Gare +d'Orléans, where a portion of the refreshment-room had been reserved for +our dinner. During this meal I was introduced by Bettany to the Bishop +who is leading the pilgrimage--one of those rare men of whose essential +saintliness one becomes instantly aware, yet a man, too, of abundant +strength, and one, as I have since found out, capable of ensuring, with +the profoundest personal humility, the utmost tribute of respect to the +high office that he represents. I suppose every Church contains such +men. It is at any rate pleasant to think so. But not all are wise enough +to make them bishops--and missionary bishops at that. + +The same train left Paris with us about nine o'clock on the long journey +to Lourdes; and after some desultory conversation we made ourselves +comfortable for the night. Fortunately, since our train was not of the +corridor type, the sick persons seemed to settle down pretty easily, and +the chief impressions that remain to me of the journey are a peep into a +cool and cloudless sunrise over some vineyards between Poitiers and +Angoulême and a very satisfactory _café complet_ at Bordeaux. Two or +three times during the morning, both before and after reaching this +place, we were jeered at by onlookers at various wayside stations, who +had read the inscription _Pèlerinage_ upon our carriage; and one or two +of these had even gone so far as to throw stones. They were reminders, +I suppose, that here in Lourdes seem almost incredible, of the enormous +extent to which the anti-clerical movement has permeated elsewhere in +France. The latter part of our journey, climbing slowly into the +Pyrenees, was enlivened for us by the presence of the Bishop, who had +given up his own carriage to some indignant Irish pilgrims that had been +so unfortunate as to have spent a sleepless night. Haymaking was already +in full swing in these steaming valleys, with men and boys and +bare-legged, brown-faced women all backs down over what seems to be a +very plentiful crop. + + * * * * * + +I have just here been tapped on the shoulder by an immaculately +apparelled American Catholic, who has just joined the pilgrimage from +Florence. He had learned, he told me, that I was a physician willing to +oblige. He suffered a little from gout, he said, and then proceeded to +pose me with the rather difficult question as to how often he ought to +take the waters. + +I explained to him that, as far as I knew, these have none but an +ethical value--a reply that obviously puzzled him. + +"You mean," he inquired at last, "that it's ENtirely a matter of faith?" + +"Precisely," I answered, and his brow cleared a little. + +"Do you think I might have a Seidlitz powder to go on with?" he asked. + + * * * * * + +We arrived at Lourdes at about four o'clock on Saturday afternoon, after +just thirty hours' travelling, and landed into a seething tumult of +departing pilgrims, bullock-wagons, carriages, and electric trams. +Losing sight of Bettany, I found myself looking vaguely round for some +kind of conveyance, in company with the Bishop and his chaplain; and +between us we managed to secure also a seat for our poor +fellow-traveller from Essex, for whom we afterwards discovered a +moderately quiet bedroom in our hotel. + +After tea, the Bishop asked me to accompany him in a stroll round the +town and shrine, during which I learned a little about Lourdes, and a +good deal about my companion. Half-way between the plains and the higher +ranges of the Pyrenees, Lourdes itself lies in a valley, bisected by the +Gave, a tumbling mountain stream that supplies the holy water to the +grotto and the _piscines_, or invalid baths. The town itself, with its +narrow, winding streets, strung, as it were, between the +fourteenth-century château on the one side and the nineteenth-century +church that surmounts the shrine, on the other, is quite the most +remarkable combination of mediævalism and modernity that I have seen; +while its crowded, ever-changing population must be, I suppose, the +saddest, oddest, and perhaps the most unique in both the hemispheres. As +we walked down towards the shrine, we met returning most of those who +had gathered round the great square for the daily blessing of the sick; +and passing through them we must have heard, I should think, almost +every dialect of Europe, Flemish perhaps predominant, since this was the +last day of a great Belgian pilgrimage, but German, Italian, English, +Spanish, and of course French, at nearly every step. + +Every now and again, too, some ardent man or woman, seeing the big +amethyst ring on my friend's finger, would kneel down to kiss it and +receive his blessing, caring nothing for his difference of language and +nationality, and everything for his holy office in their common church. +Once or twice he smiled gently when they had gone their fervent way, +clasping their votive candles or little bottles of sacred mountain +water, and once I ventured to press him a trifle as to his personal +faith in the Lourdes miracles. But he was a statesman, as I discovered, +no less than a saint, and would confess to no more than a belief that +these dear people obtained perhaps a score of spiritual to each merely +temporal favour. And surely these were after all the better? + +The actual grotto, where fifty-two years ago the little Bernadette saw +her visions of the Blessed Mary, lies now about a hundred yards from the +river's edge, along which a palisaded embankment has been built, that is +apt however, after sudden storms, to be pretty often under water. It is +really a cave set in a large rock around which, one above the other, +have since been built three churches, the topmost, with its tall and +slender spire, being perhaps the most prominent landmark for a good many +miles around. With its walls polished by the elbows and fingers of +countless thousands of pilgrims, this little cavern contains an altar +before which, in the open air, are ranged several rows of seats for +worshippers at the shrine, and where, as I afterwards learned from a +disappointed Irish priest, it is considered a very special privilege to +say Mass. + +Next to the grotto are the baths, where the sick are immersed, and from +which bottles of the holy water can be carried away to all parts of the +world; and to the left and above this is the great church, the lowest +and largest of the three that now surmount the rock. The entrance to +this church stands upon a broad terrace above the immense open +amphitheatre, about which, in a circle some half a mile in +circumference, gather the sick people and their helpers and relations +for the afternoon passing of the Host. It is at this ceremony that the +majority of the miracles take place, of which, I suppose, the crutches, +splints, spinal jackets, and other surgical appliances that hang rusting +among the wild geraniums over the entrance to the grotto are to be taken +as partial evidences. + +There were still some poor sufferers waiting outside the _piscines_, and +a few others praying before the grotto; and pausing for a moment to +watch them and the various passers-by, one could not help being very +forcibly struck with the all-pervading atmosphere of pity. Sights that +elsewhere would have been veiled from the daylight are here frankly +exposed, not to a kind of shuddering, if sympathetic horror, but as +pitiful, broken flowers to be gathered up, and laid with prayers upon +the altar of mercy. We concluded our little tour with a visit to the +Bureau des Contestations, the offices where the doctors attached to the +grotto--one of them an Englishman--receive and classify the histories of +the cures, examine the alleged _miraculés_, deprecating the excited +allegations of some, postponing their verdicts upon others, and +recording what seem to them, among a host of claims, to be genuine cases +of Divine interposition. Both the doctors present when we arrived, and +to whom Bettany, who had joined us, now introduced me, were extremely +courteous and only too anxious to lay before me all the material at +their command. Both, as I could see at once, were men accustomed to deal +with human nature of the type and under the conditions that Lourdes +presents, and it was therefore with very great diffidence that I found +myself even mentally criticising their results. Nevertheless it is true, +I think, that nothing approaching to ordinary, exact scientific +observation, as the modern medical world understands it, is carried out +at Lourdes; I doubt indeed if it would be possible; and I saw no +instance, either then or later, of a Lourdes cure that could not be +explained upon the observed and established lines of mental suggestion, +or, apart from this, could bear a thorough cross-examination. Needless +to say, the two doctors, both ardent and devout Roman Catholics, +entirely disagreed with me, and assured me that after twenty years at +the shrine they were only the more convinced of Our Lady's blesséd and +material favours. And perhaps, after all, it is merely a question of +terminology. + +But it is not until one has actually seen the procession of the Host at +the afternoon service in the amphitheatre that one has penetrated, as it +were, into the very heart of Lourdes. And so it was not, perhaps, until +three o'clock on the next afternoon that I found myself laid under the +full power of the strange, half-intoxicating, half-repellent spell of +this almost passionately fervent and yet at the same time strangely +commercial factory of miracles. All the morning, ever since the very +early hours, special trains had been rolling into the station, carrying, +as we learned at breakfast, a pilgrimage, ten thousand strong, from the +towns and villages of Toulouse. At every turn we met them, groups of +swarthy, and for the most part stunted, men and women, with sombre, +toil-worn faces, yet lit, in the majority of cases, with a deep-burning +and almost apostolic faith. Gathered about their parish priests, buying +rosaries and trinkets, little images of Bernadette Soubirous (sold by +her numerous relatives, most of whom have already, in one way and +another, made considerable fortunes out of her vision), they filled the +narrow streets to overflowing, ardent, undoubting, agog for the least +whisper of some strange and fortunate miracle. And needless to say such +whispers were plentiful enough. Just before noon, for instance, an +apple-faced sister, collecting money from the more prosperous visitors +at such hotels as ours for the free hostelries that are open elsewhere +to the poor, told us with beaming smiles of a poor girl, with a large +ulcer upon her arm that had resisted all treatment for years. Last night +she had dipped it into the waters, and lo, this morning the disease had +utterly vanished, and her skin was as the skin of a little child! There +is a young priest here, a fine, upstanding fellow, who is a qualified +doctor, and has been a house-surgeon at one of our London hospitals. He +is trying hard, I can see, to square his scientific prejudices, as he +would call them, with his religious desire to believe in these miracles. +And at this he turned to me with something of triumph. + +"If we could only find her out now," he said, "how would you account for +that?" + +But on closer inquiry we discovered, alas, that the sister had not +herself seen the ulcer before the cure was wrought; and later on in the +day the doctors at the bureau assured me that no reports of such an +incident had reached them. And we never succeeded in finding the girl, +although the rumour of her cure had already spread like wildfire, and +will soon, no doubt, be reported as a definite miracle in cottages a +thousand miles from here. + +In such an atmosphere then, and under a cloudless, burning sky, we +gathered in the afternoon, some fourteen thousand strong, in a vast +circle before the steps of the grotto church. Quite early the +_brancardiers_, a self-appointed order of workers, who assist in +transporting the sick, had been busy bringing their charges to the great +square; so that the innermost row of the waiting host was already +entirely composed of sufferers praying to be healed. Marching up and +down before them, clad in their robes of office, were the various +priests who had come with them, telling their beads, and invoking the +multitudes to prayer. As doctor to our own little party, Bettany enabled +me to step within the ring, and walking with him, before the service, I +made a slow round of the circle, beholding such a clinic as could be +seen, I suppose, nowhere else in the world--the clinic of Our Lady of +Lourdes, and one that seemed to me to contain, on this particular +afternoon, pretty nearly every malady under the sun. + +"Seigneur, Seigneur, ayez pitié de moi." "Mein Herr und mein Gott." +"Lord save us, or we perish." "Hail, Mary, blessed among women." +"Seigneur, Seigneur, ayez pitié de moi." In every tongue, as we walked +round, the age-old cries for mercy rang in our ears, from a faith that +it was impossible to doubt, and from a depth of human need that here, at +any rate, nothing short of the Divine might satisfy. + +Presently, just as we had made our way back to our own little party, of +whom many, hitherto unsuspected, had now, by kneeling in the front row, +tacitly declared themselves to be in need of physical healing, a new and +solemn sound began to break upon our ears--the sonorous chanting of +men's voices on the way up from the grotto in a long and slow +procession. "Ave, Ave, Ave Maria," marching four abreast they now came +into sight, bearing lighted candles in their hands, and in an apparently +endless succession, to turn presently into the great empty space about +which the rest of us were gathered. Up the centre of this they now +marched, all the able-bodied men of the Toulouse pilgrimage, accompanied +by many of their priests, singing the Lourdes hymn, and massing +themselves at last upon the broad terrace before the grotto church. Some +twenty minutes it must have taken for them thus to file past us; and +finally, under a canopy borne by four stalwart attendants, came the +officiating priest, clad in his heavy and gorgeous robes, and bearing +before him the golden, flame-shaped monstrance in whose centre rested, +as all this expectant gathering believed, the actual and visible body of +the Christ Himself. As they passed us I could see that the arduous task, +under this thrilling June sun, of thus holding up his Saviour to each of +these thousand sufferers had fallen to our own Bishop--the highest +dignitary of the Church, I suppose, who happens just now to be in +Lourdes. As he moved slowly up the centre of the hot amphitheatre the +cries of the poor _malades_ and their friends redoubled themselves in +ardour. "Seigneur, Seigneur, ayez pitié de moi." The tides of adoration +rose and fell and rose again until, as step by step he passed along the +circle, they climbed up to a crest of almost agonising entreaty. "Lord, +save us. Lord, save us, or we perish." To left and right we could hear +the broken voices sobbing their prayers to God, and even among our more +stolid English sufferers could see the tears running down the uplifted +worshipping faces. Watching the Bishop, as at last, after perhaps half +an hour, his laboured progress brought him opposite to ourselves, I +could not help feeling how great must be the burden now bearing upon his +shoulders, since apart from the actual physical strain, the continual +stooping, in his thick robes and with his heavy monstrance, over patient +after patient in this thunderous heat, the emotional tax must have been +enormous. For upon him and That which he bore there impinged now the +whole sum of these heart-wrung supplications. Upon his vicarious +shoulders he must carry, as it were, the multitudinous petitions of all +these kneeling thousands. And yet it was just this, as afterwards, in +the cool of the hotel, he assured me, that was his chief support. +Upborne by all this simple and unshakable belief, it was only then that +he was beginning to feel the bodily weariness that the long procession +had entailed upon him. So step by step he passed upon his way, until, +more than an hour later, the long round had been at last completed. And +it was then, in a momentary silence that followed the conclusion of his +passage, that from the far end of the circle a little cry arose, and a +woman, bedridden, as we afterwards learned, for more than fourteen +years, rose up from her chair, and tottered out into the space before +her. Instantly the cry was everywhere abroad, "A miracle, a miracle"; +and like a leaf on the wind of ten thousand shoulders, she was being +borne in an ecstasy of triumph towards the Bureau des Constatations. + +It was here, an hour later, that I saw her, a gentle-faced, devout +little peasant woman, about whose past history the evidence seemed +fairly conclusive. Smiling at us, she took a few steps across the room +among the uplifted hands and eager exclamations of the assembled +priests. But, alas, there would appear to be no physical reason why she +should not have walked thus at any time during her invalid years, if +only some stimulus, sufficiently effective, had been applied to her +before. + +Making my way slowly back to the hotel for tea, I was touched on the arm +by a young French priest to whom I had spoken earlier in the day. He had +been lamenting the great wave of godlessness that has seemed for the +moment to submerge the whole of France. But now his eyes were shining. +"Is it not wonderful," he cried, "to see all this so great faith?" He +moved his hands expressively. "Ah, _la belle_ France, the heart of her +people is still hungry for its God--and some day--some day it will lift +Him up again for all the world to see." And in the evening I saw him +once again at what was perhaps, after all, the great climax of the +Lourdes day. + +Sipping my coffee with Bettany at a small boulevard near the hotel, we +had already seen hundreds of little points of flame gathering out of the +growing darkness towards the grotto and its churches. And this evening +procession of candle-bearing pilgrims marks perhaps the last word--if I +may quite reverently put it so--in the stage-management of Lourdes. For +at a given signal not only do a thousand slender lamps pencil out in +gold and red and blue the uplifted tapering spire and every arch and +pinnacle of the church upon the rock; but a couple of miles away, and +three thousand feet high on the crest of the Pic du Ger, a great cross, +illuminated by a battery from the town, springs suddenly out into the +sky. The outline of the hill itself, and behind it the snow-clad, +retreating summits of the higher Pyrenees have long since been blotted +away in the night; so that now this gleaming cross shines out among the +stars, among which it might well be some new and glorious constellation. +To many, indeed, among the more ignorant of the processionists it must +in itself savour strongly of the miraculous; and in any case, swung +there in the southern sky, it lends a note, a little bizarre perhaps, +and yet, in its way, extraordinarily impressive, to the general vision +of Lourdes by night. + +Presently the long procession has formed itself, and now begins to move +from the grotto out towards the big statue of the Virgin at the opposite +end of the square (itself lit up with coloured fairy lamps) and thence, +a river of light in the soft June darkness, through the rocky