



Produced by Don Lainson and Charles Aldarondo. HTML version
by Al Haines.










THE UPTON LETTERS


By

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON



aedae muri' eseidon oneirata, koudepo aos.



1905






PREFACE


These letters were returned to me, shortly after the death of the
friend to whom they were written, by his widow. It seems that he had
been sorting and destroying letters and papers a few days before his
wholly unexpected end. "We won't destroy these," he had said to her,
holding the bulky packet of my letters in his hand; "we will keep them
together. T---- ought to publish them, and, some day, I hope he will."
This was not, of course, a deliberate judgement; but his sudden death,
a few days later, gives the unconsidered wish a certain sanctity, and I
have determined to obey it. Moreover, she who has the best right to
decide, desires it. A few merely personal matters and casual details
have been omitted; but the main substance is there, and the letters are
just as they were written. Such hurried compositions, of course, abound
in literary shortcomings, but perhaps they have a certain spontaneity
which more deliberate writings do not always possess. I wrote my best,
frankest, and liveliest in the letters, because I knew that Herbert
would value both the thought and the expression of the thought. And,
further, if it is necessary to excuse so speedy a publication, I feel
that they are not letters which would gain by being kept. Their
interest arises from the time, the circumstance, the occasion that gave
them birth, from the books read and criticised, the educational
problems discussed; and thus they may form a species of comment on a
certain aspect of modern life, and from a definite point of view. But,
after all, it is enough for me that he appreciated them, and, if he
wished that they should go out to the world, well, let them go! In
publishing them I am but obeying a last message of love.

T. B.
  MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON,
    Feb. 20, 1905.





THE UPTON LETTERS



MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON,
  Jan. 23, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have just heard the disheartening news, and I write
to say that I am sorry toto corde. I don't yet know the full extent of
the calamity, the length of your exile, the place, or the conditions
under which you will have to live. Perhaps you or Nelly can find time
to let me have a few lines about it all? But I suppose there is a good
side to it. I imagine that when the place is once fixed, you will be
able to live a much freer life than you have of late been obliged to
live in England, with less risk and less overshadowing of anxiety. If
you can find the right region, renovabitur ut acquila juventus tua; and
you will be able to carry out some of the plans which have been so
often interrupted here. Of course there will be drawbacks. Books,
society, equal talk, the English countryside which you love so well,
and, if I may use the expression, so intelligently; they will all have
to be foregone in a measure. But fortunately there is no difficulty
about money, and money will give you back some of these delights. You
will still see your real friends; and they will come to you with the
intention of giving and getting the best of themselves and of you, not
in the purposeless way in which one drifts into a visit here. You will
be able, too, to view things with a certain detachment--and that is a
real advantage; for I have sometimes thought that your literary work
has suffered from the variety of your interests, and from your being
rather too close to them to form a philosophical view. Your love of
characteristic points of natural scenery will help you. When you have
once grown familiar with the new surroundings, you will penetrate the
secret of their charm, as you have done here. You will be able, too, to
live a more undisturbed life, not fretted by all the cross-currents
which distract a man in his own land, when he has a large variety of
ties. I declare I did not know I was so good a rhetorician; I shall end
by convincing myself that there is no real happiness to be found except
in expatriation!

Seriously, my dear Herbert, I do understand the sadness of the change;
but one gets no good by dwelling on the darker side; there are and will
be times, I know, of depression. When one lies awake in the morning,
before the nerves are braced by contact with the wholesome day; when
one has done a tiring piece of work, and is alone, and in that frame of
mind when one needs occupation but yet is not brisk enough to turn to
the work one loves; in those dreary intervals between one's work, when
one is off with the old and not yet on with the new--well I know all
the corners of the road, the shadowy cavernous places where the demons
lie in wait for one, as they do for the wayfarer (do you remember?), in
Bewick, who, desiring to rest by the roadside, finds the dingle all
alive with ambushed fiends, horned and heavy-limbed, swollen with the
oppressive clumsiness of nightmare. But you are not inexperienced or
weak. You have enough philosophy to wait until the frozen mood thaws,
and the old thrill comes back. That is one of the real compensations of
middle age. When one is young, one imagines that any depression will be
continuous; and one sees the dreary, uncomforted road winding ahead
over bare hills, till it falls to the dark valley. But later on one can
believe that "the roadside dells of rest" are there, even if one cannot
see them; and, after all, you have a home which goes with you; and it
would seem to be fortunate, or to speak more truly, tenderly prepared,
that you have only daughters--a son, who would have to go back to
England to be educated, would be a source of anxiety. Yet I find myself
even wishing that you had a son, that I might have the care of him over
here. You don't know the heart-hunger I sometimes have for young things
of my own to watch over; to try to guard their happiness. You would say
that I had plenty of opportunities in my profession; it is true in a
sense, and I think I am perhaps a better schoolmaster for being
unmarried. But these boys are not one's own; they drift away; they come
back dutifully and affectionately to talk to their old tutor; and we
are both of us painfully conscious that we have lost hold of the
thread, and that the nearness of the tie that once existed exists no
more.

Well, I did not mean in this letter to begin bemoaning my own sorrows,
but rather to try and help you to bear your own. Tell me as soon as you
can what your plans are, and I will come down and see you for the last
time under the old conditions; perhaps the new will be happier. God
bless you, my old friend! Perhaps the light which has hitherto shone
(though fitfully) ON your life will now begin to shine THROUGH it
instead; and let me add one word. My assurance grows firmer, from day
to day, that we are in stronger hands than our own. It is true that I
see things in other lives which look as if those hands were wantonly
cruel, hard, unloving; but I reflect that I cannot see all the
conditions; I can only humbly fall back upon my own experience, and
testify that even the most daunting and humiliating things have a
purifying effect; and I can perceive enough at all events to encourage
me to send my heart a little farther than my eyes, and to believe that
a deep and urgent love is there.--Ever affectionately yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Jan. 26, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--So it is to be Madeira at present? Well, I know Madeira
a little, and I can honestly congratulate you. I had feared it might be
Switzerland. I could not LIVE in Switzerland. It does me good to go
there, to be iced and baked and washed clean with pure air. But the
terrible mountains, so cold and unchanged, with their immemorial
patience, their frozen tranquillity; the high hamlets, perched on their
lonely shelves; the bleak pine-trees, with their indomitable
strength--all these depress me. Of course there is much homely beauty
among the lower <DW72>s; the thickets, the falling streams, the flowers.
But the grim black peaks look over everywhere; and there is seldom a
feeling of the rich and comfortable peace such as one gets in England.
Madeira is very different. I have been there, and must truthfully
confess that it does not suit me altogether--the warm air, the
paradisal luxuriance, the greenhouse fragrance, are not a fit setting
for a blond, lymphatic man, who pants for Northern winds. But it will
suit you; and you will be one of those people, spare and compact as you
are, who find themselves vigorous and full of energy there. I have many
exquisite vignettes from Madeira which linger in my mind. The high
hill-villages, full of leafy trees; the grassy downs at the top; the
droop of creepers, full of flower and fragrance, over white walls; the
sapphire sea, under huge red cliffs. You will perhaps take one of those
embowered Quintas high above the town, in a garden full of shelter and
fountains. And I am much mistaken if you do not find yourself in a very
short time passionately attached to the place. Then the people are
simple, courteous, unaffected, full of personal interest. Housekeeping
has few difficulties and no terrors.

I can't get away for a night; but I will come and dine with you one day
this week, if you can keep an evening free.

And one thing I will promise--when you are away, I will write to you as
often as I can. I shall not attempt any formal letters, but I shall
begin with anything that is in my mind, and stop when I feel disposed;
and you must do the same. We won't feel bound to ANSWER each other's
letters; one wastes time over that. What I shall want to know is what
you are thinking and doing, and I shall take for granted you desire the
same.

You will be happier, now that you KNOW; I need not add that if I can be
of any use to you in making suggestions, it will be a real
pleasure.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Feb. 3, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--It seems ages since we said good-bye--yet it is not a
week ago. And now I have been at work all day correcting exercises,
teaching, talking. I have had supper with the boys, and I have been
walking about since and talking to them--the nicest part of my work.
They are at this time of the day, as a rule, in good spirits,
charitable, sensible. What an odd thing it is that boys are so
delightful when they are alone, and so tiresome (not always) when they
are together. They seem, in public, to want to show their worst side,
to be ashamed of being supposed to be good, or interested, or
thoughtful, or tender-hearted. They are so afraid of seeming better
than they are, and pleased to appear worse than they are. I wonder why
this is? It is the same more or less with most people; but one sees
instincts at their nakedest among boys. As I go on in life, the one
thing I desire is simplicity and reality; pose is the one fatal thing.
The dullest person becomes interesting if you feel that he is really
himself, that he is not holding up some absurd shield or other in front
of his shivering soul. And yet how hard it is, even when one
appreciates the benefits and beauty of sincerity, to say what one
really thinks, without reference to what one supposes the person one is
talking to would like or expect one to think--and to do it, too,
without brusqueness or rudeness or self-assertion.

Boys are generally ashamed of saying anything that is good about each
other; and yet they are as a rule intensely anxious to be POPULAR, and
pathetically unaware that the shortest cut to popularity is to see the
good points in every one and not to shrink from mentioning them. I once
had a pupil, a simple-minded, serene, ordinary creature, who attained
to extraordinary popularity. I often wondered why; after he had left, I
asked a boy to tell me; he thought for a moment, and then he said, "I
suppose, sir, it was because when we were all talking about other
chaps--and one does that nearly all the time--he used to be as much
down on them as any one else, and he never jawed--but he always had
something nice to say about them, not made up, but as if it just came
into his head."

Well, I must stop; I suppose you are forging out over the Bay, and
sleeping, I hope, like a top. There is no sleep like the sleep on a
steamer--profound, deep, so that one wakes up hardly knowing where or
who one is, and in the morning you will see the great purple
league-long rollers. I remember them; I generally felt very unwell; but
there was something tranquillising about them, all the same--and then
the mysterious steamers that used to appear alongside, pitching and
tumbling, with the little people moving about on the decks; and a mile
away in a minute. Then the water in the wake, like marble, with its
white-veined sapphire, and the hiss and smell of the foam; all that is
very pleasant. Good night, Herbert!--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Feb. 9, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I hope you have got Lockhart's Life of Scott with
you; if not, I will send it out to you. I have been reading it lately,
and I have a strong wish that you should do the same. It has not all
the same value; the earlier part, the account of the prosperous years,
is rather tiresome in places. There is something boisterous,
undignified--even, I could think, vulgar--about the aims and ambitions
depicted. It suggests a prosperous person, seated at a well-filled
table, and consuming his meat with a hearty appetite. The desire to
stand well with prominent persons, to found a family, to take a place
in the county, is a perfectly natural and wholesome desire; but it is a
commonplace ambition. There is a charm in the simplicity, the
geniality, the childlike zest of the man; but there is nothing great
about it. Then comes the crash; and suddenly, as though a curtain drew
up, one is confronted with the spectacle of an indomitable and
unselfish soul, bearing a heavy burden with magnificent tranquillity,
and settling down with splendid courage to an almost intolerable task.
The energy displayed by our hero in attempting to write off the load of
debt that hung round his neck is superhuman, august. We see him
completing in a single day what would take many writers a week to
finish, and doing it day by day, with bereavements, sorrows,
ill-health, all closing in upon him. The quality of the work he thus
did matters little; it was done, indeed, at a time of life when under
normal circumstances he would probably have laid his pen down. But the
spectacle of the man's patient energy and divine courage is one that
goes straight to the heart. It is then that one realises that the
earlier and more prosperous life has all the value of contrast; one
recognises that here was a truly unspoilt nature; and that, if we can
dare to look upon life as an educative process, the tragic sorrows that
overwhelmed him were not the mere reversal of the wheel of fortune, but
gifts from the very hand of the Father--to purify a noble soul from the
dross that was mingled with it; to give a great man the opportunity of
living in a way that should furnish an eternal and imperishable example.

I do not believe that in the whole of literature there is a more noble
and beautiful document of its kind than the diary of these later years.
The simplicity, the sincerity of the man stand out on every page. There
are no illusions about himself or his work. He hears that Southey has
been speaking of him and his misfortunes with tears, and he says
plainly that such tears would be impossible to himself in a parallel
case; that his own sympathy has always been practical rather than
emotional; his own tendency has been to help rather than to console.
Again, speaking of his own writings, he says that he realises that if
there is anything good about his poetry or prose, "It is a hurried
frankness of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young
people of bold and active disposition." He adds, indeed, a contemptuous
touch to the above, which he was great enough to have spared: "I have
been no sigher in shades--no writer of

     Songs and sonnets and rustical roundelays
     Framed on fancies and whistled on reeds."


A few days later, speaking of Thomas Campbell, the poet, he says that
"he has suffered by being too careful a corrector of his work."

That is a little ungenerous, a little complacent; noble and large as
Scott's own unconsidered writings are, he ought to have been aware that
methods differ. What, for instance, could be more extraordinary than
the contrast between Scott and Wordsworth--Scott with his "You know I
don't care a curse about what I write;" and Wordsworth, whose chief
reading in later days was his own poetry. Whenever the two are brought
into actual juxtaposition, Wordsworth is all pose and self-absorption;
Scott all simplicity and disregard of fame. Wordsworth staying at
Abbotsford declines to join an expedition of pleasure, and stays at
home with his daughter. When the party return, they find Wordsworth
sitting and being read to by his daughter, the book his own Excursion.
A party of travellers arrive, and Wordsworth steals down to the chaise,
to see if there are any of his own volumes among the books they have
with them. When the two are together, Scott is all courteous deference;
he quotes Wordsworth's poems, he pays him stately compliments, which
the bard receives as a matter of course, with stiff, complacent bows.
But, during the whole of the time, Wordsworth never lets fall a single
syllable from which one could gather that he was aware that his host
had ever put pen to paper.

Yet, while one desires to shake Wordsworth to get some of his pomposity
out of him, one half desires that Scott had felt a little more deeply
the dignity of his vocation. One would wish to have infused Wordsworth
with a little of Scott's unselfish simplicity, and to have put just a
little stiffening into Scott. He ought to have felt--and he did
not--that to be a great writer was a more dignified thing than to be a
sham seigneur.

But through the darkening scene, when the woods whisper together, and
Tweed runs hoarsely below, the simple spirit holds uncomplaining and
undaunted on his way: "I did not like them to think that I could ever
be beaten by anything," he says. But at length the hand, tired with the
pen, falls, and twilight creeps upon the darkening mind.

I paid a pious pilgrimage last summer, as you perhaps remember, to
Abbotsford. I don't think I ever described it to you. My first feeling
was one of astonishment at the size and stateliness of the place,
testifying to a certain imprudent prosperity. But the sight of the
rooms themselves; the desk, the chair, the book-lined library, the
little staircase by which, early or late, Scott could steal back to his
hard and solitary work; the death-mask, with its pathetic smile; the
clothes, with hat and shoes, giving, as it were, a sense of the very
shape and stature of the man--these brought the whole thing up with a
strange reality.

Of course, there is much that is pompous, affected, unreal about the
place; the plaster beams, painted to look like oak; the ugly
emblazonries; the cruel painted glass; the laboriously collected
objects--all these reveal the childish side of Scott, the superficial
self which slipped from him so easily when he entered into the cloud.

And then the sight of his last resting-place; the ruined abbey, so
deeply embowered in trees that the three dim Eildon peaks are
invisible; the birds singing in the thickets that clothe the ruined
cloisters--all this made a parable, and brought before one with an
intensity of mystery the wonder of it all. The brief life, so full of
plans for permanence; the sombre valley of grief; the quiet end, when
with failing lips he murmured that the only comfort for the dying heart
was the thought that it had desired goodness, however falteringly,
above everything.

I can't describe to you how deeply all this affects me--with what a
hunger of the heart, what tenderness, what admiration, what wonder. The
very frankness of the surprise with which, over and over again, the
brave spirit confesses that he does not miss the delights of life as
much as he expected, nor find the burden as heavy as he had feared, is
a very noble and beautiful thing. I can conceive of no book more likely
to make a spirit in the grip of sorrow and failure more gentle,
hopeful, and brave; because it brings before one, with quiet and
pathetic dignity, the fact that no fame, no success, no recognition,
can be weighed for a moment in the balance with those simple qualities
of human nature which the humblest being may admire, win, and
display.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Shrove Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--One of those incredible incidents has just happened
here, an incident that makes one feel how little one knows of human
beings, and that truth, in spite of the conscientious toil of Mr. H. G.
Wells, does still continue to keep ahead of fiction. Here is the story.
Some money is missed in a master's house; circumstances seem to point
to its having been abstracted by one of the boys. A good-natured,
flighty boy is suspected, absolutely without reason, as it turns out;
though he is the sort of boy to mislay his own books and other portable
property to any extent, and to make no great difficulty under pressure
of immediate need, and at the last moment, about borrowing some one
else's chattels. On this occasion the small boys in the house, of whom
he is one, solemnly accuse him of the theft, and the despoiled owner
entreats that the money may be returned. He protests that he has not
taken it. The matter comes to the ears of the house-master, who
investigates the matter in the course of the evening, and interviews
the supposed culprit. The boy denies it again quite unconcernedly and
frankly, goes away from the interview, and wandering about, finds the
small boys of the house assembled in one of the studies discussing a
matter with great interest. "What has happened?" says our suspected
friend. "Haven't you heard?" says one of them; "Campbell's grandmother"
(Campbell is another of the set) "has sent him a tip of L2." "Oh, has
she?" says the boy, with a smile of intense meaning; "I shall have to
go my rounds again." This astonishing confession of his guilt is
received with the interest it deserves, and Campbell is advised to lock
up his money, or to hand it over to the custody of the house-master. In
the course of the evening another amazing event occurs; the boy whose
money was stolen finds the whole of it, quite intact, in the pocket of
his cricketing flannels, where he now remembers having put it. The
supposed culprit is restored to favour, and becomes a reliable member
of society. One of the small boys tells the matron the story of our
hero's amazing remark on the subject, in his presence. The matron
stares at him, bewildered, and asks him what made him say it. "Oh, only
to rag them," says the boy; "they were all so excited about it." "But
don't you see, you silly boy," says the kind old dame, "that if the
money had not been found, you would have been convicted out of your own
mouth of having been the thief?" "Oh yes," says the boy cheerfully;
"but I couldn't help it--it came into my head."

Of course this is an exceptional case; but it illustrates a curious
thing about boys--I mentioned it the other day--which is, their
extraordinary willingness and even anxiety to be thought worse than
they are. Even boys of unexceptionable principle will talk as if they
were not only not particular, but positively vicious. They don't like
aspersions on their moral character to be made by others, but they
rejoice to blacken themselves; and not even the most virtuous boys can
bear to be accused of virtue, or thought to be what is called "Pi."
This does not happen when boys are by themselves; they will then talk
unaffectedly about their principles and practice, if their interlocutor
is also unaffected. But when they are together, a kind of disease of
self-accusation attacks them. I suppose that it is the perversion of a
wholesome instinct, the desire not to be thought better than they are;
but part of the exaggerated stories that one hears about the low moral
tone of public schools arises from the fact that innocent boys coming
to a public school infer, and not unreasonably, from the talk of their
companions that they are by no means averse to evil, even when, as is
often the case, they are wholly untainted by it.

The same thing seems to me to prevail very widely nowadays. The
old-fashioned canting hypocrisy, like that of the old servant in the
Master of Ballantrae, who, suffering under the effects of drink, bears
himself like a Christian martyr, has gone out; just as the kind of
pride is extinct against which the early Victorian books used to warn
children, and which was manifested by sitting in a carriage surveying a
beggar with a curling lip--a course of action which was invariably
followed by the breaking of a Bank, or by some mysterious financial
operation involving an entire loss of fortune and respectability.

Nowadays the parable of the Pharisee and the publican is reversed. The
Pharisee tells his friends that he is in reality far worse than the
publican, while the publican thanks God that he is not a Pharisee. It
is only, after all, a different kind of affectation, and perhaps even
more dangerous, because it passes under the disguise of a virtue. We
are all miserable sinners, of course; but it is no encouragement to
goodness if we try to reduce ourselves all to the same level of
conscious corruption. The only advantage would be if, by our humility,
we avoided censoriousness. Let us frankly admit that our virtues are
inherited, and that any one who had had our chances would have done as
well or better than ourselves; neither ought we to be afraid of
expressing our admiration of virtue, and, if necessary, our abhorrence
of vice, so long as that abhorrence is genuine. The cure for the
present state of things is a greater naturalness. Perhaps it would end
in a certain increase of priggishness; but I honestly confess that
nowadays our horror of priggishness, and even of seriousness, has grown
out of all proportion; the command not to be a prig has almost taken
its place in the Decalogue. After all, priggishness is often little
more than a failure in tact, a breach of good manners; it is priggish
to be superior, and it is vulgar to let a consciousness of superiority
escape you. But it is not priggish to be virtuous, or to have a high
artistic standard, or to care more for masterpieces of literature than
for second-rate books, any more than it is priggish to be rich or
well-connected. The priggishness comes in when you begin to compare
yourself with others, and to draw distinctions. The Pharisee in the
parable was a prig; and just as I have known priggish hunting men, and
priggish golfers, and even priggish card-players, so I have known
people who were priggish about having a low standard of private virtue,
because they disapproved of people whose standard was higher. The only
cure is frankness and simplicity; and one should practise the art of
talking simply and directly among congenial people of what one admires
and believes in.

How I run on! But it is a comfort to write about these things to some
one who will understand; to "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of the perilous
stuff that weighs upon the heart." By the way, how careless the
repetition of "stuff'd" "stuff" is in that line! And yet it can't be
unintentional, I suppose?

I enjoy your letters very much; and I am glad to hear that you are
beginning to "take interest," and are already feeling better. Your
views of the unchangeableness of personality are very surprising; but I
must think them over for a little; I will write about them before long.
Meanwhile, my love to you all.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Feb. 25, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--You ask what I have been reading. Well, I have been
going through Newman's Apologia for the twentieth time, and as usual
have fallen completely under the magical spell of that incomparable
style; its perfect lucidity, showing the very shape of the thought
within, its simplicity (not, in Newman's case, I think, the result of
labour, but of pure instinctive grace), its appositeness, its dignity,
its music. I oscillate between supreme contentment as a reader, and
envious despair as a writer; it fills one's mind up slowly and richly,
as honey fills a vase from some gently tilted bowl. There is no sense
of elaborateness about the book; it was written swiftly and easily out
of a full heart; then it is such a revelation of a human spirit, a
spirit so innocent and devoted and tender, and, moreover, charged with
a sweet naive egotism as of a child. It was written, as Newman himself
said, IN TEARS; but I do not think they were tears of bitterness, but a
half-luxurious sorrow, the pathos of the past and its heavinesses,
viewed from a quiet haven. I have no sympathy whatever with the
intellectual attitude it reveals, but as Roderick Hudson says, I don't
always heed the sense: it is indeed a somewhat melancholy spectacle of
a beautiful mind converted in reality by purely aesthetic
considerations, by the dignity, the far-off, holy, and venerable
associations of the great Church which drew him quietly in, while all
the time he is under the impression that it is a logical clue which he
is following. And what logic! leaping lightly over difficult places,
taking flowery by-paths among the fields, the very stairs on which he
treads based on all kinds of wide assumptions and unverifiable
hypotheses. Then it is distressing to see his horror of Liberalism, of
speculation, of development, of all the things that constitute the
primal essence of the very religion that he blindly followed. One
cannot help feeling that had Newman been a Pharisee, he would have
been, with his love of precedent, and antiquity, and tradition, one of
the most determined and deadly opponents of the spirit of Christ. For
the spirit of Christ is the spirit of freedom, of elasticity, of
unconventionality. Newman would have upheld in the Sanhedrim with
pathetic and exquisite eloquence that it was not time to break with the
old, that it was miserable treachery to throw over the ancient
safeguards of faith, to part with the rich inheritance of the national
faith delivered by Abraham and Moses to the saints. Newman was a true
fanatic, and the most dangerous of fanatics, because his character was
based on innocence and tenderness and instinctive virtue. It is rather
pathetic than distressing to see Newman again and again deluded by the
antiquity of some petty human logician into believing his utterance to
be the very voice of God. The struggle with Newman was not the struggle
of faith with scepticism, but the struggle between two kinds of
loyalty, the personal loyalty to his own past and his own friends and
the Church of his nativity, and the loyalty to the infinitely more
ancient and venerable tradition of the Roman Church. It was, as I have
said, an aesthetic conversion; he had the mind of a poet, and the
particular kind of beauty which appealed to him was not the beauty of
nature or art, but the beauty of old tradition and the far-off dim
figures of saints and prelates reaching back into the dark and remote
past.

He had, too, the sublime egotism of the poet. His own salvation--"Shall
I be safe if I die to-night?"--that, he confesses, was the thought
which eventually outweighed all others. He had little of the priestly
hunger to save souls; the way in which others trusted him, confided in
him, watched his movements, followed him, was always something of a
terror to him, and yet in another mood it ministered to his
self-absorption. He had not the stern sense of being absolutely in the
right, which is the characteristic of the true leaders of men, but he
had a deep sense of his own importance, combined with a perfectly real
sense of weakness and humility, which even disguised, I would think,
his own egotism from himself.

Again his extraordinary forensic power, his verbal logic, his exquisite
lucidity of statement, all these concealed from him, as they have
concealed from others, his lack of mental independence. He had an
astonishing power of submitting to his imagination, a power of
believing the impossible, because the exercise of faith seemed to him
so beautiful a virtue. It is not a case of a noble mind overthrown, but
of the victory of a certain kind of poetical feeling over all rational
inquiry.

To revert to Newman's literary genius, he seems to me to be one of the
few masters of English prose. I used to think, in old University days,
that Newman's style was best tested by the fact that if one had a piece
of his writing to turn into Latin prose, the more one studied it,
turned it over, and penetrated it, the more masterly did it become;
because it was not so much the expression of a thought as the thought
itself taking shape in a perfectly pure medium of language. Bunyan had
the same gift; of later authors Ruskin had it very strongly, and
Matthew Arnold in a lesser degree. There is another species of
beautiful prose, the prose of Jeremy Taylor, of Pater, even of
Stevenson; but this is a slow and elaborate construction, pinched and
pulled this way and that; and it is like some gorgeous picture, of
stately persons in seemly and resplendent dress, with magnificently
wrought backgrounds of great buildings and curious gardens. But the
work of Newman and of Ruskin is a white art, like the art of sculpture.

I find myself every year desiring and admiring this kind of lucidity
and purity more and more. It seems to me that the only function of a
writer is to express obscure, difficult, and subtle thoughts easily.
But there are writers, like Browning and George Meredith, who seem to
hold it a virtue to express simple thoughts obscurely. Such writers
have a wide vogue, because so many people do not value a thought unless
they can feel a certain glow of satisfaction in having grasped it; and
to have disentangled a web of words, and to find the bright thing lying
within, gives them a pleasing feeling of conquest, and, moreover,
stamps the thought in their memory. But such readers have not the root
of the matter in them; the true attitude is the attitude of desiring to
apprehend, to progress, to feel. The readers who delight in obscurity,
to whom obscurity seems to enhance the value of the thing apprehended,
are mixing with the intellectual process a sort of acquisitive and
commercial instinct very dear to the British heart. These bewildering
and bewildered Browning societies who fling themselves upon Sordello,
are infected unconsciously with a virtuous craving for "taking higher
ground." Sordello contains many beautiful things, but by omitting the
necessary steps in argument, and by speaking of one thing allusively in
terms of another, and by a profound desultoriness of thought, the poet
produces a blurred and tangled impression. The beauties of Sordello
would not lose by being expressed coherently and connectedly.

This is the one thing that I try with all my might to impress on boys;
that the essence of all style is to say what you mean as forcibly as
possible; the bane of classical teaching is that the essence of
successful composition is held to be to "get in" words and phrases; it
is not a bad training, so long as it is realised to be only a training,
in obtaining a rich and flexible vocabulary, so that the writer has a
choice of words and the right word comes at call. But this is not made
clear in education, and the result on many minds is that they suppose
that the essence of good writing is to search diligently for sparkling
words and sonorous phrases, and then to patch them into a duller fabric.

But I stray from my point: all paths in a schoolmaster's mind lead out
upon the educational plain.

All that you tell me of your new surroundings is intensely interesting.
I am thankful that you feel the characteristic charm of the place, and
that the climate seems to suit you. You say nothing of your work; but I
suppose that you have had no time as yet. The mere absorbing of new
impressions is a fatiguing thing, and no good work can be done until a
scene has become familiar. I will discharge your commissions
punctually; don't hesitate to tell me what you want. I don't do it from
a sense of duty, but it is a positive pleasure for me to have anything
to do for you. I long for letters; as soon as possible send me
photographs, and not merely inanimate photographs of scenes and places,
but be sure that you make a part of them yourself. I want to see you
standing, sitting, reading in the new house; and give me an exact and
detailed account of your day, please; the food you eat, the clothes you
wear; you know my insatiable appetite for trifles.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  March 5, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have been thinking over your last letter: and by
the merest chance I stumbled yesterday on an old diary; it was in
1890--a time, do you remember, when our paths had drifted somewhat
apart; you had just married, and I find a rather bitter entry, which it
amuses me to tell you of now, to the effect that the marriage of a
friend, which ought to give one a new friend, often simply deprives one
of an old one--"nec carus aeque nec superstes integer," I add. Then I
was, I suppose, hopelessly absorbed in my profession; it was at the
time when I had just taken a boarding-house, and suffered much from the
dejection which arises from feeling unequal to the new claims.

It amuses me now to think that I could ever have thought of losing your
friendship; and it was only temporary; it was only that we were fully
occupied; you had to learn camaraderie with your wife, for want of
which one sees dryness creep into married lives, when the first divine
ardours of passion have died away, and when life has to be lived in the
common light of day. Well, all that soon adjusted itself; and then I,
too, found in your wife a true and congenial friend, so that I can
honestly say that your marriage has been one of the most fortunate
events of my life.

But that was not what I meant to write to you about; the point is this.
You say that personality is a stubborn thing. It is indeed. I find
myself reflecting and considering how much one's character really
changes as life goes on; in reading this diary of fourteen years ago,
though I have altered in some superficial respects, I was confronted
with my unalterable self. I have acquired certain aptitudes; I have
learnt, for instance, to understand boys better, to sympathise with
them, to put myself in their place, to manage them. I don't think I
could enunciate my technique, such as it is. If a young master, just
entering upon the work of a boarding-house, asked my advice, I could
utter several maxims which he would believe (and rightly) to be the
flattest and most obvious truisms; but the value of them to me is that
they are deduced from experience, and not stated as assumptions. The
whole secret lies in the combination of them, the application of them
to a particular case; it is not that one sees a thing differently, but
that one knows instinctively the sort of thing to say, the kind of line
to pursue, the kind of statement that appeals to a boy as sensible and
memorable, the sort of precautions to take, the delicate adjustment of
principles to a particular case, and so forth. It is, I suppose,
something like the skill of an artist; he does not see nature more
clearly, if indeed as clearly, as he did when he began, but he knows
better what kind of stroke and what kind of tint will best produce the
effect which he wishes to record. Of course both artist and
schoolmaster get mannerised; and I should be inclined to say in the
latter case that a schoolmaster's success (in the best sense) depends
almost entirely upon his being able to arrive at sound principles and
at the same time to avoid mannerism in applying them. For instance, it
is of no use to hold up for a boy's consideration a principle which is
quite outside his horizon; what one has to do is to try and give him a
principle which is just a little ahead of his practice, which he can
admire and also believe to be within his reach.

Besides this experience which I have acquired, I have acquired a
similar experience in the direction of teaching--I know now the sort of
statement which arrests the attention and arouses the interest of boys;
I know how to put a piece of knowledge so that it appears both
intelligible and also desirable to acquire.

Then I have learnt, in literary matters, the art of expression to a
certain extent. I can speak to you with entire frankness and
unaffectedness, and I will say that I am conscious that I can now
express lucidly, and to a certain extent attractively, an idea. My
deficiency is now in ideas and not in the power of expressing them. I
have quality though not quantity. It amuses me to read this old diary
and see how impossible I found it to put certain thoughts into words.

But apart from these definite acquirements, I cannot see that my
character has altered in the smallest degree. I detect the same little,
hard, repellent core of self, sitting enthroned, cold, unchanging, and
unchanged, "like a toad within a stone," to borrow Rossetti's great
simile. I see exactly the same weaknesses, the same pitiful ambitions,
the same faults. I have learnt, I think, to conceal them a little
better; but they are not eradicated, nor even modified. Even with
regard to their concealment, I have a terrible theory. I believe that
the faults of which one is conscious, which one admits, and even the
faults of which one faintly suspects oneself, and yet supposes that one
conceals from the world at large, are the very faults that are
absolutely patent to every one else. If one dimly suspects that one is
a liar, a coward, or a snob, and gratefully believes that one has not
been placed in a position which inevitably reveals these
characteristics in their full nakedness, one may be fairly certain that
other people know that one is so tainted.

The discouraging point is that one is not similarly conscious of one's
virtues. I take for granted that I have some virtues, because I see
that most of the people whom I meet have some sprinkling of them, but I
declare that I am quite unable to say what they are. A fault is patent
and unmistakable. The old temptation comes upon one, and one yields as
usual; but with one's virtues, if they ever manifest themselves, one's
own feeling is that one might have done better. Moreover, if one tries
deliberately to take stock of one's good points, they seem to be only
natural and instinctive ways of behaving; to which no credit can
possibly attach, because by temperament one is incapable of acting
otherwise.

Another melancholy fact which I believe to be true is this--that the
only good work one does is work which one finds easy and likes. I have
one or two patiently acquired virtues which are not natural to me, such
as a certain methodical way of dealing with business; but I never find
myself credited with it by others, because it is done, I suppose,
painfully and with effort, and therefore unimpressively.

I look round, and the same phenomenon meets me everywhere. I do not
know any instance among my friends where I can trace any radical change
of character. "Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula
saeculorum."

Indeed the only line upon which improvement is possible seems to me to
be this--that a man shall definitely commit himself to a course of life
in which he shall be compelled to exercise virtues which are foreign to
his character, and any lapses of which will be penalised in a
straightforward, professional way. If a man, for instance, is
irritable, impatient, unpunctual, let him take up some line where he is
bound to be professionally bland, patient, methodical. That would be
the act of a philosopher; but, alas, how few of us choose our
profession from philosophical motives!

And even so I should fear that the tendencies of temperament are only
temporarily imprisoned, and not radically cured; after all, it fits in
with the Darwinian theory. The bird of paradise, condemned to live in a
country of marshes, cannot hope to become a heron. The most he can hope
is that, by meditating on the advantages which a heron would enjoy, and
by pressing the same consideration on his offspring, the time may come
in the dim procession of years when the beaks of his descendants will
grow long and sharp, their necks pliant, their legs attenuated.

And anyhow, one is bound in honour to have a try; and the hopefulness
of my creed (you may be puzzled to detect it) lies in the fact that one
HAS a sense of honour about it all; that one's faults are repugnant,
and that missing virtues are desirable--possunt quia posse videntur!

Thank you for the photographs. I begin to realise your house; but I
want some interiors as well; and let me have the view from your
terrace, though I daresay it is only sea and sky.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  March 15, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--You say I am not ambitious enough; well, I wish I could
make up my mind clearly on the subject of ambition; it has been brought
before me rather acutely lately. A post here has just fallen vacant--a
post to which I should have desired to succeed. I have no doubt that if
I had frankly expressed my wishes on the subject, if I had even told a
leaky, gossipy colleague what I desired, and begged him to keep it to
himself, the thing would have got out, and the probability is that the
post would have been offered to me. But I held my tongue, not, I
confess, from any very high motive, but merely from a natural dislike
of being importunate--it does not seem to me consistent with good
manners.

Well, I made no sign; and another man was appointed. I have no doubt
that a man of the world would say frankly that I was a fool, and,
though I am rather inclined to agree with him, I don't think I could
have acted otherwise.

I am inclined to encourage ambition of every kind among the boys. I
think it is an appropriate virtue for their age and temperament. It is
not a Christian virtue; for it is certain that, if one person succeeds
in an ambitious prospect, there must be a dozen who are disappointed.
But though I don't approve of it on abstract grounds, yet I think it is
so tremendous a motive for activity and keenness that it seems to me
that boys are the better for it. I don't believe that in education the
highest motive is always the best; indeed, the most effective motive,
in dealing with immature minds, is the thing which we have to discover
and use.

I mean, for instance, that I think it is probably more effective to say
to a boy who is disposed to be physically indolent, "You have a chance
of getting your colours this half, and I should like to see you get
them," than to say, "I don't want you to think about colours. I want
you to play football for the glory of God, because it makes you into a
stronger, more wholesome, more cheerful man." It seems to me that boys
should learn for themselves that there are often better and bigger
reasons for having done a thing than the reason that made them do it.

What makes an object seem desirable to a boy is that others desire to
have it too, and that he should be the fortunate person to get it. I
don't see how the sense of other people's envy and disappointment can
be altogether subtracted from the situation--it certainly is one of the
elements which makes success seem desirable to many boys--though a
generous nature will not indulge the thought.

But I am equally sure that, as one gets older, one ought to put aside
such thoughts altogether. That one ought to trample down ambitious
desires and even hopes. That glory, according to the old commonplace,
ought to follow and not to be followed.

I think one ought to pursue one's own line, to do one's own business to
the best of one's ability, and leave the rest to God. If He means one
to be in a big place, to do a big work, it will be clearly enough
indicated; and the only chance of doing it in a big way is to be
simple-minded, sincere, generous, and contented.

The worst of that theory is this. One sees people in later life who
have just missed big chances; some over-subtle delicacy of mind, some
untimely reticence or frankness, some indolent hanging-back, some
scrupulousness, has just checked them from taking a bold step forward
when it was needed. And one sees them with large powers, noble
capacities, wise thoughts, relegated to the crowd of unconsidered and
inconsiderable persons whose opinion has no weight, whose suggestions
have no effectiveness. Are they to be blamed? Or has one humbly and
faithfully to take it as an indication that they are just not fit, from
some secret weakness, some fibre of feebleness, to take the tiller?

I am speaking with entire sincerity when I say to you that I think I am
myself rather cast in that mould. I have always just missed getting
what used to be called "situations of dignity and emolument," and I
have often been condoled with as the person who ought to have had them.

Well, I expect that this is probably a very wholesome discipline for
me, but I cannot say that it is pleasant, or that use has made it
easier.

The worst of it is that I have an odd mixture of practicality and
mysticism within me, and I have sometimes thought that one has damaged
the other. My mysticism has pulled me back when I ought to have taken a
decided step, urging "Leave it to God"--and then, when I have failed to
get what I wanted, my mysticism has failed to comfort me, and the
practical side of me has said, "The decided step was what God clearly
indicated to you was needed; and you were lazy and would not take it."

I have a highly practical friend, the most absolutely and admirably
worldly person I know. In talk he sometimes lets fall very profound
maxims. We were talking the other day about this very point, and he
said musingly, "It is a very good rule in this world not to ask for
anything unless you are pretty sure to get it." That is the cream of
the worldly attitude. Such a man is not going to make himself tiresome
by importunity. He knows what he desires, he works for it, and, when
the moment comes, he just gives the little push that is needed, and
steps into his kingdom.

That is exactly what I cannot do. It is not a sign of high-mindedness,
for I am by nature greedy, acquisitive, and ambitious. But it is a want
of firmness, I suppose. Anyhow, there it is, and one cannot alter one's
temperament.

The conclusion which I come to for myself and for all like-minded
persons--not a very happy class, I fear--is that one should absolutely
steel oneself against disappointment, not allow oneself to indulge in
pleasing visions, not form plans or count chickens, but try to lay hold
of the things which do bring one tranquillity, the simple joys of
ordinary and uneventful life. One may thus arrive at a certain degree
of independence. And though the heart may ache a little at the chances
missed, yet one may console oneself by thinking that it is happier not
to realise an ambition and be disappointed, than to realise it and be
disappointed.

