The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
by George Gissing
1903 Archibald Constable and Co.
PREFACE
The name of Henry Ryecroft never became familiar to what is called
the reading public. A year ago obituary paragraphs in the literary
papers gave such account of him as was thought needful: the date
and place of his birth, the names of certain books he had written,
an allusion to his work in the periodicals, the manner of his death.
At the time it sufficed. Even those few who knew the man, and in a
measure understood him, must have felt that his name called for no
further celebration; like other mortals, he had lived and laboured;
like other mortals, he had entered into his rest. To me, however,
fell the duty of examining Ryecroft's papers; and having, in the
exercise of my discretion, decided to print this little volume, I
feel that it requires a word or two of biographical complement, just
so much personal detail as may point the significance of the self-
revelation here made.
When first I knew him, Ryecroft had reached his fortieth year; for
twenty years he had lived by the pen. He was a struggling man,
beset by poverty and other circumstances very unpropitious to mental
work. Many forms of literature had he tried; in none had he been
conspicuously successful; yet now and then he had managed to earn a
little more money than his actual needs demanded, and thus was
enabled to see something of foreign countries. Naturally a man of
independent and rather scornful outlook, he had suffered much from
defeated ambition, from disillusions of many kinds, from subjection
to grim necessity; the result of it, at the time of which I am
speaking, was, certainly not a broken spirit, but a mind and temper
so sternly disciplined, that, in ordinary intercourse with him, one
did not know but that he led a calm, contented life. Only after
several years of friendship was I able to form a just idea of what
the man had gone through, or of his actual existence. Little by
little Ryecroft had subdued himself to a modestly industrious
routine. He did a great deal of mere hack-work; he reviewed, he
translated, he wrote articles; at long intervals a volume appeared
under his name. There were times, I have no doubt, when bitterness
took hold upon him; not seldom he suffered in health, and probably
as much from moral as from physical over-strain; but, on the whole,
he earned his living very much as other men do, taking the day's
toil as a matter of course, and rarely grumbling over it.
Time went on; things happened; but Ryecroft was still laborious and
poor. In moments of depression he spoke of his declining energies,
and evidently suffered under a haunting fear of the future. The
thought of dependence had always been intolerable to him; perhaps
the only boast I at any time heard from his lips was that he had
never incurred debt. It was a bitter thought that, after so long
and hard a struggle with unkindly circumstance, he might end his
life as one of the defeated.
A happier lot was in store for him. At the age of fifty, just when
his health had begun to fail and his energies to show abatement,
Ryecroft had the rare good fortune to find himself suddenly released
from toil, and to enter upon a period of such tranquillity of mind
and condition as he had never dared to hope. On the death of an
acquaintance, more his friend than he imagined, the wayworn man of
letters learnt with astonishment that there was bequeathed to him a
life annuity of three hundred pounds. Having only himself to
support (he had been a widower for several years, and his daughter,
an only child, was married), Ryecroft saw in this income something
more than a competency. In a few weeks he quitted the London suburb
where of late he had been living, and, turning to the part of
England which he loved best, he presently established himself in a
cottage near Exeter, where, with a rustic housekeeper to look after
him, he was soon thoroughly at home. Now and then some friend went
down into Devon to see him; those who had that pleasure will not
forget the plain little house amid its half-wild garden, the cosy
book-room with its fine view across the valley of the Exe to Haldon,
the host's cordial, gleeful hospitality, rambles with him in lanes
and meadows, long talks amid the stillness of the rural night. We
hoped it would all last for many a year; it seemed, indeed, as
though Ryecroft had only need of rest and calm to become a hale man.
But already, though he did not know it, he was suffering from a
disease of the heart, which cut short his life after little more
than a lustrum of quiet contentment. It had always been his wish to
die suddenly; he dreaded the thought of illness, chiefly because of
the trouble it gave to others. On a summer evening, after a long
walk in very hot weather, he lay down upon the sofa in his study,
and there--as his calm face declared--passed from slumber into the
great silence.
When he left London, Ryecroft bade farewell to authorship. He told
me that he hoped never to write another line for publication. But,
among the papers which I looked through after his death, I came upon
three manuscript books which at first glance seemed to be a diary; a
date on the opening page of one of them showed that it had been
begun not very long after the writer's settling in Devon. When I
had read a little in these pages, I saw that they were no mere
record of day-to-day life; evidently finding himself unable to
forego altogether the use of the pen, the veteran had set down, as
humour bade him, a thought, a reminiscence, a bit of reverie, a
description of his state of mind, and so on, dating such passage
merely with the month in which it was written. Sitting in the room
where I had often been his companion, I turned page after page, and
at moments it was as though my friend's voice sounded to me once
more. I saw his worn visage, grave or smiling; recalled his
familiar pose or gesture. But in this written gossip he revealed
himself more intimately than in our conversation of the days gone
by. Ryecroft had never erred by lack of reticence; as was natural
in a sensitive man who had suffered much, he inclined to gentle
acquiescence, shrank from argument, from self-assertion. Here he
spoke to me without restraint, and, when I had read it all through,
I knew the man better than before.
Assuredly, this writing was not intended for the public, and yet, in
many a passage, I seemed to perceive the literary purpose--something
more than the turn of phrase, and so on, which results from long
habit of composition. Certain of his reminiscences, in particular,
Ryecroft could hardly have troubled to write down had he not,
however vaguely, entertained the thought of putting them to some
use. I suspect that, in his happy leisure, there grew upon him a
desire to write one more book, a book which should be written merely
for his own satisfaction. Plainly, it would have been the best he
had it in him to do. But he seems never to have attempted the
arrangement of these fragmentary pieces, and probably because he
could not decide upon the form they should take. I imagine him
shrinking from the thought of a first-person volume; he would feel
it too pretentious; he would bid himself wait for the day of riper
wisdom. And so the pen fell from his hand.
Conjecturing thus, I wondered whether the irregular diary might not
have wider interest than at first appeared. To me, its personal
appeal was very strong; might it not be possible to cull from it the
substance of a small volume which, at least for its sincerity's
sake, would not be without value for those who read, not with the
eye alone, but with the mind? I turned the pages again. Here was a
man who, having his desire, and that a very modest one, not only
felt satisfied, but enjoyed great happiness. He talked of many
different things, saying exactly what he thought; he spoke of
himself, and told the truth as far as mortal can tell it. It seemed
to me that the thing had human interest. I decided to print.
The question of arrangement had to be considered; I did not like to
offer a mere incondite miscellany. To supply each of the
disconnected passages with a title, or even to group them under
subject headings, would have interfered with the spontaneity which,
above all, I wished to preserve. In reading through the matter I
had selected, it struck me how often the aspects of nature were
referred to, and how suitable many of the reflections were to the
month with which they were dated. Ryecroft, I knew, had ever been
much influenced by the mood of the sky, and by the procession of the
year. So I hit upon the thought of dividing the little book into
four chapters, named after the seasons. Like all classifications,
it is imperfect, but 'twill serve.
G. G.
SPRING
I
For more than a week my pen has lain untouched. I have written
nothing for seven whole days, not even a letter. Except during one
or two bouts of illness, such a thing never happened in my life
before. In my life; the life, that is, which had to be supported by
anxious toil; the life which was not lived for living's sake, as all
life should be, but under the goad of fear. The earning of money
should be a means to an end; for more than thirty years--I began to
support myself at sixteen--I had to regard it as the end itself.
I could imagine that my old penholder feels reproachfully towards
me. Has it not served me well? Why do I, in my happiness, let it
lie there neglected, gathering dust? The same penholder that has
lain against my forefinger day after day, for--how many years?
Twenty, at least; I remember buying it at a shop in Tottenham Court
Road. By the same token I bought that day a paper-weight, which
cost me a whole shilling--an extravagance which made me tremble.
The penholder shone with its new varnish, now it is plain brown wood
from end to end. On my forefinger it has made a callosity.
