Father Payne Part 18

I was walking one day with Father Payne; he said to me, "I have been reading Newman's _Apologia_ over again--I must have read it a dozen times! It is surely one of the most beautiful and singular books in the whole world?--and I think that the strangest sentence in it is this,--'Who would ever dream of making the world his confidant?' Did Newman, do you suppose, not realise that he had done that? And what is stranger still, did he not know that he had told the world, not the trivial things, the little tastes and fancies which anyone might hear, but the most intimate and sacred things, which a man would hardly dare to say to G.o.d upon his knees.

Newman seems to me in that book to have torn out his beating and palpitating heart, and set it in a crystal phial for all the world to gaze upon. And further, did Newman really not know that this was what he always desired to do and mostly did--to confide in the world, to tell his story as a child might tell it to a mother? It is clear to me that Newman was a man who did not only desire to be loved by a few friends, but wished everybody to love him. I will not say that he was never happy till he had told his tale, and I will not say that artist-like he loved applause: but he did _not_ wish to be hidden, and he earnestly desired to be approved. He craved to be allowed to say what he thought--it is pathetic to hear him say so often how 'fierce' he was--and yet he hated suspicion and hostility and misunderstanding: and though he loved a refined sort of quiet, he even more loved, I think, to be the centre of a fuss! I feel little doubt in my own mind that, even when he was living most retired, he wished people to be curious about what he was doing. He was one of those men who felt he had a special mission, a prophetical function. He was a dramatic creature, a performer, you know. He read the lessons like an actor: he preached like an actor; he was intensely self-conscious. Naturally enough! If you feel like a prophet, the one sign of failure is that your audience melts away."

Father Payne paused a moment, lost in thought.

"But," I said, "do you mean that Newman calculated all his effects?"

"Oh, not deliberately," said Father Payne, "but he was an artist pure and simple--he was never less by himself than when he was alone, as the old Provost of Oriel said of him. He lived dramatically by a kind of instinct.

The unselfconscious man goes his own way, and does not bother his head about other people: but Newman was not like that. When he was reading, it was always like the portrait of a student reading. That's the artist's way--he is always living in a sort of picture-frame. Why, you can see from the _Apologia_, which he wrote in a few weeks, and often, as he once said, in tears, how tenderly and eagerly he remembered all he had ever done or thought. His descriptions of himself are always romantic: he lived in memories, like all poets."

"But that gives one a disagreeable sense of unreality--of pose," I said.

"Ah, but that's very short-sighted," said Father Payne. "Newman's was a beautiful spirit--wonderfully tender-hearted, self-restrained, gentle, sensitive, beauty-loving. He loved beauty as much as any man who ever lived--beautiful conduct, beautiful life--and then his gift of expression!

There's a marvellous thing. It's pure poetry, most of the _Apologia_: look at the way he flashes into metaphor, at his exquisite pictures of persons, at his irony, his courtesy, his humour, his pathos. He and Ruskin knew exactly how to confide in the world, how to humiliate themselves gracefully in public, how to laugh at themselves, how to be gay--it's all so well-bred, so delicate! Depend upon it, that's the way to make the world love you--to tell it all about yourself like a charming child, without any boasting or bragging. The world is awfully stupid! It adores well-bred egotism. We are all deeply inquisitive about _people_; and if you can reveal yourself without vanity, and are a lovable creature, the world will overwhelm you with love. You can't pay the world a greater compliment than to open your heart to it. You must not bore it, of course, nor must you seem to be demanding its applause. You must just seem to be in need of sympathy and comfort. You must be a little sad, a little tired, a little bewildered. I don't say that is easy to do, and a man must not set out to do it. But if a man has got something childlike and innocent about him, and a nave way with him, the world will take him to its heart. The world loves to pity, to compa.s.sionate, to sympathise, much more than it loves to admire."

"But what about the religious side of it all?" I said.

