Pages from a Journal with Other Papers Part 11

January 10th.--I must be still. I have learned this lesson before--that speech even to myself does harm. If I admit no conversation nor debate with myself, I certainly will not admit the chatter of outsiders. Mr.

Maxwell called again to-day. "Not a syllable on that subject," said I when he began in the usual strain. He then suggested that as this house was too large for me, and must have what he called "melancholy a.s.sociations," I should move. He had suggested this before, when my husband died. How can I leave the home to which I was brought as a bride? how can I endure the thought that strangers are in our room, or in that other room where Sophy lay? Mr. Maxwell would think it sacrilege to turn his church into an inn, and it is a worse sacrilege to me to permit the profanation of the sanctuary which has been consecrated by Love and Death. I do not know what might happen to me if I were to leave. I have been what I am through shadowy nothings which other people despise. To me they are realities and a law. I shall stay where I am. "A villa," forsooth, on the outskirts of the town! My existence would be fractured: it will at least preserve its continuity here.

Across the square I can see the house in which I was born, and I can watch the shadow of the church in the afternoon slowly crossing the churchyard. The townsfolk stand in the street and go up and down it just as they did forty years ago--not the same persons, but in a sense the same people. My brother will call me extravagant if I remain here.

He buys a horse and does not consider it extravagant, and my money is not wasted if I spend it in the only way in which it is of any value to me.

January 12th.--I had thought I could be dumb, but I cannot. My sorrow comes in rushes. I lift up my head above the waves for an instant, and immediately I am overwhelmed--"all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over me." My nights are a terror to me, and I fear for my reason. That last grip of Sophy's hand is distinctly on mine now, palpable as the pressure of a fleshly hand could be. It is strange that without any external circ.u.mstances to account for it, she and I often thought the same things at the same moment. She seemed to know instinctively what was pa.s.sing in my mind, so that I was afraid to harbour any unworthy thought, feeling sure that she would detect it. Blood of my blood was she. She said "goodbye" to me with perfect clearness, and in a quarter of an hour she had gone. In that quarter of an hour there could not be the extinction of so much. Such a creature as Sophy could not instantaneously NOT BE. I cannot believe it, but still the volume of my life here is closed, the story is at an end; what remains will be nothing but a few notes on what has gone before.

January 21st.--I went to church to-day for the first time since the funeral. Mr. Maxwell preached a dull, doctrinal sermon. Whilst my husband and Sophy lived, I was a regular attendant at church, and never thought of disputing anything I heard. It did not make much impression on me, but I accepted it, and if I had been asked whether I believed it, I should have said, "Certainly." But now a new standard of belief has been set up in me, and the word "belief" has a different meaning.

February 3rd.--Whenever I saw anything beautiful I always asked Tom or Sophy to look. Now I ask n.o.body. Early this morning, after the storm in the night, the sky cleared, and I went out about dawn through the garden up to the top of the orchard and watched the disappearance of the night in the west. The loveliness of that silent conquest was unsurpa.s.sable. Eighteen months ago I should have run indoors and have dragged Tom and Sophy back with me. I saw it alone now, and although the promise in the slow transformation of darkness to azure moved me to tears, I felt it was no promise for me.

March 1st.--Nothing that is PRESCRIBED does me any good. I cannot leave off going to church, but the support I want I must find out for myself.

Perhaps if I had been born two hundred years ago, I might have been caught by some strong enthusiastic organisation and have been a private in a great army. A miserable time is this when each man has to grope his way una.s.sisted, and all the incalculable toil of founders of churches goes for little or nothing. . . . I do not pray for any more pleasure: I ask only for strength to endure, till I can lie down and rest. I have had more rapture in a day than my neighbours and relations have had in all their lives. Tom once said to me that he would sooner have had twenty-four hours with me as his wife than youth and manhood with any other woman he ever knew. He said that, not when we were first married, but a score of years afterwards. I remember the place and the hour. It was in the garden one morning in July, just before breakfast.

It was a burning day, and ma.s.sive white clouds were forming themselves on the horizon. The storm on that day was the heaviest I recollect, and the lightning struck one of our chimneys and dashed it through the roof.

His pa.s.sion was informed with intellect, and his intellect glowed with pa.s.sion. There was nothing in him merely animal or merely rational. . .

. To endure, to endure! Can there be any endurance without a motive?

I have no motive.

