Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography Part 5

"Know you her secret none can utter?

Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?

Still on the spire the pigeons flutter; Still by the gateway flits the gown; Still on the street, from corbel and gutter, Faces of stone look down.

Still on her spire the pigeons hover; Still by her gateway haunts the gown; Ah, but her secret? You, young lover, Drumming her old ones forth from town, Know you the secret none discover?

Tell it--when _you_ go down."

_Know you the secret none discover_--none, that is, while they still are undergraduates?

Well, I think I do; and, to begin with a negative, it is not the secret of Nirvana. There are misguided critics abroad in the land who seem to a.s.sume that life lived easily in a beautiful place, amid a society which includes all knowledge in its comprehensive survey, and far remote from the human tragedy of poverty and toil and pain, must necessarily be calm. And so, as regards the actual work and warfare of mankind, it may be. The bitter cry of starving Poplar does not very readily penetrate to the well-spread tables of Halls and Common-rooms. In a laburnum-clad villa in The Parks we can afford to reason very temperately about life in cities where five families camp in one room. But, when we leave actualities, and come to the region of thought and opinion, all the pent energy of Oxford seethes and stirs. The Hebrew word for "Prophet" comes, I believe, from a root which signifies to bubble like water on the flame; and it is just in this fervency of thought and feeling that Oxford is Prophetic. It is the tradition that in one year of the storm-tossed 'forties the subject for the Newdigate Prize Poem was Cromwell, whereas the subject for the corresponding poem at Cambridge was Plato. In that selection Oxford was true to herself. For a century at least (even if we leave out of sight her earlier convulsions) she has been the battle-field of contending sects. Her air has resounded with party-cries, and the dead bodies of the controversially slain lie thick in her streets. All the opposing forces of Church and State, of theology and politics, of philosophy and science, of literary and social and economic theory, have contended for mastery in the place which Matthew Arnold, with fine irony, described as "so unruffled by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!" Every succeeding generation of Oxford men has borne its part in these ever recurring strifes. To hold aloof from them would have been poltroonery.

Pa.s.sionately convinced (at twenty) that we had sworn ourselves for life to each cause which we espoused, we have pleaded and planned and denounced and persuaded; have struck the shrewdest blows which our strength could compa.s.s, and devised the most dangerous pitfalls for our opponents' feet which wit could suggest. Nothing came of it all, and nothing could come, except the ruin of our appointed studies and the resulting dislocation of all subsequent life. But we were obeying the irresistible impulse of the time and the place in which our lot was cast, and we were ready to risk our all upon the venture.

But now all that pa.s.sion, genuine enough while it lasted, lies far back in the past, and we learn the secret which we never discovered while as yet Oxford held us in the thick of the fight. We thought then that we were the most desperate partisans; we asked no quarter, and gave none; pushed our argumentative victories to their uttermost consequences, and made short work of a fallen foe. But, when all the old battle-cries have died out of our ears, gentler voices begin to make themselves heard. All at once we realize that a great part of our old contentions was only sound and fury and self-deception, and that, though the causes for which we strove may have been absolutely right, our opponents were not necessarily villains. In a word, we have learnt the Secret of Oxford.

All the time that we were fighting and fuming, the higher and subtler influences of the place were moulding us, unconscious though we were, to a more gracious ideal. We had really learnt to distinguish between intellectual error and moral obliquity. We could differ from another on every point of the political and theological compa.s.s, and yet in our hearts acknowledge him to be the best of all good fellows. Without surrendering a single conviction, we came to see the virtue of so stating our beliefs as to persuade and propitiate, instead of offending and alienating. We had attained to that temper which, in the sphere of thought and opinion, is a.n.a.logous to the crowning virtue of Christian charity.

"Tell it--when _you_ go down."

Not long ago I was addressing a company of Oxford undergraduates, all keenly alive to the interests and controversies of the present hour, all devotedly loyal to the tradition of Oxford as each understood it, and all with their eyes eagerly fixed on "the wistful limit of the world."

With such an audience it was inevitable to insist on the graces and benedictions which Oxford can confer, and to dwell on Mr. Gladstone's dogma that to call a man a "typically Oxford man" is to bestow the highest possible praise.

But this was not all. Something more remained to be said. It was for a speaker whose undergraduateship lay thirty years behind to state as plainly as he could his own deepest obligation to the place which had decided the course and complexion of his life. Wherever philosophical insight is combined with literary genius and personal charm, one says instinctively, "That man is, or ought to be, an Oxford man." Chiefest among the great names which Oxford ought to claim but cannot is the name of Edmund Burke; and the "Secret" on which we have been discoursing seems to be conveyed with luminous precision in his description of the ideal character:--"It is our business ... to bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen; to cultivate friendships and to incur enmities; to have both strong, but both selected--in the one to be placable, in the other immovable."