"Ah," said Father Payne, "I think that is more touching still. The people who change their religion, as it is called,--there is something extremely captivating about them as a rule. To want to change your form of religion simply means that you are unhappy and uneasy. You want more beauty, or more a.s.surance, or more sympathy, or more antiquity. Have you never noticed how all converts personify their new Church in feminine terms? She becomes a Madonna, something at once motherly and young. It is the pa.s.sion with which the child turns away from what is male and rough, to the mother, the nurse, the elder sister. The convert isn't really in search of dogmas and doctrines: he is in love with a presence, a shape, something which can clasp and embrace and love him. I don't feel any real doubt of that. The man who turns away to some other form of faith wants a home. He sees the ugliness, the spite, the malice, the contentiousness of his own Church. He loathes the hardness and uncharitableness of it; he is like a boy at school sick for home. To me Newman's logic is like the effort of a man desperately constructing a bridge to escape to the other side of the river. The land beyond is like a landscape seen from a hill, a scene of woods and waters, of fields and hamlets--everything seems peaceful and idyllic there. He wants the wings of a dove, to flee away and be at rest. It is the same feeling which makes people wish to travel. When you travel, the new land is a spectacular thing--it is all a picture. It is not that you crave to live in a foreign land: you merely want the luxury of seeing life without living life. No ordinary person goes to live in Italy because he has studied the political const.i.tution and organisation of Italy, and prefers it to that of England. So, too, the charm of a religious conversion is that it doesn't seem unpatriotic to do it--but you get the feel of a new country without having to quit your own. And the essence of it is a flight from conditions which you dread and dislike. Of course Newman does not describe it so--that is all a part of his guilelessness--he speaks of the shadow of a hand upon the wall: but I don't doubt that his subconscious mind thrilled with the sense of a possible escape that way. His heart was converted long before his mind. What he hated in the English Church was having to decide for himself--he wanted to lean on something, to put himself inside a stronghold: he wanted to obey. Some people dislike the way in which he made himself obey,--the way he argued himself into holding things which were frankly irrational. But I don't mind that! It is the pleasure of the child in being told what to do instead of having to amuse itself."

He was silent for a little, and then he said: "I see it all so clearly, and yet of course it is in a sense inconceivable to me, because to my mind all the Churches have got a burden of belief which they can't carry. The Gospel is simple enough, and it is as much as I can do to live on those lines.

Besides, I don't want to obey--I want to obey as little as I can! The ecclesiastical and the theological tradition is all a world of shadows to me. I can't be bound by the pious fancies of men who knew no science, and very little about evidence of any kind. What I want is just a simple and beautiful principle of living, such as I feel thrills through the words of Christ. The Prodigal Son--that's almost enough for me! It is simplification that I want, and independence. Of course I see that if that isn't what a man wants, if he requires that something or someone should be infallible, then he does require a good deal of argument and information and history.

But though I don't object to people who want all that, it isn't what I am in search of. I want as much strong emotion and as little system as I can get. By emotion I don't mean sentiment, but real motives for acting or not acting. I want to hear someone saying, 'Come up hither,' and to see something in his face which makes me believe he sees something that I don't see and that I wish to see. I don't feel that with Newman! He is fifty times better than myself, but I couldn't do the thing in his way, though I love him with all my heart: it's a quiet sort of brotherhood that I want, and not too many rules. In fact, it is _laws_ I want, and not _rules_, and to feel the laws rather than to know them, I can't help feeling that Newman spent too much of his time in the law-court, pleading and arguing: and it's stuffy in there! But he will remain for ever one of those figures whom the world will love, because it can pity him as well as admire him. Newman goes to one's head, you know, or to one's heart! And I expect that it was exactly what he wanted to do all the time!"

XLVI

OF AFFECTION

Father Payne, on our walks, invariably stopped and spoke to animals. I will not say that animals were always fond of him, because that is a privilege confined to saints, and heroes of romantic legends. But they generally responded to his advances. It used to amuse me to hear the way he used to talk to animals. He would stop to whistle to a caged bird: "You like your little prison, don't you, sweet?" he would say. Or he would apostrophise a cat, "Well, Ma'am, you must find it wearing to carry on your expeditions all night, and to live the life of a domestic saint all day?" I asked him once why he did not keep a dog, when he was so fond of animals. "Oh, I couldn't," he said; "it is so dreadful when dogs get old and ill, and when they die! It's sentiment, too; and I can't afford to multiply emotions--there are too many as it is! Besides, there is something rather terrible to me about the affection of a dog--it's so unreasonable a devotion, and I like more critical affections--I prefer to earn affection!