It all comes from over-estimating one's own powers, after all. If one
is decently humble, no disappointment is possible; and such little
successes as one does attain are like gleams of sunlight on a misty
day.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  March 25, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--You are quite right about conventionality in education.

One of my perennial preoccupations here is how to encourage originality
and independence among my boys. The great danger of public-school
education nowadays, as you say, is the development of a type. It is not
at all a bad type in many ways; the best specimens of the public-school
type are young men who are generous, genial, unembarrassed, courageous,
sensible, and active; but our system all tends to level character, and
I do not feel sure whether it levels it up or levels it down. In old
days the masters concerned themselves with the work of the boys only,
and did not trouble their heads about how the boys amused themselves
out of school. Vigorous boys organised games for themselves, and
indolent boys loafed. Then it came home to school authorities that
there was a good deal of danger in the method; that lack of employment
was an undesirable thing. Thereupon work was increased, and, at the
same time, the masters laid hands upon athletics and organised them.
Side by side with this came a great increase of wealth and leisure in
England, and there sprang up that astonishing and disproportionate
interest in athletic matters, which is nowadays a real problem for all
sensible men. But the result of it all has been that there has grown up
a stereotyped code among the boys as to what is the right thing to do.
They are far less wilful and undisciplined than they used to be; they
submit to work, as a necessary evil, far more cheerfully than they used
to do; and they base their ideas of social success entirely on
athletics. And no wonder! They find plenty of masters who are just as
serious about games as they are themselves; who spend all their spare
time in looking on at games, and discuss the athletic prospects of
particular boys in a tone of perfectly unaffected seriousness. The only
two regions which masters have not organised are the intellectual and
moral regions. The first has been tacitly and inevitably extruded. A
good deal more work is required from the boys, and unless a boy's
ability happens to be of a definite academical order--in which case he
is well looked after--there is no loop-hole through which intellectual
interest can creep in. A boy's time is so much occupied by definite
work and definite games that there is neither leisure nor, indeed,
vigour left to follow his own pursuits. Life is lived so much more in
public that it becomes increasingly difficult for SETS to exist; small
associations of boys with literary tastes used to do a good deal in the
direction of fostering the germs of intellectual life; the net result
is, that there is now far less interest abroad in intellectual things,
and such interests as do exist, exist in a solitary way, and generally
mean an intellectual home in the background.

In the moral region, I think we have much to answer for; there is a
code of morals among boys which, if it is not actively corrupting, is
at least undeniably low. The standard of purity is low; a vicious boy
doesn't find his vicious tendencies by any means a bar to social
success. Then the code of honesty is low; a boy who is habitually
dishonest in the matter of work is not in the least reprobated. I do
not mean to say that there are not many boys who are both pure-minded
and honest; but they treat such virtues as a secret preference of their
own, and do not consider that it is in the least necessary to interfere
with the practice of others, or even to disapprove of it. And then
comes the perennial difficulty of schoolboy honour; the one
unforgivable offence is to communicate anything to masters; and an
innocent-minded boy whose natural inclination to purity gave way before
perpetual temptation and even compulsion might be thought to have
erred, but would have scanty, if any, expression of either sympathy or
pity from other boys; while if he breathed the least hint of his
miserable position to a master and the fact came out, he would be
universally scouted.

This is a horrible fact to contemplate; yet it cannot be cured by
enactment, only from within. It is strange that in this respect it is
entirely unlike the code of the world. No girl or woman would be
scouted for appealing to police protection in similar circumstances; no
man would be required to submit to violence or even to burglary; no
reprobation would fall upon him if he appealed to the law to help him.

Is it not possible to encourage something of this feeling in a school?
Is it not possible, without violating schoolboy honour, which is in
many ways a fine and admirable thing, to allow the possibility of an
appeal to protection for the young and weak against vile temptations?
It seems to me that it would be best if we could get the boys to
organise such a system among themselves. But to take no steps to arrive
at such an organisation, and to leave matters severely alone, is a very
dark responsibility to bear.

It is curious to note that in the matter of bullying and cruelty, which
used to be so rife at schools, public opinion among boys does seem to
have undergone a change. The vice has practically disappeared, and the
good feeling of a school would be generally against any case of gross
bullying; but the far more deadly and insidious temptation of impurity
has, as far as one can learn, increased. One hears of simply
heart-rending cases where a boy dare not even tell his parents of what
he endures. Then, too, a boy's relations will tend to encourage him to
hold out, rather than to invoke a master's aid, because they are afraid
of the boy falling under the social ban.

This is the heaviest burden a schoolmaster has to bear; to be
responsible for his boys, and to be held responsible, and yet to be
probably the very last person to whom the information of what is
happening can possibly come.

One great difficulty seems to be that boys will only, as a rule,
combine for purposes of evil. In matters of virtue a boy has to act for
himself; and I confess, too, with a sigh, that a set of virtuous boys
banding themselves together to resist evil and put it down has an
alarmingly priggish sound.

The most that a man can do at present, it seems to me, is to have good
sensible servants; to be vigilant and discreet; to try and cultivate a
paternal relation with all his boys; to try and make the bigger boys
feel some responsibility in the matter; but the worst of it is that the
subject is so unpleasant that many masters dare not speak of it at all;
and excuse themselves by saying that they don't want to put ideas into
boys' heads. I cannot conscientiously believe that a man who has been
through a big public school himself can honestly be afraid of that. But
we all seem to be so much afraid of each other, of public opinion, of
possible unpopularity, that we find excuses for letting a painful thing
alone.

But to leave this part of the subject, which is often a kind of
nightmare to me, and to return to my former point; I do honestly think
it a great misfortune that we tend to produce a type. It seems to me
that to aim at independence, to know one's own mind, to form one's own
ideas--liberty, in short--is one of the most sacred duties in life. It
is not only a luxury in which a few can indulge, it ought to be a
quality which every one should be encouraged to cultivate. I declare
that it makes me very sad sometimes to see these well-groomed,
well-mannered, rational, manly boys all taking the same view of things,
all doing the same things, smiling politely at the eccentricity of any
one who finds matter for serious interest in books, in art or music:
all splendidly reticent about their inner thoughts, with a courteous
respect for the formalities of religion and the formalities of work;
perfectly correct, perfectly complacent, with no irregularities or
angular preferences of their own; with no admiration for anything but
athletic success, and no contempt for anything but originality of
ideas. They are so nice, so gentlemanly, so easy to get on with; and
yet, in another region, they are so dull, so unimaginative, so
narrow-minded. They cannot all, of course, be intellectual or
cultivated; but they ought to be more tolerant, more just, more wise.
They ought to be able to admire vigour and enthusiasm in every
department instead of in one or two; and it is we who ought to make
them feel so, and we have already got too much to do--though I am
afraid that you will think, after reading this vast document, that I,
at all events, have plenty of spare time. But it is not the case; only
the end of the half is at hand; we have finished our regular work, and
I have done my reports, and am waiting for a paper. When you next hear
I shall be a free man. I shall spend Easter quietly here; but I have so
much to do and clear off that I probably shall not be able to write
until I have set off on my travels.--Ever yours,

T. B.



THE RED DRAGON,
  COMPTON FEREDAY,
    April 10, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I was really too busy to write last week, but I am going
to try and make up for it. This letter is going to be a diary. Expect
more of it.--T. B.


April 7.--I find myself, after all, compelled to begin my walking tour
alone. At the last moment Murchison has thrown me over. His father is
ill, and he is compelled to spend his holidays at home. I do not
altogether like to set off by myself, but it is too late to try and
arrange for another companion. I had rather, however, go by myself than
with some one who is not absolutely congenial. One requires on these
occasions to have a companion whose horizon is the same as one's own. I
daresay I could find an old friend, who is not also a colleague, to go
with me, but it would mean a certain amount of talk to bring us into
line. Then, too, I have had a very busy term; besides my form work, I
have had a good deal of extra teaching to do with the Army Class boys.
It is interesting work, for the boys are interested, not in the
subjects so much, as in mastering them for examination purposes. Yet it
matters little how the interest is obtained, as long as the boys
believe in the usefulness of what they are doing. But the result is
that I am tired out. I have lived with boys from morning to night, and
my spare time has been taken up with working at my subjects. I have had
hardly any exercise, and but a scanty allowance of sleep. Now I mean to
have both. I shall spend my days in the open air, and I shall sleep, I
hope, like a top at nights. Gradually I shall recover my power of
enjoyment; for the worst of such weeks as I have been passing through
is that they leave one dreary and jaded; one finds oneself in that dull
mood when one cannot even realise beautiful things. I hear a thrush
sing in a bush, or the sunset flames broadly behind the elms, and I say
to myself, "That is very beautiful if only I could feel it to be so!"
Boys are exhausting companions--they are so restless, so full-blooded,
so pitilessly indifferent, so desperately interested in the narrow
round of school life; and I have the sort of temperament that will
efface itself to any extent, if only the people that I am concerned
with will be content. I suppose it is a feeble trait, and that the best
schoolmasters have a magnetic influence over boys which makes the boys
interested in the master's subjects, or at least hypnotises them into
an appearance of interest. I cannot do that. It is like a leaden weight
upon me if I feel that a class is bored; the result is that I arrive at
the same end in my own way. I have learnt a kind of sympathy with boys;
I know by instinct what will interest them, or how to put a tiresome
thing in an interesting way.

But I shudder to think how sick I am of it all! I want a long bath of
silence and recollection and repose. I want to fill my cistern again
with my own thoughts and my own dreams, instead of pumping up the muddy
waters of irrigation. I don't think my colleagues are like that. I sate
with half-a-dozen of them last night at supper. They were full of all
they meant to do. Two of the most energetic were going off to play
golf, and the chief pleasure of the place they were going to was that
it was possible to get a round on Sundays; they were going to fill the
evening with bridge, and one of them said with heart-felt satisfaction,
"I am only going to take two books away with me--one on golf and the
other on bridge--and I am going to cure some of my radical faults." I
thought to myself that if he had forborne to mention the subjects of
his books, one might have supposed that they would be a Thomas-a-Kempis
and a Taylor's Holy Living, and then how well it would have seemed! Two
more were going for a rapid tour abroad in a steamer chartered for
assistant masters. That seemed to me to be almost more depressing. They
were going to ancient historical places, full of grave and beautiful
associations; places to go to, it seemed to me, with some single
like-minded associate, places to approach with leisurely and untroubled
mind, with no feeling of a programme or a time-table--and least of all
in the company of busy professional people with an academical cicerone.

Still, I suppose that this is true devotion to one's profession. They
will be able, they think, to discourse easily and, God help us,
picturesquely about what they have seen, to intersperse a Thucydides
lesson with local colour, and to describe the site of the temple of
Delphi to boys beginning the Eumenides. It is very right and proper, no
doubt, but it produces in me a species of mental nausea to think of the
conditions under which these impressions will be absorbed. The
arrangements for luncheon, the brisk interchange of shop, the cheery
comments of fellow-tradesmen, the horrible publicity and banality of
the whole affair!

My two other colleagues were going, one to spend a holiday at
Brighton--which he said was very bracing at Easter, adding that he
expected to fall in with some fellows he knew. They will all stroll on
the Parade, smoke cigarettes together, and adjourn for a game of
billiards. No doubt a very harmless way of passing the time, but not to
me enlivening. But Walters is a conventional person, and, as long as he
is doing what he would call "the correct thing," he is perfectly and
serenely content. The sixth and last is going to Surbiton to spend the
holidays with a mother and three sisters, and I think he is the most
virtuously employed of all. He will walk out alone, with a terrier dog,
before lunch; and after lunch he will go out with his sisters; and
perhaps the vicar will come to tea. But then it will be home, and the
girls will be proud of their brother, and will have the dishes he
likes, and he will have his father's old study to smoke in. I am not
sure that he is not the happiest of all, because he is not only
pursuing his own happiness.

But I have no such duties before me. I might, I suppose, go down to my
sister Helen at the Somersetshire vicarage where she lives so full a
life. But the house is small, there are four children, and not much
money, and I should only be in the way. Charles would do his best to
welcome me, but he will be in a great fuss over his Easter services;
and he will ask me to use his study as though it was my own room, which
will necessitate a number of hurried interviews in the drawing-room, my
sister will take her letters up to her bedroom, and the doors will have
to be carefully closed to exclude my tobacco smoke.

This is all very sordid, no doubt, but I am confronted with sordid
things to-day. The boys have just cleared off, and they are beginning
to sweep out the schoolrooms. The inky, dreary desks, the ragged books,
the odd fives-shoes in the pigeon-holes, the wheelbarrows full of
festering orange-peel and broken-down fives-balls: this is not a place
for a self-respecting person to be in. I want to be mooning about
country lanes, with the smell of spring woods blowing down the valley.
I want to be holding slow converse with leisurely rustic persons, to be
surveying from the side of a high grassy hill the rich plain below, to
hear the song of birds in the thickets, to try and feel myself one with
the life of the world instead of a sordid sweeper of a corner of it.
This is all very ungrateful to my profession, which I love, but it is a
necessary reaction; and what at this moment chiefly makes me grateful
to it is that my pocket is full enough to let me have a holiday on a
liberal scale, without thinking of small economies. I may give pennies
to tramps or children, or a shilling to a sexton for showing me a
church. I may travel what class I choose, and put up at a hotel without
counting the cost; and oh! the blessedness of that. I would rather have
a three-days' holiday thus than three weeks with an anxious calculation
of resources.

April 8.--I am really off to the Cotswolds. I packed my beloved
knapsack yesterday afternoon. I put in it--precision is the essence of
diarising--a spare shirt, which will have to serve if necessary as a
nightgown, a pair of socks, a pair of slippers, a toothbrush, a small
comb, and a sponge; that is sufficient for a philosopher. A pocket
volume of poetry--Matthew Arnold this time--and a map completed my
outfit. And I sent a bag containing a more liberal wardrobe to a
distant station, which I calculated it would take me three days to
reach. Then I went off by an afternoon train, and, by sunset, I found
myself in a little town, Hinton Perevale, of stone-built houses, with
an old bridge. I had no sense of freedom as yet, only a blessed feeling
of repose. I took an early supper in a small low-roofed parlour with
mullioned windows. By great good fortune I found myself the only guest
at the inn, and had the room to myself; then I went early and
gratefully to bed, utterly sleepy and content, with just enough sense
left to pray for a fine day.

My prayer is answered this morning. I slept a dreamless sleep, and was
roused by the cheerful crowing of cocks, which picked about the back
yard of the inn. I dressed quickly, only suspending my task to watch
the little dramas of the inn yard--the fowls on the pig-sty wall; the
horse waiting meekly, with knotted traces hanging round it, to be
harnessed; the cat, on some grave business of its own, squeezing
gracefully under a closed barn door; the weary, flat-footed duck,
nuzzling the mud of a small pool as delicately as though it were a rich
custard. I was utterly free; I might go and come as I liked. Time had
ceased to exist for me, and it was pleasant to reflect, as I finished
my simple breakfast, that I should under professional conditions have
been hurrying briskly into school for an hour of Latin Prose. The
incredible absurdity and futility of it all came home to me. Half the
boys that I teach so elaborately would be both more wholesomely and
happily employed if they were going out to farm-work for the day. But
they are gentlemen's sons, and so must enter what are called the
liberal professions, to retire at the age of sixty with a poor
digestion, a peevish wife, and a family of impossible children. But it
is only in such inconsequent moments that I allow myself to think thus
slightingly of Latin Prose. It is a valuable accomplishment, and, when
I have repaired the breaches made by professional work in the mental
equilibrium, I shall rejoin my colleagues with a full sense of its
paramount importance.

I scribble this diary with a vile pen, and ink like blacking, on the
corner of my breakfast-table. I have packed my knapsack, and in a few
minutes I shall set out upon my march.

April 9.--I spent an almost perfect day yesterday. It was a cool bright
day, with a few clouds like cotton-wool moving sedately in a blue sky.
I first walked quietly about my little town, which was full of delicate
beauties. The houses are all built of a soft yellow stone, which
weathers into a species of rich orange. Heaven knows where the
designers came from, but no two houses seem alike; some of them are
gabled, buttressed, stone-mullioned, irregular in outline, but yet with
a wonderful sense of proportion. Some are Georgian, with classical
pilasters and pediments. Yet they are all for use and not for show; and
the weak modern shop-windows, which some would think disfigure the
delicate house-fronts, seem to me just to give the requisite sense of
contrast. At the end of the street stands the church, with a stately
Perpendicular tower, and a resonant bell which tells the hour. This
overlooks a pile of irregular buildings, now a farm, but once a great
manor-house, with a dovecote and pavilions; but the old terrace is now
an orchard, and the fine oriel of the house looks straight into the
byre. Inside the church--it is open and well-kept--you can trace the
history of the manor and its occupants, from Job Best, a rich mercer of
London, whose monument, with marble pillars and obelisks, adorns the
south aisle; his son was ennobled, whose effigy--more majestic still,
robed and coroneted, with his Viscountess by his side, and her dog
(with his name, Jakke, engraven on his shoulder)--lies smiling, the
slender hands crossed in prayer. But the house was not destined to
survive. The Viscount's only daughter, the Lady Penelope, looks down
from the wall, a fair and delicate lady, the last of her brief race,
who, as the old inscription says with a tender simplicity, "dyed a
mayd." I cannot help wondering, my pretty lady, what your story was;
and it will do you no hurt if one, who looks upon your gentle face,
sends a wondering message of tenderness behind the veil to your pure
spirit, regret for your vanished charm, and the fragrance of your soft
bloom, and sadness for all sweet things that fade.

The manor, so I learn, was burnt wantonly by the Roundheads--there was
a battle hereabouts--on the charge that it had harboured some followers
of the king; and so our dreams of greatness and permanence are
fulfilled.

The whole church was very neat and spruce; it had suffered a
restoration lately. The walls were stripped of their old plaster and
pointed, so that the inside is now rougher than the outside, a thing
the ancient builders never intended. The altar is fairly draped with
good hangings behind, and the chancel fitted with new oak stalls and
seats, all as neat as a new pin. As I lingered in the church, reading
the simple monuments, a rosy, burly vicar came briskly in, and seeing
me there, courteously showed me all the treasures of his house, like
Hezekiah. He took me into the belfry, and there, piled up against the
wall, were some splendid Georgian columns and architraves, richly
carved in dark brown wood. I asked what it was. "Oh, a horrible pompous
thing," he said; "it was behind the altar--most pagan and unsuitable;
we had it all out as soon as I came. The first moment I entered the
church, I said to myself, 'THAT must go,' and I have succeeded, though
it was hard enough to collect the money, and actually some of the old
people here objected." I did not feel it was worth while to cast cold
water on the good man's satisfaction--but the pity of it! I do not
suppose that a couple of thousand pounds could have reproduced it; and
it is simply heart-rending to see such a noble monument of piety and
careful love sacrificed to a wave of so-called ecclesiastical taste.
The vicar's chief pride was a new window, by a fashionable modern firm;
quite unobjectionable in design, and with good colour, but desperately
uninteresting. It represented some mild, unemphatic, attenuated saints,
all exactly alike, languidly and decorously conversing together,
weighed down by heavy drapery, as though wrapped in bales of carpets.
In the lower compartments knelt some dignified persons, similarly
habited, in face exactly like the saints above, except that they were
fitted out with unaccountable beards--all pretty and correct, but with
no character or force. I suppose that fifty years hence, when our taste
has broadened somewhat, this window will probably be condemned as
impossible too. There can be no absolute canon of beauty; the only
principle ought to be to spare everything that is of careful and solid
workmanship, to give it a chance, to let time and age have their
perfect work. It is the utter conventionality of the whole thing that
is so distressing; the same thing is going on all over the country, the
attempt to put back the clock, and to try and restore things as they
were; history, tradition, association, are not considered. The old
builders were equally ruthless, it is true; they would sweep away a
Norman choir to build a Decorated one; but at all events they were
advancing and expanding, not feebly recurring to a past period of
taste, and trying to obliterate the progress of the centuries.

About noon I left the little town, and struck out up a winding lane to
the hills. The copses were full of anemones and primroses; birds sang
sharply in the bushes which were gemmed with fresh green; now and then
I heard the woodpecker laugh as if at some secret jest among the
thickets. Presently the little town was at my feet, looking small and
tranquil in the golden noon; and soon I came to the top. It was grassy,
open down-land up here, and in an instant the wide view of a rich
wooded and watered plain spread before me, with shadowy hills on the
horizon. In the middle distance I saw the red roofs of a great town,
the smoke going peacefully up; here was a shining river-reach, like a
crescent of silver. It was England indeed--tranquil, healthy,
prosperous England.

The rest of the day I need not record. It was full of delicate
impressions--an old, gabled, mullioned house among its pastures; a
hamlet by a stream, admirably grouped; a dingle set with primroses; and
over all, the long, pure lines of upland, with here and there, through
a gap, the purple, wealthy plain.

I write this in the evening, at a little wayside inn, in a hamlet under
the hill. The name alone, Wenge Grandmain, is worth a shilling. It is
very simple, but clean, and the people are kind; not with the
professional manner of those who bow, smiling, to a paying guest, but
of those who welcome a wanderer and try to make him a home. And so, in
a dark-panelled little parlour, with a sedate-ticking clock, I sit
while the sounds of life grow fainter and rarer in the little street.



THE CROSSFOXES INN,
  BOURTON-ON-THE-WOLD,
    April 16, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have now been ten days on my travels, but for the last
week I have pitched my moving tent at Bourton. Do you shudder with the
fear that I am going to give you pages of description of scenery? It is
not a SHUDDER with me when I get a landscape-letter; it is merely that
leaden dulness which falls upon the spirit when it is confronted with
statements which produce no impression upon the mind. I always, for
instance, skip the letters of travel which appear about the third
chapter of great biographies, when the young gentleman goes for the
Grand Tour after taking his degree.

But imagine this: a great, rich, wooded, watered plain; on the far
horizon the shadowy forms of hills; behind you, gently rising heights,
with dingles and folds full of copsewood, rising to soft green downs.
There, on the skirts of the upland, above the plain, below the hill,
sits the little village, with a stately Perpendicular church tower. The
village itself of stone houses, no two alike, all with character;
gabled, mullioned, weathered to a delicate ochre--some standing back,
some on the street. Intermingled with these are fine Georgian houses,
with great pilasters, all of stone too; in the centre of the street a
wall, with two tall gate-posts, crowned with stone balls; a short lime
avenue leads to a stately, gabled manor-house, which you can see
through great iron gates. The whole scene incredibly romantic,
exquisitely beautiful.

My favourite walk is this. I leave the little town by a road which
winds along the base of the hill. I pass round a shoulder, wooded and
covered to the base with tangled thickets, where the birds sing
shrilly. I turn up to the left into a kind of "combe." At the very
farthest end of the little valley, at the base of the steeper <DW72>s
but now high above the plain, stands an ancient church among yews. On
one side of it is a long, low-fronted, irregular manor-house, with a
formal garden in front, approached by a little arched gate-house which
stands on the road; on the other side of the church, and below it, a no
less ancient rectory, with a large Perpendicular window, anciently a
chapel, in the gable. In the warm, sheltered air the laurels grow
luxuriantly; a bickering stream, running in a deep channel, makes a
delicate music of its own; a little farther on stands a farm, with barn
and byre; in the midst of the buildings is a high, stone-tiled
dovecote. The roo-hooing of the pigeons fills the whole place with a
slumberous sound. I wind up the hill by a little path, now among
thickets, now crossing a tilted pasture. I emerge on the top of a down;
in front of me lie the long <DW72>s of the wold, with that purity and
tranquillity of outline which only down-land possesses. Here on a spur
stands a grass-grown camp, with ancient thorn-trees growing in it.
Turning round, the great plain runs for miles, with here and there a
glint of water, where the slow-moving Avon wanders. Hamlets, roads,
towers lie out like a map at my feet--all wearing that secluded,
peaceful air which tempts me to think that life would be easy and happy
if it could only be lived among those quiet fields, with the golden
light and lengthening shadows.

I find myself wondering in these quiet hours--I walk alone as a
rule--what this haunting, incommunicable sense of beauty is. Is it a
mere matter of temperament, of inner happiness, of physical well-being;
or has it an absolute existence? It comes and goes like the wind. Some
days one is acutely, almost painfully, alive to it--painfully, because
it makes such constant and insistent demands upon one's attention. Some
days, again, it is almost unheeded, and one passes through it blind and
indifferent. It is an expression, I cannot help feeling, of the very
mind of God; and yet the ancient earthwork in which I stand, bears
witness to the fact that in far-off days men lived in danger and
anxiety, fighting and striving for bare existence. We have established
by law and custom a certain personal security nowadays; is our sense of
beauty born of that security? I cannot help wondering whether the old
warriors who built this place cared at all for the beauty of the earth;
and yet over it all hangs the gentle sadness of all sweet things that
have an end. All those warriors are dust; the boys and girls who
wandered a century ago where I wander to-day, they are at rest too in
the little churchyard that lies at my feet; and my heart goes out to
all who have loved and suffered, and to those who shall hereafter love
and suffer here. An idle sympathy, perhaps, but none the less strong
and real.

But now for a little human experience that befell me here. I found the
other day, not far from the church, an old artist sketching. A refined,
sad-looking old fellow, sunburned and active, with white hair and
pointed beard, and a certain pathetic attempt, of a faded kind, to
dress for his part--low collar, a red tie, rough shooting-jacket, and
so forth. He seemed in a sociable mood, and I sate down beside him. How
it came about I hardly know, but he was soon telling me the story of
his life. He was the tenant, I found, of the old manor-house, which he
held at a ridiculous rent, and he had lived here nearly forty years. He
had found the place as a young man, wandering about in search of the
picturesque. I gathered that he had bright dreams and wide ambitions.
He had a small independence, and he had meant to paint great pictures
and make a name for himself. He had married; his wife was long dead,
his children out in the world, and he was living on alone, painting the
same pictures, bought, so far as I could make out, mostly by American
visitors. His drawing was old-fashioned and deeply mannerised. He was
painting not what was there, but some old and faded conception of his
own as to what it was like--missing, I think, half the beauty of the
place. He seemed horribly desolate. I tried, for his consolation and my
own, to draw out a picture of the beautiful refined life he led; and
the old fellow began to wear a certain jaunty air of dignity and
distinction, which would have amused me if it had not made me feel
inclined to cry. But he soon fell back into what is, I suppose, a
habitual melancholy. "Ah, if you had known what my dreams were!" he
said once. He went on to say that he now wished that he had taken up
some simple and straightforward profession, had made money, and had his
grandchildren about him. "I am more ghost than man," he said, shaking
his dejected head.

I despair of expressing to you the profound pathos that seemed to me to
surround this old despondent creature, with his broken dreams and his
regretful memories. Where was the mistake he made? I suppose that he
over-estimated his powers; but it was a generous mistake after all; and
he has had to bear the slow sad disillusionment, the crushing burden of
futility. He set out to win glory, and he is a forgotten, shabby,
irresolute figure, subsisting on the charity of wealthy visitors! And
yet he seems to have missed happiness by so little. To live as he does
might be a serene and beautiful thing. If such a man had large reserves
of hope and tenderness and patience; if he could but be content with
the tranquil beauty of the wholesome earth, spread so richly before his
eyes, it would be a life to be envied.

It has been a gentle lesson to me, that one must resolutely practise
one's heart and spirit for the closing hours. In the case of successful
men, as they grow older, it often strikes me with a sense of pain how
passionately they cling to their ambitions and activities. How many
people there are who work too long, and try to prolong the energies of
morning into the afternoon, and the toil of afternoon into the peace of
evening. I earnestly desire to grow old gracefully; to know when to
stop, when to slip into a wise and kindly passivity, with sympathy for
those who are in the forefront of the race. And yet if one does not
practise wonder and receptivity and hope, one cannot expect them to
come suddenly and swiftly to one's call. There comes a day when a man
ought to be able to see that his best work is behind him, that his
active influence is on the wane, that he is losing his hold on the
machine. There ought to come a patient, beautiful, and kindly dignity,
a love of young things and fresh flowers; not an envious and regretful
unhappiness at the loss of the eager life and its brisk sensations,
which betrays itself too often in a trickle of exaggerated
reminiscences, a "weary, day-long chirping."

This is a harder task, I suppose, for an old bachelor than for a father
of children. I have sometimes felt that adoption, with all its risks,
of some young creature that you can call your own, would be a solution
for many loveless lives, because it would stir them out of the
comfortable selfishness that is the bane of the barren heart.

Of course, a schoolmaster suffers from this less than most professional
men; but, even so, it is melancholy to reflect how the boys one has
cared for, and tried to help, drift out of one's sight and ken. I have
no touch of the feeling which they say was characteristic of
Jowett--and indeed is amply evidenced by his correspondence--that once
a man's tutor he was always his tutor, even though his pupil became
grey-headed and a grandfather. One must do the best for the boys and
look for no gratitude; it often comes, indeed, in rich measure, but the
schoolmaster who craves for it is lost.

Well, it is time to stop. I sit in a little, low raftered parlour of
the old inn; the fire in the big hearth flickers into ash, and my
candles flare to their sockets. I leave the place to-morrow; and such
is the instinct for permanence in the human mind, that I feel depressed
and melancholy, as though I were leaving home.--Ever your affectionate,

T. B.



THE BLUE BOAR,
  STANTON HARDWICK,
    April 21, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon. I now
feel overwhelmed with shame to reflect that, though my chief
preoccupations apart from my profession have been literary, I have
never visited the sacred place before. For an Englishman who cares for
literature not to have been to Stratford-on-Avon is as gross a neglect
as for an Englishman who has any sense of patriotism not to have
visited Westminster Abbey.

And now that I have been there and returned, and have leisure to think
it all over, I feel that I have been standing on the threshold of a
mystery. Who, when all is said and done, was this extraordinary man?
What were his thoughts, his aims, his views of himself and of the
world? If Shakespeare was Shakespeare, he seems, to speak frankly, to
have had a humanity distinct and apart from his genius. Here we have
the son of a busy, quarrelsome, enterprising tradesman--who eventually
indeed came to grief in trade--of a yeoman stock, and bearing a common
name. His mother could not write her own signature. Of his youth we
hear little that is not disreputable. He married under unpleasant
circumstances, after an entanglement which took place at a very early
age; he was addicted to poaching, or, at all events, to the illegal
pursuit of other people's game. Then he drifts up to London and joins a
theatrical company--then a rascally kind of trade--deserting his wife
and family. His life in London is full of secrets. He is a man of
mysterious passions and dangerous friendships. He writes plays of
incomparable depth and breadth, touching every chord of humour, tragedy
and pathos; certain rather elaborate poems of a precieux type, and
strange sonnets, revealing a singular poignancy of unconventional
feelings. But here, again, it is difficult to conceive that the writer
of the Sonnets, who touched life so intensely at one feverish point,
should have had the amazing detachment and complexity of mind and soul
that the plays reveal. The notices of his talk and character are few
and unenlightening, and testify to a certain easy brilliance of wit,
but no more. Before he is thirty he is spoken of as both "upright" and
"facetious"--a singular combination.

Then he suddenly appears in another aspect; at the age of thirty-two he
is a successful, well-to-do man. And then his ambition, if he had any,
seems to shift its centre, and he appears to be only bent upon
restoring the fortunes of his family, and attaining a solid municipal
position. He buys the biggest house in his native place; from the
proceeds of his writings, his professional income as an actor, and from
his share in the playhouse of which he is part owner, he purchases
lands and houses, he engages in lawsuits, he concerns himself with
grants of arms. Still the flood of stupendous literature flows out; he
seems to be under a contract to produce plays, for which he receives
the magnificent sum of L10 (L100 of our money). He writes easily and
never corrects. He seems to set no store on his writings, which stream
from him like light from the sun. He adapts, collaborates, and has no
idea of what would be called a high vocation.

At forty-seven it all ceases; he writes no more, but lives prosperously
in his native town, with occasional visits to London. At fifty-two his
health fails. He makes business-like arrangements in the event of
death, and faces the darkness of the long sleep like any other good
citizen.

Who can co-ordinate or reconcile these things? Who can conceive the
likeness of the man, who steps in this light-hearted, simple way on to
the very highest platform of literature--so lofty and unattainable a
place he takes without striving, without arrogance, a throne among the
thrones where Homer, Virgil, and Dante sit? And yet his mind is set,
not on these things, but on acres and messuages, tithes and
investments. He seems not only devoid of personal vanity, but even of
that high and solemn pride which made Keats say, with faltering lips,
that he believed he would be among the English poets after his death.

I came through the pleasant water-meadows and entered the streets of
the busy town. Everything, from bank to eating-shop, bears the name of
Shakespeare; and one cannot resist the thought that such local and
homely renown would have been more to our simple hero's taste than the
laurel and the throne. I groaned in spirit over the monstrous
playhouse, with its pretentious Teutonic air; I walked through the
churchyard, vocal with building rooks, and came to the noble church,
full of the evidences of wealth and worship and honour. I do not like
to confess the breathless awe with which I drew near to the chancel and
gazed on the stone that, nameless, with its rude rhyme, covers the
sacred dust. I cannot say what my thoughts were, but I was lost in a
formless, unuttered prayer of true abasement before the venerable
relics of the highest achievements of the human spirit. There beneath
my feet slept the dust of the brain that conceived Hamlet and Macbeth,
and the hand that had traced the Sonnets, and the eye that had plumbed
the depths of life. That was a solemn moment, and I do not think I ever
experienced so deep a thrill of speechless awe. I could not tear myself
away; I could only wonder and desire.

Presently, by the kind offices of a pleasant simple verger, I did more.
I mounted on some steps he brought, and looked face to face at the bust
in the monument.

I cannot share in the feelings of those who would consider it formal or
perfunctory. There was the high-domed forehead, like that of Pericles
and Walter Scott; there were the steady eyes, the clear-cut nose; and
as for the lips--I never for an instant doubted the truth of what I
saw--I am as certain as I can be that they are the lips of a corpse,
drawn up in the stiff tension of death, showing the teeth below. I am
absolutely convinced that here we get as near to the man as we can get,
and that the head is taken from a death-mask. What injures the dignity
and beauty of the face is the plumpness of the chin that testifies to
the burgher prosperity, the comfortable life, the unexercised brain of
the later days. I saw afterwards the various portraits; I suppose it is
a matter of evidence, but nothing convinced me of truth, not even the
bilious, dilapidated, dyspeptic, white face of the folio engraving,
with the horrible hydrocephalous development of skull. That is a
caricature only. The others seem mere fancies.

Then I saw patiently the other relics, the foundations of New Place,
the schoolhouse--but all without emotion, except a deep sense of shame
that the only records allowed to stand in the long, low-latticed room
in which the boy Shakespeare probably saw a play first acted, are
boards recording the names of school football and cricket teams. The
ineptitude of such a proceeding, the hideous insistence of the athletic
craze of England, drew from me a despairing smile; but I think that
Shakespeare himself would have viewed it with tolerance and even
amusement.

But most of these relics, like Anne Hathaway's Cottage, are restored
out of all interest, and only testify to the silly and frivolous
demands of trippers.

But, my dear Herbert, the treasure is mine. Feeble as the confession
is, I do not think I ever realised before the humanity of Shakespeare.
He seemed to me before to sit remote, enshrined aloof, the man who
could tell all the secrets of humanity that could be told, and whose
veriest hints still seem to open doors into mysteries both high and
sweet and terrible. But now I feel as if I had been near him, had been
able to love what I had only admired.

I feel somehow that it extends the kingdom of humanity to have realised
Shakespeare; and yet I am baffled. But I seem to trace in the later and
what some would call the commonplace features of the man's life, a
desire to live and be; to taste life itself, not merely to write of
what life seemed to be, and of what lay behind it. I am sure that some
such allegory was in his mind when he wrote of Prospero, who so
willingly gave up the isle full of noises, the power over the dreaming,
sexless spirits of air and wood, to go back to his tiresome dukedom,
and his petty court, and all the dull chatter and business of life. I
am sure that Shakespeare thought of his art as an Ariel--that dainty,
delicate spirit, out of the reach of love and desire, that slept in
cowslip-bells and chased the flying summer on the bat's back, and that
yet had such power to delude and bemuse the human spirit. After all,
Ariel could not come near the more divine inheritance of the human
heart, sorrow and crying, love and hate. Ariel was but a merry child,
lost in passionless delights, yearning to be free, to escape; and
Prospero felt, and Shakespeare felt, that life, with all its stains and
dreariness and disease and darkness, was something better and truer
than the fragrant dusk of the copse, and the soulless laughter of the
summer sea. Ariel could sing the heartless, exquisite song of the
sea-change that could clothe the bones and eyes of the doomed king; but
Prospero could see a fairer change in the eyes and heart of his lonely
darling.

And I am glad that even so Shakespeare could be silent, and buy and
sell, and go in and out among his fellow-townsmen, and make merry. That
is better than to sit arid and prosperous, when the brain stiffens with
stupor, and the hand has lost its cunning, and to read old
newspaper-cuttings, and long for adequate recognition. God give me and
all uneasy natures grace to know when to hold our tongues; and to take
the days that remain with patience and wonder and tenderness; not
making haste to depart, but yet not fearing the shadow out of which we
come and into which we must go; to live wisely and bravely and sweetly,
and to close our eyes in faith, with a happy sigh, like a child after a
long summer day of life and delight.--Ever yours,

T. B.



THE BLUE BOAR,
  STANTON HARDWICK,
    April 25, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--Since I last wrote I have been making pious pilgrimages
to some of the great churches hereabouts: to Gloucester, Worcester,
Tewkesbury, Malvern, Pershore. It does me good to see these great poems
in stone, beautiful in their first conception, and infinitely more
beautiful from the mellowing influences of age, and from the human
tradition that is woven into them and through them. There are few
greater pleasures than to make one's way into a Cathedral city, with
the grey towers visible for miles across the plain, rising high above
the house roofs and the smoke. At first one is in the quiet country;
then the roads begin to have a suburban air--new cottages rise by the
wayside, comfortable houses, among shrubberies and plantations. Then
the street begins; the houses grow taller and closer, and one has a
glimpse of some stately Georgian front, with pediment and cornice;
perhaps there is a cluster of factories, high, rattling buildings
overtopped by a tall chimney, with dusty, mysterious gear, of which one
cannot guess the purport, travelling upwards into some tall, blank
orifice. Then suddenly one is in the Close, with trees and flowers and
green grass, with quaint Prebendal houses of every style and date,
breathing peace and prosperity. A genial parson or two pace gravely
about; and above you soars the huge church, with pinnacle and parapet,
the jackdaws cheerily hallooing from the lofty ledges. You are a little
weary of air and sun; you push open the great door, and you are in the
cool, dark nave with its holy smell; you sit for a little and let the
spirit of the place creep into your mind; you walk hither and thither,
read the epitaphs, mourn with the bereaved, give thanks for the record
of long happy lives, and glow with mingled pain and admiration for some
young life nobly laid down. The monuments of soldiers, the sight of
dusty banners moving faintly in the slow-stirring air, always move me
inexpressibly; the stir and fury of war setting hither, like a quiet
tide, to find its last abiding-place. Then there is the choir to visit.
I do not really like the fashion which now generally prevails of paying
a small sum, writing your name in a book, and being handed over to the
guidance of some verger, a pompous foolish person, who has learnt his
lesson, delivers it like a machine, and is put out by any casual
question. I do not want to be lectured; I want to wander about, ask a
question if I desire it, and just have pointed out to me anything of
which the interest is not patent and obvious. The tombs of old knights,
the chantries of silent abbots and bishops, are all very affecting;
they stand for so much hope and love and recollection. Then sometimes
one has a glow at seeing some ancient and famous piece of history
presented to one's gaze. The figure of the grim Saxon king, with his
archaic beard and shaven upper-lip, for all the world like some
Calvinistic tradesman; or Edward the Second, with his weak, handsome
face and curly locks; or the mailed statue of Robert of Normandy, with
scarlet surcoat, starting up like a warrior suddenly aroused. Such
tombs send a strange thrill through one, a thrill of wonder and pity
and awe. What of them now? Sleepest thou, son of Atreus? Dost thou
sleep, and dream perchance of love and war, of the little life that
seemed so long, and over which the slow waves of time have flowed?
Little by little, in the holy walls, so charged with faith and
tenderness and wistful love, the pathetic vision of mortality creeps
across the mind, and one loses oneself in a dream of wonder at the
brief days so full of life, the record left for after time, and the
silence of the grave.