Old companion, yet old enemy! How many a time have I taken it up,
loathing the necessity, heavy in head and heart, my hand shaking, my
eyes sick-dazzled! How I dreaded the white page I had to foul with
ink! Above all, on days such as this, when the blue eyes of Spring
laughed from between rosy clouds, when the sunlight shimmered upon
my table and made me long, long all but to madness, for the scent of
the flowering earth, for the green of hillside larches, for the
singing of the skylark above the downs. There was a time--it seems
further away than childhood--when I took up my pen with eagerness;
if my hand trembled it was with hope. But a hope that fooled me,
for never a page of my writing deserved to live. I can say that now
without bitterness. It was youthful error, and only the force of
circumstance prolonged it. The world has done me no injustice;
thank Heaven I have grown wise enough not to rail at it for this!
And why should any man who writes, even if he write things immortal,
nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish? Who
promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? If my
shoemaker turn me out an excellent pair of boots, and I, in some
mood of cantankerous unreason, throw them back upon his hands, the
man has just cause of complaint. But your poem, your novel, who
bargained with you for it? If it is honest journeywork, yet lacks
purchasers, at most you may call yourself a hapless tradesman. If
it come from on high, with what decency do you fret and fume because
it is not paid for in heavy cash? For the work of man's mind there
is one test, and one alone, the judgment of generations yet unborn.
If you have written a great book, the world to come will know of it.
But you don't care for posthumous glory. You want to enjoy fame in
a comfortable armchair. Ah, that is quite another thing. Have the
courage of your desire. Admit yourself a merchant, and protest to
gods and men that the merchandise you offer is of better quality
than much which sells for a high price. You may be right, and
indeed it is hard upon you that Fashion does not turn to your stall.
II
The exquisite quiet of this room! I have been sitting in utter
idleness, watching the sky, viewing the shape of golden sunlight
upon the carpet, which changes as the minutes pass, letting my eye
wander from one framed print to another, and along the ranks of my
beloved books. Within the house nothing stirs. In the garden I can
hear singing of birds, I can hear the rustle of their wings. And
thus, if it please me, I may sit all day long, and into the
profounder quiet of the night.
My house is perfect. By great good fortune I have found a
housekeeper no less to my mind, a low-voiced, light-footed woman of
discreet age, strong and deft enough to render me all the service I
require, and not afraid of solitude. She rises very early. By my
breakfast-time there remains little to be done under the roof save
dressing of meals. Very rarely do I hear even a clink of crockery;
never the closing of a door or window. Oh, blessed silence!
There is not the remotest possibility of any one's calling upon me,
and that I should call upon any one else is a thing undreamt of. I
owe a letter to a friend; perhaps I shall write it before bedtime;
perhaps I shall leave it till to-morrow morning. A letter of
friendship should never be written save when the spirit prompts. I
have not yet looked at the newspaper. Generally I leave it till I
come back tired from my walk; it amuses me then to see what the
noisy world is doing, what new self-torments men have discovered,
what new forms of vain toil, what new occasions of peril and of
strife. I grudge to give the first freshness of the morning mind to
things so sad and foolish.
My house is perfect. Just large enough to allow the grace of order
in domestic circumstance; just that superfluity of intramural space,
to lack which is to be less than at one's ease. The fabric is
sound; the work in wood and plaster tells of a more leisurely and a
more honest age than ours. The stairs do not creak under my step; I
am waylaid by no unkindly draught; I can open or close a window
without muscle-ache. As to such trifles as the tint and device of
wall-paper, I confess my indifference; be the walls only
unobtrusive, and I am satisfied. The first thing in one's home is
comfort; let beauty of detail be added if one has the means, the
patience, the eye.
To me, this little book-room is beautiful, and chiefly because it is
home. Through the greater part of life I was homeless. Many places
have I inhabited, some which my soul loathed, and some which pleased
me well; but never till now with that sense of security which makes
a home. At any moment I might have been driven forth by evil hap,
by nagging necessity. For all that time did I say within myself:
Some day, perchance, I shall have a home; yet the "perchance" had
more and more of emphasis as life went on, and at the moment when
fate was secretly smiling on me, I had all but abandoned hope. I
have my home at last. When I place a new volume on my shelves, I
say: Stand there whilst I have eyes to see you; and a joyous tremor
thrills me. This house is mine on a lease of a score of years. So
long I certainly shall not live; but, if I did, even so long should
I have the wherewithal to pay my rent and buy my food.
I think with compassion of the unhappy mortals for whom no such sun
will ever rise. I should like to add to the Litany a new petition:
"For all inhabitants of great towns, and especially for all such as
dwell in lodgings, boarding-houses, flats, or any other sordid
substitute for Home which need or foolishness may have contrived."
In vain I have pondered the Stoic virtues. I know that it is folly
to fret about the spot of one's abode on this little earth.
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to the wise man ports and happy havens.
But I have always worshipped wisdom afar off. In the sonorous
period of the philosopher, in the golden measure of the poet, I find
it of all things lovely. To its possession I shall never attain.
What will it serve me to pretend a virtue of which I am incapable?
To me the place and manner of my abode is of supreme import; let it
be confessed, and there an end of it. I am no cosmopolite. Were I
to think that I should die away from England, the thought would be
dreadful to me. And in England, this is the dwelling of my choice;
this is my home.
III
I am no botanist, but I have long found pleasure in herb-gathering.
I love to come upon a plant which is unknown to me, to identify it
with the help of my book, to greet it by name when next it shines
beside my path. If the plant be rare, its discovery gives me joy.
Nature, the great Artist, makes her common flowers in the common
view; no word in human language can express the marvel and the
loveliness even of what we call the vulgarest weed, but these are
fashioned under the gaze of every passer-by. The rare flower is
shaped apart, in places secret, in the Artist's subtler mood; to
find it is to enjoy the sense of admission to a holier precinct.
Even in my gladness I am awed.
To-day I have walked far, and at the end of my walk I found the
little white-flowered wood-ruff. It grew in a copse of young ash.
When I had looked long at the flower, I delighted myself with the
grace of the slim trees about it--their shining smoothness, their
olive hue. Hard by stood a bush of wych elm; its tettered bark,
overlined as if with the character of some unknown tongue, made the
young ashes yet more beautiful.
It matters not how long I wander. There is no task to bring me
back; no one will be vexed or uneasy, linger I ever so late. Spring
is shining upon these lanes and meadows; I feel as if I must follow
every winding track that opens by my way. Spring has restored to me
something of the long-forgotten vigour of youth; I walk without
weariness; I sing to myself like a boy, and the song is one I knew
in boyhood.
That reminds me of an incident. Near a hamlet, in a lonely spot by
a woodside, I came upon a little lad of perhaps ten years old, who,
his head hidden in his arms against a tree trunk, was crying
bitterly. I asked him what was the matter, and, after a little
trouble--he was better than a mere bumpkin--I learnt that, having
been sent with sixpence to pay a debt, he had lost the money. The
poor little fellow was in a state of mind which in a grave man would
be called the anguish of despair; he must have been crying for a
long time; every muscle in his face quivered as if under torture,
his limbs shook; his eyes, his voice, uttered such misery as only
the vilest criminal should be made to suffer. And it was because he
had lost sixpence!
I could have shed tears with him--tears of pity and of rage at all
this spectacle implied. On a day of indescribable glory, when earth
and heaven shed benedictions upon the soul of man, a child, whose
nature would have bidden him rejoice as only childhood may, wept his
heart out because his hand had dropped a sixpenny piece! The loss
was a very serious one, and he knew it; he was less afraid to face
his parents, than overcome by misery at the thought of the harm he
had done them. Sixpence dropped by the wayside, and a whole family
made wretched! What are the due descriptive terms for a state of
"civilization" in which such a thing as this is possible?
I put my hand into my pocket, and wrought sixpennyworth of miracle.
It took me half an hour to recover my quiet mind. After all, it is
as idle to rage against man's fatuity as to hope that he will ever
be less a fool. For me, the great thing was my sixpenny miracle.
Why, I have known the day when it would have been beyond my power
altogether, or else would have cost me a meal. Wherefore, let me
again be glad and thankful.
IV
There was a time in my life when, if I had suddenly been set in the
position I now enjoy, conscience would have lain in ambush for me.