Whoso has attained to that ideal has learnt the "Secret" of Oxford.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] The Rev. J. M. Lester.

[18] Here I must depart from my rule, and mention a name--FitzRoy Stewart.

VI

HOME

"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."

WORDSWORTH, "_To a Sky-lark_."

I said good-bye to Oxford on the 17th of June, 1876. What was the next step to be? As so often in my life, the decision came through a doctor's lips. He spoke in a figure, and this is what he said. "When a man has had a severe illness, he has taken a large sum out of his capital.

Unless he has the wisdom to replace it, he must be permanently poorer; and, when the original stock was not large, the necessity of economizing becomes more urgent. You are in that case. My advice, therefore, is--Do nothing for the next two or three years. Concentrate all your efforts on getting better. Live as healthy a life as you can, and give mind and body a complete rest. If you will obey this counsel, you will find that you have replaced the capital, or, at any rate, some of it; and you may, in spite of all disabilities, be able to take your part in the life and work of the world." The prescription of total abstinence from effort exactly suited my disposition of the moment. Oxford, one way and another, had taken more out of me than till then I had realized, and I was only too thankful to have an opportunity of making good the loss.

It being, for the time, my prime object to recover some portion of health and strength, I was beyond measure fortunate in the possession of an absolutely ideal home. "'Home! Sweet Home!' Yes. That is the song that goes straight to the heart of every English man and woman. For forty years we never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing anything else.

The unhappy, decadent, Latin races have not even a word in their language by which to express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our honest, British, Protestant virtues. It is the only nursery of our Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to it our far-flung children turn, with all their memories aflame. They may lapse into rough ways, but they keep something sound at the core so long as they are faithful to the old home. There is still a tenderness in the voice, and tears are in their eyes, as they speak together of the days that can never die out of their lives, when they were at home in the old familiar places, with father and mother, in the healthy gladness of their childhood."[19] To me home was all this and even more; for not only had it been my earthly Paradise when I was a child, but now, in opening manhood, it was a sanctuary and a resting-place, in which I could prepare myself to face whatever lot the future might have in store for me.

That London as well as country may be, under certain conditions, Home, I am well aware. For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty. The State is built upon the Home, and as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London. All those educating influences which count for so much in the true home are infinitely weaker in the town than in the country. In a London home there is nothing to fascinate the eye. The contemplation of the mews and the chimney-pots through the back-windows of the nursery will not elevate even the most impressible child. There is no mystery, no dreamland, no Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built by Cubitt, or a palace of terra-cotta on the Cadogan estate. There can be no traditions of the past, no inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry, in a house which your father bought five years ago and of which the previous owners are not known to you even by name. "The Square" or "The Gardens" are sorry subst.i.tutes for the Park and the Pleasure-grounds, the Common and the Downs. Crossing-sweepers are a deserving folk, but you cannot cultivate those intimate relations with them which bind you to the lodge-keeper at home, or to the old women in the almshouses, or to the septuagenarian waggoner who has driven your father's team ever since he was ten years old. Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, or All Saints, Margaret Street, may be beautifully ornate, and the congregation what Lord Beaconsfield called "sparkling and modish"; but they can never have the romantic charm of the Village Church where you were confirmed side by side with the keeper's son, or proposed to the Vicar's daughter when you were wreathing holly round the lectern. There is a magic in the memory of a country home with which no urban a.s.sociations can compete.

Nowadays the world is perpetually on the move, but in the old days people who possessed a country house pa.s.sed nine months out of the twelve under its sacred roof--sacred because it was inseparably connected with memories of ancestry and parentage and early a.s.sociation; with marriage and children, and pure enjoyment and active benevolence and neighbourly goodwill. In a word, the country house was Home, and for those who dwelt in it the interests of life were very much bound up in the Park and the covers, the croquet-ground and the cricket-ground, the kennel, the stable, and the garden. I remember, when I was an undergraduate, lionizing some Yorkshire damsels on their first visit to Oxford, then in the "high midsummer pomps" of its beauty. But all they said was, in the pensive tone of unwilling exiles, "How beautifully the sun must be shining on the South Walk at home!"

The Village Church was a great centre of domestic affection. All the family had been christened in it. The eldest sister had been married in it. Generations of ancestry mouldered under the chancel-floor. Christmas decorations were an occasion of much innocent merriment, and a little ditty high in favour in Tractarian homes warned the decorators to be--

"Unselfish--looking not to see Proofs of their own dexterity; But quite contented that 'I' should Forgotten be in brotherhood."