Then, when I have drunk my fill of sweet sights, I love to sit silent,
while the great bell hums in the roof, and gathering footsteps of young
and old patter through the echoing aisles. There is a hush of
expectation. A few quiet worshippers assemble; the western light grows
low, and lights spring to life, one after another, in the misty choir.
Then murmurs a voice, an Amen rises in full concord, and as it dies
away the slumberous thunder of a pedal note rolls on the air; the
casements whirr, the organ speaks. That fills, as it were, to the brim,
as with some sweet and fragrant potion, the cup of beauty; and the
dreaming, inquiring spirit sinks content into the flowing, the aspiring
tide, satisfied as with some heavenly answer to its sad questionings.
Then the stately pomp moves slowly to its place--so familiar, perhaps
trivial an act to those who perform it, so grave and beautiful a thing
to those who see it. The holy service proceeds with a sense of
exquisite deliberation, leading one, as by a ladder, through the
ancient ways, up to the message of to-day. Through psalm and canticle
and anthem the solemnity passes on; and perhaps some single slender
voice, some boyish treble, unconscious of its beauty and pathos, thrown
into relief, like a fountain springing among dark rocks, by the slow
thunders of the organ, comes to assure the heart that it can rest, if
but for a moment, upon a deep and inner peace, can be gently rocked, as
it were, in a moving boat, between the sky and translucent sea. Then
falls the rich monotone of prayer; and the organ wakes again for one
last message, pouring a flood of melody from its golden throats, and
dying away by soft gradations into the melodious bourdon of its close.

Does this seem to you very unreal and fantastic? I do not know; it is
very real to me. Sometimes, in dreary working hours, my spirit
languishes under an almost physical thirst for such sweetness of sound
and sight. I cannot believe that it is other than a pure and holy
pleasure, because in such hours the spirit soars into a region in which
low and evil thoughts, ugly desires, and spiteful ambitions, die, like
poisonous flowers in a clear and wholesome air. I do not say that it
inspires one with high and fierce resolution, that it fits one for
battling with the troublesome world; but it is more like the green
pastures and waters of comfort; it is pleasure in which there is no
touch of sensual appetite or petty desire; it is a kind of heavenly
peace in which the spirit floats in a passionate longing for what is
beautiful and pure. It is not that I would live my life in such
reveries; even while the soft sound dies away, the calling of harsher
voices makes itself heard in the mind. But it refreshes, it calms, it
pacifies; it tells the heart that there is a peace into which it is
possible to enter, and where it may rest for a little and fold its
weary wings.

Yet even as I write, as the gentle mood lapses and fades, I find myself
beset with uneasy and bewildering thoughts about the whole. What was
the power that raised these great places as so essential and vital a
part of life? We have lost it now, whatever it was. Churches like these
were then an obvious necessity; kings and princes vied with each other
in raising them, and no one questioned their utility. They are now a
mere luxury for ecclesiastically minded persons, built by slow
accretion, and not by some huge single gift, to please the pride of a
county or a city; and this in days when England is a thousandfold
richer than she was. They are no longer a part of the essence of life;
life has flowed away from their portals, and left them a beautiful
shadow, a venerable monument, a fragrant sentiment. No doubt it was
largely superstition that constructed them, a kind of insurance paid
for heavenly security. No one now seriously thinks that to endow a
college of priests to perform services would affect his spiritual
prospects in the life to come. The Church itself does not countenance
the idea. Moreover, there is little demand in the world at large for
the kind of beauty which they can and do minister to such as myself.
The pleasure for which people spend money nowadays has to have a
stirring, exciting, physical element in it to be acceptable. If it were
otherwise, then our cathedrals could take their place in the life of
the nation; but they are out of touch with railways, and newspapers,
and the furious pursuit of athletics. They are on the side of peace and
delicate impressions and quiet emotions. I wish it were not so; but it
would be faithless to believe that we are not in the hand of God still,
and that our restless energies develop against His will.

And then there falls a darker, more bewildering thought. Suppose that
one could bring one of the rough Galilean fishermen who sowed the seed
of the faith, into a place like this, and say to him, "This is the
fruit of your teaching; you, whose Master never spoke a word of art or
music, who taught poverty and simplicity, bareness of life, and an
unclouded heart, you are honoured here; these towers and bells are
called after your names; you stand in gorgeous robes in these storied
windows." Would they not think and say that it was all a terrible
mistake? would they not say that the desire of the world, the lust of
the eye and ear, had laid subtle and gentle hands on a stern and rugged
creed, and bade it serve and be bound?


    "Thy nakedness involves thy Spouse
     In the soft sanguine stuff she wears."


So says an eager and vehement poet, apostrophising the tortured limbs,
the drooping eye of the Crucified Lord; and is it true that these
stately and solemn houses, these sweet strains of unearthly music,
serve His purpose and will? Nay, is it not rather true that the serpent
is here again aping the mildness of the dove, and using all the
delicate, luxurious accessories of life to blind us to the truth?

I do not know; it leaves me in a sad and bewildered conflict of spirit.
And yet I somehow feel that God is in these places, and that, if only
the heart is pure and the will strong, such influences can minister to
the growth of the meek and loving spirit.--Ever yours,

T. B.

I don't know what has happened to your letters. Perhaps you have not
been able to write? I go back to work to-morrow.



UPTON,
  May 2, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--My holidays are over, and I am back at work again. I
have got your delightful letter; it was silly to be anxious. . . .

To-day I was bicycling; I was horribly preoccupied, as, alas, I often
am, with my own plans and thoughts. I was worrying myself about my
work, fretting about the thousand little problems that beset a
schoolmaster, trying to think out a chapter of a book which I am
endeavouring to write, my mind beating and throbbing like a feverish
pulse. I kept telling myself that the copses were beautiful, that the
flowers were enchanting, that the long line of distant hills seen
across the wooded valleys and the purple plain were ravishingly
tranquil and serene; but it was of no use; my mind ran like a
mill-race, a stream of thoughts jostling and hurrying on, in spite of
my efforts to shut the sluice.

Suddenly I turned a corner by a little wood, and found myself looking
over into the garden of a small, picturesque cottage, which has been
smartened up lately, and has become, I suppose, the country retreat of
some well-to-do people. It was a pretty garden; a gentle <DW72> of
grass, borders full of flowers, and an orchard behind, whitening into
bloom, with a little pool in the shady heart of it. On the lawn were
three people, obviously and delightfully idle; an elderly man sate in a
chair, smiling, smoking, reading a paper. The other two, a younger man
and a young woman, were walking side by side, their heads close
together, laughing quietly at some gentle jest. A perambulator stood by
the porch. Both the men looked like prosperous professional people,
clean-shaven, healthy, and contented. I inferred, for no particular
reason, that the young pair were man and wife, lately married, and that
the elder man was the father-in-law. I had this passing glimpse, no
more, of an interior; and then I was riding among the spring woods
again.

Of course it was only an impression, but this happy, sunshiny scene, so
suddenly opened to my gaze, so suddenly closed again, was like a
parable. I felt as if I should have liked to stop, to take off my hat,
and thank my unknown friends for making so simple, pleasant, and sweet
a picture. I dare say they were as preoccupied in professional matters,
as careful and troubled as myself, if I had known more about them. But
in that moment they were finding leisure simply to taste and enjoy the
wholesome savours of life, and were neither looking backward in regret
nor forward in anticipation. I dare say the jokes that amused them were
mild enough, and that I should have found their conversation tedious
and tiresome if I had been made one of the party. But they were
symbolical; they stood for me, and will stand, as a type of what we
ought to aim at more; and that is simply LIVING. It is a lesson which
you yourself are no doubt learning in your fragrant, shady garden. You
have no need to make money, and your only business is to get better.
But for myself, I know that I work and think and hope and fear too
much, and that in my restless pursuit of a hundred aims and ambitions
and dreams and fancies, I am constantly in danger of hardly living at
all, but of simply racing on, like a man intoxicated with affairs,
without leisure for strolling, for sitting, for talking, for watching
the sky and the earth, smelling the scents of flowers, noting the funny
ways of animals, playing with children, eating and drinking. Yet this
is our true heritage, and this is what it means to be a man; and, after
all, one has (for all one knows) but a single life, and that a short
one. It is at such moments as these that I wake as from a dream, and
think how fast my life flows on, and how very little conscious of its
essence I am. My head is full from morning to night of everything
except living. For a busy man this is, of course, to a certain extent
inevitable. But where I am at fault is in not relapsing at intervals
into a wise and patient passivity, and sitting serenely on the shore of
the sea of life, playing with pebbles, seeing the waves fall and the
ships go by, and wondering at the strange things cast up by the waves,
and the sharp briny savours of the air. Why do I not do this? Because,
to continue my confession, it bores me. I must, it seems, be always in
a fuss; be always hauling myself painfully on to some petty ambition or
some shadowy object that I have in view; and the moment I have reached
it, I must fix upon another, and begin the process over again. It is
this lust for doing something tangible, for sitting down quickly and
writing fifty, for having some definite result to show, which is the
ruin of me and many others. After all, when it is done, what worth has
it? I am not a particularly successful man, and I can't delude myself
into thinking that my work has any very supreme value. And meanwhile
all the real experiences of life pass me by. I have never, God forgive
me, had time to be in love! That is a pitiful confession.

Sometimes one comes across a person with none of these uneasy
ambitions, with whom living is a fine art; then one realises what a
much more beautiful creation it is than books and pictures. It is a
kind of sweet and solemn music. Such a man or woman has time to read,
to talk, to write letters, to pay calls, to walk about the farm, to go
and sit with tiresome people, to spend long hours with children, to sit
in the open air, to keep poultry, to talk to servants, to go to church,
to remember what his or her relations are doing, to enjoy garden
parties and balls, to like to see young people enjoying themselves, to
hear confessions, to do other people's business, to be a welcome
presence everywhere, and to leave a fragrant memory, watered with sweet
tears. That is to live. And such lives, one is tempted to think, were
more possible, more numerous, a hundred years ago. But now one expects
too much, and depends too much on exciting pleasures, whether of work
or play. Well, my three persons in a garden must be a lesson to me;
and, whatever may really happen to them, in my mind they shall walk for
ever between the apple-trees and the daffodils, looking lovingly at
each other, while the elder man shall smile as he reads in the
Chronicle of Heaven, which does not grow old.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  May 9, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am going back to the subject of ambition--do you
mind?

Yesterday in chapel one of my colleagues preached rather a fine sermon
on Activity. The difficulty under which he laboured is a common one in
sermons; it is simply this--How far is a Christian teacher justified in
recommending ambition to Christian hearers? I think that, if one reads
the Gospel, it is clear that ambition is not a Christian motive. The
root of the teaching of Christ seems to me to be that one should have
or acquire a passion for virtue; love it for its beauty, as an artist
loves beauty of form or colour; and the simplicity which is to be the
distinguishing mark of a Christian seems to me to be inconsistent with
personal ambition. I do not see that there is any hint of a Christian
being allowed to wish to do, what is called in domestic language
"bettering" himself. The idea rather is that the all-wise and
all-loving Father puts a man into the world where he intends him to be;
and that a man is to find his highest pleasure in trying to serve the
Father's will, with a heart full of love for all living things. A rich
man is to disembarrass himself of his riches, or at least be sure that
they are no hindrance to him; a poor man is not to attempt to win them.
Of course it may be possible that the original Christians were intended
to take a special line while the faith was leavening the world, and
that a different economy was to prevail when society had been
Christianised. This is a point of view which can be subtly defended,
but I think it is hard to find any justification for it in the Gospel.
Ambition practically means that, if one is to shoulder to the front,
one must push other people out of the way; one must fight for one's own
hand. To succeed at no one's expense is only possible to people of very
high character and genius.

But it is difficult to see what motive to set before boys in the
matter; the ideas of fame and glory, the hope of getting what all
desire and what all cannot have, are deeply rooted in the childish
mind. Moreover, we encourage ambition so frankly, both in work and
play, that it is difficult to ascend the school pulpit and take quite a
different line. To tell boys that they must simply do their best for
the sake of doing their best, without any thought of the rewards of
success--it is a very fine ideal, but is it a practical one? If we gave
prizes to the stupid boys who work without hope of success, and if we
gave colours to the boys who played games hard without attaining
competence in them, we might then dare to speak of the rewards of
virtue. But boys despise unsuccessful conscientiousness, and all the
rewards we distribute are given to aptitude. Some preachers think they
get out of the difficulty by pointing to examples of lives that battled
nobly and unsuccessfully against difficulties; but the point always is
the ultimate recognition. The question is not whether we can provide a
motive for the unsuccessful; but whether we ought not to discourage
ambition in every form? Yet it is the highest motive power in the case
of most generous and active-minded boys.

In the course of the sermon the preacher quoted some lines of Omar
Khayyam in order to illustrate the shamefulness of the indolent life.
That is a very dangerous thing to do. The lovely stanzas, sweet as
honey, flowed out upon the air in all their stately charm. The old
sinner stole my heart away with his gentle, seductive, Epicurean grace.
I am afraid that I felt like Paolo as he sate beside Francesca. I heard
no more of the sermon that day; I repeated to myself many of the
incomparable quatrains, and felt the poem to be the most beautiful
presentment of pure Agnosticism that has ever been given to the world.
The worst of it is that the delicate traitor makes it so beautiful that
one does not feel the shame and the futility of it.

This evening I have been reading the new life of FitzGerald, so you may
guess what was the result of the sermon for me. It is not a wholly
pleasing book, but it is an interesting one; it gives a better picture
of the man than any other book or article, simply by the great
minuteness with which it enters into details. And now I find myself
confronted by the problem in another shape. Was FitzGerald's life an
unworthy one? He had great literary ambitions, but he made nothing of
them. He lived a very pure, innocent, secluded life, delighting in
nature and in the company of simple people; loving his friends with a
passion that reminds one of Newman; doing endless little kindnesses to
all who came within his circle; and tenderly loved by several
great-hearted men of genius. He felt himself that he was to blame; he
urged others to the activities which he could not practise. And yet the
results of his life are such as many other more busy, more
conscientious men have not achieved. He has left a large body of good
literary work, and one immortal poem of incomparable beauty. He also
left, quite unconsciously, I believe, many of the most beautiful,
tender, humorous, wise letters in the English tongue; and I find myself
wondering whether all this could have been brought to pass in any other
way.

Yet I could not conscientiously advise any one to take FitzGerald's
life as a model It was shabby, undecided, futile; he did many silly,
almost fatuous things; he was deplorably idle and unstrung. At the same
time a terrible suspicion creeps upon me that many busy men are living
worse lives. I don't mean men who give themselves to activities,
however dusty, which affect other people. I will grant at once that
doctors, teachers, clergymen, philanthropists, even Members of
Parliament are justified in their lives; then, too, men who do the
necessary work of the world--farmers, labourers, workmen, fishermen,
are justifiable. But business men who make fortunes for their children;
lawyers, artists, writers, who work for money and for praise--are these
after all so much nobler than our indolent friend? To begin with,
FitzGerald's life was one of extraordinary simplicity. He lived on
almost nothing, he had no luxuries; he was like a lily of the field. If
he had been a merely selfish man it would have been different; but he
loved his fellow-men deeply and tenderly, and he showered unobtrusive
kindness on all round him.

I find it very hard to make up my mind; it is true that the fabric of
the world would fall to pieces if we were all FitzGeralds. But so, too,
as has often been pointed out, would it fall to pieces if we all lived
literally on the lines of the Sermon on the Mount. Activities are for
many people a purely selfish thing, to fill the time because they are
otherwise bored; and it is hard to see why a man who can fill his life
with less strenuous pleasures, books, music, strolling, talking, should
not be allowed to do so.

Solve me the riddle, if you can! The simplicity of the Gospel seems to
me to be inconsistent with the Expansion of England; and I dare not say
off-hand that the latter is the finer ideal.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  May 15, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--You ask if I have read anything lately? Well, I have
been reading Stalky & Co. with pain, and, I hope, profit. It is an
amazing book; the cleverness, the freshness, the incredible originality
of it all; the careless ease with which scene after scene is touched
off and a picture brought before one at a glance, simply astounds me,
and leaves me gasping. But I don't want now to discourse about the
literary merits of the book, great as they are. I want to relieve my
mind of the thoughts that disquiet me. I think, to start with, it is
not a fair picture of school life at all. If it is really
reminiscent--and the life-likeness and verisimilitude of the book is
undeniable--the school must have been a very peculiar one. In the first
place, the interest is concentrated upon a group of very unusual boys.
The Firm of Stalky is, I humbly thank God, a combination of boys of a
rare species. The other figures of boys in the book form a mere
background, and the deeds of the central heroes are depicted like the
deeds of the warriors of the Iliad. They dart about, slashing and
hewing, while the rank and file run hither and thither like sheep,
their only use being in the numerical tale of heads that they can
afford to the flashing blades of the protagonists; and even so the
chief figures, realistic though they are, remind me not so much of
spirited pictures as of Gillray's caricatures. They are highly
, fantastic, horribly human and yet, somehow, grotesque.
Everything is elongated, widened, magnified, exaggerated. The
difficulty is, to my mind, to imagine boys so lawless, so unbridled, so
fond at intervals of low delights, who are yet so obviously
wholesome-minded and manly. I can only humbly say that it is my belief,
confirmed by experience, that boys of so unconventional and daring a
type would not be content without dipping into darker pleasures. But
Kipling is a great magician, and, in reading the book, one can
thankfully believe that in this case it was not so; just as one can
also believe that, in this particular case, the boys were as mature and
shrewd, and of as complete and trenchant a wit as they appear. My own
experience here again is that no boys could keep so easily on so high a
level of originality and sagacity. The chief characteristic of all the
boys I have ever known is that they are so fitful, so unfinished. A
clever boy will say incredibly acute things, but among a dreary tract
of wonderfully silly ones. The most original boys will have long lapses
into conventionality, but the heroes of Kipling's book are never
conventional, never ordinary; and then there is an absence of
restfulness which is one of the greatest merits of Tom Brown.

But what has made the book to me into a kind of Lenten manual is the
presentation of the masters. Here I see, portrayed with remorseless
fidelity, the faults and foibles of my own class; and I am sorry to say
that I feel deliberately, on closing the book, that schoolmastering
must be a dingy trade. My better self cries out against this
conclusion, and tries feebly to say that it is one of the noblest of
professions; and then I think of King and Prout, and all my highest
aspirations die away at the thought that I may be even as these.

I suppose that Kipling would reply that he has done full justice to the
profession by giving us the figures of the Headmaster and the Chaplain.
The Headmaster is obviously a figure which his creator regards with
respect. He is fair-minded, human, generous; it is true that he is
enveloped with a strange awe and majesty; he moves in a mysterious way,
and acts in a most inconsequent and unexpected manner. But he generally
has the best of a situation; and though there is little that is
pastoral about him, yet he is obviously a wholesome-minded, manly sort
of person, who whips the right person at the right time, and generally
scores in the end. But he is a Roman father, at best. He has little
compassion and no tenderness; he is acute, brisk, and sensible; but he
has (at least to me) neither grace nor wisdom; or, if he has, he keeps
them under a polished metallic dish-cover, and only lifts it in
private. I do not feel that the Headmaster has any religion, except the
religion of all sensible men. In seeming to despise all sentiment,
Kipling seems to me to throw aside several beautiful flowers, tied
carelessly up in the same bundle. There should be a treasure in the
heart of a wise schoolmaster; not to be publicly displayed nor drearily
recounted; but at the right moment, and in the right way, he ought to
be able to show a boy that there are sacred and beautiful things which
rule or ought to rule the heart. If the Head has such a treasure he
keeps it at the bank and only visits it in the holidays.

The "Padre" is a very human figure--to me the most attractive in the
book; he has some wisdom and tenderness, and his little vanities are
very gently touched. But (I daresay I am a very pedantic person) I
don't really like his lounging about and smoking in the boys' studies.
I think that what he would have called tolerance is rather a deplorable
indolence, a desire to be above all things acceptable. He earns his
influence by giving his colleagues away, and he seems to me to think
more of the honour of the boys than of the honour of the place.

But King and Prout, the two principal masters--it is they who spoil the
taste of my food and mingle my drink with ashes. They are, in their
way, well-meaning and conscientious men. But is it not possible to love
discipline without being a pedant, and to be vigilant without being a
sneak? I fear in the back of my heart that Kipling thinks that the
trade of a schoolmaster is one which no generous or self-respecting man
can adopt. And yet it is a useful and necessary trade; and we should be
in a poor way if it came to be regarded as a detestable one. I wish
with all my heart that Kipling had used his genius to make our path
smoother instead of rougher. The path of the schoolmaster is indeed set
round with pitfalls. A man who is an egotist and a bully finds rich
pasturage among boys who are bound to listen to him, and over whom he
can tyrannise. But, on the other hand, a man who is both brave and
sensitive--and there are many such--can learn as well as teach
abundance of wholesome lessons, if he comes to his task with some hope
and love. King is, of course, a verbose bully; he delights in petty
triumphs; he rejoices in making himself felt; he is a cynic as well, a
greedy and low-minded man; he takes a disgusting pleasure in detective
work; he begins by believing the worst of boys; he is vain, shy,
irritable; he is cruel, and likes to see his victim writhe. I have
known many schoolmasters and I have never known a Mr. King, except
perhaps at a private school. But even King has done me good; he has
confirmed me in my belief that more can be done by courtesy and decent
amiability than can ever be done by discipline enforced by hard words.
He teaches me not to be pompous, and not to hunger and thirst after
finding things out. He makes me feel sure that the object of detection
is to help boys to be better, and not to have the satisfaction of
punishing them.

Prout is a feeble sentimentalist, with a deep belief in phrases. He is
a better fellow than King, and is only an intolerable goose. Both the
men make me wish to burst upon the scene, when they are grossly
mishandling some simple situation; but while I want to kick King, when
he is retreating with dignity, my only desire is to explain to Prout as
patiently as I can what an ass he is. He is a perfect instance of
absolutely ineffective virtue, a plain dish unseasoned with salt.

There are, of course, other characters in the book, each of them
grotesque and contemptible in his own way, each of them a notable
example of what not to be. But I would pardon this if the book were not
so unjust; if Kipling had included in his gathering of masters one
kindly, serious gentleman, whose sense of vocation did not make him a
prig. And if he were to reply that the Headmaster fulfils these
conditions, I would say that the Headmaster is a prig in this one
point, that he is so desperately afraid of priggishness. The manly man,
to my mind, is the man who does not trouble his head as to whether he
is manly or not, not the man who wears clothes too big for him, and
heavy boots, treads like an ox, and speaks gruffly; that is a pose, not
better or worse than other poses. And what I want in the book is a man
of simple and direct character, interested in his work, and not ashamed
of his interest; attached to the boys, and not ashamed of seeming to
care.

My only consolation is that I have talked to a good many boys who have
read the book; they have all been amused, interested, delighted. But
they say frankly that the boys are not like any boys they ever knew,
and, when I timidly inquire about the masters, they laugh rather
sheepishly, and say that they don't know about that.

I am sure that we schoolmasters have many faults; but we are really
trying to do better, and, as I said before, I only wish that a man of
Kipling's genius had held out to us a helping hand, instead of giving
us a push back into the ugly slough of usherdom, out of which many good
fellows, my friends and colleagues, have, however feebly, been
struggling to emerge.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  May 21, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have been wondering since I wrote last whether I
could possibly write a school story. I have often desired to try. The
thing has hardly ever been well done. Tom Brown remains the best. Dean
Farrar's books, vigorous in a sense as they are, are too sentimental.
Stalky & Co., as I said in my last letter, in spite of its amazing
cleverness of insight, is not typical. Gilkes' books are excellent
studies of the subject, but lack unity of theme; Tim is an interesting
book, but reflects a rather abnormal point of view; A Day of My Life at
Eton is too definitely humorous in conception, though it has great
verisimilitude.

In the first place the plot is a difficulty; the incidents of school
life do not lend themselves to dramatic situations. Then, too, the
trivialities of which school life is so much composed, the minuteness
of the details involved, make the subject a singularly complicated one;
another great difficulty is to give any idea of the conversations of
boys, which are mainly concerned with small concrete facts and
incidents, and are lacking in humour and flexibility.

Again, to speak frankly, there is a Rabelaisian plainness of speech on
certain subjects, which one must admit to be apt to characterise boys'
conversation, which it is impossible to construct or include, and yet
the omission of which subtracts considerable reality from the picture.
Genius might triumph over all these obstacles, of course, but even a
genius would find it very difficult to put himself back into line with
the immaturity and narrow views of boys; their credulity, their
preoccupations, their conventionality, their inarticulateness--all
these qualities are very hard to indicate. Only a boy could formulate
these things, and no boy has sufficient ease of expression to do so, or
sufficient detachment both to play the part and describe it. A very
clever undergraduate, with a gift of language, might write a truthful
school-book; but yet the task seems to require a certain mellowness and
tolerance which can only be given by experience; and then the very
experience would tend to blunt the sharpness of the impressions.

As a rule, in such books, the whole conception of boyhood seems at
fault; a boy is generally represented as a generous, heedless,
unworldly creature. My experience leads me to think that this is very
wide of the mark. Boys are the most inveterate Tories. They love
monopoly and privilege, they are deeply subservient, they have little
idea of tolerance or justice or fair-play, they are intensely and
narrowly ambitious; they have a certain insight into character, but
there are some qualities, like vulgarity, which they seem incapable of
detecting. They have a great liking for jobs and small indications of
power. They are not, as a rule, truthful; they have no compassion for
weakness. It is generally supposed that they have a strong sense of
liberty, but this is not the case; they are, indeed, tenacious of their
rights, or what they suppose to be their rights, but they have little
idea of withstanding tyranny, they are incapable of democratic
combination, and submit blindly to custom and tradition. Neither do I
think them notably affectionate or grateful; everything that is done
for them within the limits of a prescribed and habitual system they
accept blindly and as a matter of course, while at the same time they
are profoundly affected by any civility or sympathy shown them outside
the ordinary course of life. I mean that they do not differentiate
between a master who takes immense trouble over his work, and
discharges his duties with laborious conscientiousness, and a master
who saves himself all possible trouble; they are not grateful for
labour expended on them, and they do not resent neglect. But a master
who asks boys to breakfast, talks politely to them, takes an interest
in them in a sociable way, will win a popularity which a laborious and
inarticulate man cannot attain to. They are extremely amenable to any
indications of personal friendship, while they are blind to the virtues
of a master who only studies their best interests. They will work, for
instance, with immense vigour for a man who praises and appreciates
industry; but a man who grimly insists on hard and conscientious work
is looked upon as a person who finds enjoyment in a kind of
slave-driving.

Boys are, in fact, profound egoists and profound individualists. Of
course there are exceptions to all this; there are boys of deep
affection, scrupulous honesty, active interests, keen and far-reaching
ambitions; but I am trying to sketch not the exception but the rule.

You will ask what there is left? What there is that makes boys
interesting and attractive to deal with? I will tell you. There is, of
course, the mere charm of youthfulness and simplicity. And the
qualities that I have depicted above are really the superficial
qualities, the conventions that boys adopt from the society about them.
The nobler qualities of human nature are latent in many boys; but they
are for the most part superficially ruled by an intensely strong
mauvaise honte, which leads them to live in two worlds, and to keep the
inner life very sharply and securely ruled off from the outer. They
must be approached tactfully and gently as individuals. It is possible
to establish a personal and friendly relation with many boys, so long
as they understand that it is a kind of secret understanding, and will
not be paraded or traded upon in public. In their inner hearts there
are the germs of many high and beautiful things, which tend, unless a
boy has some wise and tender older friend--a mother, a father, a
sister, even a master--to be gradually obscured under the insistent
demands of his outer life. Boys are very diffident about these matters,
and require to be encouraged and comforted about them. The danger of
public schools, with overworked masters, is that the secret life is apt
to get entirely neglected, and then these germs of finer qualities get
neither sunshine or rain. Public spirit, responsibility, intellectual
interests, unconventional hopes, virtuous dreams--a boy is apt to think
that to speak of such things is to incur the reproach of priggishness;
but a man who can speak of them naturally and without affectation, who
can show that they are his inner life too, and are not allowed to flow
in a sickly manner into his outer life, who has a due and wise reserve,
can have a very high and simple power for good.

But to express all this in the pages of a book is an almost impossible
task; what one wants is to get the outer life briskly and sharply
depicted, and to speak of the inner in hints and flashes.
Unfortunately, the man who really knows boys is apt to get so
penetrated with the pathos, the unrealised momentousness, the sad
shipwrecks of boy life that he is not light-hearted enough to depict
the outer side of it all, and a book becomes morbid and sentimental.
Then, too, to draw a boy correctly would often be to produce a sense of
contrast which would almost give a feeling of hypocrisy, because there
are boys--and not unfrequently the most interesting--who, if fairly
drawn, would appear frivolous, silly, conventional in public, even
coarse, who yet might have very fine things behind, though rarely
visible. Moreover, the natural, lively, chattering boys, whom it would
be a temptation to try and draw, are not really the most interesting.
They tend to develop into bores of the first water in later life. But
the boy who develops into a fine man is often ungainly, shy, awkward,
silent in early life, acutely sensitive, and taking refuge in bluntness
or dumbness.

The most striking instances that have come under my own experience,
where a boy has really revealed the inside of his mind and spirit, are
absolutely incapable of being expressed in words. If I were to write
down what boys have said to me, on critical occasions, the record would
be laughed at as impossible and unnatural.

So you see that the difficulties are well-nigh insuperable. Narrative
would be trivial, conversation affected, motives inexplicable; for,
indeed, the crucial difficulty is the absolute unaccountableness of
boys' actions and words. A schoolmaster gets to learn that nothing is
impossible; a boy of apparently unblemished character will behave
suddenly in a manner that makes one despair of human nature, a black
sheep will act and speak like an angel of light. The interest is the
mystery and the impenetrability of it all; it is so impossible to
foresee contingencies or to predict conduct. This impulsiveness, as a
rule, diminishes in later life under the influence of maturity and
material conditions. But the boy remains insoluble, now a demon, now an
angel; and thus the only conclusion is that it is better to take things
as they come, and not to attempt to describe the indescribable.--Ever
yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  May 28, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I am bursting with news. I am going to tell you a
secret. I have been offered an important Academical post; that is to
say, I received a confidential intimation that I should be elected if I
stood. The whole thing is confidential, so that I must not even tell
you what the offer was. I should have very much liked to talk it over
with you, but I had to make up my mind quickly; there was no time to
write, and, moreover, I feel sure that when I had turned out the pros
and cons of my own feelings for your inspection, you would have decided
as I did.

You will say at once that you do not know how I reconciled my refusal
with the cardinal article of my faith, that our path is indicated to us
by Providence, and that we ought to go where we are led. Well, I
confess that I felt this to be a strong reason for accepting. The
invitation came to me as a complete surprise, absolutely unsought, and
from a body of electors who know the kind of man they want and have a
large field to choose from; there was no question of private influence
or private friendship. I hardly know one of the committee; and they
took a great deal of trouble in making inquiries about men.

But, to use a detestable word, there is a strong difference between an
outward call and an inward call. It is not the necessary outcome of a
belief in Providence that one accepts all invitations, and undertakes
whatever one may be asked to do. There is such a thing as temptation;
and there is another kind of summons, sent by God, which seems to come
in order that one may take stock of one's own position and capacities
and realise what one's line ought to be. It is like a passage in a
labyrinth which strikes off at right angles from the passage one is
following; the fact that one MAY take a sudden turn to the left is not
necessarily a clear indication that one is meant to do so. It may be
only sent to make one consider the reasons which induce one to follow
the path on which one is embarked.

I had no instantaneous corresponding sense that it was my duty to
follow this call. I was (I will confess it) a little dazzled; but, as
soon as that wore off, I felt an indescribable reluctance to undertake
the task, a consciousness of not being equal to it, a strong sense that
I was intended for other things.

I don't mean to say that there was not much that was attractive about
the offer in a superficial way. It meant money, power, position, and
consequence--all good things, and good things which I unreservedly
like. I am like every one else in that respect; I should like a large
house, and a big income, and professional success, and respect and
influence as much as any one--more, indeed, than many people.

But I soon saw that this would be a miserable reason for being tempted
by the offer, the delight of being called Rabbi. I don't pretend to be
high-minded, but even I could see that, unless there was a good deal
more than that in my mind, I should be a wretched creature to be
influenced by such considerations. These are merely the conveniences;
the real point was the work, the power, the possibility of carrying out
certain educational reforms which I have very much at heart, and doing
something towards raising the general intellectual standard, which I
believe to be lower than it need be.

Now, on thinking it out carefully, I came to the conclusion that I was
not strong enough for this role. I am no Atlas; I have no deep store of
moral courage; I am absurdly sensitive, ill-fitted to cope with
unpopularity and disapproval. Bitter, vehement, personal hostility
would break my spirit. A fervent Christian might say that one had no
right to be faint-hearted, and that strength would be given one; that
is perfectly true in certain conditions, and I have often experienced
it when some intolerable and inevitable calamity had to be faced. But
it is an evil recklessness not to weigh one's own deficiencies. No one
would say that a man ignorant of music ought to undertake to play the
organ, if the organist failed to appear, believing that power would be
given him. Christ Himself warned His disciples against embarking in an
enterprise without counting the cost. But here I confess was the
darkest point of my dilemma--was it cowardice and indolence to refuse
to attempt what competent persons believed I could do? or was it
prudent and wise to refuse to attempt what I, knowing my own
temperament better, felt I could not attempt successfully?

Now in my present work it is different. I know that my strength is
equal to the responsibility; I know that I can do what I undertake. The
art of dealing with boys is very different from the art of dealing with
men, the capacity for subordinate command is very different from the
capacity for supreme command. Of course, it is a truism to say that if
a man can obey thoroughly and loyally he can probably command. But
then, again, there is a large class of people, to which I believe
myself to belong, who are held to be, in the words of Tacitus, Capax
imperii, nisi imperasset.

Then, too, I felt that a great task must be taken up in a certain
buoyancy and cheerfulness of spirit, not in heaviness and diffidence.
There are, of course, instances where a work reluctantly undertaken has
been crowned with astonishing success. But one has no business to think
that reluctance and diffidence to undertake a great work are a proof
that God intends one to do it.

I am quite aware of the danger which a temperament like my own runs, of
dealing with such a situation in too complex and subtle a way. That is
the hardest thing of all to get rid of, because it is part of the very
texture of one's mind. I have tried, however, to see the whole thing in
as simple a light as possible, and to ask myself whether acceptance was
in any sense a plain duty. If the offer had been a constraining appeal,
I should have doubted. But it was made in an easy, complimentary way,
as if there was no doubt that I should fall in with it.

Well, I had a very anxious day; but I simply (I may say that to you)
prayed that my way might be made clear; and the result was a
conviction, which rose like a star and then, as it were, waxed into a
sun, that the quest was not for me.

And so I refused; and I am thankful to say that I have had, ever since,
the blessed and unalterable conviction that I have done right. Even the
conveniences have ceased to appeal to me; they have not even, like the
old Adam in the Pilgrim's Progress, pinched hold of me and given me a
deadly twitch. Though the picturesque mind of one who, like myself, is
very sensitive to "the attributes of awe and majesty," takes a certain
peevish pleasure in continuing to depict my unworthy self clothed upon
with majesty, and shaking all Olympus with my nod.

But if Olympus had refused to shake, even though I had nodded like a
mandarin?

I am sure that I shall not regret it; and I do not even think that my
conscience will reproach me; nor do I think that (on this ground alone)
I shall be relegated to the dark circle of the Inferno with those who
had a great opportunity given them and would not use it.

Please confirm me if you can! Comfort me with apples, as the Song says.
I am afraid you will only tell me that it proves that you are right,
and that I have no ambition.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  June 4, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have nothing to write about. The summer is come, and
with it I enter into purgatory; I am poured out like water, and my
heart is like melting wax; I have neither courage nor kindness, except
in the early morning or the late evening. I cannot work, and I cannot
be lazy. The only consolation I have--and I wish it were a more
sustaining one--is that most people like hot weather better.

I will put down for you in laborious prose what if I were an artist I
would do in half-a-dozen strokes. There is a big place near here,
Rushton Park. I was bicycling with Randall past the lodge, blaming the
fair summer, like the fisherman in Theocritus, when he asked if I
should like to ride through. The owner, Mr. Payne, is a friend of his,
and laid a special injunction on him to go through whenever he liked.
We were at once admitted, and in a moment we were in a Paradise. Payne
is famed for his gardeners, and I think I never saw a more beautiful
place of its kind. The ground undulates very gracefully, and we passed
by velvety lawns, huge towering banks of rhododendron all ablaze with
flower, exquisite vistas and glades, with a view of far-off hills. It
seemed to me to be an enchanted pleasaunce, like the great Palace in
The Princess. Now and then we could see the huge facade of the house
above us, winking through its sunblinds. There was not a soul to be
seen; and this added enormously to the magical charm of the place, as
though it were the work of a Genie, not made with hands. We passed a
huge fountain dripping into a blue-tiled pool, over a great cockleshell
of marble; then took a path which wound into the wood, all a mist of
fresh green, and in a moment we were in a long old-fashioned garden,
with winding box hedges, and full of bright flowers. To the left, where
the garden was bordered by the wood, was set a row of big marble urns,
grey with age, on high pedestals, all dripping with flowering creepers.
It was very rococo, like an old French picture, but enchanting for all
that. To the right was a long, mellow brick wall, under which stood
some old marble statues, weather-stained and soft of hue. The steady
sun poured down on the sweet, bright place, and the scent of the
flowers filled the air with fragrance, while a dove, hidden in some
green towering tree, roo-hooed delicately, as though her little heart
was filled with an indolent contentment.

The statue that stood nearest us attracted my attention. I cannot
conceive what it was meant to represent. It was the figure of an old,
bearded man, with a curious brimless hat on his head, and a flowing
robe; in his hands he held and fingered some unaccountable object of a
nondescript shape; and he had an unpleasant fixed smile, which he
seemed to turn on us, as though he knew a secret connected with the
garden which he might not reveal, and which if revealed would fill the
hearers with a secret horror. I do not think that I have often seen a
figure which affected me so disagreeably. He seemed to be saying that
within this bright and fragrant place lay some tainted mystery which it
were ill to tamper with. It was as though we opened a door out of some
stately corridor, and found a strange, beast-like thing running to and
fro in a noble room.

Well, I do not know! But it seems to me a type of many things, and I
doubt not that the wise-hearted patrician, the former owner, who laid
out the garden and set the statue in its place, did so with a purpose.
It is for us to see that there lies no taint behind our pleasures; but
even if this be not the message, the heart of the mystery, may not the
figure stand perhaps for the end, the bitter end, which lies ahead of
all, when the lip is silent and the eye shut, and the heart is stilled
at last?