What! An income sufficient to support three or four working-class
families--a house all to myself--things beautiful wherever I turn--
and absolutely nothing to do for it all! I should have been hard
put to it to defend myself. In those days I was feelingly reminded,
hour by hour, with what a struggle the obscure multitudes manage to
keep alive. Nobody knows better than I do quam parvo liceat
producere vitam. I have hungered in the streets; I have laid my
head in the poorest shelter; I know what it is to feel the heart
burn with wrath and envy of "the privileged classes." Yes, but all
that time I was one of "the privileged" myself, and now I can accept
a recognized standing among them without shadow of self-reproach.
It does not mean that my larger sympathies are blunted. By going to
certain places, looking upon certain scenes, I could most
effectually destroy all the calm that life has brought me. If I
hold apart and purposely refuse to look that way, it is because I
believe that the world is better, not worse, for having one more
inhabitant who lives as becomes a civilized being. Let him whose
soul prompts him to assail the iniquity of things, cry and spare
not; let him who has the vocation go forth and combat. In me it
would be to err from Nature's guidance. I know, if I know anything,
that I am made for the life of tranquillity and meditation. I know
that only thus can such virtue as I possess find scope. More than
half a century of existence has taught me that most of the wrong and
folly which darken earth is due to those who cannot possess their
souls in quiet; that most of the good which saves mankind from
destruction comes of life that is led in thoughtful stillness.
Every day the world grows noisier; I, for one, will have no part in
that increasing clamour, and, were it only by my silence, I confer a
boon on all.
How well would the revenues of a country be expended, if, by mere
pensioning, one-fifth of its population could be induced to live as
I do!
V
"Sir," said Johnson, "all the arguments which are brought to
represent poverty as no evil, show it to be evidently a great evil.
You never find people labouring to convince you that you may live
very happily upon a plentiful fortune."
He knew what he was talking of, that rugged old master of common
sense. Poverty is of course a relative thing; the term has
reference, above all, to one's standing as an intellectual being.
If I am to believe the newspapers, there are title-bearing men and
women in England who, had they an assured income of five-and-twenty,
shillings per week, would have no right to call themselves poor, for
their intellectual needs are those of a stable-boy or scullery
wench. Give me the same income and I can live, but I am poor
indeed.
You tell me that money cannot buy the things most precious. Your
commonplace proves that you have never known the lack of it. When I
think of all the sorrow and the barrenness that has been wrought in
my life by want of a few more pounds per annum than I was able to
earn, I stand aghast at money's significance. What kindly joys have
I lost, those simple forms of happiness to which every heart has
claim, because of poverty! Meetings with those I loved made
impossible year after year; sadness, misunderstanding, nay, cruel
alienation, arising from inability to do the things I wished, and
which I might have done had a little money helped me; endless
instances of homely pleasure and contentment curtailed or forbidden
by narrow means. I have lost friends merely through the constraints
of my position; friends I might have made have remained strangers to
me; solitude of the bitter kind, the solitude which is enforced at
times when mind or heart longs for companionship, often cursed my
life solely because I was poor. I think it would scarce be an
exaggeration to say that there is no moral good which has not to be
paid for in coin of the realm.
"Poverty," said Johnson again, "is so great an evil, and pregnant
with so much temptation, so much misery, that I cannot but earnestly
enjoin you to avoid it."
For my own part, I needed no injunction to that effort of avoidance.
Many a London garret knows how I struggled with the unwelcome
chamber-fellow. I marvel she did not abide with me to the end; it
is a sort of inconsequence in Nature, and sometimes makes me vaguely
uneasy through nights of broken sleep.
VI
How many more springs can I hope to see? A sanguine temper would
say ten or twelve; let me dare to hope humbly for five or six. That
is a great many. Five or six spring-times, welcomed joyously,
lovingly watched from the first celandine to the budding of the
rose; who shall dare to call it a stinted boon? Five or six times
the miracle of earth reclad, the vision of splendour and loveliness
which tongue has never yet described, set before my gazing. To
think of it is to fear that I ask too much.
VII
"Homo animal querulum cupide suis incumbens miseriis." I wonder
where that comes from. I found it once in Charron, quoted without
reference, and it has often been in my mind--a dreary truth, well
worded. At least, it was a truth for me during many a long year.
Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury
of self-compassion; in cases numberless, this it must be that saves
from suicide. For some there is great relief in talking about their
miseries, but such gossips lack the profound solace of misery nursed
in silent brooding. Happily, the trick with me has never been
retrospective; indeed, it was never, even with regard to instant
suffering, a habit so deeply rooted as to become a mastering vice.
I knew my own weakness when I yielded to it; I despised myself when
it brought me comfort; I could laugh scornfully, even "cupide meis
incumbens miseriis." And now, thanks be to the unknown power which
rules us, my past has buried its dead. More than that; I can accept
with sober cheerfulness the necessity of all I lived through. So it
was to be; so it was. For this did Nature shape me; with what
purpose, I shall never know; but, in the sequence of things eternal,
this was my place.
Could I have achieved so much philosophy if, as I ever feared, the
closing years of my life had passed in helpless indigence? Should I
not have sunk into lowest depths of querulous self-pity, grovelling
there with eyes obstinately averted from the light above?
VIII
The early coming of spring in this happy Devon gladdens my heart. I
think with chill discomfort of those parts of England where the
primrose shivers beneath a sky of threat rather than of solace.
Honest winter, snow-clad and with the frosted beard, I can welcome
not uncordially; but that long deferment of the calendar's promise,
that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging
the honour of May--how often has it robbed me of heart and hope.
Here, scarce have I assured myself that the last leaf has fallen,
scarce have I watched the glistening of hoar-frost upon the
evergreens, when a breath from the west thrills me with anticipation
of bud and bloom. Even under this grey-billowing sky, which tells
that February is still in rule:-
Mild winds shake the elder brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know
That the whitethorn soon will blow.
I have been thinking of those early years of mine in London, when
the seasons passed over me unobserved, when I seldom turned a glance
towards the heavens, and felt no hardship in the imprisonment of
boundless streets. It is strange now to remember that for some six
or seven years I never looked upon a meadow, never travelled even so
far as to the tree-bordered suburbs. I was battling for dear life;
on most days I could not feel certain that in a week's time I should
have food and shelter. It would happen, to be sure, that in hot
noons of August my thoughts wandered to the sea; but so impossible
was the gratification of such desire that it never greatly troubled
me. At times, indeed, I seem all but to have forgotten that people
went away for holiday. In those poor parts of the town where I
dwelt, season made no perceptible difference; there were no luggage-
laden cabs to remind me of joyous journeys; the folk about me went
daily to their toil as usual, and so did I. I remember afternoons
of languor, when books were a weariness, and no thought could be
squeezed out of the drowsy brain; then would I betake myself to one
of the parks, and find refreshment without any enjoyable sense of
change. Heavens, how I laboured in those days! And how far I was
from thinking of myself as a subject for compassion! That came
later, when my health had begun to suffer from excess of toil, from
bad air, bad food and many miseries; then awoke the maddening desire
for countryside and sea-beach--and for other things yet more remote.
But in the years when I toiled hardest and underwent what now appear
to me hideous privations, of a truth I could not be said to suffer
at all. I did not suffer, for I had no sense of weakness. My
health was proof against everything, and my energies defied all
malice of circumstance. With however little encouragement, I had
infinite hope. Sound sleep (often in places I now dread to think
of) sent me fresh to the battle each morning, my breakfast,
sometimes, no more than a slice of bread and a cup of water. As
human happiness goes, I am not sure that I was not then happy.
Most men who go through a hard time in their youth are supported by
companionship. London has no pays latin, but hungry beginners in
literature have generally their suitable comrades, garreteers in the
Tottenham Court Road district, or in unredeemed Chelsea; they make
their little vie de Boheme, and are consciously proud of it. Of my
position, the peculiarity was that I never belonged to any cluster;
I shrank from casual acquaintance, and, through the grim years, had
but one friend with whom I held converse. It was never my instinct
to look for help, to seek favour for advancement; whatever step I
gained was gained by my own strength. Even as I disregarded favour
so did I scorn advice; no counsel would I ever take but that of my
own brain and heart. More than once I was driven by necessity to
beg from strangers the means of earning bread, and this of all my
experiences was the bitterest; yet I think I should have found it
worse still to incur a debt to some friend or comrade. The truth is
that I have never learnt to regard myself as a "member of society."
