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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Altar Fire
+by Arthur Christopher Benson
+(#3 in our series by Arthur Christopher Benson)
+
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+Title: The Altar Fire
+
+Author: Arthur Christopher Benson
+
+Release Date: November, 2003  [Etext #4612]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 19, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Altar Fire
+by Arthur Christopher Benson
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+
+THE ALTAR FIRE
+
+
+
+By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
+
+Cecidit autem ignis Domini,
+et voravit holocaustum
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+
+
+It will perhaps be said, and truly felt, that the following is a
+morbid book. No doubt the subject is a morbid one, because the
+book deliberately gives a picture of a diseased spirit. But a
+pathological treatise, dealing with cancer or paralysis, is not
+necessarily morbid, though it may be studied in a morbid mood. We
+have learnt of late years, to our gain and profit, to think and
+speak of bodily ailments as natural phenomena, not to slur over
+them and hide them away in attics and bedrooms. We no longer think
+of insanity as demoniacal possession, and we no longer immure
+people with diseased brains in the secluded apartments of lovely
+houses. But we still tend to think of the sufferings of the heart
+and soul as if they were unreal, imaginary, hypochondriacal things,
+which could be cured by a little resolution and by intercourse with
+cheerful society; and by this foolish and secretive reticence we
+lose both sympathy and help. Mrs. Proctor, the friend of Carlyle
+and Lamb, a brilliant and somewhat stoical lady, is recorded to
+have said to a youthful relative of a sickly habit, with stern
+emphasis, "Never tell people how you are! They don't want to know."
+Up to a certain point this is shrewd and wholesome advice. One does
+undoubtedly keep some kinds of suffering in check by resolutely
+minimising them. But there is a significance in suffering too. It
+is not all a clumsy error, a well-meaning blunder. It is a
+deliberate part of the constitution of the world.
+
+Why should we wish to conceal the fact that we have suffered, that
+we suffer, that we are likely to suffer to the end? There are
+abundance of people in like case; the very confession of the fact
+may help others to endure, because one of the darkest miseries of
+suffering is the horrible sense of isolation that it brings. And if
+this book casts the least ray upon the sad problem--a ray of the
+light that I have learned to recognise is truly there--I shall be
+more than content. There is no morbidity in suffering, or in
+confessing that one suffers. Morbidity only begins when one
+acquiesces in suffering as being incurable and inevitable; and the
+motive of this book is to show that it is at once curative and
+curable, a very tender part of a wholly loving and Fatherly design.
+
+A. C. B.
+
+Magdalene College, Cambridge,
+
+July 14, 1907.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+
+
+I had intended to allow the records that follow--the records of a
+pilgrimage sorely beset and hampered by sorrow and distress--to
+speak for themselves. Let me only say that one who makes public a
+record so intimate and outspoken incurs, as a rule, a certain
+responsibility. He has to consider in the first place, or at least
+he cannot help instinctively considering, what the wishes of the
+writer would have been on the subject. I do not mean that one who
+has to decide such a point is bound to be entirely guided by that.
+He must weigh the possible value of the record to other spirits
+against what he thinks that the writer himself would have
+personally desired. A far more important consideration is what
+living people who play a part in such records feel about their
+publication. But I cannot help thinking that our whole standard in
+such matters is a very false and conventional one. Supposing, for
+instance, that a very sacred and intimate record, say, two hundred
+years old, were to be found among some family papers, it is
+inconceivable that any one would object to its publication on the
+ground that the writer of it, or the people mentioned in it, would
+not have wished it to see the light. We show how weak our faith
+really is in the continuance of personal identity after death, by
+allowing the lapse of time to affect the question at all; just as
+we should consider it a horrible profanation to exhume and exhibit
+the body of a man who had been buried a few years ago, while we
+approve of the action of archaeologists who explore Egyptian
+sepulchres, subscribe to their operations, and should consider a
+man a mere sentimentalist who suggested that the mummies exhibited
+in museums ought to be sent back for interment in their original
+tombs. We think vaguely that a man who died a few years ago would
+in some way be outraged if his body were to be publicly displayed,
+while we do not for an instant regard the possible feelings of
+delicate and highly-born Egyptian ladies, on whose seemly sepulture
+such anxious and tender care was expended so many centuries ago.
+
+But in this case there is no such responsibility. None of the
+persons concerned have any objection to the publication of these
+records, and as for the writer himself he was entirely free from
+any desire for a fastidious seclusion. His life was a secluded one
+enough, and he felt strongly that a man has a right to his own
+personal privacy. But his own words sufficiently prove, if proof
+were needed, that he felt that to deny the right of others to
+participate in thoughts and experiences, which might uplift or help
+a mourner or a sufferer, was a selfish form of individualism with
+which he had no sympathy whatever. He felt, and I have heard him
+say, that one has no right to withhold from others any reflections
+which can console and sustain, and he held it to be the supreme
+duty of a man to ease, if he could, the burden of another. He knew
+that there is no sympathy in the world so effective as the sharing
+of similar experiences, as the power of assuring a sufferer that
+another has indeed trodden the same dark path and emerged into the
+light of Heaven. I will even venture to say that he deliberately
+intended that his records should be so used, for purposes of
+alleviation and consolation, and the bequest that he made of his
+papers to myself, entrusting them to my absolute discretion, makes
+it clear to me that I have divined his wishes in the matter. I
+think, indeed, that his only doubt was a natural diffidence as to
+whether the record had sufficient importance to justify its
+publication. In any case, my own duty in the matter is to me
+absolutely clear.
+
+But I think that it will be as well for me to sketch a brief
+outline of my friend's life and character. I would have preferred
+to have done this, if it had been possible, by allowing him to
+speak for himself. But the earlier Diaries which exist are nothing
+but the briefest chronicle of events. He put his earlier
+confessions into his books, but he was in many ways more
+interesting than his books, and so I will try and draw a portrait
+of him as he appeared to one of his earliest friends. I knew him
+first as an undergraduate, and our friendship was unbroken after
+that. The Diary, written as it is under the shadow of a series of
+calamities, gives an impression of almost wilful sadness which is
+far from the truth. The requisite contrast can only be attained by
+representing him as he appeared to those who knew him.
+
+He was the son of a moderately wealthy country solicitor, and was
+brought up on normal lines. His mother died while he was a boy. He
+had one brother, younger than himself, and a sister who was younger
+still. He went to a leading public school, where he was in no way
+distinguished either in work or athletics. I gathered, when I first
+knew him, that he had been regarded as a clever, quiet, good-
+natured, simple-minded boy, with a considerable charm of manner,
+but decidedly retiring. He was not expected to distinguish himself
+in any way, and he did not seem to have any particular ambitions. I
+went up to Cambridge at the same time as he, and we formed a very
+close friendship. We had kindred tastes, and we did not concern
+ourselves very much with the social life of the place. We read,
+walked, talked, played games, idled, and amused ourselves together.
+I was more attached to him, I think, than he was to me; indeed, I
+do not think that he cared at that time to form particularly close
+ties. He was frank, engaging, humorous, and observant; but I do not
+think that he depended very much upon any one; he rather tended to
+live an interior life of his own, of poetical and fanciful
+reflection. I think he tended to be pensive rather than high-
+spirited--at least, I do not often remember any particular
+ebullition of youthful enthusiasm. He liked congenial company, but
+he was always ready to be alone. He very seldom went to the rooms
+of other men, except in response to definite invitations; but he
+was always disposed to welcome any one who came spontaneously to
+see him. He was a really diffident and modest fellow, and I do not
+think it even entered into his head to imagine that he had any
+social gifts or personal charm. But I gradually came to perceive
+that his mind was of a very fine quality. He had a mature critical
+judgment, and, though I used to think that his tastes were somewhat
+austere, I now see that he had a very sure instinct for alighting
+upon what was best and finest in books and art alike. He used to
+write poetry in those days, but he was shy of confessing it, and
+very conscious of the demerits of what he wrote. I have some of his
+youthful verses by me, and though they are very unequal and full of
+lapses, yet he often strikes a firm note and displays a subtle
+insight. I think that he was more ambitious than I perhaps knew,
+and had that vague belief in his own powers which is characteristic
+of able and unambitious men. His was certainly, on the whole, a
+cold nature in those days. He could take up a friendship where he
+laid it down, by virtue of an easy frankness and a sympathy that
+was intellectual rather than emotional. But the suspension of
+intercourse with a friend never troubled him.
+
+I became aware, in the course of a walking tour that I took with
+him in those days, that he had a deep perception of the beauties of
+nature; it was not a vague accessibility to picturesque
+impressions, but a critical discernment of quality. He always said
+that he cared more for little vignettes, which he could grasp
+entire, than for wide and majestic prospects; and this was true of
+his whole mind.
+
+I suppose that I tended to idealise him; but he certainly seems to
+me, in retrospect, to have then been invested with a singular
+charm. He was pure-minded and fastidious to a fault. He had
+considerable personal beauty, rather perhaps of expression than of
+feature. He was one of those people with a natural grace of
+movement, gesture and speech. He was wholly unembarrassed in
+manner, but he talked little in a mixed company. No one had fewer
+enemies or fewer intimate friends. The delightful ears soon came to
+an end, and one of the few times I ever saw him exhibit strong
+emotion was on the evening before he left Cambridge, when he
+altogether broke down. I remember his quoting a verse from Omar
+Khayyam:--
+
+
+  "Yet ah! that spring should vanish with the rose,
+   That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close,"
+
+
+and breaking off in the middle with sudden tears.
+
+It was necessary for me to adopt a profession, and I remember
+envying him greatly when he told me that his father, who, I
+gathered, rather idolised him, was quite content that he should
+choose for himself at his leisure. He went abroad for a time; and I
+met him next in London, where he was proposing to read for the bar;
+but I discovered that he had really found his metier. He had
+written a novel, which he showed me, and though it was in some ways
+an immature performance, it had, I felt, high and unmistakable
+literary qualities. It was published soon afterwards and met with
+some success. He thereupon devoted himself to writing, and I was
+astonished at his industry and eagerness. He had for the first time
+found a congenial occupation. He lived mostly at home in those
+days, but he was often in London, where he went a good deal into
+society. I do not know very much about him at this time, but I
+gather that he achieved something of a social reputation. He was
+never a voluble talker; I do not suppose he ever set the table in a
+roar, but he had a quiet, humorous and sympathetic manner. His
+physical health was then, as always, perfect. He was never tired or
+peevish; he was frank, kindly and companionable; he talked little
+about himself, and had a genuine interest in the study of
+personality, so that people were apt to feel at their best in his
+society. Meanwhile his books came out one after another--not great
+books exactly, but full of humour and perception, each an advance
+on the last. By the age of thirty he was accepted as one of the
+most promising novelists of the day.
+
+Then he did what I never expected he would do; he fell wildly and
+enthusiastically in love with the only daughter of a
+Gloucestershire clergyman, a man of good family and position. She
+was the only child; her mother had died some years before, and her
+father died shortly after the marriage. She was a beautiful,
+vigorous girl, extraordinarily ingenuous, simple-minded, and
+candid. She was not clever in the common acceptance of the term,
+and was not the sort of person by whom I should have imagined that
+my friend would have been attracted. They settled in a pleasant
+house, which they built in Surrey, on the outskirts of a village.
+Three children were born to them--a boy and a girl, and another
+boy, who survived his birth only a few hours. From this time he
+almost entirely deserted London, and became, I thought, almost
+strangely content with a quiet domestic life. I was often with them
+in those early days, and I do not think I ever saw a happier
+circle. It was a large and comfortable house, very pleasantly
+furnished, with a big garden. His father died in the early years of
+the marriage, and left him a good income; with the proceeds of his
+books he was a comparatively wealthy man. His wife was one of those
+people who have a serene and unaffected interest in human beings.
+She was a religious woman, but her relations with others were
+rather based on the purest kindliness and sympathy. She knew every
+one in the place, and, having no touch of shyness, she went in and
+out among their poorer neighbours, the trusted friend and
+providence of numerous families; but she had not in the least what
+is called a parochial mind. She had no touch of the bustling and
+efficient Lady Bountiful. The simple people she visited were her
+friends and neighbours, not her patients and dependents. She was
+simply an overflowing fountain of goodness, and it was a natural to
+her to hurry to a scene of sorrow and suffering as it is for most
+people to desire to stay away. My friend himself had not the same
+taste; it was always rather an effort to him to accommodate himself
+to people in a different way of life; but it ought to be said that
+he was universally liked and respected for his quiet courtesy and
+simplicity, and fully as much for his own sake as for that of his
+wife. This fact could hardly be inferred from his Diary, and indeed
+he was wholly unconscious of it himself, because he never realised
+his natural charm, and indeed was unduly afraid of boring people by
+his presence.
+
+He was not exactly a hard worker, but he was singularly regular;
+indeed, though he sometimes took a brief holiday after writing a
+book, he seldom missed a day without writing some few pages. One of
+the reasons why they paid so few visits was that he tended, as he
+told me, to feel so much bored away from his work. It was at once
+his occupation and his recreation. He was not one of those who
+write fiercely and feverishly, and then fall into exhaustion; he
+wrote cheerfully and temperately, and never appeared to feel the
+strain. They lived quietly, but a good many friends came and went.
+He much preferred to have a single quest, or a husband and wife, at
+a time, and pursued his work quietly all through. He used to see
+that one had all one could need, and then withdrew after tea-time,
+not reappearing until dinner. His wife, it was evident, was devoted
+to him with an almost passionate adoration. The reason why life
+went so easily there was that she studied unobtrusively his
+smallest desires and preferences; and thus there was never any
+sense of special contrivance or consideration for his wishes: the
+day was arranged exactly as he liked, without his ever having to
+insist upon details. He probably did not realise this, for though
+he liked settled ways, he was sensitively averse to feeling that
+his own convenience was in any way superseding or overriding the
+convenience of others. It used to be a great delight and
+refreshment to stay there. He was fond of rambling about the
+country, and was an enchanting companion in a tete-a-tete. In the
+evening he used to expand very much into a genial humour which was
+very attractive; he had, too, the art of making swift and subtle
+transitions into an emotional mood; and here his poetical gift of
+seeing unexpected analogies and delicate characteristics gave his
+talk a fragrant charm which I have seldom heard equalled.
+
+It was indeed a picture of wonderful prosperity, happiness, and
+delight. The children were engaging, clever, and devotedly
+affectionate, and indeed the atmosphere of mutual affection seemed
+to float over the circle like a fresh and scented summer air. One
+used to feel, as one drove away, that though one's visit had been a
+pleasure, there would be none of the flatness which sometimes
+follows the departure of a guest, but that one was leaving them to
+a home life that was better than sociability, a life that was both
+sacred and beautiful, full to the brim of affection, yet without
+any softness or sentimentality.
+
+Then came my friend's great success. He had written less since his
+marriage, and his books, I thought, were beginning to flag a
+little. There was a want of freshness about them; he tended to use
+the same characters and similar situations; both thought and
+phraseology became somewhat mannerised. I put this down myself to
+the belief that life was beginning to be more interesting to him
+than art. But there suddenly appeared the book which made him
+famous, a book both masterly and delicate, full of subtle analysis
+and perception, and with that indescribable sense of actuality
+which is the best test of art. The style at the same time seemed to
+have run clear; he had gained a perfect command of his instrument,
+and I had about this book, what I had never had about any other
+book of his, the sense that he was producing exactly the effects he
+meant to produce. The extraordinary merit of the book was instantly
+recognised by all, I think, but the author. He went abroad for a
+time after the book was published, and eventually returned; it was
+at that point of his life that the Diary began.
+
+I went to see him not long after, and it became rapidly clear to me
+that something had happened to him. Instead of being radiant with
+success, eager and contented, I found him depressed, anxious,
+haggard. He told me that he felt unstrung and exhausted, and that
+his power of writing had deserted him. But I must bear testimony at
+the same time to the fact which does not emerge in the Diary,
+namely, the extraordinary gallantry and patience of his conduct and
+demeanour. He struggled visibly and pathetically, from hour to
+hour, against his depression. He never complained; he never showed,
+at least in my presence, the smallest touch of irritability. Indeed
+to myself, who had known him as the most equable and good-humoured
+of men, he seemed to support the trial with a courage little short
+of heroism. The trial was a sore one, because it deprived him both
+of motive and occupation. But he made the best of it; he read, he
+took long walks, and he threw himself with great eagerness into the
+education of his children--a task for which he was peculiarly
+qualified. Then a series of calamities fell upon him: he lost his
+boy, a child of wonderful ability and sweetness; he lost his
+fortune, or the greater part of it. The latter calamity he bore
+with perfect imperturbability--they let their house and moved into
+Gloucestershire. Here a certain measure of happiness seemed to
+return to him. He made a new friend, as the Diary relates, in the
+person of the Squire of the village, a man who, though an invalid,
+had a strong and almost mystical hold upon life. Here he began to
+interest himself in the people of the place, and tried all sorts of
+education and social experiments. But his wife fell ill, and died
+very suddenly; and, not long after, his daughter died too. He was
+for a time almost wholly broken down. I went abroad with him at his
+request for a few weeks, but I was myself obliged to return to
+England to my professional duties. I can only say that I did not
+expect ever to see him again. He was like a man, the spring of
+whose life was broken; but at the same time he bore himself with a
+patience and a gentleness that fairly astonished me. We were
+together day by day and hour by hour. He made no complaint, and he
+used to force himself, with what sad effort was only too plain, to
+converse on all sorts of topics. Some time after he drifted back to
+England; but at first he appeared to be in a very listless and
+dejected state. Then there arrived, almost suddenly, it seemed to
+me, a change. He had made the sacrifice; he had accepted the
+situation. There came to him a serenity which was only like his old
+serenity from the fact that it seemed entirely unaffected; but it
+was based, I felt, on a very different view of life. He was now
+content to wait and to believe. It was at this time that the Squire
+died; and not long afterwards, the Squire's niece, a woman of great
+strength and simplicity of character, married a clergyman to whom
+she had been long attached, both being middle-aged people; and the
+living soon afterwards falling vacant, her husband accepted it, and
+the newly-married pair moved into the Rectory; while my friend, who
+had been named as the Squire's ultimate heir, a life-interest in
+the property being secured to the niece, went into the Hall.
+Shortly afterwards he adopted a nephew--his sister's son--who, with
+the consent of all concerned, was brought up as the heir to the
+estate, and is its present proprietor.
+
+My friend lived some fifteen years after that, a quiet, active, and
+obviously contented life. I was a frequent guest at the Hall, and I
+am sure that I never saw a more attached circle. My friend became a
+magistrate, and he did a good deal of county business; but his main
+interest was in the place, where he was the trusted friend and
+counsellor of every household in the parish. He took a great deal
+of active exercise in the open air; he read much. He taught his
+nephew, whom he did not send to school. He regained, in fuller
+measure than ever, his old delightful charm of conversation, and
+his humour, which had always been predominant in him, took on a
+deeper and a richer tinge; but whereas in old days he had been
+brilliant and epigrammatic, he was now rather poetical and
+suggestive; and whereas he had formerly been reticent about his
+emotions and his religion, he now acquired what is to my mind the
+profoundest conversational charm--the power of making swift and
+natural transitions into matters of what, for want of a better
+word, I will call spiritual experience. I remember his once saying
+to me that he had learnt, from his intercourse with his village
+neighbours, that the one thing in the world in which every one was
+interested was religion; "even more," he added, with a smile, "than
+is the one subject in which Sir Robert Walpole said that every one
+could join."
+
+I do not suppose that his religion was of a particularly orthodox
+kind; he was impatient of dogmatic definition and of ecclesiastical
+tendencies; but he cared with all his heart for the vital
+principles of religion, the love of God and the love of one's
+neighbour.
+
+He lived to see his adopted son grow up to maturity; and I do not
+think I ever saw anything so beautiful as the confidence and
+affection that subsisted between them; and then he died one day, as
+he had often told me he desired to die. He had been ailing for a
+week, and on rising from his chair in the morning he was seized by
+a sudden faintness and died within half-an-hour, hardly knowing, I
+imagine, that he was in any danger.
+
+It fell to me to deal with his papers. There was a certain amount
+of scattered writing, but no completed work; it all dated from
+before the publication of his great book. It was determined that
+this Diary should eventually see the light, and circumstances into
+which I need not now enter have rendered its appearance advisable
+at the present date.
+
+The interest of the document is its candour and outspokenness. If
+the tone of the record, until near the end, is one of unrelieved
+sadness, it must be borne in mind that all the time he bore himself
+in the presence of others with a singular courage and simplicity.
+He said to me once, in an hour of dark despair, that he had drunk
+the dregs of self-abasement. That he believed that he had no sense
+of morality, no loyal affection, no love of virtue, no patience or
+courage. That his only motives had been timidity, personal
+ambition, love of respectability, love of ease. He added that this
+had been slowly revealed to him, and that the only way out was a
+way that he had not as yet strength to tread; the way of utter
+submission, absolute confidence, entire resignation. He said that
+there was one comfort, which was, that he knew the worst about
+himself that it was possible to know. I told him that his view of
+his character was unjust and exaggerated, but he only shook his
+head with a smile that went to my heart. It was on that day, I
+think, that he touched the lowest depth of all; and after that he
+found the way out, along the path that he had indicated.
+
+This is no place for eulogy and panegyric. My task has been just to
+trace the portrait of my friend as he appeared to others; his own
+words shall reveal the inner spirit. The beauty of the life to me
+was that he attained, unconsciously and gradually, to the very
+virtues which he most desired and in which he felt himself to he
+most deficient. He had to bear a series of devastating calamities.
+He had loved the warmth and nearness of his home circle more deeply
+than most men, and the whole of it was swept away; he had depended
+for stimulus and occupation alike upon his artistic work, and the
+power was taken from him at the moment of his highest achievement.
+His loss of fortune is not to be reckoned among his calamities,
+because it was no calamity to him. He ended by finding a richer
+treasure than any that he had set out to obtain; and I remember
+that he said to me once, not long before his end, that whatever
+others might feel about their own lives, he could not for a moment
+doubt that his own had been an education of a deliberate and loving
+kind, and that the day when he realised that, when he saw that
+there was not a single incident in his life that had not a deep and
+an intentional value for him, was one of the happiest days of his
+whole existence. I do not know that he expected anything or
+speculated on what might await him hereafter; he put his future,
+just as he put his past and his present, in the hands of God, to
+Whom he committed himself "as unto a faithful Creator."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALTAR FIRE
+
+
+
+
+
+September 8, 1888.
+
+
+We came back yesterday, after a very prosperous time at Zermatt;
+we have been there two entire months. Yes, it was certainly
+prosperous! We had delicious weather, and I have seen a number of
+pleasant people. I have done a great deal of walking, I have read a
+lot of novels and old poetry, I have sate about a good deal in the
+open air; but I do not really like Switzerland; there are of course
+an abundance of noble wide-hung views, but there are few vignettes,
+little on which the mind and heart dwell with an intimate and
+familiar satisfaction. Those airy pinnacles of toppling rocks,
+those sheets of slanted snow, those ice-bound crags--there is a
+sense of fear and mystery about them! One does not know what is
+going on there, what they are waiting for; they have no human
+meaning. They do not seem to have any relation to humanity at all.
+Sunday after Sunday one used to have sermons in that hot, trim
+little wooden church--some from quite famous preachers--about the
+need of rest, the advantage of letting the mind and eye dwell in
+awe upon the wonderful works of God. Of course the mountains are
+wonderful enough; but they make me feel that humanity plays a very
+trifling part in the mind and purpose of God. I do not think that
+if I were a preacher of the Gospel, and had a speculative turn, I
+should care to take a holiday among the mountains. I should be
+beset by a dreary wonder whether the welfare of humanity was a
+thing very dear to God at all. I should feel very strongly what the
+Psalmist said, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" It would
+take the wind out of my sails, when I came to preach about
+Redemption, because I should be tempted to believe that, after all,
+human beings were only in the world on sufferance, and that the
+aching, frozen, barren earth, so inimical to life, was in even more
+urgent need of redemption. Day by day, among the heights, I grew to
+feel that I wanted some explanation of why the strange panorama of
+splintered crag and hanging ice-fall was there at all. It certainly
+is not there with any reference to man--at least it is hard to
+believe that it is all there that human beings may take a
+refreshing holiday in the midst of it. When one penetrates
+Switzerland by the green pine-clad valleys, passing through and
+beneath those delicious upland villages, each clustering round a
+church with a glittering cupola, the wooden houses with their brown
+fronts, their big eaves, perched up aloft at such pleasant angles,
+one thinks of Switzerland as an inhabited land of valleys, with
+screens and backgrounds of peaks and snowfields; but when one goes
+up higher still, and gets up to the top of one of the peaks, one
+sees that Switzerland is really a region of barren ridges, millions
+of acres of cold stones and ice, with a few little green cracks
+among the mountain bases, where men have crept to live; and that
+man is only tolerated there.
+
+One day I was out with a guide on a peak at sunrise. Behind the
+bleak and shadowy ridges there stole a flush of awakening dawn;
+then came a line of the purest yellow light, touching the crags and
+snowfields with sharp blue shadows; the lemon-coloured radiance
+passed into fiery gold, the gold flushed to crimson, and then the
+sun leapt into sight, and shed the light of day upon the troubled
+sea of mountains. It was more than that--the hills made, as it
+were, the rim of a great cold shadowy goblet; and the light was
+poured into it from the uprushing sun, as bubbling and sparkling
+wine is poured into a beaker. I found myself thrilled from head to
+foot with an intense and mysterious rapture. What did it all mean,
+this awful and resplendent solemnity, full to brim of a solitary
+and unapproachable holiness? What was the secret of the thing?
+Perhaps every one of those stars that we had seen fade out of the
+night was ringed round by planets such as ours, peopled by forms
+undreamed of; doubtless on millions of globes, the daylight of some
+central sun was coming in glory over the cold ridges, and waking
+into life sentient beings, in lands outside our ken, each with
+civilisations and histories and hopes and fears of their own. A
+stupendous, an overwhelming thought! And yet, in the midst of it,
+here was I myself, a little consciousness sharply divided from it
+all, permitted to be a spectator, a partaker of the intolerable and
+gigantic mystery, and yet so strangely made that the whole of that
+vast and prodigious complexity of life and law counted for less to
+me than the touch of weariness that hung, after my long vigil, over
+limbs and brain. The faculty, the godlike power of knowing and
+imagining, all actually less to me than my own tiny and fragile
+sensations. Such moods as these are strange things, because they
+bring with them so intense a desire to know, to perceive, and yet
+paralyse one with the horror of the darkness in which one moves.
+One cannot conceive why it is that one is given the power of
+realising the multiplicity of creation, and yet at the same time
+left so wholly ignorant of its significance. One longs to leap into
+the arms of God, to catch some whisper of His voice; and at the
+same time there falls the shadow of the prison-house; one is driven
+relentlessly back upon the old limited life, the duties, the
+labours, the round of meals and sleep, the tiny relations with
+others as ignorant as ourselves, and, still worse, with the petty
+spirits who have a complacent explanation of it all. Even over love
+itself the shadow falls. I am as near to my own dear and true Maud
+as it is possible to be; but I can tell her nothing of the mystery,
+and she can tell me nothing. We are allowed for a time to draw
+close to each other, to whisper to each other our hopes and fears;
+but at any moment we can be separated. The children, Alec and
+Maggie, dearer to me--I can say it honestly--than life itself, to
+whom we have given being, whose voices I hear as I write, what of
+them? They are each of them alone, though they hardly know it yet.
+The little unnamed son, who opened his eyes upon the world six
+years ago, to close them in a few hours, where and what is he now?
+Is he somewhere, anywhere? Does he know of the joy and sorrow he
+has brought into our lives? I would fain believe it . . . these are
+profitless thoughts, of one staring into the abyss. Somehow these
+bright weeks have been to me a dreary time. I am well in health;
+nothing ails me. It is six months since my last book was published,
+and I have taken a deliberate holiday; but always before, my mind,
+the strain of a book once taken off it, has begun to sprout and
+burgeon with new ideas and schemes: but now, for the first time in
+my life, my mind and heart remain bare and arid. I seem to have
+drifted into a dreary silence. It is not that things have been less
+beautiful, but beauty seems to have had no message, no significance
+for me. The people that I have seen have come and gone like ghosts
+and puppets. I have had no curiosity about them, their occupations
+and thoughts, their hopes and lives; it has not seemed worth while
+to be interested, in a life which appears so short, and which leads
+nowhere. It seems morbid to write thus, but I have not been either
+morbid or depressed. It has been an easy life, the life of the last
+few months, without effort or dissatisfaction, but without zest. It
+is a mental tiredness, I suppose. I have written myself out, and
+the cistern must fill again. Yet I have had no feeling of fatigue.
+It would have been almost better to have had something to bear; but
+I am richer than I need be, Maud and the children have been in
+perfect health and happiness, I have been well and strong. I shall
+hope that the familiar scene, the pleasant activities of home-life
+will bring the desire back. I realise how much the fabric of my
+life is built upon my writing, and write I must. Well, I have said
+enough; the pleasure of these entries is that one can look back to
+them, and see the movement of the current of life in a bygone day.
+I have an immense mass of arrears to make up, in the form of
+letters and business, but I want to survey the ground; and the
+survey is not a very happy one this morning; though if I made a
+list of my benefits and the reverse, like Robinson Crusoe, the
+credit side would be full of good things, and the debit side nearly
+empty.
+
+
+
+September 15, 1888.
+
+
+It is certainly very sweet to be at home again; to find oneself in
+familiar scenes, with all the pretty homely comfortable things
+waiting patiently for us to return--pictures, books, rooms, tree,
+kindly people. Wright, my excellent gardener, with whom I spent an
+hour strolling round the garden to-day, touched me by saying that
+he was glad to see me back, and that it had seemed dull without me;
+he has done fifty little simple things in our absence, in his
+tranquil and faithful way, and is pleased to have them noticed.
+Alec, who was with me to-day, delighted me by finding his stolid
+wooden horse in the summer-house, rather damp and dishevelled, and
+almost bursting into tears at the pathos of the neglect. "Did you
+think we had forgotten you?" he said as he hugged it. I suggested
+that he should have a good meal. "I don't think he would care about
+GRASS," said Alec thoughtfully, "he shall have some leaves and
+berries for a treat." And this was tenderly executed. Maud went off
+to see some of her old pensioners, and came back glowing with
+pleasure, with twenty pleasant stories of welcome. Two or three
+people came in to see me on business, and I was glad to feel I was
+of use. In the afternoon we all went off on a long ramble together,
+and we were quite surprised to see that everything seemed to be in
+its place as usual. Summer is over, the fields have been reaped;
+there is a comfortable row of stacks in the rickyard; the pleasant
+humming of an engine came up the valley, as it sang its homely
+monotone, now low, now loud. After tea--the evenings have begun to
+close in--I went off to my study, took out my notebook and looked
+over my subjects, but I could make nothing of any of them. I could
+see that there were some good ideas among them; but none of them
+took shape. Often I have found that to glance over my subjects
+thus, after a holiday, is like blowing soap-bubbles. The idea comes
+out swelling and eddying from the bowl; a globe swimming with
+lucent hues, reflecting dim moving shapes of rooms and figures. Not
+so to-day. My mind winked and flapped and rustled like a burnt-out
+fire; not in a depressed or melancholy way, but phlegmatically and
+dully. Well, the spirit bloweth as it listeth; but it is strange to
+find my mind so unresponsive, with none of that pleasant stir, that
+excitement that has a sort of fantastic terror about it, such as
+happens when a book stretches itself dimly and mysteriously before
+the mind--when one has a glimpse of a quiet room with people
+talking, a man riding fiercely on lonely roads, two strolling
+together in a moonlit garden with the shadows of the cypresses on
+the turf, and the fragrance of the sleeping flowers blown abroad.
+They stop to listen to the nightingale in the bush . . . turn to
+each other . . . the currents of life are intermingled at the
+meeting of the lips, the warm shudder at the touch of the floating
+tress of fragrant hair. To-day nothing comes to me; I throw it all
+aside and go to see the children, am greeted delightfully, and join
+in some pretty and absurd game. Then dinner comes; and I sit
+afterwards reading, dropping the book to talk, Maud working in her
+corner by the fire--all things moving so tranquilly and easily in
+this pleasantly ordered home-like house of ours. It is good to be
+at home; and how pitiful to be hankering thus for something else to
+fill the mind, which should obliterate all the beloved things so
+tenderly provided. Maud asks about the reception of the latest
+book, and sparkles with pride at some of the things I tell her. She
+sees somehow--how do women divine these things?--that there is a
+little shadow of unrest over me, and she tells me all the
+comforting things that I dare not say to myself--that it is only
+that the book took more out of me than I knew, and that the
+resting-time is not over yet; but that I shall soon settle down
+again. Then I go off to smoke awhile; and then the haunting shadow
+comes back for a little; till at last I go softly through the
+sleeping house; and presently lie listening to the quiet breathing
+of my wife beside me, glad to be at home again, until the thoughts
+grow blurred, take grotesque shapes, sinking softly into repose.
+
+
+
+September 18, 1888.
+
+
+I have spent most of the morning in clearing up business, and
+dealing with papers and letters. Among the accumulations was a big
+bundle of press-cuttings, all dealing with my last book. It comes
+home to me that the book has been a success; it began by slaying
+its thousands, like Saul, and now it has slain its tens of
+thousands. It has brought me hosts of letters, from all sorts of
+people, some of them very delightful and encouraging, many very
+pleasant--just grateful and simple letters of thanks--some vulgar
+and impertinent, some strangely intimate. What is it, I wonder,
+that makes some people want to tell a writer whom they have never
+seen all about themselves, their thoughts and histories? In some
+cases it is an unaffected desire for sympathy from a person whom
+they think perceptive and sympathetic; in some cases it proceeds, I
+think, from a hysterical desire to be thought interesting, with a
+faint hope, I fear, of being possibly put into a book. Some of the
+letters have been simply unintelligible and inconceivable on any
+hypothesis, except for the human instinct to confess, to bare the
+heart, to display the secret sorrow. Many of these letters are
+intensely pathetic, affecting, heart-rending; an invalid lady
+writes to say that she would like to know me, and will I come to
+the North of England to see her? A man writes a pretentious letter,
+to ask me to go and stay with him for a week. He has nothing to
+offer, he says, but plain fare and rather cramped quarters; but he
+has thought deeply, he adds, on many of the problems on which I
+touch, and thinks that he could throw light upon some of them.
+Imagine what reserves of interest and wisdom he must consider that
+he possesses! Then there are patronising letters from people who
+say that I have put into words thoughts which they have always had,
+and which they never took the trouble to write down; then there are
+requests for autographs, and "sentiments," and suggestions for new
+books. A man writes to say that I could do untold good if I would
+write a book with a purpose, and ventures to propose that I should
+take up anti-vivisection. There are a few letters worth their
+weight in gold, from good men and true, writers and critics, who
+thank me for a book which fulfils its aim and artistic purpose,
+while on the other hand there are some from people who find fault
+with my book for not doing what I never even attempted to do. Here
+is one that has given me deep and unmitigated pain; it is from an
+old friend, who, I am told, is aggrieved because he thinks that I
+have put him into my book, in the form of an unpleasant character.
+The worst of it is that there is enough truth in it to make it
+difficult for me to deny it. My character is, in some superficial
+ways, habits, and tricks of speech, like Reginald. Well, on hearing
+what he felt, I wrote him a letter of apology for my carelessness
+and thoughtlessness, saying, as frankly as I could, that the
+character was not in any way drawn from him, but that I undoubtedly
+had, almost unconsciously, taken an external trait or two from him;
+adding that I was truly and heartily sorry, and hoped that there
+would be no ill-feeling; and that I valued his friendship even more
+than he probably imagined. Here is his reply:
+
+
+MY DEAR F----,
+
+--If you spit on the head of a man passing in the street, and
+then write to him a few days after to say that all is forgiven, and
+that you are sorry your aim was so accurate, you don't mend
+matters.
+
+You express a hope that after what has occurred there may be no
+ill-feeling between us. Well, you have done me what I consider an
+injury. I have no desire to repay it; if I had a chance of doing
+you a good turn, I should do it; if I heard you abused, I should
+stick up for you. I have no intention of making a grievance out of
+it. But if you ask me to say that I do not feel a sense of wrong,
+or to express a wish to meet you, or to trust you any longer as I
+have hitherto trusted you, I must decline saying anything of the
+kind, because it would not be true.
+
+Of course I know that there cannot be omelettes without breaking
+eggs; and I suppose that there cannot be what are called
+psychological novels, without violating confidences. But you cannot
+be surprised, when you encourage an old friend to trust you and
+confide in you, and then draw an ugly caricature of him in a book,
+if he thinks the worse of you in consequence. I hear that the book
+is a great success; you must be content with the fact that the
+yolks are as golden as they are. Please do not write to me again on
+the subject. I will try to forget it, and if I succeed, I will let
+you know.
+
+Yours ----
+
+
+That is the kind of letter that poisons life for a while. While I
+am aware that I meant no treachery, I am none the less aware that I
+have contrived to be a traitor. Of course one vows one will never
+write another line; but I do not suppose I shall keep the vow. I
+reply shortly, eating all the dirt I can collect; and I shall try
+to forget it too; though it is a shabby end of an old friendship.
+
+Then I turn to the reviews. I find them gracious, respectful,
+laudatory. They are to be taken cum grano, of course. When an
+enthusiastic reviewer says that I have passed at one stride into
+the very first class of contemporary writers, I do not feel
+particularly elated, though I am undeniably pleased. I find my
+conception, my structure, my style, my descriptions, my character-
+drawing, liberally and generously praised. There is no doubt that
+the book has been really successful beyond my wildest hopes. If I
+were in any doubt, the crop of letters from editors and publishers
+asking me for articles and books of every kind, and offering me
+incredible terms, would convince me.
+
+Now what do I honestly feel about all this? I will try for my own
+benefit to say. Of course I am very much pleased, but the odd thing
+is that I am not more pleased. I can say quite unaffectedly that it
+does not turn my head in the least. I reflect that if this had
+happened when I began to write, I should have been beside myself
+with delight, full of self-confidence, blown out with wind, like
+the fog in the fable. Even now there is a deep satisfaction in
+having done what one has tried to do. But instead of raking in the
+credit, I am more inclined to be grateful for my good fortune. I
+feel as if I had found something valuable rather than made
+something beautiful; as if I had stumbled on a nugget of gold or a
+pearl of price. I am very fatalistic about writing; one is given a
+certain thing to say, and the power to say it; it does not come by
+effort, but by a pleasant felicity. After all, I reflect, the book
+is only a good story, well told. I do not feel like a benefactor of
+the human race, but at the best like a skilful minstrel, who has
+given some innocent pleasure. What, after all, does it amount to? I
+have touched to life, perhaps a few gracious, tender, romantic
+fancies--but, after all, the thoughts and emotions were there to
+start with, just as the harmonies which the musician awakes are all
+dormant in his throbbing strings. I have created nothing, only
+perceived and represented phenomena. I have gained no sensibility,
+no patience, no wisdom in the process. I know no more of the secret
+of life and love, than before I wrote my book. I am only like a
+scientific investigator who has discovered certain delicate
+processes, subtle laws at work. They were there all the time; the
+temptation of the investigator and of the writer alike is to yield
+to the delusion that he has made them, by discerning and naming
+them. As for the style, which is highly praised, it has not been
+made by effort. It is myself. I have never written for any other
+reason than because I liked writing. It has been a pleasure to
+overcome difficulties, to make my way round obstacles, to learn how
+to express the vague an intangible thing. But I deserve no credit
+for this; I should deserve credit if I had made myself a good
+writer out of a bad one; but I could always write, and I am not a
+better writer, only a more practised one. There is no satisfaction
+there.
+
+And then, too, I find myself overshadowed by the thought that I do
+not want to do worse, to go downhill, to decline. I do not feel at
+all sure that I can write a better book, or so good a one indeed. I
+should dislike failing far more than I like having succeeded. To
+have reached a certain standard makes it incumbent on one that one
+should not fall below that standard; and no amount of taking pains
+will achieve that. It can only be done through a sort of radiant
+felicity of mood, which is really not in my power to count upon. I
+was happy, supremely happy, when I was writing the book. I lighted
+upon a fine conception, and it was the purest joy to see the metal
+trickle firmly from the furnace into the mould. Can I make such a
+mould again? Can I count upon the ingots piled in the fierce flame?
+Can I reckon upon the same temperamental glow? I do not know--I
+fear not.
+
+Here is the net result--that I have become a sort of personage in
+the world of letters. Do I desire it? Yes, in a sense I do, but in
+a sense I do not. I do not want money, I do not wish for public
+appearances. I have no social ambitions. To be pointed out as the
+distinguished novelist is distinctly inconvenient. People will
+demand a certain standard of talk, a certain brilliance, which I am
+not in the least capable of giving them. I want to sit at my ease
+at the banquet of life, not to be ushered to the highest rooms. I
+prefer interesting and pleasant people to important and majestic
+persons. Perhaps if I were more simple-minded, I should not care
+about the matter at all; just be grateful for the increased warmth
+and amenity of life--but I am not simple-minded, and I hate not
+fulfilling other people's expectations. I am not a prodigal, full-
+blooded, royal sort of person at all. I am not conscious of
+greatness, but far more of emptiness. I do not wish to seem
+pretentious. I have got this one faculty; but it has outrun all the
+rest of me, and I am aware that it has drained the rest of my
+nature. The curious thing is that this sort of fame is the thing
+that as a young man I used to covet. I used to think it would be so
+sustaining and resplendent. Now that it has come to me, in far
+richer measure, I will not say than I hoped, but at all events than
+I had expected, it does not seem to be a wholly desirable thing.
+Fame is only one of the sauces of life; it is not the food of the
+spirit at all. The people that praise one are like the courtiers
+that bow in the anterooms of a king, through whom he passes to the
+lonely study where his life is lived. I am not feeling ungrateful
+or ungenerous; but I would give all that I have gained for a new
+and inspiring friendship, or for the certainty that I should write
+another book with the same happiness as I wrote my last book.
+Perhaps I ought to feel the responsibility more! I do feel it in a
+sense, but I have never estimated the moral effectiveness of a
+writer of fiction very high; one comforts rather than sustains; one
+diverts rather than feeds. If I could hear of one self-sacrificing
+action, one generous deed, one tranquil surrender that had been the
+result of my book, I should be more pleased than I am with all the
+shower of compliments. Of course in a sense praise makes life more
+interesting; but what I really desire to apprehend is the
+significance and meaning of life, that strange mixture of pain and
+pleasure, of commonplace events and raptures; and my book brings me
+no nearer that. To feel God nearer me, to feel, not by evidence but
+by instinct, that there is a Heart that cares for me, and moulded
+me from the clay for a purpose--why, I would give all that I have
+in the world for that!
+
+Of course Maud will be pleased; but that will be because she
+believes that I deserve everything and anything, and is only
+surprised that the world has not found out sooner what a marvellous
+person I am. God knows I do not undervalue her belief in me; but it
+makes and keeps me humble to feel how far she is from the truth,
+how far from realising the pitiful weakness and emptiness of her
+lover and husband.
+
+Is this, I wonder, how all successful people feel about fame? The
+greatest of all have often never enjoyed the least touch of it in
+their lifetime; and they are happier so. Some few rich and generous
+natures, like Scott and Browning, have neither craved for it nor
+valued it. Some of the greatest have desired it, slaved for it,
+clung to it. Yet when it comes, one realises how small a part of
+life and thought it fills--unless indeed it brings other desirable
+things with it; and this is not the case with me, because I have
+all I want. Well, if I can but set to work at another book, all
+these idle thoughts will die away; but my mind rattles like a
+shrunken kernel. I must kneel down and pray, as Blake and his wife
+did, when the visions deserted them.
+
+
+
+September 25, 1888.
+
+
+Here is a social instance of what it means to become "quite a
+little man," as Stevenson used to say. Some county people near
+here, good-natured, pushing persons, who have always been quite
+civil but nothing more, invited themselves to luncheon here a day
+or two ago, bringing with them a distinguished visitor. They throw
+in some nauseous compliments to my book, and say that Lord
+Wilburton wishes to make my acquaintance. I do not particularly
+want to make his, though he is a man of some not. But there was no
+pretext for declining. Such an incursion is a distinct bore; it
+clouds the morning--one cannot settle down with a tranquil mind to
+one's work; it fills the afternoon. They came, and it proved not
+uninteresting. They are pleasant people enough, and Lord Wilburton
+is a man who has been everywhere and seen everybody. The fact that
+he wished to make my acquaintance shows, no doubt, that I have
+sailed into his ken, and that he wishes to add me to his
+collection. I felt myself singularly unrewarding. I am not a talker
+at the best of times, and to feel that I am expected to be witty
+and suggestive is the last straw. Lord Wilburton discoursed
+fluently and agreeably. Lady Harriet said that she envied me my
+powers of writing, and asked how I came to think of my last
+brilliant book, which she had so enjoyed. I did not know what to
+say, and could not invent anything. They made a great deal of the
+children. They walked round the garden. They praised everything
+ingeniously. They could not say the house was big, and so they
+called in convenient. They could not say that the garden was ample,
+but Lord Wilburton said that he had never seen so much ground go to
+the acre. That was neat enough. They made a great point of visiting
+my library, and carried away my autograph, written with the very
+same pen with which I wrote my great book. This they called a
+privilege. They made us promise to go over to the Castle, which I
+have no great purpose of doing. We parted with mutual goodwill, and
+with that increase of geniality on my own part which comes on me at
+the end of a visit. Altogether I did not dislike it, though it did
+not seem to me particularly worth while. To-day my wife tells me
+that they told the Fitzpatricks that it was a great pleasure seeing
+me, because I was so modest and unaffected. That is a courteous way
+of concealing their disappointment that I was not more brilliant.
+But, good heavens, what did they expect? I suppose, indeed I have
+no doubt, that if I had talked mysteriously about my book, and had
+described the genesis of it, and my method of working, they would
+have preferred that. Just as in reminiscences of the Duke of
+Wellington, the people who saw him in later life seem to have been
+struck dumb by a sort of tearful admiration at the sight of the
+Duke condescending to eat his dinner, or to light a guest's bedroom
+candle. Perhaps if I had been more simple-minded I should have
+talked frankly about myself. I don't know; it seems to me all
+rather vulgar. But my visitors are kindly and courteous people, and
+felt, I am sure, that they were both receiving and conferring
+benefits. They will like to describe me and my house, and they will
+feel that I am pleased at being received on equal terms into county
+society. I don't put this down at all cynically; but they are not
+people with whom I have anything in common. I am not of their monde
+at all. I belong to the middle class, and they are of the upper
+class. I have a faint desire to indicate that I don't want to cross
+the border-line, and that what I desire is the society of
+interesting and congenial people, not the society of my social
+superior. This is not unworldliness in the least, merely hedonism.
+Feudalism runs in the blood of these people, and they feel, not
+consciously but quite instinctively, that the confer a benefit by
+making my acquaintance. "No doubt but ye are the people," as Job
+said, but I do not want to rise in the social scale. It would be
+the earthen pot and the brazen pot at best. I am quite content with
+my own class, and life is not long enough to change it, and to
+learn the habits of another. I have no quarrel with the
+aristocracy, and do not in the least wish to level them to the
+ground. I am quite prepared to acknowledge them as the upper class.
+They are, as a rule, public-spirited, courteous barbarians, with a
+sense of honour and responsibility. But they take a great many
+things as matters of course which are to me simply alien. I no more
+wish to live with them than Wright, my self-respecting gardener,
+wishes to live with me--though so deeply rooted are feudal ideas in
+the blood of the race, that Wright treats me with a shade of
+increased deference because I have been entertaining a party of
+Lords and Ladies; and the Vicar's wife said to Maud that she heard
+we had been giving a very grand party, and would soon be quite
+county people. The poor woman will think more of my books than she
+has ever thought before. I don't think this is snobbish, because it
+is so perfectly instinctive and natural.
+
+But what I wanted to say was that this is the kind of benefit which
+is conferred by success; and for a quiet person, who likes familiar
+and tranquil ways, it is no benefit at all; indeed, rather the
+reverse; unless it is a benefit that the stationmaster touched his
+hat to me to-day, which he has never done before. It is a funny
+little world. Meanwhile I have no ideas, and my visitors to-day
+haven't given me any, though Lord Wilburton might be a useful
+figure in a book; so perfectly appointed, so quiet, so deferential,
+so humorous, so deliciously insincere!
+
+
+
+October 4, 1888.
+
+
+I have happened to read lately, in some magazines, certain
+illustrated interviews with prominent people, which have given me a
+deep sense of mental and moral nausea. I do not think I am
+afflicted with a strong sense of the sacredness of a man's home
+life--at least, if it is sacred at all, it seems to me to be just
+as much profaned by allowing visitors or strangers to see it and
+share it as it is by allowing it to be written about in a
+periodical. If it is sacred in a peculiar sense, then only very
+intimate friends ought to be allowed to see it, and there should be
+a tacit sense that they ought not to tell any one outside what it
+is like; but if I am invited to luncheon with a celebrated man whom
+I do not know, because I happen to be staying in the neighbourhood,
+I do not think I violate his privacy by describing my experience to
+other people. If a man has a beautiful house, a happy interior, a
+gifted family circle, and if he is himself a remarkable man, it is
+a privilege to be admitted to it, it does one good to see it; and
+it seems to me that the more people who realise the beauty and
+happiness of it the better. The question of numbers has nothing to
+do with it. Suppose, for instance, that I am invited to stay with a
+great man, and suppose that I have a talent for drawing; I may
+sketch his house and his rooms, himself and his family, if he does
+not object--and it seems to me that it would be churlish and
+affected of him to object--I may write descriptive letters from the
+place, giving an account of his domestic ways, his wife and family,
+his rooms, his books, his garden, his talk. I do not see that there
+is any reasonable objection to my showing those sketches to other
+people who are interested in the great man, or to the descriptive
+letters or diary that I write being shown or read to others who do
+not know him. Indeed I think it is a perfectly natural and
+wholesome desire to know something of the life and habits of great
+men; I would go further, and say that it is an improving and
+inspiring sort of knowledge to be acquainted with the pleasant
+details of the well-ordered, contented, and happy life of a high-
+minded and effective man. Who, for instance, considers it to be a
+sort of treachery for the world at large to know something of the
+splendid and affectionate life of the Kingsley circle at Eversley
+Rectory, or of the Tennyson circle at Freshwater? to look at
+pictures of the scene, to hear how the great men looked and moved
+and spoke? And if it is not profanation to hear and see this in the
+pages of a biography, why is it a profanation to read and see it in
+the pages of a magazine? To object to it seems to me to be a
+species of prudish conventionality.