The quiet figure with its secret, wicked smile, somehow slurred for me
the sunshine and the pleasant flowers, and I was glad when we turned
away.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  June 11, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--Yes, I am sure you are right. The thing I get more and
more impatient of every year is conventionality in every form. It is
rather foolish, I am well aware, to be impatient about anything; and
great conventionality of mind is not inconsistent with entire
sincerity, for the simple reason that conventionality is what
ninety-nine hundredths of the human race enjoy. Most people have no
wish to make up their own minds about anything; they do not care to
know what they like or why they like it. This is often the outcome of a
deep-seated modesty. The ordinary person says to himself, "Who am I
that I should set up a standard? If all the people that I know like
certain occupations and certain amusements, they are probably right,
and I will try to like them too." I don't mean that this feeling is
often put into words, but it is there; and there is for most people an
immense power in habit. People grow to like what they do, and seldom
inquire if they really like it, or why they like it.

Of course, to a certain extent, conventionality is a useful, peaceful
thing. I am not here recommending eccentricity of any kind. People
ought to fall in simply and quietly with ordinary modes of life, dress,
and behaviour; it saves time and trouble; it sets the mind free. But
what I rather mean is that, when the ordinary usages of life have been
complied with, all sensible people ought to have a line of their own
about occupation, amusements, friends, and not run to and fro like
sheep just where the social current sets. What I mean is best explained
by a couple of instances. I met at dinner last night our old
acquaintance, Foster, who was at school with us. He was in my house; I
don't think you ever knew much of him. He was a pleasant, good-humoured
boy enough; but his whole mind was set on discovering the exact code of
social school life. He wanted to play the right games, to wear the
right clothes, to know the right people. He liked being what he called
"in the swim." He never made friends with an obscure or unfashionable
boy. He was quite pleasant to his associates when he was himself
obscure; but he waited quietly for his opportunity to recommend himself
to prominent boys, and, when the time came, he gently threw over all
his old companions and struck out into more distinguished regions. He
was never disagreeable or conceited; he merely dropped his humble
friends until they too were approved as worthy of greater distinction,
and then he took them up again. He succeeded in his ambitions, as most
cool and clear-headed persons do. He became what would be called very
popular; he gave himself no airs; he was always good company; he was
never satirical or critical. The same thing has gone on ever since. He
married a nice wife; he secured a good official position. Last night,
as I say, I met him here. He came into the room with the same old
pleasant smile, beautifully dressed, soberly appointed. His look and
gestures were perfectly natural and appropriate. He has never made any
attempt to see me or keep up old acquaintance; but here, where I have a
certain standing and position, it was obviously the right thing to
treat me with courteous deference. He came up to me with a genial
welcome, and, but for a little touch of prosperous baldness, I could
have imagined that he was hardly a day older than when he was a boy. He
reminded me of some cheerful passages of boyhood; he asked with kindly
interest after my work; he paid me exactly the right compliments; and I
became aware that I was, for the moment, one of the pawns in his game,
to be delicately pushed about where it suited him. We talked of other
matters; he held exactly the right political opinions, a mild and
cautious liberalism; he touched on the successes of certain politicians
and praised them appropriately; he deplored the failure of certain old
friends in political life. "A very good fellow," he said of Hughes,
"but just a little--what shall I say?--impracticable?" He had seen all
the right plays, heard the right music, read the right books. He
deplored the obscurity of George Meredith, but added that he was an
undoubted genius. He confessed himself to be an ardent admirer of
Wagner; he thought Elgar a man of great power; but he had not made up
his mind about Strauss. I found that "not making up his mind about" a
person was one of his favourite expressions. If he sees that some man
is showing signs of vigour and originality in any department of life,
he keeps his eye upon him; if he passes safely through the shallows, he
praises him, saying that he has watched his rise; if he fails, our
friend will be ready with the reasons for his failure, adding that he
always feared that so-and-so was a little unpractical.

I can't describe to you the dreariness and oppression that fell upon
me. The total absence of generosity, of independent interest, weighed
on my soul. The one quality that this equable and judicious critic was
on the look-out for was the power of being approved. Foster's view
seemed to knock the bottom out of life, to deprive everything equally
of charm and individuality.

The conversation turned on golf, and one of the guests, whom I am
shortly about to describe, said bluffly that he considered golf and
drink to be the two curses of the country. Our polite friend turned
courteously towards him, treated the remark as an excellent sally, and
then said that he feared he must himself plead guilty to a great
devotion to golf. "You see all kinds of pleasant people," he said, "in
such a pleasant way; and then it tempts one into the open air; and it
is such an excellent investment, in the way of exercise, for one's age;
a man can play a very decent game till he is sixty--though, of course,
it is no doubt a little overdone." We all felt that he was right; he
took the rational, the sensible view; but it tempted me, though I
successfully resisted the temptation, to express an exaggerated dislike
of golf which I do not feel.

The guest whose remark had occasioned this discourse is one of my
colleagues, Murchison by name--you don't know him--a big, rugged, shy,
sociable fellow, who is in many ways one of the best masters here. He
is always friendly, amusing, courteous. He holds strong opinions, which
he does not produce unless the occasion demands it. He keeps a good
deal to himself, follows his own pursuits, and knows his own mind. He
is very tolerant, and can get on with almost everybody. The boys
respect him, like his teaching, think him clever, sensible, and
amusing. There are a great many things about which he knows nothing,
and is always ready to confess his ignorance. But whenever he does
understand a subject, and he has a strong taste for art and letters,
you always feel that his thoughts and opinions are fresh and living.
They are not produced like sardines from a tin, with a painful
similarity and regularity. He has strong prejudices, for which he can
always give a reason; but he is always ready to admit that it is a
matter of taste. He does not tilt in a Quixotic manner at established
things, but he goes along trying to do his work in the best manner
attainable. He is no genius, and his character is by no means a perfect
one; he has pronounced faults, of which he is perfectly conscious, and
which he never attempts to disguise. But he is simple, straightforward,
affectionate, and sincere. If he were more courageous, more fiery, he
would be, I think, a really great man; but this he somehow misses.

The two men, Foster and Murchison, are as great a contrast as can well
be imagined. They serve to illustrate exactly what I mean. Our friend
Foster is perfectly correct and admirably pleasant. You would never
think of confiding in him, or saying to him what you really felt; but,
on the other hand, there is no one whom I would more willingly consult
in a small and delicate point of practical conduct--and his advice
would be excellent.

But Murchison is a real man; he knows his limitations, but he takes
nothing second-hand. He brings his own mind and character to bear on
every problem, and judges people and things on their own merits.

Of course one does not desire that conventional people should strive
after unconventionality. That produces the most sickening
conventionality of all, because it is merely an attempt to construct a
pose that shall be accepted as unconventional. The only thing is to be
natural; and, after all, if one merely desires to see how the cat jumps
and then to jump after it, it is better to do so frankly and make no
pretence about it.

But I am sure that it is one's duty as a teacher to try and show boys
that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are
one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown
this. I found--I am now speaking of intellectual things--that certain
authors were held up to me as models which I was unfortunate enough to
dislike. Instead of making up my own mind about it, instead of trying
to see what I did admire and why I admired it, I tried feebly for years
to admire what I was told was admirable. The result was waste of time
and confusion of thought. In the same way I followed feebly, as a boy,
after the social code. I tried to like the regulation arrangements, and
thought dimly that I was in some way to blame because I did not. Not
until I went up to Cambridge did the conception of mental liberty steal
upon me--and then only partly. Of course if I had had more originality
I should have perceived this earlier. But the world appeared to me a
great, organised, kindly conspiracy, which must be joined, in however
feeble a spirit. I have learnt gradually that, after a decent
compliance with superficial conventionalities, there are not only no
penalties attached to independence, but that there, and there alone, is
happiness to be found; and that the rewards of a free judgement and an
authentic admiration are among the best and highest things that the
world has to bestow. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  June 18, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I am sick at heart. I received one of those letters this
morning which are the despair of most schoolmasters. I have in my house
a boy aged seventeen, who is absolutely alone in the world. He has
neither father or mother, brother or sister. He spends his holidays
with an aunt, a clever and charming person, but a sad invalid (by the
way, in passing, what a wretched thing in English it is that there is
no female of the word "man"; "woman" means something quite different,
and always sounds slightly disrespectful; "lady" is impossible, except
in certain antique phrases). The boy is frail, intellectual, ungenial.
He is quite incapable of playing games decently, having neither
strength or aptitude; he finds it hard to make friends, and the
consequence is that, like all clever people who don't meet with any
success, he takes refuge in a kind of contemptuous cynicism. His aunt
is devoted to him and to his best interests, but she is too much of an
invalid to be able to look after him; the result is that he is allowed
practically to do exactly as he likes in the holidays; he hates school
cordially, and I don't wonder. He fortunately has one taste, and that
is for science, and it is more than a taste, it is a real passion. He
does not merely dabble about with chemicals, or play tricks with
electricity; but he reads dry, hard, abstruse science, and writes
elaborate monographs, which I read with more admiration than
comprehension. This is almost his only hold on ordinary life, and I
encourage it with all my might; I ask about his work, make such
suggestions as I can, and praise his successful experiments and his
treatises, so far as I can understand them, loudly and liberally.

This morning one of his guardians writes to me about him. He is a
country gentleman, with a large estate, who married a cousin of my
pupil. He is a big, pompous, bumble-bee kind of man, who prides himself
on speaking his mind, and is quite unaware that it is only his position
that saves him from the plainest retorts. He writes to say that he is
much exercised about his ward's progress. The boy, he says, is fanciful
and delicate, and has much too good an opinion of himself. That is
true; and he goes on to lay down the law as to what he "needs." He must
be thrown into the society of active and vigorous boys; he must play
games; he must go to the gymnasium. And then he must learn
self-reliance; he must not be waited upon; he must be taught that it is
his business to be considerate of others; he must learn to be obliging,
and to look after other people. He goes on to say that all he wants is
the influence of a strong and sensible man (that is a cut at me), and
he will be obliged if I will kindly attend to the matter.

Well, what does he want me to do? Does he expect me to run races with
the boy? To introduce him to the captain of the eleven? To have him
thrust into teams of cricket and football from which his incapacity for
all games naturally excludes him? When our bumble-bee friend was at
school himself--and a horrid boy he must have been--what would he have
said if a master had told him to put a big, clumsy, and incapable boy
into a house cricket eleven in order to bring him out?

Then as to teaching him to be considerate, the mischief is all done in
the holidays; the boy is not waited on here, and he has plenty of
vigorous discipline in the kind of barrack life the boys lead. Does he
expect me to march into the boy's home, and request that the boy may
black his own boots and carry up the coals!

The truth is that the man has no real policy; he sees the boy's
deficiencies, and liberates his mind by requesting me, as if I were a
kind of tradesman, to see that they are corrected.

Of course the temptation is to write the man an acrimonious letter, and
to point out the idiotic character of his suggestions. But that is
worse than useless.

What I have done is to write and say that I have received his kind and
sensible letter, that he has laid his finger on the exact difficulties,
and that naturally I am anxious to put them straight. I then added that
his own recollection of his school-days will show that one cannot help
a boy in athletic or social matters beyond a certain point, that one
can only see that a boy has a fair chance, and is not overlooked, but
that other boys would not tolerate (and I know that he does not mean to
suggest this) that a boy should be included in a team for which he is
unfit, simply in order that his social life should be encouraged. I
then point out that as to discipline there is no lack of it here; and
that it is only at home that he is spoilt; and that I hope he will use
his influence, in a region where I cannot do more than make
suggestions, to minimise the evil.

The man will approve of the letter; he will think me sensible and
himself extraordinarily wise.

Does that seem to you to be cynical? I don't think it is. The man is
sincerely anxious for the boy's welfare, just as I am, and we had
better agree than disagree. The fault of his letter is that it is
stupid, and that it is offensive. The former quality I can forgive, and
the latter is only stupidity in another form. He thinks in his own mind
that if I am paid to educate the boy I ought to be glad of advice, that
I ought to be grateful to have things that I am not likely to detect
for myself pointed out by an enlightened and benevolent man.

Meanwhile I shall proceed to treat the boy on my own theory. I don't
expect him to play games; I don't think that it is, humanly speaking,
possible to expect a sensitive, frail boy to continue to play a game in
which he only makes himself ridiculous and contemptible from first to
last. Of course if a boy who is incapable of success in athletics does
go on playing games perseveringly and good-humouredly, he gets a
splendid training, and, as a rule, conciliates respect. But this boy
could not do that.

Then I shall try to encourage the boy in any taste he may exhibit, and
try to build up a real structure on these slender lines. The great
point is that he shall have SOME absorbing and wholesome instinct. He
will be wealthy, and in a position to gratify any whim. He is not in
the least likely to do anything foolish or vicious--he has not got the
animal spirits for that. I shall encourage him to take up politics; and
I shall try to put into his head a desire to do something for his
fellow-creatures, and not to live an entirely lonely and self-absorbed
life.

I have a theory that in education it is better to encourage aptitudes
than to try merely to correct deficiencies. One can't possibly
extirpate weaknesses by trying to crush them. One must build up
vitality and interest and capacity. It is like the parable of the evil
spirits. It is of no use simply to cast them out and leave the soul
empty and swept; one must encourage some strong, good spirit to take
possession; one must build on the foundations that are there.

The boy is delicate-minded, able and intelligent; he is an interesting
companion, when he is once at his ease. If only this busy, fussy,
hearty old bore would leave him alone! What I am afraid of his doing is
of his getting the boy to stay with him, making him go out hunting, and
laughing mercilessly at his tumbles. The misery that a stupid, genial
man can inflict upon a sensitive boy like this is dreadful to
contemplate.

At the end of the half I shall write a letter about the boy's work, and
delicately hint that, if he is encouraged in his subject, he may attain
high distinction and eventually rise to political or scientific
eminence. The old bawler will take the fly with a swirl--see if he does
not! And, if I can secure an interview with him, I will wager that my
triumph will be complete.

Does this all seem very dingy to you, my dear Herbert? You have never
had to deal with tiresome, stupid people in a professional capacity,
you see. There is a distinct pleasure in getting one's own way, in
triumphing over an awkward situation, in leading an old buffer by the
nose to do the thing which you think right, and to make him believe
that you are all the time following his advice and treasuring up his
precepts. But I can honestly say that my chief desire is not to amuse
myself with this kind of diplomacy, but the real welfare of the child.
I know you will believe that.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  June 25, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--This is not a letter; it is a sketch, an aquarelle out
of my portfolio.

Yesterday was a hot, heavy, restless day, with thunder brewing in the
dark heart of huge inky clouds; a day when one craves for light, and
brisk airs, and cold bare hill-tops; when one desires to get away from
one's kind, away from close rooms and irritable persons. So I went off
on my patient and uncomplaining bicycle, along a country road; and then
crossing a wide common, like the field, I thought, in the Pilgrim's
Progress across which Evangelist pointed an improving finger, I turned
down to the left to the waterside In the still air, that seemed to
listen, the blue wooded hills across the river had a dim, rich beauty.
How mysterious are the fields and heights from which one is separated
by a stream, the fields in which one knows every tree and sloping lawn
by sight, and where one sets foot so rarely! The road came to an end in
a little grassy space among high-branching elms. On my left was a farm,
with barns and byres, overhung by stately walnut trees; on the right a
grange among its great trees, a low tiled house, with white casements,
in a pleasant garden, full of trellised roses, a big dovecote, with a
clattering flight of wheeling pigeons circling round and round. Hard
by, close to the river, stands a little ancient church, with a timbered
spire, the trees growing thickly about it, dreaming forgotten dreams.

Here all was still and silent; the very children moved languidly about,
not knowing what ailed them. Far off across the wide-watered plain came
a low muttering of thunder, and a few big drops pattered in the great
elms.

This secluded river hamlet has an old history; the church, which is
served from a distant parish, stands in a narrow strip of land which
runs down across the fields to the river, and dates from the time when
the river was a real trade-highway, and when neighbouring parishes,
which had no frontages on the stream, found it convenient to have a
wharf to send their produce, timber or bricks, away by water. But the
wharf has long since perished, though a few black stakes show where it
stood; and the village, having no landing-place and no inn, has dropped
out of the river life, and minds its own quiet business.

A few paces from the church the river runs silently and strongly to the
great weir below. To-day it was swollen with rain and turbid, and
plucked steadily at the withies. To-day the stream, which is generally
full of life, was almost deserted. But it came into my head what an
allegory it made. Here through the unvisited meadows, with their huge
elms, runs this thin line of glittering vivid life; you hear, hidden in
dark leaves, the plash of oars, the grunt of rowlocks, and the chatter
of holiday folk, to whom the river-banks are but a picture through
which they pass, and who know nothing of the quiet fields that surround
them. That, I thought, following a train of reflection, is like life
itself, moving in its bright, familiar channel, so unaware of the broad
tracts of mystery that hem it in. May there not be presences, unseen,
who look down wondering--as I look to-day through my screen of leafy
boughs--on the busy-peopled stream that runs so merrily between its
scarped banks of clay? I know not; yet it seems as though it might be
so.

Beneath the weir, with its fragrant, weedy scent, where the green river
plunges and whitens through the sluices, lies a deep pool, haunted by
generations of schoolboys, who wander, flannelled and straw-hatted, up
through the warm meadows to bathe. In such sweet memories I have my
part, when one went riverwards with some chosen friend, speaking with
the cheerful frankness of boyhood of all our small concerns, and all we
meant to do; and then the cool grass under the naked feet, the
delicious recoil of the fresh, tingling stream, and the quiet stroll
back into the ordered life so full of simple happiness.


    "Ah! happy fields, ah! pleasing shade,
      Ah! fields beloved in vain!"

sang the sad poet of Eton--but not in vain, I think, for these old
beautiful memories are not sad; the good days are over and gone, and
they cannot be renewed; but they are like a sweet spring of youth,
whose waters fail not, in which a tired soul may bathe and be clean
again. They may bring back

    "The times when I remember to have been
      Joyful, and free from blame."


To be pensive, not sentimental, is the joy of later life. The thought
of the sweet things that have had an end, of life lived out and
irrevocable, is not a despairing thought, unless it is indulged with an
unavailing regret. It is rather to me a sign that, whatever we may be
or become, we are surrounded with the same quiet beauty and peace, if
we will but stretch out our hands and open our hearts to it. To grow
old patiently and bravely, even joyfully--that is the secret; and it is
as idle to repine for the lost joys as it would have been in the former
days to repine because we were not bigger and stronger and more
ambitious. Life, if it does not become sweeter, becomes more
interesting; fresh ties are formed, fresh paths open out; and there
should come, too, a simple serenity of living, a certainty that,
whatever befall, we are in wise and tender hands.

So I reasoned with myself beside the little holy church, not far from
the moving stream.

But the time warned me to be going. The thunder had drawn off to the
west; a faint breeze stirred and whispered in the elms. The day
declined. But I had had my moment, and my heart was full; for it is
such moments as these that are the pure gold of life, when the scene
and the mood move together to some sweet goal in perfect unison.
Sometimes the scene is there without the mood, or the mood comes and
finds no fitting pasturage; but to-day, both were mine; and the
thought, echoing like a strain of rich sad music, passed beyond the
elms, beyond the blue hills, back to its mysterious home. . . .

There, that is the end of my sketch; a little worked up, but
substantially true. Tell me if you like the kind of thing; if you do,
it is rather a pleasure to write thus occasionally. But it may seem to
you to be affected, and, in that case, I won't send you any more of
such reveries.

You seem very happy and prosperous; but then you like heat, and enjoy
it like a lizard. My love to all of you.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  July 1, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--What you say about forming habits is very interesting.
It is quite true that one gets very little done without a certain
method; and it is equally true that, if one does manage to arrive at a
certain definite programme for one's life and work, it is very easy to
get a big task done. Just reflect on this fact; it would not be
difficult, in any life, to so arrange things that one could write a
short passage every day, say enough to fill a page of an ordinary
octavo. Well, if one stuck to it, that would mean that in the course of
a year one would have a volume finished. Sometimes my colleagues
express surprise that I can find time for so much literary work; and on
the other hand if I tell them how much time I am able to devote to it
they are equally surprised that I can get anything done, because it
seems so little. This is the fact; I can get an hour--possibly two--on
Tuesday, two hours on Thursday, one on Friday, two on Saturday, and one
or two on Sunday--nine hours a week under favourable circumstances, and
never a moment more. But writing being to me the purest pleasure and
refreshment, I never lose a minute in getting to work, and I use every
moment of the time. That does not include reading; but by dint of
having books about, and by working carefully, so that I do not need to
go over the same ground twice, I get through a good deal in the week. I
have trained myself, too, to be able to write at full speed when I am
at work, and I can count on writing three octavo pages in an hour, or
even four. The result is, as you will see, that in a term of twelve
weeks, I can turn out between three and four hundred pages. The curious
thing is that I do better original work in the term-time than in the
holidays. I think the pressure of a good deal of mechanical work, not
of an exhausting kind, clears the brain and makes it vigorous. Of
course it is rather scrappy work; but I lay my plans in the holidays,
make my skeleton, and work up my authorities; and so I can go ahead at
full steam.

But I have strayed away from the subject of habits; and the moral of
the above is only that habits are easy enough if you like the task
enough. If I did not care for writing, I should find abundance of
excellent reasons why I should not do it.

Pater says somewhere that forming habits is failure in life; by which I
suppose he means that if one gets tied down to a petty routine of one's
own, it generally ends in one's becoming petty too--narrow-minded and
conventional. I don't suppose he referred to method, because he was one
of the most methodical of men. He wrote down sentences that came into
his mind, scattered ideas, on small cards; when he had a sufficient
store of these, he sorted them and built up his essay out of them.

But I am equally aware that habit is apt to become very tyrannical
indeed, if it is acquired. In my own case I have got into the habit of
writing only between tea and dinner, owing to its being the only time
at my disposal, so that I can hardly write at any other time; and that
is inconvenient in the holidays. Moreover, I like writing so much,
enjoy the shaping of sentences so intensely, that I tend to arrange my
day in the holidays entirely with a view to having these particular
hours free for writing; and thus for a great part of the year I lose
the best and most enjoyable part of the day, the sweet summer evenings,
when the tired world grows fragrant and cool.

One ought to have a routine for home life certainly; but it is not
wholesome when one begins to grudge the slightest variation from the
programme. I speak philosophically, because I am in the grip of the
evil myself. The reason why I care so little for staying anywhere, and
even for travelling, is because it disarranges my plan of the day, and
I don't feel certain of being able to secure the time for writing which
I love. But this is wrong; it is vivendi perdere causas, and I think we
ought resolutely to court a difference of life at intervals, and to
learn to bear with equanimity the suspension of one's daily habits. You
are certainly wise, if you find it suits you, to secure the morning for
writing. Personally my mind is not at its best then; it is dulled and
weakened by sleep, and it requires the tonic of routine work and bodily
exercise before it expands and flourishes.

Another grievous tendency which grows on me is an incapacity for
idleness. That will amuse you, when you remember the long evenings at
Eton which we used to spend in vacant talk. I remember so well your
saying after tea one evening, in that poky room of yours with the
barred windows at the end of the upper passage, "How delightful to
think that there are four hours with nothing whatever to do!" Do you
remember, too, that night when we sate at tea, blissfully, wholesomely
tired after a college match? John and Ellen, those strange, gruff
beings, came in to wash up, carrying that horrible, steaming can of
tea-dregs in which our cups were plunged: they cleared the table as we
sate; it was over before six, and it was not till the prayer-bell rang
at 9.30 that we became aware we had sate the whole evening with the
table between us. What DID we talk about? I wish to Heaven I could sit
and talk like that now! That is another thing which grows upon me, my
dislike of mere chatting: it is not priggish to say it, because I
regret and abominate my stupidity in that respect. But there is nothing
now which induces more rapid and more desperate physical fatigue than
to sit still and know I have to pump up talk for an hour.

The moral of all this is that YOU must take good care to form habits,
and _I_ must take care to unform them. YOU must resist the temptation
to read the papers, to stroll, to talk to your children; and _I_ must
try to cultivate leisurely propensities. I think that, as a
schoolmaster, one might do very good work as a peripatetic talker. I
have a big garden here--to think that you have never seen it!--with a
great screen of lilacs and some pleasant gravel walks. I never enter
it, I am afraid. But if in the pleasant summer I could learn the art of
sitting there, of having tea there, and making a few boys welcome if
they cared to come, it would be good for all of us, and would give the
boys some pleasant memories. I don't think there is anything gives me a
pleasanter thrill than to recollect the times I spent as a boy in old
Hayward's garden. He told me and Francis Howard that we might go and
sit there if we liked. You were not invited, and I never dared to ask
him. It was a pleasant little place, with a lawn surrounded with trees,
and a summer-house full of armchairs, with an orchard behind it--now
built over. Howard and I used at one time to go there a good deal, to
read and talk. I remember him reading Shakespeare's sonnets aloud,
though I had not an idea what they were all about--but his rich,
resonant voice comes back to me now; and then he showed me a MS. book
of his own poems. Ye Gods, how great I thought them! I copied many of
them out and have them still. Hayward used to come strolling about; I
can see him standing there in a big straw hat, with his hands behind
him, like the jolly old leisurely fellow he was. "Don't get up, boys,"
he used to say. Once or twice he sate with us, and talked lazily about
some book we were reading. He never took any trouble to entertain us,
but I used to feel that we were welcome, and that it really pleased him
that we cared to come. Now he lives in a suburb, on a pension: why do I
never go to see him?

"La, Perry, how yer do run on!" as the homely Warden's wife said to the
voluble Chaplain. I never meant to write you such a letter; but I am
glad indeed to find you really settling down. We must cultivate our
garden, as Voltaire said; and I only wish that the garden of my own
spirit were more full of "shelter and fountains," and less stocked with
long rows of humble vegetables; but there are a few flowers here and
there.--Ever yours,

T. B.



MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON,
  July 11, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am going to pour out a pent-up woe. I have just
escaped from a very fatiguing experience. I said good-bye this morning,
with real cordiality, to a thoroughly uncongenial and disagreeable
visitor. You will probably be surprised when I tell you his name,
because he is a popular, successful, and, many people hold, a very
agreeable man. It is that ornament of the Bar, Mr. William Welbore,
K.C. His boy is in my house; and Mr. Welbore (who is a widower) invited
himself to stay a Sunday with me in the tone of one who, if anything,
confers a favour. I had no real reason for refusing, and, to speak
truth, any evasion on my part would have been checked by the boy.

It is a fearful bore here to have any one staying in the house at all,
unless he is so familiar an old friend that you can dispense with all
ceremony. I have no guest-rooms to speak of; and a guest is always in
my study when I want to be there, talking when I want to work, or
wanting to smoke at inconvenient times. One's study is also one's
office; boys keep dropping in, and, when I have an unperceptive guest,
I have to hold interviews with boys wherever I can--in passages and
behind doors. What made it worse was that it was a wet Sunday, so that
my visitor sate with me all day, and I have no doubt thought he was
enlivening a dull professional man with some full-flavoured
conversation. Then one has to arrange for separate meals; when I am
alone I never, as you know, have dinner, but go in to the boys' supper
and have a slice of cold meat. But on this occasion I had to have a
dinner-party on Saturday and another on Sunday; and the breakfast hour,
when I expect to read letters and the paper, was taken up with general
conversation. I am ashamed to think how much discomposed I was; but a
schoolmaster is practically always on duty. I wonder how Mr. Welbore
would have enjoyed the task of entertaining me for a day or two in his
chambers! But one ought not, I confess, to be so wedded to one's own
habits; and I feel, when I complain, rather like the rich gentleman who
said to John Wesley, when his fire smoked, "These are some of the
crosses, Mr. Wesley, that I have to bear."

I could have stood it with more equanimity if only Mr. Welbore had been
a congenial guest. But even in the brief time at my disposal I grew to
dislike him with an intensity of which I am ashamed. I hated his
clothes, his boots, his eye-glass, the way he cleared his throat, the
way he laughed. He is a successful, downright, blunt, worldly man, and
is generally called a good fellow by his friends. He arrived in time
for tea on Saturday; he talked about his boy a little; the man is in
this case, unlike Wordsworth's hero, the father of the child; and the
boy will grow up exactly like him. Young Welbore does his work
punctually and without interest; he plays games respectably; he likes
to know the right boys; he is not exactly disagreeable, but he derides
all boys who are in the least degree shy, stupid, or unconventional. He
is quite a little man of the world, in fact. Well, I don't like that
type of creature, and I tried to indicate to the father that I thought
the boy was rather on the wrong lines. He heard me with impatience, as
though I was bothering him about matters which belonged to my province;
and he ended by laughing, not very agreeably, and saying: "Well, you
don't seem to have much of a case against Charlie; he appears to be
fairly popular. I confess that I don't much go in for sentiment in
education; if a boy does his work, and plays his games, and doesn't get
into trouble, I think he is on the right lines." And then he paid me an
offensive compliment: "I hear you make the boys very comfortable, and I
am sure I am obliged to you for taking so much interest in him." He
then went off for a little to see the boy. He appeared at dinner, and I
had invited two or three of the most intelligent of my colleagues. Mr.
Welbore simply showed off. He told stories; he made mirthless legal
jokes. One of my colleagues, Patrick, a man of some originality,
ventured to dispute an opinion of Mr. Welbore's, and Mr. Welbore turned
him inside out, by a series of questions, as if he was examining a
witness, in a good-natured, insolent way, and ended by saying: "Well,
Mr. Patrick, that sort of thing wouldn't do in a law-court, you know;
you would have to know your subject better than that." I was not
surprised, after dinner, at the alacrity with which my colleagues
quitted the scene, on all sorts of professional excuses. Then Mr.
Welbore sate up till midnight, smoking strong cigars, and giving me his
ideas on the subject of education. That was a bitter pill, for he
worsted me in every argument I undertook.

Sunday was a nightmare day; every spare moment was given up to Mr.
Welbore. I breakfasted with him, took him to chapel, took him to the
boys' luncheon, walked with him, sate with him, talked with him. The
strain was awful. The man sees everything from a different point of
view to my own. One ought to be able to put up with that, of course,
and I don't at all pretend that I consider my point of view better than
his; but I had to endure the consciousness that he thought his own
point of view in all respects superior to mine. He thought me a
slow-coach, an old maid, a sentimentalist; and I had, too, the galling
feeling that on the whole he approved of a drudge like myself taking a
rather priggish point of view, and that he did not expect a
schoolmaster to be a man of the world, any more than he would have
expected a curate or a gardener to be. I felt that the man was in his
way a worse prig even than I was, and even more of a Pharisee, because
he judged everything by a certain conventional standard. His idea of
life was a place where you found out what was the right thing to do;
and that if you did that, money and consideration, the only two things
worth having, followed as a matter of course. "Of course he's not my
sort," was the way in which he dismissed almost the only person we
discussed whom I thoroughly admired. So we went on; and I can only say
that the relief I felt when I saw him drive away on Monday morning was
so great as almost to make it worth while having endured his visit. I
think he rather enjoyed himself--at least he threatened to pay me
another visit; and I am sure he had the benevolent consciousness of
having brought a breath of the big world into a paltry life. The big
world! what a terrible place it would be if it was peopled by Welbores!
My only consolation is that men of his type don't achieve the great
successes. They are very successful up to a certain point; they get
what they want. Welbore will be a judge before long, and he has already
made a large fortune. But there is a demand for more wisdom and
generosity in the great places--at least I hope so. Welbore's idea of
the world is a pleasant place where such men as he can make money and
have a good time. He thinks art, religion, beauty, poetry, music, all
stuff. I would not mind that if only he did not KNOW it was stuff. God
forbid that we should pretend to enjoy such things if we do not--and,
after all, the man is not a hypocrite. But his view is that any one who
is cut in a different mould is necessarily inferior; and what put the
crowning touch to my disgust was that on Sunday afternoon we met a
Cabinet Minister, who is a great student of literature. He talked about
books to Mr. Welbore, and Mr. Welbore heard him with respect, because
the Minister was in the swim. He said afterwards to me that people's
foibles were very odd; but he so far respected the Minister's success
as to think that he had a right to a foible. He would have crushed one
of my colleagues who had battled in the same way, with a laugh and a
few ugly words.

Well, let me dismiss Mr. Welbore from my mind. The worst of it is that,
though I don't agree with him, he has cast a sort of blight on my mind.
It is as though I had seen him spit on the face of a statue that I
loved. I don't like vice in any shape; but I equally dislike a person
who has a preference for manly vices over sentimental ones; and the
root of Mr. Welbore's dislike of vice is simply that it tends to
interfere with the hard sort of training which is necessary for success.

Mr. Welbore, as a matter of fact, seems to me really to augur worse for
the introduction of the kingdom of heaven upon earth than any number of
drunkards and publicans. One feels that the world is so terribly
strong, stronger even than sin; and what is worse, there seems to be so
little in the scheme of things that could ever give Mr. Welbore the
lie.--Ever yours,

T. B



UPTON,
  July 16, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I declare that the greatest sin there is in the world is
stupidity. The character that does more harm in the world than any
other is the character in which stupidity and virtue are combined. I
grow every day more despondent about the education we give at our
so-called classical schools. Here, you know, we are severely classical;
and to have to administer such a system is often more than I can bear
with dignity or philosophy. One sees arrive here every year a lot of
brisk, healthy boys, with fair intelligence, and quite disposed to
work; and at the other end one sees depart a corresponding set of young
gentlemen who know nothing, and can do nothing, and are profoundly
cynical about all intellectual things. And this is the result of the
meal of chaff we serve out to them week after week; we collect it, we
chop it up, we tie it up in packets; we spend hours administering it in
teaspoons, and this is the end. I am myself the victim of this kind of
education; I began Latin at seven and Greek at nine, and, when I left
Cambridge, I did not know either of them well. I could not sit in an
arm-chair and read either a Greek or a Latin book, and I had no desire
to do it. I knew a very little French, a very little mathematics, a
very little science; I knew no history, no German, no Italian. I knew
nothing of art or music; my ideas of geography were childish. And yet I
am decidedly literary in my tastes, and had read a lot of English for
myself. It is nothing short of infamous that any one should, after an
elaborate education, have been so grossly uneducated. My only
accomplishment was the writing of rather pretty Latin verse.

And yet this preposterous system continues year after year. I had an
animated argument with some of the best of my colleagues the other day
about it. I cannot tell you how profoundly irritating these wiseacres
were. They said all the stock things--that one must lay a foundation,
and that it could only be laid by using the best literatures; that
Latin was essential because it lay at the root of so many other
languages; and Greek, because there the human intellect had reached its
high-water mark,--"and it has such a noble grammar," one enthusiastic
Grecian said; that an active-minded person could do all the rest for
himself. It was in vain to urge that in many cases the whole foundation
was insecure; and that all desire to raise a superstructure was
eliminated. My own belief is that Greek and Latin are things to be led
up to, not begun with; that they are hard, high literatures, which
require an initiation to comprehend; and that one ought to go backwards
in education, beginning with what one knows.

It seems to me, to use a similitude, that the case is thus. If one
lives in a plain and wishes to reach a point upon a hill, one must make
a road from the plain upwards. It will be a road at the base, it will
be a track higher up, and a path at last, used only by those who have
business there. But the classical theorists seem to me to make an
elaborate section of macadamised road high in the hills, and, having
made it, to say that the people who like can make their own road in
between.

How would I mend all this? Well, I would change methods in the first
place. If one wanted to teach a boy French or German effectively, so
that he would read and appreciate, one would dispense with much of the
grammar, except what was absolutely necessary. In the case of classics
it is all done the other way; grammar is a subject in itself; boys have
to commit to memory long lists of words and forms which they never
encounter; they have to acquire elaborate analyses of different kinds
of usages, which are of no assistance in dealing with the language
itself. It is beginning with the wrong end of the stick. Grammar is the
scientific or philosophical theory of language; it may be an
interesting and valuable study for a mind of strong calibre, but it
does not help one to understand an author or to appreciate a style.

Then, too, I would sweep away for all but boys of special classical
ability most kinds of composition. Fancy teaching a boy side by side
with the elements of German or French to compose German and French
verse, heroic, Alexandrine, or lyrical! The idea has only to be stated
to show its fatuity. I would teach boys to write Latin prose, because
it is a tough subject, and it initiates them into the process of
disentangling the real sense of the English copy. But I would abolish
all Latin verse composition, and all Greek composition of every kind
for mediocre boys. Not only would they learn the languages much faster,
but there would be a great deal of time saved as well. Then I would
abolish the absurd little lessons, with the parsing, and I would at all
hazards push on till they could read fluently.

Of course the above improvement of methods is sketched on the
hypothesis that both Greek and Latin are retained. Personally I would
retain Latin for most, but give up Greek altogether in the majority of
cases. I would teach all boys French thoroughly. I would try to make
them read and write it easily, and that should be the linguistic staple
of their education. Then I would teach them history, mainly modern
English history, and modern geography; a very little mathematics and
elementary science. Such boys would be, in my belief, well-educated;
and they would never be tempted to disbelieve in the usefulness of
their education.

When I propound these ideas, my colleagues talk of soft options, and of
education without muscle or nerve. My retort is that the majority of
boys educated on classical lines are models of intellectual debility as
it is. They are uninterested, cynical, and they cannot even read or
write the languages which they have been so carefully taught.

What I want is experiment of every kind; but my cautious friends say
that one would only get something a great deal worse. That I deny. I
maintain that it is impossible to have anything worse, and that the
majority of the boys we turn out are intellectually in so negative a
condition that any change would be an improvement.

But I effect nothing; nothing is attempted, nothing done. I do my
best--fortunately our system admits of that--to teach my private pupils
a little history, and I make them write essays. The results are
decidedly encouraging; but meanwhile my colleagues go on in the old
ways, quite contented, pathetically conscientious, laboriously slaving
away, and apparently not disquieted by results.

I am very near the end of my tether--one cannot go on for ever
administering a system in which one has lost all faith. If there were
signs of improvement I should be content. If our headmaster would even
insist upon the young men whom he appoints obtaining a competent
knowledge of French and German before they come here it would be
something, because then, when the change is made, there would be less
friction. But even a new headmaster with liberal ideas would now be
hopelessly hampered by the fact that he would have a staff who could
not teach modern subjects at all, who knew nothing but classics, and
classics only for teaching purposes.

It does me good to pour out my woes to you; I feel my position most
acutely at this time of year, when the serious business of the place is
cricket. In cricket the boys are desperately and profoundly interested,
not so much in the game, as in the social rewards of playing it well.
And my worthy colleagues give themselves to athletics with an
earnestness which depresses me into real dejection. One meets a few of
these beloved men at dinner; a few half-hearted remarks are made about
politics and books; a good deal of vigorous gossip is talked; but if a
question as to the best time for net-practice, or the erection of a
board for the purpose of teaching slip-catches is mentioned, a profound
seriousness falls on the group. A man sits up in his chair and speaks
with real conviction and heat, with grave gestures. "The afternoon," he
says, "is NOT a good time for nets; the boys are not at their best, and
the pros. are less vigorous after their dinner. Whatever arrangements
are made as to the times for school, the evening MUST be given up to
nets."

The result is a pedantry, a priggishness, a solemnity about games which
is simply deplorable. The whole thing seems to me to be distorted and
out of proportion. I am one of those feeble people to whom exercise is
only a pleasure and a recreation. If I don't like a game I don't play
it. I do not see why I should be bored by my recreations. An immense
number of boys are bored by their games, but they dare not say so
because public opinion is so strong. As the summer goes on they avail
themselves of every excuse to give up the regular games; and almost the
only boys who persevere are boys who are within reach of some coveted
"colour," which gives them social importance. What I desire is that
boys should be serious about their work in a practical, business-like
way, and amused by their games. As a matter of fact they are serious
about games and profoundly bored by their work. The work is a relief
from the tension of games, and if it were wholly given up, and games
were played from morning to night, many boys would break down under the
strain. I don't expect all the boys to be enthusiastic about their
work; all healthily constituted people prefer play to work, I myself
not least. But I want them to believe in it and to be interested in it,
in the way that a sensible professional man is interested in his work.
What produces the cynicism about work so common in classical schools is
that the work is of a kind which does not seem to lead anywhere, and
classics are a painful necessity which the boys intend to banish from
their mind as soon as they possibly can.