For me, there have always been two entities--myself and the world,
and the normal relation between these two has been hostile. Am I
not still a lonely man, as far as ever from forming part of the
social order?
This, of which I once was scornfully proud, seems to me now, if not
a calamity, something I would not choose if life were to live again.
IX
For more than six years I trod the pavement, never stepping once
upon mother earth--for the parks are but pavement disguised with a
growth of grass. Then the worst was over. Say I the worst? No,
no; things far worse were to come; the struggle against starvation
has its cheery side when one is young and vigorous. But at all
events I had begun to earn a living; I held assurance of food and
clothing for half a year at a time; granted health, I might hope to
draw my not insufficient wages for many a twelvemonth. And they
were the wages of work done independently, when and where I would.
I thought with horror of lives spent in an office, with an employer
to obey. The glory of the career of letters was its freedom, its
dignity!
The fact of the matter was, of course, that I served, not one
master, but a whole crowd of them. Independence, forsooth! If my
writing failed to please editor, publisher, public, where was my
daily bread? The greater my success, the more numerous my
employers. I was the slave of a multitude. By heaven's grace I had
succeeded in pleasing (that is to say, in making myself a source of
profit to) certain persons who represented this vague throng; for
the time, they were gracious to me; but what justified me in the
faith that I should hold the ground I had gained? Could the
position of any toiling man be more precarious than mine? I tremble
now as I think of it, tremble as I should in watching some one who
walked carelessly on the edge of an abyss. I marvel at the
recollection that for a good score of years this pen and a scrap of
paper clothed and fed me and my household, kept me in physical
comfort, held at bay all those hostile forces of the world ranged
against one who has no resource save in his own right hand.
But I was thinking of the year which saw my first exodus from
London. On an irresistible impulse, I suddenly made up my mind to
go into Devon, a part of England I had never seen. At the end of
March I escaped from my grim lodgings, and, before I had time to
reflect on the details of my undertaking, I found myself sitting in
sunshine at a spot very near to where I now dwell--before me the
green valley of the broadening Exe and the pine-clad ridge of
Haldon. That was one of the moments of my life when I have tasted
exquisite joy. My state of mind was very strange. Though as boy
and youth I had been familiar with the country, had seen much of
England's beauties, it was as though I found myself for the first
time before a natural landscape. Those years of London had obscured
all my earlier life; I was like a man town-born and bred, who scarce
knows anything but street vistas. The light, the air, had for me
something of the supernatural--affected me, indeed, only less than
at a later time did the atmosphere of Italy. It was glorious spring
weather; a few white clouds floated amid the blue, and the earth had
an intoxicating fragrance. Then first did I know myself for a sun-
worshipper. How had I lived so long without asking whether there
was a sun in the heavens or not? Under that radiant firmament, I
could have thrown myself upon my knees in adoration. As I walked, I
found myself avoiding every strip of shadow; were it but that of a
birch trunk, I felt as if it robbed me of the day's delight. I went
bare-headed, that the golden beams might shed upon me their
unstinted blessing. That day I must have walked some thirty miles,
yet I knew not fatigue. Could I but have once more the strength
which then supported me!
I had stepped into a new life. Between the man I had been and that
which I now became there was a very notable difference. In a single
day I had matured astonishingly; which means, no doubt, that I
suddenly entered into conscious enjoyment of powers and
sensibilities which had been developing unknown to me. To instance
only one point: till then I had cared very little about plants and
flowers, but now I found myself eagerly interested in every blossom,
in every growth of the wayside. As I walked I gathered a quantity
of plants, promising myself to buy a book on the morrow and identify
them all. Nor was it a passing humour; never since have I lost my
pleasure in the flowers of the field, and my desire to know them
all. My ignorance at the time of which I speak seems to me now very
shameful; but I was merely in the case of ordinary people, whether
living in town or country. How many could give the familiar name of
half a dozen plants plucked at random from beneath the hedge in
springtime? To me the flowers became symbolical of a great release,
of a wonderful awakening. My eyes had all at once been opened; till
then I had walked in darkness, yet knew it not.
Well do I remember the rambles of that springtide. I had a lodging
in one of those outer streets of Exeter which savour more of country
than of town, and every morning I set forth to make discoveries.
The weather could not have been more kindly; I felt the influences
of a climate I had never known; there was a balm in the air which
soothed no less than it exhilarated me. Now inland, now seaward, I
followed the windings of the Exe. One day I wandered in rich, warm
valleys, by orchards bursting into bloom, from farmhouse to
farmhouse, each more beautiful than the other, and from hamlet to
hamlet bowered amid dark evergreens; the next, I was on pine-clad
heights, gazing over moorland brown with last year's heather,
feeling upon my face a wind from the white-flecked Channel. So
intense was my delight in the beautiful world about me that I forgot
even myself; I enjoyed without retrospect or forecast; I, the egoist
in grain, forgot to scrutinize my own emotions, or to trouble my
happiness by comparison with others' happier fortune. It was a
healthful time; it gave me a new lease of life, and taught me--in so
far as I was teachable--how to make use of it.
X
Mentally and physically, I must be much older than my years. At
three-and-fifty a man ought not to be brooding constantly on his
vanished youth. These days of spring which I should be enjoying for
their own sake, do but turn me to reminiscence, and my memories are
of the springs that were lost.
Some day I will go to London and revisit all the places where I
housed in the time of my greatest poverty. I have not seen them for
a quarter of a century or so. Not long ago, had any one asked me
how I felt about these memories, I should have said that there were
certain street names, certain mental images of obscure London, which
made me wretched as often as they came before me; but, in truth, it
is a very long time since I was moved to any sort of bitterness by
that retrospect of things hard and squalid. Now, owning all the
misery of it in comparison with what should have been, I find that
part of life interesting and pleasant to look back upon--greatly
more so than many subsequent times, when I lived amid decencies and
had enough to eat. Some day I will go to London, and spend a day or
two amid the dear old horrors. Some of the places, I know, have
disappeared. I see the winding way by which I went from Oxford
Street, at the foot of Tottenham Court Road, to Leicester Square,
and, somewhere in the labyrinth (I think of it as always foggy and
gas-lit) was a shop which had pies and puddings in the window,
puddings and pies kept hot by steam rising through perforated metal.
How many a time have I stood there, raging with hunger, unable to
purchase even one pennyworth of food! The shop and the street have
long since vanished; does any man remember them so feelingly as I?
But I think most of my haunts are still in existence: to tread
again those pavements, to look at those grimy doorways and purblind
windows, would affect me strangely.
I see that alley hidden on the west side of Tottenham Court Road,
where, after living in a back bedroom on the top floor, I had to
exchange for the front cellar; there was a difference, if I remember
rightly, of sixpence a week, and sixpence, in those days, was a very
great consideration--why, it meant a couple of meals. (I once FOUND
sixpence in the street, and had an exultation which is vivid in me
at this moment.) The front cellar was stone-floored; its furniture
was a table, a chair, a wash-stand, and a bed; the window, which of
course had never been cleaned since it was put in, received light
through a flat grating in the alley above. Here I lived; here I
WROTE. Yes, "literary work" was done at that filthy deal table, on
which, by the bye, lay my Homer, my Shakespeare, and the few other
books I then possessed. At night, as I lay in bed, I used to hear
the tramp, tramp of a posse of policemen who passed along the alley
on their way to relieve guard; their heavy feet sometimes sounded on
the grating above my window.
I recall a tragi-comical incident of life at the British Museum.
Once, on going down into the lavatory to wash my hands, I became
aware of a notice newly set up above the row of basins. It ran
somehow thus: "Readers are requested to bear in mind that these
basins are to be used only for casual ablutions." Oh, the
significance of that inscription! Had I not myself, more than once,
been glad to use this soap and water more largely than the sense of
the authorities contemplated? And there were poor fellows working
under the great dome whose need, in this respect, was greater than
mine. I laughed heartily at the notice, but it meant so much.