+
+Only you must be sure that you get a natural, simple, and
+unaffected picture of it all; and what I object to in the
+interviews which I have been reading is that one gets an unnatural,
+affected, self-conscious, and pompous picture of it all. To go and
+pose in your favourite seat in a shrubbery or a copse, where you
+think out your books or poems, in order that an interviewer may
+take a snap-shot of you--especially if in addition you assume a
+look of owlish solemnity as though you were the prey of great
+thoughts--that seems to me to be an infernal piece of posing. But
+still worse than that is the kind of conversation in which people
+are tempted to indulge in the presence of an interviewer. A man
+ought not to say to a wandering journalist whom he has never seen
+before, in the presence of his own wife, that women are the
+inspirers and magnetisers of the world, and that he owes all that
+has made him what he is to the sweet presence and sympathetic
+tenderness of his Bessy. This, it seems to me, is the lowest kind
+of melodrama. The thing may be perfectly true, the thought may be
+often in his mind, but he cannot be accustomed to say such things
+in ordinary life; and one feels that when he says them to an
+interviewer he does it in a thoroughly self-conscious mood, in
+order that he may make an impressive figure before the public. The
+conversations in the interviews I have been reading give me the
+uncomfortable sense that they have been thought out beforehand from
+the dramatic point of view; and indeed one earnestly hopes that
+this is the solution of the situation, because it would make one
+feel very faint if one thought that remarks of this kind were the
+habitual utterances of the circle--indeed, it would cure one very
+effectually of the desire to know anything of the interiors of
+celebrated people, if one thought that they habitually talked like
+the heroes of a Sunday-school romance. That is why the reading of
+these interviews is so painful, because, in the first place, one
+feels sure that one is not realising the daily life of these people
+at all, but only looking on at a tableau vivant prepared by them
+for the occasion; and secondly, it makes one very unhappy to think
+that people of real eminence and effectiveness can condescend to
+behave in this affected way in order to win the applause of vulgar
+readers. One vaguely hopes, indeed, that some of the dismal
+platitudes that they are represented as uttering may have been
+addressed to them in the form of questions by the interviewer, and
+that they have merely stammered a shamefaced assent. It makes a
+real difference, for instance, whether as a matter of fact a
+celebrated authoress leads her golden-haired children up to an
+interviewer, and says, "These are my brightest jewels;" or whether,
+when she tells her children to shake hands, the interviewer says,
+"No doubt these are your brightest jewels?" A mother is hardly in a
+position to return an indignant negative to such a question, and if
+she utters an idiotic affirmative, she is probably credited with
+the original remark in all its unctuousness!
+
+It is a difficult question to decide what is the most simple-minded
+thing to do, if you are in the unhappy position of being requested
+to grant an interview for journalistic purposes. My own feeling is
+that if people really wish to know how I live, what I wear, what I
+eat and drink, what books I read, what kind of a house I live in,
+they are perfectly welcome to know. It does not seem to me that it
+would detract from the sacredness of my home life, if a picture of
+my dining-room, with the table laid for luncheon in a very cramped
+perspective, or if a photogravure of the scrap of grass and
+shrubbery that I call my garden, were to be published in a
+magazine. All that is to a certain extent public already. I should
+not wish to have a photograph of myself in bed, or shaving,
+published in a magazine, because those are not moments when I am
+inclined to admit visitors. Neither do I particularly want my
+private and informal conversation taken down and reproduced,
+because that often consists of opinions which are not my deliberate
+and thought-out utterances. But I hope that I should be able to
+talk simply and courteously to an interviewer on ordinary topics,
+in a way that would not discredit me it is was made public; and I
+hope, too, that decency would restrain me from making inflated and
+pompous remarks about my inner beliefs and motives, which were not
+in the least characteristic of my usual method of conversation.
+
+The truth is that what spoils these records is the desire on the
+part of worthy and active people to appear more impressive in
+ordinary life than they actually are; it is a well-meant sort of
+hypocrisy, because it is intended, in a way, to influence other
+people, and to make them think that celebrated people live
+habitually on a higher tone of intellect and emotion than they do
+actually live upon. My on experience of meeting great people is
+that they are, as a rule, disappointingly like ordinary people,
+both in their tastes and in their conversation. Very few men or
+women, who are extremely effective in practical or artistic lines,
+have the energy or the vitality to expend themselves very freely in
+talk or social intercourse. They do not save themselves up for
+their speeches or their books; but they give their best energies to
+them, and have little current coin of high thought left for
+ordinary life. The mischief is that these interviews are generally
+conducted by inquisitive and rhetorical strangers, not distinguished
+for social tact or overburdened with good taste; and so the whole
+occasion tends to wear a melodramatic air, which is fatal both to
+artistic effect as well as to simple propriety.
+
+
+
+October 9, 1888.
+
+
+Let me set against my fashionable luncheon-party of a few weeks ago
+a visit which I owe no less to my success, and which has been a
+true and deep delight to me. I had a note yesterday from a man whom
+I hold in great and deep reverence, a man who I have met two or
+three times, a poet indeed, one of our true and authentic singers.
+He writes that he is in the neighbourhood; may he come over for a
+few hours and renew our acquaintance?
+
+He came, in the morning. One has only to set eyes upon him to know
+that one is in the presence of a hero, to feel that his poetry just
+streams from him like light from the sun; that it is not the
+central warmth, but the flying rippling radiance of the outward-
+bound light, falling in momentary beauty on the common things about
+his path. He is a great big man, carelessly dressed, like a Homeric
+king. I liked everything about him from head to foot, his big
+carelessly-worn clothes, the bright tie thrust loosely through a
+cameo ring; his loose shaggy locks, his strong beard. His face,
+with its delicate pallor, and purely moulded features, had a
+youthful air of purity and health; yet there was a dim trouble of
+thought on his brow, over the great, smiling, flashing grey eyes.
+He came in with a sort of royal greeting, he flung his big limbs on
+a sofa; he talked easily, quietly, lavishly, saying fine things
+with no effort, dropping a subject quickly if he thought it did not
+interest me; sometimes flashing out with a quick gesture of
+impatience or gusto, enjoying life, every moment and every detail.
+His quick eyes, roving about, took in each smallest point, not in
+the weary feverish way in which I apprehend a new scene, but as
+though he liked everything new and unfamiliar, like an unsated
+child. He greeted Maud and the children with a kind of chivalrous
+tenderness and intimacy, as though he loved all pretty and tender
+things, and took joy in their nearness. He held Alec between his
+knees, and played with him while he talked. The children took
+possession of him, as if they had known him all their lives. And
+yet there was no touch of pose, no consciousness of greatness or
+vigour about him. He was as humble, grateful, interested, as though
+he were a poor stranger dependent on our bounty. I asked him in a
+quiet moment about his work. "No, I am writing nothing," he said
+with a smile, "I have said all I have got to say,"--and then with a
+sudden humorous flash, "though I believe I should be able to write
+more if I could get decent paper and respectable type to print my
+work." I ventured to ask if he did not feel any desire to write?
+"No," he said, "frankly I do not--the world is so full of pleasant
+things to do and hear and see, that I sometimes think myself almost
+a fool for having spent so much time in scribbling. Do you know,"
+he went on, "a delicious story I picked up the other day? A man was
+travelling in some God-forsaken out-of-the-way place--I believe it
+was the Andes--and he fell in with an old podgy Roman priest who
+was going everywhere, in a state of perpetual fatigue, taking long
+expeditions every day, and returning worn-out in the evening, but
+perfectly content. The man saw a good deal of the priest, and asked
+him what he was doing. The priest smiled and said, 'Well, I will
+tell you. I had an illness some time ago and believed that I was
+going to die. One evening--I was half unconscious--I thought I saw
+some one standing by my bed. I looked, and it was a young man with
+a beautiful and rather severe face, whom I knew to be an angel, who
+was gazing at me rather strangely. I thought it was the messenger
+of death, and--for I was wishing to be gone and have done with it
+all--I said something to him about being ready to depart--and then
+added that I was waiting hopefully to see the joys of Paradise, the
+glory of the saints in light. He looked at me rather fixedly, and
+said, "I do not know why you should say that, and why you should
+expect to take so much pleasure in the beauty of heaven, when you
+have taken so little trouble to see anything of the beauty of
+earth;" and then he left me; and I reflected that I had always been
+doing my work in a dull humdrum way, in the same place all my life;
+and I determined that, if I got well, I would go about and see
+something of the glory that IS revealed to us, and not expect only
+the glory that SHALL BE revealed to us.' It is a fine story," he
+went on, "and makes a parable for us writers, who are inclined to
+think too much about our work, and disposed to see that it is very
+good, like God brooding over the world." He sate for a little,
+smiling to himself. And then I plied him with questions about his
+writing, how his thoughts came to him how he worked them out. He
+told me as if he was talking about some one else, half wondering
+that there could be anything to care about. I have heard many
+craftsmen talk about their work, but never one who talked with such
+detachment. As a rule, writers talk with a secret glee, and with a
+deprecating humility that deceives no one; but the great man
+talked, not as if he cared to think about it, but because it
+happened to interest me. He strolled with me, he lunched; and he
+thanked us when he went away with an earnest and humble
+thankfulness, as though we had extended our hospitality to an
+obscure and unworthy guest. And then his praise of my own books--it
+was all so natural; not as if he had come there with fine
+compliments prepared, with incense to burn; but speaking about them
+as though they were in his mind, and he could not help it. "I read
+all you write," he said; "ah, you go deep--you are a lucky fellow,
+to be able to see so far and so minutely, and to bring it all home
+to our blind souls. He must be a terrible fellow to live with," he
+said, smiling at my wife. "It must be like being married to a
+doctor, and feeling that he knows so much more about one than one
+knows oneself--but he sees what is best and truest, thank God; and
+says it with the voice of an angel, speaking softly out of his
+golden cloud."
+
+I can't say what words like these have meant to me; but the visit
+itself, the sight of this strong, equable, good-humoured man, with
+no feverish ambitions, no hankering after fame or recognition, has
+done even more. I have heard it said that he is indolent, that he
+has not sufficient sense of responsibility for his gifts. But the
+man has done a great work for his generation; he has written poetry
+of the purest and finest quality. Is not that enough? I cannot
+understand the mere credit we give to work, without any reference
+to the object of the work, or the spirit in which it is done. We
+think with respect of the man who makes a fortune, or who fills an
+official post, the duties of which do nothing in particular for any
+one. It is a kind of obsession with us practical Westerners; of
+course a man ought to contribute to the necessary work of the
+world; but many men spend their lives in work which is not
+necessary; and, after all, we are sent into the world to live, and
+work is only a part of life. We work to live, we do not live to
+work. Even if we were all socialists, we should, I hope, have the
+grace to dig the gardens and make the clothes of our poets and
+prophets, so as to give them the leisure they need.
+
+I do not question the instinct of my hero in the matter; he lives
+eagerly and peacefully; he touches into light the spirits of those
+who draw near to him; and I admire a man who knows how to stop when
+he has done his best work, and does not spur and whip his tired
+mind into producing feebler, limper, duller work of the same kind;
+how few of our great writers have known when to hold their hand!
+
+God be praised for great men! My poet to-day has made me feel that
+life is a thing to be lived eagerly and high-heartedly; that the
+world is full of beautiful, generous, kindly things, of free air
+and sunshine; and that we ought to find leisure to drink it all in,
+and to send our hearts out in search of love and beauty and God--
+for these things are all about us, if we could but feel and hear
+and see them.
+
+
+
+October 12, 1888.
+
+
+How absurd it is to say that a writer could not write a large, wise,
+beautiful book unless he had a great soul--is it almost like saying
+that an artist could not paint a fine face unless he had a fine face
+himself. It is all a question of seeing clearly, and having a
+skilled hand. There is nothing to make one believe that Shakespeare
+had a particularly noble or beautiful character; and some of our
+greatest writers have been men of unbalanced, childish, immature
+temperaments, full of vanity and pettiness. Of course a man must be
+interested in what he is describing; but I think that a man of a
+naturally great, wise, and lofty spirit is so disposed as a rule to
+feel that his qualities are instinctive, and so ready to credit
+other people with them, that it does not occur to him to depict
+those qualities. I am not sure that the best equipment for an artist
+is not that he should see and admire great and noble and beautiful
+things, and feel his own deficiency in them acutely, desiring them
+with the desire of the moth for the star. The best characters in my
+own books have been, I am sure, the people least like myself,
+because the creation of a character that one whole-heartedly
+admires, and that yet is far out of one's reach, is the most restful
+and delightful thing in the world. If one is unready in speech,
+thinking of one's epigrams three hours after the occasion for them
+has arisen, how pleasant to draw the man who says the neat, witty,
+appropriate, consoling thing! If one suffers from timidity, from
+meanness, from selfishness, what a delight to depict the man who is
+brave, generous, unselfish! Of course the quality of a man's mind
+flows into and over his work, but that is rather like the varnish of
+the picture than its tints--it is the medium rather than the design.
+The artistic creation of ideal situations is often a sort of refuge
+to the man who knows that he makes a mess of the beautiful and
+simple relations of life. The artist is fastidious and moody,
+feeling the pressure of strained nerves and tired faculties, easily
+discouraged, disgusted by the superficial defect, the tiny blot that
+spoils alike the noble character, the charming prospect, the
+attractive face. He sees, let us say, a person with a beautiful face
+and an ugly hand. The normal person thinks of the face and forgets
+the hand. The artist thinks with pain of the hand and forgets the
+face. He desires an impossible perfection, and flies for safety to
+the little world that he can make and sway. That is why artists, as
+a rule, love twilight hours, shaded rooms, half-tones, subdued
+hues, because what is common, staring, tasteless, is blurred and
+hidden. Men of rich vitality are generally too much occupied with
+life as it is, its richness, its variety, its colour and fragrance,
+to think wistfully of life as it might be. The unbridled, sensuous,
+luxurious strain, that one finds in so many artists, comes from a
+lack of moral temperance, a snatching at delights. They fear
+dreariness and ugliness so much that they welcome any intoxication
+of pleasure. But after all, it is clearness of vision that makes the
+artist, the power of disentangling the central feature from the
+surrounding details, the power of subordinating accessories, of
+seeing which minister to the innermost impression, and which
+distract and blur. An artist who creates a great character need not
+necessarily even desire to attain the great qualities which he
+discerns; he sees them, as he sees the vertebrae of the mountain
+ridge under pasture and woodland, as he sees the structure of the
+tree under its mist of green; but to see beauty is not necessarily
+to desire it; for, as in the mountain and the tree, it may have no
+ethical significance at all, only a symbolical meaning. The best art
+is inspired more by an intellectual force than by a vital sympathy.
+Of course to succeed as a novelist in England to-day, one must have
+a dash of the moralist, because an English audience is far more
+preoccupied with moral ideals than with either intellectual or
+artistic ideals. The reading public desires that love should be
+loyal rather than passionate; it thinks ultimate success a more
+impressive thing than ultimate failure; it loves sadness as a
+contrast and preface to laughter. It prefers that the patriarch Job
+should end by having a nice new family of children and abundant
+flocks, rather than that he should sink into death among the ashes,
+refusing to curse God for his reverses. Its view of existence after
+death is that Dives should join Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. To
+succeed, one must compromise with this comfortable feeing,
+sacrificing, if needs be, the artistic conscience, because the place
+of the minstrel in England is after the banquet, when the warriors
+are pleasantly tired, have put off the desire of meat and drink, and
+the fire roars and crackles in the hearth. When Ruskin deserted his
+clouds and peaks, his sunsets and sunrises, and devoured his soul
+over the brutalities and uglinesses and sordid inequalities of life,
+it was all put down to the obscure pressure of mental disease.
+Ophelia does not sob and struggle in the current, but floats
+dreamily to death in a bed of meadow-flowers.
+
+
+
+October 21, 1888.
+
+
+Let me try to recollect for my own amusement how it was that my
+last book grew up and took shape. How well I remember the day and
+the hour when the first thought came to me! Some one was dining
+here, and told a story about a friend of his, and an unhappy
+misunderstanding between him and a girl whom he loved, or thought
+he loved. A figure, two figures, a scene, a conversation, came into
+my head, absolutely and perfectly life-like. I lay awake half the
+night, I remember, over it. How did those people come to be in
+exactly that situation? how would it develop? At first it was just
+the scene by itself, nothing more; a room which filled itself with
+furniture. There were doors--where did they lead to? There were
+windows--where did they look out? The house was full, too, of other
+people, whose quiet movements I heard. One person entered the room,
+and then another; and so the story opened out. I saw the wrong word
+spoken, I saw the mist of doubt and distress that filled the girl's
+mind; I felt that I would have given anything to intervene, to
+explain; but instead of speaking out, the girl confided in the
+wrong person, who had an old grudge against the man, so old that it
+had become instinctive and irrational. So the thing evolved itself.
+Then at one time the story got entangled and confused. I could go
+no further. The characters were by this time upon the scene, but
+they could not speak. I then saw that I had made a mistake
+somewhere. The scaffolding was all taken down, spar by spar, and
+still the defect was not revealed. I must go, I saw, backwards; and
+so I felt my way, like a man groping in the dark, into what had
+gone before, and suddenly came out into the light. It was a mistake
+far back in the conception. I righted it, and the story began to
+evolve itself again; this time with a delicate certainty, that made
+me feel I was on the track at last. An impressive scene was
+sacrificed--it was there that my idea had gone wrong! As to the
+writing of it, I cannot say it was an effort. It wrote itself. I
+was not creating; I was describing and selecting. There was one
+scene in particular, a scene which has been praised by all the
+reviewers. How did I invent it? I do not know. I had no idea what
+the characters were to say when I began to write it, but one remark
+grew inevitably and surely out of the one before. I was never at a
+loss; I never stuck fast; indeed the one temptation which I firmly
+and constantly resisted was the temptation to write morning, noon,
+and night. Sometimes I had a horrible fear that I might not live to
+set down what was so clear in my mind; but there is a certain
+freshness which comes of self-restraint. Day after day, as I
+strolled, and read, and talked, I used to hug myself at the thought
+of the beloved evening hours that were coming, when I should fling
+myself upon the book with a passionate zest, and feel it grow under
+my hand. And then it was done! I remember writing the last words,
+and the conviction came upon me that it was the end. There was more
+to be told; the story stretched on into the distance; but it was as
+though the frame of the picture had suddenly fallen upon the
+canvas, and I knew that just so much and no more was to be seen.
+And then, as though to show me plainly that the work was over, the
+next day came an event which drew my mind off the book. I had had a
+period of unclouded health and leisure, everything had combined to
+help me, and then this event, of which I need not speak, came and
+closed the book at the right moment.
+
+What wonder if one grows fatalistic about writing; that one feels
+that one can only say what is given one to say! And now, dry and
+arid as my mind is, I would give all I have for a renewal of that
+beautiful glow, which I cannot recover. It is misery--I can
+conceive no greater--to be bound hand and foot in this helpless
+silence.
+
+
+
+November 6, 1888.
+
+
+It is a joy to think of the way in which the best, most beautiful,
+most permanent things have stolen unnoticed into life. I like to
+think of Wordsworth, an obscure, poor, perverse, absurd man, living
+in the corner of the great house at Alfoxden, walking in the
+moonlight with Coleridge, living on milk and eggs, utterly
+unaccountable and puerile to the sensible man of affairs, while the
+two planned the Lyrical Ballads. I like to think of Keats, sitting
+lazily and discontentedly in the villa garden at Hampstead, with
+his illness growing upon him and his money melting away, scribbling
+the "Ode to the Nightingale," and caring so little about the fate
+of it that it was only by chance, as it were, that the pencil
+scraps were rescued from the book where he had shut them. I love to
+think of Charlotte Bronte, in the bare kitchen of the little house
+in the grey, wind-swept village on the edge of the moorland,
+penning, in sickness and depression, the scenes of Jane Eyre,
+without a thought that she was doing anything unusual or lasting.
+We surround such scenes with a heavenly halo, born of the afterglow
+of fame; we think them romantic, beautiful, thrilled and flushed by
+passionate joy; but there was little that was delightful about them
+at the time.
+
+The most beautiful of all such scenes is the tale of the maiden-
+wife in the stable at Bethlehem, with the pain and horror and shame
+of the tragic experience, in all its squalid publicity, told in
+those simple words, which I never hear without a smile that is full
+of tears, BECAUSE THERE WAS NO ROOM FOR THEM IN THE INN. We poor
+human souls, knowing what that event has meant for the race, make
+the bare, ugly place seemly and lovely, surrounding the Babe with a
+tapestry of heavenly forms, holy lights, rapturous sounds; taking
+the terror and the meanness of the scene away, and thereby, by our
+clumsy handling, losing the divine seal of the great mystery, the
+fact that hope can spring, in unstained and sublime radiance, from
+the vilest, lowest, meanest, noisiest conditions that can well be
+conceived.
+
+
+
+November 20, 1888.
+
+
+I wonder aimlessly what it is that makes a book, a picture, a piece
+of music, a poem, great. When any of these things has become a part
+of one's mind and soul, utterly and entirely familiar, one is
+tempted to think that the precise form of them is inevitable. That
+is a great mistake.
+
+Here is a tiny instance. I see that in the "Lycidas" Milton wrote:--
+
+
+    "Who would not sing for Lycidas? He WELL knew
+     Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme."
+
+
+The word "well" occurs in two MSS., and it seems to have been
+struck out in the proof. The introduction of the word seems
+barbarous, unmetrical, an outrage on the beauty of the line. Yet
+Milton must have thought that it was needed, and have only decided
+by an after-thought that it was better away. If it had been printed
+so, we should equally have thought its omission barbarous and
+inartistic.
+
+And thus, to an artist, there must be many ways of working out a
+conception. I do not believe in the theory that the form is so
+inevitable, because what great artist was ever perfectly content
+with the form? The greater the artist, the more conscious he
+probably is of the imperfection of his work; and if it could be
+bettered, how is it then inevitable? It is only our familiarity
+with it that gives it inevitableness. A beautiful building gains
+its mellow outline by a hundred accidents of wear and weather,
+never contemplated by the designer's mind. We love it so, we would
+not have it otherwise; but we should have loved it just as
+intensely if it had been otherwise. Only a small part, then, of the
+greatness of artistic work is what we ourselves bring to it; and it
+becomes great, not only from itself, but from the fact that it fits
+our minds as the dagger fits the sheath. The greatness of a
+conception depends largely upon its being near enough to our own
+conceptions, and yet a little greater, just as the vault of a great
+church gives one a larger sense of immensity than the sky with its
+sailing clouds. Indeed it is often the very minuteness of a
+conception rather than its vastness that makes it great. It must
+not be outside our range. As to the form, it depends upon some
+curious felicity of hand, and touch, and thought. Suppose that a
+great painter gave a rough pencil-sketch of a picture to a hundred
+students, and told them all to work it out in colour. Some few of
+the results would be beautiful, the majority would be still
+uninteresting and tame.
+
+Thus I am somewhat of a fatalist about art, because it seems to
+depend upon a lucky union of conception and technical instinct. The
+saddest proof of which is that many good and even great artists
+have not improved in greatness as their skill improved. The
+youthful works of genius are generally the best, their very
+crudities and stiffnesses adorable.
+
+The history of art and literature alike seems to point to the fact
+that each artistic soul has a flowering period, which generally
+comes early, rarely comes late; and therefore the supreme artist
+ought also to know when the bloom is over, when his good work is
+done. And then, I think, he ought to be ready to abjure his art, to
+drown his book, like Prospero, and set himself to live rather than
+to produce. But what a sacrifice to demand of a man, and how few
+attain it! Most men cannot do without their work, and go on to the
+end producing more feeble, more tired, more mannerised work, till
+they cloud the beauty of their prime by masses of inferior and
+uninspired production.
+
+
+
+November 24, 1888.
+
+
+Soft wintry skies, touched with faintest gleams of colour, like a
+dove's wing, blue plains and heights, over the nearer woodland;
+everywhere fallen rotting leaf and oozy water-channel; everything,
+tint and form, restrained, austere, delicate; nature asleep and
+breathing gently in the cool airs; a tranquil and sober hopefulness
+abroad.
+
+I walked alone in deep woodland lanes, content for once to rest and
+dream. The country seemed absolutely deserted; such labour as was
+going forward was being done in barn and byre; beasts being fed,
+hurdles made.
+
+I passed in a solitary road a draggled ugly woman, a tramp,
+wheeling an old perambulator full of dingy clothes and sordid odds
+and ends; she looked at me sullenly and suspiciously. Where she was
+going God knows: to camp, I suppose, in some dingle, with ugly
+company; to beg, to lie, to purloin, perhaps to drink; but by the
+perambulator walked a little boy, seven or eight years old,
+grotesquely clothed in patched and clumsy garments; he held on to
+the rim, dirty, unkempt; but he was happy too; he was with his
+mother, of whom he had no fear; he had been fed as the birds are
+fed; he had no anxious thoughts of the future, and as he went, he
+crooned to himself a soft song, like the piping of a finch in a
+wayside thicket. What was in his tiny mind and heart? I do not
+know; but perhaps a little touch of the peace of God.
+
+
+
+November 26, 1888.
+
+
+Another visitor! I am not sure that his visit is not a more
+distinguished testimonial than any I have yet received. He is a
+young Don with a very brilliant record indeed. He wrote to ask if
+he might have the honour of calling, and renewing a very slight
+acquaintance. He came and conquered. I am still crushed and
+battered by his visit. I feel like a land that has been harried by
+an invading army. Let me see if, dizzy and unmanned as I am, I call
+recall some of the incidents of his visit. He has only been gone an
+hour, yet I feel as though a month had elapsed since he entered the
+room, since I was a moderately happy man. He is a very pleasant
+fellow to look at, small, trim, well-appointed, courteous,
+friendly, with a deferential air. His eyes gleam brightly through
+his glasses, and he has brisk dexterous gestures. He was genial
+enough till he settled down upon literature, and since then what
+waves and storms have gone over me! I have or had a grovelling
+taste for books; I possess a large number, and I thought I had read
+them. But I feel now, not so much as if I had read the wrong ones,
+but as if those I had read were only, so to speak, the anterooms
+and corridors which led to the really important books--and of them,
+it seems, I know nothing. Epigrams flowed from his tongue,
+brilliant characterisations, admirable judgments. He had "placed"
+every one, and literature to him seemed like a great mosaic in
+which he knew the position of every cube. He knew all the movements
+and tendencies of literature, and books seemed to him to be
+important, not because they had a message for the mind and heart,
+but because they illustrated a tendency, or were a connecting link
+in a chain. He quoted poems I had never heard of, he named authors
+I had never read. He did it all modestly and quietly enough, with
+no parade, (I want to do him full justice) but with an evidently
+growing disappointment to find that he had fallen among savages. I
+am sure that his conclusion was that authors of popular novels were
+very shallow, ill-informed people, and I am sure I wholly agreed
+with him. Good heavens, what a mind the man had, how stored with
+knowledge! how admirably equipped! Nothing that he had ever put
+away in his memory seemed to have lost its colour or outline; and
+he knew, moreover, how to lay his hand upon everything. Indeed, it
+seemed to me that his mind was like an emporium, with everything in
+the world arranged on shelves, all new and varnished and bright,
+and that he knew precisely the place of everything. I became the
+prey of hopeless depression; when I tried to join in, I confused
+writers and dates; he set me right, not patronisingly but
+paternally. "Ah, but you will remember," he said, and "Yes, but we
+must not overlook the fact that"--adding, with admirable humility,
+"Of course these are small points, but it is my business to know
+them." Now I find myself wondering why I disliked knowledge,
+communicated thus, so much as I did. It may be envy and jealousy,
+it may be humiliation and despair. But I do not honestly think that
+it is. I am quite sure I do not want to possess that kind of
+knowledge. It is the very sharpness and clearness of outline about
+it all that I dislike. The things that he knows have not become
+part of his mind in any way: they are stored away there, like
+walnuts; and I feel that I have been pelted with walnuts, deluged
+and buried in walnuts. The things which my visitor knows have
+undergone no change, they have not been fused and blended by his
+personality; they have not affected his mind, nor has his mind
+affected them. I don't wish to despise or to decry his knowledge;
+as a lecturer, he must be invaluable; but he treats literature as a
+purveyor might--it has not been food to him, but material and
+stock-in-trade. Some of the poetry we talked about--Elizabethan
+lyrics--grow in my mind like flowers in a copse; in his mind they
+are planted in rows, with their botanical names on tickets. The
+worst of it is that I do not even feel encouraged to fill up my
+gaps of knowledge, or to master the history of tendency. I feel as
+if he had rather trampled down the hyacinths and anemones in my
+wild and uncultivated woodlands. I should like, in a dim way, to
+have his knowledge as well as my own appreciation, but I would not
+exchange my knowledge for his. The value of a lyric or a beautiful
+sentence, for me, is its melody, its charm, its mysterious thrill;
+and there are many books and poems, which I know to be excellent of
+their kind, but which have no meaning or message for me. He seems
+to think that it is important to have complete texts of old
+authors, and I do not think that he makes much distinction between
+first-rate and second-rate work. In fact, I think that his view of
+literature is the sociological view, and he seems to care more
+about tendencies and influences than about the beauty and appeal of
+literature. I do not go so far as to say or to think that
+literature cannot be treated scientifically; but I feel as I feel
+about the doctor in Balzac, I think, who, when his wife cried upon
+his shoulder, said, "Hold, I have analysed tears," adding that they
+contained so much chlorate of sodium and so much mucus. The truth
+is that he is a philosopher, and that I am an individualist; but it
+leaves me with an intense desire to be left alone in my woodland,
+or, at all events, not to walk there with a ruthless botanist!
+
+
+
+November 29, 1888.
+
+
+I have heard this morning of the suicide of an old friend. Is it
+strange to say that I have heard the news with an unfeigned relief,
+even gladness? He was formerly a charming and brilliant creature,
+full of enthusiasm and artistic impulses, fitful, wayward, wilful.
+Somehow he missed his footing; he fell into disreputable courses;
+he did nothing, but drifted about, planning many things, executing
+nothing. The last time I saw him was exquisitely painful; we met by
+appointment, and I could see that he had tried to screw himself up
+for the interview by stimulants. The ghastly feigning of
+cheerfulness, the bloated face, the trembling hands, told the sad
+tale. And now that it is all over, the shame and the decay, the
+horror of his having died by his own act is a purely conventional
+one. One talks pompously about the selfishness of it, but it is one
+of the most unselfish things poor Dick has ever done; he was a
+burden and a misery to all those who cared for him. Recovery was, I
+sincerely believe, impossible. His was a fine, uplifted, even noble
+spirit in youth, but there were terrible hereditary influences at
+work, and I cannot honestly say that I think he was wholly
+responsible for his sins. If I could think that this act was done
+reasonably, in a solemn and recollected spirit, and was not a mere
+frightened scurrying out of life, I should be, I believe, wholly
+glad. I do not see that any one had anything to gain by his
+continuing to live; and if reason is given us to use, to guide our
+actions by, it seems to me that we do right to obey it. Suicide
+may, of course, be a selfish and a cowardly thing, but the instinct
+of self-preservation is so strong that a man must always manifest a
+certain courage in making such a decision. The sacrifice of one's
+own life is not necessarily and absolutely an immoral thing,
+because it is always held to be justified if one's motive is to
+save another. It is purely, I believe, a question of motive;
+whatever poor Dick's motives were, it was certainly the kindest and
+bravest thing that he could do; and I look upon his life as having
+been as naturally ended as if he had died of disease or by an
+accident. There is not a single one of his friends who would not
+have been thankful if he had died in the course of nature; and I
+for one am even more thankful as it is, because it seems to me that
+his act testifies to some tenderness, some consideration for
+others, as well as to a degree of resolution with which I had not
+credited him.
+
+Of course such a thing deepens the mystery of the world; but such
+an act as this is not to me half as mysterious as the action of an
+omnipotent Power which allowed so bright and gracious a creature as
+Dick was long ago to drift into ugly, sordid, and irreparable
+misery. Yet it seems to me now that Dick has at last trusted God
+completely, made the last surrender, and put his miserable case in
+the Father's hands.
+
+
+
+December 2, 1888.
+
+
+As I came home to-night, moving slowly westward along deserted
+roads, among wide and solitary fields, in the frosty twilight, I
+passed a great pale fallow, in the far corner of which, beside a
+willow-shaded stream, a great heap of weeds was burning, tended by
+a single lonely figure raking in the smouldering pile. A dense
+column of thick smoke came volleying from the heap, that went
+softly and silently up into the orange-tinted sky; some forty feet
+higher the smoke was caught by a moving current of air; much of it
+ascended higher still, but the thin streak of moving wind caught
+and drew out upon itself a long weft of aerial vapour, that showed
+a delicate blue against the rose-flushed west. The long lines of
+leafless trees, the faint outlines of the low distant hills, seemed
+wrapped in meditative silence, dreaming wistfully, as the earth
+turned her broad shoulder to the night, and as the forlorn and
+chilly sunset faded by soft degrees on the horizon. As the day thus
+died, the frost made itself felt, touching the hedgerows with rime,
+and crisping the damp road beneath my feet. The end drew on with a
+mournful solemnity; but the death of the light seemed a perfectly
+natural and beautiful thing, not an event to be grieved over or
+regretted, but all part of a sweet and grave progress, in which
+silence and darkness seemed, not an interruption to the eager life
+of the world, but a happy suspension of activity and life. I was
+haunted, as I often am at sunset, by a sense that the dying light
+was trying to show me some august secret, some gracious mystery,
+which would silence and sustain the soul could it but capture it.
+Some great and wonderful presence seemed to hold up a hand, with a
+gesture half of invitation, half of compassion for my blindness.
+Down there, beyond the lines of motionless trees, where the water
+gleamed golden in the reaches of the stream, the secret brooded,
+withdrawing itself resistlessly into the glowing west. A wistful
+yearning filled my soul to enter into that incommunicable peace.
+Yet if one could take the wings of the morning, and follow that
+flying zone of light, as swiftly as the air, one could pursue the
+same sunset all the world over, and see the fiery face of the sun
+ever sinking to his setting, over the broad furrows of moving seas,
+over tangled tropic forests, out to the shapeless wintry land of
+the south. Day by day has the same pageant enacted itself, for who
+can tell what millions of years. And in that vast perspective of
+weltering aeons has come the day when God has set me here, a tiny
+sentient point, conscious, in a sense, of it all, and conscious too
+that, long after I sleep in the dust, the same strange and
+beautiful thing will be displayed age after age. And yet it is all
+outside of me, all without. I am a part of it, yet with no sense of
+my unity with it. That is the marvellous and bewildering thing,
+that each tiny being like myself has the same sense of isolation,
+of distinctness, of the perfectly rounded life, complete faculties,
+independent existence. Another day is done, and leaves me as
+bewildered, as ignorant as ever, as aware of my small limitations,
+as lonely and uncomforted.
+
+Who shall show me why I love, with this deep and thirsty intensity,
+the array of gold and silver light, these mist-hung fields with
+their soft tints, the glow that flies and fades, the cold veils of
+frosty vapour? Thousands of men and women have seen the sunset
+pass, loving it even as I love it. They have gone into the silence
+as I too shall go, and no hint comes back as to whether they
+understand and are satisfied.
+
+And now I turn in at the well-known gate, and see the dark gables
+of my house, with the high elms of the grove outlined against the
+pale sky. The cheerful windows sparkle with warmth and light,
+welcoming me, fresh from the chilly air, out of the homeless
+fields. With such array of cheerful usages I beguile my wondering
+heart, and chase away the wild insistent thoughts, the deep
+yearnings that thrill me. Thus am I bidden to desire and to be
+unsatisfied, to rest and marvel not, to stay, on this unsubstantial
+show of peace and security, the aching and wondering will.
+
+
+
+December 4, 1888.
+
+
+Writing, like music, ought to have two dimensions--a horizontal
+movement of melody, a perpendicular depth of tone. A person
+unskilled in music can only recognise a single horizontal movement,
+an air. One who is a little more skilled can recognise the
+composition of a chord. A real musician can read a score
+horizontally, with all its contrasting and combining melodies.
+Sometimes one gets, in writing, a piece of horizontal structure, a
+firm and majestic melody, with but little harmony. Such are the
+great spare, strong stories of the old world. Modern writing tends
+to lay much more emphasis upon depth of colour, and the danger
+there is that such writing may become a mere structureless
+modulation, The perfect combination is to get firm structure,
+sparingly and economically enriched by colour, but colour always
+subordinated to structure. When I was young I undervalued structure
+and overvalued colour; but it was a good training in a way, because
+I learned to appreciate the vital necessity of structure, and I
+learnt the command of harmony. What is it that gives structure? It
+is firm and clear intellectual conception, the grasp of form and
+proportion; while colour is given by depth and richness of
+personality, by power of perception, and still more by the power of
+fusing perception with personality. The important thing here is
+that the thing perceived and felt should not simply be registered
+and pigeon-holed, but that it should become a cell of the writer's
+soul, respond to his pulse, be animated by his vital forces.
+
+Now, in my present state, I have lost my hold on melody in some way
+or other; my creative intellectual power has struck work; and when
+I try to exercise it, I can only produce vague textures of
+modulated thoughts--things melodious in themselves, but ineffective
+because they are isolated effects, instead of effects emphasising
+points, crises, climaxes. I have strained some mental muscle, I
+suppose; but the unhappy part of the situation is that I have not
+lost the desire to use it.
+
+It would be a piece of good fortune for me now if I could fall in
+with some vigorous mind who could give me a lead, indicate a
+subject. But then the work that resulted would miss unity, I think.
+What I ought to be content to do is to garner more impressions; but
+I seem to be surfeited of impressions.
+
+
+
+December 10, 1888.
+
+
+To-day I stumbled upon one of my old childish books--Grimm's
+Household Stories. I am ashamed to say how long I read it. These
+old tales, which I used to read as transcripts of marvellous and
+ancient facts, have, many of them, gained for me, through
+experience of life, a beautiful and symbolical value; one in
+particular, the tale of Karl Katz.
+
+Karl used to feed his goats in the ruins of an old castle, high up
+above the stream. Day after day one of his herd used to disappear,
+coming back in the evening to join the homeward procession, very
+fat and well-liking. So Karl set himself to watch, and saw that the
+goat slipped in at a hole in the masonry. He enlarged the hole, and
+presently was able to creep into a dark passage. He made his way
+along, and soon heard a sound like a falling hailstorm. He groped
+his way thither, and found the goat, in the dim light, feeding on
+grains of corn which came splashing down from above. He looked and
+listened, and, from the sounds of stamping and neighing overhead,
+he became aware that the grain was failing through the chinks of a
+paved floor from a stable inside the hill. I forget at this moment
+what happened next--the story is rich in inconsequent details--but
+Karl shortly heard a sound like thunder, which he discerned at last
+to be persons laughing and shouting and running in the vaulted
+passages. He stole on, and found, in an open, grassy place, great
+merry men playing at bowls. He was welcomed and set down in a
+chair, though he could not even lift one of the bowls when invited
+to join in the game. A dwarf brought him wine in a cup, which he
+drank, and presently he fell asleep.
+
+When he woke, all was silent and still; he made his way back; the
+goats were gone, and it was the early morning, all misty and dewy
+among the ruins, when he squeezed out of the hole.
+
+He felt strangely haggard and tired, and reached the village only
+to find that seventy years had elapsed, and that he was an old and
+forgotten man, with no place for him. He had lost his home, and
+though there were one or two old grandfathers, spent and dying, who
+remembered the day when he was lost, and the search made for him,
+yet now there was no room for the old man. The gap had filled up,
+life had flowed on. They had grieved for him, but they did not want
+him back. He disturbed their arrangements; he was another useless
+mouth to feed.
+
+The pretty old story is full of parables, sad and sweet. But the
+kernel of the tale is a warning to all who, for any wilfulness or
+curiosity, however romantic or alluring the quest, forfeit their
+place for an instant in the world. You cannot return. Life
+accommodates itself to its losses, and however sincerely a man may
+be lamented, yet if he returns, if he tries to claim his place, he
+is in the way, de trop. No one has need of him.
+
+An artist has most need of this warning, because he of all men is
+tempted to enter the dark place in the hill, to see wonderful
+things and to drink the oblivious wine. Let him rather keep his
+hold on the world, at whatever sacrifice. Because by the time that
+he has explored the home of the merry giants, and dreamed his
+dream, the world to which he tries to tell the vision will heed it
+not, but treat it as a fanciful tale.
+
+All depends on the artist being in league with his day; if he is
+born too early or too late, he has no hold on the world, no message
+for it. Either he is a voice out of the past, an echo of old joys,
+piping a forgotten message, or he is fanciful, unreal, visionary,
+if he sees and tries to utter what shall be. By the time that
+events confirm his foresight, the vitality of his prophecy is gone,
+and he is only looked at with a curious admiration, as one that had
+a certain clearness of vision, but no more; he is called into court
+by the historian of tendency, but he has had no hold on living men.
+
+One sees men of great artistic gifts who suffer from each of these
+disadvantages. One sees poets, born in a prosaic age, who would
+have won high fame if they had been born in an age of poets. And
+one sees, too, men who seem to struggle with big, unintelligible
+thoughts, thoughts which do not seem to fit on to anything
+existing. The happy artist is the man who touches the note which
+awakens a responsive echo in many hearts; the man who instinctively
+uses the medium of the time, and who neither regrets the old nor
+portends the new.
+
+Karl Katz must content himself, if he can find a corner and a
+crust, with the memory of the day when the sun lay hot among the
+ruins, with the thought of the pleasant coolness of the vault, the
+leaping shower of corn, the thunder of the imprisoned feet, the
+heroic players, the heady wine. That must be enough for him. He has
+had a taste, let him remember, of marvels hidden from common eyes
+and ears. Let it be for him to muse in the sun, and to be grateful
+for the space of recollection given him. If he had lived the life
+of the world, he would but have had a treasure of simple memories,
+much that was sordid, much that was sad.
+
+But now he has his own dreams, and he must pay the price in
+heaviness and dreariness!
+
+
+
+December 14, 1888.
+
+
+The danger of art as an occupation is that one uses life, looks at
+life, as so much material for one's art. Life becomes a province of
+art, instead of art being a province of life. That is all a sad
+mistake, perhaps an irreparable mistake! I walked to-day on the
+crisp frozen snow, down the valley, by field-paths, among leafless
+copses and wood-ends. The stream ran dark and cold, between its
+brambly banks; the snow lay pure and smooth on the high-sloping
+fields. It made a heart of whiteness in the covert, the trees all
+delicately outlined, the hazels weaving an intricate pattern. All
+perfectly and exquisitely beautiful. Sight after sight of subtle
+and mysterious beauty, vignette after vignette, picture after
+picture. If I could but sing it, or say it, depict or record it, I
+thought to myself! Yet I could not analyse what the desire was. I
+do not think I wished to interpret the sight to others, or even to
+capture it for myself. No matter at what season of the year I pass
+through the valley, it is always filled from end to end with
+beauty, ever changing, perishing, ever renewing itself. In spring
+the copse is full of tender points of green, uncrumpling and
+uncurling. The hyacinths make a carpet of steely blue, the anemones
+weave their starred tapestry. In the summer, the grove hides its
+secret, dense with leaf, the heavy-seeded grass rises in the field,
+the tall flowering plants make airy mounds of colour; in autumn,
+the woods blaze with orange and gold, the air is heavy with the
+scent of the dying leaf. In winter, the eye dwells with delight
+upon the spare low tints; and when the snow falls and lies, as it
+does to-day, the whole scene has a still and mournful beauty, a
+pure economy of contrasted light and gloom. Yet the trained
+perception of the artist does not dwell upon the thought of the
+place as upon a perpetual feast of beauty and delight. Rather, it
+shames me to reflect, one dwells upon it as a quarry of effects,
+where one can find and detach the note of background, the sweet
+symbol that will lend point and significance to the scene that one
+is labouring at. Instead of being content to gaze, to listen, to
+drink in, one thinks only what one can carry away and make one's
+own. If one's art were purely altruistic, if one's aim were to
+emphasise some sweet aspect of nature which the careless might
+otherwise overlook or despise; or even if the sight haunted one
+like a passion, and fed the heart with hope and love, it would be
+well. But does one in reality feel either of these purposes?
+Speaking candidly, I do not. I care very little for my message to
+the world. It is true that I have a deep and tender love for the
+gracious things of earth; but I cannot be content with that. One
+thinks of Wordsworth, rapt in contemplation, sitting silent for a
+whole morning, his eyes fixed upon the pool of the moorland stream,
+or the precipice with the climbing ashes. It was like a religion to
+him, a communion with something holy and august which in that
+moment drew near to his soul. But with me it is different. To me
+the passion is to express it, to embalm it, in phrase or word, not
+for my pride in my art, not for any desire to give the treasure to
+others, but simply, so it seems, in obedience to a tyrannous
+instinct to lend the thought, the sight, another shape. I despair
+of defining the feeling. It is partly a desire to arrest the
+fleeting moment, to give it permanence in the ruinous lapse of
+things, the same feeling that made old Herrick say to the
+daffodils, "We weep to see you haste away so soon." Partly the joy
+of the craftsman in making something that shall please the eye and
+ear. It is not the desire to create, as some say, but to record.
+For when one writes an impassioned scene, it seems no more an act
+of creation than one feels about one's dreams. The wonder of dreams
+is that one does not make them; they come upon one with all the
+pleasure of surprise and experience. They are there; and so, when
+one indulges imagination, one does not make, one merely tells the
+dream. It is this that makes art so strange and sad an occupation,
+that one lives in a beautiful world, which does not seem to be of
+one's own designing, but from which one is awakened, in terror and
+disgust, by bodily pain, discomfort, anxiety, loss. Yet it seems
+useless to say that life is real and imagination unreal. They are
+both there, both real. The danger is to use life to feed the
+imagination, not to use imagination to feed life. In these sad
+weeks I have been like a sleeper awakened. The world of
+imagination, in which I have lived and moved, has crumbled into
+pieces over my head; the wind and rain beat through the flimsy
+dwelling, and I must arise and go. I have sported with life as
+though it were a pretty plaything; and I find it turn upon me like
+a wild beast, gaunt, hungry, angry. I am terrified by its evil
+motions, I sicken at its odour. That is the deep mystery and horror
+of life, that one yields unerringly to blind and imperious
+instincts, not knowing which may lead us into green and fertile
+pastures of hope and happy labour, and which may draw us into
+thorny wildernesses. The old fables are true, that one must not
+trust the smiling presences, the beguiling words. Yet how is one to
+know which of the forms that beckon us we may trust. Must we learn
+the lesson by sad betrayals, by dark catastrophes? I have wandered,
+it seems, along a flowery path--and yet I have not gathered the
+poisonous herbs of sin; I have loved innocence and goodness; but
+for all that I have followed a phantom, and now that it is too late
+to retrace my steps, I find that I have been betrayed. I feel
+
+
+   "As some bold seer in a trance
+    Seeing all his own mischance."
+
+
+Well, at least one may still be bold!
+
+
+
+December 22, 1888.
+
+
+Perhaps my trial comes to me that it may test my faith in art;
+perhaps to show me that the artist's creed is a false and shallow
+one after all. What is it that we artists do? In a happy hour I
+should have said glibly that we discern and interpret beauty. But
+now it seems to me that no man can ever live upon beauty. I think I
+have gone wrong in busying myself so ardently in trying to discern
+the quality of beauty in all things. I seem to have submitted
+everything--virtue, honour, life itself--to that test. I appear to
+myself like an artist who has devoted himself entirely to the
+appreciation of colour, who is suddenly struck colour-blind; he
+sees the forms of things as clearly as ever, but they are dreary
+and meaningless. I seem to have tried everything, even conduct, by
+an artistic standard, and the quality which I have devoted myself
+to discerning has passed suddenly out of life. And my mistake has
+been all the more grievous, because I have always believed that it
+was life of which I was in search. There are three great writers--
+two of them artists as well--whose personality has always
+interested me profoundly--Ruskin, Carlyle, Rossetti. But I have
+never been able wholly to admire the formal and deliberate products
+of their minds. Ruskin as an art-critic--how profoundly unfair,
+prejudiced, unjust he is! He has made up his mind about the merit
+of an artist; he will lay down a principle about accuracy in art,
+and to what extent imagination may improve upon vision; and then he
+will abuse Claude for modifying a scene, in the same breath, and
+for the same reasons, with which he will praise Turner for
+exaggerating one. He will use the same stick that he throws for one
+dog to fetch, to beat another dog that he dislikes. Of course he
+says fine and suggestive things by the way, and he did a great work
+in inspiring people to look for beauty, though he misled many
+feeble spirits into substituting one convention for another. I
+cannot read a page of his formal writings without anger and
+disgust. Yet what a beautiful, pathetic, noble spirit he had! The
+moment he writes, simply and tenderly, from his own harrowed heart,
+he becomes a dear and honoured friend. In Praeterita, in his diaries
+and letters, in his familiar and unconsidered utterances, he is
+perfectly delightful, conscious of his own waywardness and
+whimsicality; but when he lectures and dictates, he is like a man
+blowing wild blasts upon a shrill trumpet. Then Carlyle--his big
+books, his great tawdry, smoky pictures of scenes, his loud and
+clumsy moralisations, his perpetual thrusting of himself into the
+foreground, like some obstreperous showman; he wearies and dizzies
+my brain with his raucous clamour, his uncouth convolutions. I saw
+the other day a little Japanese picture of a boat in a stormy sea,
+the waves beating over it; three warriors in the boat lie prostrate
+and rigid with terror and misery. Above, through a rent in the
+clouds, is visible an ugly grotesque figure, with a demoniacal leer
+on his face, beating upon a number of drums. The picture is
+entitled "The Thunder-God beats his drums." Well, Carlyle seems to
+me like that; he has no pity for humanity, he only likes to add to
+its terrors and its bewilderment. He preached silence and seclusion
+to men of activity, energy to men of contemplation. He was furious,
+whatever humanity did, whether it slept or waked. His message is
+the message of the booming gale, and the swollen cataract. Yet in
+his diaries and letters, what splendid perception, what inimitable
+humour, what rugged emotion! I declare that Carlyle's thumbnail
+portraits of people and scenes are some of the most admirable
+things ever set down on paper. I love and admire the old furious,
+disconsolate, selfish fellow with all my heart; though he was a bad
+husband, he was a true friend, for all his discordant cries and
+groans. Then there is Rossetti--a man who wrote a few incredibly
+beautiful poems, and in whom one seems to feel the inner fire and
+glow of art. Yet many of his pictures are to me little but
+voluptuous and wicked dreams; and his later sonnets are full of
+poisonous fragrance--poetry embroidered and scented, not poetry
+felt. What a generous, royal prodigal nature he had, till he sank
+into his drugged and indulgent seclusion! Here then are three great
+souls. Ruskin, the pure lover of things noble and beautiful, but
+shadowed by a prim perversity, an old-maidish delicacy, a petulant
+despair. Carlyle, a great, rugged, and tumultuous heart, brutalised
+by ill-health, morbidity, selfishness. Rossetti, a sort of day-star
+in art, stepping forth like an angel, to fall lower than Lucifer.