This is a melancholy jeremiad, I am well aware; but it is also a frame
of mind which grows upon me; and, to come back to my original
proposition, it is the stupidity of virtuous men which is responsible
for the continuance of this arid, out-of-joint system.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  July 22, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--. . . I took a lonely walk to-day, and returned
through a new quarter of the town. When I first knew it, thirty years
ago, there was a single house here--an old farm, with a pair of pretty
gables of mellow brick, and a weathered, solid, brick garden-wall that
ran along the road; an orchard below; all round were quiet fields; a
fine row of elms stood at the end of the wall. It was a place of no
great architectural merit, but it had grown old there, having been
built with solidity and dignity, and having won a simple grace from the
quiet influences of rain and wind and sun. Very gradually it became
engulphed. First a row of villas came down to the farm, badly planned
and coarsely ; then a long row of yellow-brick houses appeared
on the other side, and the house began to wear a shy, regretful air,
like a respectable and simple person who has fallen into vulgar
company. To-day I find that the elms have been felled; the old wall, so
strongly and firmly built, is half down; the little garden within is
full of planks and heaps of brick, the box hedges trodden down, the
flowers trampled underfoot; the house itself is marked for destruction.

It made me perhaps unreasonably sad. I know that population must
increase, and that people had better live in convenient houses near
their work. The town is prosperous enough; there is work in plenty and
good wages. There is nothing over which a philanthropist and a social
reformer ought not to rejoice. But I cannot help feeling the loss of a
simple and beautiful thing, though I know it appealed to few people,
and though the house was held to be inconvenient and out of date. I
feel as if the old place must have acquired some sort of personality,
and must be suffering the innocent pangs of disembodiment. I know that
there is abundance of the same kind of simple beauty everywhere; and
yet I feel that a thing which has taken so long to mature, and which
has drunk in and appropriated so much sweetness from the gentle hands
of nature, ought not so ruthlessly and yet so inevitably to suffer
destruction.

But it brought home to me a deeper and a darker thing still--the sad
change and vicissitude of things, the absence of any permanence in this
life of ours. We enter it so gaily, and, as a child, one feels that it
is eternal. That is in itself so strange--that the child himself, who
is so late an inmate of the family home, so new a care to his parents,
should feel that his place in the world is so unquestioned, and that
the people and things that surround him are all part of the settled
order of life. It was, indeed, to me as a child a strange shock to
discover, as I did from old schoolroom books, that my mother herself
had been a child so short a time before my own birth.

Then life begins to move on, and we become gradually, very gradually,
conscious of the swift rush of things. People round us begin to die,
and drop out of their places. We leave old homes that we have loved. We
hurry on ourselves from school to college; we enter the world. Then, in
such a life as my own has been, the lesson comes insistently near. Boys
come under our care, little tender creatures; a few days seem to pass
and they are young and dignified men; a few years later they return as
parents, to see about placing boys of their own; and one can hardly
trace the boyish lineaments in the firm-set, bearded faces of manhood.

Then our own friends begin to be called away; faster and faster runs
the stream; anniversaries return with horrible celerity; and soon we
know that we must die.

What is one to hold on to in such a swift flux of things? The pleasures
we enjoy at first fade; we settle down by comfortable firesides; we
pile the tables with beloved books; friends go and come; we acquire
habits; we find out our real tastes. We learn the measure of our
powers. And yet, however simple and clear our routine becomes, we are
warned every now and then by sharp lessons that it is all on
sufferance, that we have no continuing city; and we begin to see, some
later, some earlier, that we must find something to hold on to,
something eternal and everlasting in which we can rest. There must be
some anchor of the soul. And then I think that many of us take refuge
in a mere stoical patience; we drink our glass when it is filled, and
if it stands empty we try not to complain.

Now I am turning out, so to speak, the very lining of my mind to you.
The anchor cannot be a material one, for there is no security there; it
cannot be purely intellectual, for that is a shifting thing too. The
well of the spirit is emptied, gradually and tenderly; we must find out
what the spring is that can fill it up. Some would say that one's faith
could supply the need, and I agree in so far as I believe that it must
be a species of faith, in a life where our whole being and ending is
such an impenetrable mystery. But it must be a deeper faith even than
the faith of a dogmatic creed; for that is shifting, too, every day,
and the simplest creed holds some admixture of human temperament and
human error.

To me there are but two things that seem to point to hope. The first is
the strongest and deepest of human things, the power of love--not, I
think, the more vehement and selfish forms of love, the desire of youth
for beauty, the consuming love of the mother for the infant--for these
have some physical admixture in them. But the tranquil and purer
manifestations of the spirit, the love of a father for a son, of a
friend for a friend; that love which can light up a face upon the edge
of the dark river, and can smile in the very throes of pain. That seems
to me the only thing which holds out a tender defiance against change
and suffering and death.

And then there is the faith in the vast creative mind that bade us be;
mysterious and strange as are its manifestations, harsh and indifferent
as they sometimes seem, yet at worst they seem to betoken a loving
purpose thwarted by some swift cross-current, like a mighty river
contending with little obstacles. Why the obstacles should be there,
and how they came into being, is dark indeed. But there is enough to
make us believe in a Will that does its utmost, and that is assured of
some bright and far-off victory.

A faith in God and a faith in Love; and here seems to me to lie the
strength and power of the Christian Revelation. It is to these two
things that Christ pointed men. Though overlaid with definition, with
false motive, with sophistry, with pedantry, this is the deep secret of
the Christian Creed; and if we dare to link our will with the Will of
God, however feebly, however complainingly, if we desire and endeavour
not to sin against love, not to nourish hate or strife, to hold out the
hand again and again to any message of sympathy or trust, not to
struggle for our own profit, not to reject tenderness, to believe in
the good faith and the good-will of men, we are then in the way. We may
make mistakes, we may fail a thousand times, but the key of heaven is
in our hands. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  July 29, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--You must forgive me if this is a very sentimental
letter, but this is the day that, of all days in the year, is to me
most full of pathos--the last day of the summer half. My heart is like
a full sponge and must weep a little. The last few days have been full
to the brim of work and bustle--reports to be written, papers to be
looked over. Yesterday was a day of sad partings. Half-a-dozen boys are
leaving; and I have tried my best to tell them the truth about
themselves; to say something that would linger in their minds, and yet
to do it in a tender and affectionate way. And some of these boys'
hearts are full to bursting too. I remember as if it were yesterday the
last meeting at Eton of a Debating Society of which I was a member. We
were electing new members and passing votes of thanks. Scott, who was
then President and, as you remember, Captain of the Eleven, sate in his
high chair above the table; opposite him, with his minute-book, was
Riddell, then Secretary--that huge fellow in the Eight, you recollect.
The vote of thanks to the President was carried; he said a few words in
a broken voice, and sate down; the Secretary's vote of thanks was
proposed, and he, too, rose to make acknowledgment. In the middle of
his speech we were attracted by a movement of the President. He put his
head in his hands and sobbed aloud. Riddell stopped, faltered, looked
round, and leaving his sentence unfinished, sate down, put his face on
the book and cried like a child. I don't think there was a dry eye in
the room. And these boys were not sentimental, but straightforward
young men of the world, honest, and, if anything, rather contemptuous,
I had thought, of anything emotional. I have never forgotten that
scene, and have interpreted many things in the light of it.

Well, this morning I woke early and heard all the bustle of departure.
Depression fell on me; soon I got up, with a blessed sense of leisure,
breakfasted at my ease, saw one or two boys, special friends, who came
to me very grave and wistful. Then I wrote letters and did business;
and this afternoon--it is fearfully hot--I have been for a stroll
through the deserted fields and street.

So another of these beautiful things which we call the summer half is
over, never to be renewed. There has been some evil, of course. I wish
I could think otherwise. But the tone is good, and there have been none
of those revelations of darkness that poison the mind. There has been
idleness (I don't much regret that), and of course the usual worries.
But the fact remains that a great number of happy, sensible boys have
been living perhaps the best hours of their life, with equal, pleasant
friendships, plenty of games, some wholesome work and discipline to
keep all sweet, with this exquisite background of old towers and
high-branching elms, casting their shade over rich meadow-grass; the
scene will come back to these boys in weary hours, perhaps in sun-baked
foreign lands, perhaps in smoky offices--nay, even on aching deathbeds,
parched with fever.

The whole place has an incredibly wistful air, as though it missed the
young life that circulated all about it; as though it spread its
beauties out to be used and enjoyed, and wondered why none came to
claim them. As a counterpoise to this I like to think of all the
happiness flowing into hundreds of homes; the father and mother waiting
for the sound of the wheels that bring the boy back; the children who
have gone down to the lodge to welcome the big brothers with shouts and
kisses; and the boy himself, with all the dear familiar scene and home
faces opening out before him. We ought not to grudge the loneliness
here before the thought of all those old and blessed joys of life that
are being renewed elsewhere.

But I am here, a lonely man, wondering and doubting and desiring I
hardly know what. Some nearness of life, some children of my own. You
are apt to think of yourself as shelved and isolated; yet, after all,
you have the real thing--wife, children, and home. But, in my case,
these boys who are dear to me have forgotten me already. Disguise it as
I will, I am part of the sordid furniture of life that they have so
gladly left behind, the crowded corridor, the bare-walled schoolroom,
the ink-stained desk. They are glad to think that they have not to
assemble to-morrow to listen to my prosing, to bear the blows of the
uncle's tongue, as Horace says. They like me well enough--for a
schoolmaster; I know some of them would even welcome me, with a
timorous joy, to their own homes.

I have had the feeling of my disabilities brought home to me lately in
a special way. There is a boy in my house that I have tried hard to
make friends with. He is a big, overgrown creature, with a perfectly
simple manner. He has innumerable acquaintances in the school, but only
a very few friends. He is amiable with every one, but guards his heart.
He is ambitious in a quiet way, and fond of books, and, being brought
up in a cultivated home, he can talk more unaffectedly and with a more
genuine interest about books than any boy I have ever met. Well, I have
done my best, as I say, to make friends with him. I have lent him
books; I have tried to make him come and see me; I have talked my best
with him, and he has received it all with polite indifference; I can't
win his confidence, somehow. I feel that if I were only not in the
tutorial relation, it would be easy work. But perhaps I frightened him
as a little boy, perhaps I bored him; anyhow the advances are all on my
side, and there seems a hedge of shyness through which I cannot break.
Sometimes I have thought it is simply a case of "crabbed age and
youth," and that I can't put myself sufficiently in line with him. I
missed seeing him last night--he was out at some school festivity, and
this morning he has gone without a word or a sign. I have made friends
a hundred times with a tenth of the trouble, and I suppose it is just
because I find this child so difficult to approach that I fret myself
over the failure; and all the more because I know in my heart that he
is a really congenial nature, and that we do think the same about many
things. Of course, most sensible people would not care a brass farthing
about such an episode, and would succeed where I have failed, because I
think it is the forcing of attentions upon him that this proud young
person resents. I must try and comfort myself by thinking that my very
capacity for vexing myself over the business is probably the very thing
which makes it easy as a rule for me to succeed.

Well, I must turn to my books and my bicycle and my writing for
consolation, and to the blessed sense of freedom which luxuriates about
my tired brain. But books and art and the beauties of nature, I begin
to have a dark suspicion, are of the nature of melancholy consolations
for the truer stuff of life--for friendships and loves and dearer
things.

I sit writing in my study, the house above me strangely silent. The
evening sun lies golden on the lawn and among the apple-trees of my
little orchard; but the thought of the sweet time ended lies rather
heavy on my heart--the wonder what it all means, why we should have
these great hopes and desires, these deep attachments in the short days
that God gives us. "What a world it is for sorrow," wrote a wise and
tender-hearted old schoolmaster on a day like this; "and how dull it
would be if there were no sorrow." I suppose that this is true; but to
be near things and yet not to grasp them, to desire and not to attain,
and to go down to darkness in the end, like the shadow of a dream--what
can heal and sustain one in the grip of such a mood?--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Aug. 4, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have just been over to Woodcote; I have had a few
days here alone at the end of the half, and was feeling so stupid and
lazy this morning that I put a few sandwiches in my pocket and went off
on a bicycle for the day. It is only fifteen miles from here, so that I
had two or three hours to spend there. You know I was born at Woodcote
and lived there till I was ten years old. I don't know the present
owner of the Lodge, where we lived; but if I had written and asked to
go and see the house, they would have invited me to luncheon, and all
my sense of freedom would have gone.

It is thirty years since we left, and I have not been there, near as it
is, for twenty years. I did not know how deeply rooted the whole scene
was in my heart and memory, but the first sight of the familiar places
gave me a very curious thrill, a sort of delicious pain, a yearning for
the old days--I can't describe it or analyse it. It seemed somehow as
if the old life must be going on there behind the pine-woods if I could
only find it; as if I could have peeped over the palings and seen
myself going gravely about some childish business in the shrubberies. I
find that my memory is curiously accurate in some respects, and
curiously at fault in others. The scale is all wrong. What appears to
me in memory to be an immense distance, from Woodcote to Dewhurst, for
instance, is now reduced to almost nothing; and places which I can see
quite accurately in my mind's eye are now so different that I can
hardly believe that they were ever like what I recollect of them. Of
course the trees have grown immensely; young plantations have become
woods, and woods have disappeared. I spent my time in wandering about,
retracing the childish walks we used to take, looking at the church,
the old houses, the village green, and the mill-pool. One thing came
home to me very much. When I was born my father had only been settled
at Woodcote for two years; but, as I grew up, it seemed to me we must
have lived there for all eternity; now I see that he was only one in a
long procession of human visitants who have inhabited and loved the
place. Another thing that has gone is the mystery of it all. Then,
every road was a little ribbon of familiar ground stretching out to the
unknown; all the fields and woods which lay between the roads and paths
were wonderful secret places, not to be visited. I find I had no idea
of the lie of the ground, and, what is more remarkable, I don't seem
ever to have seen the views of the distance with which the place now
abounds. I suppose that when one is a small creature, palings and
hedges are lofty obstacles; and I suppose also that the little busy
eyes are always searching the nearer scene for things to FIND, and do
not concern themselves with what is far. The sight of the Lodge itself,
with its long white front among the shrubberies and across the pastures
was almost too much for me; the years seemed all obliterated in a
flash, and I felt as if it was all there unchanged.

I suppose I had a very happy childhood; but I certainly was not in the
least conscious of it at the time. I was a very quiet, busy child, with
all sorts of small secret pursuits of my own to attend to, to which
lessons and social engagements were sad interruptions; but now it seems
to me like a golden, unruffled time full of nothing but pleasure.
Curiously enough, I can't remember anything but the summer days there;
I have no remembrance of rain or cold or winter or leafless
trees--except days of snow when the ponds were frozen and there was the
wild excitement of skating. My recollections are all of flowers, and
roses, and trees in leaf, and hours spent in the garden. In the very
hot summer weather my father and mother used to dine out in the garden,
and it seems now to me as if they must have done so all the year round;
I can remember going to bed, with my window open on to the lawn, and
hearing the talk, and the silence, and then the soft clink of the
things being removed as I sank into sleep. It is a great mystery, that
faculty of the mind for forgetting all the shadows and remembering
nothing but the sunlight; it is so deeply rooted in humanity that it is
hard not to believe that it means something; one dares to hope that if
our individual life continues after death, this instinct--if memory
remains--will triumph over the past, even in the case of lives of
sordid misery and hopeless pain.

Then, too, one wonders what the strong instinct of permanence means, in
creatures that inhabit the world for so short and troubled a space; why
instinct should so contradict experience; why human beings have not
acquired in the course of centuries a sense of the fleetingness of
things. All our instincts seem to speak of permanence; all our
experience points to swift and ceaseless change. I cannot fathom it.

As I wandered about Woodcote my thoughts took a sombre tinge, and the
lacrimae rerum, the happy days gone, the pleasant groups broken up to
meet no more, the old faces departed, the voices that are silent--all
these thoughts began to weigh on my mind with a sad bewilderment. One
feels so independent, so much the master of one's fate; and yet when
one returns to an old home one begins to wonder whether one has any
power of choice at all. There is this strange fence of self and
identity drawn for me round one tiny body; all that is outside of it
has no existence for me apart from consciousness. These are fruitless
thoughts, but one cannot always resist them; and why one is here, what
these vivid feelings mean, what one's heart-hunger for the sweet world
and for beloved people means--all this is dark and secret; and the
strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbour of childhood into
unknown seas.

Dear Woodcote, dear remembered days, beloved faces and voices of the
past, old trees and fields! I cannot tell what you mean and what you
are; but I can hardly believe that, if I have a life beyond, it will
not somehow comprise you all; for indeed you are my own for ever; you
are myself, whatever that self may be.--Ever yours,

T. B.


P.S.--By the way, I want you to do something for me; I want a MAP of
your house and of the sitting-rooms. I want to see where you usually
sit, to read or write. And more than that, I want a map of the roads
and paths round about, with your ordinary walks and strolls marked in
red. I don't feel I quite realise the details enough.



SENNICOTTS,
  HONEY HILL,
    EAST GRINSTEAD,
      Aug. 9, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I am making holiday, with the voice of praise and
thanksgiving, like the people in the Psalm, and working, oh! how
gratefully, at one of my eternal books. Depend upon it, for simple
pleasure, there is nothing like writing. I am staying with Bradby, who
has taken a cottage in Sussex. He has had his holiday, so that he goes
up to town every day; it does not sound very friendly to say that this
arrangement exactly suits me, but so it is. I work and write in the
morning, walk or bicycle in the afternoon, and then we dine together,
and spend peaceful evenings, reading or talking.

But this is not the point. I came in yesterday to tea, saw an
unfamiliar hat in the hall, and found to my surprise James Cooper, whom
you remember at Eton as a boy. I knew him a little there, and saw a
good deal of him at Cambridge; and we have kept up a very fitful
correspondence at long intervals ever since.

I am ashamed to confess that I was bored, though I trust to Heaven I
did not show it; I had come back from my ride brimming over with ideas,
and was in the condition of a person who is holding his breath, dying
to blow it all out. Cooper said that he had heard that I was in the
neighbourhood, and he had accordingly come over, a considerable
distance, to see me. He is in business, and appears to be prospering.
We had tea, and there was a good deal to talk about; but Cooper showed
no signs of moving, and said at last that he thought he would stay and
see Bradby--perhaps dine with us. So we walked about the garden, and I
gradually became aware, with regret and misery, that I was in the
presence of a bore. Yes, James Cooper is a bore! He had a great deal to
say, mostly on subjects with which I was not acquainted. He has become
a botanist, and seemed full to the brim of uninteresting information.
He stayed till Bradby came, he dined, he talked. At last he decided he
must go; but he talked in the hall, he talked in the porch. He pressed
us to come over and see him, and it was evidently a great pleasure to
him to meet us again. Since his visit I have been pondering deeply.
What is one's duty in these matters? How far ought loyalty to old
friends to go? I confess that I am somewhat vexed and dissatisfied with
myself for not being more simply pleased to see an old comrade--actae
non alio rege puertiae, and all that. But what if the old comrade is a
bore? What are the claims of friendship on busy men? I have a good many
old friends in all parts of England--ought I to use my holidays in
touring about to see them? I am inclined to think that I am not bound
to do so. But suppose that Cooper goes away, and says to another friend
that I am a man who forgets old ties; that he took some trouble to see
me, and found me absorbed, and not particularly glad to see him? I
hope, indeed, that this was not his impression; but boredom is a subtle
thing, and it is difficult to keep it out of one's manner, however
religiously one tries to be cheerful. Well, if he DOES feel thus, is he
right and am I wrong? His whole life lies on different lines to my own,
and though we had much in common in the old pleasant days, we have not
much in common now. It is quite possible that he thinks I am a bore;
and it is even possible that he is right there too. But, que faire? que
penser? I can honestly say that if Cooper wanted my help, my advice, my
sympathy, I would give it him without grudging. But is it a part of
loyalty that I must desire to see him, and even to be bored by him? I
am inclined to think that if I had a simpler, more affectionate nature,
I should probably NOT be bored, but that in my gladness at the sight of
an old friend and the reviving of old memories, the idea of criticism
would die a natural death.

What I have suffered from all my life is making friends too easily. It
is so painful to me being with a person who seems to be dull, that I
have always instinctively tried to be interested in, and to interest my
companion. The result has been--I am making a very barefaced
confession--that I have been often supposed to be more friendly than I
really am, and to allow a certain claim of loyalty to be established
which I could not sincerely sustain.--Ever yours,

T. B.



KNAPSTEAD VICARAGE,
  BALDOCK,
    Aug. 14, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--A curious little incident occurred to me
yesterday--so curious, so inexplicable, that I cannot refrain from
telling it to you, though it has no solution and no moral so far as I
can see. I am staying with an old family friend, Duncan by name--you
don't know him--who is a parson near Hitchin. We were to have gone for
a bicycle ride together, but he was called away on sudden business, and
as the only other member of the party is my friend's wife, who is much
of an invalid, I went out alone.

I went off through Baldock and Ashwell. And I must interrupt my story
for a moment to tell you about the latter. Above a large hamlet of
irregularly built and scattered white houses, many of them thatched,
most of them picturesque, rises one of the most beautiful, mouldering
church towers I have ever seen. It is more like a weather-worn
crag-pinnacle than a tower; it is of great height, and the dim and
blurred outlines of its arched windows and buttresses communicate a
singular grace of underlying form to the broken and fretted stone. I
fear that it must before long be restored, if it is to hold together
much longer; all I can say is that I am thankful to have seen it in its
hour of decay. It is infinitely patient and pathetic. Its solemn,
ruinous dignity, its tender grace, make it like some aged and
sanctified spirit that has borne calamity and misfortune with a sweet
and gentle trust. A little farther on in the village is another
extraordinarily beautiful thing. The road, while still almost in the
street, passes across a little embankment; and on the left hand you
look down into a pit, like a quarry, full of ash-trees, and with a
thick undergrowth of bushes and tall plants. From a dozen little
excavations leap and bicker crystal rivulets of water, hurrying down
stony channels, uniting in a pool, and then moving off, a full-fed
stream, among quiet water-meadows. It is one of the sources of the Cam.
The water is deliciously cool and clear, running as it does straight
off the chalk. No words of mine can do justice to the wonderful purity
and peace of the place. I found myself murmuring over those perfect
lines of Marvell--you know them?--

    "Might a soul bathe there and be clean,
     And slake its drought?"


These two sights, the tower and the well-head, put my mind into tune;
and I went on my way rejoicing, with that delicate elation of spirit
that rarely visits one. Everything I saw had an airy quality, a
flavour, an aroma, I know not how to describe it. Now I caught the
sunlight on the towering greenness of an ancient elm; now a wide view
over flat pastures, with a pool fringed deep in rushes, came in sight;
now an old manorial farm held up its lichened chimneys above a row of
pollarded elms. I came at last, by lanes and byways, to a silent
village that seemed entirely deserted. The men, I suppose, were all
working in the fields; the cottage doors stood open; near the little
common rose an old high-shouldered church, much overgrown with ivy. The
sun lay pleasantly upon its leaded roof, and among the grass-grown
graves. I left my bicycle by the porch, and at first could not find an
entrance; but at last I discovered that a low, priest's door that led
into the chancel, was open. The church had an ancient and holy smell.
It was very cool in there out of the sun. I turned into the nave, and
wandered about for a few moments, noting the timbered roof, the remains
of old frescoes on the walls; the tomb of a knight who lay still and
stiff, his head resting on his hand. I read an epitaph or two, with the
faint cry of love and grief echoing through the stilted phraseology of
the tomb, and then I went back to the altar.

On a broad slab of slate, immediately below the altar steps, lay
something dark; I bent down to look at it, and then realised, with a
curious sense of horror, that it was a little pool of blood; beside it
lay two large jagged stones, also stained with blood, which had dried
into a viscous paste upon them. It seemed as if the stoning of some
martyr had taken place, and that, the first horrible violence done, the
deed had been transferred to the open air. What made it still stranger
to me was that in the east window was a rude representation of the
stoning of Stephen; and I have since discovered that the church is
dedicated to him.

I cannot give you the smallest hint of explanation. Indeed, pondering
over it, I cannot conceive of any circumstances which can in any way
account for what I saw. I wandered out into the churchyard--for the
sight gave me a curious chill of horror--and I could see nothing that
could further enlighten me. A few yards beyond stood the rectory,
embowered in thickets. It seemed to be deserted; the windows were dark
and undraped; no smoke went up from the chimneys. It suddenly appeared
to me that I must be the victim of some strange hallucination, So I
stepped again within the church to see if my senses had played me
false. But no! there were the stones, and the blood beside them.

The sun began to decline to his setting; the shadows lengthened and
darkened, as I rode slowly away, with a shadow on my spirit. I felt I
had somehow seen a type, a mystery. These incidents do not befall one
by chance, and I was sure, in some remote way, that I had looked, as it
were, for a moment into a dark avenue of the soul; that I was bidden to
think, to ponder. These tokens of violence and death, the blood
outpoured, in witness of pain, in the heart of the quiet sanctuary,
before the very altar of the God of peace and love. What is it that we
do that is like that? What is it that _I_ do? I will not tell you how
the message shaped itself for me; perhaps you can guess; but it came,
it formed itself out of the dark, and in that silent hour a voice
called sharply in my spirit.

But I must not end thus. I came home; I told my tale; I found my friend
returned. He nodded gravely and wonderingly, and I think he half
understood. But his wife was full of curiosity. She made me tell and
retell the incident. "Was there no one you could ask?" she said; "I
would not have rested till I had solved it." She even bade me tell her
the name of the place, but I refused. "Do you mean to say you don't
WANT to know?" she said. "No," I said; "I had rather not know." To
which, rather petulantly, she said, "Oh, you MEN!" That evening a
neighbouring parson, his wife, and daughter, came to dine. I was bidden
to tell my story again, and the same scene was re-enacted. "Was there
no one you could find to ask?" said the girl. I laughed and said, "I
daresay I could have found some one, but I did not want to know. I had
rather have my little mystery," I added; and then we men interchanged a
nod, while the women looked sharply at each other. "Is it not quite
incredible?" my friend's wife said. And the daughter added, "I, for
one, will not rest till I have discovered."

That, I suppose, is the difference between the masculine and the
feminine mind. You will understand me; but read the story to your wife
and daughters, and they will say, "Was there no one he could have
asked?" and "I would not rest till I had discovered." Meanwhile I only
hope that my maiden's efforts will prove unavailing.--Ever yours,

T. B.



GREENHOWE,
  SEDBERGH,
    Aug. 21, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I suppose I am very early Victorian in my tastes; but
I have just been reading Jane Eyre again with intense satisfaction. (I
will tell you presently WHY I have been reading it.) I read it first as
a boy at Eton, and I must have read it twenty times since. I know that
much of it is grotesque, but it seems to me that its grotesqueness is
not absurd, any more than the stiff animals and trees or hills in the
early Italian pictures are absurd; one smiles, not contemptuously, but
tenderly at it all.

Again, there are two ways of treating a work of art. If a portrait, for
instance, is intensely realistic and true to its original, one says,
"How lifelike!" If it is widely unlike the original, one can always
say, "How symbolical!" Of the first kind of portrait one may say that
it brings the man before you; of the latter you may say that the artist
has striven to paint the soul rather than the body. Well, I think it is
fair to call Jane Eyre symbolical. Some of the people depicted are very
true to life. The old, comfortable, good-humoured housekeeper, Mrs.
Fairfax; Bessie the nursemaid; Adele, the little French girl, Mr.
Rochester's ward; the two Rivers sisters--they are admirable portraits.
But Mr. Rochester, the haughty Baroness Ingram of Ingram Park, Miss
Ingram, who says to the footman, "Leave that chatter, blockhead, and do
my bidding," St. John Rivers, the blue-eyed fanatic--these are
caricatures or types, according as you like to view them. To me they
are types: characters finely conceived, and only exaggerated because
Charlotte Bronte had never mixed with people of that species in
ordinary life. But I think that one can see into the souls of these
people in spite of the exaggerations of speech and gesture and
behaviour which disfigure them. Yet it is not primarily for the
character-drawing that I value the book. What attracts me is the
romance, the beauty, the poetry of the whole, and a special union of
intellectual force, with passion at white heat, which breathes through
them. The love scenes have the same strange glow that I always feel in
Tennyson's "Come into the garden, Maud," where the pulse of the lover
thrills under one's hand with the love that beats from the heart of the
world. And then, too, Charlotte Bronte seems to me to have had an
incomparable gift of animating a natural scene with vivid human
emotions. The frost-bound day, when the still earth holds its breath,
when the springs are congealed, and the causeway is black with slippery
ice, in that hour when Jane Eyre first sees Mr. Rochester; and again
the scene in the summer garden, just before the thunderstorm, when Mr.
Rochester calls her to look at the great hawk-moth drinking from the
flower chalice. Such scenes have a vitality that makes them as real to
me as scenes upon which my own eyes have rested.

Again, I know no writer who has caught the poetry of the hearth like
Charlotte Bronte. The evening hours, when the fire leaps in the
chimney, and the lamp is lit, and the homeless wind moans outside, and
the contented mind possesses its dreams--I know nothing like that in
any book.

Indeed, I do not know any books which give me quite the sense of genius
that Charlotte Bronte's bring me. I find it difficult to define where
the genius lies; but the love which she dares to depict seems to me to
have a different quality to any other love; it is the passionate ardour
of a pure soul; it embraces body, mind, and heart alike; it is a love
that pierces through all disguises, and is the worship of spirit for
spirit at the very root of being; such love is not lightly conceived or
easily given; it is not born of chance companionship, of fleshly
desire, of a craving to share the happiness of a buoyant spirit of
sunshine and sweetness; it is rather nurtured in gloom and sadness, it
demands a corresponding depth and intensity, it requires to discern in
its lover a deep passion for the beauty of virtue. It is one of the
triumphs of Jane Eyre that the love she feels for Mr. Rochester pierces
through those very superficial vices which would be most abhorrent to
the pure nature, if it were not for the certainty that such vice was
the disguise and not the essence of the soul. And here lies, I think,
the uplifting hopefulness of Jane Eyre, the Christ-like power of
recognising the ardent spirit of love behind gross faults of both the
animal and the intellectual nature.

I do not know if you ever came across a book--I must send it you if you
have not seen it--which moves me and feeds my spirit more than almost
any book I know--the Letters and Journals of William Cory. He was a
master at Eton, you know, but before our time; and his life was rather
a disappointed one; but he had that remarkable union of qualities which
I think is very rare--hard intellectual force with passionate
tenderness. I suppose that, as far as mental ability went, he was one
of the very foremost men of his day. He had a faultless memory, great
clearness and vigour of thought, and perfect lucidity of expression.
But he valued these gifts very little in comparison with feeling, which
was his real life. It always interests me deeply to find that he had
the same opinion of Charlotte Bronte that I hold; and indeed I have
always thought that, allowing for a difference of nationality, he was
very much the kind of man whom she depicted in Villette as Paul
Emmanuel.

Personality is, after all, the ultimate foundation of art, and I think
that what I value most of all in Charlotte Bronte's books is the
revelation of herself that they afford. The shy, frail, indomitable,
ardent creature, inured to poverty and hardness, without illusions,
without material temptations, but all aglow with the sacred fire--such
is the character that here emerges. Charlotte Bronte as a writer seems
to me like a burning-glass which concentrates on one intense point the
fiercest fire of the soul. I would humbly believe that there is much of
this spirit in the world, but that it seldom co-exists with the
artistic power, the intellectual force, that enables it to express
itself.

And now I will tell you what has made me take up Jane Eyre again at
this time. I was bicycling a day or two ago in a secluded valley under
the purple heights of Ingleboro'. I passed a little village, with a big
building standing by a stream below the road, called Lowood. It came
into my head as a pleasant thought that some place like this might have
been the scene of the schooldays of Jane Eyre; but I thought no more of
it, till a little while after I saw a tablet in the wall of a house by
the wayside. I dismounted, and behold! it was the very place, the very
building where Charlotte Bronte spent her schooldays. It was a low,
humble building, now divided into cottages. But you can still see the
windows of the dormitory, the little kitchen garden, the brawling
stream, the path across the meadows, and, beyond all, the long line of
the moor. In a house just opposite was a portrait of Mr. Brocklehurst
himself (his real name was Carus-Wilson), so sternly, and I expect
unjustly, gibbetted in the book. That was a very sacred hour for me. I
thought of Miss Temple and Helen Burns; I thought of the cold, the
privation, the rigour of that comfortless place. But I felt that it was
good to be there. I drew nearer in that hour to the unquenched spirit
that battled so gloriously with life and with its worst terrors and
sorrows, and that wrote so firmly and truly its pure hopes and immortal
dreams. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.



ASHFIELD,
  SETTLE,
    Aug. 27, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--You ask me to send you out some novels, and you have put
me in a difficulty. It seems hardly worth while sending out books which
will just be read once or twice in a lazy mood and then thrown aside;
yet I can find no others. It seems to me that our novelists are at the
present moment affected by the same wave which seems to be passing over
the whole of our national life; we have in every department a large
number of almost first-rate people, men of talent and ability; but very
few geniuses, very few people of undisputed pre-eminence. In literature
this is particularly the case; poets, historians, essayists,
dramatists, novelists; there are so many that reach a high level of
accomplishment, and do excellent work; but there are no giants, or they
are very small ones. Personally, I do not read a great many novels; and
I find myself tending to revert again and again to my old favourites.

Of course there are some CONSPICUOUS novelists. There is George
Meredith, though he has now almost ceased to write; to speak candidly,
though I recognise his genius, his creative power, his noble and subtle
conception of character, yet I do not feel the reality of his books; or
rather I feel that the reality is there, but disguised from me by a
veil--a dim and rich veil, it is true--which is hung between me and the
scene. The veil is George Meredith's personality. I confess that it is
a dignified personality enough, the spirit of a grand seigneur. But I
feel in reading his books as if I were staying with a magnificent
person in a stately house; but that, when I wanted to go about and look
at things for myself, my host, with splendid urbanity, insisted on
accompanying me, pointed out objects that interested himself, and
translated the remarks of the guests and the other people who appeared
upon the scene into his own peculiar diction. The characters do not
talk as I think they would have talked, but as George Meredith would
have talked under the given circumstances. There is no repose about his
books; there is a sense not only of intellectual but actually of moral
effort about reading them; and further, I do not like the style; it is
highly mannerised, and permeated, so to speak, with a kind of rich
perfume, a perfume which stupefies rather than enlivens. Even when the
characters are making what are evidently to them perfectly natural and
straightforward remarks, I do not feel sure what they mean; and I
suffer from paroxysms of rage as I read, because I feel that I cannot
get at what is there without a mental agility which seems to me
unnecessarily fatiguing. A novel ought to be like a walk; George
Meredith makes it into an obstacle race.

Then, again, Henry James is an indubitably great writer; though you
amused me once by saying that you felt you really had not time to read
his later books. Well, for myself, I confess that his earlier books,
such as Roderick Hudson and the Portrait of a Lady, are books that I
recur to again and again. They are perfectly proportioned and admirably
lucid. If they have a fault, and I do not readily admit it, it is that
the characters are not quite full-blooded enough. Still, there is quite
enough of what is called "virility" about in literature; and it is
refreshing to find oneself in the company of people who preserve at all
events the conventional decencies of life. But Henry James has in his
later books taken a new departure; he is infinitely subtle and
extraordinarily delicate; but he is obscure where he used to be lucid,
and his characters now talk in so allusive and birdlike a way, hop so
briskly from twig to twig, that one cannot keep the connection in one's
mind. He seems to be so afraid of anything that is obvious or
plain-spoken, that his art conceals not art but nature. I declare that
in his conversations I have not unfrequently to reckon back to see who
has got the ball; then, too, those long, closely printed pages, such as
one sees in The Wings of a Dove, without paragraphs, without breathing
places, pages of minute and refined analysis--there is a high
intellectual pleasure in reading them, but there is a mental strain as
well. It is as though one wandered in tortuous passages, full of
beautiful and curious things, without ever reaching the rooms of the
house. What I want, in a work of imagination, is to step as simply as
possible into the presence of an emotion, the white heat of a
situation. With Henry James I do not feel certain what the situation
is. At the same time his books are full of fine things; he has learnt a
splendid use of metaphor, when the whole page seems, as it were,
stained with some poetical thought, as though one had shut a fruit into
the book, and its juice had tinted the whole of a page. But that is not
sufficient; and I confess I close one of his later volumes in a
condition of admiring mystification. I do not know what it has all been
about; the characters have appeared, have nodded and smiled
inscrutably, have let fall sentences which seem like sparkling
fragments of remarks; I feel that there is a great conception behind,
but I am still in the dark as to what it is.

There are two or three other authors whose books I read with interest.
One of these is John Oliver Hobbes. Her books do not seem to me to be
exactly natural; it is all of the nature of a scenic display. But there
is abundance of nobility and even of passion; and the style is
original, nervous, and full of fine aphorisms. There is a feeling of
high and chivalrous courage about her characters; they breathe perhaps
too lofty an air, and are, if anything, too true to themselves. But it
is a dignified romance, rather mediaeval than modern, and penetrated
with a pungent aromatic humour which has a quality of its own.

Mrs. Humphry Ward is another writer whose books I always read. I am
constantly aware of a great conscientiousness in the background. The
scenery, the people, are all studied with the most sedulous and patient
care; but I somehow feel, at all events in the earlier works, that the
moral attitude of the writer, a kind of Puritan agnosticism, interferes
with the humanity of the books; they seem to me to be as saturated with
principle as Miss Yonge's books, written from a very different
standpoint, were. I feel that I am not to be allowed my own
preferences, and that to enjoy the books I must be in line with the
authoress. Mrs. Ward's novels, in fact, seem to me the high-water mark
of what great talent, patient observation, and faithful work can do;
but the light does not quite shine through. Yet it is only just to say
that every book Mrs. Ward writes seems an improvement on the last.
There is a wider, larger, freer conception of life; more reality, more
humanity, as well as more artistic handling; and they are worth careful
reading; I shall certainly include one or two in my consignment.

George Moore seems to me to be one of the best writers on the stage.
Esther Waters, Evelyn Innes, and Sister Theresa, are books of the
highest quality. I have a sense in these books of absolute reality. I
may think the words and deeds of the characters mysterious, surprising,
and even sometimes disgusting; but they surprise and disgust me just as
the anomalies of human beings affect me. I may not like them, but I do
not question the fact that the characters spoke and behaved as they are
supposed to behave. Moreover, Evelyn Innes and Sister Theresa are
written in a style of matchless lucidity and precision; they have
passages of high poetry. Old Mr. Innes, with his tiresome
preoccupations, his pedantic taste, his mediaeval musical instruments,
affects me exactly as an unrelenting idealist does in actual life. The
mystical Ulick has a profound charm; the Sisters in the convent, all
preoccupied with the same or similar ideas, have each a perfectly
distinct individuality. Evelyn herself, even with all her frank and
unashamed sensuality, is a deeply attractive figure; and I know no
books which so render the evasive charm of the cloistered life. But
George Moore has two grave faults; he is sometimes vulgar and he is
sometimes brutal. Evelyn's worldly lover is a man who makes one's flesh
creep, and yet one feels he is intended to represent the fascination of
the world. Then it does not seem to me to be true realism to depict
scenes of frank animalism. Such things may occur; but the actors in
such a carnival could not speak of them, even to each other; it may be
prudish, but I cannot help feeling that one ought not to have
represented in a book what could not be repeated in conversation or
depicted in a picture. One may be plain-spoken enough in art, but one
ought not to have the feeling that one would be ashamed, in certain
passages, to catch the author's eye. If it were not for these lapses, I
should put George Moore at the head of all contemporary novelists; and
I am not sure that I do not do so as it is. Do give them another trial;
I always thought you were too easily discouraged in your attempt to
grapple with his books; probably my admiration for them only aroused
your critical sense; and I admit that there is much to criticise.