March 10th.--My sister and my brother-in-law came to-day and I wished them away. Now that my husband is dead I discover that the frequent visitors to our house came to see him and not me. There must be something in me which prevents people, especially women, from being really intimate with me. To be able to make friends is a talent which I do not possess, and if those who call on me are prompted by kindness only, I would rather be without them. The only attraction towards me which I value is that which is irresistible. Perhaps I am wrong, and ought to accept with thankfulness whatever is left to me if it has any savour of goodness in it. I have no right to compare and to reject. . .

I provide myself with little maxims, and a breath comes and sweeps them away. What is permanent behind these little flickerings is black night: that is the real background of my life.

April 24th.--I have been to London, and on Easter Sunday I went to High Ma.s.s at a Roman Catholic Church. I was obliged to leave, for I was overpowered and hysterical. Were I to go often my reason might be drowned, and I might become a devotee. And yet I do not think I should.

If I could prostrate myself at a shrine I should want an answer. When I came out into the open air I saw again the PLAINNESS of the world: the skies, the sea, the fields are not in accord with incense or gorgeous ceremonies. Incense and ceremonies are beyond the facts, and to the facts we must cleave, no matter how poor and thin they may be.

May 5th.--If I am ill, I shall depend entirely on paid service. G.o.d grant I may die suddenly and not linger in imbecility. So much of me is dead that what is left is not worth preserving. Nearly everything I have done all my life has been done for love. I shall now have to act for duty's sake. It is an entire reconstruction of myself, the insertion of a new motive. I do not much believe in duty, nor, if I read my New Testament aright, did the Apostle Paul. For Jesus he would do anything. That sacred face would have drawn me whither the Law would never have driven me.

May 7th.--It is painful to me to be so completely set aside. When Tom was alive I was in the midst of the current of affairs. Few men, except Maxwell, come to the house now. My property is in the hands of trustees. Tom continually consulted me in business matters. I have nothing to look after except my house, and I sit at my window and see the stream of life pa.s.s without touching me. I cannot take up work merely for the sake of taking it up. n.o.body would value it, nor would it content me. How I used to pity my husband's uncle, Captain Charteris! He had been a sailor; he had fought the French; he had been in imminent danger of shipwreck, and from his youth upwards perpetual demands had been made upon his resources and courage. At fifty he retired, a strong, active man; and having a religious turn, he helped the curate with school-treats and visiting. He pined away and died in five years. The bank goes on. I have my dividends, but not a word reaches me about it.

October 10th.--Five months, I see, have pa.s.sed since I made an entry in my diary. What a day this is! The turf is once more soft, the trees and hedges are washed, the leaves are turning yellow and are ready to fall. I have been sitting in the garden alone, reading the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis. I must copy the closing verses. It does me good to write them.

"And Jacob charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hitt.i.te, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hitt.i.te for a possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people." There is no distress here: he gathers up his feet and departs. Perhaps our wild longings are unnatural, and yet it seems but nature NOT to be content with what contented the patriarch. Anyhow, wherever and whatever my husband and Sophy are I shall be. This at least is beyond dispute.

October 12th.--I do not wish to forget past joys, but I must simply remember them and not try to paint them. I must cut short any yearning for them.

October 20th.--We do not say the same things to ourselves with sufficient frequency. In these days of book-reading fifty fine thoughts come into our heads in a day, and the next morning are forgotten. Not one of them becomes a religion. In the Bible how few the thoughts are, and how incessantly they are repeated! If my life could be controlled by two or three divine ideas, I would burn my library. I often feel that I would sooner be a Levitical priest, supposing I believed in my office, than be familiar with all these great men whose works are stacked around me.

October 22nd.--Sometimes, especially at night, the thought not only that I personally have lost Tom and Sophy, but that the exquisite fabric of these relationships, so intricate, so delicate, so highly organised, could be cast aside, to all appearance so wastefully, is almost unendurable. . . . I went up to the moor on the top of the hill this morning, where I could see, far away, the river broaden and lose itself in the Atlantic. I lay on the heather looking through it and listening to it.

October 23rd.--The 131st Psalm came into my mind when I was on the moor again. "Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of its mother: my soul is even as a weaned child."

October 28th--Tom once said to me that reasoning is often a bad guide for us, and that loyalty to the silent Leader is true wisdom. Wesley, when he was in trouble, asked himself "whether he should fight against it by thinking, or by not thinking of it," and a wise man told him "to be still and go on." A certain blind instinct seems to carry me forward. What is it? an indication of a purpose I do not comprehend? an order given by the Commander-in-Chief which is to be obeyed although the strategy is not understood?