+What is the meaning of these strange catastrophes, these noble
+natures so infamously hampered? In the three cases, it seems to be
+that melancholy, brooding over a world, so exquisitely designed and
+yet so unaccountably marred, drove one to madness, one to gloom,
+one to sensuality. We believe or try to believe that God is pure
+and loving and true, and that His Heart is with all that is noble
+and hopeful and high. Yet the more generous the character, the
+deeper is the fall! Can such things be meant to show us that we
+have no concern with art at all; and that our only hope is to cling
+to bare, austere, simple, uncomforted virtue? Ought we to try to
+think of art only as an innocent amusement and diversion for our
+leisure hours? As a quest to which no man may vow himself, save at
+the cost of walking in a vain shadow all his days? Ought we to
+steel our hearts against the temptation, which seems to be
+implanted as deep as anything in my own nature--nay, deeper--to
+hold that what one calls ugliness and bad taste is of the nature of
+sin? But what then is the meaning of the tyrannous instinct to
+select and to represent, to capture beauty? Ought it to be enough
+to see beauty in the things around us, in flowers and light, to
+hear it in the bird's song and the falling stream--to perceive it
+thus gratefully and thankfully, and to go back to our simple lives?
+I do not know; it is all a great mystery; it is so hard to believe
+that God should put these ardent, delicious, sweet, and solemn
+instincts into our spirits, simply that we may learn our error in
+following them. And yet I feel with a sad certainty to-day that I
+have somehow missed the way, and that God cannot or will not help
+me to find it. Are we then bidden and driven to wander? Or is there
+indeed some deep and perfect secret of peace and tranquillity,
+which we are meant to find? Does it perhaps lie open to our eyes--
+as when one searches a table over and over for some familiar
+object, which all the while is there before us, plain to touch or
+sight?
+
+
+
+January 3, 1889.
+
+
+There is a tiny vignette of Blake's, a woodcut, I think, in which
+one sees a ladder set up to the crescent moon from a bald and bare
+corner of the globe. There are two figures that seem to be
+conversing together; on the ladder itself, just setting his foot to
+the lowest rung, is the figure of a man who is beginning to climb
+in a furious hurry. "I want, I want," says the little legend
+beneath. The execution is trivial enough; it is all done, and not
+very well done, in a space not much bigger than a postage-stamp--
+but it is one of the many cases in which Blake, by a minute symbol,
+expressed a large idea. One wonders if he knew how large an idea it
+was. It is a symbol for me of all the vague, eager, intense longing
+of the world, the desire of satisfaction, of peace, of fulfilment,
+of perfection; the power that makes people passionately religious,
+that makes souls so much greater and stronger than they appear to
+themselves to be. It is the thought that makes us at moments
+believe intensely and urgently in the justice, the mercy, the
+perfect love of God, even at moments when everything round us
+appears to contradict the idea. It is the outcome of that strange
+right to happiness which we all feel, the instinct that makes us
+believe of pain and grief that they are abnormal, and will be, must
+be, set right and explained somewhere. The thought comes to me most
+poignantly at sunset, when trees and chimneys stand up dark against
+the fiery glow, and when the further landscape lies smiling, lapt
+in mist, on the verge of dreams; that moment always seems to speak
+to me with a personal voice. "Yes," it seems to say, "I am here and
+everywhere--larger, sweeter, truer, more gracious than anything you
+have ever dreamed of or hoped for--but the time to know all is not
+yet." I cannot explain the feeling or interpret it; but it has
+sometimes seemed to me, in such moments, that I am, in very truth,
+not a child of God, but a part of Himself--separated from Him for a
+season, imprisoned, for some strange and beautiful purpose, in the
+chains of matter, remembering faintly and obscurely something that
+I have lost, as a man strives to recall a beautiful dream that has
+visited him. It is then that one most desires to be strong and
+free, to be infinitely patient and tender and loving, to be
+different. And then one comes back to the world with a sense of jar
+and shock, to broken purposes, and dull resentments, to unkindly
+thoughts, and people who do not even pretend to wish one well. I
+have been trying with all my might in these desolate weeks to be
+brave and affectionate and tender, and I have not succeeded. It is
+easy enough, when one is happily occupied for a part of the day,
+but when one is restless, dissatisfied, impatient, ineffective, it
+is a constant and a weary effort. And what is more, I dislike
+sympathy. I would rather bear a thing in solitude and silence. I
+have no self-pity, and it is humiliating and weakening to be
+pitied. Yet of course Maud knows that I am unhappy; and the
+wretchedness of it is that it has introduced a strain into our
+relations which I have never felt before. I sit reading, trying to
+pass the hours, trying to stifle thought. I look up and see her
+eyes fixed on me full of compassion and love--and I do not want
+compassion. Maud knows it, divines it all; but she can no more keep
+her compassion hidden than I can keep my unrest hidden. I have
+grown irritable, suspicious, hard to live with. Yet with all my
+heart and soul I desire to be patient, tolerant, kindly, sweet-
+tempered. FitzGerald said somewhere that ill-health makes all of us
+villains. This is the worst of it, that for all my efforts I get
+weaker, more easily vexed, more discontented. I do not and cannot
+trace the smallest benefit which results to me or any one else from
+my unhappiness. The shadow of it has even fallen over my relations
+with the children, who are angelically good. Maggie, with that
+divine instinct which women possess--what a perfectly beautiful
+thing it is!--has somehow contrived to discern that things are
+amiss with me, and I can perceive that she tries all that her
+little heart and mind can devise to please, soothe, interest me.
+But I do not want to be ministered to, exquisite as the instinct is
+in the child; and all the time I am as far off my object as ever. I
+cannot work, I cannot think. I have said fine things in my books
+about the discipline of reluctant suffering; and now my feeling is
+that I could bear any other kind of trial better. It seems to be
+given to me with an almost demoniacal prescience of what should
+most dishearten me.
+
+
+   "It would not school the shuddering will
+    To patience, were it sweet to bear,"
+
+
+says an old poet; and it is true, I have no doubt; but, good God,
+to think that a man, so richly dowered as I am with every
+conceivable blessing, should yet have so small a reserve of faith
+and patience! Even now I can frame epigrams about it. "To learn to
+be content not to be content"--that is the secret--but meanwhile I
+stumble in dark paths, through the grove nullo penetrabilis astro,
+where men have wandered before now. It seems fine and romantic
+enough, when one thinks of another soul in torment. One remembers
+the old sage, reading quietly at a sunset hour, who had a sudden
+vision of the fate that should befall him. His book falls from his
+hands, he sits there, a beautiful and venerable figure enough,
+staring heavily into the void. It makes me feel that I shall never
+dare to draw the picture of a man in the grip of suffering again; I
+have had so little of it in my life, and I have drawn it with a
+luxurious artistic emotion. I remember once saying of a friend that
+his work was light and trivial, because he had never descended into
+hell. Now that I have myself set foot there, I feel art and love,
+and life itself, shrivel in the relentless chill--for it is icy
+cold and drearily bright in hell, not dark and fiery, as poets have
+sung! I feel that I could wrestle better with the loss of health,
+of wealth, of love, for there would be something to bear, some
+burden to lift. Now there is nothing to bear, except a blank
+purposelessness which eats the heart out of me. I am in the lowest
+place, in the darkness and the deep.
+
+
+
+January 8, 1889.
+
+
+Snow underfoot this morning; and a brown blink on the horizon which
+shows that more is coming. I have the odd feeling that I have never
+really seen my house before, the snow lights it all up so
+strangely, tinting the ceilings a glowing white, touching up high
+lights on the top of picture-frames, and throwing the lower part of
+the rooms into a sort of pleasant dusk.
+
+Maud and the children went off this afternoon to an entertainment.
+I accompanied them to the door; what a pretty effect the snow
+background gives to young faces; it lends a pretty morbidezza to
+the colouring, a sort of very delicate green tinge to the paler
+shades. That does not sound as if it would be beautiful in a human
+face, but it is; the faces look like the child-angels of
+Botticelli, and the pink and rose flush of the cheeks is softly
+enriched and subdued; and then the soft warmth of fair and curly
+hair is delicious. I was happy enough with them, in a sort of
+surface happiness. The little waves at the top of the mind broke in
+sunlight; but down below, the cold dark water sleeps still enough.
+I left them, and took a long trudge among the valleys. Oh me! how
+beautiful it all was; the snowy fields, with the dark copses and
+leafless trees among them; the rich clean light everywhere, the
+world seen as through a dusky crystal. Then the sun went down in
+state, and the orange sky through the dark tree-stems brought me a
+thrill of that strange yearning desire for something--I cannot tell
+what--that seems so near and yet so far away. Yet I was sad enough
+too; my mind works like a mill with no corn to grind. I can devise
+nothing, think of nothing. There beats in my head a verse of a
+little old Latin poem, by an unhappy man enough, in whose sorrowful
+soul the delight of the beautiful moment was for ever poisoned by
+the thought that it was passing, passing; and that the spirit,
+whatever joy might be in store for it, could never again be at the
+same sweet point of its course. The poem is about a woodcock, a
+belated bird that haunted the hanging thickets of his Devonshire
+home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you to-day King December is
+stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do the hazel-thickets
+afford." That is my case. I have lingered too late, trusting to the
+ease and prodigal wealth of the summer, and now the woods stand
+bare about me, while my comrades have taken wing for the South. The
+beady eye, the puffed feathers grow sick and dulled with hunger.
+Why cannot I rest a little in the beauty all about me? Take it home
+to my shivering soul? Nay, I will not complain, even to myself.
+
+I came back at sundown, through the silent garden, all shrouded and
+muffled with snow. The snow lay on the house, outlining the
+cornices, cresting the roof-tiles, crusted sharply on the cupola,
+whitening the tall chimney-stacks. The comfortable smoke went up
+into the still air, and the firelight darted in the rooms. What a
+sense of beautiful permanence, sweet hopefulness, fireside warmth
+it all gave; and it is real as well. No life that I could have
+devised is so rich in love and tranquillity as mine; everything to
+give me content, except the contented mind. Why cannot I enter,
+seat myself in the warm firelight, open a book, and let the old
+beautiful thoughts flow into my mind, till the voices of wife and
+children return to gladden me, and I listen to all that they have
+seen and done? Why should I rather sit, like a disconsolate child
+among its bricks, feebly and sadly planning new combinations and
+fantastic designs? I have done as much and more than most of my
+contemporaries; what is this insensate hunger of the spirit that
+urges me to work that I cannot do, for rewards that I do not want?
+Why cannot I be content to dream and drowse a little?
+
+
+   "Rest, then, and rest
+    And think of the best,
+    'Twixt summer and spring,
+    When no birds sing."
+
+
+That is what I desire to do, and cannot. It is as though some
+creeper that had enfolded and enringed a house with its tendrils,
+creeping under window-ledges and across mellow brickwork, had been
+suddenly cut off at the root, and hung faded and lustreless, not
+even daring to be torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is
+alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, except that my
+heart seems hollow at the core.
+
+
+
+January 12, 1889.
+
+
+I have had a very bad time of late. It seems futile to say anything
+about it, and the plain man would rub his eyes, and wonder where
+the misery lay. I have been perfectly well, and everything has gone
+smoothly; but I cannot write. I have begun half-a-dozen books. I
+have searched my notes through and through. I have sketched plots,
+written scenes. I cannot go on with any of them. I have torn up
+chapters with fierce disgust, or have laid them quietly aside.
+There is no vitality in them. If I read them aloud to any one, he
+would wonder what was wrong--they are as well written as my other
+books, as amusing, as interesting. But it is all without energy or
+invention, it is all worse than my best. The people are puppets,
+their words are pumped up out of a stagnant reservoir. Everything I
+do reminds me of something I have done before. If I could bring
+myself to finish one of these books, I could get money and praise
+enough. Many people would not know the difference. But the real and
+true critic would see through them; he would discern that I had
+lost the secret. I think that perhaps I ought to be content to work
+dully and faithfully on, to finish the poor dead thing, to compose
+its dead limbs decently, to lay it out. But I cannot do that,
+though it might be a moral discipline. I am not conscious of the
+least mental fatigue, or loss of power--quite the reverse. I hunger
+and thirst to write, but I have no invention.
+
+The worst of it is that it reveals to me how much the whole of my
+life was built up round the hours I gave to writing. I used to
+read, write letters, do business in the morning, holding myself
+back from the beloved task, not thinking over it, not anticipating
+the pleasure, yet aware that some secret germination was going on
+among the cells of the brain. Then came the afternoon, the walk or
+ride, and then at last after tea arrived the blessed hour. The
+chapter was all ready to be written, and the thing flowed equably
+and clearly from the pen. The passage written, I would turn to some
+previous chapter, which had been type-written, smooth out the
+creases, enrich the dialogue, retouch the descriptions, omit,
+correct, clarify. Perhaps in the evening I would read a passage
+aloud, if we were alone; and how often would Maud, with her perfect
+instinct, lay her finger on a weak place, show me that something
+was abrupt or lengthy, expose an unreal emotion, or, best of all,
+generously and whole-heartedly approve. it seems now, looking back
+upon it, that it was all impossibly happy and delightful, too good
+to be true. Yet I have everything that I had, except my unhappy
+writing; and the want of it poisons life. I no longer seem to lie
+pleasantly in ambush for pretty traits of character, humorous
+situations, delicate nuances of talk. I look blankly at garden,
+field, and wood, because I cannot draw from them the setting that I
+want. Even my close and intimate companionship with Maud seems to
+have suffered, for I was like a child, bringing the little wonders
+that it finds by the hedgerow to be looked at by a loving eye. Maud
+is angelically tender, kind, sweet. She tells me only to wait; she
+draws me on to talk; she surrounds me with love and care. And in
+the midst of it all I sit, in dry misery, hating myself for my
+feebleness and cowardice, keeping as far as possible my pain to
+myself, brooding, feverishly straining, struggling hopelessly to
+recover the clue. The savour has gone out of life; I feel widowed,
+frozen, desolate. How often have I tranquilly and good-humouredly
+contemplated the time when I need write no more, when my work
+should be done, when I should have said all I had to say, and could
+take life as it came, soberly and wisely. Now that the end has come
+of itself, I feel like a hopeless prisoner, with death the only
+escape from a bitter and disconsolate solitude.
+
+Can I not amuse myself with books, pictures, talk? No, because it
+is all a purposeless passing of dreary hours. Before, there was
+always an object ahead of me, a light to which I made my way; and
+all the pleasant incidents of life were things to guide me, and to
+beguile the plodding path. Now I am adrift; I need go neither
+forwards nor backwards; and the things which before were gentle and
+quiet occupations have become duties to be drearily fulfilled.
+
+I have put down here exactly what I feel. It is not cowardice that
+makes me do it, but a desire to face the situation, exactly as it
+is. Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit! And in any case nothing
+can be done by blinking the truth. I shall need all my courage and
+all my resolution to meet it, and I shall meet it as manfully as I
+can. Yet the thought of meeting it thus has no inspiration in it.
+My only desire is that the frozen mind may melt at the touch of
+some genial ray, and that the buds may prick and unfold upon the
+shrunken bough.
+
+
+
+January 15, 1889.
+
+
+One of the miseries of my present situation is that it is all so
+intangible, and to the outsider so incomprehensible. There is no
+particular reason why I should write. I do not need the money; I
+believe I do not desire fame. Let me try to be perfectly frank
+about this; I do not at all desire the tangible results of fame,
+invitations to banquets, requests to deliver lectures, the
+acquaintance of notable people, laudatory reviews. I like a quiet
+life; I do not want monstrari digito, as Horace says. I have had a
+taste of all of these things, and they do not amuse me, though I
+confess that I thought they would. I feel in this rather as
+Tennyson felt--that I dislike contemptuous criticism, and do not
+value praise--except the praise of a very few, the masters of the
+craft. And this one does not get, because the great men are mostly
+too much occupied in producing their own masterpieces to have the
+time or inclination to appraise others. Yet I am sure there is a
+vile fibre of ambition lurking in me, interwoven with my nature,
+which I cannot exactly disentangle. I very earnestly desire to do
+good and fine work, to write great books. If I genuinely and
+critically approved of my own work, I could go on writing for the
+mere pleasure of it, in the face of universal neglect. But one may
+take it for granted that unless one is working on very novel and
+original lines--and I am not--the good qualities of one's work are
+not likely to escape attention. The reason why Keats, and Shelley,
+and Tennyson, and Wordsworth were decried, was because their work
+was so unusual, so new, that conventional critics could not
+understand it. But I am using a perfectly familiar medium, and
+there is a large and acute band of critics who are looking out for
+interesting work in the region of novels. Besides I have arrived at
+the point of having a vogue, so that anything I write would be
+treated with a certain respect. Where my ambition comes in is in
+the desire not to fall below my standard. I suppose that while I
+feel that I do not rate the judgment of the ordinary critic highly,
+I have an instinctive sense that my work is worthy of his
+admiration. The pain I feel is the sort of pain that an athlete
+feels who has established, say, a record in high-jumping, and finds
+that he can no longer hurl his stiffening legs and portly frame
+over the lath. Well, I have always held strongly that men ought to
+know when to stop. There is nothing more melancholy and
+contemptible than to see a successful man, who has brought out a
+brood of fine things, sitting meekly on addled eggs, or, still
+worse, squatting complacently among eggshells. It is like the story
+of the old tiresome Breton farmer whose wife was so annoyed by his
+ineffective fussiness, that she clapt him down to sit on a clutch
+of stone eggs for the rest of his life. How often have I thought
+how deplorable it was to see a man issuing a series of books, every
+one of which is feebler than its predecessor, dishing up the old
+characters, the stale ideas, the used-up backgrounds. I have always
+hoped that some one would be kind and brave enough to tell me when
+I did that. But now that the end seems to have come to me naturally
+and spontaneously, I cannot accept my defeat. I am like the monkey
+of whom Frank Buckland wrote, who got into the kettle when the
+water was lukewarm, and found the outer air so cold whenever he
+attempted to leave it, that he was eventually very nearly boiled
+alive. The fact that my occupation is gone leaves life hollow to
+the core. Perhaps a wise man would content himself with composing
+some placid literary essays, selecting some lesser figure in the
+world of letters, collecting gossip, and what are called "side-
+lights," about him, visiting his birthplace and early haunts,
+criticising his writings. That would be a harmless way of filling
+the time. But any one who has ever tried creative work gets filled
+with a nauseating disgust for making books out of other people's
+writings, and constructing a kind of resurrection-pie out of the
+shreds. Moreover I know nothing except literature; I could only
+write a literary biography; and it has always seemed to me a
+painful irony that men who have put into their writings what other
+people put into deeds and acts should be the very people whose
+lives are sedulously written and rewritten, generation after
+generation. The instinct is natural enough. The vivid memories of
+statesmen and generals fade; but as long as we have the fascinating
+and adorable reveries of great spirits, we are consumed with a
+desire to reconstruct their surroundings, that we may learn where
+they found their inspiration. A great poet, a great imaginative
+writer, so glorifies and irradiates the scene in which his mighty
+thoughts came to him, that we cannot help fancying that the secret
+lies in crag and hill and lake, rather than in the mind that
+gathered in the common joy. I have a passion for visiting the
+haunts of genius, but rather because they teach me that inspiration
+lies everywhere, if we can but perceive it, than because I hope to
+detect where the particular charm lay. And so I am driven back upon
+my own poor imagination. I say to myself, like Samson, "I will go
+out as at other times before, and shake myself," and then the end
+of the verse falls on me like a shadow--"and he wist not that the
+Lord was departed from him."
+
+
+
+January 18, 1889.
+
+
+Nothing the matter, and yet everything the matter! I plough on
+drearily enough, like a vessel forging slowly ahead against a
+strong, ugly, muddy stream. I seem to gain nothing, neither hope,
+patience, nor strength. My spirit revolted at first, but now I have
+lost the heart even for that: I simply bear my burden and wait. One
+tends to think, at such times, that no one has ever passed through
+a similar experience before; and the isolation in which one moves
+is the hardest part of it all. Alone, and cut off even from God! If
+one felt that one was learning something, gaining power or courage,
+one could bear it cheerfully; but I feel rather as though all my
+vitality and moral strength was being pressed and drained from me.
+Yet I do not desire death and silence. I rather crave for life and
+light.
+
+No, I am not describing my state fairly. At times I have a sense
+that something, some power, some great influence, is trying to
+communicate with me, to deliver me some message. There are many
+hours when it is not so, when my nerveless brain seems losing its
+hold, slipping off into some dark confusion of sense. Yet again
+there are other moments, when sights and sounds have an
+overpowering and awful significance; when the gleams of some
+tremendous secret seemed flashed upon my mind, at the sight of the
+mist-hung valley with its leafless woods and level water-meadows;
+the flaring pomp of sunset hung low in the west over the bare
+ploughland or the wide-watered plain; the wailing of the wind round
+the firelit house; the faint twitter of awakening birds in the ivy;
+the voice and smile of my children; the music breaking the silence
+of the house at evening. In a moment the sensation comes over me,
+that the sound or sight is sent not vaguely or lightly, but
+deliberately shown to me, for some great purpose, if I could but
+divine it; an oracle of God, if I could but catch the words He
+utters in the darkness and the silence.
+
+
+
+February 1, 1889.
+
+
+My dissatisfaction and depression begin to tell on me. I grow
+nervous and strained; I am often sleepless, or my sleep is filled
+by vivid, horrible, intolerable dreams. I wake early in the clutch
+of fear. I wrestle at times with intolerable irritability; social
+gatherings become unbearable; I have all sorts of unmanning
+sensations, dizzinesses, tremors; I have that dreadful sensation
+that my consciousness of things and people around me is slipping
+away from me, and that only by a strong effort can one retain one's
+hold upon them. I fall into a sort of dull reverie, and come back
+to the real world with a shock of surprise and almost horror. I
+went the other day to consult a great doctor about this. He
+reassured me; he laughed at my fears; he told me that it was a kind
+of neurasthenia, not fanciful but real; that my brain had been
+overworked, and was taking its revenge; that it was insufficiently
+nourished, and so forth. He knew who I was, and treated me with a
+respectful sympathy. I told him I had taken a prolonged holiday
+since my last book, and he replied that it had not been long
+enough. "You must take it easy," he said. "Don't do anything you
+don't like." I replied that the difficulty was to find anything I
+did like. He smiled at this, and said that I need not be afraid of
+breaking down; he sounded me, and said that I was perfectly strong.
+"Indeed," he added, "you might go to a dozen doctors to be examined
+for an insurance policy, and you would be returned as absolutely
+robust." In the course of his investigations, he applied a test,
+quite casually and as if he were hardly interested, the point of
+which he thought (I suppose) that I should not divine.
+Unfortunately I knew it, and I need only say that it was a test for
+something very bad indeed. That was rather a horrible moment, when
+a grim thing out of the shadow slipped forward for a moment, and
+looked me in the face. But it was over in an instant, and he went
+on to other things. He ended by saying: "Mr. ----, you are not as
+bad as you feel, or even as you think. Just take it quietly; don't
+overdo it, but don't be bored. You say that you can't write to
+please yourself at present. Well, this experience is partly the
+cause, and partly the result of your condition. You have used one
+particular part of your brain too much, and you must give it time
+to recover. My impression is that you will get better very
+gradually, and I can only repeat that there is no sort of cause for
+anxiety. I can't help you more than that, and I am saying exactly
+what I feel."
+
+I looked at the worn face and kind eyes of the man whose whole life
+is spent in plumbing abysses of human suffering. What a terrible
+life, and yet what a noble one! He spoke as though he had no other
+case in the world to consider except my own; yet when I went back
+to the waiting-room to get my hat, and looked round on the anxious-
+looking crowd of patients waiting there, each with a secret burden,
+I felt how heavy a load he must be carrying.
+
+There is a certain strength, after all, in having to live by rule;
+and I have derived, I find, a certain comfort in having to abstain
+from things that are likely to upset me, not because I wish it, but
+because some one else has ordered it. So I struggle on. The worst
+of nerves is that they are so whimsical; one never knows when to
+expect their assaults; the temptation is to think that they attack
+one when it is most inconvenient; but this is not quite the case.
+They spare one when one expects discomfort; and again when one
+feels perfectly secure, they leap upon one from their lair. The one
+secret of dealing with the malady is to think of it as a definite
+ailment, not to regard the attacks as the vagaries of a healthy
+mind, but as the symptoms of an unhealthy one. So much of these
+obsessions appears to be purely mental; one finds oneself the prey
+of a perfectly causeless depression, which involves everything in
+its shadow. As soon as one realises that this is not the result of
+the reflections that seem to cause it, but that one is, so to
+speak, merely looking at normal conditions through coloured
+glasses, it is a great help. But the perennial difficulty is to
+know whether one needs repose and inaction, or whether one requires
+the stimulus of work and activity. Sometimes an unexpected call on
+one's faculties will encourage and gladden one; sometimes it will
+leave one unstrung and limp. A definite illness is always with one,
+more or less; but in nervous ailments, one has interludes of
+perfect and even buoyant health, which delude one into hoping that
+the demon has gone out.
+
+It is a very elaborate form of torture anyhow; and I confess that I
+find it difficult to discern where its educative effect comes in,
+because it makes one shrink from effort, it makes one timid,
+indecisive, suspicious. It seems to encourage all the weaknesses
+and meannesses of the spirit; and, worst of all, it centres one's
+thoughts upon oneself. Perhaps it enlarges one's sympathy for all
+secret sufferers; and it makes me grateful for the fact that I have
+had so little ill-health in my life. Yet I find myself, too,
+testing with some curiosity the breezy maxims of optimists. A
+cheerful writer says somewhere: "Will not the future be the better
+and the richer for memories of past pleasure? So surely must the
+sane man feel." Well, he must be very sane indeed. It takes a very
+burly philosopher to think of the future as being enriched by past
+gladness, when one seems to have forfeited it, and when one is by
+no means certain of getting it back. One feels bitterly how little
+one appreciated it at the time; and to rejoice in reflecting how
+much past happiness stands to one's credit, is a very dispassionate
+attitude. I think Dante was nearer the truth when he said that "a
+sorrow's crown of sorrow was remembering happier things."
+
+
+
+February 3, 1889.
+
+
+To amuse oneself--that is the difficulty. Amusements are or ought
+to be the childish, irrational, savage things which a man goes on
+doing and practising, in virtue, I suppose, of the noble privilege
+of reason, far longer than any other animal--only YOUNG animals
+amuse themselves; a dog perhaps retains the faculty longer than
+most animals, but he only does it out of sympathy and
+companionship, to amuse his inscrutable owner, not to amuse
+himself. Amusements ought to be things which one wants to do, and
+which one is slightly ashamed of doing--enough ashamed, I mean, to
+give rather elaborate reasons for continuing them. If one shoots,
+for instance, one ought to say that it gets one out of doors, and
+that what one really enjoys is the country, and so forth.
+Personally I was never much amused by amusements, and gave them up
+as soon as I decently could. I regret it now. I wish we were all
+taught a handicraft as a regular part of education! I used to
+sketch, and strum a piano once, but I cannot deliberately set to
+work on such things again. I gave them all up when I became a
+writer, really, I suppose, because I did not care for them, but
+nominally on the grounds of "resolute limitation," as Lord Acton
+said--with the idea that if you prune off the otiose boughs of a
+tree, you throw the strength of the sap into the boughs you retain.
+I see now that it was a mistake. But it is too late to begin again
+now; I was reading Kingsley's Life the other day. He used to
+overwork himself periodically--use up the grey matter at the base
+of his brain, as he described it; but he had a hundred things that
+he wanted to do besides writing--fishing, entomologising,
+botanising. Browning liked modelling in clay, Wordsworth liked long
+walks, Byron had enough to do to keep himself thin, Tennyson had
+his pipe, Morris made tapestry at a loom. Southey had no
+amusements, and he died of softening of the brain. The happy people
+are those who have work which they love, and a hobby of a totally
+different kind which they love even better. But I doubt whether one
+can make a hobby for oneself in middle age, unless one is a very
+resolute person indeed.
+
+
+
+February 7, 1889.
+
+
+The children went off yesterday to spend the inside of the day with
+a parson hard by, who has three children of his own, about the same
+age. They did not want to go, of course, and it was particularly
+terrible to them, because neither I nor their mother were to go
+with them. But I was anxious they should go: there is nothing
+better for children than occasionally to visit a strange house, and
+to go by themselves without an elder person to depend upon. It
+gives them independence and gets rid of shyness. They end by
+enjoying themselves immensely, and perhaps making some romantic
+friendship. As a child, I was almost tearfully insistent that I
+should not have to go on such visits; but yet a few days of the
+sort stand out in my childhood with a vividness and a distinctness,
+which show what an effect they produced, and how they quickened
+one's perceptive and inventive faculties.
+
+When they were gone I went out with Maud. I was at my very worst, I
+fear; full of heaviness and deeply disquieted; desiring I knew well
+what--some quickening of emotion, some hopeful impulse--but utterly
+unable to attain it. We had a very sad talk. I tried to make it
+clear to her how desolate I felt, and to win some kind of
+forgiveness for my sterile and loveless mood. She tried to comfort
+me; she said that it was only like passing through a tunnel; she
+made it clear to me, by some unspoken communication, that I was
+dearer than ever to her in these days of sorrow; but there was a
+shadow in her mind, the shadow that fell from the loneliness in
+which I moved, the sense that she could not share my misery with
+me. I tried to show her that the one thing one could not share was
+emptiness. If one's cup is full of interests, plans, happinesses,
+even tangible anxieties, it is easy and natural to make them known
+to one whom one loves best. But one cannot share the horror of the
+formless dark; the vacuous and tortured mind. It is the dark
+absence of anything that is the source of my wretchedness. If there
+were pain, grief, mournful energy of any kind, one could put it
+into words; but how can one find expression for what is a total
+eclipse?
+
+It was not, I said, that anything had come between her and me; but
+I seemed to be remote, withdrawn, laid apart like some stiffening
+corpse in the tomb. She tried to reassure me, to show me that it
+was mainly physical, the overstrain of long and actively enjoyed
+work, and that all I needed was rest. She did not say one word of
+reproach, or anything to imply that I was unmanly and cowardly--
+indeed, she contrived, I know not how, to lead me to think that my
+state was in ordinary life hardly apparent. Once she asked
+pathetically if there was no way in which she could help. I had not
+the heart to say what was in my mind, that it would be better and
+easier for me if she ignored my unhappiness altogether; and that
+sympathy and compassion only plunged me deeper into gloom, as
+showing me that it was evident that there was something amiss--but
+I said "No, there is nothing; and no one can help me, unless God
+kindles the light He has quenched. Be your own dear self as much as
+possible; think and speak as little of me as you can,"--and then I
+added: "Dearest, my love for you is here, as strong and pure as
+ever--don't doubt that--only I cannot find it or come near it--it
+is hidden from me somewhere--I am like a man wandering in dark
+fields, who sees the firelit window of his home; he cannot feel the
+warmth, but he knows that it is there waiting for him. He cannot
+return till he has found that of which he is in search."
+
+"Could he not give up the search?" said Maud, smiling tearfully.
+"Ah, not yet," I said. "You do not know, Maud, what my work has
+been to me--no man can ever explain that to any woman, I think: for
+women live in life, but man lives in work. Man DOES, woman IS.
+There is the difference."
+
+We drew near the village. The red sun was sinking over the plain, a
+ball of fire; the mist was creeping up from the low-lying fields;
+the moon hung, like a white nail-paring, high in the blue sky. We
+went to the little inn, where we had been before. We ordered tea--
+we were to return by train--and Maud being tired, I left her, while
+I took a turn in the village, and explored the remains of an old
+manor-house, which I had seen often from the road. I was
+intolerably restless. I found a lane which led to the fields behind
+the manor. It was a beautiful scene. To the left of me ran the
+great plain brimmed with mist; the manor, with its high gables and
+chimney-stacks, stood up over an orchard, surrounded by a high,
+ancient brick wall, with a gate between tall gate-posts surmounted
+by stone balls. The old pasture lay round the house, and there were
+many ancient elms and sycamores forming a small park, in the boughs
+of which the rooks, who were now streaming home from the fields,
+were clamorous. I found myself near a chain of old fish-ponds, with
+thorn-thickets all about them; and here the old house stood up
+against a pure evening sky, rusty red below, melting into a pure
+green above. My heart went out in wonder at the thought of the
+unknown lives lived in this place, the past joys, the forgotten
+sorrows. What did it mean for me, the incredible and caressing
+beauty of the scene? Not only did it not comfort me, but it seemed
+to darken the gloom of my own unhappy mind. Suddenly, as with a
+surge of agony, my misery flowed in upon me. I clutched the rail
+where I stood, and bowed my head down in utter wretchedness. There
+came upon me, as with a sort of ghastly hopefulness, the temptation
+to leave it all, to put my case back into God's hands. Perhaps it
+was to this that I was moving? There might be a new life waiting
+for me, but it could not well be as intolerable as this. Perhaps
+nothing but silence and unconsciousness awaited me, a sleep
+unstirred by any dream. Even Maud, I thought, in her sorrow, would
+understand. How long I stood there I do not know, but the air
+darkened about me and the mist rose in long veils about the pasture
+with a deadly chill. But then there came back a sort of grim
+courage into my mind, that not so could it be ended. The thought of
+Maud and the children rose before me, and I knew I could not leave
+them, unless I were withdrawn from them. I must face it, I must
+fight it out; though I could and did pray with all my might that
+God might take away my life: I thought with what an utter joy I
+should feel the pang, the faintness, of death creep over me there
+in the dim pasture; but I knew in my heart that it was not to be;
+and soon I went slowly back through the thickening gloom. I found
+Maud awaiting me: and I know in that moment that some touch of the
+dark conflict I had been through had made itself felt in her mind;
+and indeed I think she read something of it in my face, from the
+startled glance she turned upon me. Perhaps it would have been
+better if in that quiet hour I could have told her the thought
+which had been in my mind; but I could not do that; and indeed it
+seemed to me as though some unseen light had sprung up for me,
+shooting and broadening in the darkness. I apprehended that I was
+no longer to suffer, I was to fight. Hitherto I had yielded to my
+misery, but the time was come to row against the current, not to
+drift with it.
+
+It was dark when we left the little inn; the moon had brightened to
+a crescent of pale gold; the last dim orange stain of sunset still
+slept above the mist. It seemed to me as though I had somehow
+touched the bottom. How could I tell? Perhaps the same horrible
+temptation would beset me, again and again, deepening into a
+despairing purpose; the fertile mind built up rapidly a dreadful
+vista of possibilities, terrible facts that might have to be faced.
+Even so the dark mood beckoned me again; better to end it, said a
+hollow voice, better to let your dear ones suffer the worst, with a
+sorrow that will lessen year by year, than sink into a broken
+shadowed life of separation and restraint--but again it passed;
+again a grim resolution came to my aid.
+
+Then, as we sped homewards in the speeding train, there came over
+me another thought. Here was I, who had lightly trafficked with
+human emotions, who had written with a romantic glow of the dark
+things of life, despair, agony, thoughts of self-destruction,
+insane fears, here was I at last confronted with them. I could
+never dare, I felt, to speak of such things again; were such dark
+mysteries to be used to heighten the sense of security and joy, to
+give a trivial reader a thrill of pleasure, a sympathetic reader a
+thrill of luxurious emotion? No, there was nothing uplifting or
+romantic about them when they came; they were dark as the grave,
+cold as the underlying clay. What a vile and loathsome profanation,
+deserving indeed of a grim punishment, to make a picturesque
+background out of such things! At length I had had my bitter taste
+of grief, and drew in to my trembling spirit the shuddering chill
+of despair. I had stepped, like the light-hearted maiden of the old
+story, within the forbidden door, and the ugly, the ghastly reality
+of the place had burst upon me, the huddled bodies, the basin
+filled with blood. One had read in books of men and women whose
+life had been suddenly curdled into slow miseries. One had half
+blamed them in one's thought; one had felt that any experience,
+however dark and deep, must have its artistic value; and one had
+thought that they should have emerged with new zest into life. I
+understood it now, how life could be frozen at its very source, how
+one could cry out with Job curses on the day that gave one birth,
+and how gladly one would turn one's face away from the world and
+all its cheerful noise, awaiting the last stroke of God.
+
+
+
+February 20, 1889.
+
+
+There is a story of a Cornish farmer who, returning home one dark
+and misty night, struck across the moorland, every yard of which he
+knew, in order to avoid a long tramp by road. In one place there
+were a number of disused mine-shafts; the railing which had once
+protected them had rotted away, and it had been no one's business
+to see that it was renewed--some few had been filled up, but many
+of them were hundreds of feet deep, and entirely unguarded. The
+farmer first missed the track, and after long wandering found
+himself at last among the shafts. He sate down, knowing the extreme
+danger of his situation, and resolved to wait till the morning; but
+it became so cold that he dared stay no longer, for fear of being
+frozen alive, and with infinite precautions he tried to make his
+way out of the dangerous region, following the downward slope of
+the ground. In spite, however, of all his care, he found suddenly,
+on putting his foot down, that he was on the edge of a shaft, and
+that his foot was dangling in vacancy. He threw himself backwards,
+but too late, and he slid down several feet, grasping at the grass
+and heather; his foot fortunately struck against a large stone,
+which though precariously poised, arrested his fall; and he hung
+there for some hours in mortal anguish, not daring to move,
+clinging to a tuft of heather, shouting at intervals, in the hope
+that, when he did not return home, a search-party might be sent out
+to look for him. At last he heard, to his intense relief, the sound
+of voices hailing him, and presently the gleam of lanterns shot
+through the mist. He uttered agonising cries, and the rescuers were
+soon at his side; when he found that he had been lying in a shaft
+which had been filled up, and that the firm ground was about a foot
+below him; and that, in fact, if the stone that supported him had
+given way, he would have been spared a long period of almost
+intolerable horror.
+
+It is a good parable of many of our disquieting fears and
+anxieties; as Lord Beaconsfield said, the greatest tragedies of his
+life had been things that never happened; Carlyle truly and
+beautifully said that the reason why the past always appeared to be
+beautiful, in retrospect, was that the element of fear was absent
+from it. William Morris said a trenchant thing on the same subject.
+He attended a Socialist Meeting of a very hostile kind, which he
+anticipated with much depression. When some one asked him how the
+meeting had gone off he said, "Well, it was fully as damnable as I
+had expected--a thing which seldom happens." A good test of the
+happiness of anyone's life is to what extent he has had trials to
+bear which are unbearable even to recollect. I am myself of a
+highly imaginative and anxious temperament, and I have had many
+hours of depression at the thought of some unpleasant anticipation
+or disagreeable contingency, and I can honestly say that nothing
+has ever been so bad, when it actually occurred, as it had
+represented itself to me beforehand. There are a few incidents in
+my life, the recollection of which I deliberately shun; but they
+have always been absolutely unexpected and unanticipated
+calamities. Yet even these have never been as bad as I should have
+expected them to be. The strange thing is that experience never
+comes to one's aid, and that one never gets patience or courage
+from the thought that the reality will be in all probability less
+distressing than the anticipation; for the simple reason that the
+fertile imagination is always careful to add that this time the
+occasion will be intolerable, and that at all events it is better
+to be prepared for the worst that may happen. Moreover, one wastes
+force in anticipating perhaps half-a-dozen painful possibilities,
+when, after all, they are alternatives, and only one of them can
+happen. That is what makes my present situation so depressing, that
+I instinctively clothe it in its worst horrors, and look forward to
+a long and dreary life, in which my only occupation will be an
+attempt to pass the weary hours. Faithless? yes, of course it is
+faithless! but the rational philosophy, which says that it will all
+probably come right, does not penetrate to the deeper region in
+which the mind says to itself that there is no hope of amendment.
+
+Can one acquire, by any effort of the mind, this kind of patience?
+I do not think one can. The most that one can do is to behave as
+far as possible like one playing a heavy part upon the stage, to
+say with trembling lips that one has hope, when the sick mind
+beneath cries out that there is none.
+
+Perhaps one can practise a sort of indifference, and hope that
+advancing years may still the beating heart and numb the throbbing
+nerve. But I do not even desire to live life on these terms. The
+one great article of my creed has been that one ought not to lose
+zest and spirit, or acquiesce slothfully in comfortable and
+material conditions, but that life ought to be full of perception
+and emotion. Here again lies my mistake; that it has not been
+perception or emotion that I have practised, but the art of
+expressing what I have perceived and felt. Of course, I wish with
+all my heart and soul that it were otherwise; but it seems that I
+have drifted so far into these tepid, sun-warmed shallows, the
+shallows of egoism and self-centred absorption, that there is no
+possibility of my finding my way again to the wholesome brine, to
+the fresh movement of the leaping wave. I am like one of those who
+lingered so long in the enchanted isle of Circe, listening
+luxuriously to the melting cadences of her magic song, that I have
+lost all hope of extricating myself from the spell. The old free
+days, when the heart beat light, and the breeze blew keen against
+my brow, have become only a memory of delights, just enabling me to
+speak deftly and artfully of the strong joys which I have
+forfeited.
+
+
+
+February 24, 1889.
+
+
+I have been away for some days, paying a visit to an old friend, a
+bachelor clergyman living in the country. The only other occupant
+of the house, a comfortable vicarage, is his curate. I am better--
+ashamed almost to think how much better--for the change. It is
+partly the new place, the new surroundings, the new minds, no
+doubt. But it is also the change of atmosphere. At home I am
+surrounded by sympathy and compassion; however unobtrusive they
+are, I feel that they are there. I feel that trivial things, words,
+actions, looks are noted, commented upon, held to be significant.
+If I am silent, I must be depressed; if I talk and smile, I am
+making an effort to overcome my depression. It sounds unloving and
+ungracious to resent this: but I don't undervalue the care and
+tenderness that cause it; at the same time it adds to the strain by
+imposing upon me a sort of vigilance, a constant effort to behave
+normally. It is infinitely and deeply touching to feel love all
+about me; but in such a state of mind as mine, one is shy of
+emotion, one dreads it, one shuns it. I suppose it argues a want of
+simplicity, of perfect manfulness, to feel this; but few or no
+women can instinctively feel the difference. In a real and deep
+affliction, one that could be frankly confessed, the more affection
+and sympathy that one can have the better; it is the one thing that
+sustains. But my unhappiness is not a real thing altogether, not a
+FRANK thing; the best medicine for it is to think as little about
+it; the only help one desires is the evidence that one does not
+need sympathy; and sympathy only turns one's thoughts inwards, and
+makes one feel that one is forlorn and desolate, when the only hope
+is to feel neither.
+
+At Hapton it was just the reverse; neither Musgrave nor the curate,
+Templeton, troubled their head about my fancies. I don't imagine
+that Musgrave noticed that anything was the matter with me. If I
+was silent, he merely thought I had nothing to say; he took for
+granted I was in my normal state, and the result was that I
+temporarily recovered it.
+
+Then, too, the kind of talk I got was a relief. With women, the
+real talk is intime talk; the world of politics, books, men, facts,
+incidents, is merely a setting; and when they talk about them, it
+is merely to pass the time, as a man turns to a game. At Hapton,
+Musgrave chatted away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his new
+organ, his bishop, his work. I used to think him rather a proser;
+how I blessed his prosing now! I took long walks with him; he asked
+a few perfunctory questions about my books, but otherwise he was
+quite content to prattle on, like a little brook, about all that
+was in his mind, and he was more than content if I asked an
+occasional question or assented courteously. Then we had some good
+talks about the rural problems of education--he is a sensible and
+intelligent man enough--and some excellent arguments about the
+movement of religion, where I found him unexpectedly liberal-
+minded. He left me to do very much what I liked. I read in the
+mornings and before dinner; and after dinner we smoked or even
+played a game of dummy whist. It is a pretty part of the country,
+and when he was occupied in the afternoon, I walked about by
+myself. From first to last not a single word fell from Musgrave to
+indicate that he thought me in any way different, or suspected that
+I was not perfectly content, with the blessed result that I
+immediately became exactly what he thought me.
+
+I got on no better with my writing; my brain is as bare as a winter
+wood; but I found that I did not rebel against that. Of course it
+does not reveal a very dignified temperament, that one should so
+take colour from one's surroundings. If I can be equable and good-
+humoured here, I ought to be able to be equable and good-humoured
+at home; at the same time I am conscious of an intense longing to
+see Maud and the children. Probably I should do better to absent
+myself resolutely from home at stated intervals; and I think it
+argued a fine degree of perception in Maud, that she decided not to
+accompany me, though she was pressed to come. I am going home to-
+morrow, delighted at the thought, grateful to the good Musgrave, in
+a more normal frame of mind than I have been for months.
+
+
+
+February 28, 1889.
+
+
+One of the most depressing things about my present condition is
+that I feel, not only so useless, but so prickly, so ugly, so
+unlovable. Even Maud's affection, stronger and more tender than
+ever, does not help me, because I feel that she cannot love me for
+what I am, but for what she remembers me as being, and hopes that I
+may be again. I know it is not so, and that she would love me
+whatever I did or became; but I cannot realise that now.
+
+A few days ago an old friend came to see me; and I was so futile,
+so fractious, so dull, so melancholy with him that I wrote to him
+afterwards to apologise for my condition, telling him that I knew
+that I was not myself, and hoped he would forgive me for not making
+more of an effort. To-day I have had one of the manliest,
+tenderest, most beautiful letters I have ever had in my life. He
+says, "Of course I saw that you were not in your usual mood, but if
+you had pretended to be, if you had kept me at arm's length, if you
+had grimaced and made pretence, we should have been no nearer in
+spirit. I was proud and grateful that you should so have trusted
+me, as to let me see into your heart and mind; and you must believe
+me when I say that I never loved and honoured you more. I
+understood fully what a deep and insupportable trial your present
+state of mind must be; and I will be frank--why should I not be?--
+and say that I thought you were bearing it bravely, and what is
+better still, simply and naturally. I seemed to come closer to you
+in those hours than I have ever done before, and to realise better
+what you were. 'To make oneself beloved,' says an old writer, 'is
+to make oneself useful to others'--and you helped me perhaps most,
+when you knew it least yourself. I won't tell you not to brood upon
+or exaggerate your trouble--you know that well enough yourself. But
+believe me that such times are indeed times of growth and
+expansion, even when one seems most beaten back upon oneself, most
+futile, most unmanly. So take a little comfort, my old friend, and
+fare onwards hopefully."
+
+That is a very beautiful and wise letter, and I cannot say how much
+it has meant for me. It is a letter that forges an invisible chain,
+which is yet stronger than the strongest tie that circumstance can
+forge; it is a lantern for one's feet, and one treads a little more
+firmly in the dark path, where the hillside looms formless through
+the shade.
+
+
+
+March 3, 1889.
+
+
+Best of all the psalms I love the Hundred-and-nineteenth; yet as a
+child what a weary thing I thought it. It was long, it was
+monotonous; it dwelt with a tiresome persistency, I used to think,
+upon dull things--laws, commandments, statutes. Now that I am
+older, it seems to me one of the most human of all documents. It is
+tender, pensive, personal; other psalms are that; but Psalm cxix.
+is intime and autobiographical. One is brought very close to a
+human spirit; one hears his prayers, his sighs, the dropping of his
+tears. Then, too, in spite of its sadness, there is a deep
+hopefulness and faithfulness about it, a firm belief in the
+ultimate triumph of what is good and true, a certainty that what is
+pure and beautiful is worth holding on to, whatever may happen; a
+nearness to God, a quiet confidence in Him. It is all in a subdued
+and minor key, but swelling up at intervals into a chord of
+ravishing sweetness.
+
+There is never the least note of loudness, none of that terrible
+patriotism which defaces many of the psalms, the patriotism which
+makes men believe that God is the friend of the chosen race, and
+the foe of all other races, the ugly self-sufficiency that
+contemplates with delight, not the salvation and inclusion of the
+heathen, but their discomfiture and destruction. The worst side of
+the Puritan found delight in those cruel and militant psalms,
+revelling in the thought that God would rain upon the ungodly fire
+and brimstone, storm and tempest, and exulting in the blasting of
+the breath of His displeasure. Could anything be more alien to the
+spirit of Christ than all that? But here, in this melancholy psalm,
+there breathes a spirit naturally Christian, loving peace and
+contemplation, very weary of the strife.
+
+I have said it is autobiographical; but it must be remembered that
+it was a fruitful literary device in those early days, to cast
+one's own thought in the mould of some well-known character. In
+this psalm I have sometimes thought that the writer had Daniel in
+mind--the surroundings of the psalm suit the circumstances of
+Daniel with singular exactness. But even so, it was the work of a
+man, I think, who had suffered the sorrows of which he wrote. Let
+me try to disentangle what manner of man he was.
+
+He was young and humble; he was rich, or had opportunities of
+becoming so; he was an exile, or lived in an uncongenial society;
+he was the member of a court where he was derided, disliked,
+slandered, plotted against, and even persecuted. We can clearly
+discern his own character. He was timid, and yet ambitious; he was
+tempted to use deceit and hypocrisy, to acquiesce in the tone about
+him; he was inclined to be covetous; he had sinned, and had learnt
+something of holiness from his fall; he was given to solitude and
+prayer. He was sensitive, and his sorrows had affected his health;
+he was sleepless, and had lost the bloom of his youth.
+
+All this and more we can read of him; but what is the saddest touch
+of all is the isolation in which he lived. There is not a word to
+show that he met with any sympathy; indeed the misunderstanding,
+whatever it was, that overshadowed him, had driven acquaintances,
+friends, and lovers away from him; and yet his tender confidence in
+God never fails; he feels that in his passionate worship of virtue
+and truth, his intense love of purity and justice, he has got a
+treasure which is more to him than riches or honour, or even than
+human love. He speaks as though this passion for holiness had been
+the very thing that had cost him so dear, and that exposed him to
+derision and dislike. Perhaps he had refused to fall in with some
+customary form of evil, and his resistance to temptation had led
+him to be regarded as a precisian and a saint? I have little doubt
+myself that this was so. He speaks as one might speak who had been
+so smitten with the desire for purity and rightness of life, that
+he could no longer even seem to condone the opposite. And yet he
+was evidently not one who dared to withstand and rebuke evil; the
+most he could do was to abstain from it; and the result was that he
+saw the careless and evil-minded people about him prosperous, happy
+and light-hearted, while he was himself plunged by his own act in
+misunderstanding and solitude and tears.