Then there is another writer, lately dead, alas, whose books I used to
read with absorbing interest, George Gissing. They had, when he treated
of his own peculiar stratum, the same quality of hard reality which I
value most of all in a work of fiction. The actors were not so much
vulgar as underbred; their ambitions and tastes were often deplorable.
But one felt that they were real people. The wall of the suburban villa
was gently removed, and the life was before your eyes. The moment he
strayed from that milieu, the books became fantastic and unreal. But in
the last two books, By the Ionian Sea and the Papers of Henry Rycroft,
Gissing stepped into a new province, and produced exquisitely beautiful
and poetical idealistic literature.

Thomas Hardy is a poetical writer. But his rustic life, dreamy,
melancholy, and beautiful as it is, with the wind blowing fragrant out
of the heart of the wood, or the rain falling on the down, seems to me
to be no more real than the scenes in As You Like It or The Tempest.
The figures are actors playing a part. And then there is through his
books so strong a note of sex, and people under the influence of
passion seem to me to behave in so incomprehensible a way, in a manner
so foreign to my own experience, that though I would not deny the truth
of the picture, I would say that it is untrue for me, and therefore
unmeaning.

I have never fallen under the sway of Rudyard Kipling. Whenever I read
his stories I feel myself for the time in the grip of a strong mind,
and it becomes a species of intoxication. But I am naturally sober by
inclination, and though I can unreservedly admire the strength, the
vigour, the splendid imaginativeness of his conceptions, yet the whole
note of character is distasteful to me. I don't like his male men; I
should dislike them and be ill at ease with them in real life, and I am
ill at ease with them in his books. This is purely a matter of taste;
and as to the animal stories, terrifically clever as they are, they
appear to me to be no more true to life than Landseer's pictures of
dogs holding a coroner's inquest or smoking pipes. The only book of his
that I re-read is The Light that Failed, for its abundant vitality and
tragicalness; but the same temperamental repugnance overcomes me even
there.

For pure imagination I should always fly to a book by H. G. Wells. He
has that extraordinary power of imagining the impossible, and working
it out in a hard literal way which is absolutely convincing. But he is
a teller of tales and not a dramatist.

Well, you will be tired of all these fussy appreciations. But what one
seems to miss nowadays is the presence of a writer of superlative
lucidity and humanity, for whose books one waits with avidity, and
orders them beforehand, as soon as they are announced. For one thing,
most people seem to me to write too much. The moment a real success is
scored, the temptation, no doubt adroitly whispered by publishers, to
produce a similar book on similar lines, becomes very strong. Few
living writers are above the need for earning money; but even that
would not spoil a genius if we had him.

These writers whom I have mentioned seem to me all like little bubbling
rivulets, each with a motion, a grace, a character of its own. But what
one craves for is a river deep and wide, for some one, with a great
flood of humanity like Scott, or with a leaping cataract of
irrepressible humour like Dickens, or with a core of white-hot passion
like Charlotte Bronte, or a store of brave and wholesome gaiety and
zest, such as Stevenson showed.

Well, we must wait and hope. Meanwhile I will write to my great
book-taster; one of the few men alive with great literary vitality, who
has never indulged the temptation to write, and has never written a
line. I will show him the manner of man you are, and a box of bright
volumes shall be packed for you. The one condition is that you shall
write me in return a sheet of similar appreciations. The only thing is
to know what one likes, and strike out a line for oneself; the rest is
mere sheep-like grazing--forty feeding like one.--Ever yours,

T. B.



ASHFIELD,
  SETTLE,
    Sept. 4, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have been reading FitzGerald's pretty essay Euphranor.
It is Platonic both in form and treatment, but I never feel that it is
wholly successful. Most of the people who express admiration for it
know nothing of the essay except a delicious passage at the end, like a
draught of fragrant wine, about the gowned figures evaporating into the
twilight, and the nightingale heard among the flowering chestnuts of
Jesus. But the talk itself is discursive and somewhat pompous. However,
it is not of that that I wish to speak, it is rather of the passage
from Digby's Godefridus which is read aloud by the narrator, which sets
out to analyse the joyful and generous temperament of Youth. "They [the
young] are easily put to Shame" (so runs the script), "for they have no
resources to set aside the precepts which they have learned; and they
have lofty souls, for they have never been disgraced or brought low,
and they are unacquainted with Necessity; they prefer Honour to
Advantage, Virtue to Expediency; for they live by Affection rather than
by Reason, and Reason is concerned with Expediency, but Affection with
Honour."

All very beautiful and noble, no doubt; but is it real? was I, were
you, creatures of this make? Could these fine things have been
truthfully said of us? Perhaps you may think it of yourself, but I can
only regretfully say that I do not recognise it.

My boyhood and youth were, it seems to me, very faulty things. My age
is faulty still, more's the pity. But without any vain conceit, and
with all the humility which is given by a knowledge of weakness, I can
honestly say that in particular points I have improved a little. I am
not generous or noble-hearted now; but I have not lost these qualities,
for I never had them. As a boy and a young man I distinctly preferred
Advantage to Honour; I was the prey of Expediency, and seldom gave
Virtue a thought. But since I have known more of men, I have come to
know that these fine powers, Honour and Virtue, do bloom in some men's
souls, and in the hearts of many women. I have perceived their
fragrance; I have seen Honour raise its glowing face like a rose, and
Virtue droop its head like a pure snowdrop; and I hope that some day,
as in an early day of spring, I may find some such tender green thing
budding in the ugly soil of my own poor spirit.

Life would be a feeble business if it were otherwise; but the one ray
of hope is not that one steadily declines in brightness from those
early days, but that one may learn by admiration the beauty of the
great qualities one never had by instinct.

I see myself as a boy, greedy, mean-spirited, selfish, dull. I see
myself as a young man, vain, irritable, self-absorbed, unbalanced. I
have not eradicated these weeds; but I have learnt to believe in beauty
and honour, even in Truth. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.



MONK'S ORCHARD,
  UPTON,
    Sept. 13, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have just come back after a long, vague holiday,
feeling well and keen about my work. The boys are not back yet, and I
have returned to put things ready for next half. But my serene mood has
received a shock this morning.

I wonder if you ever get disagreeable letters? I suppose that a
schoolmaster is peculiarly liable to receive them. The sort of letter I
mean is this. I come down to breakfast in good spirits; I pick up a
letter and open it, and, all of a sudden, it is as if a snake slipped
out and bit me. I close it and put it away, thinking I will read it
later; there it lies close by my plate, and takes away the taste of
food, and blots the sunshine. I take it upstairs, saying that it will
want consideration. I finish my other letters, and then I take it out
again. Out comes the snake again with a warning hiss; but I resist
temptation this time, read it through, and sit staring out of the
window. A disagreeable letter from a disagreeable man, containing
anxious information, of a kind that I cannot really test. What is the
best way to deal with it? I know by experience; answer it at once, as
dispassionately as one can; extract from it the few grains of probable
truth it holds, and keep them in mind for possible future use; then
deliberately try and forget all about it. I know now by experience that
the painful impression will gradually fade, and, meanwhile, one must
try to interpret the whole matter rightly. What is there in one's
conduct which needs the check? Is it that one grows confident and
careless? Probably! But the wholesome thing to do is to deal with it at
once; otherwise it means anxious and feverish hours, when one composes
a long and epigrammatic answer, point by point. The letter is
over-stated, gossipy, malicious; if one lets it soak into the mind, it
makes one suspicious of every one, miserable, cowardly. It is useless
in the first hours, when the sting is yet tingling, to remind oneself
philosophically that the suggestion is exaggerated and malignant; one
does not get any comfort that way. No, the only thing is to plunge into
detail, to work, to read--anything to recover the tone of the mind.

It is a comfort to write to you about it, for to-day I am in the sore
and disquieted condition which is just as unreal and useless as though
I were treating the matter with indifference. Indifference indeed would
be criminal, but morbidity is nearly as bad.

I once saw a very dramatic thing take place in church. It was in a town
parish near my old home. The clergyman was a friend of mine, a
wonderfully calm and tranquil person. He went up to the pulpit while a
hymn was being sung. When the hymn concluded, he did not give out his
text, but remained for a long time silent, so long that I thought he
was feeling ill; the silence became breathless, and the attention of
every one in the church became rivetted on the pulpit. Then he slowly
took up a letter from the cushion, and said in a low, clear voice: "A
fortnight ago I found, on entering the pulpit, a letter addressed to me
in an unknown hand; I took it out and read it afterwards; it was
anonymous, and its contents were scandalous. Last Sunday I found
another, which I burnt unread. To-day there is another, which I do not
intend to read"--he tore the letter across as he said the words, in the
sight of the congregation--"and I give notice that, if any further
communications of the kind reach me, I shall put the matter into the
hands of the police. I am willing to receive, if necessary, verbal
communications on such subjects, though I do not think that any good
purpose can be served by them. But to make vague and libellous
accusations against members of the congregation in this way is
cowardly, dishonourable, and un-Christian. I have a strong
suspicion"--he looked steadily down the church--"of the quarter from
which these letters emanate; and I solemnly warn the writer that, if I
have to take action in the matter, I shall take measures to make that
action effective."

I never saw a thing better done; it was said without apparent
excitement or agitation; he presently gave out his text and preached as
usual. It seemed to me a supremely admirable way of dealing with the
situation. Need I add that he was practical enough to take the pieces
of the letter away with him?

I once received an anonymous letter, not about myself, but about a
friend. I took it to a celebrated lawyer, and we discovered the right
way to deal with it. I remember that, when we had finished, he took up
the letter--a really vile document--and said musingly: "I have often
wondered what the pleasure of sending such things consists in! I always
fancy the sender taking out his watch, and saying, with malicious glee,
'I suppose so-and-so will be receiving my letter about now!' It must be
a perverted sense of power, I think."

I said, "Yes, and don't you think that there is also something of the
pleasure of saying 'Bo' to a goose?" The great man smiled, and said,
"Perhaps."

Well, I must try to forget, but I don't know anything that so takes the
courage and the cheerfulness out of one's mind as one of these secret,
dastardly things. My letter this morning was not anonymous; but it was
nearly as bad, because it was impossible to use or to rely upon the
information; and it was, moreover, profoundly disquieting.

Tell me what you think! I suppose it is good for one to know how weak
one's armour is and how vulnerable is one's feeble self.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Sept. 20, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have been reading lately, not for the first time, but
with increased interest, the Memoir of Mark Pattison. It was, you will
remember, dictated by himself towards the end of his life, and
published after his death with a few omissions. It was not favourably
received, and was called cowardly, cynical, bitter, a "cry in the
dark," treacherous, and so forth. It is very difficult not to be
influenced by current opinion in one's view of a book; one comes to it
prepared to find certain characteristics, and it is difficult to detach
one's mind sufficiently to approach a much-reviewed volume with perfect
frankness. But I have read the book several times, and my admiration
for it increases. It does not reveal a generous or particularly
attractive character, and there are certain episodes in it which are
undoubtedly painful. But it is essentially a just, courageous, and
candid book. He is very hard on other people, and deals hard knocks. He
shows very clearly that he was deficient in tolerance and sympathy, but
he is quite as severe on himself. What I value in the book is its
absolute sincerity. He does not attempt to draw an ideal picture of his
own life and character at the expense of other people. One sees him
develop from the shy, gauche, immature boy into the mature, secluded,
crabbed, ungracious student. If he had adopted a pose he might have
sketched his own life in beautiful subdued colours; he might have made
himself out as misrepresented and misunderstood. He does none of these
things. He shows clearly that the disasters of his life were quite as
much due to his own temperamental mistakes as to the machinations of
others. He has no illusions about himself, and he does not desire that
his readers should have any. The sadness of the book comes from his
failure, or rather his constitutional inability, to see other people
whole. After all, our appreciations for other people are of the nature
of a sum. There is a certain amount of addition and subtraction to be
done; the point is whether the sum total is to the credit of the person
concerned. But with Mark Pattison the process of subtraction was more
congenial than the process of addition. He saw and felt the weakness of
those who surrounded him so keenly that he did not do justice to their
good qualities. This comes out very clearly when he deals with Newman
and Pusey. Pattison was a member for a time of the Tractarian set, but
he must have been always at heart a Liberal and a Rationalist, and the
spell which Newman temporarily cast over him appeared to him in after
life to have been a kind of ugly hypnotism, to which he had limply
submitted. Certainly the diary which he quotes concerning his own part
in the Tractarian movement, the conversations to which he listened, the
morbid frame of mind to which he succumbed are deplorable reading.
Indeed the reminiscences of Newman's conversation in particular, the
pedantry, the hankering after miracles, the narrowness of view, are an
extraordinary testimony to the charm with which Newman must have
invested all he did or said. Pattison is even more severe on Pusey, and
charges him with having betrayed a secret which he had confided to him
in confession. It does not seem to occur to Pattison to consider
whether he did not himself mention the fact, whatever it was, to some
other friend.

On the other hand the book reveals an extraordinary intellectual ideal.
It holds up a standard for the student which is profoundly impressive;
and I know no other book which displays in a more single-minded and
sincere way the passionate desire of the savant for wide, deep, and
perfect knowledge, which is to be untainted by any admixture of
personal ambition. Indeed, Pattison speaks of literary ambition as
being for the student not an amiable weakness, but a defiling and
polluting sin.

Of course it is natural to feel that there is a certain selfish aridity
about such a point of view. The results of Mark Pattison's devotion are
hardly commensurate with his earnestness. He worked on a system which
hardly permitted him to put the results at the disposal of others; but
there is at the same time something which is both dignified and stately
in the idea of the lonely, laborious life, without hope and without
reward, sustained only by the pursuit of an impossible perfection.

It is not, however, as if this was all that Mark Pattison did. He was a
great intellectual factor at Oxford, especially in early days; in later
days he was a venerable and splendid monument. But as tutor of his
college, before his great disappointment--his failure to be elected to
the Rectorship--he evidently lived a highly practical and useful life.
There is something disarming about the naive way in which he records
that he became aware that he was the possessor of a certain magnetic
influence to which gradually every one in the place, including the old
Rector himself, submitted.

The story of his failure to be elected Rector is deeply pathetic.
Pattison reveals with terrible realism the dingy and sordid intrigues
which put an unworthy man in the place which he himself had earned. But
it may be doubted whether there was so much malignity about the whole
matter as he thought; and, at all events, it may be said that men do
not commonly make enemies without reason. It does not seem to occur to
him to question whether his own conduct and his own remarks may not
have led to the unhappy situation; and indeed, if he spoke of his
colleagues in his lifetime with the same acrimony with which his
posthumous book speaks of them, the mystery is adequately explained.

His depression and collapse, which he so mercilessly chronicles, after
the disaster, do not appear to me to be cowardly. He was an
over-worked, over-strained man, with a strong vein of morbidity in his
constitution; and to have the great prize of a headship, which was the
goal of his dearest hopes, put suddenly and evidently quite
unexpectedly in his hands, and then in so unforeseen a manner torn
away, must have been a terrible and unmanning catastrophe. What is
ungenerous is that he did not more tenderly realise that eventually it
all turned out for the best. He recognises the fact somewhat
grudgingly. Yet he was disengaged by the shock from professional life.
He gained bodily strength and vigour by the change; he began his work
of research; and then, just at the time when his ideal was
consolidated, the Rectorship came to him--when it might have seemed
that by his conduct he had forfeited all hopes of it.

In another respect the book is admirable. Mark Pattison attained high
and deserved literary distinction; but there is no hint of complacency
on this subject, rather, indeed, the reverse; for he confesses that
success had upon him no effect but to humiliate him by the
consideration that the completed work might have been so much better
both in conception and execution than it actually was.

I feel, on closing the book, a great admiration for the man, mingled
with infinite pity for the miseries which his own temperament inflicted
on him; it gives me, too, a high intellectual stimulus; it makes me
realise the nobility and the beauty of knowledge, the greatness of the
intellectual life. One may regret that in Pattison's case this was not
mingled with more practical power, more sympathy, more desire to help
rather than to pursue. But here, again, one cannot have everything, and
the life presents a fine protest against materialism, against the
desire of recognition, against illiberal and retrograde views of
thought. Here was a great and lonely figure haunted by a dream which
few of those about him could understand, and with which hardly any
could sympathise. He writes pathetically: "I am fairly entitled to say
that, since the year 1851, I have lived wholly for study. There can be
no vanity in making this confession, for, strange to say, in a
university ostensibly endowed for the cultivation of science and
letters, such a life is hardly regarded as a creditable one."

The practical effect of such a book on me is to make me realise the
high virtue of thoroughness. It is not wholly encouraging, because at a
place like this one must do a good deal of one's work sloppily and
sketchily; but it makes me ashamed of my sketchiness; I make good
resolutions to get up my subjects better, and, even if I know that I
shall relapse, something will have been gained. But that is a
side-issue. The true gain is to have been confronted with a real man,
to have looked into the depth of his spirit, to realise differences of
temperament, to be initiated into a high and noble ambition. And at the
same time, alas! to learn by his failures to value tact and sympathy
and generosity still more; and to learn that noble purpose is
ineffective if it is secluded; to try resolutely to see the strong
points of other workers, rather than their feeblenesses; and to end by
feeling that we have all of us abundant need to forgive and to be
forgiven--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Sept. 26, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I am much exercised in my mind about school sermons. It
seems to me that we ought to make more of them than we do. We have our
sermons here, very wisely, I think, at the evening service. The boys
are more alert, the preacher is presumably in a more genial mood, the
chapel is warm and brightly lighted, the music has had a comforting and
stimulating effect upon the mind; it is exactly the time when the boys
are ready and disposed to be interested in themselves, their lives and
characters; they are hopeful, serious, ardent. The iron is hot, and it
is just the moment to strike.

Well, it seems to me that the opportunity is often missed. In the first
place, all the clerical members of the staff are asked to preach in
turn--"given a mount," as the boys say. The headmaster preaches once a
month, and a certain number of outside preachers, old Uptonians, local
clergy, and others are imported.

Now the first point that strikes me is that to suppose that every
clergyman is ipso facto capable of preaching at all is a great mistake.
I suppose that every thoughtful Christian must have enough materials
for a few sermons; there must be some aspects of truth that come home
to every individual in a striking manner, some lessons of character
which he has learnt. But he need not necessarily have the art of
expressing himself in a penetrating and incisive way. It seems to me a
mistaken sort of conscientiousness which makes it necessary for every
preacher to compose his own sermons. I do not see why the sermons of
great preachers should not frankly be read; one hears a dull sermon by
a tired man on a subject of which Newman has treated with exquisite
lucidity and feeling in one of his parochial sermons. Why is it better
to hear tedious considerations on the same point expressed in a
commonplace way than to listen to the words of a master of the art, and
one too who saw, like Newman, very deep into the human heart? I would
have a man frankly say at the beginning of his sermon that he had been
thinking about a particular point, and that he was going to read one of
Newman's sermons on the subject. Then, if any passage was obscure or
compressed, he might explain it a little.

Again, I want more homeliness, more simplicity, more directness in
sermons; and so few people seem to be aware that these qualities of
expression are not only the result of being a homely, simple, and
direct character, but are a matter of long practice and careful art.

Then, again, I want sermons to be more shrewd and incisive. Holiness,
saintliness, and piety are virtues which are foreign to the character
of boys. If any proof of it is needed, it is only too true that if a
boy applies any of the three adjectives holy, saintly, or pious to a
person, it is not intended to be a compliment. The words in their
mouths imply sanctimonious pretension, and a certain Pharisaical and
even hypocritical scrupulousness. It is a great mistake to overlook
this fact; I do not mean that a preacher should not attempt to praise
these virtues, but if he does, he ought to be able to translate his
thoughts into language which will approve itself to boys; he ought to
be able to make it clear that such qualities are not inconsistent with
manliness, humour, and kindliness. A school preacher ought to be able
to indulge a vein of gentle satire; he ought to be able to make boys
ashamed of their absurd conventionalism; he ought to give the
impression that because he is a Christian he is none the less a man of
the world in the right sense. He ought not to uphold what, for want of
a better word, I will call a feminine religion, a religion of sainted
choir-boys and exemplary death-beds. A boy does not want to be gentle,
meek, and mild, and I fear I cannot say that it is to be desired that
he should. But if a man is shrewd and even humorous first, he can lift
his audience into purer and higher regions afterwards; and he will then
be listened to, because his hearers will feel that the qualities they
most admire--strength, keenness, good humour--need not be left behind
at the threshold of the Christian life, but may be used and practised
in the higher regions.

Then, too, I think that there is a sad want of variety. How rarely does
one hear a biographical sermon; and yet biography is one of the things
to which almost all boys will listen spellbound. I wish that a preacher
would sometimes just tell the story of some gallant Christian life,
showing the boys that they too may live such lives if they have the
will. Preachers dwell far too much on the side of self-sacrifice and
self-abnegation. Those, it seems to me, are much more mature ideals. I
wish that they would dwell more upon the enjoyment, the interest, the
amusement of being good in a vigorous way.

What has roused these thoughts in me are two sermons I have lately
heard here. On Sunday week a great preacher came here, and spoke with
extraordinary force and sense upon the benefits to be derived from
making the most of chapel services. I never heard the thing better
done. He gave the simplest motives for doing it. He said that we all
believed in goodness in our hearts, and that a service, if we came to
it in the right way, was a means of hammering goodness in. That it was
a good thing that chapel services were compulsory, because if they were
optional, a great many boys would stay away out of pure laziness, and
lose much good thereby. And as they were compulsory, we had better make
the most we could of them. He went on to speak of attention, of
posture, and so forth. There are a certain number of big boys here, who
have an offensive habit of putting their heads down upon their arms on
the book-board during a sermon, and courting sleep. The preacher made a
pause at this point, and said that it was, of course, true that an
attitude of extreme devotion did not always mean a corresponding
seriousness of mind. There was a faint ripple of mirth at this, and
then, one by one, the boys who were engaged in attempting to sleep
raised themselves slowly up in a sheepish manner, trying to look as if
they were only altering their position naturally. It was intensely
ludicrous; but so good for the offenders! And then the preacher rose
into a higher vein, and said how the thought of the school chapel would
come back to the boys in distant days; that the careless would wish in
vain that they had found the peace of Christ there, and that those who
had worshipped in spirit and truth would be thankful that it had been
so. And then he drew a little picture of a manly, pure, and kind ideal
of a boy's life in words that made all hearts go out to him. Boys are
heedless creatures; but I am sure that many of them, for a day or two
at all events, tried to live a better life in the spirit of that strong
and simple message.

Well, yesterday we had a man of a very different sort; earnest enough
and high-minded, I am sure, but he seemed to have forgotten, if he had
ever known, what a boy's heart and mind were like. The sermon was
devoted to imploring boys to take Orders, and he drew a dismal picture
of the sacrifices the step entailed, and depicted, in a singularly
unattractive vein, the life of a city curate. Now the only way to make
the thought of such a life appeal to boys is to indicate the bravery,
the interest of it all, the certainty that you are helping human
beings, the enjoyment which always attaches to human relationship.

The result was, I confess, extremely depressing. He made a fervent
appeal at the end; "The call," he said, "comes to you now and to-day."
I watched from my stall with, I am sorry to say, immense amusement, the
proceedings of a great, burly, red-faced boy, a prominent football
player, and a very decent sort of fellow. He had fallen asleep early in
the discourse; and at this urgent invitation, he opened one eye and
cast it upon the preacher with a serene and contented air. Finding that
the call did not appear to him to be particularly imperative, he slowly
closed it again, and, with a good-tempered sigh, addressed himself once
more to repose. I laughed secretly, hoping the preacher did not observe
his hearer.

But, seriously, it seemed to me a lamentable waste of opportunities.
The Sunday evening service is the one time in the week when there is a
chance of putting religion before the boys in a beautiful light. Most
of them desire to be good, I think; their half-formed wishes, their
faltering hopes, their feeble desires, ought to be tenderly met, and
lifted, and encouraged. At times, too, a stern morality ought to be
preached and enforced; wilful transgression ought to be held up in a
terrible light. I do not really mind how it is done, but the heart
ought somehow to be stirred and awakened. There is room for
denunciation and there is room for encouragement. Best of all is a due
admixture of both; if sin can be shown in its true colours, if the
darkness, the horror, the misery of the vicious life can be displayed,
and the spirit then pointed to the true and right path, the most is
done that can be done.

But we grow so miserably stereotyped and mannerised. My cautious
colleagues are dreadfully afraid of anything which they call
revivalistic, and, indeed, of anything which is unconventional. I
should like to see the Sunday sermon made one of the most stirring
events of the week, as Arnold made it at Rugby. I should like preachers
to be selected with the utmost care, and told beforehand what they were
to preach about. No instruction is wanted in a school chapel--the boys
get plenty of that in their Divinity lessons. What is wanted is that
the heart should be touched, and that faint strivings after purity and
goodness should be enforced and helped. To give the spirit wings, that
ought to be the object. But so often we have to listen to a
conscientious discourse, in which the preacher, after saying that the
scene in which the narrative is laid is too well known to need
description, proceeds to paint an ugly picture out of The Land and the
Book or Farrar's Life of Christ. The story is then tediously related,
and we end by a few ethical considerations, taken out of the footnotes
of the Cambridge Bible for Schools or Homiletical Hints, which make
even the most ardent Christian feel that after all the pursuit of
perfection is a very dreary business.

But a brave, wise-hearted, and simple man, speaking from the heart to
the heart, not as one who has attained to a standard of impossible
perfection, but as an elder pilgrim, a little older, a little stronger,
a little farther on the way--what cannot such an one do to set feeble
feet on the path, and turn souls to the light? Boys are often
pathetically anxious to be good; but they are creatures of impulse, and
what they need is to feel that goodness is interesting, beautiful, and
desirable. . . . Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Oct. 5, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--It is autumn now with us, the sweetest season of the
year to a polar bear like myself. Of course, Spring is ravishingly,
enchantingly beautiful, but she brings a languor with her, and there
are the hot months to be lived through, treading close on her heels.
But now the summer is over and done; the long firelit evenings are
coming, and, as if to console one for the loss of summer beauty, the
whole world blazes out into a rich funeral pomp. I walked to-day with a
friend to a place not far away, a great, moated house in a big, ancient
park. We left the town, held on through the wretched gradations of
suburbanity, and then, a few hundred yards from the business-like,
treeless high-road, the coverts came in sight. There is always a dim
mystery about a close-set wood showing its front across the fields. It
always seems to me like a silent battalion guarding some secret thing.
We left the high-road and soon were in the wood--the dripping woodways,
all strewn with ruinous gold, opening to right and left; and soon the
roofs and towers of the big house--Puginesque Gothic, I must tell
you--came in sight. But those early builders of the romantic revival,
though they loved stucco and shallow niches, had somehow a sense of
mass. It pleases me to know that the great Sir Walter himself had a
hand in the building of this very house, planned the barbican and the
water-gate. All round the house lies a broad moat of black water, full
of innumerable carp. The place was breathlessly still; only the sharp
melancholy cries of water-birds and the distant booming of guns broke
the silence. The water was all sprinkled with golden leaves, that made
a close carpet round the sluices; the high elms were powdered with
gold; the chestnuts showed a rustier red. A silent gardener, raking
leaves with ancient leisureliness, was the only sign of life--he might
have been a spirit for all the sound he made; while the big house
blinked across the rich clumps of Michaelmas daisies, and the dark
windows showed a flicker of fire darting upon the walls. Everything
seemed mournful, yet contented, dying serenely and tranquilly, with a
great and noble dignity. I wish I could put into words the sweet
solemnity, the satisfying gravity of the scene; it was like the sight
of a beautiful aged face that testifies to an inner spirit which has
learnt patience, tenderness, and trustfulness from experience, and is
making ready, without fear or anxiety, for the last voyage.

I say gratefully that this is one of the benefits of growing older,
that these beautiful things seem to speak more and more instantly to
the mind. Perhaps the faculty of eager enjoyment is somewhat blunted;
but the appeal, the sweetness, the pathos, the mystery of the world, as
life goes on, fall far oftener and with far more of a magical spell
upon the heart.

We walked for a while by a bridge, where the stream out of the moat ran
hoarsely, choked with drift, in its narrow walls. That melancholy and
sobbing sound seemed only to bring out more forcibly the utter silence
of the tall trees and the sky above them; light wreaths of mist lay
over the moat, and we could see far across the rough pasture, with a
few scattered oaks of immemorial age standing bluff and gnarled among
the grass. The time of fresh spring showers, of sailing clouds, of
basking summer heat, was over--so said the grey, gentle sky--what was
left but to let the sap run backward to its secret home, to rest, to
die? With such sober and stately acquiescence would I await the end,
not grudgingly, not impatiently, but in a kind of solemn glory, with
gratitude and love and trust.

My companion of that day was Vane, one of my colleagues, and we had
discussed a dozen of the small interests and problems that make up our
busy life at this restless place; but a silence fell upon us now. The
curtain of life was for a moment drawn aside, the hangings that wrap us
round, and we looked for an instant into the vast and starlit silences,
the formless, ancient dark, where a thousand years are but as
yesterday, and into which the countless generations of men have
marched, one after another. That is a solemn, but hardly a despairing
thought; for something is being wrought out in the silence, something
of which we may not be conscious, but which is surely there. Could we
but lay that cool and mighty thought closer to our spirits! That
impenetrable mystery ought to give us courage, to let us rest, as it
were, within a mighty arm. Behind and beyond the precisest creed that
great mystery lies; the bewildering question as to how it is possible
for our own atomic life to be so sharply defined and bounded from the
life of the world--why the frail tabernacle in which we move should be
thus intensely our own, and all outside it apart from us.

Yet in days like this calm autumn day one seems to draw a little closer
to the mystery, to take a nearer share in the great and wide
inheritance, to be less of ourselves and more of God.--Ever yours,

T. B.



MONK'S ORCHARD,
  UPTON,
    Oct. 12, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have nothing but local gossip to tell you. We have
been having a series of Committee meetings lately about our Chapel
services; I am a member of the Committee, and as so often happens when
one is brought into close contact with one's colleagues upon a definite
question, I find myself lost in bewilderment at the views which are
held and advanced by sensible and virtuous men. I don't say that I am
necessarily right, and that those who disagree with me are wrong; I
daresay that some of my fellow-members think me a tiresome and
wrong-headed man. But in one point I believe I am right; in things of
this kind, the only policy seems to me to try to arrive at some broad
principle, to know what you are driving at; and then, having arrived at
it, to try and work it out in detail. Now two or three of my friends
seem to me to begin at the wrong end; to have got firmly into their
heads certain details, and to fight with all their power to get these
details accepted, without attempting to try and develop a principle at
all. For instance, Roberts, one of the members of the Committee, is
only anxious for what he calls the maintenance of liturgical tradition;
he says that there is a science of liturgy, and that it is of the
utmost importance to keep in touch with it. The sort of detail that he
presses is that at certain seasons the same hymn ought to be sung on
Sunday morning and every morning throughout the week, because of the
mediaeval system of octaves. He calls this knocking the same nail on
the head, and, as is common enough, he is led to confuse a metaphor
with an argument. Again, he is very anxious to have the Litany twice a
week, that the boys may be trained, as he calls it, in the habit of
continuous prayerful attention. Another member, Randall, is very
anxious that the services should be what he calls instructive; that
courses, for instance, of sermons should be preached on certain books
of the Old Testament, on the Pauline Epistles, and so forth. He is also
very much set on having dogmatic and doctrinal sermons, because dogma
and doctrine are the bone and sinew of religion. Another man, old
Pigott, says that the whole theory of worship is praise, and he is very
anxious to avoid all subjective and individual religion.

I find myself in hopeless disagreement with these three worthy men; my
own theory of school services is, to put it shortly, that they should
FEED THE SOUL, and draw it gently to the mysteries of Love and Faith.
The whole point is, I believe, to rouse and sustain a pure and generous
emotion. Most boys have in various degrees a religious sense. That is
to say, that they have moments when they are conscious of the
Fatherhood of God, of redemption from sin, of the indwelling of a Holy
Spirit. They have moments when they see all that they might be and are
not--moments when they would rather be pure than impure, unselfish
rather than self-absorbed, kind rather than unkind, brave rather than
cowardly; moments when they perceive, however dimly, that happiness
lies in activity and kindliness, and when they would give much never to
have stained their conscience with evil. It seems to me that school
services ought to aim at developing these faint and faltering dreams,
at increasing the sense of the beauty and peace of holiness, at giving
them some strong and joyful thought that will send them back to the
world of life resolved to try again, to be better and worthier.

I am afraid that I do not value the science of liturgical tradition
very much. The essence of all science is that it should be progressive;
our problems and needs are not the same as mediaeval problems and
needs. The whole conception of God and man has broadened and deepened.
Science has taught us that nature is a part of the mind of God, not
something to be merely contended against; again, it has taught us that
man has probably not fallen from grace into corruption, but is slowly
struggling upwards out of darkness into light. Again, we no longer
think that everything was created for the use and enjoyment of man; we
know now of huge tracts of the earth where for thousands of years a
vast pageant of life has been displaying itself without any reference
to humanity at all. Then, too, as a great scientist has lately pointed
out, the dark and haunting sense of sin, that drove devotees to the
desert and to lives of the grimmest asceticism, has given place to a
nobler conception of civic virtue, has turned men's hearts rather to
amendment than to repentance; well, that, in the face of all this, we
should be limited to the precise kind of devotions that approved
themselves to mediaeval minds seems to me to be a purely retrograde
position.

Then as to arranging services in order to cultivate the power of
continuous prayer among boys, I think it a thoroughly unpractical
theory. In the first place, for one boy so trained you blunt the
religious susceptibilities of ninety-nine others. Boys are quick,
lively, and bird-like creatures, intolerant above all things of tedium
and strain; and I believe that in order to cultivate the religious
sense in them, the first duty of all is to make religion attractive,
and resolutely to put aside all that tends to make it a weariness.

As to doctrinal and dogmatic instruction, I cannot feel that, at a
school, the chapel is the place for that; the boys here get a good deal
of religious instruction, and Sunday is already too full, if anything,
of it. I believe that the chapel is the place to make them, if
possible, love their faith and find it beautiful; and if you can secure
that, the dogma will look after itself. The point is, for instance,
that a boy should be aware of his redemption, not that he should know
the metaphysical method in which it was effected. There is very little
dogmatic instruction in the Gospels, and what there is seems to have
been delivered to the few and not to the many, to the shepherds rather
than to the flocks; it is vital religion and not technical that the
chapel should be concerned with.

As to the theory of praise, I cannot help feeling that the old idea
that God demanded, so to speak, a certain amount of public recognition
of His goodness and greatness is a purely savage and uncivilised form
of fetish-worship; it is the same sort of religion that would attach
material prosperity to religious observation; and belongs to a time
when men believed that, in return for a certain number of sacrifices,
rain and sun were sent to the crops of godly persons, with a nicer
regard to their development than was applied in the case of the
ungodly. The thought of the Father of men feeling a certain
satisfaction in their assembling together to roar out in concert
somewhat extravagantly phrased ascriptions of honour and majesty seems
to me purely childish.

My own belief is that services should in the first place be as short as
possible; that there should be variety and interest, plenty of movement
and plenty of singing, and that every service should be employed to
meet and satisfy the restless minds and bodies of children. But though
all should be simple, it should not, I think, be of a plain and obvious
type entirely. There are many delicate mysteries, of hope and faith, of
affliction and regret, of suffering and sorrow, of which many boys are
dimly conscious. There are many subtle and seemly qualities which lie a
little apart from the track of manly, full-fed, game-playing boyhood;
and such emotions should be cultivated and given voice in our services.
To arrange the whole of our religion for brisk, straightforward boys,
whose temptations are of an obvious type and who have never known
sickness or sorrow is, I believe, a radical mistake. There is a good
deal of secret, tender, delicate emotion in the hearts of many boys,
which cannot be summarily classed and dismissed as subjective.

Sermons should be brief and ethical, I believe. They should aim at
waking generous thoughts and hopes, pure and gracious ideals. Anything
of a biographical character appeals strongly to boys; and if one can
show that it is not inconsistent with manliness to have a deep and
earnest faith, to love truth and purity as well as liberty and honour,
a gracious seed has been sown.

Above all, religion should not be treated from the purely boyish point
of view; let the boys feel that they are strangers, soldiers, and
pilgrims, let them realise that the world is a difficult place, but
that there is indeed a golden clue that leads through the darkness of
the labyrinth, if they can but set their hand upon it; let them learn
to be humble and grateful, not hard and self-sufficient. And, above
all, let them realise that things in this world do not come by chance,
but that a soul is set in a certain place, and that happiness is to be
found by interpreting the events of life rightly, by facing sorrows
bravely, by showing kindness, by thankfully accepting joy and pleasure.

And lastly, there should come some sense of unity, the thought of
combination for good, of unaffectedness about what we believe to be
true and pure, of facing the world together and not toying with it in
isolation. All this should be held up to boys.

Even as it is boys grow to love the school chapel, and to think of it
in after years as a place where gleams of goodness and power visited
them. It might be even more so than it is; but it can only be so, if we
realise the conditions, the material with which we are working. We
ought to set ourselves to meet and to encourage every beautiful
aspiration, every holy and humble thought; not to begin with some
eclectic theory, and to try to force boys into the mould. We do that in
every other department of school life; but I would have the chapel to
be a place of liberty, where tender spirits may be allowed a glimpse of
high and holy things which they fitfully desire, and which may indeed
prove to be a gate of heaven.

Well, for once I have been able to finish a letter without a single
interruption. If my letters, as a rule, seem very inconsequent,
remember that they are often written under pressure. But I suppose we
each envy the other; you would like a little more pressure and I a
little less. I am glad to hear that all goes well; thank Nellie for her
letter.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Oct. 19, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I am at present continuously liturgical, owing to my
Committee; but you must have the benefit of it.

I have often wondered which of the compilers of the Prayer-book fixed
upon the Venite as the first Canticle for our Morning Service;
wondered, I say, in the purposeless way that one does wonder, without
ever taking the trouble to find out. I dare say there are abundant
ecclesiological precedents for it, if one took the trouble to discover
them. But the important thing is that it was done; and it is a stroke
of genius to have done it. (N.B.--I find it is in the Breviary
appointed for Matins.)

The thing is so perfect in itself, and in a way so unexpected, that I
feel in the selection of it the work of a deep and poetical heart. Many
an ingenious ecclesiastical mind would be afraid of putting a psalm in
such a place which changed its mood so completely as the Venite does.
To end with a burst of noble and consuming anger, of vehement and
merciless indignation--that is the magnificent thing.

Just consider it; I will write down the verses, just for the simple
pleasure of shaping the great simple phrases:--


"Oh come let us sing unto the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the
strength of our salvation."


What a vigorous and enlivening verse, like the invitation of old
song-writers, "Begone, dull care." For once let us trust ourselves to
the full tide of exaltation and triumph, let there be no heavy
overshadowings of thought.


"Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and show ourselves
glad in him with psalms.

"For the Lord is a great God: and a great King above all Gods.

"In his hand are all the corners of the earth; and the strength of the
hills is his also.

"The sea is his and he made it; and his hands prepared the dry land.

"Oh come, let us worship, and fall down: and kneel before the Lord our
Maker.

"For he is the Lord our God; and we are the people of his pasture and
the sheep of his hand."


What a splendid burst of joy; the joy of earth, when the sun is bright
in a cloudless heaven, and the fresh wind blows cheerfully across the
plain. There is no question of duty here, of a task to be performed in
heaviness, but a simple tide of joyfulness such as filled the heart of
the poet who wrote:--

      "God's in His Heaven;
       All's right with the world."