November 3rd.--Palmer, my maid, who has been with me ever since I began to keep house, was very good-looking at one-and-twenty. When she had been engaged to be married about a twelvemonth, she burned her face and the burn left a bad scar. Her lover found excuses for breaking off the engagement. He must have been a scoundrel, and I should like to have had him whipped with wire. She was very fond of him. She had an offer of marriage ten years afterwards, but she refused. I believe she feared lest the scar, seen every day, would make her husband loathe her. Her case is worse than mine, for she never knew such delights as mine.

She has subsisted on mere friendliness and civility. "Oh," it is suggested at once to me, "you are more sensitive than she is." How dare I say that? How hateful is the a.s.sumption of superior sensitiveness as an excuse for want of endurance!

November 4th.--Ellen Charteris, my husband's cousin, belongs to a Roman Catholic branch of the family, and is an abbess. I remember saying to her that I wondered that she and her nuns could spend such useless lives. She replied that although she and all good Catholics believe in the atonement of Christ, they also believe that works of piety in excess of what may be demanded of us, even if they are done in secret, are a set-off against the sins of the world. In this form the doctrine has not much to commend itself to me, and it is a.s.sumed that the nuns' works are pious. But in a sense it is true. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." The fall of a grain of dust is recorded.

November 7th--A kind of peace occasionally visits me. It is not the indifference begotten of time, for my husband and my child are nearer and dearer than ever to me. I care not to a.n.a.lyse it. I return to my patriarch. With Joseph before him, the father, who had refused to be comforted when he thought his son was dead, gathered up his feet into the bed and slept.

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GEORGE LUCY M.A., AND HIS G.o.dCHILD, HERMIONE RUSSELL, B.A.

My Dear Hermione,--I have sent you my little volume of verse translations into English, and you will find appended a few attempts at Latin and Greek renderings of favourite English poems. You must tell me what you think of them, and you must not spare a single blunder or inelegance. I do not expect any reviews, and if there should be none it will not matter, for I proposed to myself nothing more than my own amus.e.m.e.nt and that of my friends. I would rather have thoroughly good criticism from you than a notice, even if it were laudatory, from a magazine or a newspaper. You have worked hard at your Latin and Greek since we read Homer and Virgil, and you have had better instruction than I had at Winchester. These trifles were published about three months ago, but I purposely did not send you a copy then. You are enjoying your holiday deep in the country, and may be inclined to pardon that incurable old idler, your G.o.dfather and former tutor, for a waste of time which perhaps you would not forgive when you are teaching in London. Verse-making is out of fashion now. Goodbye. I should like to spend a week with you wandering through those Devonshire lanes if I could carry my two rooms with me and stick them in a field.

Affectionately, G. L.

My Dear G.o.dfather,--The little Musae came safely. My love to you for them, and for the pretty inscription. I positively refuse to say a single syllable on your scholarship. I have deserted my Latin and Greek, and they were never good enough to justify me in criticising yours. I have latterly turned my attention to Logic, History, and Moral Philosophy, and with the help of my degree I have obtained a situation as teacher of these sciences. I confess I do not regret the change.

They are certainly of supreme importance. There is something to be learned about them from Latin and Greek authors, but this can be obtained more easily from modern writers or translations than by the laborious study of the originals. Do not suppose I am no longer sensible to the charm of cla.s.sical art. It is wonderful, but I have come to the conclusion that the time spent on the cla.s.sics, both here and in Germany, is mostly thrown away. Take even Homer. I admit the greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but do tell me, my dear G.o.dfather, whether in this nineteenth century, when scores of urgent social problems are pressing for solution, our young people ought to give themselves up to a study of ancient legends? What, however, are Horace, Catullus, and Ovid compared with Homer? Much in them is pernicious, and there is hardly anything in them which helps us to live.

Besides, we have surely enough in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, to say nothing of the poets of this century, to satisfy the imagination of anybody. Boys spend years over the Metamorphoses or the story of the wars of AEneas, and enter life with no knowledge of the simplest facts of psychology. I look forward to a time not far distant, I hope, when our whole paedagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and Latin will then occupy the place which a.s.syrian or Egyptian hieroglyphic occupies now, and children will be directly prepared for the duties which await them.