I read somewhere the other day," he went on, "that it might easily be argued that the dog was a higher flight of nature even than man; that man has gone ahead in mind and inventiveness; but that the dog is on the whole the better Christian, because he does by instinct what man fails to do by intention--he is so sympathetic, so unresentful, so trustful! It is really amazing, if you come to think of it, the dog's power of attachment to another species. We must seem very mysterious to dogs, and yet they never question our right to use them as we will, while nothing shakes their love.

And then there is something wonderful in the way in which the dog, however old he is, always wants to play. Most animals part with that after their first youth; but a dog plays, partly for the fun of it, and partly to make sure that you like his company and are happy. And yet it is a little undignified to care for people like that, you know!"

"How ought one to care for people?" I said.

"Ah, that's a large question," said Father Payne, "the duty of loving--it's a contradiction in terms! To love people seems the one thing in the world you cannot do because you ought to do it; and yet to love your neighbour as yourself can't _only_ mean to behave _as if_ you loved him. And then, what does caring about people mean? It seems impossible to say. It isn't that you want anything which they can give you--it isn't that they need anything you can give them; it isn't always even that you want to see them. There are people for whom I care who rather bore me; there are people who care for me who bore me to extinction; and again there are people whose company I like for whom I don't care. It isn't always by any means that I admire the people for whom I care. I see their faults, I don't want to resemble them. Then, too, there have been people for whom I have cared very much, and wanted to please, who have not cared in the least for me. Some of the best-loved people in the world seem to have had very little love to give away! I have a sort of feeling that the people who evoke most affection are the people who have something of the child always in them--something petulant, wilful, self-absorbed, claiming sympathy and attention. It is a certain innocence and freshness that we love, I think; the quality that seems to say, 'Oh, do make me happy'; and I think that caring for people generally means just that you would like to make them happy, or that they have it in their power to make you happy. I think it is a kind of conspiracy to be happy together, if possible. Probably the mistake we make is to think it is one definite thing, when a good many things go to make it up. I have been interested in a very large number of people--in fact, I am generally interested in people; but I haven't cared for all of them, while I have cared for a good many people in whom I have not been at all interested. But it is easier to say what the qualities are that repel affection, than what the qualities are which attract it. I don't think any faults prevent it, if people are sorry for their faults and are sorry to have hurt you. It seems to me impossible to care for spiteful people, or for the people who turn on you in a sudden anger, and don't want to be forgiven, but are glad to have made you fear them. I don't care for people who claim affection as a right, or who bargain for sacrifices. The bargaining element must be wholly absent from affection. The feeling 'it is your turn to be nice' is fatal to it. No, I think that it is a feeling that you can live at peace with the particular person that is the basis of friendship. The element of reproach must be wholly absent: I don't mean the element of criticism--that can be impersonal--but the feeling 'you ought not to behave like this to me.'"

Father Payne relapsed into silence. "But," I said, "surely the people who make claims for affection are very often most beloved, even when they are unjust, inconsiderate, ill-tempered?"

"By women," said Father Payne, "but not by men--and there's another difficulty. Men and women mean such utterly different things by affection, that they can't even discuss it together. Women will do anything for you, if you claim their help, and make it clear that you need them; they will love you if you do that. A man, on the other hand, will often do his very best to help you, if you appeal to him, but he won't care for you, as a rule, in consequence. Women like emotional surprises, men do not. A man wants to get done with excitement, and to enter on an easy partnership--women like the excitement more than the ease. And then it is all complicated by the admixture of the masculine and feminine temperaments. As a rule, however, women are interested in moody temperaments, and men are bored by them. Personally, my own pleasure in meeting a real friend, or in hearing from a friend, is the pleasure of feeling 'Yes, you are there, just the same,'--it's the tranquillity that one values. The possibility of finding a man angry or pettish is unpleasant to me. I feel 'so all this nonsense has to be cleared away again!' I don't want to be questioned and scrutinised, with a sense that I am on my trial.