+
+And then how strange to see this beautiful and delicate confession
+put into so narrow and constrained a shape! It is the most
+artificial by far of all the psalms. The writer has chosen
+deliberately one of the most cramping and confining forms that
+could be devised. Each of the eight verses that form the separate
+stanzas begins with the same letter of the alphabet, and each of
+the letters is used in turn. Think of attempting to do the same in
+English--it could not be done at all. And then in every single
+verse, except in one, where the word has probably disappeared in
+translation, by a mistake, there is a mention of the law of God.
+Infinite pains must have gone to the slow building of this curious
+structure; stone by stone must have been carved and lifted to its
+place. And yet the art is so great that I know no composition of
+the same length that has so perfect a unity of mood and atmosphere.
+There is never a false or alien note struck. It is never jubilant
+or contentious or assertive--and, best of all, it is wholly free
+from any touch of that complacency which is the shadow of virtue.
+The writer never takes any credit to himself for his firm adherence
+to the truth; he writes rather as one who has had a gift of
+immeasurable value entrusted to unworthy hands, who hardly dares to
+believe that it has been granted him, and who still speaks as
+though he might at any time prove unfaithful, as though his
+weakness might suddenly betray him, and who therefore has little
+temptation to exult in the possession of anything which his own
+frail nature might at any moment forfeit.
+
+And thus, from its humility, its sense of weakness and weariness,
+its consciousness of sin and failure, combined with its deep
+apprehension of the stainless beauty of the moral law, this lyric
+has found its way to the hearts of all who find the world and
+temptation and fear too strong, all who through repeated failure
+have learned that they cannot even be true to what they so
+pathetically desire and admire; who would be brave and vigorous if
+they could, but, as it is, can only hope to be just led step by
+step, helped over the immediate difficulty, past the dreaded
+moment; whose heart often fails them, and who have little of the
+joy of God; who can only trust that, if they go astray, the mercy
+of God will yet go out to seek them; who cannot even hope to run in
+the way of God's beloved commandments, till He has set their heart
+at liberty.
+
+
+
+March 8, 1889.
+
+
+I went to see Darell, my old schoolfellow, a few days ago; he wrote
+to say that he would much like to see me, but that he was ill and
+unable to leave home--could I possibly come to see him?
+
+I have never seen very much of him since I left Cambridge; but
+there I was a good deal in his company--and we have kept up our
+friendship ever since, in the quiet way in which Englishmen do keep
+up their friendships, meeting perhaps two or three times in the
+year, exchanging letters occasionally. He was not a very intimate
+friend--indeed, he was not a man who formed intimacies; but he was
+a congenial companion enough. He was a frankly ambitious man. He
+went to the bar, where he has done well; he married a wife with
+some money; and I think his ultimate ambition has been to enter
+Parliament. He told me, when I last saw him, that he had now, he
+thought, made enough money for this, and that he would probably
+stand at the next election. I have always liked his wife, who is a
+sensible, good-natured woman, with social ambitions. They live in a
+good house in London, in a wealthy sort of way. I arrived to
+luncheon, and sate a little while with Mrs. Darell in the drawing-
+room. I became aware, while I sate with her, that there was a sense
+of anxiety in the air somehow, though she spoke cheerfully enough
+of her husband, saying that he had overworked himself, and had to
+lie up for a little. When he came into the room I understood. It
+was not that he was physically much altered--he is a strongly-built
+fellow, with a sanguine complexion and thick curly hair, now
+somewhat grizzled; but I knew at the first sight of him that
+matters were serious. He was quiet and even cheerful in manner, but
+he had a look on his face that I had never seen before, the look of
+a man whose view of life has been suddenly altered, and who is
+preparing himself for the last long journey. I knew instinctively
+that he believed himself a doomed man. He said very little about
+himself, and I did not ask him much; he talked about my books, and
+a good deal about old friends; but all with a sense, I thought, of
+detachment, as though he were viewing everything over a sort of
+intangible fence. After luncheon, we adjourned to his study and
+smoked. He then said a few words about his illness, and added that
+it had altered his plans. "I am told," he said, "that I must take a
+good long holiday--rather a difficult job for a man who cares a
+great deal about his work and very little about anything else;" he
+added a few medical details, from which I gathered the nature of
+his illness. Then he went on to talk of casual matters; it seemed
+to interest him to discuss what had been happening to our school
+and college friends; but I knew, without being told, that he wished
+me to understand that he did not expect to resume his place in the
+world--and indeed I divined, by some dim communication of the
+spirit, that he thought my visit was probably a farewell. But he
+talked with unabated courage and interest, smiling where he would
+in old days have laughed, and speaking of our friends with more
+tenderness than was his wont. Only once did he half betray what was
+in his mind: "It is rather strange," he said, "to be pushed aside
+like this, and to have to reconsider one's theories. I did not
+expect to have to pull up--the path lay plain before me--and now it
+seems to me as if there were a good many things I had lost sight
+of. Well, one must take things as they come, and I don't think that
+if I had it all to do again I should do otherwise." He changed the
+subject rather hurriedly, and began to talk about my work. "You are
+quite a great man now," he said with a smile; "I hear your books
+talked about wherever I go--I used to wonder if you would have had
+the patience to do anything--you were hampered by having no need to
+earn your living; but you have come out on the top." I told him
+something about my own late experiences and my difficulty in
+writing. He listened with undisguised interest. "What do you make
+of it?" he said. "Well," I said; "you will think I am talking
+transcendentally, but I have felt often of late as if there were
+two strains in our life, two kinds of experience; at one time we
+have to do our work with all our might, to get absorbed in it, to
+do what little we can to enrich the world; and then at another time
+it is all knocked out of our hands, and we have to sit and
+meditate--to realise that we are here on sufferance, that what we
+can do matters very little to any one--the same sort of feeling
+that I once had when old Hoskyns, in whose class I was, threw an
+essay, over which I had taken a lot of trouble, into his waste-
+paper basket before my eyes without even looking it over. I see now
+that I had got all the good I could out of the essay by writing it,
+and that the credit of it mattered very little; but then I simply
+thought he was a very disagreeable and idle old fellow."
+
+"Yes," he said, smiling, "there is something in that; but one wants
+the marks as well--I have always liked to be marked for my work. I
+am glad you told me that story, old man."
+
+We went on to talk of other things, and when I rose to go, he
+thanked me rather effusively for my kindness in coming to see him.
+He told me that he was shortly going abroad, and that if I could
+find time to write he would be grateful for a letter; "and when I
+am on my legs again," he said with a smile, "we will have another
+meeting."
+
+That was all that passed between us of actual speech. Yet how much
+more seems to have been implied than was said. I knew, as well as
+if he had told me in so many words, that he did not expect to see
+me again; that he was in the valley of the shadow, and wanted help
+and comfort. Yet he could not have described to me what was in his
+mind, and he would have resented it, I think, if I had betrayed any
+consciousness of my knowledge; and yet he knew that I knew, I am
+sure of that.
+
+The interview affected me deeply and poignantly. The man's patience
+and courage are very great; but he has lived, frankly and
+laboriously, for perfectly definite things. He never had the least
+sense of what is technically called religion; he was strong and
+temperate by nature, with a fine sense of honour; loving work and
+the rewards of work, despising sentiment and emotion--indeed his
+respect for me, of which I was fully conscious, is the respect he
+feels for a sentimental man who has made sentiment pay. It is very
+hard to see what part the prospect of suffering and death is meant
+to play in the life of such a man. It must be, surely, that he has
+something even more real than what he has held to be realities to
+learn from the sudden snapping off of life and activity. I find
+myself filled with an immense pity for him; and yet if my faith
+were a little stronger and purer, I should congratulate rather than
+commiserate him. And yet the thought of him in his bewilderment
+helps me too, for I see my own life as in a mirror. I have received
+a message of truth, the message that the accomplishment of our
+plans and cherished designs is not the best thing that can befall
+us. How easy to see that in the case of another, how hard to see it
+in our own case! But it has helped me too to throw myself outside
+the morbid perplexities in which I am involved; to hold out open
+hands to the gift of God, even though He seems to give me a stone
+for bread, a stinging serpent for wholesome provender. It has
+taught me to pray--not only for myself, but for all the poor souls
+who are in the grip of a sorrow that they cannot understand or
+bear.
+
+
+
+March 14, 1889.
+
+
+The question that haunts me, the problem I cannot disentangle, is
+what is or what ought our purpose to be? What is our duty in life?
+Ought we to discern a duty which lies apart from our own desires
+and inclinations? The moralist says that it ought to be to help
+other people; but surely that is because the people, whom by some
+instinct we deem the highest, have had the irresistible desire to
+help others? How many people has one ever known who have taken up
+philanthropy merely from a sense of rectitude? The people who have
+done most to help the world along have been the people who have had
+an overwhelming natural tenderness, an overflowing love for
+helpless, weak, and unhappy people. That is a thing which cannot be
+simulated. One knows quite well, to put the matter simply, the
+extent of one's own limitations. There are courses of action which
+seem natural and easy; others which seem hard, but just possible;
+others again which are frankly impossible. However noble a life,
+for instance, I thought the life of a missionary or of a doctor to
+be, I could not under any circumstances adopt the role of either.
+There are certain things which I might force myself to do which I
+do not do, and which I practically know I shall not do. And the
+number of people is very small who, when circumstances suggest one
+course, resolutely carry out another. The artistic life is a very
+hard one to analyse, because at the outset it seems so frankly
+selfish a life. One does what one most desires to do, one develops
+one's own nature, its faculties and powers. If one is successful,
+the most one can claim is that one has perhaps added a little to
+the sum of happiness, of innocent enjoyment, that one has perhaps
+increased or fed in a few people the perception of beauty. Of
+course the difficulty is increased by the conventional belief that
+any career is justified by success in that career. And as long as a
+man attains a certain measure of renown we do not question very
+much the nature of his aims.
+
+Then, again, if we put that all aside, and look upon life as a
+thing that is given us to teach us something, it is easy to think
+that it does not matter very much what we do; we take the line of
+least resistance, and think that we shall learn our lesson somehow.
+
+It is difficult to believe that our one object ought to be to
+thwart all our own desires and impulses, to abstain from doing what
+we desire to do, and to force ourselves continually to do what we
+have no impulse to do. That is a philosophical and stoical
+business, and would end at best in a patient and courteous
+dreariness of spirit.
+
+Neither does it seem a right solution to say: "I will parcel out my
+energies--so much will I give to myself, so much to others." It
+ought to be a larger, more generous business than that; yet the
+people who give themselves most freely away too often end by having
+very little to give; instead of having a store of ripe and wise
+reflection, they have generally little more than an official smile,
+a kindly tolerance, a voluble stream of commonplaces.
+
+And then, too, it is hard to see, to speak candidly, what God is
+doing in the matter. One sees useful careers cut ruthlessly short,
+generous qualities nullified by bad health or minute faults,
+promise unfulfilled, men and women bound in narrow, petty,
+uncongenial spheres, the whole matter in a sad disorder. One sees
+one man's influence spoilt by over-confidence, by too strong a
+sense of his own significance, and another man made ineffective by
+diffidence and self-distrust. The best things of life, the most
+gracious opportunities, such as love and marriage, cannot be
+entered upon from a sense of duty, but only from an overpowering
+and instinctive impulse.
+
+Is it not possible to arrive at some tranquil harmony of life, some
+self-evolution, which should at the same time be ardent and
+generous? In my own sad unrest of spirit, I seem to be alike
+incapable of working for the sake of others and working to please
+myself. Perhaps that is but the symptom of a moral disease, a
+malady of the soul. Yet if that is so, and if one once feels that
+disease and, suffering is not a part of the great and gracious
+purpose of God--if it is but a failure in His design--the struggle
+is hopeless. One sees all around one men and women troubled by no
+misgivings, with no certain aim, just doing whatever the tide of
+life impels them to do. My neighbour here is a man who for years
+has gone up to town every day to his office. He is perfectly
+contented, absolutely happy. He has made more money than he will
+ever need or spend, and he will leave his children a considerable
+fortune. He is kind, respectable, upright; he is considered a
+thoroughly enviable man, and indeed, if prosperity and contentment
+are the sign and seal of God's approbation, such a man is the
+highest work of God, and has every reason to be an optimist. He
+would think my questionings morbid and my desires moonshine. He is
+not necessarily right any more than I; but his theory of life works
+out a good deal better for him than mine for me.
+
+Well, we drift, we drift! Sometimes the sun shines bright on the
+wave, and the wheeling birds dip and hover, and our heart is full
+of song. But sometimes we plunge on rising billows, with the wind
+wailing, and the rain pricking the surface with needle-points; we
+are weary and uncomforted; and we do not know why we suffer, or why
+we are glad. Sometimes I have a far-off hope that I shall know,
+that I shall understand and be satisfied; but sometimes, alas, I
+fear that my soul will flare out upon the darkness, and know no
+more either of weal or woe.
+
+
+
+March 20, 1889.
+
+
+I am reading a great deal now; but I find that I turn naturally to
+books of a sad intimite--books in which are revealed the sorrowful
+cares and troubles of sensitive people. Partly, I suppose, it is to
+get the sense of comfort which comes from feeling that others have
+suffered too; but partly to find, if I can, some medicine for my
+soul, in learning how others struggled out of the mire. Thus I have
+been reading Froude's Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters over
+again, and they have moved me strangely and deeply. Perhaps it is
+mostly that I have felt, in these dark months, drawn to the society
+of two brave people--she was brave in her silences, he in the way
+in which he stuck doggedly to his work--who each suffered so
+horribly, so imaginatively, so inexplicably, and, alas, it would
+seem, so unnecessarily! Of course Carlyle indulged his moods, while
+Mrs. Carlyle fought against hers; moreover, he had the instinct for
+translating thoughts, instantaneously and volubly, into vehement
+picturesque speech. How he could bite in a picture, an ugly, ill-
+tempered one enough very often, as when he called Coleridge a
+"weltering" man! Many of his sketches are mere Gillray caricatures
+of people, seen through bile unutterable, exasperated by nervous
+irritability. And Mrs. Carlyle had a mordant wit enough. But still
+both of them had au fond a deep need of love, and a power of
+lavishing love. It comes out in the old man's whimsical notes and
+prefaces; and indeed it is true to say that if a person once
+actually penetrated into Carlyle's inner circle, he found himself
+loved hungrily and devotedly, and never forgotten or cast out. And
+as to Mrs. Carlyle, I suppose it was impossible to be near her and
+not to love her! This comes out in glimpses in her sad pathological
+letters. There is a scene she describes, how she returned home
+after some long and serious bout of illness, when her cook and
+housemaid rushed into the street, kissed her, and. wept on her
+neck; while two of her men friends, Mr. Cooke and Lord Houghton,
+who called in the course of the evening, to her surprise and
+obvious pleasure, did the very same. The result on myself, after
+reading the books, is to feel myself one of the circle, to want to
+do something for them, to wring the necks of the cocks who
+disturbed Carlyle's sleep; and sometimes, alas, to rap the old
+man's fingers for his blind inconsiderateness and selfishness. I
+came the other day upon a passage in a former book of my own, where
+I said something sneering and derisive about the pair, and I felt
+deep shame and contrition for having written it--and, more than
+that, I felt a sort of disgust for the fact that I have spent so
+much time in writing fiction. Books like the Life of Carlyle and
+Mrs. Carlyle's Letters take the wind out of one's imaginative
+faculties altogether, because one is confronted with the real stuff
+of life in them. Life, that hard, stubborn, inconclusive,
+inconsistent, terrible thing! It is, of course, that very hardness
+and inconclusiveness that makes one turn to fiction. In fiction,
+one can round off the corners, repair mistakes, comfort, idealise,
+smooth things down, make error and weakness bear good fruit,
+choose, develop as one pleases. Not so with life, where things go
+from bad to worse, misunderstandings grow and multiply, suffering
+does not purge, sorrow does not uplift. That is the worst of
+fiction, that it deludes one into thinking that one can deal gently
+with life, finish off the picture, arrange things on one's own
+little principles; and then, as in my own case, life brings one up
+against some monstrous, grievous, intolerable fact, that one can
+neither look round or over, and the scales fall from one's eyes.
+With what courage, tranquillity or joy is one to meet a thoroughly
+disagreeable situation? The more one leans on the hope that it may
+amend, the weaker one grows; the thing to realise is that it is
+bad, that it is inevitable, that it has arrived, and to let the
+terror and misery do their worst, soak into the soul and not run
+off it. Only then can one hope to be different; only so can one
+climb the weary ladder of patience and faith.
+
+
+
+March 28, 1889.
+
+
+Low-hung ragged grey skies, heaven smeared with watery vapours
+fleeting, broken and mournful, from the west--these above me, as I
+stand by the old lichened gate of the high wind-swept field at the
+top of the wold. In front a stretch of rough common, the dark-brown
+heather, the young gorse, bluish-green, the rusty red of soaked
+bracken, the pale ochre-coloured grass, all blent into a rich tint
+that pleases the eye with its wild freshness. To the left, the wide
+flat level of the plain, with low hills rising on its verge; to the
+right, a pale pool of water at the bottom of a secret valley,
+reflecting the leafless bushes that fringe it, catches the sunset
+gleam that rises in the west; and then range after range of wolds,
+with pale-green pastures, dark copses, fawn-coloured ploughland,
+here and there an emerald patch of young wheat. The air is fresh,
+soft and fragrant, laden with rain; the earth smells sweet; and the
+wild woodland scent comes blowing to me out of the heart of the
+spinney. In front of me glimmer the rough wheel-tracks of a grassy
+road that leads out on to the heath, and two obscure figures move
+slowly nearer among the tufted gorse. They seem to me, those two
+figures, charged with a grave significance, as though they came to
+bear me tidings, messengers bidden to seek and find me, like the
+men who visited Abraham at the close of the day.
+
+As I linger, the day grows darker, the colour fading from leaf and
+blade; bright points of light flash out among the dark ridges from
+secluded farms, where the evening lamp is lit.
+
+Sometimes on days like this, when the moisture hangs upon the
+hedges, when the streams talk hoarsely to themselves in grassy
+channels, when the road is full of pools, one is weary, unstrung
+and dissatisfied, faint of purpose, tired of labour, desiring
+neither activity nor rest; the soul sits brooding, like the black
+crows that I see in the leafless wood beneath me, perched silent
+and draggled on the tree-tops, just waiting for the sun and the dry
+keen airs to return; but to-day it is not so; I am full of a quiet
+hope, an acquiescent tranquillity. My heart talks gently to itself,
+as to an unseen friend, telling its designs, its wishes, its
+activities. I think of those I hold dear, all the world over; I am
+glad that they are alive, and believe that they think of me. All
+the air seems full of messages, thoughts and confidences and
+welcomes passing to and fro, binding souls to each other, and all
+to God. There seems to be nothing that one needs to do to-day
+except to live one's daily life; to be kind and joyful. To-day the
+road of pilgrimage lies very straight and clear between its fences,
+in an open ground, with neither valley nor hill, no by-path, no
+turning. One can even see the gables and chimneys of some grave
+house of welcome, "a roof for when the dark hours begin," full of
+pious company and smiling maidens. And not, it seems, a false
+security; one is not elated, confident, strong; one knows one's
+weakness; but I think that the Lord of the land has lately passed
+by with a smile, and given command that the pilgrims shall have a
+space of quiet. These birds, these branching trees, have not yet
+lost the joy of His passing. There, along the grassy tracks, His
+patient footsteps went, how short a time ago! One does not hope
+that all the journey will be easy and untroubled; there will be
+fresh burdens to be borne, dim valleys full of sighs to creep
+through, dark waters to wade across; these feet will stumble and
+bleed; these knees will be weary before the end; but to-day there
+is no doubt about the pilgrimage, no question of the far-off goal.
+The world is sad, perhaps, but sweet; sad as the homeless clouds
+that drift endlessly across the sky from marge to marge; sweet as
+the note of the hidden bird, that rises from moment to moment from
+the copse beside me, again and yet again, telling of a little heart
+that is content to wait, and not ill-pleased to be alone with its
+own soft thoughts.
+
+
+
+April 4, 1889.
+
+
+Down in the valley which runs below the house is a mill. I passed
+it to-day at dusk, and I thought I had never seen so
+characteristically English a scene. The wheel was silent, and the
+big boarded walls, dusted with flour, loomed up solemnly in the
+evening light. The full leat dashed merrily through the sluice,
+making holiday, like a child released from school. Behind was the
+stack-yard, for it is a farm as well as a mill; and in the byre I
+heard the grunting of comfortable pigs, and the soft pulling of the
+hay from the big racks by the bullocks. The fowls were going to
+roost, fluttering up every now and then into the big elder-bushes;
+while high above, in the apple-trees, I saw great turkeys settled
+precariously for the night. The orchard was silent, except for the
+murmur of the stream that bounds it. In the mill-house itself
+lights gleamed in the windows, and I saw a pleasant family-party
+gathered at their evening meal. The whole scene with its background
+of sloping meadows and budding woods so tranquil and contented--a
+scene which William Morris would have loved--for there is a
+pleasant grace of antiquity about the old house, a sense of homely
+and solid life, and of all the family associations that have gone
+to the making of it, generation after generation leaving its mark
+in the little alterations and additions that have met a need, or
+even satisfied a pleasant fancy.
+
+The miller is an elderly man now, fond of work, prosperous, good-
+humoured. His son lives with him, and the house is full of
+grandchildren. I do not say that it puzzles me to divine what is
+the miller's view of life, because I think I know it. It is to make
+money honestly, to bring up his grandchildren virtuously and
+comfortably, to enjoy his daily work and his evening leisure. He is
+never idle, never preoccupied. He enjoys getting the mill started,
+seeing the flour stream into the sacks, he enjoys going to market,
+he enjoys going prosperously to church on Sundays, he enjoys his
+paper and his pipe. He has no exalted ideas, and he could not put a
+single emotion into words, but he is thoroughly honest, upright,
+manly, kind, sensible. A perfect life in many ways; and yet it is
+inconceivable to me that a man should live thus, without an aim,
+without a hope, without an object. He would think my own life even
+more inconceivable--that a man could deliberately sit down day
+after day to construct a story about imaginary people; and such
+respect as he feels for me, is mainly due to the fact that my
+writings bring me in a larger income than he could ever make from
+his mill. But of course he is a man who is normally healthy, and
+such men as he are the props of rural life. He is a good master, he
+sees that his men do their work, and are well housed. He is not
+generous exactly, but he is neighbourly. The question is whether
+such as he is the proper type of humanity. He represents the simple
+virtues at their high-water mark. He is entirely contented, and his
+desires are perfectly proportioned to their surroundings. He seems
+indeed to be exactly what the human creature ought to be. And yet
+his very virtues, his sense of justice and honesty, his sensible
+kindliness, are the outcome of civilisation, and bear the stamp, in
+reality, of the dreams of saints and sages and idealists--the men
+who felt that things could be better, and who were made miserable
+by the imperfections of the world. I cannot help wondering, in a
+whimsical moment, what would have been the miller's thoughts of
+Christ, if he had been confronted with Him in the flesh. He would
+have thought of Him rather contemptuously, I think, as a
+bewildering, unpractical, emotional man. The miller would not have
+felt the appeal of unselfishness and unworldliness, because his
+ideal of life is tranquil prosperity. He would have merely wondered
+why people could not hold their tongues and mind their business:
+and yet he is a model citizen, and would be deeply annoyed if he
+were told he were not a sincere Christian. He accepts doctrinal
+statements as he would accept mathematical formulae, and he takes
+exactly as much of the Christian doctrine as suits him. Now when I
+compare myself with the miller, I feel that, as far as human
+usefulness goes, I am far lower in the scale. I am, when all is
+said and done, a drone in the hive, eating the honey I did not
+make. I do not take my share in the necessary labour of the world,
+I do not regulate a little community of labourers with uprightness
+and kindness, as he does. But still I suppose that my more
+sensitive organisation has a meaning in the scale of things. I
+cannot have been made and developed as I am, outside of the purpose
+of God. And yet my work in the world is not that of the passionate
+idealist, that kindles men with the hope of bettering and amending
+the world. What is it that my work does? It fills a vacant hour for
+leisurely people, it gives agreeable distraction, it furnishes some
+pleasant dreams. The most that I can say is that I have a wife whom
+I desire to make happy, and children whom I desire to bring up
+innocently, purely, vigorously.
+
+Must one's hopes and beliefs be thus tentative and provisional?
+Must one walk through life, never fathoming the secret? I have
+myself abundance of material comfort, health, leisure. I know that
+for one like myself, there are hundreds less fortunate. Yet
+happiness in this world depends very little upon circumstances; it
+depends far more upon a certain mixture of selfishness,
+tranquillity, temperance, bodily vigour, and unimaginativeness. To
+be happy, one must be good-humouredly indifferent to the sufferings
+of others, and indisposed to forecast the possibilities of
+disaster. The sadness which must shadow the path of such as myself,
+is the sadness which comes of the power to see clearly the
+imperfections of the world, coupled with the inability to see
+through it, to discern the purpose of it all. One comforts oneself
+by the dim hope that the desire will be satisfied and the dream
+fulfilled; but has one any certainty of that? The temptation is to
+acquiesce in a sort of gentle cynicism, to take what one can get,
+to avoid as far as possible all deep attachments, all profound
+hopes, to steel oneself in indifference. That is what such men as
+my miller do instinctively; meanwhile one tries to believe that the
+melancholy that comes to such as Hamlet, the sadness of finding the
+world unintelligible, and painful, and full of shadows, is a noble
+melancholy, a superior sort of madness. Yet one is not content to
+bear, to suffer, to wait; one clutches desperately at light and
+warmth and joy, and alas, in joy and sorrow alike, one is ever and
+insupportably alone.
+
+
+
+April 9, 1889.
+
+
+I have been reading Rousseau lately, and find him a very
+incomprehensible figure. The Confessions, it must be said, is a
+dingy and sordid book. I cannot quite penetrate the motive which
+induced him to write them. It cannot have been pure vanity, because
+he does not spare himself; he might have made himself out a far
+more romantic and attractive character, if he had suppressed the
+shadows and heightened the lights. I am inclined to think that it
+was partly vanity and partly honesty. Vanity was the motive force,
+and honesty the accompanying mood. I do not suppose there is any
+document so transparently true in existence, and we ought to be
+thankful for that. It is customary to say that Rousseau had the
+soul of a lackey, by which I suppose is meant that he had a gross
+and vulgar nature, a thievish taste for low pleasures, and an ill-
+bred absence of consideration for others. He had all these
+qualities certainly, but he had a great deal more. He was upright
+and disinterested. He had a noble disregard of material advantages;
+he had an enthusiasm for virtue, a passionate love of humanity, a
+deep faith in God. He was not an intellectual man nor a
+philosopher; and yet what a ridiculous criticism is that which is
+generally made upon him, that his reasoning is bad, his knowledge
+scanty, and that people had better read Hobbes! The very reason
+which made Rousseau so tremendous an influence was that his point
+of view was poetical rather than philosophical; he was not too far
+removed from the souls to which he prophesied. What they needed was
+inspiration, emotion, and sentimental dogma; these he could give,
+and so he saved Europe from the philosophers and the cynics. Of
+course it is a deplorable life, tormented by strong animal passion,
+ill-health, insanity; but one tends to forget the prevalent
+coarseness of social tone at that date, not because Rousseau made
+any secret of it, but because none of his contemporaries dared to
+be so frank. If Rousseau had struck out a dozen episodes from the
+Confessions the result would have been a highly poetical,
+reflective, charming book. I can easily conceive that it might have
+a very bad effect upon an ingenuous mind, because it might be
+argued from what he says that moral lapses do not very much matter,
+and that emotional experience is worth the price of some animalism.
+Still more perniciously it might induce one to believe that a man
+may have a deep sense of religion side by side with an unbridled
+sensuality, and that one whose life is morally infamous may yet be
+able to quicken the moral temperature of great nations.
+
+Some of the critics of Rousseau speak as though a man whose moral
+code was so loose, and whose practice was so libidinous, ought
+almost to have held his tongue on matters of high moral import. But
+this is a very false line of argument. A man may see a truth
+clearly, even if he cannot practise it; and an affirmation of a
+passionate belief in virtue is emphasised and accentuated when it
+comes from the lips of one who might be tempted rather to excuse
+his faults by preaching the irresistible character of evil.
+
+To any one who reads wisely, and not in a censorious and
+Pharisaical spirit, this sordid record, which is yet interspersed
+with things so fragrant and beautiful, may have a sobering and
+uplifting effect. One sees a man hampered by ill-health, by a
+temperament childishly greedy of momentary pleasure, by
+irritability, suspicion, vanity and luxuriousness, again and again
+expressing a deep belief in unselfish emotion, a passionate desire
+to help struggling humanity onward, a child-like confidence in the
+goodness and tenderness of the Father of all. Disgust and
+admiration struggle strangely together. One cannot sympathise and
+yet one dare not condemn. One feels a horrible suspicion that there
+are dark and slimy corners, vile secrets. ugly memories, in the
+minds of hundreds of seemingly respectable people; the book brings
+one face to face with the mystery of evil; and yet through the
+gloom there steals a silvery radiance, a far-off hope, an infinite
+compassion for all weakness and imperfection. One can hardly love
+Rousseau, though one does not wonder that there were many found to
+do so; and instead of judging him, one cries out with horror at the
+slime of the pit where he lay bound.
+
+
+
+April 14, 1889.
+
+
+A delusion of which we must beware is the delusion that we can have
+a precise and accurate knowledge of spiritual things. This is a
+delusion into which the exponents of settled religions are apt to
+fall. The Roman Catholic, with his belief in the infallible Church,
+as the interpreter of God's spirit, which is nothing more than a
+belief in the inspiration of the majority, or even a belief in the
+inspiration of a bureaucracy, is the prey of this delusion. The
+Protestant, too, with his legal creed, built up of texts and
+precedents, in which the argumentative dicta of Apostles and
+Evangelists are as weighty and important as the words of the
+Saviour Himself, falls under this delusion. I read the other day a
+passage from a printed sermon of an orthodox type, an acrid outcry
+against Liberalism in religion, which may illustrate what I mean.
+
+"To St. Paul and St. John," said the preacher, "the natural or
+carnal man is hopelessly remote from God; the same Lord who came to
+make possible for man this intimate communion with God is careful
+to make it clear that this communion is only possible to redeemed,
+regenerate man; prior to new birth into the Kingdom of God, far
+from being a son of God, man is, according to the Lord Himself, a
+child of the devil, however potentially capable of being translated
+from death into life."
+
+Such teaching is so horrible and abominable that it is hard to find
+words to express one's sense of its shamefulness. To attribute it
+to the Christ, who came to seek and save what is lost, is an act of
+traitorous wickedness. If Christ had made it His business to
+thunder into the ears of the outcasts, whom He preferred to the
+Scribes and Pharisees, this appalling message, where would His
+teaching be? What message of hope would it hold for the soul? Such
+a view of Christianity as this insults alike the soul and the mind
+and the heart; it deliberately insults God; the message of Christ
+to the vilest human spirit is that it is indeed, in spite of all
+its corruption, its falls, its shame, in very truth God's own
+child; it calls upon the sinner to recognise it, it takes for
+granted that he feels it. The people whom Christ denounced with
+indignation so fiery, so blasting, that it even seems inconsistent
+with His perfect gentleness, were the people who thus professed to
+know and interpret the mind of God, who bade the sinner believe
+that He was a merciless judge, extreme to mark what is done amiss,
+when the one secret was that He was the tenderest and most loving
+of Fathers. But according to this preacher's terrible doctrine God
+pours into the world a stream of millions of human beings, all
+children of the devil, with instincts of a corrupt kind, hampered
+by dreadful inheritances, doomed, from their helpless and reluctant
+birth, to be sinful here and lost hereafter, and then prescribes to
+them a hard and difficult path, beset by clamorous guides, pointing
+in a hundred different directions, bidding them find the intricate
+way to His Heart, or perish. The truth is the precise opposite. The
+divine voice says to every man: "Hampered and sore hindered as you
+are, you are yet My dearly beloved son and child; only turn to Me,
+only open your heart to Me, only struggle, however faintly, to be
+what you can desire to be, and I will guide and lead you to Myself;
+all that is needed is that your heart should be on My side in the
+battle. Even your sins matter little, provided that you can say
+sincerely, 'If it were mine to choose and ordain, I would never
+willingly do evil again.' I know, better even than you yourself
+know, your difficulties, your temptations, your weaknesses; the
+sorrow they bring upon you is no dreary and vindictive punishment,
+it is the loving correction of My hand, and will bring you into
+peace yet, if only you will trust Me, and not despair."
+
+The world is full of dreadful things, pains and sorrow and
+miseries, but the worst of all are the dreary wretchednesses of our
+own devising. The old detestable doctrine of Hell, the idea that
+the stubborn and perverse spirit can defy God, and make its black
+choice, is simply an attempt to glorify the strength of the human
+spirit and to belittle the Love of God. It denies the truth that
+God, if He chose, could show the darkest soul the beauty of
+holiness in so constraining a way that the frail nature must yield
+to the appeal. To deny this, is to deny the omnipotence of the
+Creator. No man would deliberately reject peace and joy, if he
+could see how to find them, in favour of feverish evil and
+ceaseless suffering. If we believe that God is perfect love, it is
+inconceivable that He should make a creature capable of defying His
+utmost tenderness, unless He had said to Himself, "I will make a
+poor wretch who shall defy Me, and he shall suffer endlessly and
+mercilessly in consequence." The truth is that God's Omnipotence is
+limited by His Omnipotence; He could not, for instance, abolish
+Himself, nor create a power that should be greater than He. But if
+He indeed can give to evil such vitality that it can defy Him for
+ever, then He is creating a power that is stronger than Himself.
+
+While the mystery of evil is unexplained, we must all be content to
+know that we do not know; for the thing is insoluble by human
+thought. If God be all-pervading, all-in-all, it is impossible to
+conceive anything coming into being alien to Himself, within
+Himself. If He created spirits able to choose evil, He must have
+created the evil for them to choose, for a man could not choose
+what did not exist; if man can defy God, God must have given him
+the thought of defiance, for no thought can enter the mind of man
+not permitted by God.
+
+With this mystery unsolved, we cannot pretend to any knowledge of
+spiritual things; all that we can do is to recognise that the
+principle of Love is stronger than the principle of evil, and cling
+so far as we can cling to the former. But to set ourselves up to
+guide and direct other men, as the preacher did whose words I have
+quoted, is to set oneself in the place of God, and is a detestable
+tyranny. Only by our innate sense of Justice and Love can we
+apprehend God at all; and thus we are safe in this, that whenever
+we find any doctrine preached by any human being which insults our
+sense of justice and love, we may gladly reject it, saying that at
+least we will not believe that God gives us the power, on the one
+hand, to recognise our highest and truest instincts, and on the
+other directs us to outrage them. Such teaching as this we can
+infallibly recognise as a human perversion and not as a divine
+message; and we may thankfully and gratefully believe that the
+obstacles and difficulties, the temptations and troubles, which
+seem to be strewn so thickly in our path, are to develop rather
+than to thwart our strivings after good, and assuredly designed to
+minister to our ultimate happiness, rather than to our ultimate
+despair.
+
+
+
+April 25, 1889.
+
+
+I found to-day on a shelf a Manual of Preparation for Holy
+Communion, which was given me when I was confirmed. I stood a long
+time reading it, and little ghosts seemed to rustle in its pages.
+How well I remember using it, diligently and carefully, trying to
+force myself into the attitude of mind that it inculcated, and
+humbly and sincerely believing myself wicked, reprobate, stony-
+hearted, because I could not do it successfully. Shall I make a
+curious confession? From quite early days, the time of first waking
+in the morning has been apt to be for me a time of mental
+agitation; any unpleasant and humiliating incident, any
+disagreeable prospect, have always tended to dart into my brain,
+which, unstrung and weakened by sleep, has often been disposed to
+view things with a certain poignancy of distress at that hour--a
+distress which I always knew would vanish the moment I felt my feet
+on the carpet. I used to take advantage of this to use my Manual at
+that hour, because by that I secured a deeper intensity of
+repentance, and I have often succeeded in inducing a kind of
+tearful condition by those means, which I knew perfectly well to be
+artificial, but which yet seemed to comply with the rules of the
+process.
+
+The kind of repentance indicated in the book as appropriate was a
+deep abasement, a horror and hatred of one's sinful propensities;
+and the language used seems to me now not only hollow and
+meaningless, but to insult the dignity of the soul, and to be
+indeed a profound confession of a want of confidence in the methods
+and purposes of God. Surely the right attitude is rather a manly,
+frank, and hopeful co-operation with God, than a degraded kind of
+humiliation. One was invited to contemplate God's detestation of
+sin, His awful and stainless holiness. How unreal, how utterly
+false! It is no more reasonable than to inculcate in human beings a
+sense of His hatred of weakness, of imperfection, of disease, of
+suffering. One might as well say that God's courage and beauty were
+so perfect that He had an impatient loathing for anything timid or
+ugly. If one said that being perfect He had an infinite pity for
+imperfection, that would be nearer the truth--but, even so, how far
+away! To believe in His perfect love and benevolence, one must also
+believe that all shortcomings, all temptations, all sufferings,
+somehow emanate from Him; that they are educative, and have an
+intense and beautiful significance--that is what one struggles,
+how hardly, to believe! Those childish sins, they were but the
+expression of the nature one received from His hand, that wilful,
+pleasure-loving, timid, fitful nature, which yet always desired the
+better part, if only it could compass it, choose it, love it. To
+hate one's nature and temperament and disposition, how impossible,
+unless one also hated the God who had bestowed them! And then, too,
+how inextricably intertwined! The very part of one's soul that made
+one peace-loving, affectionate, trustful was the very thing that
+led one into temptation. The very humility and diffidence that made
+one hate to seem or to be superior to others was the occasion of
+falling. The religion recommended was a religion of scrupulous
+saints and self-torturing ascetics; and the result of it was to
+make one, as experience widened and deepened, mournfully
+indifferent to an ideal which seemed so utterly out of one's reach.
+It is very difficult to make the right compromise. On the one hand,
+there is the sense of moral responsibility and effort, which one
+desires to cultivate; on the other hand, truth compels us to
+recognise our limitations, and to confess boldly the fact that
+moral improvement is a very difficult thing. The question is
+whether, in dealing with other people, we will declare what we
+believe to be the truth, or whether we will tamper with the truth
+for a good motive. Ought we to pretend that we think a person
+morally responsible and morally culpable, when we believe that he
+is neither, for the sake of trying to improve him?
+
+My own practice now is to waste as little time as possible in
+ineffectual regrets, but to keep alive as far as I can in my heart
+a hope, a desire, that God will help to bring me nearer to the
+ideal that I can perceive and cannot reach. To-day, turning over
+the pages of the old Manual, with its fantastic strained phrases
+staring at me from the page, I cannot help wishing that some wise
+and tender person had been able to explain to me the conditions as
+I now see them. Probably the thing was incommunicable; one must
+learn for oneself both one's bitterness and one's joy.
+
+
+
+May 2, 1889.
+
+
+It sometimes happens to me--I suppose it happens to every one--to
+hear some well-meaning person play or sing at a party. Last night,
+at the Simpsons', a worthy young man, who was staying there, sang
+some Schubert songs in a perfectly correct, weak, inexpressive
+voice, accompanying himself in a wooden and inanimate fashion--the
+whole thing might have been turned out by a machine. I was, I
+suppose, in a fretful mood. "Good God!" I thought to myself, "what
+is the meaning of this woeful performance?--a party of absurd
+dressed-up people, who have eaten and drunk too much, sitting in a
+circle in this hot room listening gravely to this lugubrious
+performance! And this is the best that Schubert can do! This is the
+real Schubert! Here have I been all my life pouring pints of
+subjective emotion into this dreary writer of songs, believing that
+I was stirred and moved, when it was my own hopes and aspirations
+all along, which I was stuffing into this conventional vehicle,
+just as an ecclesiastical person puts his emotion into the
+grotesque repetitions of a liturgy." I thought to myself that I had
+made a discovery, and that all was vanity. Well, we thanked the
+singer gravely enough, and went on, smiling and grimacing, to talk
+local gossip. A few minutes later, a young girl, very shy and
+painfully ingenuous, was hauled protesting to the piano. I could
+see her hands tremble as she arranged her music, and the first
+chords she struck were halting and timid. Then she began to sing--
+it was some simple old-fashioned song--what had happened? the world
+was somehow different; she had one of those low thrilling voices,
+charged with utterly inexplicable emotion, haunted with old
+mysterious echoes out of some region of dreams, so near and yet so
+far away. I do not think that the girl had any great intensity of
+mind, or even of soul, neither was she a great performer; but there
+was some strange and beautiful quality about the voice, that now
+rose clear and sustained, while the accompaniment charged and
+tinged the pure notes with glad or mournful visions, like wine
+poured into water; now the voice fell and lingered, like a clear
+stream among rocks, pathetic, appealing, stirring a deep hunger of
+the spirit, and at the same time hinting at a hope, at a secret
+almost within one's grasp. How can one find words to express a
+thing so magical, so inexpressible? But it left me feeling as
+though to sing thus was the one thing worth doing in the world,
+because it seemed to interpret, to reveal, to sustain, to console--
+it was as though one opened a door in a noisy, dusty street, and
+saw through it a deep and silent glen, with woodlands stooping to a
+glimmering stream, with a blue stretch of plain beyond, and an
+expanse of sunny seas on the rim of the sky.
+
+I have had similar experiences before. I have looked in a gallery
+at picture after picture--bright, soulless, accomplished things--
+and asked myself how it was possible for men and women to spend
+their time so elaborately to no purpose; and then one catches sight
+of some little sketch--a pool in the silence of high summer, the
+hot sun blazing on tall trees full of leaf, and rich water-plants,
+with a single figure in a moored boat, musing dreamily; and at once
+one is transported into a region of thrilled wonder. What is it all
+about? What is this sudden glimpse into a life so rich and strange?
+In what quiet country is it all enacted, what land of sweet
+visions? What do the tall trees and the sleeping pool hide from me,
+and in what romantic region of joy and sadness does the dreamer
+muse for ever, in the long afternoon, so full of warmth and
+fragrance and murmurous sound? That is the joy of art, of the
+symbol--that it remains and rests within itself, in a world that
+seems, for a moment, more real and true than the clamorous and
+obtrusive world we move in.
+
+It is so all along the line--the hard and soulless art of technique
+and rule, of tradition and precept, however accomplished, however
+perfect it is, is worth nothing; it is only another dreary form of
+labour, unless through some faculty of the spirit, some vital
+intensity, or even some inexplicable felicity, not comprehended,
+not designed, not intended by the artist, it has this remote and
+suggestive quality. And thus suddenly, in the midst of this weary
+beating of instruments, this dull laying of colour by colour, of
+word by word, there breaks in the awful and holy presence; and then
+one feels, as I have said, that this thrill, this message, this
+oracle, is the one thing in the world worth striving after, and
+that indeed one may forgive all the dull efforts of those who
+cannot attain it, because perhaps they too have felt the call, and
+have thrown themselves into the eternal quest.
+
+And it is true too of life; one is brought near to many people, and
+one asks oneself in a chilly discomfort what is the use of it all,
+living thus in hard and futile habits, on dull and conventional
+lines; and then again one is suddenly confronted by some
+personality, rich in hope and greatness, touching the simplest acts
+of life with an unearthly light, making them gracious and
+beautiful, and revealing them as the symbols of some pure and high
+mystery. Sometimes this is revealed by a word, sometimes by a
+glance; perfectly virtuous, capable, successful people may miss it;
+humble, simple, quiet people may have it. One cannot analyse it or
+describe it; but one has instantaneously a sense that life is a
+thing of large issues and great hopes; that every action and
+thought, however simple or commonplace, may be touched with this
+large quality of interest, of significance. It is a great happiness
+to meet such a person, because one goes in the strength of that
+heavenly meat many days and nights, knowing that life is worth
+living to the uttermost, and that it can all be beautiful and lofty
+and gracious; but the way to miss it, to lose that fine sense, is
+to have some dull and definite design of one's own, which makes one
+treat all the hours in which one cannot pursue it, but as the dirt
+and debris of a quarry. One must not, I see, wait for the golden
+moments of life, because there are no moments that are not golden,
+if one can but pierce into their essence. Yet how is one to realise
+this, to put it into practice? I have of late, in my vacuous mood,
+fallen into the dark error of thinking of the weary hours as of
+things that must be just lived through, and endured, and beguiled,
+if possible, until the fire again fall. But life is a larger and a
+nobler business than that; and one learns the lesson sooner, if one
+takes the suffering home to one's soul, not as a tedious interlude,
+but as the very melody and march of life itself, even though it
+crash into discords, or falter in a sombre monotony.
+
+The point is that when one seems to be playing a part to one's own
+satisfaction, when one appears to oneself to be brilliant,
+suggestive, inspiriting, and genial, one is not necessarily
+ministering to other people; while, on the other hand, when one is
+dull, troubled, and anxious, out of heart and discontented, one may
+have the chance of making others happier. Here is a whimsical
+instance; in one of my dreariest days--I was in London on business--
+I sate next to an old friend, generally a very lively, brisk, and
+cheerful man, who appeared to me strangely silent and depressed. I
+led him on to talk freely, and he told me a long tale of anxieties
+and cares; his health was unsatisfactory, his plans promised ill.
+In trying to paint a brighter picture, to reassure and encourage
+him, I not only forgot my own troubles, but put some hope into him.
+We had met, two tired and dispirited men, we went away cheered and
+encouraged, aware that we were not each of us the only sufferer in
+the world and that there were possibilities still ahead of us all,
+nay, in our grip, if we only were not blind and forgetful.
+
+
+
+May 8, 1889.
+
+
+I saw the other day a great artist working on a picture in its
+initial stages. There were a few lines of a design roughly traced,
+and there was a little picture beside him, where the scheme was
+roughly worked out; but the design itself was covered with strange
+wild smears of flaring, furious colour, flung crudely upon the
+canvas. "I find it impossible to believe," I said,--"forgive me for
+speaking thus--that these ragged stains and splashes of colour can
+ever be subdued and harmonised and co-ordinated." The great man
+smiled. "What would you have said, I wonder," he replied, "if you
+had seen, as I did once, a picture of Rossetti's in an early stage,
+with the face and arms of one of his strange and mysterious figures
+roughly painted in in the brightest ultramarine? Many of these
+fantastic scraps of colour will disappear altogether from the eye,
+just lending tone to something which is to be superimposed upon
+them."
+
+I have since reflected that this makes a beautiful parable of our
+lives. Some element comes into our experience, some suffering, some
+anxiety, and we tend to say impatiently: "Well, whatever happens,
+this at least can never appear just or merciful." But God, like a
+wise and perfect artist, foresees the end in the beginning. We, who
+live in time and space, can merely see the rough, crude tints flung
+fiercely down, till the thing seems nothing but a frantic patchwork
+of angry hues; but God sees the blending and the softening; how the
+soft tints of face and hand, of river and tree, will steal over the
+coarse background, and gain their strength and glory from the
+hidden stains. Perhaps we have sometimes the comfort of seeing how
+some old and ugly experience melted into and strengthened some
+soft, bright quality of heart or mind. Staring mournfully as we do
+upon the tiny circumscribed space of life, we cannot conceive how
+the design will work itself out; but the day will come when we
+shall see it too; and perhaps the best moments of life are those
+when we have a secret inkling of the process that is going so
+slowly and surely forward, as the harsh lines and hues become the
+gracious lineaments of some sweet face, and from the glaring patch
+of hot colour is revealed the remote and shining expanse of a
+sunlit sea.
+
+
+
+May 14, 1889.
+
+
+There used to be a favourite subject for scholastic disputation:
+WHETHER HERCULES IS IN THE MARBLE. The image is that of the
+sculptor, who sees the statue lie, so to speak, imbedded in the
+marble block, and whose duty is so to carve it, neither cutting too
+deep or too shallow, so that the perfect form is revealed. The idea
+of the disputation is the root-idea of idealistic philosophy. That
+each man is, as it were, a block of marble in which the ideal man
+is buried. The purpose of the educator ought to be to cut the form
+out, perikoptein, as Plato has it.
+
+What a lofty and beautiful thought! To feel about oneself that the
+perfect form is there, and that the experience of life is the
+process of cutting it out--a process full of pain, perhaps, as the
+great splinters and flakes fly and drop--a rough, brutal business
+it seems at first, the hewing off great masses of stone, so firmly
+compacted, fused and concreted together. At first it seems
+unintelligible enough; but the dints become minuter and minuter,
+here a grain and there an atom, till the smooth and shapely limbs
+begin to take shape. At first it seems a mere bewildered loss, a
+sharp pang as one parts with what seems one's very self. How long
+before the barest structure becomes visible! but when one once gets
+a dim inkling of what is going on, as the stubborn temper yields,
+as the face takes on its noble frankness, and the shapely limbs
+emerge in all the glory of free line and curve, how gratefully and
+vehemently one co-operates, how little a thing the endurance of
+mere pain becomes by the side of the consciousness that one is
+growing into the likeness of the divine.
+
+
+
+May 23, 1889.
+
+
+when Goethe was writing Werther he wrote to his friend Kestner, "I
+am working out my own situation in art, for the consolation of gods
+and men." That is a fine thing to have said, proceeding from so
+sublime an egoism, so transcendent a pride, that it has hardly a
+disfiguring touch of vanity about it. He did not add that he was
+also working in the situation of his friend Kestner, and Kestner's
+wife, Charlotte; though when they objected to having been thus used
+as material, Goethe apologised profusely, and in the same breath
+told them, somewhat royally, that they ought to be proud to have
+been thus honoured. But that is the reason why one admires Goethe
+so much and worships him so little. One admires him for the way in
+which he strode ahead, turning corner after corner in the
+untravelled road of art, with such insight, such certainty,
+interpreting and giving form to the thought of the world; but one
+does not worship him, because he had no tenderness or care for
+humanity. He knew whither he was bound, but he did not trouble
+himself about his companions. The great leaders of the world are
+those who have said to others, "Come with me--let us find light and
+peace together!"--but Goethe said, "Follow me if you can!" Some
+one, writing of that age, said that it was a time when men had
+immense and far-reaching desires, but feeble wills. They lost
+themselves in the melancholy of Hamlet, and luxuriated in their own
+sorrows. That was not the case with Goethe himself; there never was
+an artist who was less irresolute.
+
+One of the reasons, I think, why we are weak in art, at the present
+time, is because we refer everything to conventional ethical
+standards. We are always arraigning people at the bar of morality,
+and what we judge them mainly by is their strength or weakness of
+will. Blake thought differently. He always maintained that men
+would be judged for their intellectual and artistic perception, by
+their good or bad taste.