Some of my abodes I have utterly forgotten; for one reason or
another, I was always moving--an easy matter when all my possessions
lay in one small trunk. Sometimes the people of the house were
intolerable. In those days I was not fastidious, and I seldom had
any but the slightest intercourse with those who dwelt under the
same roof, yet it happened now and then that I was driven away by
human proximity which passed my endurance. In other cases I had to
flee from pestilential conditions. How I escaped mortal illness in
some of those places (miserably fed as I always was, and always
over-working myself) is a great mystery. The worst that befell me
was a slight attack of diphtheria--traceable, I imagine, to the
existence of a dust-bin UNDER THE STAIRCASE. When I spoke of the
matter to my landlady, she was at first astonished, then wrathful,
and my departure was expedited with many insults.
On the whole, however, I had nothing much to complain of except my
poverty. You cannot expect great comfort in London for four-and-
sixpence a week--the most I ever could pay for a "furnished room
with attendance" in those days of pretty stern apprenticeship. And
I was easily satisfied; I wanted only a little walled space in which
I could seclude myself, free from external annoyance. Certain
comforts of civilized life I ceased even to regret; a stair-carpet I
regarded as rather extravagant, and a carpet on the floor of my room
was luxury undreamt of. My sleep was sound; I have passed nights of
dreamless repose on beds which it would now make my bones ache only
to look at. A door that locked, a fire in winter, a pipe of
tobacco--these were things essential; and, granted these, I have
been often richly contented in the squalidest garret. One such
lodging is often in my memory; it was at Islington, not far from the
City Road; my window looked upon the Regent's Canal. As often as I
think of it, I recall what was perhaps the worst London fog I ever
knew; for three successive days, at least, my lamp had to be kept
burning; when I looked through the window, I saw, at moments, a few
blurred lights in the street beyond the Canal, but for the most part
nothing but a yellowish darkness, which caused the glass to reflect
the firelight and my own face. Did I feel miserable? Not a bit of
it. The enveloping gloom seemed to make my chimney-corner only the
more cosy. I had coals, oil, tobacco in sufficient quantity; I had
a book to read; I had work which interested me; so I went forth only
to get my meals at a City Road coffee-shop, and hastened back to the
fireside. Oh, my ambitions, my hopes! How surprised and indignant
I should have felt had I known of any one who pitied me!
Nature took revenge now and then. In winter time I had fierce sore
throats, sometimes accompanied by long and savage headaches.
Doctoring, of course, never occurred to me; I just locked my door,
and, if I felt very bad indeed, went to bed--to lie there, without
food or drink, till I was able to look after myself again. I could
never ask from a landlady anything which was not in our bond, and
only once or twice did I receive spontaneous offer of help. Oh, it
is wonderful to think of all that youth can endure! What a poor
feeble wretch I now seem to myself, when I remember thirty years
ago!
XI
Would I live it over again, that life of the garret and the cellar?
Not with the assurance of fifty years' contentment such as I now
enjoy to follow upon it! With man's infinitely pathetic power of
resignation, one sees the thing on its better side, forgets all the
worst of it, makes out a case for the resolute optimist. Oh, but
the waste of energy, of zeal, of youth! In another mood, I could
shed tears over that spectacle of rare vitality condemned to sordid
strife. The pity of it! And--if our conscience mean anything at
all--the bitter wrong!
Without seeking for Utopia, think what a man's youth might be. I
suppose not one in every thousand uses half the possibilities of
natural joy and delightful effort which lie in those years between
seventeen and seven-and-twenty. All but all men have to look back
upon beginnings of life deformed and discoloured by necessity,
accident, wantonness. If a young man avoid the grosser pitfalls, if
he keep his eye fixed steadily on what is called the main chance,
if, without flagrant selfishness, he prudently subdue every interest
to his own (by "interest" understanding only material good), he is
putting his youth to profit, he is an exemplar and a subject of
pride. I doubt whether, in our civilization, any other ideal is
easy of pursuit by the youngster face to face with life. It is the
only course altogether safe. Yet compare it with what might be, if
men respected manhood, if human reason were at the service of human
happiness. Some few there are who can look back upon a boyhood of
natural delights, followed by a decade or so of fine energies
honourably put to use, blended therewith, perhaps, a memory of joy
so exquisite that it tunes all life unto the end; they are almost as
rare as poets. The vast majority think not of their youth at all,
or, glancing backward, are unconscious of lost opportunity, unaware
of degradation suffered. Only by contrast with this thick-witted
multitude can I pride myself upon my youth of endurance and of
combat. I had a goal before me, and not the goal of the average
man. Even when pinched with hunger, I did not abandon my purposes,
which were of the mind. But contrast that starved lad in his slum
lodging with any fair conception of intelligent and zealous youth,
and one feels that a dose of swift poison would have been the right
remedy for such squalid ills.
XII
As often as I survey my bookshelves I am reminded of Lamb's "ragged
veterans." Not that all my volumes came from the second-hand stall;
many of them were neat enough in new covers, some were even stately
in fragrant bindings, when they passed into my hands. But so often
have I removed, so rough has been the treatment of my little library
at each change of place, and, to tell the truth, so little care have
I given to its well-being at normal times (for in all practical
matters I am idle and inept), that even the comeliest of my books
show the results of unfair usage. More than one has been foully
injured by a great nail driven into a packing-case--this but the
extreme instance of the wrongs they have undergone. Now that I have
leisure and peace of mind, I find myself growing more careful--an
illustration of the great truth that virtue is made easy by
circumstance. But I confess that, so long as a volume hold
together, I am not much troubled as to its outer appearance.
I know men who say they had as lief read any book in a library copy
as in one from their own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. For
one thing, I know every book of mine by its SCENT, and I have but to
put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.
My Gibbon, for example, my well-bound eight-volume Milman edition,
which I have read and read and read again for more than thirty
years--never do I open it but the scent of the noble page restores
to me all the exultant happiness of that moment when I received it
as a prize. Or my Shakespeare, the great Cambridge Shakespeare--it
has an odour which carries me yet further back in life; for these
volumes belonged to my father, and before I was old enough to read
them with understanding, it was often permitted me, as a treat, to
take down one of them from the bookcase, and reverently to turn the
leaves. The volumes smell exactly as they did in that old time, and
what a strange tenderness comes upon me when I hold one of them in
hand. For that reason I do not often read Shakespeare in this
edition. My eyes being good as ever, I take the Globe volume, which
I bought in days when such a purchase was something more than an
extravagance; wherefore I regard the book with that peculiar
affection which results from sacrifice.
Sacrifice--in no drawing-room sense of the word. Dozens of my books
were purchased with money which ought to have been spent upon what
are called the necessaries of life. Many a time I have stood before
a stall, or a bookseller's window, torn by conflict of intellectual
desire and bodily need. At the very hour of dinner, when my stomach
clamoured for food, I have been stopped by sight of a volume so long
coveted, and marked at so advantageous a price, that I COULD not let
it go; yet to buy it meant pangs of famine. My Heyne's Tibullus was
grasped at such a moment. It lay on the stall of the old book-shop
in Goodge Street--a stall where now and then one found an excellent
thing among quantities of rubbish. Sixpence was the price--
sixpence! At that time I used to eat my midday meal (of course my
dinner) at a coffee-shop in Oxford Street, one of the real old
coffee-shops, such as now, I suppose, can hardly be found. Sixpence
was all I had--yes, all I had in the world; it would purchase a
plate of meat and vegetables. But I did not dare to hope that the
Tibullus would wait until the morrow, when a certain small sum fell
due to me. I paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in my
pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at combat within me. The
book was bought and I went home with it, and as I made a dinner of
bread and butter I gloated over the pages.
In this Tibullus I found pencilled on the last page: "Perlegi, Oct.
4, 1792." Who was that possessor of the book, nearly a hundred
years ago? There was no other inscription. I like to imagine some
poor scholar, poor and eager as I myself, who bought the volume with
drops of his blood, and enjoyed the reading of it even as I did.