defile, +where are represented the seven stations of the Cross. And as it passes +onwards the hymn once more swells up to us in a hundred keys and voices, +altos and baritones and trebles, "Ave, Ave, Ave Maria," robbed, by the +very depths of its sincerity, of any semblance of discord. For fully an +hour we watched it--the solemn passing of these earnest, candle-lit +faces; and then, moving down the broad terrace above the square, we met +again the leaders of the procession as they drew up below the steps. +Presently they had all gathered there, thousands strong; whereupon, led +by a priest from the open door of the church, they recited in one voice +the great credo of their faith. Catholic or not, materialist, or +veriest atheist, it would have been impossible, I think, to listen +unmoved to the deep-chested volume of sound that now rose up before +us--superstitious if you will, but with a superstition that had laid its +fibres into humanity's deepest being. And perhaps, after all, it was +this strong, vibrating declaration of belief, purged, if not completely, +yet to a very great extent, of such hysterical elements as had been +obvious in the afternoon, that swept us up to the topmost pinnacle of +the day's experiences. In the eyes of my young priest, at any rate, I +could read that this was so. For him, as I could see, this was at once +the bugle-note of the undefeatable hosts of God, and the herald of the +great kingdom that was to come. It was the day's last word to him; and +it rang gloriously with victory. + +But for us there was another. For returning presently in a darkness that +seemed doubly deep after the sudden extinguishing of all these lamps and +candles, we came by accident upon a lover and his sweetheart. His arm +was about her waist, and as we passed he was kissing her under the +shadow of a doorway--a common enough spectacle, yet one that came upon +us now with a shock that was almost startling. It served, at any rate, +to demonstrate how far, in twenty-four hours, we had drifted from the +normal--and to remind me, with an odd and almost unbelievable emphasis, +that in less than three days' time I shall be walking through Kensington +Gardens. + + Yr. affect. brother, + PETER. + + + + +XVIII + +_To Robert Lynn, M.R.C.S., Applebrook, Devon._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _June_ 25, 1910. + +MY DEAR BOB, + +I have had a talk with Arthur, as you suggested, about his new +appointment, and I think, on the whole, that he would be well advised to +take it. As he said to me, poor boy, he has had just lately to readjust +his future a bit, and the practice that he had thought of buying has +ceased to have much attraction for him. And I needn't tell you again how +very sorry I am that Molly, and perhaps to a lesser degree both Esther +and myself, have been responsible for this. For you know quite well that +there is nobody whom we would more gladly have welcomed as an extra son; +and until quite lately we both fully believed--although we had never of +course actually ascertained this--that Molly returned his feelings. +Alas, however, for the best-laid plans--for since we discussed the +matter at Applebrook, I have become almost certain that although her +answer would be "yes" on every other ground but this, on this +particular one she will never, I'm afraid, be able to meet him with open +arms. The event may contradict me, but I think not. The divine spark has +not yet touched her heart. And I know you are with me in believing that +she would be wrong, with all her youth in front of her, not to wait for +it a little longer. And so Arthur, being robbed (but only for a time, I +hope) of what he tells me sorrowfully was his _raison d'être_, has +decided to postpone his début as a general practitioner--yet not +without, unless I am very greatly mistaken, a certain secret atom of +relief. For his real inclinations, I am sure, still centre in the +laboratory and the microscope; and it was chiefly for financial reasons +that he had abandoned any ideas of further dallying with them. He wanted +to "do Molly," as he confided to me, "as well as he could"; and that +would have been impossible, he was afraid, as a bacteriologist or +pathologist. And there, from a strictly monetary standpoint, he was +perhaps in the right. For though, as a profession (and through us, the +great public), we must needs lean each year more heavily upon these +skilled workers at our right hand, yet at present we are all very +reluctant to give them their full dues either in professional _éclat_ +or pounds, shillings, and pence. All the same, their day is coming, if +perhaps a little slowly; so that maybe, after all, Miss Molly's +unintentional cruelty may prove to be an angel in mufti. And now that he +is in no immediate need of earning more money than can comfortably +support himself, I think that this new appointment, as assistant in the +inoculation department, is just the job for him. It will mean of course +two years of life; but he has already been a house-surgeon and a +house-physician, and in any case a two years' training in the exactest +of all scientific technique will not be a waste of time whatever his +ultimate occupation is destined to be. + +Moreover (though it is seldom wise to prophesy) I am becoming pretty +thoroughly convinced that the future of medicine lies more wholly in the +hands of the vaccino-therapists than any of us are as yet quite able to +realise. For when one comes to think of it, although surgery, during the +last fifty years, has been advancing by leaps and bounds, medicine has +been standing very still indeed. Where it has moved at all it has been +chiefly on the lines of improving its methods of diagnosis, while as +regards treatment it has remained very nearly as empirical as it was a +century ago. Perhaps this is rather a hard saying, but in the main I am +quite sure that it is a true one. And I think its restoration to lively +and effective growth will be more dependent upon the methods, so sound +in their conception and so brilliant in their performance, of Sir +Almroth Wright and his fellow-workers, at home and abroad, than upon any +other factor now making for medical progress. As a school they are no +doubt destined to confront a good many reverses. And they will presently +be forced, I suspect, to re-state a certain number of their present +beliefs. But their guiding principle is so essentially sane, so really +scientific, in the true sense of an abused adjective, that I cannot +think your boy will go far wrong in perfecting himself in their methods, +and even perhaps deciding later to specialise altogether in this +particular branch of medicine. + +To determine by culture the precise organism that is causing a patient's +malady (and how few are the diseases left to us that may be definitely +classed as non-microbic); to learn by an examination of his blood-cells +the exact condition of his resisting powers; and to increase these by +carefully graduated doses of his own or similar bacteria until his newly +stimulated anti-bodies have been so increased and fortified as to be +able to win their own battle--it is a general method of treatment that +seems to me to hold more palpably the key to future victory than any +other. There's an infinity yet to be learned about it, of course. The +mysteries of the anti-body have been scarcely fringed. And the technique +is still so difficult that none but a highly trained man can be trusted +with it. But if anybody is to win an ultimate triumph over incidental +disease it is that trained man who is going to do it. And the sooner we +consulting physicians learn rather to count him as a brother than a mere +laboratory assistant, the better will it be for the march of light and +healing. Amen. This little peroration was put into my head by a passage +in an address that I heard delivered the other day at an evening lecture +to post-graduates. + +"Gentlemen," said the lecturer--a well-known provincial consultant, "I +should like the day to dawn when I could be met at the door of my +hospital by a trained chemist, a trained bacteriologist, a trained +pathologist, so that when I came to some complicated case I could say, +'Chemist, a part of this problem is yours, take it and work it out. +Bacteriologist, perform your share in elucidating this difficulty. +Pathologist, advance, and do likewise.'" + +There was a little applause; and after all, he had got, I suppose, some +glimmering of what the new medicine is to be. Only he, the lecturer, was +still, do you see, to be the _deus ex machina_. He was a genial old +gentleman and quite without conceit, and was merely taking, as we all +do, I'm afraid, the predominant position of the consulting physician as +fixed for eternity. Whereas instead it is quite healthily rocking, I +fancy, on waters that are ceasing to be stagnant. + + Yours ever, + P. H. + + + + +XIX + +_To Hugh Pontrex, Hotel Montana, Biarritz._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _July_ 16, 1910. + +MY DEAR HUGH, + +So the pendulum of our frailty swings. The warm airs of July have +surrounded you with well-being in your Atlantic quarters, and a +confounded carbuncle under my left shoulder has been painting my world +quite black for at least four days, and grey for the inside of a week. +It's the penalty, I suppose, of being rarely laid aside by sickness, +that when some trivial misfortune does make its appearance, one +exaggerates its proportion in the general scheme of things to a quite +unmerited degree--and especially, I think, if one happens to be a +doctor. "Physician, heal thyself," the mockers say. But he should never +attempt to. He knows too much about the various possibilities, the +remoter significances of each one of his little troubles, to be a +sufficiently clear-minded judge. And he is far better advised when he +resigns his body _in toto_ to the care of some outside mind, and +confines his own mental powers to the fortification of his private +philosophy. + +Pain, sleeplessness, and that peculiar sense of being disowned by one's +own body that a high temperature always seems to induce--I suppose if +all the comfortable words that have been uttered in their explanation +were to be gathered up into a book the whole world would not be great +enough to contain it. We were told not so desperately long ago that they +represented the direct tenancy of the evil one or some of his +dependents. Then a more enlightened but still stern theology informed us +that they represented the well-deserved judgments of God; until a later +and more generous interpretation has inclined rather to believe in them +as evidences, a little puzzlingly disguised, of a chastening yet still +indubitable Love. + +But, alas, it is so easy, even in the full comfort of bodily health, to +perceive the bottomless gaps in these and all other arguments about the +great problem of pain, that in the actual enduring of it there seems, +after all, very little to be done but to lie low, and bear it humbly--as +many a better fellow and weaker woman have borne worse things before us +since the foreconsciousness of death became the price of the first +man's soul. And yet I believe quite orthodoxly that these unattractive +episodes in one's life--even carbuncles--do really contain some sort of +a message to one's intelligence, apart from the patent one that +somewhere or other one has blundered against a natural law, and paid the +necessary penalty. + +For there comes a period in most illnesses, I think, sometimes during a +temporary respite, more often perhaps at the first dawn of +convalescence, when one becomes extraordinarily conscious, yet without +discomfort, of the almost trivial delicacy of one's surrounding tissue. +It is generally, I suppose, a moment of exhaustion, both mental and +physical, either upon the bugle of a victory or a truce. But it is a +moment when one's spiritual æsthesis, as it were, is peculiarly at +liberty. Very soon, in a minute or two even, Nature will begin her work +of restoration--none more willing than she, given a very little patience +and half a straw to make her bricks with. But now she is standing by for +a moment, trowel in hand, and the outer wind is breathing through the +gap. And it's then, I think, if you'll only listen carefully enough, +that you can sometimes hear it whispering. + +"Presently," you can hear it say, "this little house of yours will be +mended, and the more easily maybe, because its walls are so thin. But +don't--don't forget too quickly that it is but a house after all." + +Yet I suppose we do forget it, most of us, and probably quite healthily, +when once the dwelling-place is bricked up again, and the new paint is +on, and it stands foursquare to the winds that may not enter now. And +yet again, if the message has once been heard, or twice, or thrice, as +circumstances have it, I don't believe that it is ever entirely lost. +And there, perhaps, may even lie the key to all the mystery; so that +when the last storm blows, and Nature must shake her head, and let the +frail house fall, its tenant may not go out altogether unprepared. + +I felt all this very strongly some ten days ago, having made or reviewed +my will about twenty-seven times, resigned myself to the administration +of gas and the skilful weapons of old Sir Jeremy across the way, and +awakened next morning to a normal temperature and a comparatively +comfortable back. But a week's high feeding, and three days with Esther +at Eastbourne, in the occasional brisk and simple company of Claire and +her pals, have been steadily blunting my higher susceptibilities. So +that's why I've been setting them on record with so much circumstantial +detail--a great deal less for your satisfaction than my own. + +We had resolved to take Miss Claire by surprise, and, calling at the +school, found, as a consequence, that she was out. She had probably gone +Pevensey way, thought the maid, with some of the older young ladies and +one of the governesses. And it was out Pevensey way that we presently +recognised upon the beach, among a heterogeneous collection of empty +shoes and stockings, some big-brimmed straw hats with the school ribbon +upon them. Their owners were for the most part thigh-deep in the English +Channel with their skirts tucked conveniently round their plump waists. +And they were being watched from the shore by a very pleasant young +lady, who looked rather wistfully as if she would like to be out there +too. Yes, she told us, Claire was in the water with the others, probably +among the deeper ones who were getting their knickers wet. Surveying the +melée with an expression of polite concern, she was rather afraid that +it would be a little difficult to make Claire understand who we were. +But if we wouldn't mind waiting for a minute or two they would all be +coming in to dry their legs before going back to prep. + +Presently some floating atom of wreckage took them unanimously eastward, +splashing through the shallows, until the governess, waving a white +handkerchief, brought them gingerly ashore across a little bank of +rather slippery-looking rock. There was a general shaking out and +rearranging of tousled manes, yellow and chestnut and black, and a +modest dropping of skirts to the demurer level of shining wet knees. + +The little party drifted slowly towards us, their brown feet lingering +wholesomely across the sands. + +"You'll know Claire," said the governess, "by the bandage round her +instep. I oughtn't really to have let her paddle." + +Esther's eyes became a little anxious. + +"But what has been the matter?" she asked. + +The governess smiled. + +"Oh, nothing very serious," she said. "And I think you must ask Claire +herself. Tales out of school, you know." + +And then the least tidy, perhaps, of the damsels detached herself +suddenly from her comrades, and came down upon us at top speed, +regardless of pebbles. + +"Have you got me off prep?" she asked earnestly, after she had kissed us +and found her shoes and stockings. And having explained to her that we +were going to take her out to tea for a pre-birthday treat--she was +going to be sixteen next week--we inquired about the bandage. It was the +result, we discovered, of an illegal (and unconfirmed) raid upon a +neighbouring dormitory, during which, by a kind of Homeric retribution, +a stray tin-tack had wounded her unprotected foot. + +"But it's about well now, I should think," she said, undoing the +bandage, and turning up a salmon-pink sole for our inspection. And we +were obliged to confess that it was. + +She rolled up the bandage into a little ball, and threw it down the +beach. + +"I wish we could _always_ go barefoot," she sighed. And for the moment I +felt inclined to agree with her. For the happy foot, as T. E. Brown has +said, swings rather from the heart than from the hip. And there are few +prettier things in nature than the restless, romping legs of the average +healthy little maiden. They are her life's joy made visible; so that it +really seems a shame, if a necessary one, to imprison them in even the +airiest of stockings and the most hygienic of leather shoes. + + Blue gingham petticoats, + White blown aprons, + Five pairs of plump legs + Twinkling down the hill, + Black imprisoned plump legs, + Fretful for the stream bed, + Tired of shoes and stockings, + Dancing like a rill, + Dancing down the hillside, + So come the children, + Like a rill in sunshine, + So dance they, + Seek the solemn waters, + Marching to the ocean, + Set the solemn waters + Laughing at their play. + So into my heart come, + Silver it with laughter, + Lest among the shadows + Lost should be its way, + So into my heart come + Rosamund and Daphne, + Marian and Rosemary, + And little baby May. + +Claire and her companions had been paddling in the big ocean itself; and +being comparatively dignified did not of course wear aprons. Moreover, +as I had the strongest reasons for believing, they were at this moment +quite innocent of petticoats. But the little poem comes back to me as I +write. + +"And next week," she proceeded ruefully, "I shall have to go into blobs +and half-masters." + +We stared at her rather blankly. + +"All the girls do, you know," she added, "when they turn sixteen." + +"But blobs----" I began. + +"And half-masters?" puzzled Esther. + +"When your hair's neither up nor down," Claire explained, "with a big +fat bow on it. And when you have to wear skirts a foot below your +knees." + +She rolled over, and struck her toes into the sand. + +"It's to show," she finished pathetically, "that you're too grown up to +be spanked and not old enough to have visiting cards." + +Which seems to suggest that even sixteen may have its tragedies, though +its capacity for ices remains happily unimpaired. Or would you call them +growing pains? And are all pains growing pains? + + Ever yrs., + P. H. + + + + +XX + +_To Horace Harding, c/o Major Alec Cameron, Glen Bruisk, Sutherland, +N.B._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _August_ 17, 1910. + +MY DEAR HORACE, + +So you have yielded at last. Your fine contempt for the gentlest art has +begun to dissolve. And being on the very brink of one of the snuggest of +sea-trout lochs you think that you must really have a cast or two upon +its waters. There are people who will tell you, of course, that it's a +blind man's game, or very nearly so, this loch trout fishing. But let +the blue waters--crinkled, if fortune smiles, with