I take it that these verses draw into themselves, as the sea draws the
streams, all the rivers of joy and beauty that flow, whether laden with
ships out of the heart of great cities, or dropping and leaping from
high unvisited moorlands. All the sweet joys that life holds for us
find their calm end and haven here; all the delights of life, of
action, of tranquil thought, of perception, of love, of beauty, of
friendship, of talk, of reflection, are all drawn into one great flood
of gratitude and thankfulness; the thankfulness that comes from the
thought that after all it is He that made us, and not we ourselves;
that we are indeed led and pastured by green meadows and waters of
comfort; in such a mood all uneasy anxieties, all dull questionings,
die and are merged, and we are glad to be.

Then suddenly falls a different mood, a touch of pathos, in the thought
that there are some who from wilfulness, and vain desire, and troubled
scheming, shut themselves out from the great inheritance; to them comes
the pleading call, the sorrowful invitation:--


"To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts; as in the
provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness.

"When your fathers tempted me: proved me, and saw my works."


And then rises the gathering wrath; the doom of all perverse and
stubborn natures, who will not yield, or be guided, or led; who live in
a wilful sadness, a petty obstinacy:--


"Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said: It is a
people that do err in their hearts for they have not known my ways."


And then the passion of the mood, the fierce indignation, rises and
breaks, as it were, in a dreadful thunderclap:--


"Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest."


But even so the very horror of the denunciation holds within it a
thought of beauty, like an oasis in a burning desert. "My REST"--that
sweet haven which does truly await all those who will but follow and
wait upon God.

I declare that the effect of this amazing lyric grows upon me every
time that I hear it. Some Psalms, like the delicate and tender cxix.,
steal into the heart after long and quiet use. How dull I used to find
it as a child; how I love it now! But this is not the case with the
Venite; its noble simplicity and directness has no touch of intentional
subtlety about it. Rather the subtlety was in the true insight, which
saw that, if ever there was a Psalm which should at once give the reins
to joy, and at the same time pierce the careless heart with a sharp
arrow of thought, this was the Psalm.

I feel as if I had been trying in this letter to do as Mr. Interpreter
did--to have you into a room full of besoms and spiders, and to draw a
pretty moral out of it all. But I am sure that the beauty of this
particular Psalm, and of its position, is one of those things that is
only spoilt for us by familiarity; and that it is a duty in life to try
and break through the crust of familiarity which tends to be deposited
round well-known things, and to see how bright and joyful a jewel shows
its heart of fire beneath.

I have been hoping for a letter; but no doubt it is all right. I am
before my time, I see.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Oct. 25, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have been studying, with a good deal of interest, two
books, the Letters of Professor A----, and the Life of Bishop F----.
Given the form, I think the editor of the letters has done his work
well. His theory has been to let the Professor speak for himself; while
he himself stands, like a discreet and unobtrusive guide, and just says
what is necessary in the right place. In this he is greatly to be
commended; for it happens too often that biographers of eminent men use
their privilege to do a little adventitious self-advertisement. They
blow their own trumpets; they stand and posture courteously in the
ante-room, when what one desires is to go straight into the presence.

I once had a little piece of biography to do which necessitated my
writing requests for reminiscences to several of the friends of the
subject of my book. I never had such a strange revelation of human
nature. A very few people gave me just what I wanted to know--facts,
and sayings, and trenchant actions. A second class of correspondents
told me things which had a certain value--episodes in which my hero
appeared, but intermingled with many of their own opinions, doings, and
sayings. A third class wrote almost exclusively about themselves, using
my hero as a peg to hang their own remarks upon. The worst offender of
all wrote me long reminiscences of his own conversations, in the
following style: "How well I remember the summer of 18--, when dear
P---- was staying at F----. I and my wife had a little house in the
neighbourhood. We found it convenient to be able to run down there and
to rest a little after the fatigues of London life. I remember very
well a walk I took with P----. It was the time of the Franco-Prussian
War, and I was full of indignation at the terrible sacrifice of life
which appeared to me to be for no end. I remember pouring out my
thoughts to P----." Here followed a page or two of reflections upon the
barbarity of war. "P---- listened to me with great interest; I cannot
now recall what he said, but I know that it struck me very much at the
time." And so on through many closely written pages.

Well, the editor of the Professor's letters has not done this at all;
he keeps himself entirely in the background. But, after reading the
book, the reflection is borne in upon me that, unless the hero is a
good letter-writer (and the Professor was not), the form of the book
cannot be wholly justified. Most of the letters are, so to speak,
business letters; they are either letters connected with ecclesiastical
politics, or they are letters dealing with technical historical points.
There are many little shrewd and humorous turns occurring in them. But
these should, I think, have been abstracted from their context and
worked into a narrative. The Professor was a man of singular character
and individuality. Besides his enormous erudition, he had a great fund
of sterling common sense, a deep and liberal piety, and a most
inconsequent and, I must add, undignified sense of humour. He carried
almost to a vice the peculiarly English trait of national
character--the extreme dislike of emotional statement, the inability to
speak easily and unaffectedly on matters of strong feeling and tender
concern. I confess that this has a displeasing effect. When one desires
above all things to have a glimpse into his mind, to be reassured as to
his seriousness and piety, it is ten to one that the Professor will, so
to speak, pick up his skirts, and execute a series of clumsy, if comic,
gambols and caracoles in front of you. A sense of humour is a very
valuable thing, especially in a professor of theology; but it should be
of a seemly and pungent type, not the humour of a Merry Andrew. And one
has the painful sense, especially in the most familiar letters of this
collection, that the Professor took an almost puerile pleasure in
trying to shock his correspondent, in showing how naughty he could be.
One feels the same kind of shock as if one had gone to see the
Professor on serious business, and found him riding on a rocking-horse
in his study, with a paper cap on his head. There is nothing morally
wrong about it; but it appears to be silly, and silliness is out of
place behind a gown and under a college cap.

But the Biography of Bishop F---- opens up a further and more
interesting question, which I feel myself quite unequal to solving. One
has a respect for erudition, of course, but I find myself pondering
gloomily over the reasons for this respect. Is it only the respect that
one feels for the man who devotes patient labour to the accomplishment
of a difficult task, a task which demands great mental power? What I am
not clear about is what the precise value of the work of the erudite
historian is. The primary value of history is its educational value. It
is good for the mind to have a wide view of the world, to have a big
perspective of affairs. It corrects narrow, small, personal views; it
brings one in contact with heroic, generous persons; it displays noble
qualities. It gives one glimpses of splendid self-sacrifice, of lives
devoted to a high cause; it sets one aglow with visions of patriotism,
liberty and justice. It shows one also the darker side; how great
natures can be neutralised or even debased by uncorrected faults; how
bigotry can triumph over intelligence; how high hopes can be
disappointed. All this is saddening; yet it deepens and widens the
mind; it teaches one what to avoid; it brings one near to the deep and
patient purposes of God.

But then there is a temptation to think that vivid, picturesque,
stimulating writers can do more to develop this side of history than
patient, laborious, just writers. One begins to be inclined to forgive
anything but dulness in a writer; to value vitality above accuracy,
colour above truth. One is tempted to feel that the researches of
erudite historians end only in proving that white is not so white, and
black not so black as one had thought. That generous persons had a
seamy side; that dark and villainous characters had much to be urged in
excuse for their misdeeds. This is evidently a wrong frame of mind, and
one is disposed to say that one must pursue truth before everything.
But then comes in the difficulty that truth is so often not to be
ascertained; that documentary evidence is incomplete, and that even
documents themselves do not reveal motives. Of course, the perfect
combination would be to have great erudition, great common sense and
justice, and great enthusiasm and vigour as well. It is obviously a
disadvantage to have a historian who suppresses vital facts because
they do not fit in with a preconceived view of characters. But still I
find it hard to resist the conviction that, from the educational point
of view, stimulus is more important than exactness. It is more
important that a boy should take a side, should admire and abhor, than
that he should have very good reasons for doing so. For it is character
and imagination that we want to affect rather than the mastery of
minute points and subtleties.

Thus, from an educational point of view, I should consider that Froude
was a better writer than Freeman; just as I should consider it more
important that a boy should care for Virgil than that he should be sure
that he had the best text.

I think that what I feel to be the most desirable thing of all is, that
boys should learn somehow to care for history--however prejudiced a
view they take of it--when they are young; and that, when they are
older, they should correct misapprehensions, and try to arrive at a
more complete and just view.

Then I go on to my further point, and here I find myself in a still
darker region of doubt. I must look upon it, I suppose, as a direct
assault of the Evil One, and hold out the shield of faith against the
fiery darts.

What, I ask myself, is, after all, the use of this practice of
erudition? What class of the community does it, nay, can it, benefit?
The only class that I can even dimly connect with any benefits
resulting from it is the class of practical politicians; and yet, in
politics, I see a tendency more and more to neglect the philosophical
and abstruse view; and to appeal more and more to later precedents, not
to search among the origins of things. Nay, I would go further, and say
that a pedantic and elaborate knowledge of history hampers rather than
benefits the practical politician. It is not so with all the learned
professions. The man of science may hope that his researches may have
some direct effect in enriching the blood of the world. He may fight
the ravages of disease, he may ameliorate life in a hundred ways.

But these exponents of learning, these restorers of ancient texts,
these disentanglers of grammatical subtleties, these divers among
ancient chronicles and forgotten charters--what is it that they do but
to multiply and revive useless knowledge, and to make it increasingly
difficult for a man to arrive at a broad and philosophical view, or
ever attack his subject at the point where it may conceivably affect
humanity or even character? The problem of the modern world is the
multiplication of books and records, and every new detail dragged to
light simply encumbers the path of the student. I have no doubt that
this is a shallow and feeble-minded view. But I am not advancing it as
a true view; I am only imploring help; I only desire light. I am only
too ready to believe in the virtues and uses of erudition, if any one
will point them out to me. But at present it only appears to me like a
gigantic mystification, enabling those who hold richly endowed posts to
justify themselves to the world, and to keep the patronage of these
emoluments in their own hands. Supposing, as a reductio ad absurdum,
that some wealthy individual were to endow an institution in order that
the members of it might count the number of threads in carpets. One can
imagine a philosophical defence being made of the pursuit. A man might
say that it was above all things necessary to classify, and
investigate, and to arrive at the exact truth; to compare the number of
threads in different carpets, and that the sordid difficulties which
encumbered such a task should not be regarded, in the light of the fact
that here, at least, exact results had been obtained.

Of course, that is all very silly! But I believe; only I want my
unbelief helped! If you can tell me what services are rendered by
erudition to national life, you will relieve my doubts. Do not merely
say that it enlarges the bounds of knowledge, unless you are also
prepared to prove that knowledge is, per se, a desirable thing. I am
not sure that it is not a hideous idol, a Mumbo Jumbo, a Moloch in
whose honour children have still to pass through the fire in the
recesses of dark academic groves.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Nov. 1, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have read, after a fashion, in the course of the
last month, the Autobiography of Herbert Spencer. I know nothing of his
philosophy--I doubt if I have read half-a-dozen pages of his writings;
and the man, as revealed in his own transparent confessions, is almost
wholly destitute of attractiveness. All the same it is an intensely
interesting book, because it is the attempt of a profound egotist to
give a perfectly sincere picture of his life. Of course, I should have
read it with greater appreciation if I had studied or cared for his
books; but I take for granted that he was a great man, and accomplished
a great work, and I like to see how he achieved it.

The book is the strongest argument I have ever yet read against a
rational education. I who despair of the public-school classical
system, am reluctantly forced to confess that it can sow the seeds of
fairer flowers than ever blossomed in the soul of Herbert Spencer. He
was by no means devoid of aesthetic perception. He says that the sight
of a mountain, and music heard in a cathedral were two of the things
that moved him most. He describes a particular sunset which he saw in
Scotland, and describes the experience as the climax of his emotional
sensations. He was devoted to music, and had a somewhat contemptuous
enjoyment of pictures. But the arrogance and impenetrability of the man
rise up on every page. He cannot say frankly that he does not
understand art and literature; he dogmatises about them, and gives the
reader to understand that there is really nothing in them. He
criticises the classics from the standpoint of a fourth form boy. He
sits like a dry old spider, spinning his philosophical web, with a
dozen avenues of the soul closed to him, and denying that such avenues
exist. As a statistical and sociological expert he ought to have taken
into account the large number of people who are affected by what we may
call the beautiful, and to have allowed for its existence even if he
could not feel it. But no, he is perfectly self-satisfied, perfectly
decided. And this is the more surprising because the man was in reality
a hedonist. He protests finely in more than one place against those who
make life subsidiary to work. He is quite clear on the point that work
is only a part of life, and that to live is the object of man. Again,
he states that the pursuit of innocent pleasure is a thing to which it
is justifiable to devote some energy, and yet this does not make him
tolerant. The truth is that he was so supremely egotistical, so
entirely wrapped up in himself and his own life, that what other people
did and cared for was a matter of entire indifference to him. His
social tastes, and they were considerable, were all devoted to one and
the same purpose. He liked staying at agreeable country houses, because
it was a pleasant distraction to him and improved his health. He liked
dining out, because it stimulated his digestion. All human
relationships are made subservient to the same end. It never seems to
him to be a duty to minister to the pleasure of others. He takes what
he can get at the banquet of life, and, having secured his share, goes
away to digest it. When, at the end of his life, social entertainments
tried his nerves, he gave them up. When people came to see him, and he
found himself getting tired or excited by conversation, if it was not
convenient to him to leave the room, he put stoppers in his ears to
blur the sense of the talk. What better parable of the elaborate
framework of egotism on which his life was constructed could there be
than the following legend, not derived from the book? One evening, the
story goes, the philosopher had invited, at his club, a youthful
stranger to join him in a game of billiards. The young man, who was a
proficient, ran out in two breaks, leaving his rival a hopeless
distance behind. When he had finished, Spencer, with a severe air, said
to him: "To play billiards in an ordinary manner is an agreeable
adjunct to life; to play as you have been playing is evidence of a
misspent youth." A man who was not an egotist and a philosopher,
however much he disliked the outcome of the game, would have attempted
some phrases of commendation. But Spencer's view was, that anything
which rendered a player of billiards less useful to himself, by giving
him fewer opportunities in the course of a game for what he would have
called healthful and pleasurable recreation, was not only not to be
tolerated, but was to be morally reprobated.

As to his health, a subject which occupies the larger part of the
volumes, it is evident that, though his nervous system was deranged, he
was a complete hypochondriac. There is very little repining about the
invalid conditions under which he lived; and it gradually dawned upon
me that this was not because he had resolved to bear it in a stoical
and courageous manner, but because his ill-health, seen through the
rosy spectacles of the egotist, was a matter of pleasurable excitement
to him; he complains a good deal of the peculiar sensations he
experienced, and his broken nights, but with a solemn satisfaction in
the whole experience. He never had to bear physical pain, and the worst
evil from which he suffered was the boredom resulting from the way in
which he had to try, or conceived that he had to try, to kill time
without reading or working.

Of course one cannot help admiring the tenacious way in which he
carried out his great work under unfavourable conditions. Yet there is
something ridiculous in the picture of his rowing about in a boat on
the Regent's Park Lake, with an amanuensis in the stern, dictating
under the lee of an island until his sensations returned, and then
rowing until they subsided again. As a hedonist, he distinctly
calculated that his work gave the spice to his life, and that he would
not have been so happy had he relinquished it. But there is nothing
generous or noble about his standpoint; he liked writing and
philosophising, and he preferred to do it even though it entailed a
certain amount of invalidism, in the same spirit in which a man prefers
to drink champagne with the prospect of suffering from the gout, rather
than to renounce champagne and gout alike.

The man's face is in itself a parable. He has the high, domed forehead
of the philosopher, and a certain geniality of eye; but the hard,
thin-lipped mouth, with the deep lines from the nose, give him the air
of an elderly chimpanzee. He has a hand like a bird's claw; and the
antique shirt-front and small bow-tie denote the man who has fixed his
opinions on the cut of his clothes at an early date and does not intend
to modify them. Quite apart from the intense seriousness with which the
sage took himself, down to the smallest details, the style of the book,
dry as it is, is in itself grotesquely attractive.

There is something in the use of solemn scientific terminology, when
dealing with the most trivial matters, which makes many passages
irresistibly ludicrous. I wish that I could think that the writer of
the following lines wrote them with any consciousness of how humorous a
passage he was constructing--


"With me any tendency towards facetiousness is the result of temporary
elation, either . . . caused by pleasurable health-giving change, or
more commonly by meeting old friends. Habitually I observed that on
seeing the Lotts after a long interval, I was apt to give vent to some
witticisms during the first hour or two, and then they became rare."


I can't say that the life is a sad one, because, on the whole, it is a
contented one; but it is so one-sided and so self-absorbed that one
feels dried-up and depressed by it. One feels that great ability, great
perseverance, may yet leave a man very cold and hard; that a man may
penetrate the secrets of philosophy and yet never become wise; and one
ends by feeling that simplicity, tenderness, a love of beautiful and
gracious things are worth far more than great mental achievement. Or
rather, I suppose, that one has to pay a price for everything, and that
the price that this dyspeptic philosopher paid for his great work was
to move through the world in a kind of frigid blindness, missing life
after all, and bartering reality for self-satisfaction.

Curiously enough, I have at the same time been reading the life of
another self-absorbed and high-minded personality--the late Dean
Farrar. This is a book the piety of which is more admirable than the
literary skill; but probably the tender partiality with which it is
written makes it a more valuable document from the point of view of
revealing personality than if it had been more critically treated.

Farrar was probably the exact opposite of Herbert Spencer in almost
every respect. He was a litterateur, a rhetorician, an idealist, where
Spencer was a philosopher, a scientific man, and a rationalist. Farrar
admired high literature with all his heart; though unfortunately it did
not clarify his own taste, but only gave him a rich vocabulary of
high-sounding words, which he bound into a flaunting bouquet. He was
like the bower-bird, which takes delight in collecting bright objects
of any kind, bits of broken china, fragments of metal, which it
disposes with distressing prominence about its domicile, and runs to
and fro admiring the fantastic pattern. The fabric of Farrar's writing
is essentially thin; his thoughts rarely rose above the commonplace,
and to these thoughts he gave luscious expression, sticking the flowers
of rhetoric, of which his marvellous memory gave him the command, so as
to ornament without adorning.

Every one must have been struck in Farrar's works of fiction by the
affected tone of speech adopted by his saintly and high-minded heroes.
It was not affectation in Farrar to speak and write in this way; it was
the form in which his thoughts naturally arranged themselves. But in
one sense it was affected, because Farrar seems to have been naturally
a kind of dramatist. I imagine that his self-consciousness was great,
and I expect that he habitually lived with the feeling of being the
central figure in a kind of romantic scene. The pathos of the situation
is that he was naturally a noble-minded man. He had a high conception
of beauty, both artistic and moral beauty. He did live in the regions
to which he directed others. But this is vitiated by a desire for
recognition, a definite, almost a confessed, ambition. The letter, for
instance, in which he announces that he has accepted a Canonry at
Westminster is a painful one. If he felt the inexpressible distress, of
which he speaks, at the idea of leaving Marlborough, there was really
no reason why he should not have stayed; and, later on, his failure to
attain to high ecclesiastical office seems to have resulted in a sense
of compassion for the inadequacy of those who failed to discern real
merit, and a certain bitterness of spirit which, considering his
services to religion and morality, was not wholly unnatural. But he
does not seem to have tried to interpret the disappointment that he
felt, or to have asked himself whether the reason of his failure did
not rather lie in his own temperament.

The kindness of the man, his laboriousness, his fierce indignation
against moral evil, to say nothing of his extraordinary mental powers,
seem to have been clogged all through life by this sad
self-consciousness. The pity and the mystery of it is that a man should
have been so moulded to help his generation, and then that this
grievous defect of temperament should have been allowed to take its
place as the tyrant of the whole nature. And what makes the whole
situation even more tragic is that it was through a certain
transparency of nature that this egotism became apparent to others. He
was a man who seemed bound to speak of all that was in his mind; that
was a part of his rhetorical temperament. But if he could have held his
tongue, if he could have kept his own weakness of spirit concealed, he
might have achieved the very successes which he desired, and, indeed,
deserved. The result is that a richly endowed character achieves no
conspicuous greatness, either as a teacher, a speaker, a writer, or
even as a man.

The moral of these two books is this: How can any one whose character
is deeply tinged by this sort of egotism--and it is the shadow of all
eager and sensitive temperaments--best fight against it? Can it be
subdued, can it be concealed, can it be cured? I hardly dare to think
so. But I think that a man may deliberately resolve not to make
recognition an object; and next I believe he may most successfully
fight against egotism in ordinary life by regarding it mainly as a
question of manners. If a man can only, in early life, get into his
head that it is essentially bad manners to thrust himself forward, and
determine rather to encourage others to speak out what is in their
minds, a habit can be acquired; and probably, upon acquaintance, an
interest in the point of view of others will grow. That is not a very
lofty solution, but I believe it to be a practical one; and certainly
for a man of egotistic nature it is a severe and fruitful lesson to
read the lives of two such self-absorbed characters as Spencer and
Farrar, and to see, in the one case, how ugly and distorting a fault,
in the other, how hampering a burden it may become.

Egotism is really a failure of sympathy, a failure of justice, a
failure of proportion, and to recognise this is the first step towards
establishing a desire to be loving, just, and well-balanced.

But still the mystery remains: and I think that perhaps the most
wholesome attitude is to be grateful for what in the way of work, of
precept, of example these men achieved, and to leave the mystery of
their faults to their Maker, in the noble spirit of Gray's Elegy:--

     "No farther seek his merits to disclose,
       Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
      (There they alike in trembling hope repose),
       The bosom of his Father and his God."


--Ever yours,

T. B.



MONK'S ORCHARD,
  UPTON,
    Nov. 8, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--I have been trying to read the letters of T. E. Brown.
Do you know anything about him? He was a Manxman by birth, a fellow of
Oriel, a Clifton Master for many years, and at the end of his life a
Manxman again--he held a living there. He wrote some spirited tales in
verse, in the Manx vernacular, and he was certainly a poet at heart. He
was fond of music, and a true lover of nature. He had a genius for
friendship, and evidently had the gift of inspiring other people;
high-minded and intelligent men speak of him, in the little memoir that
precedes the letters, with a pathetic reverence and a profound belief
in the man's originality, and even genius. I was so sure that I should
enjoy the book that I ordered it before it was published, and, when it
appeared, it was a very profound disappointment. I don't mean to say
that there are not beautiful things in it; it shows one a wholesome
nature and a grateful, kindly heart; but, in the first place, he writes
a terrible style, the kind of style that imposes on simple people
because it is allusive, and what is called unconventional; to me it is
simply spasmodic and affected. The man seems, as a rule, utterly unable
to say anything in a simple and delicate way; his one object appears to
be not to use the obvious word. He has a sort of jargon of his own--a
dreadful jargon. He must write "crittur" or "craythur," when he means
"creature"; he says "Yiss, ma'am, I'd be glad to jine the Book Club";
he uses the word "galore"; he talks of "the resipiscential process"
when he means growing wiser--at least I think that is what he means.
The following, taken quite at random, are specimens of the sort of
passages that abound:--


"Rain, too, is one of my joys. I want to wash myself, soak myself in
it; hang myself over a meridian to dry; dissolve (still better) into
rags of soppy disintegration, blotting paper, mash and splash and hash
of inarticulate protoplasm."


I suppose that both he and his friends thought that picturesque; to me
it is neither beautiful nor amusing--simply ugly and aggravating.

Here again:--


"On the Quantocks I feel fairies all round me, the good folk, meet
companions for young poets. How Coleridge, more especially, fits in to
such surroundings! 'Fairies?' say you. Well, there's odds of fairies,
and of the sort I mean Coleridge was the absolute Puck. 'Puck?' says
you. 'For shame!' says you. No, d--n it! I'll stick to that. There's
odds o' fairies, and often enough I think the world is nothing else;
troops, societies, hierarchies--S.T.C., a supreme hierarch; look at his
face; think of meeting him at moonlight between Stowey and Alfoxden,
like a great white owl, soft and plumy, with eyes of flame!"


I confess that such passages simply make me blush, leave me with a kind
of mental nausea. What makes it worse is that there is something in
what he says, if he would only say it better. It makes me feel as I
should feel if I saw an elderly, heavily-built clergyman amusing
himself in a public place with a skipping-rope, to show what a child of
nature he was.

I cannot help feeling that the man was a poseur, and that his
affectations were the result of living in a small and admiring coterie.
If, when one begins to write and talk in that jesting way, there is
some one at your elbow to say, "How refreshing, how original, how
rugged!" I suppose that one begins to think that one had better indulge
oneself in such absurdities. But readers outside the circle turn away
in disgust.

The pity of it is that Brown had something of the Celtic spirit--the
melancholy, the mystery of that sensitive and delicate temperament; but
it is vitiated by what I can only call a schoolmaster's humour--cheap
and silly, such as imposes on immature minds. When he was quite serious
and simple, he wrote beautiful, quiet, wise letters, dealing with deep
things in a dignified way; but, as a rule, he thought it necessary to
cut ugly capers, and to do what can only be described as playing the
fool. I wish with all my heart that these letters had not been
published; they deform and disfigure a beautiful spirit and a quick
imagination.

Pose, affectation--what a snare they are to the better kind of minds. I
declare that I value every day more and more the signs of simplicity,
the people who say what they mean, and as they mean it; who don't think
what they think is expected of them, but what they really feel; who
don't pretend to enjoy what they don't enjoy, or to understand what
they don't understand.

I may be all wrong about Brown, of course, for the victory always
remains with the people who admire, rather than with the people who
criticise; people cannot be all on the same plane, and it is of no use
to quench enthusiasm by saying, "When you are older and wiser you will
think differently." The result of that kind of snub is only to make
people hold their tongues, and think one an old-fashioned pedant. I
sometimes wonder whether there is an absolute standard of beauty at
all, whether taste is not a sort of epidemic contagion, and whether the
accredited man of taste is not, as some one says, the man who has the
good fortune to agree most emphatically with the opinion of the
majority.

I am sure, however, you would not like the book; though I don't say
that you might not extract, as I do to my shame, a kind of bitter
pleasure in thinking how unconsciously absurd it is--the pleasure one
gets from watching the movements and gestures, and listening to the
remarks of a profoundly affected and complacent person. But that is not
an elevated kind of pleasure, when all is said and done!


              "We get no good,
     By being ungenerous, even to a book!"

as Mrs. Browning says. . . .--Ever yours.

T. B.



UPTON,
  Nov. 15, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--A controversy, a contest! How they poison all one's
thoughts! I am at present wading, as Ruskin says, in a sad marsh or
pool of thought. Let me indicate to you without excessive detail the
kind of thing that is going on.

We have been discussing the introduction here of certain important
educational reforms, in the direction of modernising and simplifying
our curriculum.

Now we are all one body here, no doubt, like the Christian Church in
the hymn; but unhappily, and unlike the hymn, we ARE very much divided.
We are in two camps. There is a conservative section who, doubtless for
very good reasons, want to keep things as they are; they see strongly
all the blessings of the old order; they like the old ways and believe
in them; they think, for instance, that the old classical lines of
education are the best, that the system fortifies the mind, and that,
when you have been through it, you have got a good instrument which
enables you to tackle anything else; a very coherent position, and, in
the case of our conservatives, very conscientiously administered.

Then there is a strong Progressive party numerically rather stronger,
to which I myself belong. We believe that things might be a good deal
better. We are dissatisfied with our results. We think, to take the
same instance, that classics are a very hard subject, and that a great
many boys are not adapted to profit by them; we believe that the
consequence of boys being kept at a hard subject, which they cannot
penetrate or master, leads to a certain cynicism about intellectual
things, and that the results of a classical education on many boys are
so negative that at all events some experiments ought to be tried.

Well, if all discussions could be conducted patiently, good-humouredly,
and philosophically, no harm would be done; but they can't! Men will
lose their temper, indulge in personalities, and import bitterness into
the question. Moreover, a number of my fiercest opponents are among my
best friends here, and that is naturally very painful. Indeed, I feel
how entirely unfitted I am for these kinds of controversy. This
disgusting business deprives me of sleep, makes me unable to
concentrate my mind upon my work, destroys both my tranquillity and my
philosophy.

It is a relief to write to you on the subject. Yet I don't see my way
out. One must have an opinion about one's life-work. My business is
education, and I have tried to use my eyes and see things as they are.
I am quite prepared to admit that I may be wrong; but if everybody who
formed opinions abstained from expressing them out of deference to the
people who were not prepared to admit that they themselves could be
mistaken, there would be an end of all progress. Minds of the sturdy,
unconvinced order are generally found to range themselves on the side
of things as they are; and that is at all events a good guarantee that
things won't move too fast, and against the trying of rash experiments.

But I don't want to be rash; I think that for a great many boys our
type of education is a failure, and I want to see if something cannot
be devised to meet their needs. But my opponents won't admit any
failure. They say that the boys who, I think, end by being hopelessly
uneducated would be worse off if they had not been grounded in the
classics. They say that my theory is only to make things easier for
boys; and they add that, if any boy's education is an entire failure
(they admit a few incapables are to be found), it is the boy's own
fault; he has been idle and listless; if he had worked properly it
would have been all right; he would have been fortified; and anyhow,
they say, it doesn't matter what you teach such boys--they would have
been hopeless anyhow.

Of course the difficulty of proving my case is great. You can't, in
education, get two exactly parallel boys and try the effect of
different types of education on the two. A chemist can put exactly the
same quantity of some salt in two vessels, and, by treating them in
different ways, produce a demonstration which is irrefragable. But no
two boys are exactly alike, and, while classics are demanded at the
university, boys of ability will tend to keep on the classical side; so
that the admitted failure of modern sides in many places to produce
boys of high intellectual ability results from the fact that boys of
ability do not tend to join the modern sides.

So one hammers on, and, as it is always easier to leave an object at
rest than to set it moving, we remain very much where we were.

The cynical solution is to say, let us have peace at any cost; let the
thing alone; let us teach what we have to teach, and not bother about
results. But that appears to me to be a cowardly attitude. If one
expresses dissatisfaction to one of the cheerful stationary party, they
reply, "Oh, take our word for it, it is all right; do your best; you
don't teach at all badly, though you lack conviction; leave it to us,
and never mind the discontent expressed by parents, and the cynical
contempt felt by boys for intellectual things."


    "Meanwhile, regardless of their doom,
       The little victims play."


They do indeed! they find work so dispiriting a business that they put
it out of their thoughts as much as they can. And when they grow up,
conscious of intellectual feebleness, they have no idea of expressing
their resentment at the way they have been used--if they are modest,
they think that it is their own fault; if they are complacent, they
think that intellectual things don't matter.

While I write there comes in one of my cheerful opponents to discuss
the situation. We plunge into the subject of classics. I say that, to
boys without aptitude, they are dreary and hopelessly difficult. "There
you go again," he says, "always wanting to make things EASIER: the
thing to do is to keep boys at hard, solid work; it is an advantage
that they can't understand what they are working at; it is a better
gymnastic." The subject of mathematics is mentioned, and my friend
incidentally confesses that he never had the least idea what higher
Algebra was all about.

I refrain from saying what comes into my mind. Supposing that he,
without any taste for Mathematics, had been kept year after year at
them, surely that would have been acting on his principle, viz. to find
out what boys can't do and make them do it. No doubt he would say that
his mind had been fortified, as it was, by classics. But, if a rigid
mathematical training had been employed, his mind might have been
fortified into an enviable condition of inaccessibility. But I don't
say this; he would only think I was making fun of the whole thing.

Fun, indeed! There is very little amusement to be derived from the
situation. My opponents have a strong sense of what they call
liberty--which means that every one should have a vote, and that every
one should register it in their favour. Or they are like the
old-fashioned Whigs, who had a strong belief in popular liberty, and an
equally unshaken belief in their own personal superiority.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Nov. 22, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--"Be partner of my dreams as of my fishing," says the old
fisherman to his mate, in that delicious idyll of Theocritus--do read
it again. It is one of the little masterpieces that hang for ever in
one of the inner secret rooms of the great halls of poetry. The two old
men lie awake in their wattled cabin, listening to the soft beating of
the sea, and beguiling the dark hour before the dawn, when they must
fare forth, in simple talk about their dreams. It is a genre picture,
full of simple detail, but with a vein of high poetry about it; all
remote from history and civic life, in that eternal region of perfect
and quiet art, into which, thank God, one can always turn to rest
awhile.

But to-day I don't want to talk of fishermen, or Theocritus, or even
art; I want you to share one of my dreams.

I must preface it by saying that I have just experienced a severe
humiliation; I have been deeply wounded. I won't trouble you with the
sordid details, but it has been one of those severe checks one
sometimes experiences, when a mirror is held up to one's character, and
one sees an ugly sight. Never mind that now! But you can imagine my
frame of mind.

I bicycled off alone in the afternoon, feeling very sore and miserable
in spirit. It was one of those cool, fresh, dark November days, not so
much gloomy as half-lit and colourless. There was not a breath
stirring. The long fields, the fallows, with hedges and coverts, melted
into a light mist, which hid all the distant view. I moved in a narrow
twilight circle, myself the centre; the road was familiar enough to me;
at a certain point there is a little lodge, with a road turning off to
a farm. It is many years since I visited the place, but I remembered
dimly that there was some interest of antiquity about the house, and I
determined to explore it. The road curved away among quiet fields, with
here and there a belt of woodland, then entered a little park; there I
saw a cluster of buildings on the edge of a pool, all grown up with
little elms and ashes, now bare of leaves. Here I found a friendly,
gaitered farmer, who, in reply to my question whether I could see the
place, gave me a cordial invitation to come in; he took me to a garden
door, opened it, and beckoned me to go through. I found myself in a
place of incomparable beauty. It was a long terrace, rather wild and
neglected; below there were the traces of a great, derelict garden,
with thick clumps of box, the whole surrounded by a large earthwork,
covered with elms. To the left lay another pool; to the right, at the
end of the terrace, stood a small red-brick chapel, with a big
Perpendicular window. The house was to the left of us, in the centre of
the terrace, of old red brick, with tall chimneys and mullioned
windows. My friend the farmer chatted pleasantly about the house, but
was evidently prouder of his rose-trees and his chrysanthemums. The day
grew darker as we wandered, and a pleasant plodding and clinking of
horses coming home made itself heard in the yard. Then he asked me to
enter the house. What was my surprise when he led me into a large hall,
with painted panels and a painted ceiling, occupying all the centre of
the house. He told me a little of the history of the place, of a visit
paid by Charles the First, and other simple traditions, showing me all
the time a quiet, serious kindness, which reminded one of the
entertainment given to the wayfarers of the Pilgrim's Progress.

Once more we went out on the little terrace and looked round; the night
began to fall, and lights began to twinkle in the house, while the fire
glowed and darted in the hall.

But what I cannot, I am afraid, impart to you is the strange
tranquillity that came softly down into my mind; everything took its
part in this atmosphere of peace. The overgrown terrace, the mellow
brickwork, the bare trees, the tall house, the gentle kindliness of my
host. And then I seemed so far away from the world; there was nothing
in sight but the fallows and the woods, rounded with mist; it seemed at
once the only place in the world, and yet out of it. The old house
stood patiently waiting, serving its quiet ends, growing in beauty
every year, seemingly so unconscious of its grace and charm, and yet,
as it were, glad to be loved. It seemed to give me just the calm, the
tenderness I wanted. To assure me that, whatever pain and humiliation
there were in the world, there was a strong and loving Heart behind. My
host said good-bye to me very kindly, begging me to come again and
bring any one to see the place. "We are very lonely here, and it does
us good to see a stranger."

I rode away, and stopped at a corner where a last view of the house was
possible; it stood regarding me, it seemed, mournfully, and yet with a
solemn welcome from its dark windows. And here was another beautiful
vignette; close to me, by a hedge, stood an old labourer, a fork in one
hand, the other shading his eyes, watching with simple intentness a
flight of wild-duck that was passing overhead, dipping to some
sequestered pool.

I rode away with a quiet hopefulness in my heart. I seemed like a dusty
and weary wayfarer, who has flung off his heated garments and plunged
into the clear waters of comfort; to have drawn near to the heart of
the world; to have had a sight, in the midst of things mutable and
disquieting, of things august and everlasting. At another time I might
have flung myself into busy fancies, imagined a community living an
orderly and peaceful life, full of serene activities, in that still
place; but for once I was content to have seen a dwelling-place,
devised by some busy human brain, that had failed of its purpose, lost
its ancient lords, sunk into a calm decay; to have seen it all caressed
and comforted and embraced by nature, its scars hidden, its grace
replenished, its harshness smoothed away.

Such gentle hours are few; and fewer still the moments of anxiety and
vexation when so direct a message is flashed straight from the Mind of
God into the unquiet human heart; I never doubted that I was led there
by a subtle, delicate, and fatherly tenderness, and shown a thing which
should at once touch my sense of beauty, and then rising, as it were,
and putting the superficial aspect aside, speak with no uncertain voice
of the deep hopes, the everlasting peace on which for a few years the
little restless world of ours is rocked and carried to and fro. . .
.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Nov. 29, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--To-day the world is shrouded in a thick, white, dripping
mist. Glancing up in the warm room where I sit, I see nothing but grey
window spaces. "How melancholy, how depressing," says my generally
cheerful friend, Randall, staring sadly out into the blank air. But I
myself do not agree. I am conscious of a vague, pleasurable excitement;
a sense, too, of repose. This half light is grateful and cooling alike
to eye and brain. Then, too, it is a change from ordinary conditions,
and a change has always something invigorating about it. I steal about
with an obscure sense that something mysterious is happening. And yet
imagine some bright spirit of air and sunshine, like Ariel, flitting
hither and thither above the mist, dipping his feet in the vapour, as a
sea-bird flies low across the sea. Think of the pity he would feel for
the poor human creatures, buried in darkness below, creeping hither and
thither in the gloom.

It is pleasurable enough within the house, but still more pleasurable
to walk abroad; the little circle of dim vision passes with you, just
revealing the road, the field, the pasture in which you walk.

There is a delightful surprise about the way in which a familiar object
looms up suddenly, a dim remote shape, and then as swiftly reveals the
well-known outline. My path takes me past the line, and I hear a train
that I cannot see roar past. I hear the sharp crack of the fog signals
and the whistle blown. I pass close to the huge, dripping signals;
there, in a hut beside a brazier, sits a plate-layer with his pole,
watching the line, ready to push the little disc off the metals if the
creaking signal overhead moves. In another lonely place stands a great
luggage train waiting. The little chimney of the van smokes, and I hear
the voices of guards and shunters talking cheerily together. I draw
nearer home, and enter the college by the garden entrance. The black
foliage of the ilex lowers overhead, and then in a moment, out of an
overshadowing darkness, rises a battlemented tower like a fairy castle,
with lights in the windows streaming out with straight golden rays into
the fog. Below, the arched doorway reveals the faintly-lighted arches
of the cloisters. The hanging, clinging, soaking mist--how it heightens
the value, the comfort of the lighted windows of studious, fire-warmed
rooms.

And then what a wealth of pleasant images rises in the mind. I find
myself thinking how the reading of certain authors is like this
mist-walking; one seems to move in a dreary, narrow circle, and then
suddenly a dim horror of blackness stands up; and then, again, in a
moment one sees that it is some familiar thought which has thus won a
stateliness, a remote mystery, from the atmosphere out of which it
leans.

Or, better still, how like these fog-wrapped days are to seasons of
mental heaviness, when the bright, distant landscape is all swallowed
up and cherished landmarks disappear. One walks in a vain shadow; and
then the surprises come; something, which in its familiar aspect stirs
no tangible emotion, in an instant overhangs the path, shrouded in dim
grandeur and solemn awe. Days of depression have this value, that they
are apt to reveal the sublimity, the largeness of well-known thoughts,
all veiled in a melancholy magnificence. Then, too, one gains an
inkling of the sweetness of the warm corners, the lighted rooms of
life, the little centre of brightness which one can make in one's own
retired heart, and which gives the sense of welcome, the quiet delights
of home-keeping, the warmth of the contented mind.