How much THAT was I could not easily say. Gentle-hearted Tibullus!-
-of whom there remains to us a poet's portrait more delightful, I
think, than anything of the kind in Roman literature.
An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres,
Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est?
So with many another book on the thronged shelves. To take them
down is to recall, how vividly, a struggle and a triumph. In those
days money represented nothing to me, nothing I cared to think
about, but the acquisition of books. There were books of which I
had passionate need, books more necessary to me than bodily
nourishment. I could see them, of course, at the British Museum,
but that was not at all the same thing as having and holding them,
my own property, on my own shelf. Now and then I have bought a
volume of the raggedest and wretchedest aspect, dishonoured with
foolish scribbling, torn, blotted--no matter, I liked better to read
out of that than out of a copy that was not mine. But I was guilty
at times of mere self-indulgence; a book tempted me, a book which
was not one of those for which I really craved, a luxury which
prudence might bid me forego. As, for instance, my Jung-Stilling.
It caught my eye in Holywell Street; the name was familiar to me in
Wahrheit und Dichtung, and curiosity grew as I glanced over the
pages. But that day I resisted; in truth, I could not afford the
eighteen-pence, which means that just then I was poor indeed. Twice
again did I pass, each time assuring myself that Jung-Stilling had
found no purchaser. There came a day when I was in funds. I see
myself hastening to Holywell Street (in those days my habitual pace
was five miles an hour), I see the little grey old man with whom I
transacted my business--what was his name?--the bookseller who had
been, I believe, a Catholic priest, and still had a certain priestly
dignity about him. He took the volume, opened it, mused for a
moment, then, with a glance at me, said, as if thinking aloud:
"Yes, I wish I had time to read it."
Sometimes I added the labour of a porter to my fasting endured for
the sake of books. At the little shop near Portland Road Station I
came upon a first edition of Gibbon, the price an absurdity--I think
it was a shilling a volume. To possess those clean-paged quartos I
would have sold my coat. As it happened, I had not money enough
with me, but sufficient at home. I was living at Islington. Having
spoken with the bookseller, I walked home, took the cash, walked
back again, and--carried the tomes from the west end of Euston Road
to a street in Islington far beyond the Angel. I did it in two
journeys--this being the only time in my life when I thought of
Gibbon in avoirdupois. Twice--three times, reckoning the walk for
the money--did I descend Euston Road and climb Pentonville on that
occasion. Of the season and the weather I have no recollection; my
joy in the purchase I had made drove out every other thought.
Except, indeed, of the weight. I had infinite energy, but not much
muscular strength, and the end of the last journey saw me upon a
chair, perspiring, flaccid, aching--exultant!
The well-to-do person would hear this story with astonishment. Why
did I not get the bookseller to send me the volumes? Or, if I could
not wait, was there no omnibus along that London highway? How could
I make the well-to-do person understand that I did not feel able to
afford, that day, one penny more than I had spent on the book? No,
no, such labour-saving expenditure did not come within my scope;
whatever I enjoyed I earned it, literally, by the sweat of my brow.
In those days I hardly knew what it was to travel by omnibus. I
have walked London streets for twelve and fifteen hours together
without ever a thought of saving my legs, or my time, by paying for
waftage. Being poor as poor can be, there were certain things I had
to renounce, and this was one of them.
Years after, I sold my first edition of Gibbon for even less than it
cost me; it went with a great many other fine books in folio and
quarto, which I could not drag about with me in my constant
removals; the man who bought them spoke of them as "tomb-stones."
Why has Gibbon no market value? Often has my heart ached with
regret for those quartos. The joy of reading the Decline and Fall
in that fine type! The page was appropriate to the dignity of the
subject; the mere sight of it tuned one's mind. I suppose I could
easily get another copy now; but it would not be to me what that
other was, with its memory of dust and toil.
XIII
There must be several men of spirit and experiences akin to mine who
remember that little book-shop opposite Portland Road Station. It
had a peculiar character; the books were of a solid kind--chiefly
theology and classics--and for the most part those old editions
which are called worthless, which have no bibliopolic value, and
have been supplanted for practical use by modern issues. The
bookseller was very much a gentleman, and this singular fact,
together with the extremely low prices at which his volumes were
marked, sometimes inclined me to think that he kept the shop for
mere love of letters. Things in my eyes inestimable I have
purchased there for a few pence, and I don't think I ever gave more
than a shilling for any volume. As I once had the opportunity of
perceiving, a young man fresh from class-rooms could only look with
wondering contempt on the antiquated stuff which it rejoiced me to
gather from that kindly stall, or from the richer shelves within.
My Cicero's Letters for instance: podgy volumes in parchment, with
all the notes of Graevius, Gronovius, and I know not how many other
old scholars. Pooh! Hopelessly out of date. But I could never
feel that. I have a deep affection for Graevius and Gronovius and
the rest, and if I knew as much as they did, I should be well
satisfied to rest under the young man's disdain. The zeal of
learning is never out of date; the example--were there no more--
burns before one as a sacred fire, for ever unquenchable. In what
modern editor shall I find such love and enthusiasm as glows in the
annotations of old scholars?
Even the best editions of our day have so much of the mere
schoolbook; you feel so often that the man does not regard his
author as literature, but simply as text. Pedant for pedant, the
old is better than the new.
XIV
To-day's newspaper contains a yard or so of reading about a spring
horse-race. The sight of it fills me with loathing. It brings to
my mind that placard I saw at a station in Surrey a year or two ago,
advertising certain races in the neighbourhood. Here is the poster,
as I copied it into my note-book:
"Engaged by the Executive to ensure order and comfort to the public
attending this meeting:-
14 detectives (racing),
15 detectives (Scotland Yard),
7 police inspectors,
9 police sergeants,
76 police, and a supernumerary contingent of specially selected men
from the Army Reserve and the Corps of Commissionaires.
The above force will be employed solely for the purpose of
maintaining order and excluding bad characters, etc. They will have
the assistance also of a strong force of the Surrey Constabulary."
I remember, once, when I let fall a remark on the subject of horse-
racing among friends chatting together, I was voted "morose." Is it
really morose to object to public gatherings which their own
promoters declare to be dangerous for all decent folk? Every one
knows that horse-racing is carried on mainly for the delight and
profit of fools, ruffians, and thieves. That intelligent men allow
themselves to take part in the affair, and defend their conduct by
declaring that their presence "maintains the character of a sport
essentially noble," merely shows that intelligence can easily enough
divest itself of sense and decency.
XV
Midway in my long walk yesterday, I lunched at a wayside inn. On
the table lay a copy of a popular magazine. Glancing over this
miscellany, I found an article, by a woman, on "Lion Hunting," and
in this article I came upon a passage which seemed worth copying.
"As I woke my husband, the lion--which was then about forty yards
off--charged straight towards us, and with my .303 I hit him full in
the chest, as we afterwards discovered, tearing his windpipe to
pieces and breaking his spine. He charged a second time, and the
next shot hit him through the shoulder, tearing his heart to
ribbons."
It would interest me to look upon this heroine of gun and pen. She
is presumably quite a young woman; probably, when at home, a
graceful figure in drawing-rooms. I should like to hear her talk,
to exchange thoughts with her. She would give one a very good idea
of the matron of old Rome who had her seat in the amphitheatre.
Many of those ladies, in private life, must have been bright and
gracious, high-bred and full of agreeable sentiment; they talked of
art and of letters; they could drop a tear over Lesbia's sparrow; at
the same time, they were connoisseurs in torn windpipes, shattered
spines and viscera rent open. It is not likely that many of them
would have cared to turn their own hands to butchery, and, for the
matter of that, I must suppose that our Lion Huntress of the popular
magazine is rather an exceptional dame; but no doubt she and the
Roman ladies would get on very well together, finding only a few
superficial differences. The fact that her gory reminiscences are
welcomed by an editor with the popular taste in view is perhaps more
significant than appears either to editor or public. Were this lady
to write a novel (the chances are she will) it would have the true
note of modern vigour. Of course her style has been formed by her
favourite reading; more than probably, her ways of thinking and
feeling owe much to the same source. If not so already, this will
soon, I daresay, be the typical Englishwoman. Certainly, there is
"no nonsense about her." Such women should breed a remarkable race.