+
+But surely it is all a deep-seated mistake; one might as well judge
+people for being tall or short, ugly or beautiful. The only thing
+for which I think most people would consent to be judged, which is
+after all what matters, is whether they have yielded consciously to
+mean, prudent, timid, conventional motives in life. It is not a
+question of success or failure; it is rather whether one has acted
+largely, freely, generously, or whether one has acted politely,
+timidly, prudently.
+
+In the Gospel, the two things for which it seems to be indicated
+that men will be judged are, whether they have been kind, and
+whether they have improved upon what has been given them. And
+therefore the judgment seems to depend rather upon what men desire
+than upon what they effect, upon attitude rather than upon
+performance. But it is all a great mystery, because no amount of
+desiring seems to give us what we desire. The two plain duties are
+to commit ourselves to the Power that made us, and to desire to
+become what He would have us become; and one must also abstain from
+any attempt to judge other people--that is the unpardonable sin.
+
+In art, then, a man does his best if, like Goethe, he works his own
+situation into art for the consolation of gods and men. His own
+situation is the only thing he can come near to perceiving; and if
+he draws it faithfully and beautifully, he consoles and he
+encourages. That is the best and noblest thing he can do, if he can
+express or depict anything which may make other men feel that they
+are not alone, that others are treading the same path, in sunshine
+or cloud; anything which may help others to persevere, to desire,
+to perceive. The worst sorrows in life are not its losses and
+misfortunes, but its fears. And when Goethe said that it was for
+the consolation of gods as well as of men, he said a sublime thing,
+for if we believe that God made and loved us, may we not sympathise
+with Him for our blindness and hopelessness, for all the sad sense
+of injustice and perplexity that we feel as we stumble on our way;
+all the accusing cries, all the despairing groans? Do not such
+things wound the heart of God? And if a man can be brave and
+patient, and trust Him utterly, and bid others trust Him, is He not
+thereby consoled?
+
+In these dark months, in which I have suffered much, there rises at
+times in my heart a strong intuition that it is not for nothing
+that I suffer. I cannot divine whom it is to benefit, or how it is
+to benefit any one. One thing indeed saddens me, and that is to
+reflect that I have often allowed the record of old sadnesses to
+heighten my own sense of luxurious tranquillity and security. Not
+so will I err again. I will rather believe that a mighty price is
+being paid for a mightier joy, that we are not astray in the
+wilderness out of the way, but that we are rather a great and
+loving company, guided onward to some far-off city of God, with
+infinite tenderness, and a love so great that we cannot even
+comprehend its depth and its intensity.
+
+I sit, as I write, in my quiet room, the fragrant evening air
+floating in, surrounded by all the beloved familiar things that
+have made my life sweet, easy, and delightful--books and pictures,
+that have brought me so many messages of beauty. I hear the voice
+of Maud overhead--she is telling the children a story, and I hear
+their voices break out every now and then into eager questions. Yet
+in the midst of all this peace and sweetness, I walk in loneliness
+and gloom, hardly daring, so faithless and despairing I am, to let
+my heart go out to the love and goodness round me, for fear of
+losing it all, for fear that those souls I love may be withdrawn
+from me or I from them. In this I know that I am sadly and darkly
+wrong--the prudent coldness, the fear of sorrow pulls me back;
+irresolute, cowardly, base! Yet even so I must trust the Hand that
+moulded me, and the Will that bade me be, just so and not
+otherwise.
+
+
+
+June 4, 1889.
+
+
+It is a melancholy reflection how very little the highest and most
+elaborate culture effects in the direction of producing creative
+and original writing. Very few indeed of our great writers have
+been technically cultivated men. How little we look to the
+Universities, where a lifetime devoted to the study of the nuances
+of classical expression is considered well spent, for any
+literature which either raises the intellectual temperature or
+enriches the blood of the world! The fact is that the highly-
+cultivated man tends to find himself mentally hampered by his
+cultivation, to wade in a sea of glue, as Tennyson said. It is
+partly that highly-cultivated minds grow to be subservient to
+authority, and to contemn experiment as rash and obstreperous.
+Partly also the least movement of the mind dislodges such a pile of
+precedents and phrases and aphorisms, stored and amassed by
+diligent reading, that the mind is encumbered by the thought that
+most things worth saying have been so beautifully said that
+repetition is out of the question. Partly, too, a false and
+fastidious refinement lays hold of the mind; and an intellect
+trained in the fine perception of ancient expression is unable to
+pass through the earlier stages through which a writer must pass,
+when the stream flows broken and turbid, when it appears impossible
+to capture and define the idea which seems so intangible and
+indefinable.
+
+What an original writer requires is to be able to see a subject for
+himself, and then to express it for himself. The only cultivation
+he needs is just enough to realise that there are differences of
+subject and differences of expression, just enough to discern the
+general lines upon which subjects can be evolved, and to perceive
+that lucidity, grace, and force of expression are attainable. The
+overcultivated man, after reading a masterpiece, is crushed and
+flattened under his admiration; but the effect of a masterpiece
+upon an original spirit, is to make him desire to say something
+else that rises in his soul, and to say it in his own words; all he
+needs in the way of training is just enough for him to master
+technique. The highly-cultivated man is as one dazzled by gazing
+upon the sun; he has no eyes for anything else; a bright disc,
+imprinted upon his eyes, floats between him and every other object.
+
+The best illustration of this is the case of the great trio,
+Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. All three started as poets.
+Coleridge was distracted from poetry into metaphysics, mainly, I
+believe, by his indulgence in opium, and the torturing
+contemplation of his own moral impotence. He turned to philosophy
+to see if he could find some clue to the bewildering riddle of
+life, and he lost his way among philosophical speculations.
+Southey, on the other hand, a man of Spartan virtue, became a
+highly-cultivated writer; he sate in his spacious library of well-
+selected books, arranged with a finical preciseness, apportioning
+his day between various literary pursuits. He made an income; he
+wrote excellent ephemeral volumes; he gained a somewhat dreary
+reputation. But Wordsworth, with his tiny bookshelf of odd tattered
+volumes, with pages of manuscript interleaved to supply missing
+passages, alone kept his heart and imagination active, by
+deliberate leisure, elaborate sauntering, unashamed idleness.
+
+The reason why very few uneducated persons have been writers of
+note, is because they have been unable to take up the problem at
+the right point. A writer cannot start absolutely afresh; he must
+have the progress of thought behind him, and he must join the
+procession in due order. Therefore the best outfit for a writer is
+to have just enough cultivation to enable him to apprehend the
+drift and development of thought, to discern the social and
+emotional problems that are in the air, so that he can interpret--
+that is the secret--the thoughts that are astir, but which have not
+yet been brought to the birth. He must know enough and not too
+much; he must not dim his perception by acquainting himself in
+detail with what has been said or thought; he must not take off the
+freshness of his mind by too much intellectual gymnastic. It is a
+race across country for which he is preparing, and he will learn
+better what the practical difficulties are by daring excursions of
+his own, than by acquiring a formal suppleness in prescribed
+exercises.
+
+The originality and the output of the writer are conditioned by his
+intellectual and vital energy. Most men require all their energy
+for the ordinary pursuits of life; all creative work is the result
+of a certain superabundance of mental force. If this force is used
+up in social duties, in professional business, even in the pursuit
+of a high degree of mental cultivation, originality must suffer;
+and therefore a man whose aim is to write, ought resolutely to
+limit his activities. What would be idleness in another is for him
+a storing of forces; what in an ordinary man would be malingering
+and procrastination, is for the writer the repose necessary to
+allow his energies to concentrate themselves upon his chosen work.
+
+
+
+June 8, 1889.
+
+
+I have been looking at a catalogue, this morning, of the
+publications of a firm that is always bringing out new editions of
+old writers. I suppose they find a certain sale for these books, or
+they would not issue them; and yet I cannot conceive who buys them
+in their thousands, and still less who reads them. Teachers,
+perhaps, of literature; or people who are inspired by local
+lectures to go in search of culture? It is a great problem, this
+accumulation of literature; and it seems to me a very irrational
+thing to do to republish the complete works of old authors, who
+perhaps, in the midst of a large mass of essentially second-rate
+work, added half-a-dozen lyrics to the literature of the world. But
+surely it is time that we began to select? Whatever else there is
+time for in this world, there certainly is not time to read old
+half-forgotten second-rate work. Of course people who are making a
+special study of an age, a period, a school of writers, have to
+plough through a good deal that is not intrinsically worth reading;
+but, as a rule, when a man has done this, instead of saying boldly
+that the greater part of an author's writings may be wisely
+neglected and left alone, he loses himself in the critical
+discrimination and the chronological arrangement of inferior
+compositions; perhaps he rescues a few lines of merit out of a mass
+of writing; but there is hardly time now to read long ponderous
+poems for the sake of a few fine flashes of emotion and expression.
+What, as a rule, distinguishes the work of the amateur from the
+work of the great writer is that an amateur will retain a poem for
+the sake of a few good lines, whereas a great writer will
+relentlessly sacrifice a few fine phrases, if the whole structure
+and texture of the poem is loose and unsatisfactory. The only
+chance of writing something that will live is to be sure that the
+whole thing--book, essay, poem--is perfectly proportioned, firm,
+hammered, definite. The sign and seal of a great writer is that he
+has either the patience to improve loose work, or the courage to
+sacrifice it.
+
+But most readers are so irrational, so submissive, so deferential,
+that they will swallow an author whole. They think dimly that they
+can arrive at a certain kind of culture by knowledge; but knowledge
+has nothing to do with it. The point is to have perception,
+emotion, discrimination. This is where education fails so
+grievously, that teachers of this independent and perceptive
+process are so rare, and that teaching too often falls into the
+hands of conscientious people, with good memories, who think that
+it benefits the mind to load it with facts and dates, and forget,
+or do not know, that what is needed is a sort of ardent inner fire,
+that consumes the debris and fuses the ore.
+
+In that dry, ugly, depressing book, Harry and Lucy, which I used to
+read in my youth, there is a terrible father, kind, virtuous,
+conscientious, whose one idea seems to be to encourage the children
+to amass correct information. The party is driving in a chaise
+together, and Lucy begins to tell a story of a little girl, Kitty
+Maples by name, whom she has met at her Aunt Pierrepoint's; it
+seems as if the conversation is for once to be enlightened by a ray
+of human interest, but the name is hardly out of her lips, when the
+father directs her attention to a building beside the road, and
+adds, "Let us talk of things rather than of people." The building
+turns out to be a sugar-refinery, or some equally depressing
+place, and the unhappy children are initiated into its mysteries.
+What could be more cheerless and dispiriting? Lucy is represented
+as a high-spirited and somewhat giddy child, who is always being
+made aware of her moral deficiencies.
+
+One looks forward sadly to the time when nature has been resolutely
+expelled by a knowledge of dynamics and statics, and when Lucy,
+with children of her own, will be directing their attention away
+from childish fancies, to the fact that the poker is a lever, and
+that curly hair is a good hygrometer.
+
+Plenty of homely and simple virtues are inculcated in Harry and
+Lucy; but the attitude of mind that must inevitably result from
+such an education is hard, complacent, and superior. The children
+are scolded out of superficial vanities, and their place is
+occupied by a satanical sort of pride--the pride of possessing
+correct information.
+
+What does one want to make of one's own children? One wants them to
+be generous, affectionate, simple-minded, just, temperate in the
+moral region. In the intellectual region, one desires them to be
+alert, eager, independent, perceptive, interested. I like them to
+ask a hundred questions about what they see and hear. I want them
+to be tender and compassionate to animals and insects. As for
+books, I want them to follow their own taste, but I surround them
+only with the best; but even so I wish them to have minds of their
+own, to have preferences, and reasons for their preferences. I do
+not want them to follow my taste, but to trust their own. I do not
+in the least care about their amassing correct information. It is
+much better that they should learn how to use books. It is very
+strange how theories of education remain impervious to development.
+In the days when books were scarce and expensive, when knowledge
+was not formulated and summarised, men had to depend largely on
+their own stores. But now, what is the use of books, if one is
+still to load one's memory with details? The training of memory is
+a very unimportant part of education nowadays; people with accurate
+memories are far too apt to trust them, and to despise
+verification. Indeed, a well-filled memory is a great snare,
+because it leads the possessor of it to believe, as I have said,
+that knowledge is culture. A good digestion is more important to a
+man than the possession of many sacks of corn; and what one ought
+rather to cultivate nowadays is mental digestion.
+
+
+
+June 14, 1889.
+
+
+It is comforting to reflect how easy it is to abandon habits, and
+how soon a new habit takes the place of the old. Some months ago I
+put writing aside in despair, feeling that I was turning away from
+the most stable thing in life; yet even now I have learned largely
+to acquiesce in silence; the dreary and objectless mood visits me
+less and less frequently. What have I found to fill the place of
+the old habit? I have begun to read much more widely, and recognise
+how very ill-educated I am. In my writing days, I used to read
+mainly for the purposes of my books, or, if I turned aside to
+general reading at all, it was to personal, intime, subjective
+books that I turned, books in which one could see the development
+of character, analyse emotion, acquire psychological experience;
+but now I find a growing interest in sociological and historical
+ideas; a mist begins to roll away from my mental horizon, and I
+realise how small was the circle in which I was walking. I
+sometimes find myself hoping that this may mean the possibility of
+a wider flight; but I do not, strange to say, care very much about
+the prospect. Just at present, I appear to myself to have been like
+a botanist walking in a great forest, looking out only for small
+typical specimens of certain classes of ground-plants, without any
+eyes for the luxurious vegetation, the beauty of the rich opening
+glade, the fallen day of the dense underwood.
+
+Then too I have begun to read regularly with the children; I did it
+formerly, but only fitfully, and I am sorry to say grudgingly. But
+now it has become a matter of intense interest to me, to see how
+thoughts strike on eager and ingenuous minds. I find my trained
+imagination a great help here, because it gives me the power of
+clothing a bare scene with detail, and of giving vitality to an
+austere figure. I have made all sorts of discoveries, to me
+astonishing and delightful, about my children. I recognise some of
+their qualities and modes of thought; but there are whole ranges of
+qualities apparent, of which I cannot even guess the origin. One
+thinks of a child as deriving its nature from its parents, and its
+experience from its surroundings; but there is much beside that,
+original views, unexpected curiosities, and, strangest of all,
+things that seem almost like dim reminiscences floated out of other
+far-off lives. They seem to infer so much that they have never
+heard, to perceive so much that they have never seen, to know so
+much that they have never been told. Bewildering as this is in the
+intellectual region, it is still more marvellous in the moral
+region. They scorn, they shudder at, they approve, they love, as by
+some generous instinct, qualities of which they have had no
+experience. "I don't know what it is, but there is something wrong
+about Cromwell," said Maggie gravely, when we had been reading the
+history of the Commonwealth. Now Cromwell is just one of those
+characters which, as a rule, a child accepts as a model of rigid
+virtue and public spirit. Alec, whose taste is all for soldiers and
+sailors just now, and who might, one would have thought, have been
+dazzled by military glory, pronounced Napoleon "rather a common
+man." This arose purely in the boy's own mind, because I am very
+careful not to anticipate any judgments; I think it of the highest
+importance that they should learn to form their own opinions, so
+that we never attempt to criticise a character until we have
+mastered the facts of his life.
+
+Another thing I am doing with them, which seems to me to develop
+intelligence pleasurably and rapidly, is to read them a passage or
+an episode, and then to require them to relate it or write it in
+their own words. I don't remember that this was ever done for me in
+the whole course of my elaborate education; and the speed with
+which they have acquired the art of seizing on salient points is to
+me simply marvellous. I have my reward in such remarks as these
+which Maud repeated to me yesterday. "Lessons," said Alec gravely,
+"have become ever so much more fun since we began to do them with
+father." "Fun!" said Maggie, with indignant emotion; "they are not
+lessons at all now!" I certainly do not observe any reluctance on
+their part to set to work, and I do see a considerable reluctance
+to stop; yet I don't think there is the least strain about it. But
+it is true that I save them all the stupid and irksome work that
+made my own acquisition of knowledge so bitter a thing. We read
+French together; my own early French lessons were positively
+disgusting, partly from the abominable little books on dirty paper
+and in bad type that we read, and partly from the absurd character
+of the books chosen. The Cid and Voltaire's Charles XII.! I used to
+wonder dimly how it was ever worth any one's while to string such
+ugly and meaningless sentences together. Now I read with the
+children Sans Famille and Colomba; and they acquire the language
+with incredible rapidity. I tell them any word they do not know;
+and we have a simple system of emulation, by which the one who
+recollects first a word we have previously had, receives a mark;
+and the one who first reaches a total of a hundred marks gets
+sixpence. The adorable nature of women! Maggie, whose verbal memory
+is excellent, went rapidly ahead, and spent her sixpence on a
+present to console Alec for the indignity of having been beaten.
+Then, too, they write letters in French to their mother, which are
+solemnly sent by post. It is not very idiomatic French, but it is
+amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the children at
+breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles over
+them.
+
+Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of education; it certainly
+seems to fulfil its purpose very wonderfully in making them alert,
+inquisitive, eager, and without any shadow of priggishness. It is
+established as a principle that it is stupid not to know things,
+and still more stupid to try and make other people aware that you
+know them; and the apologies with which Maggie translated a French
+menu at a house where we stayed with the children the other day
+were delightful to behold.
+
+I am very anxious that they should not be priggish, and I do not
+think they are in any danger of becoming so. I suppose I rather
+skim the cream of their education, and leave the duller part to the
+governess, a nice, tranquil person, who lives in the village, the
+daughter of a previous vicar, and comes in in the mornings. I don't
+mean that their interest and alertness does not vary, but they are
+obedient and active-minded children, and they prefer their lessons
+with me so much that it has not occurred to them to be bored. If
+they flag, I don't press them. I tell them a story, or show them
+pictures. While I write these words in my armchair, they are
+sitting at the table, writing an account of something I have told
+them. Maggie lays down her pen with a sigh of satisfaction. "There,
+that is beautiful! But I dare say it is not as good as yours,
+Alec." "Don't interrupt me," says Alec sternly, "and don't push
+against me when I'm busy." Maggie looks round and concludes that I
+am busy too. In a minute, Alec will have done, and then I shall
+read the two pieces aloud; then we shall criticise them
+respectfully. The aim is to make them frankly recognise the good
+points of each other's compositions as well as the weak points, and
+this they are very ready to do.
+
+In all this I do not neglect the physical side. They can ride and
+swim. They go out in all weathers and get wholesomely wet, dirty,
+and tired. Games are a difficulty, but I want them to be able, if
+necessary, to do without games. We botanise, we look for nests, we
+geologise, we study birds through glasses, we garden. It is all
+very unscientific, but they observe, they perceive, they love the
+country. Moreover, Maud has a passion for knowing all the village
+people, and takes the children with her, so that they really know
+the village-folk all round; they are certainly tremendously happy
+and interested in everything. Of course they are volatile in their
+tastes, but I rather encourage that. I know that in the little old
+moral books the idea was that nothing should be taken up by
+children, unless it was done thoroughly and perseveringly; but I
+had rather that they had a wide experience; the time to select and
+settle down upon a pursuit is not yet, and I had rather that they
+found out for themselves what they care about, than practise them
+in a premature patience. The only thing I object to is their taking
+up something which they have tried and dropped; then I do require a
+pledge that they shall stick to it. I say to them, "I don't mind
+how many things you try, and if you find you don't care about one,
+you may give it up when you have given it a trial; but it is a bad
+thing to be always changing, and everybody can't do everything; so
+don't take up this particular thing again, unless you can give a
+good reason for thinking you will keep to it."
+
+One of the things I insist upon their doing, whether they like it
+or not, is learning to play the piano. There are innumerable
+people, I find, who regret not having been made to overcome the
+initial difficulties of music; and the only condition I make is,
+that they shall be allowed to stop when they can play a simple
+piece of music at sight correctly, and when they have learnt the
+simple rules of harmony.
+
+For teaching them geography, I have a simple plan; my own early
+geography lessons were to my recollection singularly dismal. I
+used, as far as I can remember, to learn lists of towns, rivers,
+capes, and mountains. Then there were horrible lists of exports and
+imports, such as hides, jute, and hardware. I did not know what any
+of the things were, and no one explained them to me. What we do now
+is this. I read up a book of travels, and then we travel in a
+country by means of atlases, while I describe the sort of landscape
+we should see, the inhabitants, their occupations, their religion,
+and show the children pictures. I can only say that it seems to be
+a success. They learn arithmetic with their governess, and what is
+aimed at is rapid and accurate calculations. As for religious
+instruction, we read portions of the Bible, striking scenes and
+stories, carefully selected, and the Gospel story, with plenty of
+pictures. But here I own I find a difficulty. With regard to the
+Old Testament, I have frankly told them that many of the stories
+are legends and exaggerations, like the legends of other nations.
+That is not difficult; I say that in old days when people did not
+understand science, many things seemed possible which we know now
+to be impossible; and that things which happened naturally, were
+often thought to have happened supernaturally; moreover, that both
+imagination and exaggeration crept in about famous people. I am
+sure that there is a great danger in teaching intelligent children
+that the Bible is all literally true. And then the difficulty comes
+in, that they ask artlessly whether such a story as the miracle of
+Cana, or the feeding of the five thousand, is true. I reply frankly
+that we cannot be sure; that the people who wrote it down believed
+it to be true, but that it came to them by hearsay; and the
+children seem to have no difficulty about the matter. Then, too, I
+do not want them to be too familiar, as children, with the words of
+Christ, because I am sure that it is a fact that, for many people,
+a mechanical familiarity with the Gospel language simply blurs and
+weakens the marvellous significance and beauty of the thought. It
+becomes so crystallised that they cannot penetrate it. I have
+treated some parts of the Gospel after the fashion of
+Philochristus, telling them a story, as though seen by some earnest
+spectator. I find that they take the deepest interest in these
+stories, and that the figure of Christ is very real and august to
+them. But I teach them no doctrine except the very simplest--the
+Fatherhood of God, the Divinity of Christ, the indwelling voice of
+the Spirit; and I am sure that religion is a pure, sweet, vital
+force in their lives, not a harsh thing, a question of sin and
+punishment, but a matter of Love, Strength, Forgiveness, Holiness.
+The one thing I try to show them is that God was not, as I used to
+think, the property, so to speak, of the Jews; but that He is
+behind and above every race and nation, slowly leading them to the
+light. The two things I will not allow them to think of are the
+Doctrines of the Fall and the Atonement; the doctrine of the Fall
+is contrary to all true knowledge, the doctrine of the Atonement is
+inconsistent with every idea of justice. But it is a difficult
+matter. They will hear sermons, and Alec, at school, may have
+dogmatic instruction given him; but I shall prepare him for
+Confirmation here, and have him confirmed at home, and thus the
+main difficulty will be avoided; neither do I conceal from them
+that good people think very differently on these points. It is
+curious to remember that, brought up as I was on strict Evangelical
+lines, I was early inculcated into the sin of schism, with the
+result that I hurried with my Puritan nurse swiftly and violently
+by a Roman Catholic chapel and a Wesleyan meeting-house which we
+used to pass in our walks, with a sense of horror and wickedness in
+the air. Indeed, I remember once asking my mother why God did not
+rain down fire and brimstone on these two places of worship, and
+received a very unsatisfactory answer. To develop such a spirit
+was, it seems to me, a monstrous sin against Christian charity, and
+my children shall be saved from that.
+
+Meantime my own hours are increasingly filled. It takes me a long
+time to prepare for the children's lessons; and I have my reward
+abundantly in the delight of seeing their intelligence, their
+perception, their interest grow. I am determined that the
+beginnings of knowledge shall be for them a primrose path; I
+suppose there will have to be some stricter mental discipline
+later; but they shall begin by thinking and expecting things to be
+interesting and delightful, before they realise that things can
+also be hard and dull.
+
+
+
+June 20, 1889.
+
+
+When I read books on education, when I listen to the talk of
+educational theorists, when I see syllabuses and schedules, schemes
+and curricula, a great depression settles on my mind; I feel I have
+no interest in education, and a deep distrust of theoretical
+methods. These things seem to aim at missing the very thing of
+which we are in search, and to lose themselves in a sort of
+childish game, a marshalling of processions, a lust for
+organisation. I care so intensely for what it all means, I loathe
+so deeply the motives that seem at work. I suppose that the
+ordinary man considers a species of success, a bettering of
+himself, the acquisition of money and position and respectability,
+to be the end of life; and such as these look upon education
+primarily as a means of arriving at their object. Such was the old
+education given by the sophists, which aimed at turning out a well-
+balanced, effective man. But all this, it seems to me, has the
+wrong end in view. The success of it depends upon the fact that
+every one is not so capable of rising, that the rank and file must
+be in the background, forming the material out of which the
+successful man makes his combinations, and whom he contrives to
+despoil.
+
+The result of it is that the well-educated man becomes hard, brisk,
+complacent, contemptuous, knowing his own worth, using his
+equipment for precise and definite ends.
+
+My idea would rather be that education should aim at teaching
+people how to be happy without success; because the shadow of
+success is vulgarity, and vulgarity is the one thing which
+education ought to extinguish. What I desire is that men should
+learn to see what is beautiful, to find pleasure in homely work, to
+fill leisure with innocent enjoyment. If education, as the term is
+generally used, were widely and universally successful, the whole
+fabric of a nation would collapse, because no one thus educated
+would acquiesce in the performance of humble work. It is commonly
+said that education ought to make men dissatisfied, and teach them
+to desire to improve their position. It is a pestilent heresy. It
+ought to teach them to be satisfied with simple conditions, and to
+improve themselves rather than their position--the end of it ought
+to be to produce content. Suppose, for an instant--it sounds a
+fantastic hypothesis--that a man born in the country, in the
+labouring class, were fond of field-work, a lover of the sights of
+nature in all her aspects, fond of good literature, why should he
+seek to change his conditions? But education tends to make boys and
+girls fond of excitement, fond of town sociabilities and
+amusements, till only the dull and unambitious are content to
+remain in the country. And yet the country work will have to be
+done until the end of time.
+
+It is a dark problem; but it seems to me that we are only saved
+from disaster, in our well-meant efforts, by the simple fact that
+we cannot make humanity what we so short-sightedly desire to make
+it; that the dull, uninspired, unambitious element has an endurance
+and a permanence which we cannot change if we would, and which it
+is well for us that we cannot change; and that in spite of our
+curricula and schedules, mankind marches quietly upon its way to
+its unknown goal.
+
+
+
+June 28, 1889.
+
+
+An old friend has been staying with us, a very interesting man for
+many reasons, but principally for the fact that he combines two
+sets of qualities that are rarely found together. He has strong
+artistic instincts; he would like, I think, to have been a painter;
+he has a deep love of nature, woodland places and quiet fields; he
+loves old and beautiful buildings with a tenderness that makes it a
+real misery to him to think of their destruction, and even their
+renovation; and he has, too, the poetic passion for flowers; he is
+happiest in his garden. But beside all this, he has the Puritan
+virtues strongly developed; he loves work, and duty, and simplicity
+of life, with all his heart; he is an almost rigid judge of conduct
+and character, and sometimes flashes out in a half Pharisaical
+scorn against meanness, selfishness, and weakness. He is naturally
+a pure Ruskinian; he would like to destroy railways and machinery
+and manufactories; he would like working-men to enjoy their work,
+and dance together on the village green in the evenings; but he is
+not a faddist at all, and has the healthiest and simplest power of
+enjoyment. His severity has mellowed with age, while his love of
+beauty has, I think, increased; he does not care for argument, and
+is apt to say pathetically that he knows that his fellow-disputant
+is right, but that he cannot change his opinions, and does not
+desire to. He is passing, it seems to me, into a very gracious and
+soft twilight of life; he grows more patient, more tender, more
+serene. His face, always beautiful, has taken on an added beauty of
+faithful service and gracious sweetness.
+
+We began one evening to discuss a book that has lately been
+published, a book of very sad, beautiful, wise, intimate letters,
+written by a woman of great perception, high intellectual gifts and
+passionate affections. These letters were published, not long after
+her death, by her children, to whom many of them were addressed.
+
+He had read the book, I found, with deep emotion; but he said very
+decidedly that it ought not to have been published, at all events
+so soon after the writer's death. I am inclined to defer greatly to
+his judgment, and still more to his taste, and I have therefore
+read the book again to see if I am inclined to alter my mind. I
+find that my feeling is the exact opposite of his in every way. I
+feel humbly and deeply grateful to the children who have given the
+letters to the world. Of course if there had been any idea in the
+mind of the writer that they would be published, she would probably
+have been far more reticent; but, as it was, she spoke with a
+perfect openness and simplicity of all that was in her mind. It is
+curious to reflect that I met the writer more than once, and
+thought her a cold, hard, unsympathetic woman. She had to endure
+many sorrows and bereavements, losing, by untimely death, those
+whom she most loved; but the revelation of her pain and
+bewilderment, and the sublime and loving resignation with which she
+bore it, has been to me a deep, holy, and reviving experience. Here
+was one who felt grief acutely, rebelliously, and passionately, yet
+whom sorrow did not sear or harden, suffering did not make self-
+absorbed or morbid, or pain make callous. Her love flowed out more
+richly and tenderly than ever to those who were left, even though
+the loss of those whom she loved remained an unfading grief, an
+open wound. She did not even shun the scenes and houses that
+reminded her of her bereavements; she did not withdraw from life,
+she made no parade of her sorrows. The whole thing is so wholesome,
+so patient, so devoted, that it has shown me, I venture to say, a
+higher possibility in human nature of bearing intolerable
+calamities with sweetness and courage, than I had dared to believe.
+It seems to me that nothing more wise or brave could have been done
+by the survivors than to make these letters accessible to others.
+We English people make such a secret of our feelings, are so
+stubbornly reticent about the wrong things, have so false and
+stupid a sense of decorum, that I am infinitely grateful for this
+glimpse of a pure, patient, and devoted heart. It seems to me that
+the one thing worth knowing in this world is what other people
+think and feel about the great experiences of life. The writers who
+have helped the world most are those who have gone deepest into the
+heart; but the dullest part of our conventionality is that when a
+man disguises the secrets of his soul in a play, a novel, a lyric,
+he is supposed to have helped us and ministered to our deepest
+needs; but if he speaks directly, in his own voice and person, of
+these things, he is at once accused of egotism and indecorum. It is
+not that we dislike sentiment and feeling; we value it as much as
+any nation; but we think that it must be spoken of symbolically and
+indirectly. We do not consider a man egotistical, if he will only
+give himself a feigned name, and write of his experiences in the
+third person. But if he uses the personal pronoun, he is thought to
+be shameless. There are even people who consider it more decent to
+say "one feels and one thinks," than to say "I feel and I think."
+The thing that I most desire, in intercourse with other men and
+women, is that they should talk frankly of themselves, their hopes
+and fears, their beliefs and uncertainties. Yet how many people can
+do that? Part of our English shyness is shown by the fact that
+people are often curiously cautious about what they say, but
+entirely indiscreet in what they write. The only books which
+possess a real and abiding vitality are those in which personality
+is freely and frankly revealed. Of course there are one or two
+authors like Shakespeare who seem to have had a power of
+penetrating and getting inside any personality, but, apart from
+them, the books that go on being read and re-read are the books in
+which one seems to clasp hands with a human soul.
+
+I said many of these things to my friend, and he replied that he
+thought I was probably right, but that he could not change his
+opinion. He would not have had these letters published until all
+the survivors were dead. He did not think that the people who liked
+the book were actuated by good motives, but had merely a desire to
+penetrate behind the due and decent privacies of life; and he would
+have stopped the publication of such letters if he could, because
+even if people liked them, it was not good for them to read them.
+He said that he himself felt on reading the book as if he had been
+listening at keyholes, or peeping in at windows, and seeing the
+natural endearments of husband and wife, mother and children.
+
+I said that what seemed to me to make a difference was whether the
+people thus espied were conscious of the espionage or not; and that
+it was no more improper to have such things revealed IN A BOOK,
+than to have them described in a novel or shown upon the stage.
+Moreover, it seemed to me, I said, as though to reveal such things
+in a book was the perfect compromise. I feel strongly that each
+home, each circle has a right to its own privacy; but I am not
+ashamed of my natural feelings and affections, and, by allowing
+them to appear in a book, I feel that I am just speaking of them
+simply to those who will understand. I desire communion with all
+sympathetic and like-minded persons; but one's actual circle of
+friends is limited by time and space and physical conditions.
+People talk of books as if every one in the world was compelled to
+read them. My own idea of a book is that it provides a medium by
+which one may commune confidentially with people whom one may never
+see, but whom one is glad to know to be alive. One can make friends
+through one's books with people with whom one agrees in spirit, but
+whose bodily presence, modes of life, reticences, habits, would
+erect a barrier to social intercourse. It is so much easier to love
+and understand people through their books than through their
+conversation. In books they put down their best, truest, most
+deliberate thoughts; in talk, they are at the mercy of a thousand
+accidents and sensations. There were people who objected to the
+publication of the Browning love-letters. To me they were the
+sacred and beautiful record of an intensely holy and passionate
+relation between two great souls; and I can afford to disregard and
+to contemn the people who thought the book strained, unconventional
+and shameless, for the sake of those whose faith in love and beauty
+was richly and generously nurtured by it.
+
+It seems to me that the whole progress of life and thought, of love
+and charity, depends upon our coming to understand each other. The
+hostile seclusion which some desire is really a savage and almost
+animal inheritance; and the best part of civilisation has sprung
+from the generous self-revelation of kindly and honourable souls.
+
+I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, by wondering
+whether the person concerned would have liked or disliked the
+publication of these letters. I feel no sort of doubt that, as far
+as I am concerned, she would be only too willing that I should thus
+have read and loved them, and I cannot believe that the
+disapprobation of a few austere people, or the curiosity of a few
+vulgar people, would weigh in the balance for a moment against the
+joy of like-minded spirits.
+
+The worst dissatisfaction of life is the difficulty one has in
+drawing near to others, the foolish hardness, often only
+superficial, which makes one hold back from and repudiate
+intimacies. If I had known and loved a great and worthy spirit, and
+had been the recipient of his confidences, I should hold it a
+solemn duty to tell the world what I knew. I should care nothing
+for the carping of the cold and unsympathetic, but I should base my
+decision on the approval of all loving and generous souls. This
+seems to me the highest service that art can render, and if it be
+said that no question of art comes in, in the publication of such
+records as these letters, I would reply that they are themselves
+works of the highest and most instinctive art, because the world,
+its relations and affections, its loss and grief, its pain and
+suffering, are here seen patiently mirrored and perfectly expressed
+by a most perceptive personality. The moment that emotions are
+depicted and represented, that moment they have felt the holy and
+transfiguring power of art; and then they pass out of the region of
+stuffy conventions and commonplace decorums into a finer and freer
+air. I do not deny that there is much vulgar inquisitiveness
+abroad, but that matters little; and, for myself, I am glad to
+think that the world is moving in the direction of a greater
+frankness. I do not mean that a man has not a right to live his
+life privately, in his own house and his own circle, if he wills.
+But if that life is lived simply, generously and bravely, I welcome
+any ripple or ray from it that breaks in light and fragrance upon
+the harsher and uglier world.
+
+
+
+July 1, 1889.
+
+
+I have just read an interesting sentence. I don't know where it
+comes from--I saw it in a book of extracts.
+
+"I am more and more convinced that the cure for sentiment, as for
+all weakened forms of strong things, is not to refuse to feel it,
+but to feel more in it. This seems to me to make the whole
+difference between a true and a false asceticism. The false goes
+for getting rid of what it is afraid of; the true goes for using
+and making it serve, the one empties, the other fills; the one
+abstracts, the other concentrates."
+
+There is a great deal of truth in this, and it is manfully put.
+Where it fails is, I think, in assuming an amount of will-power and
+resolution in human character, which I suspect is not there. The
+system the writer recommends is a system that a strong character
+instinctively practises, moving through sentiment to emotion,
+naturally, and by a sturdy growth. But to tell a man to feel more
+in a thing, is like telling a man to be intelligent, benevolent,
+wise. It is just what no one can do. The various grades of emotion
+are not things like examinations, in which one can successively
+graduate. They are expressions of temperament. The sentimental man
+is the man who can go thus far and no farther. How shall one
+acquire vigour and generosity? By behaving as if one was vigorous
+and generous, when one is neither? I do not think it can be done in
+that way. One can do something to check a tendency, very little to
+deepen it. What the writer calls false asceticism is the only brave
+and wholesome refuge of people, who know themselves well enough to
+know that they cannot trust themselves. Take the case of one's
+relations with other people. If a man drifts into sentimental
+relations with other people, attracted by charm of any kind, and
+knowing quite well that the relation is built on charm, and that he
+will not be able to follow it into truer regions, I think he had
+probably better try to keep himself in check, not embrace a
+sentimental relation with a mild hope that it may develop into a
+real devotion. The strong man may try experiments, even though he
+burns his fingers. The weak man had better not meddle with the
+instruments and fiery fluids at all.
+
+I am myself just strong enough to dislike sentiment, to turn faint
+in the sickly, mawkish air. But I am not strong enough to charge it
+with vivid life. Moreover, the danger of a strong character taking
+up the anti-ascetic position is that he is apt to degenerate into a
+man like Goethe, who plucked the fragrant blooms on every side, and
+threw them relentlessly away when he had inhaled their sweetness.
+That is a cruel business, unless there is a very wise and tender
+heart behind.
+
+Yet again, reconsidering the whole problem, I am not sure that the
+whole suggestion, taken as advice, is not at fault. I think it is
+making a melancholy, casuistical, ethical business out of what
+ought to be a natural process. I think it is vitiated by a
+principle which vitiates so much of the advice of moralists, the
+principle that one ought to aim at completeness and perfection. I
+don't believe that is the secret of life--indeed I think it is all
+the other way. One must of course do one's best to resist immoral,
+low, sensuous tendencies; but otherwise I believe that one ought to
+drink as much as one's glass can hold of pure and beautiful
+influences. If sentiment is the nearest that a man can come to
+emotion, I think he had better take it thankfully. It is this
+ethical prudence which is always weighing issues, and pulling up
+the plant to see how it grows, which is the weakening and the
+stunting thing. Of course any principle can be used sophistically;
+but I think that many people commit a kind of idolatry by
+worshipping their rules and principles rather than by trusting God.
+It develops a larger and freer life, if one is not too cautious,
+too precise. Of course one must follow what light one has, and all
+lights are lit from God; but if one watches the lanterns of
+moralists too anxiously, one may forget the stars.
+
+
+
+July 8, 1889.
+
+
+I lose myself sometimes in a dream of misery in thinking of the
+baseness and meanness and squalor that condition the lives of so
+many of the poor. Not that it is not possible under those
+conditions to live lives of simplicity and dignity and beauty. It
+is perfectly possible, but only, I think, for strong natures
+possessing a combination of qualities--virtue, industry, sense,
+prudence, and above all good physical health. There must still be
+thousands of lives which could be happy and simple and virtuous
+under more secure conditions, which are marred and degraded by the
+influences under which they are nurtured. Yet what can the more
+fortunate individual do in the matter? If all the rich men in
+England were to resign to-morrow all the wealth they possessed,
+reserving only a bare modicum of subsistence, the matter could not
+be amended. Even that wealth could not be wisely applied; and, if
+equally divided, it would hardly make any appreciable difference.
+What is worse, it would not alter the baneful influences in the
+least; it would give no increased security of material conditions,
+and it would not affect the point at issue, namely, the tone and
+quality of thought and feeling, where the only hope of real
+amelioration lies, and which is really the source and root of our
+social evils.
+
+Moreover, the real difficulty is not to see what the classes on
+whom the problem presses most grimly NEED, but what they WANT. It
+is no use theorising about it, and providing elegant remedies which
+will not touch the evil. What one requires to know is what those
+natures, who lie buried in this weltering tide, and are
+dissatisfied and tormented by it, really desire. It is no use
+trying to provide a paradise on the farther bank of the river, till
+we have constructed bridges to cross the gulf. What one wants is
+that some one from the darkness of the other side should speak
+articulately and boldly what they claim, what they could use. It is
+not enough to have a wistful cry for help ringing in our ears; one
+wants a philosophical or statesmanlike demand--just the very thing
+which from the nature of the case we cannot get. It may be that
+education will make this possible; but at present education seems
+merely to be a ladder let down into the abyss, by which a few
+stronger natures can climb out of it, with horror and contempt in
+their hearts of what they have left behind. The question that
+stares one in the face is, is there honest work for all to do, if
+all were strong and virtuous? The answer at present seems to be in
+the negative; and the problem seems to be solved only by the fact
+that all are not capable of honest work, and that the weaklings
+give the strong their opportunity. What, again, one asks oneself,
+is the use of contriving more leisure for those who could not use
+it well? Then, too, under present conditions, the survival of the
+unfittest seems to be assured. Those breed most freely and
+recklessly of whom it may be said that, for the interests of
+civilisation, it is least desirable that they should perpetuate
+their kind. The problem too is so complicated, that it requires a
+gigantic faith in a reformer to suggest the sowing of seed of which
+he can never hope to see the fruit. The situation is one which
+tends to develop vehement and passionate prophets, dealing in vague
+and remote generalisations, when what one needs is practical
+prudence, and the effective power of foreseeing contingencies. One
+who like myself loves security, leisure, beauty and peace, and is
+actuated by a vague and benevolent wish that all should have the
+same opportunities as myself, feels himself a mere sentimentalist
+in the matter, without a single effective quality. I can see the
+problem, I can grieve over it, I can feel my faith in God totter
+under the weight of it, but that is all.
+
+
+
+July 15, 1889.
+
+
+One of the hardest things to face in the world is the grim fact
+that our power of self-improvement is limited. Of some qualities we
+do not even possess the germs. Some qualities we have in minute
+quantities, but hardly capable of development; some few qualities
+we possess in fuller measure, and they are capable of development;
+but even so, our total capacity of growth is limited, conditioned
+by our vital energy, and we have to face the fact that if we
+develop one set of qualities we must neglect another set.
+
+I think of it in a whimsical and fantastic image, the best I can
+find. Imagine a box in which there are a number of objects like
+puff-balls, each with a certain life of its own, half-filling the
+box. Some of the puff-balls are small, hard, sterile; others are
+soft and expansive; some grow quickly in warmth and light, others
+fare better in cold and darkness. The process of growth begins:
+some of them increase in size and press themselves into every
+crevice, enclosing and enfolding the others; even so the growth of
+the whole mass is conditioned by the size of the box, and when the
+box is full, the power of increase is at an end.
+
+The box, to interpret the fable, is our character with its
+possibilities. The conditions which develop the various qualities
+are the conditions of our lives, our health, our income, our
+education, the people who surround us; but even the qualities
+themselves have their limitations. Two people may grow up under
+almost precisely similar influences, and yet remain different to
+the end; two characters may be placed in difficult and bracing
+circumstances; the effect upon one character is to train the
+quality of self-reliance, on the other to produce a moral collapse.
+Some people do their growing early and then stop altogether,
+becoming impervious to new opinions and new influences. Some people
+go on growing to the end.
+
+If one develops one side of one's nature, as the intellectual or
+artistic, one probably suffers on the emotional or moral side. The
+pain which the perceptive man feels in surveying this process is
+apt to be very acute. He may see that he lacks certain qualities
+altogether and yet be unable to develop them. He may find in
+himself some patent and even gross fault, and be unable to cure it.
+The only hope for any of us is that we do not know the expansive
+force of our qualities, nor the size of the box; and therefore it
+is reasonable to go on trying and desiring; and as long as one can
+do that, it is clear that there is still room for growth. The worst
+shadow of all is to find, as one goes on, a certain indifference
+creeping over one. One accepts a fault as a part of one's nature;
+one ceases to care about what appears unattainable.
+
+It may be said that this is a fatalistic theory, and leads to a
+mild inactivity; but the question rather is whether it is true,
+whether it is attested by experience. One improves, not by
+overlooking facts, in however generous and enthusiastic a spirit,
+but by facing facts, and making the best use one can of them. One
+must resolutely try to submit oneself to favourable conditions,
+fertilising influences. And much more must one do that in the case
+of those for whom one is responsible. In the case of my own two
+children, for instance, my one desire is to surround them with the
+best influences I can. Even there one makes mistakes, no doubt,
+because one cannot test the expansive power of their qualities; but
+one can observe the conditions under which they seem to develop
+best, and apply them. To lavish love and tenderness on some
+children serves to concentrate their thoughts upon themselves, and
+makes them expect to find all difficulties smoothed away; on other
+more generous natures, it produces a glow of responsive gratitude
+and affection, a desire to fulfil the hopes formed of them by those
+who love them. The most difficult cases of all are the cases of
+temperaments without loyal affection, but with much natural charm.
+Those are the people who get what is called 'spoilt,' because it is
+so much easier to believe in the existence of qualities which are
+superficially displayed than in qualities which lie too deep for
+facile expression. One comes across cases of children of intense
+emotional natures, and very little power of expressing their
+feelings, or of showing their affection. Of course, too, example is
+far more potent than precept, and it is very difficult for parents
+to simulate a high-mindedness and an affectionateness that they do
+not themselves possess, even if they are sincerely anxious that
+their children should grow up high-minded and affectionate. One of
+the darkest shadows of my present condition is the fear that any
+revelation of my own weakness and emptiness may discourage and
+distort my children's characters; and the watchfulness which this
+requires increases the strain under which I suffer, because it is a
+hard fact that an example set for a noble and an unselfish motive
+is not nearly so potent as an example set naturally, sweetly, and
+generously, with no particular consciousness of motive behind it at
+all.
+
+
+
+July 18, 1889.
+
+
+I have just heard of the sudden death of an old friend. Francis
+Willett was a writer of some distinction, whose acquaintance I made
+in my first years in London. He was a tall, slim man, dark of
+complexion, who would have been called very handsome, if it had not
+been for a rather burdened air that he wore. As it was, people
+tended rather to pity him, and to speak of him as somewhat of a
+mystery. I never knew anything about the background of his life. He
+must have had some small means of his own, and he lived in rooms,
+in rather an out-of-the-way street near Regent's Park. One used to
+see him occasionally in London, walking rapidly, almost always
+alone, and very rarely I encountered him at parties, always wearing
+a slightly regretful air, as though he were wishing himself away.
+He wrote a good deal, reviewed books, and, I suppose, contrived to
+make enough to live on by his pen. He once spoke of himself as
+being in the happy position of being able to exist without writing,
+but forced to purchase all small luxuries by work. He published two
+or three books of short stories and sketches of travel, delicate
+pieces of work, which had no great sale, but gave him a recognised
+position among men of letters. I drifted into a kind of friendship
+with him; we were members of the same club, and he sometimes used
+to flutter shyly into my rooms like a great moth; but he never
+asked me to his quarters.
+
+I discovered that he had done well at Oxford, and also that he had
+once, at all events, had considerable ambitions; but his health was
+not strong, he was extremely sensitive, and very fastidious about
+the quality of his work. I realised this on an occasion when he
+once entrusted me with a MS., and asked me if I would give him an
+opinion, as it was an experiment, and he did not feel sure of his
+ground; he added that there was no hurry about it. I put the MS.
+away in a despatch-box, and having at the time a press of work, I
+forgot about it. He never asked me for it, and I did not happen to
+open the box where it lay. Some months after I came upon it. I read
+it through, and thought it a fine and delicate piece of work. I
+wrote to him, apologising for my delay and speaking warmly of the
+piece, which was one of those rather uncomfortable stories, which
+is not quite long enough to make a book, and yet rather too long to
+put in a volume with other pieces. He wrote at once, thanking me
+for my opinion, and it was only by accident at a later date, when I
+happened to ask him what he was doing with the story, that he told
+me he had destroyed it. I expressed deep regret that he had done
+so; and he said with a smile that it was probably rather a foolish
+impulse that had decided him to make away with it. "The fact is,"
+he said, "that you wrote very kindly about it, but you had had it
+in your hands so long, that I felt somehow that it could not have
+interested you--it really doesn't matter," he added, "I don't think
+it was at all successful." I apologised very humbly, and explained
+the circumstances. "Oh, please don't blame yourself in any way," he
+said, "I have not the least shadow of resentment in my mind about
+it. There is something wrong about my work; it doesn't interest
+people. I suppose it is that I can't let myself go." An interesting
+conversation followed, and he told me more than he ever told me
+before or since about himself. He confessed to being so critical of
+his own work, that his table-drawers were full of unfinished MSS.
+His usual experience was to begin a piece of work enthusiastically;
+to plan it all out, and to work at first with zest. "Then it begins
+to get all out of shape," he said, "there is no go about it; it all
+loses itself in subtleties and complexities of motive; one thing
+trips up another, and at last it all gets so tangled that I put it
+aside; if I could follow the track of one strong and definite
+emotion, it would be all right--but I am like the man in the story
+who changes the cow for the horse, and the horse for the pig, and
+the pig for the grindstone; and then the grindstone rolls into the
+river." He seemed to take it all very philosophically, and I
+ventured to say so. "Yes," he said, "I have learnt at last that
+that is how I am made; but I have been through a good many agonies
+of disgust and discouragement about it in old days--it is the same
+with everything I have touched. The bits of work that I have
+completed have all been done in a rush--if the mood lasts long
+enough, I am all right--and once or twice it has just lasted. I am
+like a swimmer," he went on, "who can only swim a certain distance;
+and if I judge the distance rightly, I can reach the point I desire
+to reach; but I generally judge the distance wrong; and half-way
+across I am seized with a sudden fright, and struggle back in
+terror."
+
+By one of the strange coincidences that sometimes happen in this
+world, I took an unknown lady in to dinner a few days afterwards,
+and happened to mention Willett's name. "Do you know him?" she
+said. "Oh yes, of course you do!" she went on; "you are the Mr.
+S---- of whom he has spoken to me." I found that my neighbour was
+a distant relation of Willett's, and she told me a good deal about
+him. He was absolutely alone in the world; he had been left an
+orphan at an early age, and had spent his holidays with guardians
+and relations, with any one who would take pity on him. "He was a
+clever kind of boy," she said, "melancholy and diffident, always
+thinking that people disliked him. He used to give me the air of a
+person who was trying to find something, and who did not quite know
+where to look for it. He had a time of expansion at Oxford, where
+he made friends and did well; and then he came to London, and began
+to write. But the real tragedy of his life is this," she said. "He
+really fell in love, or as nearly as he could, with a very pretty
+and high-spirited girl, who took a great fancy to him, and pitied
+him from the bottom of her heart. For five years the thing went on.