the daintiest of +ripples--be their immediate and sufficient refutation. And some day they +may behold you casting one of Mrs. Richardson's artfullest duns over +those senior wranglers among trout that lurk in the disillusioned depths +of the Itchen. + +At the same time I am not forwarding you an outfit for your birthday +present, as you so delicately suggest, firstly because you tell me that +Major Cameron can easily fix you up with all that is necessary; but +principally because I am not quite comfortable in my mind as to your +real motive for caressing the surface of Loch Bruisk. I should like to +be just a little surer that it is a genuine regard for _salmo trutta_ +rather than a merely altruistic (though very praiseworthy) desire to be +properly companionable to Miss Graham, who is, as you tell me, so +awfully keen about it. + +It is of course a very strong point in her favour, and I remember her +brother quite well. He plays half for Richmond, I think, and you +introduced us to one another at Queen's. And his sister--I don't +remember that you have mentioned her to me before--may of course be the +means to an end--an instrument chosen by a merciful Providence whereby a +new channel of enjoyment is about to be revealed to you. But on the +other hand, I can't help feeling that with your duty done, cheerfully +and bravely, as I have no doubt will be the case--and Miss Graham +away--the yearning to catch trout may conceivably leave you. So I am +sending you instead my very best wishes for the happiest of birthdays, +and a hope that you have many others yet in store for you. + +I am glad that you have determined to go up for your second medical some +time next year, and note that you have taken away volumes of anatomy and +physiology in your trunk. If you will accept my paternal advice, +however, you will leave them there until you have decided that your +health is sufficiently recuperated to return either to Cambridge or +Harley Street. I don't want you to curtail your holidays. I have far too +much respect both for holidays in general and yourself in particular. +For it's one of the most pathetic features about the genuine old codger +(and one of his surest signs too) that his periods of recreation tend to +become progressively shorter--and not always by force of circumstances. +They may actually begin to bore him. He may even have to make an effort +of will to prolong them for his ultimate good--to school himself into +regarding them as cures. Thus, while at twenty-two a summer vacation of +less than two months is too monstrous to be seriously considered, at +forty-two one becomes grateful for a fortnight, could do with three +weeks, but is apt to find a month just a trifle too long. Whereas at +fifty-two---- So don't curtail them. And yet better is it to curtail +them than to pollute. And unless you particularly need them for +preserving specimens of the local flora or maintaining the creases upon +your Sunday trousers, you should never, never, never pack technical +books in a holiday trunk. It is to put poison--or at any rate +water--into the wine that you are to pour out before the gods of +mountain and moor and loch. And though they are generous they are proud. +And they will surely make you repent it--not merely because it is +tactless, as though you should make Miss Dolly--I think that was her +name?--the staple article of your conversations with Miss Graham; and +not merely because it shows your ignorance, as though you should munch +ginger-nuts with that fine old port which your uncle has dug up for your +especial benefit; but because--far worse--it is an evidence of +double-dealing. And no god, not even the presiding deity of the tiniest +mountain ash, is going to stand that. If you read your Bible, as I hope +you do, you will have been warned concerning this simultaneous worship +of two contrary masters, and the doom that must certainly befall it. And +that's why no really wise schoolmaster ever sets his pupils a holiday +task, though there are still, I'm afraid, a few foolish ones left. I +hardly like to think that mine can have been among them; and yet there's +no doubt that "Marmion," the "Lady of the Lake," the "Cloister and the +Hearth," and several other peaks upon the literary landscape remain +clouded to me for ever. + +You would have thought this a sufficiently clear lesson, perhaps, upon +the point that I am pressing into you. But it wasn't. And I remember +consecrating a golden September in Fife to the mastery of my materia +medica. There's a moor, for instance, somewhere between Dunfermline and +Rumbling Bridge that will eternally be associated in my mind with the +preparations of opium. I can recall in all its hideous detail some such +afternoon's tramp as this:-- + +"By George, that's a fine piece of colouring, the sunlight on that dying +heather over there, Tinct: Camph: Co: strength of opium one in two +hundred and forty. There are the Ochils again, pil: plumbi cum opio, +strength of opium one in eight---- Damn, I forgot to look for that big +trout when I crossed the burn just now. Extractum opii, strength of +opium two in one" (it sounds improbable--even theological--but if you +look it up you will discover it to be correct, and I have never found +the knowledge in the least important). And, as a result, that particular +moor will always whisper to me unhealthily of morphia, while the +preparations of opium had to be learned all over again in something +less than six weeks' time. + +And you will generally find it to be the case, I think, that the work +which has desecrated the holiday can seldom stand either the test of an +examination or the more valuable one of practical appliance. For it's +the term's work, the good, solid, everyday's grind in the +dissecting-room or the physiological theatre, and later in the wards and +the out-patient department, that is the bone and marrow of your +pre-graduate education. Without it no amount of feverish cramming will +ever make you efficient, though it may occasionally perhaps save you +from being deservedly ploughed. And with it no cramming should be +necessary--or at most a very little. For there are still a few subjects, +alas, demanded by examining boards that can be learned, I suppose, in no +other way--such as the preparations of opium before mentioned, with +their respective strengths and all that appertains unto them, and the +ingredients of various obscure powders that you will never hear about +again. In after life you will always refer to your pharmacopeia if you +want information upon these subjects, and no normal mind has either the +capacity or the desire to retain their details for so long as +twenty-four hours after they have been required in the examination-room. + +But as a general rule, and one that is happily gaining ground every +year, you will find that your examiners will far prefer to discover in +you the evidences of a functionally active, if somewhat lightly stored, +mind than a kind of _paté de foie gras_, fattened up for the occasion, +but too inert, as a result, to leave him quite happy about its future. +And that's why it's always a good thing to take life easily during the +last week before your papers have to be written. Go abroad, mix with +normal men and women, to whom examinations are just episodes in the +lives of other people, fearsome but remote. And remind yourself in their +unruffled company that, after all, they _are_ merely episodes. You won't +forget anything really important in that time. If you do, you can never +properly have known it. While as for the trimmings, you will be more +than compensated for the shedding of a few of these by the sanity and +freshness with which your brain will come to its ordeal--as an example +of the reverse of which there occurs to me the vision of a pallid young +man who addressed me about six weeks ago in the hospital lobby. He was +very much frightened. I didn't know who he was. Indeed I don't think +that I had ever seen him before. And the remnants of a natural modesty +were evidently struggling to hold him back. But Circumstance, and the +awful fact that in less than an hour's time he was due for a _viva_ upon +the Thames Embankment, forced him trembling towards me. He wiped his +forehead--I was the only likely subject within range at the moment, and +his train was to leave in exactly seven and a half minutes. + +"I can remember the hooklets," he gasped, "but _would_ you mind telling +me, sir, which of the tapeworms it is that has four suckers?" + +Poor boy--I could see that his whole future was pivoting miserably upon +those forgotten suckers; and, by an excessively fortunate accident, I +happened to have some notes for a lecture upon the subject in one of my +pockets. + +"If you'll wait a moment," I told him honestly, "I think that I can let +you know. But I really couldn't tell you offhand." + +He looked at me anxiously, and I could see my reputation tottering in +his eyes as I searched about for my pocket-book. + +"Nor could your examiners, you know," I assured him, "unless they had +just primed themselves beforehand, or carried notes upon their +cuffs--which they probably do." + +His brow cleared amazingly at this, and I could see that the relative +importance of knowing, without reference, the precise number of a +tapeworm's suckers was beginning to define itself a little more clearly +to his distressed understanding. So I read out my notes to him, and he +dashed upon his way, relieved if not rejoicing. But you mustn't ever +become like that, you know, although it's not so difficult to do so as +you may think. + +And lastly, if there should be a Miss Graham--I speak in the abstract, +of course, and very, very tentatively--she must be allowed to share none +of the homage that every respectable examination insists upon +monopolising. She may still be the goddess in your car. For on the whole +I think that goddesses (of the right sort) make for careful driving. But +at present your eyes must be chiefly upon the reins. You must forgive me +for touching upon a topic that you will probably find extremely +irrelevant, but there are certain things in a Highland country house +that are curiously apt to wander a little from their true perspective. I +ought to have mentioned, by the way, that Churchills are sending you a +gun, which I hope may arrive safely with this letter. For though I am +quite open to conviction about the fishing, I feel rather more certain +about the shooting. It was pre-Grahamite, you see--you haven't told me +her Christian name--pre-Dollyite, pre-Berylite--and even, if I remember +rightly, pre-Looite; so that I think it may safely be accepted as being +integral and not merely adventitious. Anyway, there's the gun, and I +hope that you'll kill many grouse with it in spite of your sister Molly +and her humanitarian comrades. For grouse, like men, must die on a day, +and better the quick shot in mid-flight than to crawl away, and to +perish slowly in the corner as most of us, alas, will probably have to +do when our sunset days come round. + +I expect you will already have had letters from mother and Molly, if not +from Tom and Claire, who are staying with Lady Wroxton at Stoke, and +defying the Thames Conservancy in the matter of mixed bathing during +most of the forbidden hours. You heard, no doubt, or saw in the papers, +that Rupert Morris has had a K added to his C.B.; which means, I +suppose, that his little scrap on the frontier was more important than +he led us to suppose. In any case, nobody, I should think, has deserved +his title more, and quite certainly no one will value it less. He is +expected home, I believe, about the end of September, and you will +probably meet him at Stoke, where Molly (having squared her conscience) +is presently to assist in the extra housekeeping demanded by the +partridges and pheasants. With much love, + + Yr. affect. father, + P. H. + + + + +XXI + +_To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _August_ 25, 1910. + +MY DEAR AUNT JOSEPHINE, + +I have, of course, frequently seen many of the pictures that you +mention, and have also read some of the stories of which, as you say, +each illustration professes to tell one. I don't think however that I +have seen the particular one of the signalman which you enclose; and it +certainly seems a coincidence that he should be pressing his left hand +so vehemently upon the precise spot at which your cook also is so apt to +suffer pain. And it is odd too that, like her, he would appear to be so +thoroughly respectable that their common affliction becomes a little +difficult to understand. It is not, as you say, as if either of them +gave one the least impression of being in any degree _loose_ or +_rackety_. At the same time, from a close examination of the signalman's +anatomy, I don't think that the organs so frequently mentioned in his +very eloquent account of himself are those most likely to be affected. +And perhaps your cook may also be happily under a similar +misapprehension. And that is why, before taking the pills that have been +so markedly blessed to the signalman, I would suggest the outward +application of a little friction with the open palm of someone else's +hand in which have been previously placed a few drops of turpentine. It +will be so far less expensive, you see; and, even if not finally +successful, will at any rate do no harm. But I have great hopes. + + Your affect. nephew, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +XXII + +_To Reginald Pole, S.Y. Nautilus, Harwich._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _August_ 30, 1910. + +MY DEAR REGGIE, + +When one of your youngest journalists from Franciscan House called upon +me last night, I guessed at once that you were either away from home or +that you had given the lad _carte blanche_ to collect material for a +"silly season" discussion, without adding an Olympian hint or two as to +where he had best go hunting. As a matter of fact both surmises turned +out to be correct; and I even seemed to detect in him a certain air of +relief as he admitted the first, while he was still young enough to feel +rather important with regard to the second. Unhappy youth--how should he +know that he had run into the very jaws of your arch-enemy? + +It was a college friendship with Horace, he informed me, that was his +excuse for calling upon me, although of course he knew quite well that I +was an eminent authority on the subject in hand. This was so obvious an +afterthought that I couldn't help asking him what the subject might be. +He told his lie so nicely, you see, and was so humbly aware of its small +worth. He coloured a little. + +"Are we nervous?" he said. + +I pushed over the tobacco-jar, and asked him to fill his pipe. + +"I hope not," I replied, and he coloured a little more. + +"You don't understand," he explained. "That is to be the headline of the +discussion. At least, that was what I'd thought myself. But some of the +other fellows have suggested, 'Are we _more_ nervous?' or 'Where are our +National Nerves?' or 'National Neurosis; are we suffering from it?'" + +I nodded. + +"Yours is the shortest," I said. + +"Just so," he replied, "and, I think, the most arresting." + +"And who's going to write the first letter?" I asked. + +"Well," he stammered, "I rather expect it will be me." + +"And you'll call yourself 'A London Physician,' I suppose?" + +"Something like that," he confessed. "You see, a newspaper discussion +like this is all right when once it's started--that is, if it's a live +one, as Mr. Pole calls it. The other letters simply pour in." + +"From Balham and Holloway and Tottenham and Ilford----" + +"Oh yes," he smiled, "and from Kensington and Mayfair as well." + +"You think that a good many of your readers will like to tell the public +all about their nerves?" + +"Thousands of 'em," he said confidently. + +"And you'll select a certain number of letters from each district, and +fill up a couple of your daily columns for nothing?" + +"That's the idea. And we shall give a lot of pleasure too." + +"And the writers and the writers' friends will rush to buy copies, I +suppose, and cut out their letters, and stick them in albums." + +He laughed. + +"I shouldn't wonder," he said. "Making personal friends for the +paper--that's what Mr. Pole calls it. He says that nothing pays better." + +"And presently, perhaps, you'll collect all the letters, and put them in +a little booklet of which you'll sell large numbers for sixpence in a +comfortable dressing-gown of advertisements." + +"Possibly," he said, "if it goes really well." + +I looked at him for a moment, upon the threshold of his life-work. He +was a nice boy, though the shades of Franciscan House were fast closing +about him. + +"D'you think it's worth it?" I asked him. + +"Why rather," he said. "Pays like anything." + +"Forty per cent, perhaps?" + +"Very likely." + +"The Franciscan heaven," I admitted, and he winced a little. By which I +knew, of course, that he was as yet no true Franciscan--who never +winces, and whose conscience, to use a borrowed phrase, is merely his +accomplice. + +"Do you object to forty per cent?" he asked. + +"_Per se?