I left the inn in rather a turbid humour. Moving homeward by a new
way, I presently found myself on the side of a little valley, in
which lay a farm and an orchard. The apple trees were in full
bloom, and, as I stood gazing, the sun, which had all that day been
niggard of its beams, burst forth gloriously. For what I then saw,
I have no words; I can but dream of the still loveliness of that
blossomed valley. Near me, a bee was humming; not far away, a
cuckoo called; from the pasture of the farm below came a bleating of
lambs.
XVI
I am no friend of the people. As a force, by which the tenor of the
time is conditioned, they inspire me with distrust, with fear; as a
visible multitude, they make me shrink aloof, and often move me to
abhorrence. For the greater part of my life, the people signified
to me the London crowd, and no phrase of temperate meaning would
utter my thoughts of them under that aspect. The people as country-
folk are little known to me; such glimpses as I have had of them do
not invite to nearer acquaintance. Every instinct of my being is
anti-democratic, and I dread to think of what our England may become
when Demos rules irresistibly.
Right or wrong, this is my temper. But he who should argue from it
that I am intolerant of all persons belonging to a lower social rank
than my own would go far astray. Nothing is more rooted in my mind
than the vast distinction between the individual and the class.
Take a man by himself, and there is generally some reason to be
found in him, some disposition for good; mass him with his fellows
in the social organism, and ten to one he becomes a blatant
creature, without a thought of his own, ready for any evil to which
contagion prompts him. It is because nations tend to stupidity and
baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals
have a capacity for better things that it moves at all.
In my youth, looking at this man and that, I marvelled that humanity
had made so little progress. Now, looking at men in the multitude,
I marvel that they have advanced so far.
Foolishly arrogant as I was, I used to judge the worth of a person
by his intellectual power and attainment. I could see no good where
there was no logic, no charm where there was no learning. Now I
think that one has to distinguish between two forms of intelligence,
that of the brain, and that of the heart, and I have come to regard
the second as by far the more important. I guard myself against
saying that intelligence does not matter; the fool is ever as
noxious as he is wearisome. But assuredly the best people I have
known were saved from folly not by the intellect but by the heart.
They come before me, and I see them greatly ignorant, strongly
prejudiced, capable of the absurdest mis-reasoning; yet their faces
shine with the supreme virtues, kindness, sweetness, modesty,
generosity. Possessing these qualities, they at the same time
understand how to use them; they have the intelligence of the heart.
This poor woman who labours for me in my house is even such a one.
From the first I thought her an unusually good servant; after three
years of acquaintance, I find her one of the few women I have known
who merit the term of excellent. She can read and write--that is
all. More instruction would, I am sure, have harmed her, for it
would have confused her natural motives, without supplying any clear
ray of mental guidance. She is fulfilling the offices for which she
was born, and that with a grace of contentment, a joy of
conscientiousness, which puts her high among civilized beings. Her
delight is in order and in peace; what greater praise can be given
to any of the children of men?
The other day she told me a story of the days gone by. Her mother,
at the age of twelve, went into domestic service; but on what
conditions, think you? The girl's father, an honest labouring man,
PAID the person whose house she entered one shilling a week for her
instruction in the duties she wished to undertake. What a grinning
stare would come to the face of any labourer nowadays, who should be
asked to do the like! I no longer wonder that my housekeeper so
little resembles the average of her kind.
XVII
A day of almost continuous rain, yet for me a day of delight. I had
breakfasted, and was poring over the map of Devon (how I love a good
map!) to trace an expedition that I have in view, when a knock came
at my door, and Mrs. M. bore in a great brown-paper parcel, which I
saw at a glance must contain books. The order was sent to London a
few days ago; I had not expected to have my books so soon. With
throbbing heart I set the parcel on a clear table; eyed it whilst I
mended the fire; then took my pen-knife, and gravely, deliberately,
though with hand that trembled, began to unpack.
It is a joy to go through booksellers' catalogues, ticking here and
there a possible purchase. Formerly, when I could seldom spare
money, I kept catalogues as much as possible out of sight; now I
savour them page by page, and make a pleasant virtue of the
discretion I must needs impose upon myself. But greater still is
the happiness of unpacking volumes which one has bought without
seeing them. I am no hunter of rarities; I care nothing for first
editions and for tall copies; what I buy is literature, food for the
soul of man. The first glimpse of bindings when the inmost
protective wrapper has been folded back! The first scent of BOOKS!
The first gleam of a gilded title! Here is a work the name of which
has been known to me for half a lifetime, but which I never yet saw;
I take it reverently in my hand, gently I open it; my eyes are dim
with excitement as I glance over chapter-headings, and anticipate
the treat which awaits me. Who, more than I, has taken to heart
that sentence of the Imitatio--"In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et
nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro"?
I had in me the making of a scholar. With leisure and tranquillity
of mind, I should have amassed learning. Within the walls of a
college, I should have lived so happily, so harmlessly, my
imagination ever busy with the old world. In the introduction to
his History of France, Michelet says: "J'ai passe e cote du monde,
et j'ai pris l'histoire pour la vie." That, as I can see now, was
my true ideal; through all my battlings and miseries I have always
lived more in the past than in the present. At the time when I was
literally starving in London, when it seemed impossible that I
should ever gain a living by my pen, how many days have I spent at
the British Museum, reading as disinterestedly as if I had been
without a care! It astounds me to remember that, having breakfasted
on dry bread, and carrying in my pocket another piece of bread to
serve for dinner, I settled myself at a desk in the great Reading-
Room with books before me which by no possibility could be a source
of immediate profit. At such a time, I worked through German tomes
on Ancient Philosophy. At such a time, I read Appuleius and Lucian,
Petronius and the Greek Anthology, Diogenes Laertius and--heaven
knows what! My hunger was forgotten; the garret to which I must
return to pass the night never perturbed my thoughts. On the whole,
it seems to me something to be rather proud of; I smile approvingly
at that thin, white-faced youth. Me? My very self? No, no! He
has been dead these thirty years.
Scholarship in the high sense was denied me, and now it is too late.
Yet here am I gloating over Pausanias, and promising myself to read
every word of him. Who that has any tincture of old letters would
not like to read Pausanias, instead of mere quotations from him and
references to him? Here are the volumes of Dahn's Die Konige der
Germanen: who would not like to know all he can about the Teutonic
conquerors of Rome? And so on, and so on. To the end I shall be
reading--and forgetting. Ah, that's the worst of it! Had I at
command all the knowledge I have at any time possessed, I might call
myself a learned man. Nothing surely is so bad for the memory as
long-enduring worry, agitation, fear. I cannot preserve more than a
few fragments of what I read, yet read I shall, persistently,
rejoicingly. Would I gather erudition for a future life? Indeed,
it no longer troubles me that I forget. I have the happiness of the
passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?
XVIII
Is it I, Henry Ryecroft, who, after a night of untroubled rest, rise
unhurriedly, dress with the deliberation of an oldish man, and go
downstairs happy in the thought that I can sit reading, quietly
reading, all day long? Is it I, Henry Ryecroft, the harassed toiler
of so many a long year?
I dare not think of those I have left behind me, there in the ink-
stained world. It would make me miserable, and to what purpose?
Yet, having once looked that way, think of them I must. Oh, you
heavy-laden, who at this hour sit down to the cursed travail of the
pen; writing, not because there is something in your mind, in your
heart, which must needs be uttered, but because the pen is the only
tool you can handle, your only means of earning bread! Year after
year the number of you is multiplied; you crowd the doors of
publishers and editors, hustling, grappling, exchanging
maledictions. Oh, sorry spectacle, grotesque and heart-breaking!
Innumerable are the men and women now writing for bread, who have
not the least chance of finding in such work a permanent livelihood.