+She would have married him at any time if he had asked her. But he
+did not. I suppose he could not face the idea of being married. He
+always seemed to be on the point of proposing to her, and then he
+would lose heart at the last minute. At last she got tired of
+waiting, and, I suppose, began to care for some one else; but she
+was very good to Francis, and never lost patience with him. At last
+she told him one day quietly that she was engaged, and hoped that
+they would always remain friends. I think, do you know, that it was
+almost more a relief to him than otherwise. I did my best to help
+him--marriage was the one thing he wanted; if he could only have
+been pushed into it, he would have made a perfect husband, because
+not only is he very much of a gentleman, but he could never bear to
+fail any one who depended on him; but he has got the unhappiest
+mind I know; the moment that he has formed a plan, and sees his way
+clear, he at once begins to think of all the reasons against it--
+not the selfish reasons, by any means; in this case he reflected, I
+am sure, how little he had to offer; he could not bring himself to
+feel that any one could really care for him; and then, too, he
+never really cared for anything quite enough himself. Or if he did,
+he found all sorts of refined reasons why he ought not to do so. If
+only he had been a little more selfish, it would have been all
+right. Indeed," said Mrs. T----, with a smile, "he is the only
+person of whom I could truthfully say that if he had only been a
+little more vulgar, he would have been a much happier person."
+
+I saw a good deal of Willett after that, and he interested me
+increasingly. I verified Mrs. T----'s judgment about him, and found
+it true in every particular. I suppose there was some lack of
+vitality about him, because the more I knew of him the more I found
+to admire. He was an exquisitely delicate person, affectionate,
+responsive, with a fine sense of humour--indeed, the most
+disconcerting thing was that he saw to the full the humour of his
+own position. But none of the robust motives that spur men to
+action affected him. He was ambitious, but he would not make any
+sacrifices to gain the objects of his ambition. He could not use
+his powers on conventional lines. He was, I think, deeply desirous
+of confidence and affection, but he could never believe that he
+deserved either, or that it was possible for him to be interesting
+to others. He was laborious, pure-minded, transparently honest, and
+had a shrewd and penetrating judgment of other people; but he
+seemed to labour under a sense of shame at his deficiencies, and to
+feel that he had no claims or rights in the world. He existed on
+sufferance. The smallest shadow of disapproval caused him to
+abandon any design, not resentfully but eagerly, as though he was
+fully aware of his own incompetence.
+
+I grew to feel a strong affection for him, and tried in many ways
+to help and encourage him. But he always discounted encouragement,
+and it is a clumsy business trying to help a man who does not
+demand or desire help.
+
+He seemed to me to have schooled himself into a kind of tender
+patience; and this attitude, I am ashamed to say, used to irritate
+me considerably, because it seemed to me to be so much power wasted
+on accepting defeat, which might have ensured victory.
+
+He was with me a few weeks ago. I was up in town, and he dined with
+me by appointment. He told me, with a gentle philosophy, a story
+which made my blood boil. He had been asked to write a book by a
+publisher, and the lines had been laid down for him. "It was such a
+comfort to me," he said, "because it supplied just the stimulus I
+could not myself originate. My book was really rather a good piece
+of work; but a week ago I sent it to the publisher, and he returned
+it, saying it was not the least what he wanted--he suggested my
+retaining about a third of it, and rewriting the rest. Of course I
+could do nothing of the kind." "What have you done with it?" I
+asked. "Oh, I have destroyed it." "But didn't you see him," I said,
+"or do something--or at all events insist on payment?" "Oh no," he
+said, "I could not do that--the man was probably right--he wanted a
+particular kind of book, and mine was not what he wanted. I did say
+that I wished he had explained to me more clearly what he wanted--
+but after all it doesn't very much matter. I can get along all
+right, if I am careful."
+
+"Well," I said, "you are really a very aggravating person. If I
+could not have got my book published elsewhere, I would certainly
+have had a row--I would have taken out my money's worth in
+vituperation."
+
+Willett smiled; "I dare say you would have had some fun," he said,
+"but that is not my line. I have told you before that I can't
+interest people--I don't think it is wholly my fault."
+
+We sate late, talking; and for the only time in his life he spoke
+to me, with a depth of emotion of which I should hardly have
+suspected him, of the value he set upon my friendship, and his
+gratitude for my sympathy.
+
+And now this morning I have heard of his sudden death. He was found
+dead in his room, bent over his papers. He must have been writing
+late at night, as his custom was; and it proved on examination that
+he must have long suffered from an unsuspected disease of the
+heart. Perhaps that may explain his failure, if it can be called a
+failure. There is something to me almost insupportably pathetic to
+think of his lonely and uncomforted life, his isolation, his
+sensitiveness. And yet I do not feel sure that it is pathetic,
+because his life somehow seems to me to have been one of the most
+beautiful I have ever known. He did nothing much for others, he
+achieved nothing for himself; but it is only our miserable habit of
+weighing every one's life, in a hard way, by a standard of
+performance and success, which makes one sigh over Francis
+Willett's life. It is very difficult at times to see what it is
+that life is exactly meant to do for us. Most of the men and women
+I know--I say this sadly but frankly--seem to me to leave the world
+worse, in essential respects, than they entered it. There is
+generally something ingenuous, responsive, eager, sweet, hopeful
+about a child--but though I admit that one does encounter beautiful
+natures that seem to flower very generously in the light of
+experience, yet most people grow dull, dreary, conventional,
+grasping, commonplace--they grow to think rather contemptuously of
+emotion and generosity--they think it weak to be amiable,
+unselfish, kind. They become fond of comfort and position and
+respect and money. They think such things the serious concerns of
+life, and sentiment a kind of relaxation. But with Willett it was
+the precise reverse. He claimed nothing for himself, he never
+profited at the expense of another; he was utterly humble, gentle,
+unpretentious, kind, sincere. An hour ago I should have called him
+"poor fellow," and wished that he had had a more robust kind of
+fibre; now that I know he is dead, I cannot find it in my heart to
+wish him any such qualities. His life appears to me utterly
+beautiful and fragrant. He never incurred any taint of grossness
+from prosperity or success; he never grew indifferent or hard; and
+in the light of his last passage, such a failure seems the one
+thing worth achieving, and to carry with it a hope all alive and
+rich with possibilities of blessing and glory. He would hardly have
+called himself a Christian, I think; he would have said that he
+could not have attained to anything like a vital faith or a hopeful
+certainty; but the only words and thoughts that haunt my mind about
+him, echoing sweetly and softly through the ages, are the words in
+which Christ described the tender spirits of those who were nearest
+to the Father's heart, and to whom it is given to see God.
+
+
+
+July 28, 1889.
+
+
+Health of body and mind return to me, slowly but surely. I have
+given up all attempt at writing; I rack my brain no longer for
+plots or situations. I keep, it is true, my note-book for subjects
+beside me, and occasionally jot down a point; but I feel entirely
+indifferent to the whole thing. Meanwhile the flood of letters
+about my book, invitations from editors, offers from publishers,
+continues to flow. I reply to these benignantly and courteously,
+but undertake nothing, promise nothing. I seem to have recovered my
+balance. I think no more about my bodily complaints, and my nerves
+no longer sting and thrill. The day is hardly long enough for all I
+have to do. It may be that when the novelty of the experiment in
+education wears off, I shall begin to hanker after authorship
+again. Alec will have to go to school in a year or two, I suppose;
+but it shall be a day-school at first, if I can find one. As to the
+question of a public school, I am much exercised. Of course there
+are nightmare terrors about tone and morals; but I am not really
+very anxious about the boy, because he is sensible and independent,
+and has no lack of moral courage. The vigorous barrack-life is good
+for a boy, the give-and-take, the splendid equality, the manly
+code, the absence of affectation. But the intellectual tone of
+schools is low, and the conventionality is great. I don't want Alec
+to be a conventional man, and yet I want him to accept current
+conventions instinctively about matters of indifference. I have a
+horror of the sporting public-school type, the good-humoured,
+robust fellow, who does his work and fills his spare time with
+games, and thinks intellectual things, and artistic interests, and
+emotion, and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people live a
+wholesome enough life; they make good soldiers, good officials,
+good men of business. But they are woefully complacent and self-
+satisfied. The schools develop a Spartan type, and I want Alec to
+be an Athenian. But the experiment will have to be made, because a
+man is at a disadvantage in ordinary life if he has not the public
+school bonhomie, courtesy, and common sense. I must try to keep the
+other side alive, and I don't despair of doing it.
+
+Meantime we are a very contented household, in spite of the fact
+that now, if ever, is the time for me to make my mark as a writer,
+and I have to pass all the opportunities that offer. On the other
+hand, this is the point at which one sees, in the history of
+letters, so many writers go to pieces. They suddenly find, after
+their first great success, that they have arrived, by a tortuous
+and secret path, at being a sort of public man. They are dazzled by
+contact with the world. They go into society, they make speeches,
+they write twaddle, they drain their energy, already depleted by
+creation, in fifty different ways. Now I am strongly of Ruskin's
+opinion that the duty of the artist is to make himself fit for the
+best society, and then to abstain from it. Very fortunately I have
+no sort of taste for these things, beyond the simple human
+satisfaction in enjoying consideration. That is natural and
+inevitable. But I don't value it unduly, and I dislike its
+penalties more than I love its rewards.
+
+And then, too, I reflect that it is, after all, life that we are
+here to taste, and life that so many of us pass by. Work is a part
+of life, perhaps the essence of life; but to be absorbed in work is
+to be like a man who is absorbed in collecting specimens, and never
+has time to sort them. I knew of a man who determined, early in
+life, to write the history of political institutions. He had a
+great library, and he devoted himself to study. He put in his
+books, as he read them, slips of paper to indicate passages and
+chapters that he would have to consult, and as he finished with a
+book, he put it in a certain place on a certain shelf. He made no
+other notes or references--he was a man with a colossal memory,
+and he knew exactly what his markers meant. In the middle of this
+life of acquisition, while he bored like a worm in a cheese, he
+died. His library was sold. The markers meant nothing to any one
+else; and the book-buyers merely took the markers out and threw
+them away, and that was the end of the history of political
+institutions.
+
+I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to try and arrive at
+some solution, to draw some sort of conclusions--to reflect, to
+theorise; we may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only hope
+of doing so, the only hope that humanity will do so, is for some at
+least to try. And thus I think that I have perhaps been saved from
+a great delusion. I was spending my time in spinning romances, in
+elaborating plots, in manoeuvring life as I would; and it is not
+like that! Life is not run on physical lines, nor on emotional, nor
+social, nor even moral lines. It is not managed in the least as we
+should manage it; it is a resultant of innumerable forces, or
+perhaps the same force running in intricate currents. Of course the
+strange thing is that we men should find ourselves thrust into it,
+with strong intuitions, vehement preconceptions, as to how it ought
+to be directed; our happiness seems to depend upon our being, or
+learning to be, in harmony with it, but it baffles us, it resists
+us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to the end; sometimes it
+crushes us; and yet we believe that it means good; and even if we
+do not so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure; and one
+thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson of life by practising
+indifference or stoical fortitude, or by abandoning ourselves to
+despair; only by believing that our sufferings are fruitful, our
+mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sorrows gracious, can
+we hope to triumph. We go on, many of us, relying on useless
+defences, beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions,
+overlooking, as far as we can, stern realities; stopping our ears,
+turning away our gaze, shrinking and crying out like children at
+the prospect of experiences to which we are led by loving
+presences, that smile as they draw us to the wholesome and bracing
+incidents that we so weakly dread. We pray for courage, but we know
+in our souls that courage can only be won by enduring what we fear;
+and thus preoccupied by hopes and plans and fears, we miss the
+wholesome sweet and simple stuff of life, its quiet relationships,
+its tranquil occupations, its beautiful and tender surprises.
+
+And then perhaps, at long intervals, we have a deep and splendid
+flash of insight, when we can thank God that things have not been
+as we should have willed and ordered them. We should have lingered,
+perhaps, in the low rich meadows, the sheltered woodlands of our
+desire; we should never have set our feet to the hill. In terror
+and reluctance we have wandered upwards among the steep mountain
+tracks, by high green slopes, by grim crag-buttresses, through
+fields of desolate stones. Yet we are aware of a finer, purer air,
+of wide prospects of hill and plain; we feel that we have gained in
+strength and vigour, that our perceptions are keener, our very
+enjoyment nobler; and at last, it may be, we have sight, from some
+Pisgah-top of hope, of fairer lands yet to which we are surely
+bound. And then, too, though we have fared on in loneliness and
+isolation, we see moving forms of friends and comrades converging
+on our track. It is no dream; it is but a parable of what has
+happened to many a soul, what is daily happening. What does the
+sad, stained, weary, fitful past concern us at such a moment as
+this? It concerns us nothing, save that only through its pains and
+shadows was it possible for us to climb where we have climbed.
+
+To-day it seems that I have been blessed with such a vision. The
+mist will close in again, doubtless, wild with wind, chill with
+rain, sad with the cry of hoarse streams. But I have seen! I shall
+be weary and regretful and despairing many times; but I shall never
+wholly doubt again.
+
+
+
+August 8, 1889.
+
+
+Alec is ill to-day. He was restless, flushed, feverish, yesterday
+evening, and I thought he must have caught cold; we put him to bed,
+and this morning we sent for the doctor. He says there is no need
+for anxiety, but he does not know as yet what is the matter; his
+temperature is high, and we must just keep him quietly in bed, and
+wait. I tell myself that it is foolish to be anxious, but I cannot
+keep a certain dread out of my mind; there is a weight upon my
+heart, which seems unduly heavy. Perhaps it is only that it seems
+unusual, for he has never had an illness of any kind. He is not to
+be disturbed, and Maggie is not allowed to see him. Maud sate with
+him this morning, and he slept most of the time. I looked in once
+or twice, but people coming and going tend to make him restless.
+Maud herself is a marvel to me. She must be even more anxious than
+I am, but she is serene, smiling, strong, with a cheerfulness that
+has no effort about it. She laughed tenderly at my fears, and sent
+me out for a walk with Maggie. I fear I was a gloomy companion. In
+the evening I went to sit with Alec a little. He was wakeful,
+large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of stories from Homer,
+of which he is very fond, in one hand, the other clasping his black
+kitten, which slept peacefully on the counterpane. He wanted to
+talk, but to keep him quiet I told him a long trivial story, full
+of unexciting incidents. He lay musing, his head on his hand; then
+he seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside him, watching and
+wondering at the nearness and the dearness of the child to me,
+almost amazed at the revelation which this shadow of fear gives me
+of the place which he fills in my heart and life. He tossed about
+for some time, and when I asked him if he wanted anything, he only
+put his hand in mine; a gesture not quite like him, as he is a boy
+who is averse to personal caresses or signs of emotion. So I drew
+my chair up to the bed, and sate there with the little hot hand in
+my own. Maud came up presently; but as he now seemed sound asleep,
+we left him in the care of the old nurse, and went down to dinner.
+If we only knew what was the matter! I argue with myself how much
+unnecessary misery I give myself by anticipating evil; but I cannot
+help it; and the weight on my mind grew heavier; half the night I
+lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I fell into a sort
+of stupor of the senses, which fled from me in the dismal dawn, and
+the unmanning hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a
+beast leaping upon its prey.
+
+
+
+August 11, 1889.
+
+
+I cannot and dare not write of these days. The child is very ill;
+it is some obscure inflammation of the brain-tissue. I had an
+insupportable fear that it might have resulted in some way from
+being over-pressed in the matter of work, over-stimulated. I asked
+the doctor. If he lied to me, and I do not think he did, he lied
+like a man, or an angel. "Not in the least," he said, "it is a
+constitutional thing; in fact, I may say that the rational and
+healthy life the child has lived will help more than anything to
+pull him through."
+
+But I can't write of the days. I sleep, half-conscious of my
+misery. I suppose I eat, walk, read. But waking is like the waking
+of a prisoner who awakes up to be put on the rack, who hears doors
+open and feet approach, and sickens with dread as he lies. God's
+hand is heavy upon me day and night. Surely nothing, in the world
+or out of it, can obliterate the memory of this suffering; perhaps,
+if Alec is given back to us, I shall smile at this time of
+suffering. But, if not--
+
+
+
+August 12, 1889.
+
+
+He is losing ground, he is hardly ever conscious now; he sleeps a
+good deal, but often he talks quietly to himself of all that we
+have done and said; he often supposes himself to be with me, and,
+thank God, he never says a word to show that he has ever feared or
+misunderstood me. I could not bear that. Yesterday when I was with
+him, he opened his eyes on me; I could see that he knew me, and
+that he was frightened. I could not speak, but Maud, who was with
+me, just took his hand and with her own tranquil smile, said, "It
+is all right, Alec; there is nothing to be frightened about; we are
+here, and you will soon be well again." The child closed his eyes
+and lay smiling to himself. I could not have done that.
+
+
+
+August 13, 1889.
+
+
+He died this morning, just at the dawn. I knew last night that all
+hope was over. I was with him half the night, and prayed, knowing
+my prayers were in vain. That I could save him no suffering, could
+not keep him, could not draw him back. Maud took my place at
+midnight; I slept, and in the grey dawn, I woke to find her
+standing with a candle by my bed; I knew in a moment, by a glance,
+that the end was near. No word passed between us; I found Maggie by
+the bed; and we three together waited for the end. I had never seen
+any one die. He was quite unconscious, breathing slowly, looking
+just like himself, as though flushed with slumber. At last he
+stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle himself for the
+last sleep. I do not know when he died, but I became aware that
+life had passed, and that the little spirit that we loved had fled,
+God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand in mine; and in my
+dumb and frozen grief, almost without a thought of anything but a
+deep and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of love
+and death alike, I became aware that both she and Maud had me in
+their thoughts, that my sorrow was even more to them than their
+own--while I was cut off from them; from life and hope alike, in a
+place of darkness and in the deep.
+
+
+
+August 19, 1889.
+
+
+I saw Alec no more; I would remember him as he was in life, not the
+stiffened waxen mask of my beloved. The days passed in a dull
+stupor of grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly
+greyness. And I who thought that I had sounded the depths of pain!
+I could not realise it, could not believe that all would not
+somehow be as before. Maud and Maggie speak of him to each other
+and to me . . . it is inconceivable. With a dull heartache I have
+collected and put away all the child's things--his books, his toys,
+his little possessions. I followed the little coffin to the grave.
+The uncontrollable throb of emotion came over me at the words, "I
+am the resurrection and the life." It was a grey, gusty day; a
+silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great churchyard elms
+roared and swayed, and I found myself watching idly how the
+clergyman's hood was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into the
+deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying there, all in a
+dumb dream. The holy words fell vacuously on my ears. "Man walketh
+in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain"--that was all I
+felt. I seem to believe nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe
+I shall ever see or draw near to the child again, and yet the
+thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart.
+Maud is wonderful to me; her love does not seem to suffer eclipse;
+she does everything, she smiles, she speaks; she feels, she says,
+the presence of the child near her and about her; that means
+nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have gone out utterly like
+a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as the little body we
+loved will be mingled with the dust.
+
+I cannot say that I endure agony; it is rather as if I had received
+a blow so fierce that it drove sensation away; I seem to see the
+bruise, watch the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. The
+suffering will come, I doubt not; but meanwhile I am only mutely
+grateful that I do not feel more, suffer more. It does not even
+seem to me to have drawn me nearer to Maud, to Maggie; my power of
+loving seems extinguished, like my power of suffering. I do not
+know why I write in this book, why I record my blank apathy. It is
+a habit, it passes the time; the only thing that gives me any
+comfort is the thought that I shall die, too, and close my eyes at
+last upon this terrible world, made so sweet and beautiful, and
+then slashed and scored across with such cruel stripes, where we
+pay so grievous a penalty for feeling and loving. Tennyson found
+consolation "when he sorrowed most." But I say deliberately that I
+would rather not have loved my child, than lose him thus.
+
+
+
+August 28, 1889.
+
+
+We are to go away. Maggie droops like a faded flower, and for the
+first time I realise, in trying to comfort and distract her, that I
+have not lost everything. We are much together, and seeing her thus
+pine and fade stirs a dread, in the heart that had been so cold,
+that I may lose her too. At last we are drawn together. She came to
+say good-night to me last night, and a gush of love passed through
+me, like the wind stirring the strings of a harp to music. "My
+precious darling, my comfort," I said; the words put, it seemed, on
+my lips, by some deeper power. She clung to me, crying softly. Yet,
+is it strange to say it, that simple utterance seems almost to have
+revived her, to have given her pride and courage? But Maud is still
+almost a mystery to me. Who can tell how she suffers--I cannot--it
+seems to have quickened and enriched her love and tenderness; she
+seems to have a secret that I cannot come near to sharing; she does
+not repine, rebel, resist; she lives in some region of
+unapproachable patience and love. She goes daily to the grave, but
+I cannot visit it or think of it. The sight of the church-tower on
+my walks gives me a throb of dismay. But now we are going away. We
+have been lent a little house in a quiet seaside place; I suppose I
+am ill--at least, I am aware of a deep and unutterable fatigue at
+times, when I can rouse myself to nothing, but sit unoccupied,
+musing, glad to be alone, and only dreading the slightest
+interruption, the smallest duty. I know by some subtle sense that I
+am seldom absent from Maud's thoughts; but, with her incredible
+courage and patience, she betrays nothing by word or glance. She is
+absolutely patient, entirely self-forgetful; she quietly relieves
+me of anything I have to do; she alters arrangements a dozen times
+a day, with a ready smile; and yet it almost seems to me as if I
+had lost her too.
+
+
+
+August 30, 1889.
+
+
+Our route lay through Cambridge; we had to change there and wait;
+so we drove down to the town to look at my old college. There it
+lay, the charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking lazily out of its
+deep-set barred windows in the bright sun, just the same, it
+seemed, as ever, though perhaps a touch more mellow and more
+settled; every corner and staircase haunted with old ghosts for me.
+I could put a name to every set of rooms, flash an incident to
+every door and window. In my heavy, apathetic mood the memory of my
+life there seemed like a memory of some one else, moving in golden
+light, talking and laughing in firelit rooms, lingering in moonlit
+nights by the bridge, wondering what life was going to bring. It
+seemed like turning the pages of some old illuminated book with
+bright pictures, where the very sunlight is the purest and stiffest
+gold. The men I knew, the friends I lived with, admired, loved--
+where are they? scattered to all parts of the earth, parted utterly
+from me, some of them dead, alas! and silent. It came over me with
+a thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had pictured Alec here,
+living the same free and beautiful life, tasting the same innocent
+pleasures, with the bright, sweet world opening upon him. In that
+calm, sunny afternoon, life seemed a strange phantasmal business,
+and I myself a revenant from some thin, unsubstantial world. A door
+opened, and an old Don, well known to me in those days, hardly
+altered, it seemed, came out and trotted across the court, looking
+suspiciously to left and right as he used to do. Had he been doing
+the same thing ever since, reading the same books, talking the same
+innocent gossip? I had not the heart to greet him, and he passed me
+by unrecognising. We peeped into the hall through the screen. I
+could see where I used to sit, the same dark pictures looking down.
+We went to the chapel, with its noble classical woodwork, the great
+carved panels, the angels' heads, the huge, stately reredos. Some
+one, thank God, was playing softly on the organ, and we sate to
+listen. The sweet music flowed over my sad heart in a healing tide.
+Yes, it was not meaningless, after all, this strange life, with the
+good years shining in their rainbow halo, even though the path led
+into darkness and formless shadow. I seemed to look back on it all,
+as the traveller on the hill looks out from the skirts of the cloud
+upon the sunny valley beneath him. It all worked together, said the
+delicate rising strain, outlining itself above the soft thunder of
+the pedals, into something high and grave and beautiful; it all
+ended in the peace of God. I sate there, with wife and child, a
+pilgrim faring onwards, tasting of love and life and sorrow, weary
+of the way, but still--yes, I could say that--still hopeful. In
+that moment even my bitter loss had something beautiful about it.
+It was THERE, the bright episode of my dear Alec's life, the memory
+of the beloved years together. Maggie, seeing something in my face
+that she was glad to see, put her hand in mine, and the tears rose
+to my eyes, while I smiled at Maud; the burden fell off my shoulder
+for a moment, and something seemed as it were to touch me and point
+onwards. The music with a dying fall came to a soft close; the rich
+light fell on desk and canopy; the old tombs glimmered in the dusty
+air. We went out in silence; and then there came back to me, in the
+old dark court, with its ivied corners, its trim grass plots, the
+sense that I was still a part of it all, that the old life was not
+dead, but stored up like a garnered treasure in the rich and
+guarded past. Not by detachment or aloofness from happiness and
+warmth and life are our victories won. That had been the dark
+temptation, the shadow of my loss, to believe that in so sad and
+strange an existence the only hope was to stand apart from it all,
+not to care too much, not to love too closely. That was false,
+utterly false; a bare and grim philosophy, a timid sauntering.
+Rather it was better to clasp all things close, to love
+passionately, to desire infinitely, to yield oneself gladly and
+joyfully to every deep and true emotion; not greedily and
+luxuriously, flinging aside the crumpled husk that had given up its
+sweetness; but tenderly and gently, holding out one's arms to
+everything pure and noble, trusting that behind all there did
+indeed beat a great and fatherly heart, that loved one better than
+one dreamed.
+
+That was a strange experience, that sunlit afternoon, a mingling of
+deepest pain and softest hope, a touch of fire from the very altar
+of faith, linking the beautiful past with the dark present, and
+showing me that the future held a promise of perfect graciousness
+and radiant strength. Did other lives hold the same rich secrets? I
+felt that they did; for that day, at least, all mankind, young and
+old alike, seemed indeed my brothers and sisters. In the young men
+that went lightly in and out, finding life so full of zest,
+thinking each other so interesting and wonderful; in the tired face
+of the old Professor, limping along the street; in the prosperous,
+comfortable contentment of robust men, full of little affairs and
+schemes--I saw in all of them the same hope, the same unity of
+purpose, the same significance; and we three in the midst, united
+by love and loss alike, we were at the centre, as it were, of a
+great drama of life and love, in which even death could only shift
+the scene and enrich the intensity of the secret hope.
+
+
+
+September 5, 1889.
+
+
+The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away from Cambridge could
+not last; I did not hope that it could. We have had a dark and sad
+time, yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we have realised
+how closely we are drawn together, how much we depend on each
+other. Maud's brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly;
+and this has done more than anything to bring us nearer, because I
+have felt the stronger, realising how much she leant upon me. She
+has been filled with self-reproach, I know not for what shadowy
+causes. She blames herself for a thousand things, for not having
+been more to Alec, for having followed her own interests and
+activities, for not having understood him better. It is all unreal,
+morbid, overstrained, of course, but none the less terribly there.
+I have tried to persuade her that it is but weariness and grief
+trying to attach itself to definite causes, but she cannot be
+comforted. Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive, read, and talk
+together--mostly of him, for I can do that now; we can even smile
+together over little memories, though it is perilous walking, and a
+step brings us to the verge of tears. But, thank God, there is not
+a single painful memory, not a thing we would have had otherwise in
+the whole of that little beautiful life; and I wonder now
+wretchedly, whether its very beauty and brightness ought not to
+have prepared me more to lose him; it was too good to be true, too
+perfectly pure and brave. Yet I never even dreamed that he would
+leave us; I should have treasured the bright days better if I had.
+There are times of sharpest sorrow, days when I wake and have
+forgotten; when I think of him as with us, and then the horror of
+my loss comes curdling and weltering back upon me; when I thrill
+from head to foot with hopeless agony, rebelling, desiring, hating
+the death that parts us.
+
+Maggie seems to feel it differently. A child accepts a changed
+condition with perhaps a sharper pang, but with a swift accustoming
+to what irreparably IS. She weeps at the thought of him sometimes,
+but without the bitter resistance, the futile despair which makes
+me agonise. That she can be interested, distracted, amused, is a
+great help to me; but nothing seems to minister to my dear Maud,
+except the impassioned revival, for it is so, of our earliest first
+love. It has come back to bless us, that deep and intimate
+absorption that had moved into a gentler comradeship. The old
+mysterious yearning to mingle life and dreams, and almost
+identities, has returned in fullest force; the years have rolled
+away, and in the loss of her calm strength and patience, we are as
+lovers again. The touch of her hand, the glance of her eye, thrill
+through me as of old. It is a devout service, an eager anticipation
+of her lightest wish that possesses me. I am no longer tended; I
+tend and serve. There is something soft, appealing, wistful about
+her that seems to give her back an almost childlike dependence,
+till my grief almost goes from me in joy that I can sustain and aid
+her.
+
+
+
+September 7, 1889.
+
+
+Another trouble has fallen upon us. I have had a very grievous
+letter from my cousin, who succeeded by arrangement, on my father's
+death, to the business. He has been unfortunate in his affairs; he
+has thrown money away in speculation. The greater part of my income
+came from the business. I suppose the arrangement was a bad one,
+but the practice was so sound and secure in my father's life that
+it never occurred to me to doubt its stability. The chief part of
+my income, some nine hundred a year, came to me from this source.
+Apart from that, I have some three or four hundreds from invested
+money of my own, and Maud has upwards of two hundred a year. I am
+going off to-morrow to L---- to meet my cousin, and go into the
+matter. I don't at present understand how things are. His letter is
+full of protestations and self-recrimination. We can live, I
+suppose, if the worst comes to the worst, but in a very different
+way. Perhaps we may even have to sell our pleasant house. The
+strange thing is that I don't feel this all more acutely, but I
+seem to have lost the power of suffering for any other reason than
+because Alec is dead.
+
+
+
+September 12, 1889.
+
+
+I have come back to-night from some weary nightmare days with my
+poor cousin. The thing is as bad as it can be. The business will be
+acquired by Messrs. F----, the next most leading solicitors. With
+the price they will give, and with the sacrifice of my cousin's
+savings, and the assets of the firm, the money can just be paid. We
+shall have some six hundred a year to live upon; my cousin is to
+enter the office of the F---- firm as an ordinary clerk. The origin
+of the disaster is a melancholy one; it was not that he himself
+might profit, but to increase the income of some clients who had
+lost money and desired a higher rate of interest for funds left in
+the hands of the firm. If my cousin had resisted the demand, there
+would have been some unpleasantness, because the money lost had
+been invested on his advice; he could not face this, and proceeded
+to speculate with other money, of which he was trustee, to fill the
+gap. Good-nature, imprudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the
+conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, have been the cause
+of his ruin. It is a fearful blow to him, but he is fortunate,
+perhaps, in being unmarried; I have urged him to try and get
+employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the situation in
+the place where he is known, with a fantastic idea, which is at the
+same time noble and chivalrous, of doing penance. Of course he has
+no prospects whatever; but I am sure of this, that he grieves over
+my lost inheritance far more than he grieves over his own ruin. His
+great misery is that some years ago he refused an offer from
+Messrs. F---- to amalgamate the two firms.
+
+I feared at first that I might have to sacrifice the rest of my
+money as well--money slowly accumulated out of my own labours. And
+the relief of finding that this will not be necessary is immense.
+We must sell our house at once, and find a smaller one. At present
+I am not afraid of the changed circumstances; indeed, if I could
+only recover my power of writing, we need not leave our home. The
+temptation is to get a book written somehow, because I could make
+money by any stuff just now. On the other hand, it will almost be
+to me a relief to part from the home so haunted with the memory of
+Alec--though that will be a dreadful pain to Maud and Maggie. As
+far as living more simply goes, that does not trouble me in the
+least. I have always been slightly uncomfortable about the ease and
+luxury in which we lived. I only wish we had lived more simply all
+along, so that I could have put by a little more. I have told Maud
+exactly how matters stand, and she acquiesces, though I can see
+that, just at this time, the thought of handing over to strangers
+the house where we have lived all our married life, the rooms where
+Alec and the baby died, is a deep grief to her. To me that is
+almost a relief. I have dreaded going back there. To-night I told
+Maggie, and she broke out into long weeping. But even so there is
+something about the idea of being poor, strange to say, which
+touches a sense of romance in the child. She does not realise the
+poky restrictions of the new life.
+
+And still stranger to me is the way in which this solid, tangible
+trouble seems to have restored my energy and calm. I found myself
+clear-headed, able to grasp the business questions which arose,
+gifted with a hard lucidity of mind that I did not know I
+possessed. It is a relief to get one's teeth into something, to
+have hard, definite occupation to distract one; indeed, it hardly
+seems to me in the light of a misfortune at present, so much as a
+blessed tangible problem to be grappled with and solved. What I
+should have felt if all had been lost, and if I had had to resign
+my liberty, and take up some practical occupation, I hardly know. I
+do not think I should even have dreaded that in my present frame of
+mind.
+
+
+
+September 15, 1889.
+
+
+I have been thinking all day long of my last walk with Alec, the
+day before he was taken ill. Maud had gone out with Maggie; and the
+little sturdy figure came to my room to ask if I was going out. I
+was finishing a book that I was reading for the evening's work; I
+had been out in the morning, and I had not intended to go out
+again, as it was cold and drizzling. I very nearly said that I
+could not go, and I had a shadow of vexation at being interrupted.
+But I looked up at him, as he stood by the door, and there was a
+tiny shadow of loneliness upon his face; and I thank God now that I
+put my book down at once, and consented cheerfully. He brightened
+up at this; he fetched my cap and stick, and we went off together.
+I am glad to think that I had him to myself that day. He was in a
+more confidential mood than usual. Perhaps--who knows?--there was
+some shadow of death upon him, some instinct to clasp hands closer
+before the end. He asked me to tell him some stories of my
+schooldays, and what I used to do as a boy--but he was full of
+alertness and life, breaking into my narratives to point out a nest
+that we had seen in the spring, and that now hung, wind-dried and
+ruinous, among the boughs. Coming back, he flagged a little, and
+did what he seldom did, put his arm in my own; how tenderly the
+touch of the little hand, the restless fingers on my arm thrilled
+me--the hand that lies cold and folded and shrivelled in the dark
+ground! He was proud that evening of having had me all to himself,
+and said to Maggie that we had talked secrets, "such as MEN talk
+when there are no women to ask questions." But thinking that this
+had wounded Maggie a little, he went and put his arm round her, and
+I heard him say something about its being all nonsense, and that we
+had wished for her all the time. . . .
+
+Ah, how can I endure it, the silence, the absence, the lost smile,
+the child of my own whom I loved from head to foot, body soul and
+spirit all alike! I keep coming across signs of his presence
+everywhere, his books, his garden tools in the summerhouse, the
+little presents he gave me, on my study chimney-piece, his cap and
+coat hanging in the cupboard--it is these little trifling things,
+signs of life and joyful days, that sting the heart and pierce the
+brain with sorrow. If I could but have one sight of him, one word
+with him, one smile, to show that he is, that he remembers, that he
+waits for us, I could endure it; but I look into the dark and no
+answer comes; I send my wild entreaties pulsating through the
+worlds of space, crying, "Are you there, my child?" That his life
+is there, hidden with God, I do not doubt; but is it he himself, or
+has he fallen back, like the drop of water in the fountain, into
+the great tide of life? That is no comfort to me; it is he that I
+want, that union of body and mind, of life and love, that was
+called my child and is mine no more.
+
+
+
+September 20, 1889.
+
+
+Such a loss as mine passes over the soul like a plough cleaving a
+pasture line by line. The true stuff of the spirit is revealed and
+laid out in all its bareness. That customary outline, that surface
+growth of herb and blade, is all pared away. I have been accustomed
+to think myself a religious man--I have never been without the
+sense of God over and about me. But when an experience like this
+comes, it shows me what my religion is worth. I do not turn to God
+in love and hope; I do not know Him, I do not understand Him. I
+feel that He must have forgotten me, or that He is indifferent to
+me, or that He is incapable of love, and works blindly and sternly.
+My reason in vain says that the great and beautiful gift itself of
+the child's life and the child's love came from Him. I do not
+question His power or His right to take my child from me. But I
+endure only because I must, not willingly or loyally or lovingly.
+It is not that I feel the injustice of His taking the boy away; it
+is a far deeper sense of injustice than that. The injustice lies in
+the fact that He made the child so utterly dear and desired; that
+He set him so firmly in my heart; this on the one hand; and on the
+other, that He does not, if He must rend the little life away and
+leave the bleeding gap, send at the same time some love, some
+strength, some patience to make the pain bearable. I cannot believe
+that the love I bore my boy was anything but a sweet and holy
+influence. It gave me the one thing of which I am in hourly need--
+something outside of myself and my own interests, to love better
+than I loved even myself. It seems indeed a pure and simple loss,
+unless the lesson God would have us learn is the stoical lesson of
+detachment, indifference, cold self-sufficiency. It is like taking
+the crutches away from a lame man, knocking the props away from a
+tottering building. An optimistic moralist would say that I loved
+Alec too selfishly, and even that the love of the child turned away
+my heart from the jealous Heart of God, who demands a perfect
+surrender, a perfect love. But how can one love that which one does
+not know or understand, a Power that walks in darkness and that
+gives us on the one hand sweet, beautiful, and desirable things,
+and on the other strikes them from us when we need them most? It is
+not as if I did not desire to trust and love God utterly. I should
+think even this sorrow a light price to pay, if it gave me a pure
+and deep trust in the mercy and goodness of God. But instead of
+that it fills me with dismay, blank suspicion, fretful resistance.
+I do not feel that there is anything which God could send me or
+reveal to me, which would enable me to acquit Him of hardness or
+injustice. I will not, though He slay me, say that I trust Him and
+love Him when I do not. He may crush me with repeated blows of His
+hand, but He has given me the divine power of judging, of testing,
+of balancing; and I must use it even in His despite. He does not
+require, I think, a dull and broken submissiveness, the
+submissiveness of the creature that is ready to admit anything, if
+only he can be spared another blow. What He requires, so my spirit
+tells me, is an eager co-operation, a brave approval, a generous
+belief in His goodness and His justice; and this I cannot give, and
+it is He that has made me unable to give it. The wound may heal,
+the dull pain may die away, I may forget, the child may become a
+golden memory--but I cannot again believe that this is the
+surrender God desires. What I think He must desire, is that I
+should love the child, miss him as bitterly as ever, feel my day
+darkened by his loss, and yet turn to Him gratefully and bravely in
+perfect love and trust. It may be that I may be drawn closer to
+those whom I love, but the loss must still remain irreparable,
+because I might have learned to love my dear ones better through
+Alec's presence, and not through his absence. It is His will, I do
+not doubt it; but I cannot see the goodness or the justice of the
+act, and I will not pretend to myself that I acquiesce.
+
+
+
+September 25, 1889.
+
+
+Yesterday was a warm, delicious, soft day, full of a gentle
+languor, the air balmy and sweet, the sunshine like the purest
+gold; we sate out all the morning under the cliff, in the warm dry
+sand. To the right and left of us lay the blue bay, the waves
+breaking with short, crisp sparkles on the shore. We saw headland
+after headland sinking into the haze; a few fishing-boats moved
+slowly about, and far down on the horizon we watched the smoke of a
+great ocean-steamer. We talked, Maud and I, for the first time, I
+think, without reserve, without bitterness, almost without grief,
+of Alec. What sustains her is the certainty that he is as he was,
+somewhere, far off, as brave and loving as ever, waiting for us,
+but waiting with a perfect understanding and knowledge of why we
+are separated. She dreams of him thus, looking down upon her, and
+seeming, in her dream, to wonder what there can be to grieve about.
+I suppose that a mother has a sense of oneness with a child that a
+father cannot have. It is a deep and marvellous faith, an intuition
+that transcends all reason, a radiant certainty. I cannot attain to
+it. But in the warmth and light of her belief, I grew to feel that
+at least there was some explanation of it all. Not by chance is the
+dear gift sent us, not by chance do we learn to love it, not by
+chance is it rent from us. Lying thus, talking softly, in so
+gracious a world, a world that satisfied every craving of the
+senses, I came to realise that the Father must wish us well, and
+that if the shadow fell upon our path, it was not to make us cold
+and bitter-hearted. Infinite Love! it came near to me in that hour,
+and clasped me to a sorrowful, tender, beating Heart. I read Maud,
+at her request, "Evelyn Hope," and the strong and patient love,
+that dwells so serenely and softly upon the incidents of death, yet
+without the least touch of morbidity and gloom, treating death
+itself as a quiet slumber of the soul, taught me for a moment how
+to be brave.
+
+"You will wake and remember, and understand,"--my voice broke and
+tears came, unbidden tears which I did not even desire to conceal--
+and in that moment the spirit of my wife came near to me, and soul
+looked into the eyes of soul, with a perfect and bewildering joy,
+the very joy of God.
+
+
+
+October 10, 1889.
+
+
+We have had the kindest, dearest letters from our neighbours about
+our last misfortune. But no one seems to anticipate that we shall
+be obliged to leave the place. They naturally suppose that I shall
+be able to make as large an income as I want by writing. And so I
+suppose I could. I talked the whole matter over with Maud, and said
+I would abide by her decision. I confessed that I had an extreme
+repugnance to the thought of turning out books for money, books
+which I knew to be inferior; but I also said that if she could not
+bear to leave the place, I had little doubt that I could, for the
+present at all events, make enough money to render it possible for
+us to continue to live there. I said frankly that it would be a
+relief to me to leave a house so sadly haunted by memory, and that
+I should myself prefer to live elsewhere, framing our household on
+very simple lines--and to let the power of writing come back if it
+would, not to try and force it. It would be a dreadful prospect to
+me to live thus, overshadowed by recollection, working dismally for
+money; but I suppose it would be possible, even bracing. Maud did
+not hesitate: she spoke quite frankly; on the one hand the very
+associations, which I dread most, were evidently to her a source of
+sad delight; and the thought of strangers living in rooms so
+hallowed by grief was like a profanation. Then there was the fact
+of all her relations with our friends and neighbours; but she said
+quite simply that my feeling outweighed it all, and that she would
+far rather begin life afresh somewhere else, than put me in the
+position I described. We determined to try and find a small house
+in the neighbourhood of her own old home in Gloucestershire; and
+this thought, I am sure, gave her real happiness. We determined at
+once what we would do; we would let our house for a term of years,
+take what furniture we needed, and dispose of the rest; we arranged
+to go off to Gloucestershire, as soon as possible, to look for a
+house. We both realise that we must learn to retrench at once. We
+shall have less than half our former income, counting in what we
+hope to get from the old house. I am not at all afraid of that. I
+always vaguely disliked living as comfortably as we did--but it
+will not be agreeable to have to calculate all our expenses--that
+may perhaps mend itself, if I can but begin my writing again.
+
+All this helps me--I am ashamed to say how much--though sometimes
+the thought of all the necessary arrangements weighs on me like a
+leaden weight, on days when I fall back into a sad, idle, hopeless
+repining. Sometimes it seems as if the old happy life was all
+broken up and gone for ever; and, so strange a thing is memory and
+imagination, that even the months overshadowed by the loss of my
+faculty of work seem to me now impossibly fragrant and beautiful,
+my sufferings unreal and unsubstantial. Real trouble, real grief,
+have at least the bracing force of actuality, and sweep aside with
+a strong hand all artificial self-made miseries and glooms.
+
+
+
+December 15, 1889.
+
+
+I have kept no record of these weeks. They have been full of
+business, sadness, and yet of hope. We went back home for a time;
+we made our farewells, and it moved me strangely to see that our
+departure was viewed almost with consternation. It is Maud's loss
+that will be felt. I have lived very selfishly and dully myself,
+but even so I was half-glad to find that even I should be missed.
+At such a time everything is forgotten and forgiven, and such
+grudging, peaceful neighbourliness as even I have shown seems
+appreciated and valued. It was a heartrending business reviving our
+sorrow, and it plunged me for a time into my old dry bitterness of
+spirit. But I hardened my heart as best I could, and felt more
+deeply than ever, how far beyond my powers of endurance it would
+have been to have taken up the old life, and Alec not there. Again
+and again it was like a knife plunged into my heart with an almost
+physical pain. Not so with Maud and Maggie--it was to them a
+treasure of precious memories, and they could dare to indulge their
+grief. I can't write of it, I can't think of it. Wherever I turned,
+I saw him in a hundred guises--as a tiny child, as a small, sturdy
+boy, as the son we lost.
+
+We have let the house to some very kind and reasonable people, who
+have made things very easy to us; and to me at least it was a sort
+of heavy joy to take the last meal in the old home, to drive away,
+to see the landscape fade from sight. I shall never willingly
+return. It would seem to me like a wilful rolling among the thorns
+of life, a gathering-in of spears into one's breast. I seemed like
+a naked creature that had lost its skin, that shrank and bled at
+every touch.
+
+
+
+February 10, 1890.
+
+
+I have been house-hunting, and I do not pretend to dislike it. The
+sight of unknown houses, high garden walls, windows looking into
+blind courts, staircases leading to lofts, dark cupboards, old
+lumber, has a very stimulating effect on my imagination. Perhaps,
+too, I sometimes think, these old places are full of haunting
+spiritual presences, clinging, half tearfully, half joyfully to the
+familiar scenes, half sad, perhaps, that they did not make a finer
+thing of the little confined life; half glad to be free--as a man,
+strong and well, might look with a sense of security into a room
+where he had borne an operation. But I have never believed much in
+haunted rooms. The Father's many mansions can be hardly worth
+deserting for the little, dark houses of our tiny life.
+
+I disliked some of the houses intensely--so ugly and pretentious,
+so inconvenient and dull; but even so it is pleasant in fancy to
+plan the life one would live there, the rooms one would use. One
+house touched me inexpressibly. It was a house I knew from the
+outside in a little town where I used to go and spend a few weeks
+every year with an old aunt of mine. The name of the little town--I
+saw it in an agent's list--had a sort of enchantment for me, a
+golden haze of memory. I was allowed a freedom there I was allowed
+nowhere else, I was petted and made much of, and I used to spend
+most of my time in sauntering about, just looking, watching,
+scrutinising things, with the hard and uncritical observation of
+childhood. When I got to the place, I was surprised to find that I
+knew well the look of the house I went to see, though I had not
+ever entered it. Two neat, contented, slightly absurd old maiden
+ladies had lived there, who used to walk out together, dressed
+exactly alike in some faded fashion. The laurels and yews still
+grew thickly in the shrubbery, and shaded the windows of the ugly
+little parlours. An old, quiet, respectable maid showed me round;
+she had been in service there for twenty years, and she was
+tearfully lamenting over the break-up of the home. The old ladies
+had lived there for sixty years. One of them had died ten years
+before, the other had lingered on to extreme old age. The house was
+like a museum, a specimen of a house of the thirties, in which
+nothing had ever been touched or changed. The strange wall-papers
+and chintzes, the crewel-work chairs, the mirrors, the light maple
+furniture, the case of moth-eaten humming-birds, the dull
+engravings of historical pictures, the old books--the drawing-room
+table was covered with annuals and keepsakes, Moore's poems, Mrs.
+Barbauld's works--all had a pathetic ugliness, redeemed by a
+certain consistency of quality. And then the poky, comfortable
+arrangements, the bath-chair in the coach-house, the four-post
+bedsteads, the hand-rail on the stairs, the sandbags for the doors,
+all spoke of a timid, invalid life, a dim backwater in the tide of
+things. There had been children there at some time, for there were
+broken toys, collections of dried plants, curious stones, in an
+attic. The little drama of the house shaped itself for me, as I
+walked through the frowsy, faded rooms, with a touching insistence.
+This bedroom had never been used since Miss Eleanor died--and I
+could fancy the poor, little, timid, precise life flitting away
+among the well-known surroundings. This had been Miss Jackson's
+favourite room--it was so quiet--she had died there, sitting in her
+chair, a few weeks before. The leisurely, harmless routine of the
+quiet household rose before me. I could imagine Miss Jackson
+writing her letters, reading her book, eating her small meals,
+making the same humble and grateful remarks, entertaining her old
+friends. Year after year it had gone on, just the same, the clock
+ticking loud in the hall, the sun creeping round the old rooms, the
+birds singing in the garden, the faint footsteps in the road. It
+had begun, that gentle routine, long before I had been born into
+the world; and it was strange to me to think that, as I passed
+through the most stirring experiences of my life, nothing ever
+stirred or moved or altered here. Miss Jackson had felt Miss
+Eleanor's death very much; she had hardly ever left the house
+since, and they had had no company. Yes, what a woefully
+bewildering thing death swooping down into that quiet household,
+with all its tranquil security, must have been! One wondered what
+Miss Eleanor had felt, when she knew she had to die, to pass out
+into the unknown dark out of a world so tender, so familiar, so
+peaceful; and what had poor Miss Jackson made of it, when she was
+left alone? She must have found it all very puzzling, very dreary.
+And yet, in the dim past, perhaps one or both of them, had had
+dreams of a fuller life, had fancied that something more than
+tenderness had looked out of the eyes of a man; well, it had come
+to nothing, whatever it might have been; and the two old ladies had
+settled down, perhaps with some natural repining, to their
+unexciting, contented life, the day filled with little duties and
+pleasures, the nights with innocent sleep. It had not been a
+selfish life--they had been good to the poor, the maid told me;
+and in old days they had often had their nephews and nieces to stay
+with them. But those children had grown up and gone out into the
+world, and no longer cared to return to the dull little house with
+its precise ways, and the fidgety love that had once embraced them.
+
+The whole thing seemed a mysterious mixture of purposelessness and
+contentment. Rumours of wars, social convulsions, patriotic hopes,
+great ideas, had swept on their course outside, and had never
+stirred the drowsy current of life behind the garden walls. The
+sisters had lived, sweetly, perhaps, and softly, like trees in some
+sequestered woodland, hardly recognising their own gentle lapse of
+strength and activity.
+
+And now the whole thing was over for good. Curious and indifferent
+people came, tramped about the house, pronounced it old-fashioned
+and inconvenient. I could not do that myself; the place was brimful
+of the pathetic evidences of what had been. Soon, no doubt, the old
+house would wear a different guise--it would be renovated and
+restored, the furniture would drift away to second-hand shops, the
+litter would be thrown out upon the rubbish-heap. New lives, new
+relationships would spring up; children would be born, boys would
+play, lovers would embrace, sufferers would lie musing, men and
+women would die in those refurbished rooms. Everything would drift
+onwards, and the lives to whom each corner, each stair, each piece
+of furniture had meant so much, would become a memory first, and
+then fade into nothingness. Where and what were the two old ladies
+now? Were they gone out utterly, like an extinguished flame? were
+they in some new home of tranquil peace? Were they adjusting
+themselves with a sense of timid impotence--those slender, tired
+spirits--to new and bewildering conditions?
+
+The old, dull house called to me that day with a hundred faint
+voices and tremulous echoes. I could make nothing of it; for though
+it swept the strings of my heart with a ghostly music, it seemed to
+have no certain message for me, but the message of oblivion and
+silence.
+
+I was sorry, as I went away, to leave the poor maidservant to her
+lonely and desolate memories. She had to leave her comfortable
+kitchen and her easy routine, for new duties and new faces, and I
+could see that she anticipated the change with sad dismay.