I don't mind an ironical letter, which shows that a friend is fully aware of my faults and foibles; but it's an end of all friendship with me if I feel a man is bent on improving me, especially if it is for his own convenience. I'm sure that the fault-finding element is fatal to affection.

That may sound weak, but I can't be made to feel that I am responsible to other people. I don't recognise anyone's right to censure me. A man may criticise me if he likes, but he mustn't impose upon me the duty of living up to his ideal. I don't believe that even G.o.d does that!"

"I don't understand," I said.

"Well," said Father Payne, "I don't believe that G.o.d says, 'This is my law, and you must obey it because I choose," I believe He says, 'This is the law, for Me as well as for you, and you will not be happy till you obey it,'--Yes, I have got it, I believe--the essence of affection is _equality_. I don't mean that you may not recognise superiorities in your friend, and he in you; but they must not come into the question of affection. Love makes equal, and when there is a real sense of equality, love can begin."

"But," I said, "the pa.s.sion of lovers--isn't that all based on the worship of something infinitely superior to oneself?"

"Yes," said Father Payne, "but that means a sight of something beyond--of the thing which we all love--beauty. I don't say that equality is the thing we love--it's only the condition of loving. The lover can't love, if he feels himself _really_ unworthy of love. He must believe that at worst he _can_ be loved, though he may be astonished at being loved; it is in love that it is possible to meet; it is love that brings beauty within your reach, or down, to your level. It is beauty that you love in your friend, not his right to improve you. He is what you want to be; and the comfort of being loved is the comfort of feeling that there is some touch of the same beauty in yourself. It is so easy to feel dreary, stupid, commonplace--and then someone appears, and you see in his glance and talk that there is, after all, some touch of the same thing in yourself which you love in him, some touch of the beauty which you love in G.o.d. But the glory of beauty is that it is concerned with being beautiful and becoming beautiful--not in mocking or despising or finding fault or improving. Love is the finding your friend beautiful in mind and heart, and the joy of being loved is the sense that you are beautiful to him--that you are equal in that! When you once know that, little quarrels and frictions do not matter--what _does_ matter is the recognising of some ugly thing which the man whom you thought was your friend really clings to and worships.

Faults do not matter if only the friend is aware of them, and ashamed of them: it is the self-conscious fault, proud of its power to wound, and using affection as the channel along which the envenomed stream may flow, which destroys affection and trust."

"Then it comes to this," I said, "that affection is a mutual recognition of beauty and a sense of equality?"

"It _is_ that, more or less, I believe," said Father Payne. "I don't mean that friends need be aware of that--you need not philosophise about your friendships--but if you ask me, as an a.n.a.lyst, what it all consists in, I believe that those are the essential elements of it--and I believe that it holds good of the dog-and-man friendship as well!"

XLVII

OF RESPECT OF PERSONS

Father Payne had been out to luncheon one day with some neighbours. He had groaned over the prospect the day before, and had complained that such goings-on unsettled him.

"Well, Father," said Rose at dinner, "so you have got through your ordeal!

Was it very bad?"

"Bad!" said Father Payne, "why should it be bad? I'm crammed with impressions--I'm a perfect mine of them."

"But you didn't like the prospect of going?" said Rose.

"No," said Father Payne, "I shrank from the strain--you phlegmatic, aristocratic people,--men-of-the-world, blases, highly-born and highly-placed,--have no conception of the strain these things are on a child of nature. You are used to such things, Rose, no doubt--you do not antic.i.p.ate a luncheon-party with a mixture of curiosity and gloom. But it is good for me to go to such affairs--it is like a waterbreak in a stream--it aerates and agitates the mind. But _you_ don't realise the amount of observation I bring to bear on such an event--the strange house, the unfamiliar food, the new inscrutable people--everything has to be observed, dealt with, if possible accounted for, and if unaccountable, then inflexibly faced and recollected. A torrent of impressions has poured in upon me--to say nothing of the anxious consideration beforehand of topics of conversation, and modes of investigation! To stay in a new house crushes me with fatigue--and even a little party like this, which seems, I daresay, to some of you, a negligible, even a tedious thing, is to me rich in far-flung experience."