They took to writing because they knew not what else to do, or
because the literary calling tempted them by its independence and
its dazzling prizes. They will hang on to the squalid profession,
their earnings eked out by begging and borrowing, until it is too
late for them to do anything else--and then? With a lifetime of
dread experience behind me, I say that he who encourages any young
man or woman to look for his living to "literature," commits no less
than a crime. If my voice had any authority, I would cry this truth
aloud wherever men could hear. Hateful as is the struggle for life
in every form, this rough-and-tumble of the literary arena seems to
me sordid and degrading beyond all others. Oh, your prices per
thousand words! Oh, your paragraphings and your interviewings! And
oh, the black despair that awaits those down-trodden in the fray.
Last midsummer I received a circular from a typewriting person,
soliciting my custom; some one who had somehow got hold of my name,
and fancied me to be still in purgatory. This person wrote: "If
you should be in need of any extra assistance in the pressure of
your Christmas work, I hope," etc.
How otherwise could one write if addressing a shopkeeper? "The
pressure of your Christmas work"! Nay, I am too sick to laugh.
XIX
Some one, I see, is lifting up his sweet voice in praise of
Conscription. It is only at long intervals that one reads this kind
of thing in our reviews or newspapers, and I am happy in believing
that most English people are affected by it even as I am, with the
sickness of dread and of disgust. That the thing is impossible in
England, who would venture to say? Every one who can think at all
sees how slight are our safeguards against that barbaric force in
man which the privileged races have so slowly and painfully brought
into check. Democracy is full of menace to all the finer hopes of
civilization, and the revival, in not unnatural companionship with
it, of monarchic power based on militarism, makes the prospect
dubious enough. There has but to arise some Lord of Slaughter, and
the nations will be tearing at each other's throats. Let England be
imperilled, and Englishmen will fight; in such extremity there is no
choice. But what a dreary change must come upon our islanders if,
without instant danger, they bend beneath the curse of universal
soldiering! I like to think that they will guard the liberty of
their manhood even beyond the point of prudence.
A lettered German, speaking to me once of his year of military
service, told me that, had it lasted but a month or two longer, he
must have sought release in suicide. I know very well that my own
courage would not have borne me to the end of the twelvemonth;
humiliation, resentment, loathing, would have goaded me to madness.
At school we used to be "drilled" in the playground once a week; I
have but to think of it, even after forty years, and there comes
back upon me that tremor of passionate misery which, at the time,
often made me ill. The senseless routine of mechanic exercise was
in itself all but unendurable to me; I hated the standing in line,
the thrusting-out of arms and legs at a signal, the thud of feet
stamping in constrained unison. The loss of individuality seemed to
me sheer disgrace. And when, as often happened, the drill-sergeant
rebuked me for some inefficiency as I stood in line, when he
addressed me as "Number Seven!" I burned with shame and rage. I
was no longer a human being; I had become part of a machine, and my
name was "Number Seven." It used to astonish me when I had a
neighbour who went through the drill with amusement, with zealous
energy; I would gaze at the boy, and ask myself how it was possible
that he and I should feel so differently. To be sure, nearly all my
schoolfellows either enjoyed the thing, or at all events went
through it with indifference; they made friends with the sergeant,
and some were proud of walking with him "out of bounds." Left,
right! Left, right! For my own part, I think I have never hated
man as I hated that broad-shouldered, hard-visaged, brassy-voiced
fellow. Every word he spoke to me, I felt as an insult. Seeing him
in the distance, I have turned and fled, to escape the necessity of
saluting, and, still more, a quiver of the nerves which affected me
so painfully. If ever a man did me harm, it was he; harm physical
and moral. In all seriousness I believe that something of the
nervous instability from which I have suffered since boyhood is
traceable to those accursed hours of drill, and I am very sure that
I can date from the same wretched moments a fierceness of personal
pride which has been one of my most troublesome characteristics.
The disposition, of course, was there; it should have been modified,
not exacerbated.
In younger manhood it would have flattered me to think that I alone
on the school drill-ground had sensibility enough to suffer acutely.
Now I had much rather feel assured that many of my schoolfellows
were in the same mind of subdued revolt. Even of those who,
boylike, enjoyed their drill, scarce one or two, I trust, would have
welcomed in their prime of life the imposition of military servitude
upon them and their countrymen. From a certain point of view, it
would be better far that England should bleed under conquest than
that she should be saved by eager, or careless, acceptance of
Conscription. That view will not be held by the English people; but
it would be a sorry thing for England if the day came when no one of
those who love her harboured such a thought.
XX
It has occurred to me that one might define Art as: an expression,
satisfying and abiding, of the zest of life. This is applicable to
every form of Art devised by man, for, in his creative moment,
whether he produce a great drama or carve a piece of foliage in
wood, the artist is moved and inspired by supreme enjoyment of some
aspect of the world about him; an enjoyment in itself keener than
that experienced by another man, and intensified, prolonged, by the
power--which comes to him we know not how--of recording in visible
or audible form that emotion of rare vitality. Art, in some degree,
is within the scope of every human being, were he but the ploughman
who utters a few would-be melodious notes, the mere outcome of
health and strength, in the field at sunrise; he sings, or tries to,
prompted by an unusual gusto in being, and the rude stave is all his
own. Another was he, who also at the plough, sang of the daisy, of
the field-mouse, or shaped the rhythmic tale of Tam o' Shanter. Not
only had life a zest for him incalculably stronger and subtler than
that which stirs the soul of Hodge, but he uttered it in word and
music such as go to the heart of mankind, and hold a magic power for
ages.
For some years there has been a great deal of talk about Art in our
country. It began, I suspect, when the veritable artistic impulse
of the Victorian time had flagged, when the energy of a great time
was all but exhausted. Principles always become a matter of
vehement discussion when practice is at ebb. Not by taking thought
does one become an artist, or grow even an inch in that direction--
which is not at all the same as saying that he who IS an artist
cannot profit by conscious effort. Goethe (the example so often
urged by imitators unlike him in every feature of humanity) took
thought enough about his Faust; but what of those youthtime lyrics,
not the least precious of his achievements, which were scribbled as
fast as pen could go, thwartwise on the paper, because he could not
stop to set it straight? Dare I pen, even for my own eyes, the
venerable truth that an artist is born and not made? It seems not
superfluous, in times which have heard disdainful criticism of
Scott, on the ground that he had no artistic conscience, that he
scribbled without a thought of style, that he never elaborated his
scheme before beginning--as Flaubert, of course you know, invariably
did. Why, after all, has one not heard that a certain William
Shakespeare turned out his so-called works of art with something
like criminal carelessness? Is it not a fact that a bungler named
Cervantes was so little in earnest about his Art that, having in one
chapter described the stealing of Sancho's donkey, he presently, in
mere forgetfulness, shows us Sancho riding on Dapple, as if nothing
had happened? Does not one Thackeray shamelessly avow on the last
page of a grossly "subjective" novel that he had killed Lord
Farintosh's mother at one page and brought her to life again at
another? These sinners against Art are none the less among the
world's supreme artists, for they LIVED, in a sense, in a degree,
unintelligible to these critics of theirs, and their work is an
expression, satisfying and abiding, of the zest of life.
Some one, no doubt, hit upon this definition of mine long ago. It
doesn't matter; is it the less original with me? Not long since I
should have fretted over the possibility, for my living depended on
an avoidance of even seeming plagiarism. Now I am at one with Lord
Foppington, and much disposed to take pleasure in the natural
sprouts of my own wit--without troubling whether the same idea has
occurred to others. Suppose me, in total ignorance of Euclid, to
have discovered even the simplest of his geometrical demonstrations,
shall I be crestfallen when some one draws attention to the book?
These natural sprouts are, after all, the best products of our life;
it is a mere accident that they may have no value in the world's
market. One of my conscious efforts, in these days of freedom, is
to live intellectually for myself. Formerly, when in reading I came
upon anything that impressed or delighted me, down it went in my
note-book, for "use." I could not read a striking verse, or
sentence of prose, without thinking of it as an apt quotation in
something I might write--one of the evil results of a literary life.
Now that I strive to repel this habit of thought, I find myself
asking: To what end, then, do I read and remember? Surely as
foolish a question as ever man put to himself. You read for your
own pleasure, for your solace and strengthening.