_" I answered, "not at all." + +"But to the correspondence perhaps?" + +"I'm not enamoured of the idea," I confessed. "Are you?" + +He reached for the ash-tray, and knocked out his pipe. + +"We must give 'em what they want, you know," he said. + +I bowed. + +"The Franciscan creed," I told him. "But perhaps they don't know yet +that they do want it." + +"Then we must show 'em," he replied. + +"The Franciscan gospel," I sighed, for, as I have said, he was a nice +boy, still trailing a wisp or two of glory. + +"And besides," he went on, "people always like to talk about their weak +nerves, don't they?" + +He was getting in under my guard now to bleed me of copy, so I stepped +aside. + +"Play cricket?" I asked him. + +"A bit," he confessed. + +"Ever stopped a rot?" + +"Sometimes," he replied warily. + +"How did you do it?" I inquired. + +He laughed again. + +"Now you're getting at me, aren't you?" he said. + +"Of course I am. Haven't you been trying to get at me?" + +"Do you think you're going to score?" he asked. + +"I shouldn't wonder," I told him; "because you didn't encourage those +panicky fellow-batsmen of yours to talk about their nerves, did you? On +the contrary, you swaggered a bit yourself, and told 'em that the +bowling was poor stuff. You didn't even tell 'em to forget that growing +excavation behind their belt-buckles. You were subtler. You took it for +granted that they hadn't got one. You surrounded 'em with the proper +atmosphere. You were more than half a nerve specialist already--the +better half. You infected them with your own health. But what are you +proposing to do now?" + +The journalist in him died hard. + +"Then you think there _is_ a rot?" he asked. + +"I didn't say so." + +He put his pipe in his pocket, and picked up his hat and gloves. + +"After all," he smiled, "you've only been preaching the old doctrine of +responsibility, you know. And the modern journalist is a detached +person." But I shook my head. + +I repeat that he was a nice boy, and had borne my little pi-jaw with +admirable fortitude. + +"Only semi-detached," I ventured, "with a half-educated brother next +door." + +I fancy that I can see you lying snugly aft upon the "Nautilus" at +anchor--a bronzing cynic, smiling gently over this ingenuous little +duel. And perhaps you have already made up your mind to transfer this +incomplete disciple of yours to some other department, or even +(according to a fundamental Franciscan tradition) to dispense with his +services altogether. For if he cannot bring himself to demolish one +prehistoric physician, what can he do? And I shall be sorry if he is put +to any real inconvenience. But on the other hand I shall rejoice openly +to see him save his soul alive. For though I didn't tell him so, and +though I am convinced that at the core--the germ-plasm, if you like--the +race is still happily sound enough, yet if there is a rot, a temporary +epidemic of nervous instability, it is largely confined to those who +draw their mental nourishment from Franciscan House, and whose +twitterings you are now proposing to exploit. + +_Autres temps, autres moeurs_, for while there was a time when our +more ignorant forefathers were wont to scoff (mistakenly, no doubt, but +on balance with a tonic effect) at the possessors of "weak nerves," now +that we have learned just enough to talk about them in bad Greek +"neurasthenia" is an affection of which no man need be ashamed. "Poor +chap," we say, and begin to wonder if we are not sufferers ourselves. + +You will have observed that my reference is masculine, although the +older historians have regarded the complaint as being chiefly confined +to women. But you are not to deduct from this, as I can see you trying +to do, that the neurasthenia of to-day is therefore a new variety, whose +exhibition in your halfpenny daily paper is justifiable on public +grounds. For if it attacked mainly a certain class of our +great-grandmothers and their maternal ancestors, this was less, I think, +on account of their sex than of their circumstances--the predisposing +combination in some of them of slender academic endowment with +unexercised mental activity. + +Times have changed, but even then it was not the woman of affairs, whose +education, ample or the reverse, had been salted by the winds of +action--it was not the queens and the stateswomen at the one pole, or +the workers in the fields at the other, but the secluded gentlewomen +between them, who fainted daily, and agonised over beetles and mice. +_Requiescant in pace_, for their day is no more, and their busier +daughters have no longer time to write pathetic little self-revelations +in unventilated boudoirs, or collapse at a knock upon the door. Instead, +they will vault nimbly over the window-sill; while as for the beetles, +they will kill them for you mercifully, and explain their pedigree in +Latin. + +But the class that they have thus vacated has not, alas, been suffered +to die out, and is now perhaps even fuller than ever. Gone, it is true, +with the conditions that produced them, are the vaporous women of +Richardson and Fielding. But here in their stead, and in a very similar +soil, is the twopenny clerk of to-day. And it is typically in his +Harringay villa that one must search for the modern neurasthenic. A +little cheap education, a long period of physical security, a +comfortable, if inexpensive, assurance of at any rate the more primal +necessities, and the demand of ever coalescing industries for an +innumerable army of semi-automatic dependents--all these have been at +work. And they have built up for us a hundred airless mental chambers, +whose inhabitants, desperately aware of their gentility, and +sufficiently educated for a little self-probing, have nothing more +demanded from them than to copy out stereotyped letters or manipulate a +Morse key. To obtain their chance of doing these things they had to +acquire a small amount of knowledge--since seldom added to; and to do +them automatically a few months of mental apprenticeship became +necessary. No more was asked of them. And after a little while, and in +the great majority of cases, they have ceased to ask more of themselves. +And I have seen men crying in my consulting-room over some trivial, +unexpected appeal that has been too much for their paralysed initiative. + +You may think that my analogy is far-fetched, and superficially I'll +admit that it is. But probe a little deeper, and you'll find how exactly +the related conditions have produced corresponding types. Look at my +sequestered lady busy with her eternal crochet, but in reality not busy +at all. And then behold my little clerk occupied with his letters and +his envelope-licking, but with a brain as really unemployed as my +lady's. Read out to me the writings of my sequestered lady or the +records of her conversations. How little she had read or seen or +studied, and yet with what confident persistence she uttered her +superlatives. And now talk to my little clerk, who likewise has climbed +no mountains of comparison, and his tiniest headache is "shocking," his +least calamity "terrible." Why, only this afternoon I was asked for a +tonic by such an one (your halfpenny illustrated was peeping out of his +pocket) on the ground that yesterday he had seen a small child cut its +forehead, and held it till the doctor came. Listen to my sequestered +lady, innocence herself, and her talk, with titters, is of my lord's +_liaisons_, my lady's cure, and what the neighbours think. And listen to +my little clerk, and what are his topics but these? + +God forbid that I should hold either of them up for ridicule (it's you +that I'm ultimately to annihilate), for such generalities as these are +never more than half true. My lady was only waiting for the marching +years to become a Florence Nightingale and a Madame Curie. She was only +waiting to be shown, and admitted into, the great worlds outside her +boudoir to prove a right of way that has long since ceased to be +questioned. And who shall say what shining destiny awaits my little +clerk? For it is not, as we are so often told, the mere rush of our +modern industrialism that is at the root of so much neurasthenia--it is +its blank automatism, with its endless opportunities for self-pity. And +one can only suppose that as we advance in knowledge much of this human +drudgery will be delegated to other instruments. But the time is not +yet, alas, and meanwhile all that is best of him has to struggle with +circumstances only too sorrowfully adapted to morbid mental imaginings. +"The result of all this free education," you will be told by a certain +type of elderly _raisonneur_. But of course he is wrong. It's not less +education that we want, but more. For even in the good old days, as I +have said, it was not the Marie Stuarts and the Queen Elizabeths, +delivering their Latin orations and translating their "Mirrors of the +Sinful Soul" at thirteen and fourteen years old, it was not the +full-tide women of the Renaissance, who were afterwards conspicuous for +nervous debility. And nor is it the really well-educated clerk of +to-day. For while a little education is chiefly dangerous in so far as +it increases a man's self-consciousness without showing him where it is +gently to be laughed at, a little more will generally remedy this +defect, to the lasting benefit of his sanity. No, it's in his awful +self-seriousness that lurks the subtlest enemy of the half-educated man. +If you can make a man laugh at himself, you can make him laugh at his +nerves--which is better than a hecatomb of bromides. + +Well then, there's my analogy; and here's where it breaks down. My +lady's prison walls were concrete as well as abstract; my clerk's are +chiefly abstract. She was in the world but not of it. He is both in it +and of it. She could scarcely touch upon its treasures if she would. +For him they are waiting--the real ones--if he will only take them. Long +ago we have recognised the merely physical dangers of his daily enforced +imprisonment. And we have framed a hundred sanitary laws to provide him +with his oxygen unsullied. But what about his half-developed mind? You +will tell me that good lectures are abundant, and that classics may be +bought for a shilling. Yet what are these, at the best, but occasional +winds of thought, too often resented as a draught? And who is it but +you, creeping under his door for a halfpenny, that creates his mental +atmosphere? You may tell me that you only reproduce it, with its +constituents very faithfully proportioned--a nebulous sermonette once a +week, an inch to the scientific progress of both the hemispheres, and +three columns to the personal appearance of the Camden murderer. And you +may justify yourself on the same grounds for covering your nakedness, as +you did last week (I'm glad that you yourself were away), with an appeal +in big letters that he should buy your orange-coloured weekly, +wherein--with delicious exclusiveness--he might find, in all its +details, the life-history of this same criminal's flimsy little +paramour, written (God forgive you--and him) by her own father; and the +nadir, one can only pray, of your efforts for forty per cent. But you +cannot at the same time lay a finger on your paragraph of Health Hints, +and boast complacently about the influence of the Press. Nor do you, I +suppose, with any real conviction; and I may have exaggerated, perhaps, +in crediting you with the creation of anybody's atmosphere. For the true +brain-worker passes you by, and the manual labourer has his antidote at +hand; while the little clerk is not, in a modern and abominable phrase, +"a person who matters." But then he is. And in the battle for mental +vigour that, under present conditions, he must consciously fight or die, +you might so easily be playing the biggest rather than the least worthy +part. For our help still cometh from the hills. And surely it's of the +hill-top men, the men who are climbing, the men with a view, that you +should be telling him, morning and evening, as he sits in his London +cellule. Whereas instead, with his birthright ever broadening about him, +you still drearily drag him after you to Bow Street, where you +photograph him in his pitiful queue for to-morrow's illustration. Dear +me, I'm afraid that I'm tub-thumping; and you'll think that I've +forgotten your farm and your balloon-house and your daily reports upon +the cuckoo and the corn-crake. But I haven't; and what's more, I'm quite +ready to believe that if Bow Street went out of fashion you'd be the +first to appreciate the fact. We should soon be hearing indeed that you +had led the movement. And that's why you don't really stem the onward +march of sanity, though there are casualties _en route_ of which it +would be difficult to acquit you. While as for your National Neurosis, +one foreign battery on Primrose Hill would bury it for two generations. + +It might also blow the roof off Franciscan House. + + * * * * * + +"But poor Reggie can't do anything by himself," says Esther. + +"They all say that," I grumble. + +"And haven't you been just a little bit rude?" + +"I'm attacking a point of view," I explain, "and I feel rather heated." + +She looks over my shoulder reproachfully. + +"And you've never even _mentioned_ our having the baby when they take +the 'Nautilus' to Italy." + +"No more I have." + +"And it's the very thing I told you to write about." + +And this is true. For we _must_ have the baby. + + Yr. sorrowful friend, + P. H. + +P.S.--This letter almost makes me wonder why I like you. + + + + +XXIII + +_To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _September_ 6, 1910. + +MY DEAR SALLY, + +There was a young American, Stephen Crane, who wrote, a few years ago, a +little volume called "Wounds in the Rain." You may have read it. It was +rather a grim book, but written with a good deal of power, and a promise +of more to come that the author, alas, never lived to fulfil. And not +the worst part of it was its title, with its suggestion of grey +suffering, the aftermath alike of victory and defeat. And yet I am not +sure that "Wounds in the Sun" would not literally have stood for a far +greater sum of misery. Only he would never have made us feel it. + +For there's an implicit sadness in the monosyllable rain--in the very +sound of it--that depends, I think, when you come to analyse it, less +upon the ideas of water and wetness and possible chill that it conjures +up, than upon an underlying suggestion of something falling. It's a +little hard to account for it--I would commend the subject to a +metaphysician if I could be certain that it hasn't already been dealt +with by him--and yet it's a fact, I think, that we have invested all +falling things with a certain quality of tragedy, with at any rate no +single idea of cheerfulness. Think of what you will, from little Susan's +tear to Lucifer, son of the Morning, and of all the more material +phenomena that lie between them--cascades, avalanches, autumn +leaves--and you will find that while your vision perceives in them pity, +or solemnity, or terror, or even disgust, it clothes no falling thing +with actual joy. And the swifter the fall the more profound are these +sentiments that it engenders. + +Thus the sheer waterfall, spilling itself unbroken over some brooding +crag into a pit of blackness, contains just so much more gloom than the +torrent, leaping down from rock to rock, as its descent is more vertical +and headlong. The thistledown, sliding earthwards upon the wind, is less +tragic than the rain-sodden beech-leaf by just the measure of its longer +passage through the air. While the rain that drives horizontally against +one's Burberry may be a good deal more penetrating, but is seldom so +dismal as that which drops down undisturbed from the drab sky to earth. + +I believe that there is a sermon in all this somewhere--in the universal +instinct with which we find sorrow, or at least some factor of it, in +all that falls; and joy, or at any rate its suggestion, in most things +that rise up, and open, and turn themselves towards the heavens. But +I'll spare you the preaching of it, since these reflections merely +spring to my mind as the result, last Saturday, of a particularly wet +tramp from Beer to Sidmouth. + +I had been called down in consultation on Friday, and having spent the +night in the sick man's house, decided next morning to walk the eight +miles along the coast. It was one of those baffling Devonshire mornings +of rain and mist with rhythmical promises, never fulfilled, of a watery +sunshine to come; and both my hostess and the local doctor were fain to +press motor-cars upon me. But I had made up my mind, and assured them +that I was one of those many people--possibly foolish--who rather +enjoyed a walk in the rain. + +My host, who was by way of being a philosopher as well as an invalid, +looked at me with a twinkle. + +"So you really think you like it?" he asked me. + +"Yes," I told him. "I really do like it." + +He put a hand on my shoulder. + +"No, you don't," he said. "Just think it over between here and +Sidmouth." + +And he was right. Before I had walked two miles I knew that he was +right. I don't enjoy walking in the rain, though I often do it, and +always claim to like it. I merely walk in it for the rather subtle +enjoyment of getting out of it, and for the sake of plumbing a little +more deeply, at my journey's end, the everyday delights of dryness, +warmth, and a deep-bosomed chair. I become a Tibetan at the prayer-wheel +storing up joys to come in a whetted appetite for to-morrow's blue sky. +For though I must admit that there's a certain decorative effect about +rain over a countryside, yet it's an effect of pure melancholy, +scientifically unfounded of course--at any rate until science can +explain the proposition at the beginning of this letter--heightening +loneliness, exaggerating the hardship of toil, deepening the horror of +death, but adding quite an extraordinary power to any gleam of even the +tearfullest of sunshine that may have stumbled into some corner of the +landscape. And there's always the possibility of that gleam being the +herald of a sudden conquest of glory, in whose triumph your merely +fair-weather pedestrian can never have a part. + +Thus a memory comes back to me, for instance, of a dreary +five-in-the-morning start, a hopeless breakfast, a dogged rain-soaked +tramp up the steep hillside--and then the summit of Ben Lomond, a very +ark above the flood, borne up, as it were, into the midmost sanctuary of +heaven, with the submerging seas rolling out to the world's end, and the +wind thrilling over them like an organ. Ten minutes ago, and the sun had +lost itself for ever. And now it flamed there like the white throne of +God, till the horizons melted before its gaze, and the great dead began +majestically to rise--Ben More, Ben Lawers, the Cairngorms, and the +distant peaks of Arran. + +My sunshine on Saturday last however was not, I should think, more than +twelve years old. She was standing rather pensively (but without +agitation) near a cottage gate; and fortunately I had provided myself +with some bulls'-eyes at a village called Branscombe, where a kindly old +lady had assured me that there was still a great demand for them. I +extracted one from the bag, and was thanked politely but by no means +deferentially. There was a moment's pause during which a damp physician +was being gravely relegated to his proper sphere in the natural scheme +of things--an obviously humble one. Then she threw me a fact. + +"Nellie arn't got one," she observed. + +So I gave her one for Nellie. + +"Anybody else?" I inquired. + +She looked down for a minute at the plump and striped confection. + +"Mother likes _them_ things," she said--and I had seen by this time, of +course, that her mother must be a very nice mother. So she accepted one +for mother. + +"And is that all?" I asked. + +"Well," she said doubtfully, "_Baby's_ just arf to sleep." + +And this is all that I shall ever remember about the road from Beer to +Sidmouth. + +I am finding it harder than ever this year to get a summer holiday. And +while these little glimpses of the country merely sharpen my desire for +more, I find myself telling myself sternly that I must really learn to +be contented with them. And at any rate I have been enabled to see more +of the hospital than for some time past; and, as you know, this is to be +my last year there as a visiting physician. + +This afternoon, my junior being salmon-fishing in Norway, I thought +that I would take the out-patients for the first time in twelve years; +and the clinical assistant proving not unwilling to go and play tennis, +I amused myself with seeing the lot of them. For there's no other +commentary upon men and manners quite like a collection of out-patients +at a large hospital. Listen therefore to a stalwart gentleman who earns +twenty shillings a week, and doesn't stint himself in beer. + +"Debility, doctor," he said, "that's what's the metter with me." He +dropped his voice huskily. "Domestic trouble," he added. + +"Dear me," I sympathised, feeling his pulse. "Serious?" + +"Twins," he said gloomily; "second lot I've 'ed in eighteen months; an' +I think it's run me down." + + Your aff. brother, + PETER. + + + + +XXIV + +_To the Rev. Bruce Harding, S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay._ + + + c/o HARRY CARTHEW, CROME LODGE, + NEAR CAVERSHAM, BERKS, + _September_ 14, 1910. + +MY DEAR BRUCE, + +I am very glad to hear that you have had such an excellent holiday in +Switzerland, and brought home four or five more mountain scalps to your +Cumberland wigwam. But it's rather sad that the little storm that was +brewing at S. Peter's before you left should have