I have in preparation a book which I expect soon to publish, ent.i.tled Positive Education. It will appear anonymously, for society being const.i.tuted as it is, I am afraid that my name on the t.i.tle-page would prevent me from finding employment. My object is to show how the moral fabric can be built up without the aid of theology or metaphysics. I profess no hostility to either, but as educational instruments I believe them to be useless. I begin with Logic as the foundation of all science, and then advance by easy steps (a) to the laws of external nature commencing with number, and (b) to the rules of conduct, reasons being given for them, with History and Biography as ill.u.s.trations. One modern foreign language, to be learned as thoroughly as it is possible to learn it in this country, will be included. I desire to banish all magic in school training. Everything taught shall be understood. It is easier, and in some respects more advantageous, not to explain, but the mischief of habituating children to bow to the unmeaning is so great that I would face any inconvenience in order to get rid of it. All kinds of objections, some of them of great weight, may be urged against me, but the question is on which side do they preponderate? Is it no objection to our present system that the simple laws most necessary to society should be grounded on something which is unintelligible, that we should be brought up in ignorance of any valid obligation to obey moral precepts, that we should be unable to give any account of the commonest physical phenomena, that we should never even notice them, that we should be unaware, for example, of the nightly change in the position of planets and stars, and that we should nevertheless busy ourselves with niceties of expression in a dead tongue, and with tales about Jupiter and Juno? For what glorious results may we not look when children from their earliest years learn that which is essential, but which now, alas!

is picked up unmethodically and by chance? I cannot help saying all this to you, for your Musae arrived just as my youngest brother came home from Winchester. He was delighted with it, for he is able to write very fair Latin and Greek. That boy is nearly eighteen. He does not know why the tides rise and fall, and has never heard that there has been any controversy as to the basis of ethics.

Your affectionate G.o.dchild, HERMIONE.

My Dear Hermione,--Your letter was something like a knock-down blow. I am sorry you have abandoned your old friends, and I felt that you intended to rebuke me for trifling. A great deal of what you say I am sure is true, but I cannot write about it. Whether Greek and Latin ought to be generally taught I am unable to decide. I am glad I learned them. My apology for my little Musae must be that it is too late to attempt to alter the habits in which I was brought up. Remember, my dear child, that I am an old bachelor with seventy years behind me last Christmas, and remember also my natural limits. I am not so old, nevertheless, that I cannot wish you G.o.d-speed in all your undertakings.

Your affectionate G.o.dfather, G. L.

My Dear G.o.dfather,--What a blunderer I am! What deplorable want of tact! If I wanted your opinion on cla.s.sical education or my scheme I surely might have found a better opportunity for requesting it. It is always the way with me. I get a thing into my head, and out it comes at the most unseasonable moment. It is almost as important that what is said should be relevant as that it should be true. Well, the mistake is made, and I cannot unmake it. I will not trouble you with another syllable--directly at any rate--about Latin and Greek, but I do want to know what you think about the exclusion of theology and metaphysics from the education of the young. I must have DEBATE, so that before publication my ideas may become clear and objections may be antic.i.p.ated.

I cannot discuss the matter with my father. You were at college with him, and you will remember his love for Aristotle, who, as I think, has enslaved him. If I may say so without offence, you are not a philosopher. You are more likely, therefore, to give a sound, unprofessional opinion. You have never had much to do with children, but this does not matter; in fact, it is rather an advantage, for actual children would have distorted your judgment. What has theology done?

It is only half-believed, and its rewards and punishments are too remote to be of practical service. They are not seen when they are most required. As to metaphysics, its propositions are too loose. They may with equal ease be affirmed or denied. Conduct cannot be controlled by what is shadowy and uncertain. We have been brought up on theology and metaphysics for centuries, and we are still at daggers drawn upon matters of life and death. We are as warlike as ever, and not a single social problem has been settled by bishops or professors. I wish to try a more direct and, as I believe, a more efficient method. I wish to see what the effect will be of teaching children from their infancy the lesson that morality and the enjoyment of life are identical; that if, for example, they lie, they lose. I should urge this on them perpetually, until at last, by a.s.sociation, lying would become impossible. Restraint which is exercised in accordance with rational principles, inasmuch as it proceeds from Nature, must be more efficacious than an external prohibition. So with other virtues. I should deduce most of them in the same way. If I could not, I should let them go, a.s.sured that we could do without them. Now, my dear G.o.dfather, do open out to me, and don't put me off.

Your affectionate G.o.dchild, HERMIONE.

My Dear Hermione,--You terrify me. These matters are really not in my way. I have never been able to tackle big questions. Unhappily for me, all questions nowadays are big. I do not see many people, as you know, and potter about in my garden from morning to night, but Mrs. Lindsay occasionally brings down her friends from London, and the subjects of conversation are so immense that I am bewildered. I admit that some people are too rich and others are too poor, and that if I could give you a vote you should have one, and that boys and girls might be better taught, but upon Socialism, Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Women, and Educational Reform, I have not a word to say. Is not this very unsatisfactory?