Of course, whether Tractarian or Evangelical, religious people regarded church-going as a spiritual privilege; and everyone, religious or not, recognized it as a civil duty. "When a gentleman is _sur ses terres_,"

said Major Pendennis, "he must give an example to the country people; and, if I could turn a tune, I even think I should sing. The Duke of St.

David's, whom I have the honour of knowing, always sings in the country, and let me tell you it has a doosed fine effect from the Family Pew."

Before the pa.s.sion for "restoration" had set in, and ere yet Sir Gilbert Scott had transmogrified the Parish Churches of England, the Family Pew was indeed the ark and sanctuary of the territorial system--and a very comfortable ark too. It had a private entrance, a round table, a good a.s.sortment of armchairs, a fire-place, and a wood-basket. And I well remember a wash-leather glove of unusual size which was kept in the wood-basket for the greater convenience of making up the fire during divine service. "You may restore the church as much as you like," said the lay-rector of our parish, to an innovating Inc.u.mbent, "but I must insist on my Family Pew not being touched. If I had to sit in an open seat, I should never get a wink of sleep again."

A country home left its mark for all time on those who were brought up in it. The sons played cricket and went bat-fowling with the village boys, and not seldom joined with them in a poaching expedition to the paternal preserves. However popular or successful or happy a Public-school boy might be at Eton or Harrow, he counted the days till he could return to his pony and his gun, his ferrets and rat-trap and fishing-rod. In after years, amid all the toil and worry of active life, he looked back lovingly to the corner of the cover where he shot his first pheasant, or the precise spot in the middle of the Vale where he first saw a fox killed, and underwent the disgusting Baptism of Blood.

Girls, living more continuously at home, entered even more intimately into the daily life of the place. Their morning rides led them across the Village Green; their afternoon drives were often steered by the claims of this or that cottage to a visit. They were taught as soon as they could toddle never to enter a door without knocking, never to sit down without being asked, and never to call at meal-time. They knew everyone in the village--old and young; played with the babies, taught the boys in Sunday School, carried savoury messes to the old and impotent, read by the sick-beds, and brought flowers for the coffin.

Mamma knitted comforters and dispensed warm clothing, organized relief in hard winters and times of epidemic, and found places for the hobbledehoys of both s.e.xes. The pony-boy and the scullery-maid were pretty sure to be products of the village. Very likely the young-ladies'-maid was a village girl whom the doctor had p.r.o.nounced too delicate for factory or farm. I have seen an excited young groom staring his eyes out of his head at the Eton and Harrow match, and exclaiming with rapture at a good catch, "It was my young governor as 'scouted'

that. 'E's nimble, ain't he?" And I well remember an ancient stable-helper at a country house in Buckinghamshire who was called "Old Bucks," because he had never slept out of his native county, and very rarely out of his native village, and had spent his whole life in the service of one family.

Of course, when so much of the impressionable part of life was lived amid the "sweet, sincere surroundings of country life," there grew up, between the family at the Hall and the families in the village, a feeling which, in spite of our national unsentimentality, had a chivalrous and almost feudal tone. The interest of the poor in the life and doings of "The Family" was keen and genuine. The English peasant is too much a gentleman to be a flatterer, and compliments were often bestowed in very unexpected forms. "They do tell me as 'is understanding's no worse than it always were," was a ploughman's way of saying that an uncle of mine was in full possession of his faculties.

"We call 'im 'Lord Charles' because he's so old and so cunning," was another's description of a pony which had belonged to my father. "Ah, I know you're but a poor creature at the best!" was the recognized way of complimenting a lady on what she considered her bewitching and romantic delicacy.

But these eccentricities were merely verbal, and under them lay a deep vein of genuine and lasting regard. "I've lived under four dukes and four 'ousekeepers, and I'm not going to be put upon in my old age!" was the exclamation of an ancient poultry-woman, whose dignity had been offended by some irregularity touching her Christmas dinner. When the daughter of the house married and went into a far country, she was sure to find some emigrant from her old home who welcomed her with effusion, and was full of enquiries about his Lordship and her Ladyship, and Miss Pinkerton the governess, and whether Mr. Wheeler was still coachman, and who lived now at the Entrance Lodge. Whether the sons got commissions, or took ranches, or became curates in slums, or contested remote const.i.tuencies, some grinning face was sure to emerge from the crowd with "You know me, sir? Bill Juffs, as used to go birds-nesting with you"; or, "You remember my old dad, my lord? He used to shoe your black pony." When the eldest son came of age, his condescension in taking this step was hailed with genuine enthusiasm. When he came into his kingdom, there might be some grumbling if he went in for small economies, or altered old practices, or was a "hard man" on the Bench or at the Board of Guardians; but, if he went on in the good-natured old ways, the traditional loyalty was unabated. Lord Shaftesbury wrote thus about the birth of his eldest son's eldest son:--"My little village is all agog with the birth of a son and heir in the very midst of them, the first, it is believed, since 1600, when the first Lord Shaftesbury was born.