burst in thunder and +lightning during your absence. Knowing both Merridew and Rogers, I quite +agree with you that it was probably inevitable, and may ultimately tend +to a clearer atmosphere. Meanwhile however the little community makes +war from opposite camps, and there is a great deal of unnecessary +bitterness in their tactics that seems likely to increase when Rogers +comes back from London. And, as you say, it's all rather sad and sordid, +and only humorous because the parish is so small and the whole storm +contained, as it were, in one of its afternoon teacups. But then most +parishes are comparatively small, and we all have to live in one or +other of them, and storms in teacups are apt to be just as devastating +as any other kind of storm--even more so perhaps, because it's so much +easier on these occasions to insist upon recommending one's own +particular infusion of tannin, than to insert instead an unobtrusive +drop or two of the calming milk of human kindness. Whereas cyclones have +a habit of setting us shoulder to shoulder, by virtue of the unanimous +discovery that they rather suddenly engender of the extraordinary +unimportance of our differences. + +So on the whole I'm with you in preferring cyclones, although at first I +was rather inclined to disagree with your assertion that this little +flare-up between Rogers and your new vicar was merely a somewhat +exaggerated instance of the general underlying hostility that seems to +exist between Medicine and the Church. + +I was for pointing out to you, with some vigour, the fact that we both +have friends, not a few, in the consulting-room and cloth respectively, +to whom we can talk with a complete frankness, and in the assurance of a +reciprocated understanding. And yet, on second thoughts, I am +reluctantly sure that you are right, and that, speaking in very general +terms, there does exist some such feeling as you have named--less +hostility, perhaps, than a decently veiled distrust. It's a little hard +to see why this should be the case. For there would appear superficially +to be at least a hundred reasons why the precisely opposite should be +true. Perhaps the foundation of it is historical. Centuries enough have +not yet rolled away since medicine came out of the side of priestcraft; +so that on the one hand there is still an occasional smarting of the old +wound, and on the other a little over-insistence, perhaps, upon a +complete and rather superior liberty--tradition still looming somewhat +largely in the education of the young clergyman, and reverence being +not, perhaps, a particularly prominent feature in the training of his +medical brother. In any case, there it is; and though I think that +Rogers has been wrong, or at any rate tactless, in his opposition to the +extra services that Merridew wishes to hold in the cottage hospital, it +seems to me that your two protagonists are very typical of all that is +best (and possibly least reconcilable) on either side. For on the one +hand you have Merridew, ardent, sincere, sacerdotal, and very nearly +young enough to account for, though not of course to justify, Rogers's +rudeness in referring to him as "the boy from Cuddesdon." And on the +other, you have Rogers, equally genuine, generous, uncompromising, and +almost fiercely insistent in his demand for intellectual honesty. Indeed +I think his rather truculent materialism is far more an expression of +this desire than an exact creed of his personal belief. And both men, it +seems to me, are so obviously the logical products of their respective +upbringings. + +Of Merridew's I can only speak of course as an outsider. His father, +whom I knew very slightly, was himself a clergyman of the old High +Church type, moderately wealthy, refined to the uttermost, acutely +sensitive, artistic, yet as rigid in his standards as any Cromwellian +Ironside. He was happily married, and his home--and young +Merridew's--was, almost necessarily, like himself. Merridew was the only +child, and when his father died, while he was still at Lancing, it was +only natural that he should resolve to enter the Church, and that his +mother should henceforth devote herself almost entirely to his welfare +and to the furtherance of these boyish resolutions. Leaving Lancing, he +went up to his father's old college at Cambridge, commended to his +tutors, and known to his fellow-undergraduates, from the outset, as a +candidate for Holy Orders. And here--again as a perfectly accepted +consequence--he took his degree in classics, and dabbled a little in +history. He was not unpopular. His ardour, never awkward, procured him +many friends and indeed followers among like-minded youths with a +similar future in front of them; and, being adequately athletic, he was +on friendly, if not intimate, terms with a good many others. At +twenty-two or so he left Cambridge for Cuddesdon, and at twenty-four he +obtained a curacy in Hoxton, where he overworked himself for four years. +He was then, I think, an assistant priest at a fashionable church in +Kensington, until he was presented by one of his uncles with the living +of S. Peter's. Those are the external facts, and, as a guesser from the +opposite camp, I may very likely go wrong in estimating their inner +significances. But it seems to me--and in talking with Merridew I am +always conscious of this--that as the inevitable result of this training +he has been surrounded by a kind of protective aura, now almost +impenetrable, that has interposed itself, as it were, between himself, +as an anointed priest, and the great tides of actual life that go +surging about him. Little by little it was created for him by his +parents. The vicissitudes of school life made him cling to it only the +more firmly. Cambridge, and the conspiracy of silence that, to a lesser +extent, surrounds the embryo and younger clergy as certainly as it does +their sisters at home, merely strengthened it fourfold; so that when he +left Cuddesdon there it was complete--his lifebelt for the conflicting +seas of reality--and not only about his waist, but also to a large +extent encircling his intellect. For if you examine his education you +will find, I think, that never in all that time was he encouraged, for +himself and by himself, to discover, to classify, to co-relate, one +single naked fact of real existence. Science was then, and has always +been, in its inward sense, a thing unknown to him. Of the living stuff +of humanity he was given not the smallest primary notion. And his +observation of it since has been that of a man who has never been +equipped with the first unprejudiced principles of observation at all. +Of heredity and psychology he knows not a line. And of their results in +actual character and conduct he can perceive, as a rule, only as much as +the normal man will reveal to the present type of normal parson--while +even of that he has never been given the wherewithal to judge. + +Rogers, on the other hand, was the son of a small Northampton milliner. +At the age of fourteen he ran away to sea, where he served for four +years in all sorts of ships, in all sorts of capacities. It was on one +of these that some rough and ready, but skilful, surgery, by which a +young ship's doctor removed some broken bone from the brain of a comrade +who had fallen from the rigging, first fired him with the desire to be a +surgeon. He returned home to find his father dead and his mother in +straitened circumstances. He got work in a boot factory, and studied at +night schools for his preliminary examination. Having passed this, he +went back to sea for a year, and then, coming up to London, he managed +to attend at hospital by day, while he kept himself as dispenser, +bottle-washer, and general handy man to a dispensing practitioner in his +spare hours. + +By this means, and with the aid of a scholarship or two, he obtained his +diplomas, and started a cash surgery near Waterloo. Five years later he +was a Fellow of the College of Surgeons, and in another three had become +a member of his hospital staff. For a year or so he found it pretty hard +to make both ends meet behind his modest plate (one of five) upon a +front door in Harley Street. But then the tide began to turn. A +brilliant paper or two marked him out as a coming man. A new and +admirable method of performing a certain cerebral operation became +associated with his name. And in ten years' time he had become perhaps +the foremost brain surgeon in London. Twelve years after this he lost a +hand, in consequence of a post-mortem infection, but retired a wealthy +man, though at first a rather disconsolate one. For a time his love of +the sea reasserted itself, and he travelled. Then, as you know, he found +a retreat that suited him on the shores of Cumberland, where he has +built, endowed, and kept lavishly up-to-date the little cottage hospital +about which your teacup storm is raging. + +You may tell me, perhaps, that both Rogers and Merridew are extreme +instances. But if they are, it is in degree only and not in kind. For +behind Rogers I can see a large and quickly growing army of thinking men +and women, risen like him from what are called the masses, vigorous of +mind and hard of muscle, men accustomed to deal with life at first hand, +trained to observe, quick to deduct, unhampered, if perhaps a little too +unmoved by tradition, state-makers, explorers, and men withal not +impervious to, but on the contrary almost passionately eager for the +truth. + +And behind Merridew I can see many, if not most, of his brethren, men of +fine instincts and real devotedness--narrow-minded in none but the most +literal sense, and in that merely because of the school that has moulded +them--men who would cheerfully give all that they possess to be able to +influence in any substantial degree the great world's dreamers and +doers. And behind them again I can see their Church. + + * * * * * + +Curiously enough, we have just been discussing something of all this +upon Carthew's Thames-side lawn. We had crossed the river in the +morning, and walked up, about a couple of miles, to a neighbouring +village church. And now, as I write to you in the boat under the +willows, they seem to me--the temple and its service--to have been +almost tragically symbolic. The village itself, on the outskirts of +Reading, consists of a rustic core, about which time and circumstance +have wrapped several red-brick layers, the innermost containing workers +from the various shops and factories of the neighbouring town, together +with a sprinkling of day-labourers in the country round; and the outer +accommodating some superior clerks and their families, a few of the more +substantial Reading tradesmen, and the inevitable retired colonel. + +Most of these, as we passed upon our way, were smoking over the Sunday +papers in their front gardens, or preparing for a morning to be spent +upon the river; and the church was far from their midst, a mile in fact +beyond their extremest outskirts. Moreover the day was hot, and the road +to it dusty. + +The building itself was neither old nor new, and we were shown into a +pew beneath a large stained-glass window that almost immediately began, +in spite of myself, to monopolise my attention. The congregation +consisted, of course, mainly of women. ("It will be the same in the +Hereafter," my Aunt Josephine once assured me when commenting upon the +same phenomenon.) But there were about thirty men present, for the most +part gnarled and sunburnt sons of the field, in uncomfortable, +ready-made suits--men, as I guessed, in whose veins there still ran +something of the older homage once shared by parson and squire. What was +this particular parson going to give them, I wondered, as mental and +moral food for the week's sustenance? His delivery of the prayers and +lessons was not very promising. It was not that he had any physical +impediment in his speech. It was merely that he had never been taught to +produce his sounds effectively, and that Oxford and his clubs had +successfully schooled him into eliminating any tincture of emotion from +their quality. But he might still, of course, have a message in waiting +for us from the pulpit. + +He preached upon the value of communicating before breakfast; and, as +far as I could see, his remarks upon the subject were received, +especially by the male portion of his congregation, with the same kind +of curious, impassive gusto that had been noticeable in their delivery +of the responses and the hymns. I remember a verse of one of these, and +am quoting it exactly: + + Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee + Repaid a thousandfold will be; + _Then_ gladly will we give to Thee, + Who givest all. + +Could they have known what they were singing? Had their vicar read these +lines before he gave them out? Let us hope not. + +But, as I said, it was the stained-glass window that dominated me, and +seemed to contain in itself an epitome--yet not quite that, perhaps--of +sermon and service and hymn, and the system that had made their survival +possible in twentieth-century England. And yet, let me first put down +that through it came light, real if distorted, and distilled, but how +faintly, from the true arch of the outside heaven. And let me not forget +this as I go on to remember its eight divisions, containing each a +worshipping and apparently musical young woman, arrayed as no being has +ever been arrayed, and regarding with upturned eyes--well, fortunately +the artist had stopped short there, though merely, one fears, from want +of space. I have called these maidens musical for the rather inadequate +reason that in the hands of each were instruments by and through which +sounds might conceivably be produced. But at the nature of these one +could, alas, guess only too readily. Even in the grasp of experts one +would have been justly dubious about the capabilities of those +two-stringed violins, that one-keyed portable organ, those twin-trumpets +with a common mouthpiece. And imagination reeled before their combined +contemplation in the hands of these anæmic and self-evident amateurs. +Nor could one turn from the subject, and find consolation in its colour +or history. The window was not forty years old, and the colour was but +a ghost of what colour might be. + +The whole window indeed was but a ghost--a ghost, manufactured at the +thirtieth hand, of the mediæval work of some laborious but crude +designer. And what, one wondered, could be even its pretended message to +the full-blooded, restless, and instructed generation of to-day? Could +these sallow-cheeked saints, these obviously unhealthy, ill-nourished, +incapable young women, tell anything worth the hearing upon any single +plane of thought or conduct to the men and women of 1910? Could they +indeed preach any other possible sermon than to cry out to all would-be +healthy people to flee away from them into the outer sunshine? Were they +even justified as reflections, infinitely remote, of the pale Galilean +of Gautier and Swinburne? And was there in fact ever a pale Galilean, +the least of Whose doctrines they could ever imaginably have embodied? +Was that sturdy, sun-browned Youth, with His carpenter's wrists and His +physical endurance, with His undreamed spiritual forces and His splendid +sanity in their control, with the glory of His emancipating conceptions +and His divine simplicity in their exposition--was He ever such as to be +thus pallidly worshipped save in the twilight imageries of earlier +centuries and the resentful poetry of rebellious thinkers? And I +couldn't help wondering if my stained-glass window had perhaps cast its +spell not only upon the aisles, but the authority of the Church that had +set it up. + +Only a year or two ago, for instance, I remember being assured by a +youthful priest from Cambridge, who had scarcely ever stirred beyond his +East End settlement, that, while he would refrain from setting a limit +to God's mercy, no man could really be considered safe who had not made +verbal confession of his sins to himself or one of his brothers. And +only last week, upon the beach at Swanage, I heard another young +clergyman, of a rather more so-called evangelical way of thinking, most +positively assuring a ring of little children that the Devil was even +then whispering in their ears what a good time he would like to give +them. No wonder that the Carthews and the Rogers' stand aside, and wait +impatiently for the coming of the New Word or of the Old one as it was. +And no wonder that men and women, more really religious now, perhaps, +than ever in history, look on at it all rather dubiously in a healthy +hesitation, or turn frankly away to the tennis-lawn and river. + +I have been watching them all the afternoon plying their oars here upon +the Thames--strong and ruddy, keen-faced artisans from Reading, +actresses from town, barristers, doctors, men of leisure, and men of +affairs. And now, as I write, they are plying still, while across the +fields comes the ineffectual call of the various ecclesiastical bells. +By some they are not even heard, I suppose. They are singing choruses +from "Our Miss Gibbs." To others they are just decorative in the region +of river sounds, as the loose-strife and charlock in that of its +colours. To a few they must even be merely sad. They might mean--they +once have meant--so much to their country's seething life. And now they +would seem to contain almost less significance than the gramophone in +the steam-launch round the corner. + +A few moments ago the Bishop, Carthew's newly-acquired brother-in-law, +was leaning forward in his chair. + +"If you knew," he said, "the real agony with which the Church has to +face these problems." + +Carthew nodded. + +"Yes," he said slowly, "parturition's always painful--especially to the +elderly--but the price for shirking it----" + +"Is sterility," said the Bishop. "I know. But we don't want your pity. +We want your help." + +Carthew knocked the ashes out of his pipe. + +"Then first," he said, "you must get rid of those lifebelts, where the +race goes past them, and teach your clergy to swim. And then you must +keep 'em swimming. And you must see that they swim first. Don't stultify +their efforts by askin' 'em to square impossible traditions with new +truths, or mediæval ethics with essential Christianity. Don't call 'em +unsound because they have inklings inside 'em that Revelation didn't +cease with St. John or interpretation with the Epistle to the Hebrews. +Let 'em have Visions of their own. Tell 'em to go out, and make +discoveries. Let 'em dare to be simple--really simple, that is. And +trust God and human kindness to do the rest." + +I don't think that he was speaking lightly, but the Bishop looked at him +for a moment rather closely. + +"You're a believer?" he said. "You don't mind my asking?" + +"Not a bit," said Carthew. "I'm a believer. And what's more, I'm a +believer in an organised, visible Church, not because it's vital, but +because it's expedient. Only its stained-glass windows, if they _must_ +be stained, should contain blacksmiths and boxers and wireless +telegraphists, with some bank clerks and a bus driver, and of course +some children." Mrs. Carthew had just brought out the twins, "for of +such is the Kingdom of Heaven." + + Your affect. cousin, + PETER HARDING. + +P.S.