+
+It seemed to me in that hour as though the cruelty and the
+tenderness of the world were very mysteriously blended--there was
+no lack of tenderness in the old house with its innumerable small
+associations, its sheltered calm. And then suddenly the stroke must
+fall, and fall upon lives whose very security and gentleness seemed
+to have been so ill a preparation for sterner and darker things. It
+would have been more loving, one thought, either to have made the
+whole fabric more austere, more precarious from the first; or else
+to have bestowed a deep courage and a fertile hope, a firmer
+endurance, rather than to have confronted lives so frail and
+delicate with the terrors of the vast unknown.
+
+
+
+April 8, 1890.
+
+
+Our new house is charming, beautiful, homelike. It is an old stone
+building, formerly a farm; it has a quaint garden and orchard, and
+the wooded hill runs up steeply behind, with a stream in front. It
+is on the outskirts of a village, and we are within three miles of
+Maud's old home, so that she knows all the country round. We have
+got two of our old servants, and a solid comfortable gardener, a
+native of the place. The house within is quaint and comfortable. We
+have a spare bedroom; I have no study, but shall use the little
+panelled dining-room. We have had much to do in settling in, and I
+have done a great deal of hard physical work myself, in the way of
+moving furniture and hanging pictures, inducing much wholesome
+fatigue. Maggie, who broke down dreadfully on leaving the old home,
+with the wonderful spring that children have, is full of excitement
+and even delight in the new house. I rather dread the time when all
+our occupations shall be over, and when we shall settle down to the
+routine of life. I begin to wonder how I shall occupy myself. I
+mean to do a good many odd jobs--we have no trap, and there will be
+a good deal of fetching and carrying to be done. We shall resume
+our lessons, Maggie and I; there will be reading, gardening,
+walking. One ought to be able to live philosophically enough. What
+would I not give to be able to write now! but the instinct seems
+wholly and utterly dead and gone. I cannot even conceive that I
+ever used, solemnly and gravely, to write about imaginary people,
+their jests and epigrams, their sorrows and cares. Life and Art! I
+used to suppose that it was all a softly moulded, rhythmic,
+sonorous affair, strophe and antistrophe; but the griefs and
+sorrows of art are so much nearer each other, like major and minor
+keys, than the griefs and sorrows of life. In art, the musician
+smiles and sighs alternately, but his sighing is a balanced, an
+ordered mood; the inner heart is content, as the pool is content,
+whether it mirrors the sunlight or the lonely star; but in life,
+joy is to grief what music is to aching silence, dumbness,
+inarticulate pain--though perhaps in that silence one hears a
+deeper, stranger sound, the buzz of the whirring atom, the soft
+thunder of worlds plunging through the void, joyless, gigantic,
+oblivious forces.
+
+Is it good thus to have the veils of life rent asunder? If life,
+the world's life, activity, work, be the end of existence, then it
+is not good. It breaks the spring of energy, so that one goes
+heavily and sorely. But what if that be not the end? What then?
+
+
+
+May 16, 1890.
+
+
+At present the new countryside is a great resource. I walk far
+among the wolds; I find exquisite villages, where every stone-built
+house seems to have style and quality; I come down upon green
+water-meadows, with clear streams flowing by banks set with thorn-
+bushes and alders. The churches, the manor-houses, of grey rubble
+smeared with plaster, with stone roof-tiles, are a feast for eye
+and heart. Long days in the open air bring me a dull equable health
+of body, a pleasant weariness, a good-humoured indifference. My
+mind becomes grass-grown, full of weeds, ruinous; but I welcome it
+as at least a respite from suffering. It is strange to think of
+myself at what ought, I suppose, to be the busiest and fullest time
+of my life, living here like a tree in lonely fields. What would be
+the normal life? A little house in a London street, I suppose, with
+a lot of white paint and bookshelves. Luncheons, dinners, plays,
+music, clubs, week-end visits to lively houses, a rush abroad, a
+few country visits in the winter. Very harmless and pleasant if one
+enjoyed it, but to me inconceivable and insupportable. Perhaps I
+should be happier and brisker, perhaps the time would go quicker.
+Ought one to make up one's mind that this would be the normal life,
+and that therefore one had better learn to accommodate oneself to
+it? Does one pay penalties for not submitting oneself to the
+ordinary laws of human intercourse? Doubtless one does. But then,
+made as I am, I should have to pay penalties which would seem to be
+even heavier for the submission. It is there that the puzzle lies;
+that a man should be created with the strong instinct that I feel
+for liberty and independence and solitude and the quiet of the
+country, and then that he should discover that the life he so
+desires should be the one that develops all the worst side of him--
+morbidity, fastidiousness, gloom, discontent. This is the shadow of
+civilisation; that it makes people intellectual, alert, craving for
+stimulus, and yet sucks their nerves dry of the strength that makes
+such things enjoyable.
+
+And still, as I go in and out, the death of Alec seems the one
+absolutely unintelligible and inexplicable thing, a gloom
+penetrated by no star. It was the one thing that might have made me
+unselfish, tender-hearted, the anxious care of some other than
+myself. "Perhaps," says an old friend writing to me with a clumsy
+attempt at comfort, "perhaps he was taken mercifully away from some
+evil to come." A good many people say that, and feel it quite
+honestly. But what an insupportable idea of the ways of Providence,
+that God had planned a prospect for the child so dreadful that even
+his swift removal should be tolerable by comparison! What a
+helpless, hopeless confession of failure! No; either the whole
+short life, closed by the premature death, must have been designed,
+planned, executed deliberately; or else God is at the mercy of
+blank cross-currents, opposing forces, tendencies even stronger
+than Himself; and then the very idea of God crumbles away, and God
+becomes the blank and inscrutable force working behind a gentle,
+good-humoured will, which would be kind and gracious if it could,
+but is trammelled and bound by something stronger; that was the
+Greek view, of course--God above man, and Fate above God. The worst
+of it is that it has a horrible vraisemblance, and seems to lie
+even nearer to the facts of life than our own tender-hearted and
+sentimental theories and schemes of religion.
+
+But whether it be God or fate, the burden has to be borne. And my
+one endeavour must be to bear it myself, consciously and
+courageously, and to shift it so far as I can from the gentler and
+tenderer shoulders of those whose life is so strangely linked with
+mine.
+
+
+
+May 25, 1890.
+
+
+One sees a house, like the house we now live in, from a road as one
+passes, from the windows of a train. It seems to be set at the end
+of the world, with the earth's sunset distance behind it--it seems
+a fortress of quiet, a place of infinite peace; and then one lives
+in it, and behold, it is a centre of a little active life, with all
+sorts of cross-currents darting to and fro, over it, past it.
+
+Or again one thinks, as one sees such a house in passing, that
+there at least one could live in meditation and cloistered calm;
+that there would be neither cares nor anxieties; that one would be
+content to sit, just looking out at the quiet fields, pacing to and
+fro, receiving impressions, musing, selecting, apprehending--and
+then one lives there, and the stream of life is as turbid, as
+fretful as ever. The strange thing is that such delusions survive
+any amount of experience; that one cannot read into other lives the
+things that trouble one's own.
+
+A little definite scheme opens before us here; old friends of
+Maud's find us out, simple, kindly, tiresome people. There is an
+exchange of small civilities, there are duties, activities,
+relationships. To Maud these things come by the light of nature; to
+her the simplest interchange of definite thoughts is as natural as
+to breathe. I hear her calm, sweet, full voice answering, asking.
+To me these things are utterly wearisome and profitless. I want
+only to speak of the things for which I care, and to people attuned
+to the same key of thought; a basis of sympathy and temperamental
+differences--that is the perfect union of qualities for a friend.
+But these stolid, kindly parsons, with brisk, active wives,
+ingenuous daughters, heavy sons--I want either to know them better,
+or not to know them at all. I want to enter the house, the
+furnished chambers of people's minds; and I am willing enough to
+throw my own open to a cordial guest; but I do not want to stand
+and chatter in some debatable land of social conventionality. I
+have no store of simple geniality. The other night we went to dine
+quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fellow, happy and useful.
+Afterwards, in the drawing-room, I sate beside my host. I saw Maud
+listening, with rapt interest, to the chronicles of all the village
+families, robustly and unimaginatively told by the parson's wife;
+meanwhile I, tortured by intolerable ennui, pumped up questions,
+tried a hundred subjects with my worthy host. He told me long and
+prolix stories, he discoursed on rural needs. At last I said that
+we must be going; he replied with genuine disappointment that the
+night was still young, and that it was a pity to break up our
+pleasant confabulation. I saw with a shock of wonder that he had
+evidently been enjoying himself hugely; that it was a pleasure to
+him, for some unaccountable reason, not to hear a new person talk,
+but to say the same things that he had said for years, to a new
+person. It is not ideas that most people want; they are satisfied
+with mere gregariousness, the sight and sound of other figures.
+They like to produce the same stock of ideas, the same conclusions.
+"As I always say," was a phrase that was for ever on my
+entertainer's lips. I suppose that probably my own range is just as
+limited, but I have an Athenian hankering after novelty of thought,
+the new mintage of the mind. I loathe the old obliterated coinage,
+with the stamp all rounded and faint. Dulness, sameness, triteness,
+are they essential parts of life? I suppose it is really that my
+nervous energy is low, and requires stimulus: if it were strong and
+full, the current would flow into the trivial things. I derive a
+certain pleasure from the sight of other people's rooms, the
+familiar, uncomfortable, shabby furniture, the drift of pictures,
+the debris of ornament--all that stands for difference and
+individuality. But one can't get inside most people's minds; they
+only admit one to the public rooms. A crushing fatigue and
+depression settles down upon me in such hours, and then the old
+blank sense of grief and loss comes flowing back--it is old
+already, because it seems to have stained all the backward pages of
+life; then follows the weary, restless night; and the breaking of
+the grey, pitiless dawn.
+
+
+
+June 3, 1890.
+
+
+I do not want, even in my thoughts, to put the contemplative life
+above the practical life. Highest of all I would put a combination
+of the two--a man of high and clear ideals, in a position where he
+was able to give them shape--a great constructive statesman, a
+great educator, a great man of business, who was also keenly alive
+to social problems, a great philanthropist. Next to these I would
+put great thinkers, moralists, poets--all who inspire. Then I would
+put the absolutely effective instruments of great designs--
+legislators, lawyers, teachers, priests, doctors, writers--men
+without originality, but with a firm conception of civic and human
+duty. And then I would put all those who, in a small sphere,
+exercise a direct, quiet, simple influence--and then come the large
+mass of mankind; people who work faithfully, from instinct and
+necessity, but without any particular design or desire, except to
+live honestly, honourably, and respectably, with no urgent sense of
+the duty of serving others, taking life as it comes, practical
+individualists, in fact. No higher than these, but certainly no
+lower, I should put quiet, contemplative, reflective people, who
+are theoretical individualists. They are not very effective people
+generally, and they have a certain poetical quality; they cannot
+originate, but they can appreciate. I look upon all these
+individualists, whether practical or theoretical, as the average
+mass of humanity, the common soldiers, so to speak, as
+distinguished from the officers. Life is for them a discipline, and
+their raison d'etre is that of the learner, as opposed to that of
+the teacher. To all of them, experience is the main point; they are
+all in the school of God; they are being prepared for something.
+The object is that they should apprehend something, and the channel
+through which it comes matters little. They do the necessary work
+of the world; they support themselves, and they support those who
+from infirmity, weakness, age, or youth cannot support themselves.
+There is room, I think, in the world for both kinds of
+individualist, though the contemplative individualists are in the
+minority; and perhaps it must be so, because a certain lassitude is
+characteristic of them. If they were in the majority in any nation,
+one would have a simple, patient, unambitious race, who would tend
+to become the subjects of other more vigorous nations: our Indian
+empire is a case in point. Probably China is a similar nation,
+preserved from conquest by its inaccessibility and its numerical
+force. Japan is an instance of the strange process of a
+contemplative nation becoming a practical one. The curious thing is
+that Christianity, which is essentially a contemplative,
+unmilitant, unpatriotic, unambitious force, decidedly oriental in
+type, should have become, by a mysterious transmutation, the
+religion of active, inventive, conquering nations. I have no doubt
+that the essence of Christianity lies in a contemplative
+simplicity, and that it is in strong opposition to what is commonly
+called civilisation. It aims at improving society through the
+uplifting of the individual, not at uplifting the individual
+through social agencies. We have improved upon that in our latter-
+day wisdom, for the Christian ought to be inherently unpatriotic,
+or rather his patriotism ought to be of an all-embracing rather
+than of an antagonistic kind. I do not want to make lofty excuses
+for myself; my own unworldliness is not an abnegation at all, but a
+deliberate preference for obscurity. Still I should maintain that
+the vital and spiritual strength of a nation is measured, not by
+the activity of its organisations, but by the number of quiet,
+simple, virtuous, and high-minded persons that it contains. And
+thus, in my own case, though the choice is made for me by
+temperament and circumstances, I have no pricking of conscience on
+the subject of my scanty activities. It is not mere activity that
+makes the difference. The danger of mere activity is that it tends
+to make men complacent, to lead them to think that they are
+following the paths of virtue, when they are only enmeshed in
+conventionality. The dangers of the quiet life are indolence,
+morbidity, sloth, depression, unmanliness; but I think that it
+develops humility, and allows the daily and hourly message of God
+to sink into the soul. After all, the one supreme peril is that of
+self-satisfaction and finality. If a man is content with what he
+is, there is nothing to make him long for what is higher. Any one
+who looks around him with a candid gaze, becomes aware that our
+life is and must be a provisional one, that it has somehow fallen
+short of its possibilities. To better it is the best of all
+courses; but next to that it is more desirable that men should hope
+for and desire a greater harmony of things, than that they should
+acquiesce in what is so strangely and sadly amiss.
+
+
+
+June 18, 1890.
+
+
+I have made a new friend, whose contact and example help me so
+strangely and mysteriously, that it seems to me almost as though I
+had been led hither that I might know him. He is an old and lonely
+man, a great invalid, who lives at a little manor-house a mile or
+two away. Maud knew him by name, but had never seen him. He wrote
+me a courtly kind of note, apologising for being unable to call,
+and expressing a hope that we might be able to go and see him. The
+house stands on the edge of the village, looking out on the
+churchyard, a many-gabled building of grey stone, a long flagged
+terrace in front of it, terminated by posts with big stone balls; a
+garden behind, and a wood behind that--the whole scene unutterably
+peaceful and beautiful. We entered by a little hall, and a kindly,
+plain, middle-aged woman, with a Quaker-like precision of mien and
+dress, came out to greet us, with a fresh kindliness that had
+nothing conventional about it. She said that her uncle was not very
+well, but she thought he would be able to see us. She left us for a
+moment. There was a cleanness and a fragrance about the old house
+that was very characteristic. It was most simply, even barely
+furnished, but with a settled, ancient look about it, that gave one
+a sense of long association. She presently returned, and said,
+smiling, that her uncle would like to see us, but separately, as he
+was very far from strong. She took Maud away, and returning, walked
+with me round the garden, which had the same dainty and simple
+perfection about it. I could see that my hostess had the poetical
+passion for flowers; she knew the names of all, and spoke of them
+almost as one might of children. This was very wilful and
+impatient, and had to be kept in good order; that one required
+coaxing and tender usage. We went on to the wood, in all its summer
+foliage, and she showed us a little arbour where her uncle loved to
+sit, and where the birds would come at his whistle. "They are
+looking at us out of the trees everywhere," she said, "but they are
+shy of strangers"--and indeed we heard soft chirping and rustling
+everywhere. An old dog and a cat accompanied us. She drew my
+attention to the latter. "Look at Pippa," she said, "she is
+determined to walk with us, and equally determined not to seem to
+need our company, as if she had come out of her own accord, and was
+surprised to find us in her garden." Pippa, hearing her name
+mentioned, stalked off with an air of mystery and dignity into the
+bushes, and we could see her looking out at us; but when we
+continued our stroll, she flew out past us, and walked on stiffly
+ahead. "She gets a great deal of fun out of her little dramas,"
+said Miss ----. "Now poor old Rufus has no sense of drama or
+mystery--he is frankly glad of our company in a very low and
+common way--there is nothing aristocratic about him." Old Rufus
+looked up and wagged his tail humbly. Presently she went on to talk
+about her uncle, and contrived to tell me a great deal in a very
+few words. I learnt that he was the last male representative of an
+old family, who had long held the small estate here; that after a
+distinguished Oxford career, he had met with a serious accident
+that had made him a permanent invalid. That he had settled down
+here, not expecting to live more than a few years, and that he was
+now over seventy; it had been the quietest of lives, she said, and
+a very happy one, too, in spite of his disabilities. He read a
+great deal, and interested himself in local affairs, but sometimes
+for weeks together could do nothing. I gathered that she was his
+only surviving relation, and had lived with him from her childhood.
+"You will think," she added, laughing, "that he is the kind of
+person who is shown by his friends as a wonderful old man, and who
+turns out to be a person like the patriarch Casby, in Little
+Dorrit, whose sanctity, like Samson's, depended entirely upon the
+length of his hair. But he is not in the least like that, and I
+will leave you to find out for yourself whether he is wonderful or
+not."
+
+There was a touch of masculine irony and humour about this that
+took my fancy; and we went to the house, Miss ---- saying that two
+new persons in one afternoon would be rather a strain for her
+uncle, much as he would enjoy it, and that his enjoyment must be
+severely limited. "His illness," she said, "is an obscure one; it
+is a want of adequate nervous force: the doctors give it names, but
+don't seem to be able to cure or relieve it; he is strong,
+physically and mentally, but the least over-exertion or over-strain
+knocks him up; it is as if virtue went out of him; though a partial
+niece may say that he has a plentiful stock of the material."
+
+We went in, and proceeded to a small library, full of books, with a
+big writing-table in the window. The room was somewhat dark, and
+the feet fell softly on a thick carpet. There was no sort of luxury
+about the room; a single portrait hung over the mantelpiece, and
+there was no trace of ornament anywhere, except a big bowl of roses
+on a table.
+
+Here, with a low table beside him covered with books, and a little
+reading-desk pushed aside, I found Mr. ---- sitting. He was
+leaning forwards in his chair, and Maud was sitting opposite him.
+They appeared to be silent, but with the natural silence that comes
+of reflection, not the silence of embarrassment. Maud, I could see,
+was strangely moved. He rose up to greet me, a tall, thin figure,
+dressed in a rough grey suit. There was little sign of physical
+ill-health about him. He had a shock of thick, strong hair,
+perfectly white. His face was that of a man who lived much in the
+open air, clear and ascetic of complexion. He was not at all what
+would be called handsome; he had rather heavy features, big, white
+eyebrows, and a white moustache. His manner was sedate and
+extremely unaffected, not hearty, but kindly, and he gave me a
+quick glance, out of his blue eyes, which seemed to take swift
+stock of me. "It is very kind of you to come and see me," he said
+in a measured tone. "Of course I ought to have paid my respects
+first, but I ventured to take the privilege of age; and moreover I
+am the obedient property of a very vigilant guardian, whose orders
+I implicitly obey--'Do this, and he doeth it.'" He smiled at his
+niece as he said it, and she said, "Yes, you would hardly believe
+how peremptory I can be; and I am going to show it by taking
+Mrs. ---- away, to show her the garden; and in twenty minutes
+I must take Mr. ---- away too, if he will be so kind as help me
+to sustain my authority."
+
+The old man sate down again, smiling, and pointed me to a chair.
+The other two left us; and there followed what was to me a very
+memorable conversation. "We must make the best use of our time, you
+see," he said, "though I hope that this will not be the last time
+we shall meet. You will confer a very great obligation on me, if
+you can sometimes come to see me--and perhaps we may get a walk
+together occasionally. So we won't waste our time in conventional
+remarks," he added; "I will only say that I am heartily glad you
+have come to live here, and I am sure you will find it a beautiful
+place--you are wise enough to prefer the country to the town, I
+gather." Then he went on: "I have read all your books--I did not
+read them," he added with a smile, "that I might talk to you about
+them, but because they have interested me. May I say that each book
+has been stronger and better than the last, except in one case"--he
+mentioned the name of a book of mine--"in which you seemed to me to
+be republishing earlier work." "Yes," I said, "you are quite right;
+I was tempted by a publisher and I fell." "Well," he said, "the
+book was a good one--and there is something that we lose as we grow
+older, a sort of youthfulness, a courageous indiscretion, a
+beautiful freedom of thought; but we can't have everything, and
+one's books must take their appropriate colours from the mind. May
+I say that I think your books have grown more and more mature,
+tolerant, artistic, wise?--and the last was simply admirable. It
+entirely engrossed me, and for a blessed day or two I lived in your
+mind, and saw out of your eyes. I am sure it was a great book--a
+noble and a large-hearted book, full of insight and faith--the
+best kind of book." I murmured something; and he said, "You may
+think it is arrogant of me to speak like this; but I have lived
+among books, and I am sure that I have a critical gift, mainly
+because I have no power of expression. You know the best kind of
+critics are the men who have tried to write books, and have failed,
+as long as their failure does not make them envious and ungenerous;
+I have failed many times, but I think I admire good work all the
+more for that. You are writing now?" "No," I said, "I am writing
+nothing." "Well, I am sorry to hear it," he said, "and may I
+venture to ask why?" "Simply because I cannot," I said; and now
+there came upon me a strange feeling, the same sort of feeling that
+one has in answering the questions of a great and compassionate
+physician, who assumes the responsibility of one's case. Not only
+did I not resent these questions, as I should often have resented
+them, but it seemed to give me a sense of luxury and security to
+give an account of myself to this wise and unaffected old man. He
+bent his brows upon me: "You have had a great sorrow lately?" he
+said. "Yes," I said, "we have lost our only boy, nine years old."
+"Ah," he said, "a sore stroke, a sore stroke!" and there was a deep
+tenderness in his voice that made me feel that I should have liked
+to kneel down before him, and weep at his knee, with his hand laid
+in blessing on my head. We sate in silence for a few moments. "Is
+it this that has stopped your writing?" he said. "No," I said, "the
+power had gone from me before--I could not originate, I could only
+do the same sort of work, and of weaker quality than before."
+"Well," he said, "I don't wonder; the last book must have been a
+great strain, though I am sure you were happy when you wrote it. I
+remember a friend of mine, a great Alpine climber, who did a
+marvellous feat of climbing some unapproachable peak--without any
+sense of fatigue, he told me, all pure enjoyment--but he had a
+heart-attack the next day, and paid the penalty of his enjoyment.
+He could not climb for some years after that." "Yes," I said, "I
+think that has been my case--but my fear is that if I lose the
+habit--and I seem to have lost it--I shall never be able to take it
+up again." "No, you need not fear that," he replied; "if something
+is given you to say, you will be able to say it, and say it better
+than ever--but no doubt you feel very much lost without it. How do
+you fill the time?" "I hardly know," I said, "not very profitably--
+I read, I teach my daughter, I muddle along." "Well," he said,
+smiling, "the hours in which we muddle along are not our worst
+hours. You believe in God?" The suddenness of this question
+surprised me. "Yes," I said, "I believe in God. I cannot
+disbelieve. Something has placed me where I am, something urges me
+along; there is a will behind me, I am sure of that. But I do not
+know whether that will is just or unjust, kind or unkind,
+benevolent or indifferent. I have had much happiness and great
+prosperity, but I have had to bear also things which are
+inconceivably repugnant to me, things which seem almost satanically
+adapted to hurt and wound me in my tenderest and innermost
+feelings, trials which seem to be concocted with an almost infernal
+appropriateness, not things which I could hope to bear with courage
+and faith, but things which I can only endure with rebellious
+resistance." "Yes," he said, "I understand you perfectly; but does
+not their very appropriateness, the satanical ingenuity of which
+you speak, help you to feel that they are not fortuitous, but sent
+deliberately to you yourself and to none other?" "Yes," I said, "I
+see that; but how can I believe in the justice of a discipline
+which I could not inflict, I will not say upon a dearly loved
+child, but upon the most relentless and stubborn foe." "Ah," said
+he, "now I see your heart bare, the very palpitating beat of the
+blood. Do you think you are alone in this? Let me tell you my own
+story. Over fifty years ago I left Oxford with, I really think I
+may say, almost everything before me--everything, that is, which is
+open to an instinctively cheerful, temperate, capable, active man--
+I was not rich, but I could afford to wait to earn money. I was
+sociable and popular; I was endowed with an immense appetite for
+variety of experience; I don't think that there was anything which
+appeared to me to be uninteresting. But I could persevere too, I
+could stick to work, I had taken a good degree. Then an accidental
+fall off a chair, on which I was standing to get a book, laid me on
+my back for a time. I fretted over it at first, but when I got
+about again, I found that I was a man maimed for life. I don't know
+what the injury was--some obscure lesion of the spinal marrow or
+brain, I believe--some flaw about the size of a pin's head--the
+doctors have never made out. But every time that I plunged into
+work, I broke down; for a long time I thought I should struggle
+through; but at last I became aware that I was on the shelf, with
+other cracked jars, for life--I can't tell you what I went through,
+what agonies of despair and rebellion. I thought that at least
+literature was left me. I had always been fond of books, and was a
+good scholar, as it is called; but I soon became aware that I had
+no gift of expression, and moreover that I could not hope to
+acquire it, because any concentrated effort threw me into illness.
+I was an ambitious fellow, and success was closed to me--I could
+not even hope to be useful. I tried several things, but always with
+the same result; and at last I fell into absolute despair, and just
+lived on, praying daily and even hourly that I might die. But I did
+not die, and then at last it dawned upon me, like a lightening
+sunrise, that THIS was life for me; this was my problem, these my
+limitations; that I was to make the best I could out of a dulled
+and shattered life; that I was to learn to be happy, even useful,
+in spite of it--that just as other people were given activity,
+practical energy, success, to learn from them the right balance,
+the true proportion of life, and not to be submerged and absorbed
+in them, so to me was given a simpler problem still, to have all
+the temptations of activity removed--temptations to which with my
+zest for experience I might have fallen an easy victim--and to keep
+my courage high, my spirit pure and expectant, if I could, waiting
+upon God. This little estate fell to me soon afterwards, and I soon
+saw what a tender gift it was, because it gave me a home; every
+other source of interest and pleasure was removed, because the
+simplest visits, the wildest distractions were too much for me--the
+jarring of any kind of vehicle upset me. By what slow degrees I
+attained happiness I can hardly say. But now, looking back, I see
+this--that whereas others have to learn by hard experience, that
+detachment, self-purification, self-control are the only conditions
+of happiness on earth, I was detached, purified, controlled by God
+Himself. I was detached, because my life was utterly precarious, I
+was taught purification and control, because whereas more robust
+people can defer and even defy the penalties of luxury, comfort,
+gross desires, material pleasures, I was forced, every day and
+hour, to deny myself the smallest freedom--I was made ascetic by
+necessity. Then came a greater happiness still; for years I was
+lost in a sort of individualistic self-absorption, with no thoughts
+of anything but God and His concern with myself--often hopeful and
+beautiful enough--when I found myself drawn into nearer and dearer
+relationships with those around me. That came through my niece,
+whom I adopted as an orphan child, and who is one of those people
+who live naturally and instinctively in the lives of other people.
+I got to know all the inhabitants of this little place--simple
+country people, you will say--but as interesting, as complex in
+emotion and intellect, as any other circle in the world. The only
+reason why one ever thinks people dull and limited, is because one
+does not know them; if one talks directly and frankly to people,
+one passes through the closed doors at once. Looking back, I can
+see that I have been used by God, not with mere compassion and
+careless tenderness, but with an intent, exacting, momentary love,
+of an almost awful intensity and intimacy. It is the same with all
+of us, if we can only see it. Our faults, our weaknesses, our
+qualities good or bad, are all bestowed with an anxious and
+deliberate care. The reason why some of us make shipwreck--and even
+that is mercifully and lovingly dispensed to us--is because we will
+not throw ourselves on the side of God at every moment. Every time
+that the voice says 'Do this,' or 'Leave that undone,' and we reply
+fretfully, 'Ah, but I have arranged otherwise,' we take a step
+backwards. He knocks daily, hourly, momently, at the door, and when
+we have once opened, and He is entered, we have no desire again but
+to do His will to the uttermost." He was silent for a moment, his
+eyes in-dwelling upon some secret thought; then he said,
+"Everything about you, your books, your dear wife, your words, your
+face, tell me that you are very near indeed to the way--a step or
+two, and you are free!" He sate back for a moment, as though
+exhausted, and then said: "You will forgive me for speaking so
+frankly, but I feel from hour to hour how short my time may be; and
+I had no doubt when I saw you, even before I saw you, that I should
+have some message to give you, some tidings of hope and patience."
+
+I despair, as I write, of giving any idea of the impressiveness of
+the old man; now that I have written down his talk, it seems abrupt
+and even strained. It was neither. The perfect naturalness and
+tranquillity of it all, the fatherly smile, the little gestures of
+his frail hand, interpreted and filled up the gaps, till I felt as
+though I had known him all my life, and that he was to me as a dear
+father, who saw my needs, and even loved me for what I was not and
+for what I might be.
+
+At this point Miss ---- came in, and led me away. As Maud and I
+walked back, we spoke to each other of what we had seen and heard.
+He had talked to her, she said, very simply about Alec. "I don't
+know how it was," she added, "but I found myself telling him
+everything that was in my mind and heart, and it seemed as though
+he knew it all before." "Yes, indeed," I said, "he made me desire
+with all my heart to be different--and yet that is not true either,
+because he made me wish not to be something outside of myself, but
+something inside, something that was there all the time: I seem
+never to have suspected what religion was before; it had always
+seemed to me a thing that one put on and wore, like a garment; but
+now it seems to me to be the most natural, simple, and beautiful
+thing in the world; to consist in being oneself, in fact." "Yes,
+that is exactly it," said Maud, "I could not have put it into
+words, but that is how I feel." "Yes," I said, "I saw, in a flash,
+that life is not a series of things that happen to us, but our very
+selves. It is not a question of obeying, and doing, and acting, but
+a question of being. Well, it has been a wonderful experience; and
+yet he told me nothing that I did not know. God in us, not God with
+us." And presently I added: "If I were never to see Mr. ---- again,
+I should feel he had somehow done more for me than a hundred
+conversations and a thousand books. It was like the falling of the
+spirit at Pentecost."
+
+That strange sense of an uplifted freedom, of willing co-operation
+has dwelt with me, with us both, for many days. I dare not say that
+life has become easy; that the cloud has rolled away; that there
+have not been hours of dismay and dreariness and sorrow. But it is,
+I am sure, a turning-point of my life; the way which has led me
+downwards, deepening and darkening, seems to have reached its
+lowest point, and to be ascending from the gloom; and all from the
+words of a simple, frail old man, sitting among his books in a
+panelled parlour, in a soft, summer afternoon.
+
+
+
+July 10, 1890.
+
+
+I have been sitting out, this hot, still afternoon, upon the lawn,
+under the shade of an old lime-tree, with its sweet scent coming
+and going in wafts, with the ceaseless murmur of the bees all about
+it; but for that slumberous sound, the place was utterly still; the
+sun lay warm on the old house, on the box hedges of the garden, on
+the rich foliage of the orchard. I have been lost in a strange
+dream of peace and thankfulness, only wishing the sweet hours could
+stay their course, and abide with me thus for ever. Part of the
+time Maggie sate with me, reading. We were both silent, but glad to
+be together; every now and then she looked up and smiled at me. I
+was not even visited by the sense that used to haunt me, that I
+must bestir myself, do something, think of something. It is not
+that I am less active than formerly; it is the reverse. I do a
+number of little things here, trifling things they would seem, not
+worth mentioning, mostly connected with the village or the parish.
+My writing has retired far into the past, like a sort of dream. I
+never even plan to begin again. I teach a little, not Maggie only,
+but some boys and girls of the place, who have left school, but are
+glad to be taught in the evenings. I have plenty of good easy
+friends here, and have the blessed sense of feeling myself wanted.
+Best of all, a sense of poisonous hurry seems to have gone out of
+my life. In the old days I was always stretching on to something,
+the end of my book, the next book--never content with the present,
+always hoping that the future would bring me the satisfaction I
+seemed to miss. I did not always know it at the time, for I was
+often happy when I was writing a book--but it was, at best, a
+rushing, tortured sort of happiness. My great sorrow--what has that
+become to me? A beautiful thing, full of patience and hope. What
+but that has taught me to learn to live for the moment, to take the
+bitter experiences of life as they come, not crushing out the
+sweetness and flinging the rind aside, but soberly, desirously,
+only eager to get from the moment what it is meant to bring. Even
+the very shrinking back from a bitter duty, the indolent rejection
+of the thought that touches one's elbow, bidding one again and
+again arise and go, means something; to defer one's pleasure, to
+break the languid dream, to take up the tiny task, what strength is
+there! Thus no burden seems too heavy, too awkward, too slippery,
+too ill-shaped, but one can lift it. The yoke is easy, because one
+bears it in quiet confidence, not overtaxing ability or straining
+hope. Instead of watching life, as from high castle windows,
+feeling it common and unclean, not to be mingled with, I am in it
+and of it. And what is become of all my old dreams of art, of the
+secluded worship, the lonely rapture! Well, it is all there,
+somehow, flowing inside life, like a stream that is added to a
+river, not like a leat drawn aside from the current. The force I
+spent on art has gone to swell life and augment it; it heightens
+perception, it intensifies joy--it was the fevered lust of
+expression that drained the vigour of my days and hours.
+
+But am I then satisfied with the part I play? Do I feel that my
+faculties are being used, that I am lending a hand to the great sum
+of toil? I used to feel that, or thought I felt it, in the old
+days, but now I see that I walked in a vain delusion, serving my
+own joy, my own self-importance. Not that I think my old toil all
+ill-spent; that was my work before, as surely as it is not now; but
+the old intentness, the old watching for tone and gesture, for
+action and situation, that has all shifted its gaze, and waits upon
+God. It may be, nay it is certain, that I have far to go, much to
+learn; but now that I may perhaps recover my strength, life spreads
+out into sunny shallows, moving slow and clear. It is like a soft
+sweet interlude between two movements of fire and glow; for I see
+now, what then I could not see, that something in my life was burnt
+and shrivelled up in my enforced silence and in my bitter loss--
+then, when I felt my energies at their lowest, when mind and bodily
+frame alike flapped loose, like a flag of smut upon the bars of a
+grate, I was living most intensely, and the soul's wings grew fast,
+unfolding plume and feather. It was then that life burnt with its
+fiercest heat, when it withdrew me, faintly struggling, away from
+all that pleased and caressed the mind and the body, into the
+silent glow of the furnace. Strange that I should not have
+perceived it! But now I see in all maimed and broken lives, the
+lives that seem most idle and helpless, most futile and vain, that
+the same fierce flame is burning bright about them; that the reason
+why they cannot spread and flourish, like flowers, into the free
+air, is because the strong roots are piercing deep, entwining
+themselves firmly among the stones, piercing the cold silent
+crevices of the earth. Ay, indeed! The coal in the furnace, burning
+passively and hotly, is as much a force, though it but lies and
+suffers, as the energy that throbs in the leaping piston-rod or the
+rushing wheel. Not in success and noise and triumph does the soul
+grow; when the body rejoices, when the mind is prodigal of seed,
+the spirit sits within in a darkened chamber, like a folded
+chrysalis, stiff as a corpse, in a faint dream. But when triumphs
+have no savour, when the cheek grows pale and the eye darkens, then
+the dark chrysalis opens, and the rainbow wings begin to spread and
+glow, uncrumpling to the suns of paradise. My soul has taken wings,
+and sits poised and delicate, faint with long travail, perhaps to
+hover awhile about the garden blooms and the chalices of honied
+flowers, perhaps to take her flight beyond the glade, over the
+forest, to the home of her desirous heart. I know not! Yet in these
+sunlit hours, with the slow, strong pulse of life beating round me,
+it seems that something is preparing for one struck dumb and
+crushed with sorrow to the earth. How soft a thrill of hope throbs
+in the summer air! How the bird-voices in the thicket, and the
+rustle of burnished leaves, and the hum of insects, blend into a
+secret harmony, a cadence half-heard! I wait in love and
+confidence; and through the trees of the garden One seems ever to
+draw nearer, walking in the cool of the day, at whose bright coming
+the flowers look upwards unashamed. Shall I be bidden to meet Him!
+Will He call me loud or low?
+
+
+
+August 25, 1890.
+
+
+Maud has been ailing of late--how much it is impossible to say,
+because she is always cheerful and indomitable. She never
+complains, she never neglects a duty; but I have found her, several
+times of late, sitting alone, unoccupied, musing--that is unlike
+her--and with a certain shadow upon her face that I do not
+recognise; but the strange, new, sweet companionship in which we
+live seems at the same time to have heightened and deepened. I seem
+to have lived so close to her all these years, and yet of late to
+have found a new and different personality in her, which I never
+suspected. Perhaps we have both changed somewhat; I do not feel the
+difference in myself. But there is something larger, stronger,
+deeper about Maud now, as if she had ascended into a purer air, and
+caught sight of some unexpected, undreamed-of distance; but instead
+of giving her remoteness, she seems to be sharing her wider outlook
+with me; she was never a great talker--perhaps it was that in old
+days my own mind ran like an ebullient fountain, evoking no
+definite response, needing no interchange; but she was always a
+sayer of penetrating things. She has a wonderful gift of seeing the
+firm issue through a cloud of mixed suggestions; but of late there
+has been a richness, a generosity, a wisdom about her which I have
+never recognised before. I think, with contrition, that I under-
+estimated, not her judgment or instinct, but her intellect. I am
+sure I lived too much in the intellectual region, and did not guess
+how little it really solves, in what a limited region it disports
+itself. I see that this wisdom was hers all along, and that I have
+been blind to it; but now that I have travelled out of the
+intellectual region, I perceive what a much greater thing that
+further wisdom is than I had thought. Living in art and for art, I
+used to believe that the intellectual structure was the one thing
+that mattered, but now I perceive dimly that the mind is but on the
+threshold of the soul, and that the artist may, nay does, often
+perceive, by virtue of his trained perception, what is going on in
+the sanctuary; but he is as one who kneels in a church at some
+great solemnity--he sees the movements and gestures of the priests;
+he sees the holy rite proceeding, he hears the sacred words;
+something of the inner spirit of it all flows out to him; but the
+viewless current of prayer, the fiery ray streaming down from God,
+that smites itself into the earthly symbol--all this is hidden from
+him. Those priests, intent upon the sacred work, feel something
+that they not only do not care to express, but which they would not
+if they could; it would be a profanation of the awful mystery. The
+artist is not profane in expressing what he perceives, because he
+can be the interpreter of the symbol to others more remote; but he
+is not a real partaker of the mystery; he is a seer of the word and
+not a doer. What now amazes me is that Maud, to whom the heart of
+the matter, the inner emotion, has always been so real, could fling
+herself, and all for love of me, into the outer work of
+intellectual expression. I have always, God forgive me, believed my
+work to be in some way superior to hers. I loved her truly, but
+with a certain condescension of mind, as one loves a child or a
+flower; and now I see that she has been serenely ahead of me all
+the time, and it has been she that has helped me along; I have been
+as the spoilt and wilful child, and she as the sweet and wise
+mother, who has listened to its prattle, and thrown herself, with
+all the infinite patience of love, into the tiny bounded dreams. I
+have told her all this as simply as I could, and though she
+deprecated it all generously and humbly, I feel the blessed sense
+of having caught her up upon the way, of seeing--how dimly and
+imperfectly!--what I have owed her all along. I am overwhelmed with
+a shame which it is a sweet pleasure to confess to her; and now
+that I can spare her a little, anticipate her wishes, save her
+trouble, it is an added joy; a service that I can render and which
+she loves to receive. I never thought of these things in the old
+days; she had always planned everything, arranged everything,
+forestalled everything.
+
+I have at last persuaded her to come up to town and see a doctor.
+We plan to go abroad for a time. I would earn the means if I could,
+but, if not, we will sacrifice a little of our capital, and I will
+replace it, if I can, by some hack-work; though I have a dislike of
+being paid for my name and reputation, and not for my best work.
+
+I am not exactly anxious; it is all so slight, what they call a
+want of tone, and she has been through so much; even so, my anxiety
+is conquered by the joy of being able to serve her a little; and
+that joy brings us together, hour by hour.
+
+
+
+September 6, 1890.
+
+
+Again the shadow comes down over my life. The doctor says plainly
+that Maud's heart is weak; but he adds that there is nothing
+organically wrong, though she must be content to live the life of
+an invalid for a time; he was reassuring and quiet; but I cannot
+keep a dread out of my mind, though Maud herself is more serene
+than she has been for a long time; she says that she was aware that
+she was somehow overtaxing herself, and it is a comfort to be
+bidden, in so many words, to abstain a little. We are to live
+quietly at home for a while, until she is stronger, and then we
+shall go abroad.
+
+Maud does not come down in the mornings now, and she is forbidden
+to do more than take the shortest stroll. I read to her a good deal
+in the mornings; Maggie has proudly assumed the functions of
+housekeeper; the womanly instinct for these things is astonishing.
+A man would far sooner not have things comfortable, than have the
+trouble of providing them and seeing about them. Women do not care
+about comforts for themselves; they prefer haphazard meals, trays
+brought into rooms, vague arrangements; and yet they seem to know
+by instinct what a man likes, even though he does not express it,
+and though he would not take any trouble to secure it. What
+centuries of trained instincts must have gone to produce this. The
+new order has given me a great deal more of Maggie's society. We
+are sent out in the afternoon, because Maud likes to be quite alone
+to receive the neighbours, small and great, that come to see her,
+now that she cannot go to see them. She tells me frankly that my
+presence only embarrasses them. And thus another joy has come to
+me, one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to me
+in my life, and which I can hardly find words to express--the
+contact with, the free sight of the mind and soul of an absolutely
+pure, simple and ingenuous girl. Maggie's mind has opened like a
+flower. She talks to me with perfect openness of all she feels and
+thinks; to walk thus, hour by hour, with my child's arm through my
+own, her wide-opened, beautiful eyes looking in mine, her light
+step beside me, with all her pretty caressing ways--it seems to me
+a taste of the purest and sweetest love I have ever felt. It is
+like the rapture of a lover, but without any shadow of the desirous
+element that mingles so fiercely and thirstily with our mortal
+loves, to find myself dear to her. I have a poignant hunger of the
+heart to save her from any touch of pain, to smooth her path for
+her, to surround her with beauty and sweetness. I did not guess
+that the world held any love quite like this; there seems no touch
+of selfishness about it; my love lavishes itself, asking for
+nothing in return, except that I may be dear to her as she to me.
+
+Her fancies, her hopes, her dreams--how inexplicable, how adorable!
+She said to me to-day that she could never marry, and that it was a
+real pity that she could not have children of her own without. "We
+don't want any one else, do we, except just some little children to
+amuse us." She is a highly imaginative child, and one of our
+amusements is to tell each other long, interminable tales of the
+adventures of a family we call the Pickfords. I have lost all count
+of their names and ages, their comings and goings; but Maggie never
+makes a mistake about them, and they seem to her like real people;
+and when I sometimes plunge them into disaster, she is so deeply
+affected that the disasters have all to be softly repaired. The
+Pickfords must have had a very happy life; the kind of life that
+people created and watched over by a tender, patient and detailed
+Providence might live. How different from the real world!
+
+But I don't want Maggie to live in the real world yet awhile. It
+will all come pouring in upon her, sorrow, anxiety, weariness, no
+doubt--alas that it should be so! Perhaps some people would blame
+me, would say that more discipline would be bracing, wholesome,
+preparatory. But I don't believe that. I had far rather that she
+learnt that life was tender, gentle and sweet--and then if she has
+to face trouble, she will have the strength of feeling that the
+tenderness, gentleness and sweetness are the real stuff of life,
+waiting for her behind the cloud. I don't want to. disillusion her;
+I want to establish her faith in happiness and love, so that it
+cannot be shaken. That is a better philosophy, when all is said and
+done, than the stoical fortitude that anticipates dreariness, that
+draws the shadow over the sun, that overvalues endurance. One
+endures by instinct; but one must be trained to love.
+
+
+
+February 6, 1891.
+
+
+It is months since I have opened this book; it has lain on my table
+all through the dreadful hours--I write the word down
+conventionally, and yet it is not the right word at all, because I
+have merely been stunned and numbed. I simply could not suffer any
+more. I smiled to myself, as the man in the story, who was broken
+on the wheel, smiled when they struck the second and the third
+blow. I knew why he smiled; it was because he had dreaded it so
+much, and when it came there was nothing to dread, because he
+simply did not feel it.
+
+To-night I just pick up idly the dropped thread. Perhaps it is a
+sign, this faint desire to make a little record, of the first
+tingling of returning life. Something stirs in me, and I will not
+resist it; it may be read by some one that comes after me, by some
+one perhaps who feels that his own grief is supreme and unique, and
+that no one has ever suffered so before. He may learn that there
+have been others in the dark valley before him, that the mist is
+full of pilgrims stumbling on, falling, rising again, falling
+again, lying stupefied in a silence which is neither endurance nor
+patience.
+
+Maud was taken from me first; she went without a word or a sign.
+She was better that day, she declared, than she had felt for some
+time; she was on the upward grade. She walked a few hundred yards
+with Maggie and myself, and then she went back; the last sight I
+had of her alive was when she stood at the corner and waved her
+hand to us as we went out of sight. I am glad I looked round and
+saw her smile. I had not the smallest or faintest premonition of
+what was coming; indeed, I was lighter of mood than I had been for
+some time. We came in; we were told that she was tired and had gone
+up to lie down. As she did not come down to tea, I went up and
+found her lying on her bed, her head upon her hand--dead. The
+absolute peace and stillness of her attitude showed us that she had
+herself felt no access of pain. She had lain down to rest, and she
+had rested indeed. Even at my worst and loneliest, I have been able
+to be glad that it was even so. If I could know that I should die
+thus in joy and tranquillity, it would be a great load off my mind.
+
+But the grief, the shock to Maggie was too much for my dear, love-
+nurtured child. A sort of awful and desperate strength came on me
+after that; I felt somehow, day by day, that I must just put away
+my own grief till a quiet hour, in order that I might sustain and
+guard the child; but her heart was broken, I think, though they say
+that no one dies of sorrow. She lay long ill--so utterly frail, so
+appealing in her grief, that I could think of nothing but saving
+her. Was it a kind of selfishness that needed to be broken down in
+me? Perhaps it was! Every single tendril of my heart seemed to grow
+round the child and clasp her close; she was all that I had left,
+and in some strange way she seemed to be all that I had lost too.
+And then she faded out of life, not knowing that she was fading,
+but simply too tired to live; and my desire alone seemed to keep
+her with me. Till at last, seeing her weariness and weakness, I let
+my desire go; I yielded, I gave her to God, and He took her, as
+though He had waited for my consent.
+
+And now that I am alone, I will say, with such honesty as I can
+muster, that I have no touch of self-pity, no rebellion. It is all
+too deep and dark for that. I am not strong enough even to wish to
+die; I have no wishes, no desires at all. The three seem for ever
+about me, in my thoughts and in my dreams. When Alec died, I used
+to wake up to the fact, day after day, with a trembling dismay. Now
+it is not like that. I can give no account of what I do. The
+smallest things about me seem to take up my mind. I can sit for an
+hour by the hearth, neither reading nor thinking, just watching the
+flame flicker over the coals, or the red heart of the fire eating
+its way upwards and outwards. I can sit on a sunshiny morning in
+the garden, merely watching with a strange intentness what goes on
+about me, the uncrumpling leaf, the snowdrop pushing from the
+mould, the thrush searching the lawn, the robin slipping from bough
+to bough, the shapes of the clouds, the dying ray. I seem to have
+no motive either to live or to die. I retrace in memory my walks
+with Maggie, I can see her floating hair, and how she leaned to me;
+I can sit, as I used to sit reading. by Maud's side, and see her
+face changing as the book's mood changed, her clear eye, her strong
+delicate hands. I seem as if I had awaked from a long and beautiful
+dream. People sometimes come and see me, and I can see the pity in
+their faces and voices; I can see it in the anxious care with which
+my good servants surround me; but I feel that it is half
+disingenuous in me to accept it, because I need no pity. Perhaps
+there is something left for me to do in the world: there seems no
+reason otherwise why I should linger here.
+
+Mr. ---- has been very good to me; I have seen him almost daily. He
+seems the only person who perfectly understands. He has hardly said
+a word to me about my sorrow. He said once that he should not speak
+of it; before, he said, I was like a boy learning a lesson with the
+help of another boy, but that now I was being taught by the Master
+Himself. That may be so; but the Master has a very scared and dull
+pupil, alas, who cannot even discern the letters. I care nothing
+whether God be pleased or displeased; I bear His will, without
+either pain or resistance. I simply feel as if there had been some
+vast and overwhelming mistake somewhere; a mistake so incredible
+and inconceivable that nothing else mattered; as if--I do not speak
+profanely--God Himself were appalled at what He had done, and dared
+not smite further one whom He had stunned into silence and apathy.
+
+With Mr. ---- I talk; he talks of simple, quiet things, of old
+books and thoughts. He tells me, sometimes, when I am too weary to
+speak, long, beautiful, quiet stories of his younger days, and I
+listen like a child to his grave voice, only sorry when it comes to
+an end. So the days pass, and I will not say I have no pleasure in
+them, because I have won back a sort of odd childish pleasure in
+small incidents, sights, and sounds. The part of me that can feel
+seems to have been simply cut gently away, and I live in the hour,
+just glad when the sun is out, sorry when it is dull and cheerless.
+
+I read the other day one of my old books, and I could not believe
+it was mine. It seemed like the voice of some one I had once known
+long ago, in a golden hour. I was amused and surprised at my own
+quickness and inventiveness, at the confidence with which I
+interpreted everything so glibly and easily. I cannot interpret any
+more, and I do not seem to desire to do so. I seem to wait, with a
+half-amused smile, to see if God can make anything out of the
+strange tangle of things, as a child peers in within a scaffolding,
+and sees nothing but a forest of poles, little rising walls of
+chambers, a crane swinging weights to and fro. What can ever come,
+he thinks, out of such strange confusion, such fruitless hurry?
+
+Well, I will not write any more; a sense of weariness and futility
+comes over me. I will go back to my garden to see what I can see,
+only dumbly and mutely thankful that it is not required of me to
+perform any dull and monotonous task, which would interrupt my idle
+dreams.
+
+
+
+February 8, 1891.