And, best of all, as one stumbles along the half-hidden street a shape,
huge, intangible, comes stealing past; one wonders what strange
visitant this is that comes near in the gathering darkness. And then in
a moment the vagueness is dispelled; the form, the lineaments, take
shape from the gloom, and one finds that one is face to face with a
familiar friend, whose greeting warms the heart as one passes into the
mist again.--Ever yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Dec. 5, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am very sorry to hear you have been suffering from
depression; it is one of the worst evils of life, and none the better
for being so intangible. I was reading a story the other day, in some
old book, of a moody man who was walking with a friend, and, after a
long silence, suddenly cried out, as if in pain. "What ails you?" said
his friend. "My mind hurts me," said the other. That is the best way to
look at it, I think--as a kind of neuralgia of the soul, to be treated
like other neuralgias. A friend of mine who was a great sufferer from
such depression went to an old doctor, who heard his story with a
smile, and then said: "Now, you're not as bad as you feel, or even as
you think. My prescription is a simple one. Don't eat pastry; and for a
fortnight don't do anything you don't like."

It is often only a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and
get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air.
"A recumbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a
great aid to cheerfulness."

I used, as you know, to be a great sufferer; or perhaps you don't know,
for I was too miserable sometimes even to speak of it. But I can say
humbly and gratefully that a certain freedom from depression is one of
the blessings that advancing years have brought me. Still, I don't
altogether escape, and it sometimes falls with an unexpected
suddenness. It may help you to know that other people suffer similarly,
and how they suffer.

Well, then, a few days ago I woke early, after troubled dreams, and
knew that the old enemy had clutched me. I lay in a strange agony of
mind, my heart beating thick, and with an insupportable weight on my
heart. It always takes the same form with me--an overwhelming sense of
failure in all that I attempt, a dreary consciousness of absolute
futility, coupled with the sense of the brevity and misery of human
life generally. I ask myself what is the use of anything? What is an
almost demoniacal feature of the mood is that it lays a spell of utter
dreariness upon all pleasures as well as duties. One feels condemned to
a long perspective of work without interest, and recreation without
relish, and all confined and bounded by death; whichever way my
thoughts turned, a grey prospect met me.

Little by little the misery abated, recurring at longer and longer
intervals, till at last I slept again; but the mood overclouded me all
day long, and I went about my duties with indifference. But there is
one medicine which hardly ever fails me--it was a half-holiday, and,
after tea, I went to the cathedral and sate in a remote corner of the
nave. The service had just begun. The nave was dimly lighted, but an
upward radiance gushed behind the screen and the tall organ, and lit up
the vaulted roof with a tranquil glory. Soon the Psalms began, and at
the sound of the clear voices of the choir, which seemed to swim on the
melodious thunder of the organ, my spirit leapt into peace, as a man
drowning in a stormy sea is drawn into a boat that comes to rescue him.
It was the fourth evening, and that wonderful Psalm, My God, my God,
look upon me--where the broken spirit dives to the very depths of
darkness and despair--brought me the message of triumphant sorrow. How
strange that these sad cries of the heart, echoing out of the ages, set
to rich music--it was that solemn A minor chant by Battishill, which
you know--should be able to calm and uplift the grieving spirit. The
thought rises into a burst of gladness at the end; and then follows
hard upon it the tenderest of all Psalms, The Lord is my Shepherd, in
which the spirit casts its care upon God, and walks simply, in utter
trust and confidence. The dreariness of my heart thawed and melted into
peace and calm. Then came the solemn murmur of a lesson; the
Magnificat, sung to a setting--again as by a thoughtful tenderness--of
which I know and love every note; and here my heart seemed to climb
into a quiet hope and rest there; the lesson again, like the voice of a
spirit; and then the Nunc Dimittis, which spoke of the beautiful rest
that remaineth. Then the quiet monotone of prayer, and then, as though
to complete my happiness, Mendelssohn's Hear my prayer. It is the
fashion, I believe, for some musicians to speak contemptuously of this
anthem, to say that it is over-luscious. I only know that it brings all
Heaven about me, and reconciles the sadness of the world with the peace
of God. A boy's perfect treble--that sweetest of all created sounds,
because so unconscious of its pathos and beauty--floating on the top of
the music, and singing as an angel might sing among the stars of
heaven, came to my thirsty spirit like a draught of clear spring water.
And, at the end of all, Mendelssohn's great G major fugue gave the note
of courage and endurance that I needed, the strong notes marching
solemnly and joyfully on their appointed way.

I left the cathedral, through the gathering twilight, peaceful,
hopeful, and invigorated, as a <DW36> dipped in the healing well.
While music is in the world, God abides among us. Ever since the day
that David soothed Saul by his sweet harp and artless song, music has
thus beguiled the heaviness of the spirit. Yet there is the mystery,
that the emotion seems to soar so much higher and dive so much deeper
than the notes that evoke it! The best argument for immortality, I
think.

Now that I have written so much, I feel that I am, perhaps,
inconsiderate in speaking so much of the healing music which you cannot
obtain. But get your wife to play to you, in a quiet and darkened room,
some of the things you love best. It is not the same as the cathedral,
with all its glory and its ancient, dim tradition, but it will serve.

And, meanwhile, think as little of your depression as you can; it won't
poison the future; just endure it like a present pain; the moment one
can do that, the victory is almost won.

The worst of the grim mood is that it seems to tear away all the
pretences with which we beguile our sadness, and to reveal the truth.
But it is only that truth which lies at the bottom of the well; and
there are fathoms of clear water lying above it, which are quite as
true as the naked fact below. That is all the philosophy I can extract
from such depression, and, in some mysterious way, it helps us, after
all, when it is over; makes us stronger, more patient, more
compassionate; and it is worth some suffering, if one lays hold of true
experience instead of wasting time in querulous
self-commiseration.--Affectionately yours,

T. B.



UPTON,
  Dec. 12, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have lately been reading in a whimsical and
discursive fashion--you know the mood--turning the pages, and yet not
finding the repose one demands in a book.

One thought emerges from such hours; and as I cannot to-day write you a
long letter, I will just try and shape my ideas in a few sentences,
hoping that you will be able to supplement or correct it.

Is not the one thing which, after all, one demands in art, PERSONALITY?
A perfectly sincere and direct point of view? It matters little what
the point of view is, and whether one agrees with it or not, so long as
one is certain of its truth and reality. Books where there is any sense
of pose, of affectation, of insincerity, do not ever really please or
satisfy; of course there are books which are entirely sincere which are
yet so unsympathetic that one cannot get near them. But presupposing a
certain sympathy of aim and ideal, one may disagree with, or think
incomplete, or consider overstrained, the sincere presentment of some
thought, but one realises it to be true and natural--to be THERE.

Well, such a point of view holds both hope and discouragement for a
writer. Writers have long periods, I suppose, when they don't seem to
have anything to say; or, even worse, when they have something to say
but can't please themselves as to the manner of saying it. But all
these delays, these inarticulate silences, these dumb discouragements
are part, after all, of the same thing. It is useless to try and say
anything under these conditions; or, if one does contrive to express
something, one must look upon it merely as an exercise in expression, a
piece of training, a sort of gymnastic--and be content to throw the
thing aside.

The only kind of thing that is worth saying is the thing that is
conceived in perfect sincerity; it need not be original or
new--sometimes, indeed, it is some one else's thought which touches the
train which seems so difficult to fire. But it must be sincere; one's
very own; if one does not originate it one must, at least, give it the
impress of one's own inmost mind.

Of course, even then the thing may not win acceptance; for a thought to
appeal to others a certain sympathy must be abroad; there must be, to
use a musical metaphor, a certain descant or accompaniment going on,
into which one can drop one's music as an organist plays a solo, which
gives voice and individuality to some quiet, gliding strain.

But the thing to remember is that the one condition of art is that the
thought and the expression must be individual and absolutely sincere.
To be accepted matters little, if only you have said what is in your
heart.

Of course, many things must be combined as well--style, magic of
word-painting, harmony, beauty. There are many people whose strong and
sincere thoughts cannot be uttered, because they have no power of
expression; but even these are all personality too.

There must be no deep and vital despondency in the artist's heart as to
his right and power to speak. His duty is to gain flexibility by
perseverance; and, meanwhile, to analyse, to keep his mind large and
sympathetic, to open all the windows of his heart to the day; not to be
conventional, prejudiced, or wilful; to believe that any one who can
see beauty or truth in a thing is nearer to its essence than one who
can only criticise or despise.

This is roughly and awkwardly put; but I believe it to be true. Tell me
what you feel about it; stay me with flagons, whatever that mysterious
process may be. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.



OXFORD,
  Dec. 23, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I came down, as soon as the term was over, to Oxford,
where I have come in the way of a good deal of talk. I find that I
become somewhat of a connoisseur in the matter of conversation as I
grow older; and I must also confess that such powers as I possess in
that direction are of the tete-a-tete order. A candid friend of mine, a
gracious lady, who wields some of the arts of a salon, lately took the
wind out of my sails, on an occasion when I formed one of a large and
rather tongue-tied party at her house. I had flung myself, rather
strenuously, into the breach, and had talked with more valour than
discretion. Later in the evening I had a little confabulation with
herself, at the end of which she said to me, with a vaguely reminiscent
air, "What a pity it is that you are only a tete-a-tete talker!"

To be a salon talker indeed requires a certain self-possession, a kind
of grasp of the different individuals which surround you, which is of
the nature of Napoleonic strategy.

At Oxford one does not find much general conversation. The party which
meets night by night in Hall is too large for any diffused talk; and,
moreover, the clink and clash of service, the merry chatter of the
undergraduates fill the scene with a background of noise. There is a
certain not unpleasant excitement, of the gambling type, as to who
one's neighbours will be. Sometimes by a dexterous stroke one can
secure one's chosen companion; but it also may happen that one may be
at the end of the row of the first detachment which sits down to dinner
(for the table slowly fills), and then it is like a game of dominoes;
it is uncertain who may occupy one's nether flank. But the party is so
large that there is a great variety. Of course we have our
drawbacks--what society has not? There is the argumentative,
hair-splitting Professor, who is never happy unless he is landing you
in a false position and ruthlessly demolishing it. There is the crusted
old Don, whose boots creak, whose clothes seem to be made of some hard,
unyielding material, and whose stiff collars scrape his shaven cheeks
with a rustling noise; he speaks rarely and gruffly; he opens his mouth
to insert food, and closes it with a snap; but he is a humorous old
fellow, with a twinkle in his eye; generous if whimsical; and more
good-natured than he wishes you to believe. Some of my friends are
silent and abrupt; there is the statuesque chaplain who, whatever you
may talk of, appears to be preoccupied with something else; there are
brisk, bird-like men, who pick up their food and interject disconnected
remarks. But the majority are lively, sensible fellows, with abundance
of interest in life and people, and a considerable sense of humour;
and, after all, I think it matters very little what a man talks about
as long as you feel that the talk is sincere and natural, and not a
pose; the only kind of talker whom I find really discomposing is the
shy man, who makes false starts, interrupts in order to show his
sympathy, and then apologises for his misapprehension; but this is an
unknown species in a College Hall. What one does weary of more and more
every year is the sort of surface cackle that has to be indulged in in
general society, simply to fill the time.

But of course, in conversation, much depends upon what may be called
LUCK. You may invite three or four of the best conversationalists you
know to a quiet dinner; and yet, though the same party may have on some
previous occasion played the game with agility and zest, yet for some
reason, on the present occasion, all may go heavily. You may light upon
a tiresome subject; your most infectious humorist may be tired or out
of temper, and the whole thing may languish and droop; people may
misunderstand each other, perversely or unintentionally; the dredge may
bring up nothing but mud; a contagion of yawning may set in, and you
are lost. Again, some party which has been assembled from motives of
duty, and from which no species of social pleasure was expected, may
turn out brisk, lively, and entertaining.

A good party should contain, if possible, a humorist, a sentimentalist,
and a good-tempered butt; the only kind of men who should be rigidly
excluded are the busy mocker, the despiser, the superior person. It
does not matter how much people disagree, if they will only admit in
their minds that every one has a right to a point of view, and that
their own does not necessarily rule out all others. I had two friends
once, a husband and wife, who had strong political views; the wife
believed it probable that all Radicals were either wicked or stupid,
but it was possible to argue the point with her; whereas the husband
KNEW that any person who, however slightly, entertained Liberal views
was a fool or a knave, and thus argument was impossible.

Of course, there are a very few people who have a genius for
conversation. Such persons are not as a rule great talkers themselves,
though they every now and then emit a flash of soft brilliance; but
they are rather the people who send every one else away contented; who
see the possibilities in every remark; who want to know what other
people think; and who can, by some deft sympathetic process which is to
me very mysterious, expand a blunt expression of opinion into an
interesting mental horizon, or fructify some faltering thought into a
suggestive and affecting image. Such people are worth their weight in
gold. Then there is a talker who is worth much silver, a man of
irresistible geniality, who has a fund of pleasant banter for all
present. This is a great art; banter, to be agreeable, must be of a
complimentary kind; it must magnify the object it deals with--a
perverse person may be bantered on his strength of character; a stingy
person may be bantered on his prudence. There is, indeed, a kind of
banter, not unknown in academical circles, which takes the heart out of
every one by displaying them in a ludicrous and depreciating light; a
professor of this art will make out a sensitive person to be a coward,
and a poetical man to be a sentimental fool; and then the conversation,
"like a fountain's sickening pulse, retires."

The talker who is worth much copper is the good, commonplace, courteous
person who keeps up an end and has something to say; and these must be
the basis of most parties--the lettuce, so to speak, of the salad.

The thing to beware of is to assemble a purely youthful party, unless
you know your men well; a shy, awkward young man, or a noisy,
complacent young man, are each in their way distressing. But a mixture
of youth and age will produce the happiest results, if only your luck
does not desert you.

After all, the essence of the thing is to have simple, unaffected
people; the poseur is the ruin of genial intercourse, unless he is a
good fellow whose pose is harmless. Some of the best talks I have ever
had have been in the company of sensible and good-natured men, of no
particular brilliance, but with a sense of justice in the matter of
talk and no taste for anecdote; just as some of the best meals I have
ever had have been of the plainest, when good digestion waited upon
appetite. And, on the other hand, some of the very saddest
entertainments I have ever taken a hand in have been those conducted by
a host bubbling with geniality, and with a stock of reminiscences, who
turned the hose in the face of guest after guest till they writhed with
boredom.

Bless me, it is midnight! The hour is pealed from innumerable towers;
then comes a holy silence, while I hear the drip of the fountain in the
court. This incomparable Oxford! I wish that fate or Providence would
turn my steps this way!--Ever yours,

T. B.



PELHAM HOUSE,
  HAMMERSMITH,
    Dec. 28, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--Since I left Oxford, I have been staying in town. I
can't remember if you ever came across my old friend Hardy--Augustus
Hardy, the art critic--at all events you will know whom I mean. I have
been very much interested and a good deal distressed by my visit. Hardy
is an elderly man now, nearly sixty. He went through Oxford with a good
deal of distinction, and his sketches were much admired. It was
supposed that he had only to present himself at the doors of the
Academy, and that it would surrender at discretion. His family were
rich, and Hardy went up to town to practise art. He was a friend of my
father's, and he was very kind to me as a boy. He was well off, and
lived in a pleasant house of his own in Half Moon Street. He was a
great hero of mine in those days; he had given up all idea of doing
anything great as a painter, but turned his attention to art-criticism.
He wrote an easy, interesting style, and he used to contribute to
magazines on all kinds of aesthetic subjects; he belonged to several
clubs, dined out a great deal, and used to give elaborate little
dinners himself. He was fond of lecturing and speechifying generally;
and he liked the society of young people, young men of an intelligent
and progressive type. He was very free with his money--I suppose he had
nearly three thousand a year--and spent it in a princely kind of way;
when he travelled he travelled like a great gentleman, generally took a
young artist or two with him in whom he was interested, and whose
expenses he paid.

He was in those days an admirable talker, quick, suggestive, amusing,
and with an indefinable charm. He was then a tall, thin, active man,
with flashing eyes, a sanguine complexion, and a mobile face; he wore
his hair rather luxuriantly, and had a picturesque, pointed beard. I
shall never forget the delight of occasional visits to his house; he
was extraordinarily kind and really sympathetic, and he had with young
people a kind of caressing deference in his manner that used to give
one an agreeable sense of dignity. I remember that he had a very deft
way of giving one's halting remarks a kind of twist which used to make
it appear that one had said something profound and poetical.

Well, about twenty years ago, all this came to an end very suddenly.
Hardy lost the greater part of his money at one swoop; he had
inherited, I think, a certain share in his father's business; he had
one brother, older than himself, who carried the business on. Hardy
never looked into money matters, but simply spent whatever came in; the
business came to grief, and Hardy found himself pretty considerably in
debt, with a few hundreds a year of his own. He had, fortunately for
himself, never married; his friends came to his assistance, and
arranged matters as comfortably as possible. Hardy settled in an old
house in Hammersmith, and has lived there ever since. He belonged to
several clubs; but he resigned his membership of all but one, where he
now practically spends his day, and having been always accustomed to
have his own way, and dominate the societies in which he found himself,
took it for granted that he would be the chief person there. He was
always an egoist, but his position, his generosity, and his own charm
had rather tended to conceal the fact.

Well, he has found every one against him in his adversity, and has
suffered from all the petty intrigues of a small and rather
narrow-minded society. His suggestions have been scouted, he has been
pointedly excluded from all share in the management of the club, and
treated with scanty civility. I don't suppose that all this has given
him as much pain as one would imagine, because he has all the
impenetrability and want of perception of the real egoist. I am told
that he used to be treated at one time in the club with indifference,
hostility, and even brutality. But he is not a man to be suppressed--he
works hard, writes reviews, articles, and books, and pays elaborate
civilities to all new members. I have only seen him at long intervals
of late years; but he has stayed with me once or twice, and has often
pressed me to go and see him in town. I had some business to attend
there this Christmas, and I proposed myself. He wrote a letter of
cordial welcome, and I have now been his guest for four days.

I can't express to you the poignant distress which my visit has caused
me; not exactly a personal distress, for Hardy is not a man to be
directly pitied; but the pathos of the whole thing is very great. His
house has large and beautiful rooms, and I recognised many of the
little treasures--portraits, engravings, statuettes, busts, and
books--which used to adorn the house in Half Moon Street. But the man
himself! He has altered very little in personal appearance. He still
moves briskly, and, except that his hair is nearly white, I could
imagine him to be the same hero that I used to worship. But his egoism
has grown upon him to such an extent that his mind is hardly
recognisable. He still talks brilliantly and suggestively at times; and
I find myself every now and then amazed by some stroke of genius in his
talk, some familiar thing shown in a new and interesting light, some
ray of poetry or emotion thrown on to some dusty and well-known
subject. But he has become a man of grievances; he still has, at the
beginning of a talk, some of the fine charm of sympathy. He will begin
by saying that he wants to know what one thinks of a point, and he will
smile in the old affectionate kind of way, as one might smile at a
favourite child; but he will then plunge into a fiery monologue about
his ambitions and his work. He declaims away, with magnificent
gestures. He still interlards his talk with personal appeals for
approbation, for concurrence, for encouragement; but it is clear he
does not expect an answer, and his demands for sympathy have little
more personal value than the reiterated statement in the Litany that we
are miserable sinners has in the mouth of many respectable church-goers.

The result is that I find myself greatly fatigued by my visit. I have
spent several hours of every day in his society, and I do not suppose
that I have uttered a dozen consecutive words; yet many of his
statements would be well worth discussing, if he were capable of
discussion.

The burden of his song is the lack of that due recognition which he
ought to receive; and this, paradoxical as it may appear, is combined
with an intense and childish complacency in his own greatness, his
position, his influence, his literary and artistic achievements.

He seems to live a very lonely life, though a full one; every hour of
his day is methodically mapped out. He has a large correspondence, he
reads the papers diligently, he talks, he writes; but he seems to have
no friends and no associates. His criticisms upon art, which are
suggestive enough, are regarded with undisguised contempt by
professional critics; and I find that they are held to be vitiated by a
certain want of balance and proportion, and a whimsical eclecticism of
taste.

But the pathos of the situation is not the opinion which is held of
him, for he is wholly unconscious of it, and he makes up for any lack
of expressed approbation by the earnest and admiring approval of all he
does, which he himself liberally supplies. It is rather a gnawing
hunger of the soul from which he seems to suffer; he has a simply
boundless appetite for the poor thing which he calls recognition--I
shudder to think how often I have heard the word on his lips--and his
own self-approbation is like a drug which he administers to still some
fretting pain.

He has been telling me to-night a long story of machinations against
him in the club; the perspicacity with which he detected them, the
odious repartees he made, the effective counter-checks he applied. "I
was always a combatant," he says, with a leering gaiety. Then the next
moment he is girding at the whole crew for their stupidity, their
ingratitude, their malignity; and it never seems to cross his mind that
he can be, or has been in the smallest degree, to blame. It distressed
me profoundly, and my mind and heart seemed to weep silent tears.

If he had shown tact, prudence, diligence, if he could have held his
tongue when he first took a different place, he would have had a circle
of many friends by now. Instead of this, I find him barely tolerated.
He talks--he has plenty of courage, and no idea of being put down--but
he is listened to with ill-concealed weariness, and, at best, with
polite indifference. Yet every now and then the old spell falls on me,
and I realise what a noble mind is overthrown. He ought to be at this
time the centre of a set of attached friends, a man spoken of with
reverence, believed in, revisited by grateful admirers--a man whom it
would be an honour and a delight to a young man to know; and the
setting in which he lives is precisely adapted to this role. Instead of
which it may safely be said that, if he were to announce his departure
from town, it would be received with general and cordial satisfaction
by his fellow-clubmen.

Even if he had not his circle, he might live a quiet, tranquil, and
laborious life in surroundings which are simple and yet dignified.

But the poison is in his system, and it afflicts me to think in how
many systems the same poison is at work nowadays. One sees the frankest
form of it in the desire of third-rate people to amass letters after
their names; but, putting aside all mere vulgar manifestations of it,
how many of us are content to do good, solid, beautiful work unpraised,
unsung, unheeded? I will take my own case, and frankly confess that
what is called recognition is a pleasure to me. I like to have work,
which I have done with energy, enjoyment, and diligence, praised--I
hope because it confirms the verdict of my own mind that it has been
faithfully done. But I can also sincerely say that, as far as literary
work goes, the chief pleasure lies in the doing of it; and I could
write with unabated zest even if there were no question of publication
in view--at least, I think so, but one does not know oneself.

In any event, the contemplation of poor Hardy's case is a terrible
lesson to one not to let the desire for praise get too strong a hold,
or, at all events, to be deliberately on one's guard against it.

But the pathos and sadness, after all, remain. "Healing is well," says
the poet, "but wherefore wounds to heal?" and I find myself lost in a
miserable wonder under what law it is that the Creator can mould so
fine a spirit, endow it with such splendid qualities, and then allow
some creeping fault to obscure it gradually, as the shadow creeps over
the moon, and to plunge it into disastrous and dishonourable eclipse.

But I grow tedious; I am inoculated by Hardy's fault. I hastily close
this letter, with all friendly greetings. "Pray accept a blessing!" as
little Miss Flite said. I am going down to my sister's to-morrow.--Ever
yours,

T. B.



SIBTHORPE VICARAGE, WELLS,
  Dec. 31, 1904 (and Jan. 1, 1905).


DEAR HERBERT,--It is nearly midnight, and I am sitting alone in my
room, by the deathbed of the Old Year, expecting every moment to hear
the bells break out proclaiming the birth of the New. It is a clear,
still night, and I can see, beyond the lawn and over the shrubs of the
Vicarage garden, by the light of a low moon, entangled in cloud, the
high elms, the church tower, with a light in the belfry, like a solemn,
cheerful eye, and the roofs of the little village, all in a patient,
musing slumber. Everything is unutterably fresh, tranquil, and serene.
By day it is a commonplace scene enough, with a sense of little
work-a-day cares and businesses about it all; but now, at night, it is
all dim and rich and romantic, full of a calm mystery, hushed and
secret, dreaming contented dreams.

I have had an almost solitary day, except for meals. I like being here
in a way; there is no strain about it. That is the best of
blood-relationship; there is no need to entertain or to be entertained.
My brother-in-law, Charles, is an excellent fellow, full to the brim of
small plans and designs for his parish; my sister is a very simple and
unworldly person, entirely devoted to her husband and children. My
nephews and nieces, four in number, three girls and a boy, do not, I
regret to say, interest me very deeply; they are amiable, healthy
children, with a confined horizon, rather stolid; they never seem to
quarrel or to have any particular preferences. The boy, who is the
youngest, is to come to my house at Upton when he is old enough; but at
present I am simply a good-natured uncle to the children, whose arrival
and whose gifts make a pleasant little excitement. Our talk is purely
local, and I make it my business to be interested. It is all certainly
very restful. Sometimes--as a rule, in fact--when I stay in other
people's houses, I have a sense of effort; I feel dimly that a certain
brightness is expected of me; as I dress in the morning I wonder what
we shall talk about, and what on earth I shall do between breakfast and
lunch. But here I have a fire in my bedroom all day, and for the first
time, I am permitted to smoke there. I read and write all the morning;
I walk, generally alone, in the afternoon. I write before dinner. The
result is that I am perfectly content. I sleep like a top; and I find
myself full of ideas. The comfort of the whole thing is that no one is
afraid that I am not amused, and I myself do not have the uneasy sense
that I am bound, so to speak, to pay for my entertainment by being
brisk, lively, or sympathetic. The immediate consequence is, that I get
as near to all three qualities as I ever get. We simply live our own
lives quietly, in company. My presence gives a little fillip to the
proceedings; and I myself get all the benefit of change of scene,
together with simple unexhausting companionship.

Hark! it is midnight! The soft murmur of bells rises on the clear air,
toppling over in a sweet cascade of sound, bringing hope and peace to
the heart. In the attic above I hear the children moving softly about,
and catch the echo of young voices. They are supposed to be asleep, but
I gather that they have been under a vow to keep awake in turn, the
watcher to rouse the others just before midnight. The bells peal on,
coming in faint gusts of sound, now loud, now low.

I suppose if I were more simple-minded I should have been thinking over
my faults and failures, desiring to do better, making good resolutions.
But I don't do that. I do desire, with all my heart, to do better. I
know how faltering, how near the ground my flight is. But these formal,
occasional repentances are useless things; resolutions do little but
reveal one's weakness more patently. What I try to do is simply to
uplift my heart with all its hopes and weaknesses to God, to try to put
my hand in His, to pray that I may use the chances He gives me, and
interpret the sorrows He may send me. He knows me utterly and entirely,
my faults and my strength. I cannot fly from Him though I take the
wings of the morning. I only pray that I may not harden my heart; that
I may be sought and found; that I may have the courage I need. All that
I have of good He has given me; and as for the evil, He knows best why
I am tempted, why I fall, though I would not. There is no strength like
the abasement of weakness; no power like a childlike confidence. One
thing only I shall do before I sleep--give a thought to all I love and
hold dear, my kin, my friends, and most of all, my boys: I shall
remember each, and, while I commend them to the keeping of God, I shall
pray that they may not suffer through any neglect or carelessness of my
own. It is not, after all, a question of the quantity of what we do,
but of the quality of it. God knows and I know of how poor a stuff our
dreams and deeds are woven; but if it is the best we can give, if we
desire with all our hearts what is noble and pure and beautiful and
true--or even desire to desire it--He will accept the will and purify
the deed. And in such a mood as this--and God forgive us for not more
often dwelling in such thoughts--I can hope and feel that the most
tragic failure, the darkest sorrow, the deepest shame are viewed by
God, and will some day be viewed by ourselves, in a light which will
make all things new; and that just as we look back on our childish
griefs with a smiling wonder, so we shall some day look back on our
mature and dreary sufferings with a tender and wistful air, marvelling
that we could be so short-sighted, so faithless, so blind.

And yet the thought of what the new year may hold for us cannot be
other than solemn. Like men on the eve of a great voyage, we know not
what may be in store, what shifting of scene, what loss, what grief,
what shadow of death. And then, again, the same grave peace flows in
upon the mind, as the bells ring out their sweet refrain, "It is He
that hath made us." Can we not rest in that?

What I hope more and more to do is to withdraw myself from material
aims and desires; not to aim at success, or dignity of office, or
parade of place. I wish to help, to serve, not to command or rule. I
long to write a beautiful book, to put into words something of the
sense of peace, of beauty and mystery, which visits me from time to
time. Every one has, I think, something of the heavenly treasure in
their hearts, something that makes them glad, that makes them smile
when they are alone; I want to share that with others, not to keep it
to myself. I drift, alas, upon an unknown sea; but sometimes I see,
across the blue rollers, the cliffs and shores of an unknown land,
perfectly and impossibly beautiful. Sometimes the current bears me away
from it; sometimes it is veiled in cloud-drift and weeping rain. But
there are days when the sun shines bright upon the leaping waves, and
the wind fills the sail and bears me thither. It is of that beautiful
land that I would speak, its pure outlines, its crag-hollows, its
rolling downs. Tendimus ad Latium, we steer to the land of hope.

And meanwhile I desire but to work in a corner; to make the few lives
that touch my own a little happier and braver; to give of my best, to
withhold what is base and poor. There is abundance of evil, of
weakness, of ugliness, of dreariness in my own heart; I only pray that
I may keep it there, not let it escape, not let it flow into other
lives.

The great danger of all natures like my own, which have a touch of what
is, I suppose, the artistic temperament, is a certain hardness, a
self-centred egotism, a want of lovingness and sympathy. One sees
things so clearly, one hankers so after the power of translating and
expressing emotion and beauty, that the danger is of losing proportion,
of subordinating everything to the personal value of experience. From
this danger, which is only too plain to me, I humbly desire to escape;
it is all the more dangerous when one has the power, as I am aware I
have, of entering swiftly and easily into intimate personal relations
with people; one is so apt, in the pleasure of observing, of
classifying, of scrutinising varieties of temperament, to use that
power only to please and amuse oneself. What one ought to aim at is not
the establishment of personal influence, not the perverted sense of
power which the consciousness of a hold over other lives gives one, but
to share such good things as one possesses, to assist rather than to
sway.

Well, it is all in the hands of God; again and again one returns to
that, as the bird after its flight in remote fields returns to the
familiar tree, the branching fastness. One should learn, I am sure, to
live for the day and in the day; not to lose oneself in anxieties and
schemes and aims; not to be overshadowed by distant terrors and far-off
hopes, but to say, "To-day is given me for my own; let me use it, let
me live in it." One's immediate duty is happily, as a rule, clear
enough. "Do the next thing," says the old shrewd motto.

The bells cease in the tower, leaving a satisfied stillness. The fire
winks and rustles in the grate; a faint wind shivers and rustles down
the garden paths, sighing for the dawn. I grow weary.

Herbert, I must say "Good-night." God keep and guard you, my old and
true friend. I have rejoiced week by week to hear of your recovered
health, your activity, your renewed zest in life. When shall I welcome
you back? I feel somehow that in these months of separation we have
grown much nearer and closer together. We have been able to speak in
our letters in a way that we have seldom been able to speak eye to eye.
There is a pure gain. My heart goes out to you and yours; and at this
moment I feel as if the dividing seas are nothing, and that we are
close together in the great and loving heart of God.--Your ever
affectionate,

T. B.



SIBTHORPE VICARAGE, WELLS,
  Jan. 7, 1905.


DEAR HERBERT,--Four nights ago I dreamed a strange dream. I was in a
big, well-furnished, airy room, with people moving about in it; I knew
none of them, but we were on friendly terms, and talked and laughed
together. Quite suddenly I was struck somewhere in the chest by some
rough, large missile, fired, I thought, from a gun, though I heard no
explosion; it pierced my ribs, and buried itself, I felt, in some vital
part. I stumbled to a couch and fell upon it; some one came to raise
me, and I was aware that other persons ran hither and thither seeking,
I thought, for medical aid and remedies. I knew within myself that my
last hour had come; I was not in pain, but life and strength ebbed from
me by swift degrees. I felt an intolerable sense of indignity in my
helplessness, and an intense desire to be left alone that I might die
in peace; death came fast upon me with clouded brain and fluttering
breath. . . .



SIBTHORPE VICARAGE, WELLS,
  Jan. 7, 1905.


DEAR NELLIE,--I have just opened your letter, and you will know how my
whole heart goes out to you. I cannot understand it, I cannot realise
it; and I would give anything to be able to say a word that should
bring you any comfort or help. God keep and sustain you, as I know He
CAN sustain in these dark hours. I cannot write more to-day; but I send
you the letter that I was writing, when your own letter came. It helps
me even now to think that my dear Herbert told me himself--for that, I
see, was the purpose of my dim dream--what was befalling him. And I am
as sure as I can be of anything that he is with us, with you, still.
Dear friend, if I could only be with you now; but you will know that my
thoughts and prayers are with you every moment.--Ever your affectionate,

T. B.



[I add an extract from my Diary.--T. B.]


Diary, Jan. 15.--A week ago, while I was writing the above unfinished
lines, I received a letter to say that my friend Herbert was dead--he
to whom these letters have been written. It seems that he had been
getting, to all appearances, better; that he had had no renewed
threatenings of the complaint that had made him an exile. But, rising
from his chair in the course of the evening, he had cried out faintly;
put his hand to his breast; fallen back in his chair unconscious, and,
in a few minutes, had ceased to breathe. They say it was a sudden
heart-failure.

It is as though we had been watching by a burrow with all precaution
that some little hunted creature should not escape, and that, while we
watched and devised, it had slipped off by some other outlet the very
existence of which we had not suspected.

Of course, as far as he himself is concerned, such a death is simply a
piece of good fortune. If I could know that such would be the manner of
my own death, a real weight would be lifted from my mind. To die
quickly and suddenly, in all the activity of life, in comparative
tranquillity, with none of the hideous apparatus of the sick-room about
one, with no dreary waiting for death, that is a great joy. But for his
wife and his poor girls! To have had no last word, no conscious look
from one whose delicate consideration for others was so marked a part
of his nature, this is a terrible and stupefying misery.

I cannot, of course, even dimly realise what has happened; the
remoteness of it all, the knowledge that my own outer life is
absolutely unchanged, that the days will flow on as usual, makes it
trebly difficult to feel what has befallen me. I cannot think of him as
dead and silent; yet even before I heard the news, he was buried. I
cannot, of course, help feeling that the struggling spirit of my friend
tried to fling me, as it were, some last message; or that I suffered
with him, and shared his last conscious thought.

Perhaps I shall grow to think of Herbert as dead. But, meanwhile, I am
preoccupied with one thought, that such an event ought not to come upon
one as such a stunning and trembling shock as it does. It reveals to
one the fact of how incomplete one's philosophy of life is. One ought,
I feel, deliberately to reckon with death, and to discount it. It is,
after all, the only certain future event in our lives.

And yet we struggle with it, put it away from us, live and plan as
though it had no existence; or, if it insistently clouds our thoughts,
as it does at intervals, we wait resignedly until the darkness lifts,
and until we may resume our vivid interests again.

I do not, of course, mean that it should be a steady, melancholy
preoccupation. If we have to die, we are also meant to live; but we
ought to combine and co-ordinate the thought of it. It ought to take
its place among the other great certainties of life, without weakening
our hold upon the activity of existence. How is this possible? For the
very terror of death lies not in the sad accidents of mortality, the
stiffened and corrupting form, the dim eye, the dreadful
pageantry--over that we can triumph; but it is the blank cessation of
all that we know of life, the silence of the mind that loved us, the
irreparable wound.

Some turn hungrily to Spiritualism to escape from this terrible
mystery. But, so far as I have looked into Spiritualism, it seems to me
only to have proved that, if any communication has ever been made from
beyond the gate of death--and even such supposed phenomena are
inextricably intertwined with quackeries and deceits--it is an abnormal
and not a normal thing. The scientific evidence for the continuance of
personal identity is nil; the only hope lies in the earnest desire of
the hungering heart.

The spirit cries out that it dare not, it cannot cease to be. It cannot
bear the thought of all the energy and activity of life proceeding in
its accustomed course, deeds being done, words being uttered, the
problems which the mind pondered being solved, the hopes which the
heart cherished being realised--"and I not there." It is a ghastly
obsession to think of all the things that one has loved best--quiet
work, the sunset on familiar fields, well-known rooms, dear books,
happy talk, fireside intercourse--and one's own place vacant, one's
possessions dispersed among careless hands, eye and ear and voice
sealed and dumb. And yet how strange it is that we should feel thus
about the future, experience this dumb resentment at the thought that
there should be a future in which one may bear no part, while we
acquiesce so serenely in claiming no share in the great past of the
world that enacted itself before we came into being. It never occurs to
us to feel wronged because we had no conscious outlook upon the things
that have been; why should we feel so unjustly used because our outlook
may be closed upon the things that shall be hereafter? Why should we
feel that the future somehow belongs to us, while we have no claim upon
the past? It is a strange and bewildering mystery; but the fact that
the whole of our nature cries out against extinction is the strongest
argument that we shall yet be, for why put so intensely strong an
instinct in the heart unless it is meant to be somehow satisfied?

Only one thought, and that a stern one, can help us--and that is the
certainty that we are in stronger hands than our own. The sense of
free-will, the consciousness of the possibility of effort, blinds us to
this; we tend to mistake the ebullience of temperament for the
deliberate choice of the will. Yet have we any choice at all? Science
says no; while the mind, with no less instinctive certainty, cries out
that we have a choice. Yet take some sharp crisis of life--say an
overwhelming temptation. If we resist it, what is it but a resultant of
many forces? Experience of past failures and past resolves combine with
trivial and momentary motives to make us choose to resist. If we fail
and yield, the motive is not strong enough. Yet we have the sense that
we might have done differently: we blame ourselves, and not the past
which made us ourselves.

But with death it is different. Here, if ever, falls the fiat of the
Mind that bade us be. And thus the only way in which we can approach it
is to put ourselves in dependence upon that Spirit. And the only course
we can follow is this: not by endeavouring to anticipate in thought the
moment of our end--that, perhaps, only adds to its terrors when it
comes--but by resolutely and tenderly, day after day, learning to
commend ourselves to the hand of God; to make what efforts we can; to
do our best; to decide as simply and sincerely as possible what our
path should be, and then to leave the issue humbly and quietly with God.

I do this, a little; it brings with it a wonderful tranquillity and
peace. And the strange thing is that one does not do it oftener, when
one has so often experienced its healing and strengthening power.

To live then thus; not to cherish far-off designs, or to plan life too
eagerly; but to do what is given us to do as carefully as we can; to
follow intuitions; to take gratefully the joys of life; to take its
pains hopefully, always turning our hearts to the great and merciful
Heart above us, which a thousand times over turns out to be more tender
and pitiful than we had dared to hope. How far I am from this faith.
And yet I see clearly that it is the only power that can sustain. For
in such a moment of insight even the thought of the empty chair, the
closed books, the disused pen, the sorrowing hearts, and the
flower-strewn mound fail to blur the clear mirror of the mind.

For him there can be but two alternatives: either the spirit that we
knew has lost the individuality that we knew and is merged again in the
great vital force from which it was for a while separated; or else,
under some conditions that we cannot dream of, the identity remains,
free from the dreary material conditions, free to be what it desired to
be; knowing perhaps the central peace which we know only by subtle
emanations; seeing the region in which beauty, and truth, and purity,
and justice, and high hopes, and virtue are at one; no longer baffled
by delay, and drooping languor, and sad forebodings, but free and pure
as viewless air.




THE END









End of Project Gutenberg's The Upton Letters, by Arthur Christopher Benson

*** 