--Rogers is coming to dinner with us, as you suggested, before he +goes back to Cumberland. + + + + +XXV + +_To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _October_ 3, 1910. + +MY DEAR HUGH, + +When you write and ask me to tell you what books I read during my +illness I can see an ancient accusation of yours peering at me behind +the question--as though you had visibly added that, except when +indisposed, I never read books at all. And if it weren't that I too find +other people's reading so interesting, though less informing perhaps +than their pictures, I might possibly stand upon my dignity, and decline +to supply you with an answer. And in any case, now that I come to +reflect a little, this will be rather a difficult thing to do. For +having got me at a disadvantage, you see, I could no longer pick and +choose, as is my wont when the health within me is rude and exacting. I +could no longer demand haughtily of a book that it must make me read it, +or remain within its covers for ever unread. My defences were down, and +I had perforce to roll over, hands up, for anything in the shape of book +with which Accident and Mudie had happened to endow my house. And as a +result I read half a dozen novels that, as the Americans say, left me +cold, although I must needs give them the credit of having whiled away +the time. Moreover, before dismissing them thus unkindly, I must +remember that they were each the work of somebody's hand and brain, and +the hard work too--at any rate so far as the hand was concerned--as +anyone who has tried to put eighty thousand words of even unimaginative +English upon paper would surely bear witness. Some of it too, one could +see, was the rather tired work of minds that should really have been +(perhaps only too willingly) lying fallow of production. And I think +that I noticed this particularly in an altogether unimportant little +volume called "Daisy's Aunt" by Mr. E. F. Benson, that may well stand +for a sorrowful example. It's true that it was merely a two-shilling +story; but even so, it was surely an unworthy one. And yet, I suppose, +there _is_ a public that likes to devour these descriptions of very +ordinary London drawing-rooms and very usual Thames-side bungalows--that +would fain listen to even the weariest repetitions of the somewhat +annoying slang of the "oh you heavenly person" type that for the moment +is being affected by Mr. Benson's "quite nice people." And having thus +found, or created, such a public, and designed the precise bait that it +requires, I suppose that one is justified in hooking, as often as may +be, one's share of their two-shilling pieces. But alas for the artist in +Mr. Benson, in whose books there have been passages good enough of their +kind to have made, perhaps, three or four pieces of real literature that +few, I suppose, would have bought, but that some, at any rate, would +have liked to keep upon their shelves. And yet again, who is to say that +Mr. Benson (as representing not a few) has not after all chosen his +better way? For if his popularity has been costly, it is at any rate of +a clean and healthy sort, and one that may well, perhaps, be +substituting itself for vogues unworthier and less wholesome. + +They form an interesting study, these three brothers, not merely in +heredity of talent, but because, as it seems to me, they stand very high +in that small but growing band of really able writers, who possess also +the knack of a popular appeal. The sons of a religious, scholarly, and +discreet father, who himself had the power of attracting both attention +and success, these qualities, with no suspicion of a more wayward +genius, have descended upon them in very generous measure. The social +sense, the faculty of choosing the right friends, and a gift for getting +them on paper; the high purpose, clerically moulded; the gentle inward +warring of trained intellect and instinctive orthodoxy; to each has +fallen a share of his father's mantle, wherewith to make himself a +garment. And the mental pabulum that they provide is just what is wanted +by a large number of active, intelligent men and women to whom genius is +at all times unsympathetic; and by the yet greater company--including +most of us, I suppose--to whom its strongest appeal is a matter of mood +and place. Every generation seems to provide itself with such writers, +and as a rule rewards them well; and while, no doubt, it is genius alone +that survives, with a light that can never remain hidden, the others, by +their more instant and transient appeal, do yeoman work, and are +gathered honourably to their fathers. For we may not always be tuned to +the tang of Stevenson or the burr of Dr. John Brown. But we are seldom +incapable of sitting with enjoyment at some College Window, or allowing +the lesser voices to prepare us for those that are mightier than they. + +And never, perhaps, has a generation possessed so many of these. Never +certainly has their level of eloquence been so high. Hichens and Locke +and Anthony Hope, Phillpotts, Marriott, Munro, and Wells, with Hewlett +and de Morgan a little nearer, perhaps, to the stars, and a score of +others close upon their heels--how sound and various is their artistry, +and how consistent, as a whole, is the quality of their output. For +this, one thinks, must be the besetting danger of all these skilled +professionals--to avoid, on the one hand, the Scylla of over-repetition +(to which most of the monthly magazines were long ago safely anchored) +and on the other, the more dangerous Charybdis of a too venturesome +novelty. Upon the first (and still confining oneself to the more +considerable writers) Mr. Benson, the essayist, for example, would seem, +more nearly than many, to be in danger of foundering. While upon the +second I can think of Conan Doyle as having bumped as badly as most +writers of an equal eminence. For while there is no man who can spin a +better yarn for a dull journey (even if he has never given us a +Brushwood Boy), his particular talent is about as at home among the +delicate domesticities of his "Duet with an Occasional Chorus" as would +be some genial pugilist with the "Pot-pourri of a Surrey Garden." And +yet, while one could pile up examples of sad wreckage upon both these +rocks, the wonder, after all, is that there is really so little of it. + +Mr. Benson, no doubt, will put up his helm in time; and Sir Arthur has +been wise enough, as far as I know, to avoid any further emulation of +Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Mitford. But it is, perhaps, to Mrs. Humphry Ward +that one naturally seems to turn for a demonstration of the completely +median course--so rigidly median indeed, in its lofty mediocrity, that I +am sometimes at a loss to account for her very great popularity even +among (as the critics have called it) the circulating-library public. +For though she has a gift, and a very considerable one, for bringing +together the materials--a little machine-made, perhaps--of dramatic +incident, one may search her books in vain for a single thrill that they +have produced; while of humour they contain not a semblance. Indeed they +form, as it seems to me, a long series of admirably well-laid fires, for +which only the matches are wanting. As Dr. Brown would have said, she is +the Maker, not the Mother, of her books. And I think hers must be the +twentieth-century triumph of the college-bred lady inspector. + +It's strange how increasingly one misses, when it is absent, this +underlying sense of humour; so much so indeed that one perceives it more +and more to be a _sine qua non_ of all towering and durable achievement. +Given Meredith's humour, how Hardy, with his first-hand observation, his +extraordinary detachment, and the beautiful lucidity of his English, +would have loomed above the creator of Sir Willoughby. With humour for +its lightning, how Tess would have stricken us to the heart. And how +poor a substitute for it is irony, howsoever its subjects may deserve +it. To withstand the years it must, no doubt, surround itself with the +stronger qualities--depth and simplicity and desire--or Barrie, least of +the Immortals, would be among their giants; and Jacobs would be knocking +at their door. But that Olympus demands it let all testify who have +tried to love Sordello, or watched Jude fade ever deeper into his +obscurity, or read again, a generation later, the rhapsodies of +Inglesant and Elsmere. There are a few exceptions of course, chiefly, I +think, in the sphere of the short story, the mere _conte_, and among the +poets, of whom perhaps Wordsworth is the one that springs most readily +to the mind. By the way, I saw a discussion (a rather unkindly one) in +one of the magazines, a year or two ago, as to the worst line in +reputable poetry, and I am rather afraid that last Sunday I discovered +it, and that Wordsworth must be regarded as its sponsor. Here it is, and +one grain of humour would surely have made it impossible. + + Spade! with which Wilkinson has tilled his land. + +And yet he has written a sonnet or two, and at least one ode, that are +as immortal, I suppose, as anything in letters. + +But I don't seem to have told you very much about my bedside books. And +the truth of it is that "Daisy's Aunt" is the only title that I can +remember, though it may conveniently be stretched, perhaps, to embrace +them all. For it concluded, if I remember rightly, with the matrimony of +four persons; and the others also are now a blur to me of ultimate +marriages--marriages between pathological pianists and high-born, +introspective damsels; and marriages between athletic young gentlemen, +good at puncture-mending, and the distressed maidens whose tyres had +become deflated. + +Of the books, on the other hand, that have made me read them--rare and +beloved visitors--there have been fewer this year than usual, though it +is I, and not the books, that must bear the chief blame for this. The +two latest of these, separated by an interval of months, and both, I +believe, already elderly as the lives of modern novels go, are "The +Cliff End" and "Captain Margaret." The first of these delighted me from +cover to cover, in spite of some exaggerations of character-drawing and +dialogue; and I reverently bow my head to its author as having made +himself at a bound the laureate, not only of the bath-tub, but of that +peculiarly distressing variety of it that is very wide and shallow, with +a dimple in it that cracks when you stand upon it, and a capacity for +water that no housemaid has ever satisfied. It is perhaps too late for +the nature of this vessel to change. But never more, with that rosy +vision of sponging maidenhood before my eyes, shall I regard it as +anything but blessed. + +So it's a book for which I should like to prophesy life, though with +less certainty, perhaps, than "Captain Margaret," upon the deck of his +_Broken Heart_, carries the very germ of it in his delicate hands. For +to his eldorado of dreams we have all of us, at one time or another, +turned our eyes. And in his schooner might have sailed any Quixote of +history, lucky indeed to find a Cammock for his navigator. + +And yet who am I to be thus prophesying so boldly? For the third of my +books has been a collection of Oscar Wilde's contributions to the "Pall +Mall Gazette," full of such forecasts, and written, too, by a practised +hand. Has one half of them been verified? I think not. And yet I suspect +that few critics could more equably confront a reprinting of their +twenty-year-old opinions. Looking through this book, I read, for +example, whole pages devoted to the novel of Miss So-and-so whom one +would have supposed, in the eighties, to have been an emerging George +Eliot. And how desperately must the praise have fired her to further +efforts. Yet what, in 1910, has become of poor Miss So-and-so; and where +are those great works that were so certainly to be? There is the writer +himself too, so young then, with his brilliant flippancies--his +impeachment of the British Cook, for instance, with her passion for +combining pepper and gravy and calling it soup, and her inveterate habit +of sending up bread poultices with pheasant--and all his promises of +grace. + +So, upon the whole, it's a sad book; and here, for a brisker comment +upon all that I have been writing, comes a volume of American essays +that has just been lent to Esther, wherein I am positively assured that +the volumes of Mrs. Humphry Ward are quite dangerously immoral! While +there, upon a chair, lies a novel, "Mr. Meeson's Will," that Rupert +Morris has just recommended to me as being his beau-ideal of a really +outstanding story. So let me lie low. I have spoken out my literary +heart to you, as any man, on occasion, should have the courage to do. +But now let me lie low. For by what standards am I judging, after all, +who have only spent an hour in Chicago, and never a moment east of Suez? + +You will remember Morris, whom you met here during his last visit to +England. And as you remember him so he is, with perhaps an added grey +hair or two in his moustache, and a few more upon his temples. For the +rest, he is just as lean and brown and boyish as he has always been, and +with a touch of deference in his first greetings to Esther and me that +has survived from the school-days, when he was a comparative nipper, and +that he will carry, I suppose, since he is English of the English, until +common earth shall level us all. He was looking, when he first came in, +rather hesitating and ill at ease, with his title, as it were, tucked +awkwardly under his arm. Much like this I have seen him at school, on +some Old Boys' Day, coming back to the pavilion after making his +century, with an uncomfortable shove at his cap, and something about the +bowlers having been "dead off their luck." + +Finding us alone however, and not disposed to worry him, he cheered up +amazingly, and was soon chattering to us briskly about his various +adventures. His personal part in these would seem as a rule to have been +conspicuous by its dullness; but the adventures themselves were well +worth hearing about. And it was only quite accidentally, as he was +leaving for Stoke, that we discovered him to be seconded for some +special duties in the colonies--"imperial defence, don't you know, and +all that sort of thing; rather an interesting job." + +And did I tell you, by the way, that the Poles have bequeathed us their +baby during their visit to Italy? Esther has just brought her in, and +she is staring at me now with the solemnest eyes in creation--little +pools of Siloam, but with the angels just going to be busy. I must go to +them, and be healed. + + Ever yrs., + P. H. + + + + +XXVI + +_To John Summers, M.B., c/o the Rev. W. B. La Touche, High Barn, +Winchester._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _October_ 18, 1910. + +MY DEAR JACK, + +I have just received your letter, and also the accountant's statement as +regards Dr. Singleton's books; and I have instructed the solicitors to +sell out enough of your stock to buy the quarter-share of his practice +upon which you and he have agreed. If you can manage to obtain with it +an equal proportion of his skill, kindliness, and cheerful adequacy you +may be quite sure that the advantage of the bargain will not be +altogether upon his side. For though books are important of course, if +the man who keeps them is sound you needn't trouble your head so very +much about them. And Singleton is sound through and through--not exactly +one of those brilliant men, perhaps, of whom, as operating surgeons, Sir +Frederick Treves has declared himself to be so justly timid, but what +is far better, one of those level-headed, big-hearted general +practitioners, tender of hand and essentially careful, in whose +professional history mistakes have been, and will continue to be, +practically unknown. + +Moreover he was never, even as a student, one of those people who have +set out to purchase skill in their own profession by the sacrifice of +very nearly every other human interest. _Nihil humani a me alienum puto_ +has been his own as well as his hospital's motto. And you must some day +get him to tell you the story of how an odd little insight into esoteric +Buddhism that he was once curious enough to obtain became the means of +saving the life, to say nothing of the sanity, of one of the most +valuable men of our time. That late cut of his, too, is still well worth +seeing; and there are not many of my friends who can go straighter to +the heart of a book or a picture--that is, if the book or the picture +has a heart to be got to. + +He may not be able to excise a Gasserian ganglion, or know very much +about the researches of Calmette or von Pircquet. But he knows precisely +when to call in the men who do. And he's just the sort of assistant with +whom they feel safe in setting out to work. While, on the other hand, +upon a hundred points--little everyday problems of medical practice, +unclassified ailments that have never got into the text-books or been +dignified with a Latin name, doubtful beginnings of more definite +illnesses, their home-treatment, and the adequate settlement of the +domestic problems that they involve--there isn't a man in Harley Street +who could give a more valuable opinion. And he has performed a +tracheotomy with his pocket-knife and a hair-pin, five miles from +anywhere, in the heart of the Hampshire downs. + +Such men are not only the pillars of our profession, but its topmost +pinnacles, even if the wreaths and the knighthoods but seldom come their +way. I am saying all this because I think that I can detect in your +letter, and certainly in the newer generation of qualifying students, a +kind of reluctance about going into general practice, as if this were in +a way an admission of failure, a sort of _dernier ressort_. Whereas of +course there is no point of view from which such a way of looking at it +is at all justifiable. General practice is at least as difficult, if it +is to be carried on well and successfully, as any special practice can +be, and probably more so; for the G.P. has to live continually, as it +were, with the results of his handiwork. He is always liable to meet his +failures round the next corner; and his mistakes may quite easily rent +the pew behind him in the parish church. The consultant, on the other +hand, comes into the family life from afar, and returns again, an hour +or two later, to the seclusion of his private fastness. He has brought +down his little bit of extra technical skill or knowledge. He has used +it for good or ill. And the results do not follow him, save indirectly, +and at a very comfortable distance. But the G.P. who has taken upon +himself the responsibility of calling him in must needs still bear upon +his shoulders not only the anxiety that heralds ultimate success, but a +large share of the possible obloquy that may follow failure. + +Moreover, in all the hundred extraneous interests that are involved, his +advice becomes of paramount importance. This would be the best room for +the patient from the point of view of quietness and aspect. But that, on +the other hand, is the room that he has been used to. His favourite +books and pictures surround him there in the old accustomed order. Does +the doctor think it better for him to be moved? His wife, his mother, +or his sister are anxious to nurse him. Are they strong enough or +skilful enough? What is the doctor's opinion on this point? Here is a +telephone message from the office. A disturbing