+
+
+I tried this morning to look through some of the old letters and
+papers in Maud's cabinet. There were my own letters, carefully tied
+up with a ribbon; letters from her mother and father; from the
+children when we were away from them. I began to read, and was
+seized with a sharp, unreasoning pain, surprised by sudden tears. I
+seemed dumbly to resent this, and I put them all away again. Why
+should I disturb myself to no purpose? "There shall be no more
+sorrow nor crying, for the former things are passed away"--so runs
+the old verse, and I had almost grown to feel like that. Why
+distrust it? Yet I could not forbear. I got the papers out again,
+and read late into the night, like one reading an old and beautiful
+story. Suddenly the curtain lifted, and I saw myself alone, I saw
+what I had lost. The ineffectual agony I endured, crying out for
+very loneliness! "That was all mine," said the melting heart, so
+long frozen and dumb. Grief, in waves and billows, began to beat
+upon me like breakers on a rock-bound shore. A strange fever of the
+spirit came on me, scenes and figures out of the years floating
+fiercely and boldly past me. Was my strength and life sustained for
+this, that I should just sleep awhile, and wake to fall into the
+pit of suffering, far deeper than before?
+
+If they could but come back to me for a moment; if I could feel
+Maud's cheek by mine, or Maggie's arms round my neck; if they could
+but stand by me smiling, in robes of light! Yet as in a vision I
+seem to see them leaning from a window, in a blank castle-wall
+rising from a misty abyss, scanning a little stairway that rises
+out of the clinging fog, built up through the rocks and ending in a
+postern gate in the castle-wall. Upon that stairway, one by one
+emerging from the mist, seem to stagger and climb the figures of
+men, entering in, one by one, and the three, with smiles and arms
+interlaced, are watching eagerly. Cannot I climb the stair? Perhaps
+even now I am close below them, where the mist hangs damp on rock
+and blade? Cannot I set myself free? No, I could not look them in
+the face, they would hide their eyes from me, if I came in hurried
+flight, in passionate cowardice. Not so must I come before them, if
+indeed they wait for me.
+
+The morning was coming in about the dewy garden, the birds piping
+faint in thicket and bush, when I stumbled slowly, dizzied and
+helpless, to my bed. Then a troubled sleep; and ah, the bitter
+waking; for at last I knew what I had lost.
+
+
+
+February 10, 1891.
+
+
+"All things become plain to us," said the good vicar, pulling on
+his gloves, "when we once realise that God is love--Perfect Love!"
+He said good-bye; he trudged off to his tea, a trying visit
+manfully accomplished, leaving me alone.
+
+He had sate with me, good, kindly man, for twenty minutes. There
+were tears in his eyes, and I valued that little sign of human
+fellowship more than all the commonplaces he courageously
+enunciated. He talked in a soft, low tone, as if I was ill. He made
+no allusions to mundane things; and I am grateful to him for
+coming. He had dreaded his call, I am sure, and he had done it from
+a mixture of affection and duty, both good things.
+
+"Perfect Love, yes--if we could feel that!" I sate musing in my
+chair.
+
+I saw, as in a picture, a child brought up in a beautiful and
+stately house by a grave strong man, who lavished at first love and
+tenderness, ease and beauty, on the child, laughing with him, and
+making much of him; all of which the child took unconsciously,
+unthinkingly, knowing nothing different; running to meet his
+guardian, glad to be with him, sorry to leave him.
+
+Then I saw in my parable that one day, when the child played in the
+garden, as he had often played before, he noticed a little green
+alley, with a pleasant arch of foliage, that he had never seen
+before, leading to some secluded place. The child was dimly aware
+that there were parts of the garden where he was supposed not to
+go; he had been told he must not go too far from the house, but it
+was all vague and indistinct in his mind; he had never been shown
+anything precisely, or told the limits of his wanderings. So he
+went in joy, with a sense of a sweet mystery, down the alley, and
+presently found himself in a still brighter and more beautiful
+garden, full of fruits growing on the ground and on the trees,
+which he plucked and ate. There was a building, like a pavilion, at
+the end, of two storeys; and while he wandered thither with his
+hands full of fruits, he suddenly saw his guardian watching him,
+with a look he had never seen on his face before, from the upper
+windows of the garden-house. His first impulse was to run to him,
+share his joy with him, and ask him why he had not been shown the
+delicious place; but the fixed and inscrutable look on his
+guardian's face, neither smiling nor frowning, the stillness of his
+attitude, first chilled the child and then dismayed him; he flung
+the fruits on the ground and shivered, and then ran out of the
+garden. In the evening, when he was with his guardian, he found him
+as kind and tender as ever. But his guardian said nothing to him
+about the inner garden of fruits, and the child feared to ask him.
+
+But the next day he felt as though the fruits had given him a new
+eagerness, a new strength; he hankered after them long, and at last
+went down the green path again; this time the summer-house seemed
+empty. So he ate his fill, and this he did for many days. Then one
+day, when he was bending down to pluck a golden fruit, that lay
+gem-like on the ground among green leaves, he heard a sudden step
+behind him, and turning, saw his guardian draw swiftly near, with a
+look of anger on his face; the next instant he was struck down,
+again and again; lifted from the ground at last, as in a passion of
+rage, and flung down bleeding on the earth; and then, without a
+word, his guardian left him; at first he lay and moaned, but then
+he crawled away, and back to the house. And there he found the old
+nurse that tended him, who greeted him with tears and words of
+comfort, and cared for his hurts. And he asked her the reason of
+his hard usage, but she could tell him nothing, only saying that it
+was the master's will, and that he sometimes did thus, though she
+thought he was merciful at heart.
+
+The child lay sick many days, his guardian still coming to him and
+sitting with him, with gentle talk and tender offices, till the
+scene in the garden was like an evil dream; but as his guardian
+spoke no word of displeasure to the child, the child still feared
+to ask him, and only strove to forget. And then at last he was well
+enough to go out a little; but a few days after--he avoided the
+inner garden now out of a sort of horror--he was sitting in the
+sun, near the house, feebly trying to amuse himself with one of his
+old games--how poor they seemed after the fruits of the inner
+paradise, how he hankered desirously after the further place, with
+its hot, sweet, fragrant scents, its rich juices!--when again his
+guardian came upon him in a sudden wrath, and struck him many
+times, dashing him down to the ground; and again he crept home, and
+lay long ill, and again his guardian was unwearyingly kind; but now
+a sort of horror of the man grew up in the mind of the child, and
+he feared that his strange anger might break out at any moment in a
+storm of blows.
+
+And at last he was well again; and had half forgotten, in the
+constant kindness, and even merriment, of his guardian, the horror
+of the two assaults. He was out and about again; he still shunned
+the paradise of fruits, but wearying of the accustomed pleasaunce,
+he went further and passed into the wood; how cool and mysterious
+it was among the great branching trees! the forest led him onwards;
+now the sun lay softly upon it, and a stream bickered through a
+glade, and now the path lay through thickets, which hid the further
+woodland from view; and now passing out into a more open space, he
+had a thrill of joy and excitement; there was a herd of strange
+living creatures grazing there, great deer with branching horns;
+they moved slowly forwards, cropping the grass, and the child was
+lost in wonder at the sight. Presently one of them stopped feeding,
+began to sniff the air, and then looking round, espied the child,
+and began slowly to approach him. The child had no terror of the
+great dappled stag, and held out his hand to him, when the great
+beast suddenly bent his head down, and was upon him with one bound,
+striking him with his horns, lifting him up, smiting him with his
+pointed hooves. Presently the child, in his terror and faintness,
+became aware that the beast had left him, and he began to drag
+himself, all bruised as he was, along the glade; then he suddenly
+saw his guardian approaching, and cried out to him, holding out his
+hands for help and comfort--and his guardian strode straight up to
+him, and, with the same fierce anger in his face, struck at him
+again and again, and spurned him with his feet. And then, when he
+left him, the child at last, with accesses of deadly faintness and
+pain, crept back home, to be again tended by the old nurse, who
+wept over him; and the child found that his guardian came to visit
+him, as kind and gentle as ever. And at last one day when he sate
+beside the child, holding his hand, stroking his hair, and telling
+him an old tale to comfort him, the child summoned up courage to
+ask him a question about the garden and the wood; but at the first
+word his guardian dropped his hand, and left him without a word.
+
+And then the child lay and mused with fierce and rebellious
+thoughts. He said to himself, "If my guardian had told me where I
+might not go; if he had said to me, 'in the inner garden are
+unwholesome fruits, and in the wood are savage beasts; and though I
+am strong and powerful, yet I have not strength to root up the
+poisonous plants and make the place a wilderness; and I cannot put
+a fence about it, or a fence about the wood, that no one should
+enter; but I warn you that you must not enter, and I entreat you
+for the love I bear you not to go thither,'" then the child thought
+that he would not have made question, but would have obeyed him
+willingly; and again he thought that, if he had indeed ventured in,
+and had eaten of the evil fruits, and been wounded by the savage
+stag, yet if his guardian had comforted him, and prayed him
+lovingly not to enter to his hurt, that then he would have loved
+his guardian more abundantly and carefully. And he thought too
+that, if his guardian had ever smitten him in wrath, and had then
+said to him with tears that it had grieved him bitterly to hurt
+him, but that thus and thus only could he learn the vileness of the
+place, then he would have not only forgiven the ill-usage, but
+would even have loved to endure it patiently. But what the child
+could not understand was that his guardian should now be tender and
+gracious, and at another time hard and cruel, explaining nothing to
+him. And thus the child said in himself, "I am in his power, and he
+must do his will upon me; but I neither trust nor love him, for I
+cannot see the reason of what he does; though if he would but tell
+me the reason, I could obey him and submit to him joyfully." These
+hard thoughts he nourished and fed upon; and his guardian came no
+more to him for good or for evil; and the child, much broken by his
+hard usage and his angry thoughts, crept about neglected and
+spiritless, with nothing but fear and dismay in his heart.
+
+So the imagination shaped itself in my mind, a parable of the sad,
+strange life of man.
+
+"Perfect Love!" If it were indeed that? Yet God does many things to
+His frail children, which if a man did, I could not believe him to
+be loving; though if He would but give us the assurance that it was
+all leading us to happiness, we could endure His fiercest stroke,
+His bitterest decree. But He smites us, and departs; He turns away
+in a rage, because we have broken a law that we knew not of. And
+again, when we seem most tranquil and blest, most inclined to trust
+Him utterly, He smites us down again without a word. I hope, I
+yearn to see that it all comes from some great and perfect will, a
+will with qualities of which what we know as mercy, justice, and
+love are but faint shadows--but that is hidden from me. We cannot
+escape, we must bear what God lays upon us. We may fling ourselves
+into bitter and dark rebellion; still He spares us or strikes us,
+gives us sorrow or delight. My one hope is to cooperate with Him,
+to accept the chastening joyfully and courageously. Then He takes
+from me joy, and courage alike, till I know not whom I serve, a
+Father or a tyrant. Can it indeed help us to doubt whether He be
+tyrant or no? Again I know not, and again I sicken in fruitless
+despair, like one caught in a great labyrinth of crags and
+precipices.
+
+
+
+February 14, 1891.
+
+
+Then the Christian teacher says: "God has given you a will, an
+independent will to act and choose; put it in unison with His
+will." Alas, I know not how much of my seeming liberty is His or
+mine. He seems to make me able to exert my will in some directions,
+able to make it effective; and yet in other matters, even though I
+see that a course is holy and beautiful, I have no power to follow
+it at all. I see men some more, some less hampered than myself.
+Some seem to have no desire for good, no dim perception of it. The
+outcast child, brought up cruelly and foully, with vile
+inheritances, he is not free, as I use the word; sometimes, by some
+inner purity and strength, he struggles upwards; most often he is
+engulfed; yet it is all a free gift, to me much, to another little,
+to some nothing at all. With all my heart do I wish my will to be
+in harmony with His. I yield it up utterly to Him. I have no
+strength or force, and He withholds them from me. I do not blame, I
+only ask to understand; He has given me understanding, and has put
+in my heart a high dream of justice and love; why will He not show
+me that He satisfies the dream? I say with the old Psalmist, "Lo, I
+come," but He comes not forth to meet me; He does not even seem to
+discern me when I am yet a long way off, as the father in the
+parable discerned his erring son.
+
+Then the Christian teacher says to me that all is revealed in
+Christ; that He reconciles, not an angry God to a wilful world, but
+a grieved and outraged world to a God who cannot show them He is
+love.
+
+Yet Christ said that God was all-merciful and all-loving, and that
+He ordered the very falling of a single hair of our heads. But if
+God ordered that, then He did not leave unordered the qualities of
+our hearts and wills, and our very sins are of His devising.
+
+No, it is all dark and desperate; I do not know, I cannot know; I
+shall stumble to my end in ignorance; sometimes glad when a gleam
+of sunshine falls on my wearied limbs, sometimes wrapping my
+garments around me in cold and drenching rain. I am in the hand of
+God; I know that; and I hope that I may dare to trust Him; but my
+confidence is shaken as He passes over me, as the reed in the river
+shakes in the wind.
+
+
+
+February 18, 1891.
+
+
+A still February day, with a warm, steady sun, which stole in and
+caressed me, enveloping me in light and warmth, as I sate reading
+this morning. If I could be ashamed of anything, I should be
+ashamed of the fact that my body has all day long surprised me by a
+sort of indolent contentment, repeating over and over that it is
+glad to be alive. The mind and soul crave for death and silence.
+Yet all the while my faithful and useful friend, the body, seems to
+croon a low song of delight. That is the worst of it, that I seem
+built for many years of life. Shall I learn to forget?
+
+I walked long and far among the fields, in the fresh, sun-warmed
+air. Ah! the sweet world! Everything was at its barest and
+austerest--the grass thin in the pastures, the copses leafless. But
+such a sense of hidden life everywhere! I stood long beside the
+gate to watch the new-born lambs, whose cries thrilled plaintively
+on the air, like the notes of a violin. Little black-faced grey
+creatures, on their high, stilt-like legs--a week or two old, and
+yet able to walk, to gambol, to rejoice, in their way, to reflect.
+The bleating mothers moved about, divided between a deep desire to
+eat, and the anxious care of their younglings. One of them stood
+over her sleeping lamb, stamping her feet, to dismay me, no doubt,
+while the little creature lay like a folded door-mat on the
+pasture. Another brutally repelled the advances of a strange lamb,
+butting it over whenever it drew near; another chewed the cud,
+while its lamb sucked, its eyes half closed in contented joy, just
+turning from time to time to sniff at the little creature pressed
+close to its side. I felt as if I had never seen the sight before,
+this wonderful and amazing drama of life, beginning again year
+after year, the same, yet not the same.
+
+The old shepherd came out with his crook, said a few words to me,
+and moved off, the ewes following him, the lambs skipping behind.
+"He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the
+waters of comfort." How perfectly beautiful and tender the image, a
+thing seen how many hundred years ago on the hills of Bethlehem,
+and touching the old heart just as it touches me to-day!
+
+And yet, alas, to me to-day the image seems to miss the one thing
+needful; how all the images of guide and guardian and shepherd fail
+when applied to God! For here the shepherd is but a little wiser, a
+little stronger than his flock. He sees their difficulties, he
+feels them himself. But with God, He is at once the Guide, and the
+Creator of the very dangers past which He would lead us. If we felt
+that God Himself were dismayed and sad in the presence of evils
+that He could not touch or remedy, we should turn to Him to help us
+as He best could. But while we feel that the very perplexities and
+sufferings come from His hand, how can we sincerely ask Him to
+guard us from things which He originates, or at least permits? Why
+should they be there at all, if His concern is to help us past
+them; or how can we think that He will lead us past them, when they
+are part of His wise and awful design?
+
+And thus one plunges again into the darkness. Can it indeed be that
+God, if He be all-embracing, all-loving, all-powerful, can create
+or allow to arise within Himself something that is not, Himself,
+alien to Him, hostile to Him? How can we believe in Him and trust
+Him, if this indeed be so?
+
+And yet, looking upon that little flock to-day, I did indeed feel
+the presence of a kind and fatherly heart, of something that
+grieved for my pain, and that laid a hand upon my shoulder, saying,
+"Son, endure for a little; be not so disquieted!"
+
+
+
+March 8, 1891.
+
+
+Something--far-off, faint, joyful--cried out suddenly in the depths
+of my spirit to-day. I felt--I can but express it by images, for it
+was too intangible for direct utterance--as a woman feels when her
+child's life quickens within her; as a traveller's heart leaps up
+when, lost among interminable hills, he is hailed by a friendly
+voice; as the river-water, thrust up into creeks and estuaries by
+the incoming tide, is suddenly freed by the ebb from that stealthy
+pressure, and flows gladly downwards; as the dark garden-ground may
+feel when the frozen soil melts under warm winds of spring, and the
+flower-roots begin to swell and shoot.
+
+Some such thrill it was that moved in the silence of the soul,
+showing that the darkness was alive.
+
+It came upon me as I walked among soft airs to-day. It was no
+bodily lightness that moved me, for I was unstrung, listless,
+indolent; but it was a sense that it was good to live, lonely and
+crushed as I was; that there was something waiting for me which
+deserved to be approached with a patient expectation--that life was
+enriched, rather than made desolate by my grief and losses; that I
+had treasure laid up in heaven. It came upon me as a fancy, but it
+was something better than that, that one or other of my dear ones
+had perhaps awaked in the other world, and had sent out a thought
+in search of me. I had often thought that if, when we are born into
+this world of ours, our first years are so dumb and unperceptive,
+it might be even so in the world beyond; that we are there allowed
+to rest a little, to sleep; and that has seemed to me to be perhaps
+the explanation why, in those first sad days of grief, when the
+mourner aches to have some communication with the vanished soul,
+and when the soul that has passed the bounds of life would be
+desiring too, one would think, to send some message back, why, I
+say, there is no voice nor hint nor sign. Perhaps the reason why
+our grief loses its sting after a season is that the soul we have
+loved does contrive to send some healing influence into the
+desolate heart.
+
+I know not; but as I stood upon the hill-top to-day at evening, the
+setting sun gilding the cloud-edges, and touching the horizon with
+a delicate misty azure, my spirit did indeed awake with a smile,
+with a murmured word of hope.
+
+If I, who have lost everything that can enrich and gladden life,
+can yet feel that inalienable residue of hope, which just turns the
+balance on the side of desiring still to live, it must be that life
+has something yet in store for me--I do not hope for love, I do
+not desire the old gift of expression again; but there is something
+to learn, to apprehend, to understand. I have learnt, I think, not
+to grasp at anything, not to clasp anything close to my heart; the
+dream of possession has fled from me; it will be enough if, as I
+learn the lesson, I can ease a few burdens and help frail feet
+along the road. Duty, pleasure, work--strange names which we give
+to life, perversely separating the strands of the woven thread,
+they hold no meaning for me now--I do not expect to be free from
+suffering or from grief; but I will no more distinguish them from
+other experiences saying, this is joyful, and I will take all I
+can, or this is sad, and I will fly from it. I will take life
+whole, not divide it into pieces and choose. My grief shall be like
+a silent chapel, lit with holy light, into which I shall often
+enter, and bend, not to frame mechanical prayers, but to submit
+myself to the still influence of the shrine. It is all my own now,
+a place into which no other curious eye can penetrate, a guarded
+sanctuary. My sorrow seems to have plucked me with a strong hand
+out of the swirling drift of cares, anxieties, ambitions, hopes;
+and I see now that I could not have rescued myself; that I should
+have gone on battling with the current, catching at the river
+wrack, in the hopes of saving something from the stream. Now I am
+face to face with God; He saves me from myself, He strips my ragged
+vesture from me and I stand naked as He made me, unashamed,
+nestling close to His heart.
+
+
+
+April 3, 1891.
+
+
+A truth which has come home to me of late with a growing intensity
+is that we are sent into the world for the sake of experience, not
+necessarily for the sake of immediate happiness. I feel that the
+mistake we most of us make is in reaching out after a sense of
+satisfaction; and even if we learn to do without that, we find it
+very difficult to do without the sense of conscious growth. I say
+again that what we need and profit by is experience, and sometimes
+that comes by suffering, helpless, dreary, apparently meaningless
+suffering. Yet when pain subsides, do we ever, does any one ever
+wish the suffering had not befallen us? I think not. We feel
+better, stronger, more pure, more serene for it. Sometimes we get
+experience by living what seems to be an uncongenial life. One
+cannot solve the problem of happiness by simply trying to turn out
+of one's life whatever is uncongenial. Life cannot be made into an
+Earthly Paradise, and it injures one's soul even to try. What we
+can turn out of our lives are the unfruitful, wasteful,
+conventional things; and one can follow what seems the true life,
+though one may mistake even that sometimes. One of the commonest
+mistakes nowadays is that so many people are haunted with a vague
+sense that they ought to DO GOOD, as they say. The best that most
+people can do is to perform their work and their obvious duties
+well and conscientiously.
+
+If we realise that experience is what we need, and not necessarily
+happiness or contentment, the whole value of life is altered. We
+see then that we can get as much or even more out of the futile
+hour when we are held back from our chosen delightful work, even
+out of the dreary or terrified hour, when the sense of some
+irrevocable neglect, some base surrender that has marred our life,
+sinks burning into the soul, as a hot ember sinks smoking into a
+carpet. Those are the hours of life when we move and climb; not the
+hours when we work, and eat, and laugh, and chat, and dine out with
+a sense of well-merited content.
+
+The value of life is not to be measured by length of days or
+success or tranquillity, but by the quality of our experience, and
+the degree in which we have profited by it. In the light of such a
+truth as this, art seems to fade away as just a pleasant amusement
+contrived by leisurely men for leisurely men.
+
+Then, further, one grows to feel that such easy happiness as comes
+to us may be little more than the sweetening of the bitter
+medicine, just enough to give us courage and heart to live on; that
+applies, of course, only to the commoner sorts of happiness, when
+one is busy and merry and self-satisfied. Some sorts of happiness,
+such as the best kind of affection, are parts of the larger
+experience.
+
+Then, if we take hold of such experience in the right way,
+welcoming it as far as possible, not resisting it or trying to
+beguile it or forget it, we can get to the end of our probation
+quicker; if, that is, we let the truth burn into us, instead of
+timidly shrinking away from it.
+
+This seems to me the essence of true religion; the people who cling
+very close to particular creeds and particular beliefs seem to me
+to lose robustness; it is like trying to go to heaven in a bath-
+chair! It retards rather than hastens the apprehension of the
+truth. Here lies, to my mind, the unreality of mystical books of
+devotion and piety, where one is instructed to practise a servile
+sort of abasement, and to beg forgiveness for all one's noblest
+efforts and aspirations. Neither can I believe that the mystical
+absorption, inculcated by such books, in the human personality, the
+human sufferings of Christ, is wholesome, or natural, or even
+Christian. I cannot imagine that Christ Himself ever recommended
+such a frame of mind for an instant. What we want is a much simpler
+sort of Christianity. If a man had gone to Christ and expressed a
+desire to follow Him, Christ, I believe, would have wanted to know
+whether he loved others, whether he hated sin, whether he trusted
+God. He would not have asked him to recite the articles of his
+belief, and still less have suggested a mystical and emotional sort
+of passion for His own Person. As least I cannot believe it, and I
+see nothing in the Gospels which would lead me to believe it.
+
+In any case this belief in our experience being sent us for our
+far-off ultimate benefit has helped me greatly of late, and will, I
+am sure, help me still more. I do not practise it as I should, but
+I believe with all my heart that the truth lies there.
+
+After all, the truth IS there; it matters little that we should
+know it; it is just so and not otherwise, and what we believe or do
+not believe about it, will not alter it; and that is a comfort too.
+
+
+
+April 24, 1891.
+
+
+After I had gone upstairs to bed last night, I found I had left a
+book downstairs which I was reading, and I went down again to
+recover it. I could not find any matches, and had some difficulty
+in getting hold of the book; it is humiliating to think how much
+one depends on sight.
+
+A whimsical idea struck me. Imagine a creature, highly intellectual,
+but without the power of sight, brought up in darkness, receiving
+impressions solely by hearing and touch. Suppose him introduced into
+a room such as mine, and endeavouring to form an impression of the
+kind of creature who inhabited it. Chairs, tables, even a musical
+instrument he could interpret; but what would he make of a
+writing-table and its apparatus? How would he guess at the use of a
+picture? Strangest of all, what would he think of books? He would
+find in my room hundreds of curious oblong objects, opening with a
+sort of hinge, and containing a series of laminae of paper, which he
+would discern by his delicacy of touch to be oddly and obscurely
+dinted. Yet he would probably never be able to frame a guess that
+such objects could be used for the communication of intellectual
+ideas. What would he suppose them to be?
+
+The thought expanded before me. What if we ourselves, in this world
+of ours, which seems to us so complete, may really be creatures
+lacking some further sense, which would make all our difficulties
+plain? We knock up against all sorts of unintelligible and
+inexplicable things, injustice, disease, pain, evil, of which we
+cannot divine the meaning or the use. Yet they are undoubtedly
+there! Perhaps it is only that we cannot discern the simplicity and
+the completeness of the heavenly house of which they are the
+furniture. Fanciful, of course; but I am inclined to think not
+wholly fanciful.
+
+
+
+May 10, 1891.
+
+
+The question is this: Is there a kind of peace, of tranquillity,
+attainable in this world, which is proof against all calamities,
+sufferings, sorrows, losses, doubts? Is it attainable for one like
+myself, who is sensitive, apprehensive, highly strung, at once
+confident and timid, alive to impressions, liable to swift changes
+of mood? Or is it a mere matter of mental, moral, and physical
+health, depending on some balance of qualities, which may or may
+not belong to a man, a balance which hundreds cannot attain to?
+
+By this peace, I do not mean a chilly indifference, or a stoical
+fortitude. I do not mean the religious peace, such as I see in some
+people, which consists in holding as a certainty a scheme of things
+which I believe to be either untrue or uncertain--and about which,
+at all events, no certainty is logically and rationally possible.
+
+The peace I mean is a frame of mind which a man would have, who
+loved passionately, who suffered acutely, who desired intensely,
+who feared greatly; and yet for whom, behind love and pain, desire
+and fear, there existed a sort of inner citadel, in which his soul
+was entrenched and impregnable.
+
+Such a security could not be a wholly rational thing, because
+reason cannot solve the enigmas with which we are confronted; but
+it must not be an irrational intuition either, because then it
+would be unattainable by a man of high intellectual gifts; and the
+peace that I speak of ought to be consistent with any and every
+constitution--physical, moral, mental. It must be consistent with
+physical weakness, with liability to strong temptations, with an
+incisive and penetrating intellectual quality; its essence would be
+a sort of vital faith, a unity of the individual heart with the
+heart of the world. It would rise like a rock above the sea, like a
+lighthouse, where a guarded flame would burn high and steady,
+however loudly the surges thundered below upon the reefs, however
+fiercely the spray was dashed against the glasses of the casements.
+
+If it is attainable, then it is worth while to do and to suffer
+anything to attain it; if it is not attainable, then the best thing
+is simply to be as insensible as possible, not to love, not to
+admire, not to desire; for all these emotions are channels along
+which the bitter streams of suffering can flow.
+
+Prudence bids one close these channels; meanwhile a fainter and
+remoter voice, with sweet and thrilling accents, seems to cry to
+one not to be afraid, urges one to fling open every avenue by which
+impassioned experiences, uplifting thoughts, noble hopes, unselfish
+desires, may flow into the soul.
+
+This peace I have seen, or dream that I have seen, in the faces and
+voices of certain gracious spirits whom I have known. It seemed to
+consist in an unbounded natural gratitude, a sweet simplicity, a
+childlike affectionateness, that recognised in suffering the joy of
+which it was the shadow, and in desperate catastrophes the hope
+that lay behind them.
+
+Such a peace must not be a surrender of anything, a feeble
+acquiescence; it must be a strong and eager energy, a thirst for
+experience, a large tolerance, a desire to be convinced, a resolute
+patience.
+
+It is this and no less that I ask of God.
+
+
+
+June 6, 1891.
+
+
+I had a beautiful walk to-day. I went a short way by train, and
+descending at a wayside station, found a little field-path, that
+led me past an old, high-gabled, mullioned farmhouse, with all the
+pleasant litter of country life about it. Then I passed along some
+low-lying meadows, deep in grass, where the birds sang sweetly,
+muffled in leaves. The fields there were all full of orchids,
+purple as wine, and the gold of buttercups floated on the top of
+the rich meadow-grass. Then I passed into a wood, and for a long
+time I walked in the green glooms of copses, in a forest stillness,
+only the tall trees rustling softly overhead, with doves cooing
+deep in the wood. Only once I passed a house, a little cottage of
+grey stone, in a clearing, with an air of settled peace about it,
+that reminded me of an old sweet book that I used to read as a
+child, Phantastes, full of the mysterious romance of deep forests
+and haunted glades. I was overshadowed that afternoon with a sense
+of the ineffectiveness, the loneliness of my life, walking in a
+vain shadow; but it melted out of my mind in the delicate beauty of
+the woodland, with its wild fragrances and cool airs, as when one
+chafes one's frozen hands before a leaping flame. They told me,
+those whispering groves, of the patient and tender love of the
+Father, and I drew very near His inmost heart in that gentle hour.
+The secret was to bear, to endure, not stoically nor stolidly, but
+with a quiet inclination of the will to sorrow and pain, that were
+not so bitter after all, when one abode faithfully in them. I
+became aware, as I walked, that my heart was with the future after
+all. The beautiful dead past, I could be grateful for it, and not
+desire that it were mine again. I felt as a man might feel who is
+making his way across a wide moor. "Surely," he says to himself,
+"the way lies here; this ridge, that dingle mark the track; it lies
+there by the rushy pool, and shows greener among the heather." So
+he says, persuading himself in vain that he has found the way; but
+at last the track, plain and unmistakable, lies before him, and he
+loses no more time in imaginings, but goes straight forward. It was
+my sorrow, after all, that had shown me that I was in the true
+path. I had tried, in the old days, to fancy that I was homeward
+bound; sometimes it was in the love of my dear ones, sometimes in
+the joy of art, sometimes in my chosen work; and yet I knew in my
+heart all the time that I was but a leisurely wanderer; but now at
+last the destined road was clear; I was no longer astray; I was no
+longer inventing duties and acts for myself, but I had in very
+truth a note of the way. It was not the path I should have chosen
+in my blindness and easiness. But there could no longer be any
+doubt about it. How the false ambitions, the comfortable schemes,
+the trivial hopes melted away for me in that serene certainty! What
+I had pursued before was the phantom of delight; and though I still
+desired delight, with all the passion of my poor frail nature, yet
+I saw that not thus could the real joy of God be won. It was no
+longer a question of hope and disappointment, of sin and
+punishment. It was something truer and stronger than that. The sin
+and the suffering alike had been the Will of God for me. I had
+never desired evil, though I had often fallen into it; but there
+was never a moment when, if I could, I would not have been pure and
+unselfish and strong. That was a blessed hour for me, when, in
+place of the old luxurious delight, there came, flooding my heart,
+an intense and passionate desire that I might accept with a loving
+confidence whatever God might send; my wearied body, my tired,
+anxious mind, were but a slender veil, rent and ruinous, that hung
+between God and my soul, through which I could discern the glory of
+His love.
+
+
+
+June 20, 1891.
+
+
+It was on a warm, bright summer afternoon that I woke to the sense
+both of what I had lost and what I had gained. I had wandered out
+into the country, for in those days I had a great desire to be
+alone. I stood long beside a stile in the pastures, a little
+village below me, and the gables and chimneys of an old farmhouse
+stood up over wide fields of young waving wheat. A cuckoo fluted in
+an elm close by, and at the sound there darted into my mind the
+memory, seen in an airy perspective, of innumerable happy and
+careless days, spent in years long past, with eager and light-
+hearted companions, in whose smiling eyes and caressing motions was
+reflected one's own secret happiness. How full the world seemed of
+sweet surprises then! To sit in an evening hour in some quiet,
+scented garden in the gathering dusk, with the sense of a delicious
+mystery flashing from the light movements, the pensive eyes, the
+curve of arm or cheek of one's companion, how beautiful that was!
+And yet how simple and natural it seemed. That was all over and
+gone, and a gulf seemed fixed between those days and these. And
+then there came first that sad and sweet regret, "the passion of
+the past," as Tennyson called it, that suddenly brimmed the eyes at
+the thought of the vanished days; and there followed an intense
+desire to live in it once again, to have made more of it, a
+rebellious longing to abandon oneself with a careless disregard to
+the old rapture.
+
+Then on that mood, rising like a star into the blue spaces of the
+evening, came the thought that the old days were not dead after
+all. That they were assuredly there, just as the future was there,
+a true part of oneself, ineffaceable, eternal. And hard on the
+heels of that came another and a deeper intuition still, that not
+in such delights did the secret really rest; what then was the
+secret? It was surely this: that one must advance, led onward like
+a tottering child by the strong arm of God. That the new knowledge
+of suffering and sorrow was as beautiful as the old, and more so,
+and that instead of repining over the vanished joys, one might
+continue to rejoice in them and even rejoice in having lost them,
+for I seemed to perceive that one's aim was not, after all, to be
+lively, and joyful, and strong, but to be wiser, and larger-minded,
+and more hopeful, even at the expense of delight. And then I saw
+that I would not really for any price part with the sad wisdom that
+I had reluctantly learnt, but that though the burden galled my
+shoulder, it held within it precious things which I could not throw
+away. And I had, too, the glad sense that even if in a childish
+petulance I would have laid my burden down and run off among the
+flowers, God was stronger than I, and would not suffer me to lose
+what I had gained. I might, I assuredly should, wish to be more
+free, more light of heart. But I seemed to myself like a woman that
+had borne a child in suffering, and that no matter how restless and
+vexatious a care that child might prove to be, under no conceivable
+circumstances could she wish that she were barren and without the
+experience of love. I felt indeed that I had fulfilled a part of my
+destiny, and that I might be glad that the suffering was behind me,
+even though it separated me from the careless days.
+
+I hope that in after days I may sometimes make a pilgrimage to the
+place where that wonderful truth thus dawned upon me. I have made a
+tabernacle there in my spirit, like the saints who saw the Lord
+transfigured before their eyes; and to me it had been indeed a
+transfiguration, in which Love and sorrow and hope had been touched
+with an unearthly light of God.
+
+
+
+June 24, 1891.
+
+
+Yesterday I was walking in a field-path through the meadows; it was
+just that time in early summer when the grass is rising, when
+flowers appear in little groups and bevies. There was a patch of
+speedwell, like a handful of sapphires cast down. Why does one's
+heart go out to certain flowers, flowers which seem to have some
+message for us if we could but read it? A little way from the path
+I saw a group of absolutely unknown flower-buds; they were big,
+pale things, looking more like pods than flowers, growing on tall
+stems. I hate crushing down meadow-grass, but I could not resist my
+impulse of curiosity. I walked up to them, and just as I was going
+to bend down and look at them, lo and behold, all my flowers opened
+before my eyes as by a concerted signal, spread wings of the
+richest blue, and fluttered away before my eyes. They were nothing
+more than a company of butterflies who, tired of play, had fallen
+asleep together with closed wings on the high grass-stems.
+
+There they had sate, like folded promises, hiding their azure
+sheen. Perhaps even now my hopes sit motionless and lifeless, in
+russet robes. Perhaps as I draw dully near, they may spring
+suddenly to life, and dance away in the sunshine, like fragments of
+the crystalline sky.
+
+
+
+July 8, 1891.
+
+
+I was in town last week for a few days on some necessary business,
+staying with old friends. Two or three people came in to dine one
+night, and afterwards, I hardly know how, I found myself talking
+with a curious openness to one of the guests, a woman whom I only
+slightly knew. She is a very able and cultivated woman indeed, and
+it was a surprise to her friends when she lately became a Christian
+Scientist. When I have met her before, I have thought her a
+curiously guarded personality, appearing to live a secret and
+absorbing life of her own, impenetrable, and holding up a shield of
+conventionality against the world. To-night she laid down her
+shield, and I saw the beating of a very pure and loving heart. The
+text of her talk was that we should never allow ourselves to
+believe in our limitations, because they did not really exist. I
+found her, to my surprise, intensely emotional, with a passionate
+disbelief in and yet pity for all sorrow and suffering. She
+appealed to me to take up Christian Science--"not to read or talk
+about it," she said; "that is no use: it is a life, not a theory;
+just accept it, and live by it, and you will find it true."
+
+But there is one part of me that rebels against the whole idea of
+Christian Science--my reason. I found, or thought I found, this
+woman to be wise both in head and heart, but not wise in mind. it
+seems to me that pain and sorrow and suffering are phenomena, just
+as real as other phenomena; and that one does no good by denying
+them, but only by accepting them, and living in them and through
+them. One might as truly, it seems, take upon oneself to deny that
+there was any such colour as red in the world, and tell people that
+whenever they saw or discerned any tinge of red, it was a delusion;
+one can only use one's faculty of perception; and if sorrow and
+suffering are a delusion, how do I know that love and joy are not
+delusions too? They must stand and fall together. The reason why I
+believe that joy and love will in the end triumph, is because I
+have, because we all have, an instinctive desire for them, and a no
+less instinctive fear and dread of pain and sorrow. We may, indeed
+I believe with all my heart that we shall, emerge from them, but
+they are no less assuredly there. We triumph over them, when we
+learn to live bravely and courageously in them, when we do not seek
+to evade them or to hasten incredulously away from them. We fail,
+if we spend our time in repining, in regretting, in wishing the
+sweet and tranquil hours of untroubled joy back. We are not strong
+enough to desire the cup of suffering, even though we may know that
+we must drink it before we can discern the truth. But we may
+rejoice with a deep-seated joy, in the dark hours, that the Hand of
+God is heavy upon us. When our vital energies flag, when what we
+thought were our effective powers languish and grow faint, then we
+may be glad because the Father is showing us His Will; and then our
+sorrow is a fruitful sorrow, and labours, as the swelling seed
+labours in the sombre earth to thrust her slender hands up to the
+sun and air. . . .
+
+We two sate long in a corner of the quiet lamp-lit room, talking
+like old friends--once or twice our conversation was suspended by
+music, which fell like dew upon my parched heart; and though I
+could not accept my fellow-pilgrim's thought, I could see in the
+glance of her eyes, full of pity and wonder, that we were indeed
+faring along the same strange road to the paradise of God. It did
+me good, that talk; it helped me with a sense of sweet and tender
+fellowship; and I had no doubt that God was teaching my friend in
+His own fatherly way, even as He was teaching me, and all of us.
+
+
+
+July 19, 1891.
+
+
+In one of the great windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge,
+there is a panel the beauty of which used to strike me even as a
+boy. I used to wonder what further thing it meant.
+
+It was, I believe--I may be wholly wrong--a picture of Reuben,
+looking in an agony of unavailing sorrow into the pit from which
+his brothers had drawn the boy they hated to sell him to the
+Midianites. I cannot recollect the details plainly, and little
+remains but a memory of dim-lit azure and glowing scarlet. Even
+though the pit was quaintly depicted as a draw-well, with a solid
+stone coping, the pretty absurdity of the thought only made one
+love the fancy better. But the figure of Reuben!--even through an
+obscuring mist of crossing leads and window-bars and weather
+stains, there was a poignant agony wrought into the pose of the
+figure, with its clasped hands and strained gaze.
+
+I used to wonder, I say, what further thing it meant. For the deep
+spell of art is that it holds an intenser, a wider significance
+beneath its symbols than the mere figure, the mere action it
+displays.
+
+What was the remorse of Reuben? It was that through his weakness,
+his complaisance, he had missed his chance of protecting what was
+secretly dear to him. He loved the boy, I think, or at all events
+he loved his father, and would not willingly have hurt the old man.
+And now, even in his moment of yielding, of temporising, the worst
+had happened, the child was gone, delivered over to what baseness
+of usage he could not bear to think. He himself had been a traitor
+to love and justice and light; and yet, in the fruitful designs of
+God, that very traitorous deed was to blossom into the hope and
+glory of the race; the deed itself was to be tenderly forgiven, and
+it was to open up, in the fulness of days, a prospect of greatness
+and prosperity to the tribe, to fling the seed of that mighty
+family in soil where it was to be infinitely enriched; it was to
+open the door at last to a whole troop of great influences,
+marvellous events, large manifestations of God.
+
+Even so, in a parable, the figure came insistently before me all
+day, shining and fading upon the dark background of the mind.
+
+It was at the loss of my own soul that I had connived; not at its
+death indeed--I had not plotted for that--but I had betrayed
+myself, I saw, year by year. I had despised the dreams and visions
+of the frail and ingenuous spirit; and when it had come out
+trustfully to me in the wilderness, I had let it fall into the
+hands of the Midianites, the purloining band that trafficked in all
+things, great and small, from the beast of the desert to the bodies
+and souls of men.
+
+My soul had thus lain expiring before my eyes, and now God had
+taken it away from my faithless hands; I saw at last that to save
+the soul one must assuredly lose it; that if it was to grow strong
+and joyful and wise, it must be sold into servitude and dark
+afflictions. I saw that when I was too weak to save it, God had
+rent it from me, but that from the darkness of the pit it should
+fare forth upon a mighty voyage, and be made pure and faithful in a
+region undreamed of.
+
+To Reuben was left nothing but shame and sorrow of heart and deceit
+to hide his sin; unlike him, to me was given to see, beyond the
+desert and the dwindling line of camels, the groves and palaces of
+the land of wisdom, whither my sad soul was bound, lonely and
+dismayed. My heart went out to the day of reconciliation, when I
+should be forgiven with tears of joy for my own faltering
+treachery, when my soul should be even grateful for my weakness,
+because from that very faithlessness, and from no other, should the
+new life be born.
+
+And thus with a peaceful hope that lay beyond shame and sorrow
+alike, as the shining plain lies out beyond the broken crags of the
+weary mountain, I gave myself utterly into the Hands of the Father
+of All. He was close beside me that day, upholding, comforting,
+enriching me. Not hidden in clouds from which the wrathful trumpet
+pealed, but walking with a tender joy, in a fragrance of love, in
+the garden, at the cool of the day.
+
+
+
+August 18, 1891.
+
+
+Mr. ---- is dead. He died yesterday, holding my hand. The end was
+quite sudden, though not unexpected. He had been much weaker of
+late, and he knew he could only live a short time. I have been much
+with him these last few days. He could not talk much, but there was
+a peaceful glory on his face which made me think of the Pilgrims in
+the Pilgrim's Progress whose call was so joyful. I never suspected
+how little desire he had to live; but when he knew that his days
+were numbered, he allowed something of his delight to escape him,
+as a prisoner might who has borne his imprisonment bravely and sees
+his release draw nigh. He suffered a good deal, but each pang was
+to him only like the smiting off of chains. "I have had a very
+happy life," he said to me once with a smile. "Looking back, it
+seems as though my later happiness had soaked backwards through the
+whole fabric, so that my joy in age has linked itself as by a
+golden bridge to the old childish raptures." Then he looked
+curiously at me, with a half-smile, and added, "But happy as I have
+been, I find it in my heart to envy you. You hardly know how much
+you are to be envied. You have no more partings to fear; your
+beautiful past is all folded up, to be creased and tarnished no
+more. You have had the love of wife and child--the one thing that I
+have missed. You have had fame too; and you have drunk far deeper
+of the cup of suffering than I. I look upon you," he said
+laughingly, "as an old home-keeping captain, who has never done
+anything but garrison duty, might look upon a young general who has
+carried through a great campaign and is covered with signs of
+honour."
+
+A little while after he roused himself from a slumber to say, "You
+will be surprised to find yourself named in my will; please don't
+have any scruples about accepting the inheritance. I want my niece,
+of course, to reign in my stead; but if you outlive her, all is to
+go to you. I want you to live on in this place, to stand by her in
+her loneliness, as a brother by a sister. I want you to help and
+work for my dear people here, to be tender and careful for them.
+There are many things that a man can do which a woman cannot; and
+your difficulty will be to find a hem for your life. Remember that
+there is no one who is injured by this--my niece is my only living
+relation; so accept this as your post in life; it will not be a
+hard one. It is strange," he added, "that one should cling to such
+trifles; but I should like you to take my name, if you will; and
+you must find some one to succeed you; I wish it could have been
+your own boy, whom I have learnt to love."
+
+Miss ---- came in shortly after, and Mr. ---- said to her, "Yes, I
+have told him, and he consents. You do consent, do you not?" I
+said, "Yes, dear friend, of course I consent; and consent
+gratefully, for you have given me a work in the world." And then I
+took Miss ----'s hand across the bed and kissed it; the old man
+laid his hands upon our heads very tenderly and said, "Brother and
+sister to the end."
+
+I thought he was tired then, and made as if to leave him, but he
+said, "Do not go, my son." He lay smiling to himself, as if well
+pleased. Then a sudden change came over his face, and I saw that he
+was going; we knelt beside him, and his last words were words of
+blessing.
+
+
+
+October 12, 1891.
+
+
+This book has been my companion through some very strange, sad,
+terrible, and joyful hours; my faithful companion, my silent
+friend, my true confessor. I have felt the need of utterance, the
+imperative instinct--the most primitive, the most childish of
+instincts--to tell my pains and hopes and dreams. I could not utter
+them, at the time, to another. I could not let the voice of my
+groaning reach the ears of any human being. Perhaps it would have
+been better for us both, if I could have said it all to my dearest
+Maud. But a sort of courtesy forbade my redoubling my monotonous
+lamentations; her burden was heavy enough without that. I can
+hardly dignify it with the name of manliness or chivalry, because
+my frame of mind during those first months, when I lost the power
+of writing, was purely despicable; and then, too, I did not want
+sympathy; I wanted help; and help no one but God could give me;
+half my time was spent in a kind of dumb prayer to Him, that He
+would give me some sort of strength, some touch of courage; for a
+helpless cowardice was the note of my frame of mind. Well, He has
+sent me strength--I recognise that now--not by lightening the load,
+but by making it insupportably heavy and yet showing me that I had
+the strength to carry it; I am still in the dark as to why I
+deserved so sore a punishment, and I cannot yet see that the
+loneliness to which He has condemned me is the help that is
+proportioned to my need. But I walk no longer in a vain shadow. I
+have known affliction by the rod of His wrath. But the darkness in
+which I walk is not the darkness of thickening gloom, but the
+darkness of the breaking day.
+
+And then, too, I suppose that writing down my thoughts from day to
+day just eased the dumb pain of inaction, as the sick man shifts
+himself in his bed. Anyhow it is written, and it shall stand as a
+record.
+
+But now I shall write no more. I shall slip gratefully and securely
+into the crowd of inarticulate and silent men and women, the vast
+majority, after all, of humanity. One who like myself has the
+consciousness of receiving from moment to moment sharp and clear
+impressions from everything on earth, people, houses, fields,
+trees, clouds, is beset by a kind of torturing desire to shape it
+all in words and phrases. Why, I know not! It is the desire, I
+suppose, to make some record of what seems so clear, so distinct,
+so beautiful, so interesting. One cannot bear that one impression
+that seems so vivid and strange should be lost and perish. It is
+the artistic instinct, no doubt. And then one passes through the
+streets of a great city, and one becomes aware that of the
+thousands that pass one by, perhaps only one or two have the same
+instinct, and even they are bound to silence by circumstance, by
+lack of opportunity. The rest--life is enough for them; hunger and
+thirst, love and strife, hope and fear, that is their daily meat.
+And life, I doubt not, is what we are set to taste. Of all those
+thousands, some few have the desire, and fewer still the power, to
+stand apart from the throng. These are not content with the humdrum
+life of earning a livelihood, of forming ties, of passing the time
+as pleasantly as they can. They desire rather to be felt, to
+exercise influence, to mould others to their will, to use them for
+their convenience. I have had little temptation to do that, but my
+life has been poisoned at its source, I now discern, by the desire
+to differentiate myself from others. I could not walk faithfully in
+the procession; I was as one who likes to sit securely in his
+window above the street, noting all that he sees, sketching all
+that strikes his fancy, hugging his pleasure at being apart from
+and superior to the ordinary run of mortals. Here lay my chiefest
+fault, that I could not bear a humble hand, but looked upon my
+wealth, my loving circle, as things that should fence me from the
+throng. I lived in a paradise of my own devising.
+
+But now I have put that all aside for ever. I will live the life of
+a learner; I will be docile if I can. I might indeed have been
+stripped of everything, bidden to join the humblest tribe of
+workers for daily bread. But God has spared my weakness, and I
+should be faithless indeed, if, seeing how intently His will has
+dealt with me, I did not recognise the clear guiding of His hand.
+He has given me a place and a quiet work to do; these strange
+bereavements, one after another, have not hardened me. I feel the
+bonds of love for those whom I have lost drawn closer every hour.
+They are waiting for me, I am sure of that. It is not reason, it is
+not faith which prompts me; it is a far deeper and stronger
+instinct, which I could not doubt if I would. What wonder if I look
+forward with an eager and an ardent hope to death. I can conceive
+no more welcome tidings than the tidings that death was at hand.
+But I do not expect to die. My health of body is almost
+miraculously preserved. What I dare to hope is that I may learn by
+slow degrees to set the happiness of others above my own. I will
+listen for any sound of grief or discontent, and I will try to
+quiet it. I will spend my time and strength as freely as I can.
+That is a far-off hope. One cannot in a moment break through the
+self-consideration of a lifetime. But whereas, before, my dim
+sense that happiness could not be found by deliberately searching
+for ease made me half rebellious, half uncomfortable, I know now
+that it is true, and I will turn my back if I can upon that lonely
+and unsatisfied quest. I did indeed--I can honestly say that--
+desire with a passionate intentness the happiness of Maud and the
+children; but I think I desired it most in order that the sunshine
+of their happiness should break in warmth and light upon myself. It
+will be hard enough--I can see that--not to labour still for the
+sake of the ultimate results upon my own peace of mind. But in my
+deepest heart I do not desire to do that, and I will not, God
+helping me.
+
+And so to-day, having read the whole record once again, with
+blinding tears, tears of love, I think, not tears of self-pity, I
+will close the book and write no more. But I will not destroy it,
+because it may help some soul that may come after me, into whose
+hands it may fall, to struggle on in the middle of sorrow and
+darkness. To him will I gladly reveal all that God has done for my
+soul. That poor, pitiful, shrinking soul, with all its faint
+desires after purity and nobleness and peace, all its self-wrought
+misery, all its unhappy failures, all its secret faults, its
+undiscerned weaknesses, I put humbly and confidently in the hands
+of the God who made me. I cannot amend myself, but I can at least
+co-operate with His loving Will. I can stumble onwards, with my
+hand in His, like a timid child with a strong and loving father. I
+may wish to be lifted in His arms, I may wonder why He does not
+have more pity on my frailty. But I can believe that He is leading
+me home, and that His way is the best and nearest.
+
+
+THE END
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Altar Fire
+by Arthur Christopher Benson
+******This file should be named thltr10.txt or thltr10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, thltr11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, thltr10a.txt
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+This etext was created by Don Lainson (dlainson@sympatico.ca) & Charles Aldarondo (Aldarondo@yahoo.com)
+
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+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Altar Fire
+by Arthur Christopher Benson
+