The christening yesterday was an ovation. Every cottage had flags and flowers. We had three triumphal arches; and all the people were exulting. 'He is one of us.' 'He is a fellow-villager.' 'We have now got a lord of our own.' This is really gratifying. I did not think that there remained so much of the old respect and affection between peasant and proprietor, landlord and tenant."

In the present day, if a season of financial pressure sets in, people shut up their country houses, let their shooting, cut themselves off with a sigh of relief from all the unexciting duties and simple pleasures of the Home, and take refuge from boredom in the delights of London. In London life has no duties. Little is expected of one, and nothing required.

But in old days, when people wished to economize, it was London that they deserted. They sold the "Family Mansion" in Portland Place or Eaton Square; and, if they revisited the glimpses of the social moon, they took a furnished house for six weeks in the summer; the rest of the year they spent in the country. This plan was a manifold saving. There was no rent to pay, and only very small rates, for everyone knows that country houses are shamefully under-a.s.sessed. Carriages did not require re-painting every season, and no new clothes were wanted. As the ladies in _Cranford_ said--"What can it matter what we wear here, where everyone knows who we are?" The products of the Park, the Home Farm, the hothouses, and the kitchen-garden kept the family supplied with food. A brother-magnate staying at Beaudesert with the famous Lord Anglesey waxed enthusiastic over the mutton, and, venturing on the privilege of an old friendship, asked how much it cost him. "Cost me?" screamed the hero. "Good Gad, it costs me nothing! I don't buy it. It's my own," and he was beyond measure astonished when his statistical guest proved that "his own" cost him about a guinea per pound. In another great house, conducted on strictly economical lines, it was said that the very numerous family were reared exclusively on rabbits and garden-stuff, and that their enfeebled const.i.tutions and dismal appearance in later life were due to this ascetic regimen.

People were always hospitable in the country; but rural entertaining was not a very costly business. The "three square meals and a snack," which represent the minimum requirements of the present day, are a huge development of the system which prevailed in my youth. Breakfast had already grown from the tea and coffee, and rolls and eggs, which Macaulay tells us were deemed sufficient at Holland House, to an affair of covered dishes. Luncheon-parties were sometimes given--terrible ceremonies which lasted from two to four; but the ordinary luncheon of the family was a snack from the servants' joint or the children's rice pudding; and five o'clock tea had only lately been invented. To remember, as I just can, the Foundress[20] of that divine refreshment seems like having known Stephenson or Jenner.

Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped gla.s.ses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much seriousness of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was really vinous.

Grace was said before and after dinner. There was a famous squire in Hertfordshire whose love of his dinner was constantly at war with his pietistic traditions. He always had his gla.s.s of sherry poured out before he sat down to dinner, so that he might get at it without a moment's delay. One night, in his generous eagerness, he upset the gla.s.s just as he dropped into his seat at the end of grace, and the formula ran on to an unexpected conclusion, thus: "For what we are going to receive, the Lord make us truly thankful--D--n!" But if the incongruities which attended grace before dinner were disturbing, still more so were the solemnities of the close. Grace after dinner always happened at the moment of loudest and most general conversation. For an hour and a half people had been stuffing as if their lives depended on it--"one feeding like forty." Out of the abundance of the mouth the heart speaketh, and everyone was talking at once, and very loud. Perhaps the venue was laid in a fox-hunting country, and then the air was full of such voices as these: "Were you out with the Squire to-day?" "Any sport?" "Yes, we'd rather a nice gallop." "Plenty of the animal about, I hope?" "Well, I don't know. I believe that new keeper at Boreham Wood is a vulpicide. I don't half like his looks." "What an infernal villain! A man who would shoot a fox would poison his own grandmother." "Sh! Sh!"

"What's the matter?"

"_For what we have received_," &c.

"Do you know you've been talking at the top of your voice all the time grace was going on?"

"Not really? I'm awfully sorry. But our host mumbles so, I never can make out what he's saying."

"I can't imagine why people don't have grace after dessert. I know I'm much more thankful for strawberry ice than for saddle of mutton."

And so on and so forth. On the whole, I am not sure that the abolition of grace is a sign of moral degeneracy, but I note it as a social change which I have seen.