point has arisen in the +conduct of a great business, and should be dealt with promptly. Are we +to worry the patient with it now, or postpone the settlement, with the +possibilities of greater anxieties later on? Let us wait, at any rate, +until the doctor comes. + +And from this household he has to drive home by a private school where +lies some boy with a cheerful countenance and a suspicious red rash on +his chest. It would never do to create a false alarm. But, on the other +hand, it would be more than disastrous to let the origin of some +sweeping epidemic go free for convenience' sake. And here is a +servant-maid in the surgery with a throat that looks as diphtheritic as +a throat can well be; and she comes from a dairy farm that supplies half +the town with milk, under the eyes of a government inspector; while the +rector's wife, nervous, and uncomfortably near forty, is expecting her +first, long-looked-for baby some time this afternoon. + +It may take a good man to remove successfully an adherent appendix or +an obscure tumour of the brain, or to diagnose some out-of-the-way +lesion of a heart valve. But such a man, after all, has spent the +greater portion of his professional life in dealing with no other +subjects but these. And it must surely require at least an equal +equipment, after its own kind, to deal wisely and rapidly with such +variously conflicting problems as I have just been describing. + +You are probably becoming a little bored by these commonplace remarks of +mine. But they are the sort of truism that will generally bear an +occasional reconsideration. And if I have a very private opinion, to +which you cannot subscribe, that the really able general practitioner is +perhaps the very best man in our ranks bar none, I am quite willing to +concede this extra superiority if you will grant him at least an equal +eminence to that of Sir Grosvenor le Draughte, as Mr. Russell has called +him in one of his recent books. + +So go into your practice with a good heart. Your experience as a locum +in Bristol and Shropshire will have prepared you for any little +mortifications that may be in waiting during your first few months. You +will be used to the disheartening fall of the countenance that greets +the junior partner when his senior was expected. And you will accept +with a grave countenance and an inward chuckle your knowledge of the +extremely frank criticism that is likely to herald and succeed your +first few visits. Even now there's a letter upon my desk from a +disrespectful young lady who shall be nameless. A new curate has made +his initial appearance in an Eastbourne drawing-room. "He shook hands +just like a baby," she writes, "and he stopped to tea, and he sprawled +all over the table, and he has quite nice eyes, but his mouth is just +like cook's when she's having one of her windy spasums." And if sixteen +can rise to heights like this, what about eighteen and twenty and +twenty-two? Nor are curates, alas, the only legitimate prey. I wonder if +there's a girls' school in your practice? + +You may lament too, for a little while perhaps, the slow dawning of +confidence in your new patients. But before very long you may even be +rather overwhelmed (quite privately of course) by the freedom and +completeness with which it is accorded you. And above all things, be +just your natural self in dealing with them, forgetting, if you can, +that you have ever even heard of such an attribute as a good bedside +manner. + +This reminds me that only last week, in a railway carriage, I overheard +two young ladies discussing a very sympathetic physician well known to +us both. One of them was wondering why he had always been so successful. +"Oh, that," said the other cheerfully, "is because he's so frightfully +good at comforting the relatives--_afterwards_, you know." + +If your news must be bad, tell it soberly and promptly. It's +seldom--very seldom--wise to conceal it for some dubious temporary +benefit. And if you are in doubt about any of their maladies let them +know it quite frankly, explaining to them in language suited to their +degree of education and intelligence exactly why this should be the +case. + +There's been a good deal written lately about the personal factor in +treatment, the Psychology of the Physician, and the mental therapeutics +at his command. And I even saw a letter in the "Lancet," a few weeks +ago, urging that the practical application of Personality in the +sick-room should form one of the recognised subjects of the medical +curriculum. But in the first place, I'm exceedingly doubtful if the +modesty of our profession is so excessively marked as to demand for its +correction a course of instruction in the conscious prescribing of its +own personality. And in the second, I fail to see how this latter could +ever be done without, by the very act, considerably altering that +uncertain quantity, at any rate so far as its victim was concerned. And +what would one's _ego_ be like, I wonder, after ten years' conscientious +labour? So I shouldn't worry too much about your personality if I were +you. It will be a good thing, no doubt, to get all you can into it by +encouraging such tentacles as it may put forth to the sun and the +breeze. But what other people are to get out of it is a matter with +which you may quite properly, I think, be too busy to concern yourself. + +While I'm still in the pulpit, let me recommend you to husband your +energies. Don't play tennis all the afternoon (even with Amaryllis) if +you have been up all night. Go to sleep in the hammock, instead, over a +book or a paper or a letter from Uncle Peter. And don't forget sometimes +to say your prayers. For whatever may be one's private notions as to +their ultimate Destination; whether one affects a belief in some +beneficent Overlord, once incarnate; or regards God as the ever-growing +sum of all higher human volitions; or, remembering this infinitesimal +particle of earth in the greatness of the universe, considers such a +conception to be inadequate; or admits only some possible +Starting-point, a kind of Divine Convenience upon which to found +theories; or has never thought about the matter at all--it's always a +gracious and comforting act to remove one's moral hat, as it were (even +if reverence goes no further) to Something at any rate bigger than most +of us. While even on the very chilliest of auto-suggestion grounds there +is still a word to be said for it as a vehicle wherein to despatch one's +extra troubles to some handy mental cemetery. For prayer, whether we +look upon it as sacred or superstitious, must still, as the hymn says, +be the soul's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed. And occasional +expression is about as valuable a prelude to the acquiring of knowledge +as any that are going. + +So I may as well tell you at once that I know nothing whatever about +motor-cars, and therefore find the last half of your letter entirely +unintelligible. But I gather that the one you mean to purchase combines +speed, silence, and freedom from odour in a quite unusual degree. Some +day, no doubt, I shall be sponging upon you for a lesson in driving +it--or him--or do you call the thing her? + + Yr. affect. uncle, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +XXVII + +_To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _November_ 7, 1910. + +MY DEAR SALLY, + +This is going to be a short letter because the news that it contains is +probably speeding to you already--from Esther, to whom its greatness is +not unmixed with tears; and from Molly, to whom its joy is of the +eternal gold. Ten days ago she came back to us from Stoke, where, as she +told us, she had been having a good time, but seemed now to have +fulfilled her little contract. For the house-party had broken up: Horace +had long ago made a late return to Cambridge; Carthew was in the Temple, +and Pole in Fleet Street; Hilary and Norah were off to Spain; and the +one or two extra guns, just leisurely shooting men, had betaken +themselves, at any rate superficially regretful, to other people's +houses. Lady Wroxton was better--very nearly her old self, and for the +moment wrapped up, heart and soul, in her nephew Rupert. It had been a +pleasant visit. She kissed us very tenderly. And now it was high time +that she was back again among her girls at Hoxton. + +Two days later came a wire from Rupert asking if he might spend a night +with us on his way to Yorkshire. And in the evening he duly arrived. +Nobody else was dining with us that night, and our little party at the +table was perhaps quieter than usual. After dinner we were going to +smoke our pipes in the library with Esther and Molly, when Rupert drew +me aside and asked me to take him into the consulting-room. + +"I want you just to run over me," he said, with his eyes on a dangling +stethoscope, "to run over me rather thoroughly." + +I glanced at him anxiously. But in his evening clothes he seemed even +lither and more bronzed than ever. + +"Feeling bad anywhere?" I inquired. But he shook his head. + +"Rather fit," he admitted, as he took off his coat and waistcoat. And as +I suspected, I could find nothing wrong with him. On the contrary, he +appeared to be in the very pink of condition, for all his tropical +sojournings. + +"Good," he said; "and, as a matter of fact, I saw Manson this morning, +and West this afternoon, and they both told me the same thing." + +I began to laugh at him, though he was speaking very seriously. "You're +surely not becoming a hypochondriac?" I asked. + +"No," he said gravely; "I don't think so. But I'm forty-seven, you see. +And I want to get married." + +I was, perhaps, rather taken aback at this, though I scarcely knew why. +And he himself appeared to consider the idea as savouring somewhat of +presumption. For he blushed a little as he slowly collected his clothes. +Somehow we had neither of us thought of him as being a marrying man. +Then, as he began to dress himself again, I congratulated him, and asked +him if the lady was known to me. He hesitated for a moment, and then +smiled. + +"Yes, I think she is," he said; "though I doubt if you'd consider me +much of a husband for her." + +He filled his pipe thoughtfully. + +"For though in some ways she seems to me to be rather old for her +years--old-fashioned, you know, and womanly, and all that--she's really +rather young." + +He seemed to consider this a difficulty. Then he looked at me with a +kind of deprecating straightness. + +"You'd be giving her," he said, "to a fellow who's old enough to be her +father." + +I suppose that I looked a little surprised. + +"Yes, I do," he said humbly; "I mean Molly." + +We sucked our pipes in silence for a minute or two, looking at one +another through the tobacco smoke. Then I asked him if he had ever +pointed out to Molly her striking lack of modernity. He shook his head. + +"Hadn't the pluck," he confessed; "but it's so obvious, isn't it?" + +He glanced at me anxiously. + +"But you mustn't think I'm against it," he said. "It's so rare nowadays. +And I think it's beautiful; and anyway, it's just what I've been wanting +all my life." + +"You'll let me talk to Esther?" I asked presently. + +"I should like to talk to her myself," he answered, "only I'm such a +fool at these things." + +He lit another match. + +"Look here," he went on, "I don't want you to tell me what you both +think for a week--till I come back from Yorkshire. I'm too old for her, +I know. But I seem to be pretty sound, and I--well, dash it all, Peter, +you know her better than I do, although you--d'you know, by the way, +that you rather put me off her in that last letter of yours?" + +"Did I?" I asked. "Perhaps that was because I don't really know her so +well." + +"Well, first," he said, "there was that Lynn affair, of course. But +that's dead, isn't it?" + +"Quite," I told him; "and they've both gone out of mourning." + +"And then," he went on, "you made me think of a rather up-to-date young +woman, quite nice, of course," he looked at me apologetically, "but +perhaps just a little bit self-complacent. Whereas I found in her, +instead, everything that I've always worshipped most, you know--from +rather a long way off." + + * * * * * + +That was a week ago. And since he left, as you will imagine, both Esther +and I have done a good deal of thinking. For on the one side we +couldn't help feeling the absurdity of regarding Rupert as a son-in-law. +And on the other we should be giving our daughter--or rather watching +her go--into the hands of one of our oldest friends. Given love too, how +well should they be mated; both so strong, but he so abidingly simple, +so unchallenged by surrounding mysteries, and she so eager, so +delicately tuned to each passing subtlety of thought. + +Characteristically enough, he had neither told us, before he went, how +clearly he had shown Molly his feelings, nor asked us to discuss with +her, or to withhold, his announcement to ourselves. And so we said +nothing to her about it. But just now, as we were expecting his arrival, +I discovered, I think, that our desire for her had been fulfilled. For +with a shyness bringing back to me a little girl that I had forgotten, +she had perched herself on the arm of my chair; so that when his voice +was in the hall there wasn't very far to bend. + +"You told me to wait for Heaven, you know," she reminded me. And her +eyes confessed that it was standing at the door. + + Your affect. brother, + PETER. + +P.S.--I can see you pursing those wise lips of yours, and muttering that +Heaven has been a little sudden. But I believe that there are precedents +for this. + + + + +XXVIII + +_To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _November_ 26, 1910. + +MY DEAR AUNT JOSEPHINE, + +We shall be very disappointed if you don't come to Molly's wedding, +although it is to be rather a quiet one, or at any rate as quiet as we +can manage to keep it--not because we are anything but desirous that as +many people as are kind enough to do so may rejoice with us over the +occasion; but because, from Molly downwards, we have a temperamental +shrinking from crowded churches, pavement druggets, hired exotics, and +paid choir-boys. And you mustn't worry because your favourite porter has +been transferred to Leeds, and therefore won't be able to look after +your luggage at St. Pancras. Because one of us will be sure to meet you +with the carriage, and escort both you and it quite safely to Harley +Street. + +I have received your cheque, and will buy the little medicine-chest for +Rupert to-morrow. As you say, it's most important that the breadwinner +should try to keep himself in as good a state of health as possible, +even if he is so liable, as Rupert is, to be suddenly shot. And we all +think the old bracelet that you have sent to Molly very beautiful. Both +of them will so much want to thank you personally for your gifts that +you must really make up your mind, I think, to take the risks of the +journey (the most recent statistics show these to be quite small) and +stay with us here for a couple of nights from December 6th. + + Yr. affect. nephew, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +XXIX + +_To the Rev. Bruce Harding, S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _December_ 2, 1910. + +MY DEAR BRUCE, + +It was very good of you to enclose a note in your letter to Molly, and +the more so because I have an uncomfortable suspicion that I may have +wounded you a little when I wrote to you last. If only we could use +colours now, to express our deeper attitude on these occasions--as some +of your fellow-clergy wear stoles at certain seasons--with what pleasant +impunity could we write to one another in yellow, or purple, or red, +leaving black for the editor of "The Times," or the plumber whose bill +we're disputing. But, alas, even our lightest thoughts must needs go +forth clad like mutes at a funeral, and dependent upon those who meet +them to detect their forlorn humanity. And so if I have talked, as the +outsider that I am, too harshly of things that are dear to you, you +must forgive me even as Merridew has forgiven Rogers. + +For you know--why should I tell you?--that it was no Word from on high +that my puny humanity was attempting to challenge, but only the chains +(as they seem to me) of Its ecclesiastical exposition; as though man had +been made for the Church, and not the Church for man. And yet even thus +one can only bow before its achievement. For to be able, as the miner of +whom we read the other day, to sing "Lead, kindly Light" through the +foul air of some blocked-up coal-pit is better than to have all +knowledge--and an abundant justification of any creed that makes it +possible. + +"Thou wouldst not seek Me," says the Saviour in the "Mirror of Jesus," +"if thou hadst not found Me." + +Do you know the quotation? I came upon it by chance the other day as +repeated by Bourget in a book that I happened to be reading. And it +seems to me to contain very simply--if only we might give it something +more than an academic consent--just the one conception that is needed +for the true and permanent sweetening of all our religious +relationships. For they _are_ seeking, these pig-headed people who annoy +us so much--I think that, nowadays, we most of us can admit as much as +that. Methodist, Sacerdotalist, Hyde-Park Agnostic, Christian Socialist, +Roman Modernist, Traditional Romanist, High, Low, Broad, Middle, Open, +Closed (I wonder if God laughs sometimes at our resounding definitions), +or Free Lance--we cannot help pitying them, of course, according to our +several lights; but in so far as their sincerity is manifest, we do +behold in them the signs of a mistaken search. + +And yet, by that very fact, have they not really found? Not our +particular little glimpse of the Almighty and the Eternal, but some +other little glimpse--something, at any rate, that is evidently making +them strive for more; and something that they, like we, are desperately +anxious to share. Or why these dusts of conflict? + +And yet, perhaps, the dusts are inevitable, after all--the surest sign +that the Building grows beneath its million workers, and that the +mallets and chisels are being busy against that great day of Affirmation +when the Temple shall stand complete at the meeting-place of all our +roads. + +And meanwhile Molly and Rupert, at any rate, are feeling very +happy--with a proud humility, carefully concealed. His years have +seldom weighed heavily on Molly's future husband, though as a matter of +bald fact he is Mr. Pickwick's senior. And lately he has been dropping +them by handfuls. Molly, however, must have picked some of them up, I +fancy, and is wearing them with an appropriate dignity. + + Your affect. cousin, + PETER HARDING. + + + + +XXX + +_To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone._ + + + 91B HARLEY STREET, W., + _December_ 25, 1910, + 10.30 p.m. + +MY DEAR HUGH, + +This seems an odd sort of time at which to begin a letter--even to you. +But this has been an odd sort of Christmas, a kind of aftermath, as far +as its festivities have been concerned, of those demanded by Molly's +marriage. The two water-colours that you sent them, by the way, were +both lovely, quite in your happiest vein; and I am sorry that at present +they have no permanent wall to hang them on. But Rupert's colonial tour, +upon which they had to start early last week, will scarcely be finished, +I