"Mayn't we have the benefit of some of it?" said Rose.

"Yes," said Father Payne, "you may--you must, indeed! I am grateful to you for introducing the subject--it is more graceful than if I had simply divested myself of my impressions unsolicited."

"What was it all about?" said Rose.

"Why," said Father Payne, "the answer to that is simple enough--it was to meet an American! I know that race! Who but an American would have heard of our little experiment here, and not only wanted to know--they all do that--but positively arranged to know? Yes, he was a hard-featured man--a man of wealth, I imagine--from some place, the grotesque and extravagant name of which I could not even accurately retain, in the State of Minnesota."

"Did he want to try a similar experiment?" said Barthrop.

"He did not," said Father Payne. "I gathered that he had no such intention--but he desired to investigate ours. He was full of compliments, of information, even of rhetoric. I have seldom heard a simple case stated more emphatically, or with such continuous emphasis. My mind simply reeled before it. He pursued me as a harpooner might pursue a whale. He had the whole thing out of me in no time. He interrogated me as a corkscrew interrogates a cork. That consumed the whole of luncheon. I made a poor show. My experiment, such as it is, stood none of the tests he applied to it. It appeared to be lacking in all earnestness and zeal. I was painfully conscious of my lack of earnestness. 'Well, sir,' he said at the conclusion of my examination-in-chief, 'I seem to detect that this business of yours is conducted mainly with a view to your own entertainment, and I admit that it causes me considerable disappointment.' The fact is, my boys," said Father Payne, surveying the table, "that we must be more conscious of higher aims here, and we must put them on a more commercial footing!"

"But that was not all?" said Barthrop.

"No, it was not all," said Father Payne; "and, to tell you the truth, I was more alarmed by than interested in the Minnesota merchant. I couldn't state my case--I failed in that--and I very much doubt if I could have convinced him that there was anything in it. Indeed, he said that my conceptions of culture were not as clear-cut as he had hoped."

"He seems to have been fairly frank," said Rose.

"He was frank, but not uncivil," said Father Payne. "He did not deride my absence of definiteness, he only deplored it. But I really got more out of the subsequent talk. We adjourned to a sort of portico, a pretty place looking on to a formal garden: it was really very charmingly done--a clever fake of an, old garden, but with nothing really beautiful about it. It looked as if no one had ever lived in it, though the illusion of age was skilfully contrived--old paving-stones, old bricks, old lead vases, but all looking as if they were shy, and had only been just introduced to each other. There was no harmony of use about it. But the talk--that was the amazing thing! Such pleasant intelligent people, nice smiling women, courteous grizzled men. By Jove, there wasn't a single writer or artist or musician that they didn't seem to know intimately! It was a literary party, I gathered: but even so there was a haze of politics and society about it--vistas of politicians and personages of every kind, all known intimately, all of them quoted, everything heard and whispered in the background of events--we had no foregrounds, I can tell you, nothing second-hand, no concealments or reticences. Everyone in the world worth knowing seemed to have confided their secrets to that group. It was a privilege, I can tell you! We simply swam in influences and authenticities.

I seemed to be in the innermost shrine of the world's forces--where they get the steam up, you know!"

"But who are these people, after all?" said Rose.

"My dear Rose!" said Father Payne. "You mustn't destroy my illusions in that majestic manner! What would I not have given to be able to ask myself that question! To me they were simply the innermost circle, to whom the writers and artists of the day told their dreams, and from whom they sought encouragement and sympathy. That was enough for me. I stored my memory with anecdotes and n.o.ble names, like the man in _Pride and Prejudice_."