suppose, for twelve months; and even then their place of habitation +seems likely to be very movable. So, upon the whole, we have been a +quiet little party, or as quiet, at any rate, as Claire and Tom will +allow; and we decided to spend the afternoon at the hospital, which is +_en fête_ for some twenty-four hours, at the price, possibly, of a few +subsequent temperatures, but to the immediate benediction of all +concerned. + +Have you ever been to the hospital? I think not. And I daren't attempt +to describe it to you, chiefly, I suppose, on account of the natural +reticence, the _mauvaise bonte_, or the golden silence--I leave you to +select--with which most men avoid such subjects as their wives, their +souls, and their _alma mater_; but secondarily because, by the time my +letter reached you, the description would most probably have ceased to +be true. It would have added a storey, or sprouted a wing. Let me +content myself therefore with pointing out to you those two boys +standing rather awkwardly in one corner of the entrance-hall--the +left-hand corner between the cloak-room and the porter's desk. Both of +them have only just left school. The shiny-haired one, with the crimson +tie, and the gold buttons on his waistcoat, and the creases on his +rather striking trousers, was at one of our older foundations. The +other, with yesterday's collar round his neck, and a stain or two of +nitric acid upon his sleeves, has just won an entrance scholarship from +a private school at Camberwell. The second is the shyer of the two +perhaps, in spite of his ardent Fabianism and his bitter independence +of revealed religion. But both are a little nervous in that they are +only in their first year, and still, academically speaking, confined to +the study of the dog-fish in a remoter corner of the college. They are +feeling rather young, in fact, though the hospital's name is on their +visiting cards--something like new boys again, at the bottom of the +first form. + +Three Christmases from now, however, and they will be sauntering here +very much at their ease, waiting about with their house-physicians for +the two o'clock arrival of their chiefs from Harley Street. The gold +buttons will have disappeared, I think, by then, and the trousers will +be modester in hue; while on the other hand that collar will be above +suspicion, and you might search in vain for a trace of red corrosive. +Both, too, will be dangling stethoscopes, and would like, if they were +quite certain of the chairman, to be smoking a Virginian cigarette. In +other words, they have deserted the college for the "house." They have +become critics of the nursing staff, and their talk--not on Christmas +Day, of course--is of _râles_ and _rhonchi_ and the merits of their +respective H.P.'s. There are some of them standing about in the hall as +our party dismounts from the carriage. But the majority are already in +their favourite wards, whose walls they have been helping to decorate. +Far removed are they from the Sawyers of yesterday, though at times they +grow merry with wine. For the demands of examiners have become annually +more stringent; their hospital duties are arduous; and hard work, as +everybody knows, is the next-door neighbour to virtue. + +Give them but three Christmases more, and they will be even as this +white-coated and dignified young man whom Horace and I are watching as +he deals with the patients in the receiving-room. For these will drift +in from the streets and tenements, whether or no the day be a Festival, +and partly, perhaps, with an eye to possible good cheer. We wait a +little, as he stands there by the pillar, a curious contrast, with his +fresh face and athletic figure, to the slouching fleshiness of these big +navvies and the stunted urbanity of the rest. + +Behind him stand a couple of dressers, fresh from the college, willing, +but still perhaps a little bewildered, and to whom this all-knowing and +self-possessed young surgeon is something of a god. His treatment is +rapid--it has to be--for he is here primarily to sort out the cases +that come crowding in their daily hundreds. But he must never make a +mistake--a grave one, that is. And the remembrance of this has taught +him--no easy matter--to know real illness when he sees it with a pretty +high degree of certainty. So the bad cases he sets on one side. For if +possible they must be admitted; and at any rate they must be seen by the +house-surgeon or house-physician on duty. While as for the rest, they +may be given at once the necessary pill, or a desirable draught from +that decorated urn in the corner--there's a certain irony in that +particular wreath of holly--or despatched, with out-patient cards, to +appropriate special departments. + +And all this time there is flowing from him to the dressers a little +stream of wounds to be stitched, torn scalps to be cleaned, and sprains +and strains to be temporarily bandaged. Odder things too may be +demanding their youthful attention. Here, for instance, is a genial but, +alas, beery Irishwoman of vast _embonpoint_, whose wedding-ring has been +jammed into her finger, and must at all costs be removed. Alcoholic +invocations are breathed into the dresser's ear as he files patiently at +this brass emblem of married unity. Sure, darlin', she tells him, if +she could only be rid of her ould man as aisy, she'd be another woman +to-morrer, she would. While here, sitting next her, is a dark-eyed +twelve-year-old, holding out a pathetic little toe that has been stamped +upon by a passing dray-horse. It is attached to a very grimy foot that +was not, one fears, the only inhabitant of the stocking that contained +it. And the dresser is not sure if the bone is broken. She has the +countenance of a tear-stained Madonna; but her language, when he twists +her toe, becomes positively lurid. The other women titter or are +shocked, the Sister rebukes her, and young white-coat is called up for +reference. He likes the little girl, and gives her some chocolate, +whereupon she stifles half her sobs and most of her profanity. Yes, it's +a fracture all right. Does the dresser know how to put on a poroplastic +splint? The dresser looks a little uncertain. So white-coat gives him a +swiftly helping hand, and within five minutes is removing a decayed +Semitic molar that has been giving its owner _schmerz_ indescribable. +Accompanying this gentleman are his two sisters, a married brother with +his wife and family, and an elderly uncle, all of whom wail +incontinently to the general discomfort. Glancing over his shoulder, +young white-coat sends briefly for a porter, who courteously removes +them; and is only just in time, having extracted the tooth successfully, +to avoid the happy sufferer's embraces. He has never hurried; and yet by +the time that we have made our round of the dressing-rooms the benches +are empty, and he has disappeared to his pipe and his arm-chair. Can you +believe that but four years ago he was throwing chalk about the +dissecting-room, and stamping uproariously during lectures? + +This wonder has my hospital performed. And what am I to tell you of the +Sister who has witnessed it--whose shrewd eyes have beheld so many +dressers emerging rawly from the college or from Cambridge, becoming in +due time even as our white-clad friend, and passing hence, as he will +pass, into the staid gravity of the family doctor? + +There's a time--fortunately brief--in the career of the just-qualified +student when he is a little inclined to assert his professional +supremacy. How tenderly she watches him through it; and how, telling him +all things, she apparently tells him nothing! I wouldn't like to say how +many years she has stood there, or what sights, humorous, tragic, +unpaintably indecent, she has witnessed in all that time. And you could +certainly never guess them for yourself. Let me only say then that her +wisdom is more than the wisdom of many physicians, and that no gentler +fingers have touched the seamy side of life. + +And yet, I suppose, she was once a little girl, shinning up the orchard +trees for the apples at the top. And she can still, I believe, drop a +sentimental tear or two upon the last page of a novel. So can this be +yet another miracle that my hospital has wrought? Dear me--and we have +got no further than the receiving-room, and scarcely even thought about +the patients. + +Sometimes I wonder if the people whose pennies are invited to keep us +for a second ever realise the full significance of the instant that they +make their own. Not always, I think, for even I, who am in the hospital +three times a week, only get an occasional vision of it--chiefly on such +days as these, when one may travel its wards at large, unforbidden by +professional etiquette. Do they know, for example, that under the roof +of the out-patients' department there are two small boys--open-mouthed +little snorers of yesterday, sprawling about on the pavement inviting +trouble--whose tonsils during that moment have been successfully removed +from them? And can they perceive, in the same measure of time, a dozen +blocked-up ears and noses being skilfully examined by electrical +illumination? Do they realise that, simultaneously with all this, eight +short-sighted persons are being tested for spectacles, and two more +being operated upon for squint; that three men with diseased skins are +being prescribed for in another part of the building, and that four +women who were being consumed with lupus are now being cured with light; +that a poor servant-girl is under gas while her yet poorer teeth are +being removed, and that three others are being fitted with nerveless new +ones; that a little damsel with a dislocated hip is having it put in +plaster; that an elderly and rheumatic cab-driver is being helped with +radiant heat; and that some four hundred men and women of all +descriptions are waiting their turn for treatment? My numbers are +conservative; but, even so, does the gentleman on the underground +railway platform realise (to be merely sordid) that during his second +some five hundred pounds' worth of free operations are in progress? Does +he visualise the resultant satisfaction in all those squalid little +homes, the domestic relief, the returning efficiency, the rolled-away +anxiety, the dawning happiness? And does he remember that he has as yet +peeped into but one department of the great hospital that he is +supporting? + +But really, on a Christmas Day one shouldn't be thinking about these +things; and you must put them down to an elderly garrulity, or as being, +if you will, in the nature of a half-sorrowful farewell. For by next +Christmas, alas, my wards will have ceased to know me. The twenty years' +span allotted to me will have come to its close; and even to-day, at a +corner of the corridor, I overheard a hazarded guess at my successor. + +So after a long pilgrimage through gay and chattering wards--they were +all gay this afternoon, only you mustn't look, perhaps, at those quiet +corners--we at last found Esther and her party in the gayest of them +all. I will call it this, as being a very complete disguise if you +should ever quote me to the Sister of another. And here a troupe of +residents was delivering a little series of songs and dances, to the +complete delight of some forty patients and a background of visitors and +nurses. Its members were particularly hilarious. I fancy indeed that +they must have primed themselves with a little previous champagne--a +very little, and you must remember that at least two of them had been up +for most of the night. But nobody noticed this; and Claire, at any rate, +was very thoroughly taken by storm. + +"Won't they come back presently?" she asked. + +But the Sister shook her head. If Claire wanted to see them again she +must go off to some other ward. I saw her turn to Tom. + +"Shall we?" she said, and they slipped away together. But before they +went I heard her calling his particular attention to one of the players, +"the second from the left," she whispered, "the awfully handsome one"--a +new note for Claire? Yes, just a little new. + +And so we left it at last, driving out into the street through a small +crowd of eager, white-faced children, for some of whom, no doubt, its +walls were as the walls of Paradise. It was quite dark, with a blur of +rain upon the carriage windows; and for a minute or two the hospital, +with its long rows of lighted wards, towered dimly upon our left. + +"Just like a great big liner," said Claire, who had been down to +Southampton when Molly and Rupert sailed. And so indeed one could +imagine it--lifting its strong sides above all these crowded roof-tops, +with unshaken bows, and Hope upon the bridge, and Comfort, at least, to +minister in its cabins. + +"And yet there's something awful in it too," said Jeanie Graham. + +"Chiefly," explained Horace philosophically, "because we're going home +ourselves to an excellent Christmas dinner." + +"And happen to be feeling rather well," said Esther. + +"And partly, I suppose," added Jeanie, "because just now we're looking +at it from the outside." + +"And a little bit," I guessed, "because it stands, in a sense, for +Knowledge with a big K. And there are times when we're all rather afraid +of that--even when it wants to do us good." + +"But we run to it in the end," smiled Jeanie. + +Let me introduce you to her as she sits opposite to me in the +brougham--or to so much of her as is not obscured by Claire, who is +dividing her weight between Horace and his wife-apparent. Strictly +speaking, I suppose, she is scarcely to be described as pretty. Her +cheek-bones are the least shade too high, and her eyebrows just a trifle +too level. Here and there too her skin, still clinging to its Highland +brown, is powdered with tiny freckles; and though her nose is straight +enough, a purist might consider her mouth too big, and her chin perhaps +a little too firm--but very pleasantly so. Her hair is dark and wavy, +and in its natural setting--a grey tam-'o-shanter, I think, and the tail +of a Scotch mist--might well contain the deep, divine, dark dayshine of +the poet. And indeed I have been assured that it does. I have left her +eyes to the last, because at present she is standing away from them a +little. Regarded as mere windows to her mind they are well opened, +clear, and grey. But Horace, who has seen their owner leaning out of +them, could no doubt describe them better. And we think that he's a +fortunate young man. + +Our only other guest was Wensley, dragged reluctantly from Chelsea. His +year has had some of its usual disappointments. His big work wasn't +finished in time for the Academy, and is still in his studio. But though +the Chantrey trustees passed over the very beautiful bronze that he did +send, he has sold this to the National Gallery at Copenhagen for six +hundred pounds, and has spent, in consequence, a fortnight at +Whitby--his first holiday, I believe, in three years, since his invalid +aunt and sister absorb most of his usual earnings. He always looks odd +and uncomfortable in evening dress. But our very informal table +generally sets him at his ease. And he is an extreme favourite with both +Tom and Claire. To-night he remembered one of Tom's songs, and persuaded +him, after dinner, to deliver it--with a little hesitation at first (for +the poor boy has still got some scruples, I think), but ultimately to +his saving grace. He left us at ten o'clock, for the invalids' sake, by +which time Tom and Claire announced themselves to be feeling rather +sleepy, without, as I observed, any notable protest from Jeanie and +Horace. So they have both gone upstairs to bed; or at least I had +thought so. But a tentative whisper at my door-handle has aroused my +suspicions. I am busy writing to Mr. Pontrex, so that I shall be sure +not to hear anything; and slowly the crack widens between the door-edge +and the architrave. Across the blackness disclosed, flashes the gleam of +a white-frocked arm, like a turning trout in a pool; and presently a +brown hand, desperately silent, begins feeling for my key. I look at it +apprehensively (for I have become a little nervous on this point lately) +and am happily relieved to find it ringless. I must be very quick. + + * * * * * + +And yet, as you will have noticed, even Claire is growing up, still +faithful to a more boisterous March, but now and then holding out her +finger-tips to May. She reposes, as you may remember, in the little room +next to ours. And yesterday morning Esther called me from my +shaving-glass. For she had opened the door between, to discover that +Claire had flown. Whither we could guess very easily, as she was even +then hammering Tom with her pillow. But there, balanced face downwards +on the edge of the bolster, lay a momentarily forgotten photograph. +Esther touched it with a smile. + +"D'you think we ought to?" she asked. And then she drew back. But at +that moment a rather more vehement bump than its predecessors shook the +wall and floor so thoroughly that the photo slid down upon the sheets, +poised itself for a second upon its edge, and then dropped over, to +reveal the very debonair figure of Mr. George Alexander as the gallant +Rudolf Rassendyll. We looked at one another, and laughed--but only a +little. And then Esther restored the picture to its resting-place. + +Some day we shall meet him in the Park, and Claire will behold a very +genial, middle-aged gentleman, a little inclined to be plump. But he +won't be Rudolf Rassendyll. And what will happen to his likeness? + + * * * * * + +"She'll put it in her bottom drawer," smiles Esther, leaning over me as +I write, "and it'll become part of somebody else." + +She drops a kiss upon my occiput. + +"And now you must come to bed," she adds, "or perhaps to-morrow morning +you'll be tired." + +And by this, of course, she means "cross," though possibly, by some +blessed dispensation, she imagines that she doesn't. For long (as I am +minded to tell you, Hugh Pontrex), long before she's married, a woman +has made a garment for the man who is to wed her--a beautiful and rather +princely garment, and fortunately a bigger one than is usually required. +Because then, you see, she has only to take a tuck in it--and forget +about it--and there's her man clad in his coat, just as she had always +dreamed that he would come to her. Most women, I'm afraid, have to +deepen this tuck until there's no more stuff that they can turn. And by +that time, perhaps, we have begun to suspect that there has been some +tampering with our property. + +"D'you mean to say," we inquire bitterly, "that we've grown out of it +already?" + +And then it is that they must needs explain to us, with dewy eyes and +hands upon our shoulders, how it's only the same dear garment +still--_three times as thick_. + +"What nonsense," says Esther above my shoulder. + +"The garment?" I ask. + +"No, the--the tuck." + +But she looks a little conscious. + + Ever yours, + P. H. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Corner of Harley Street, by Henry Bashford + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORNER OF HARLEY STREET *** + +***** This file should be named 39681-8.txt or 39681-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/6/8/39681/ + +Produced by Annie McGuire. This book was produced from +scanned images of public domain material from the Internet +Archive. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |