The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft Part 7

XXII.

For a nation of this temper, the movement towards democracy is fraught with peculiar dangers. Profoundly aristocratic in his sympathies, the Englishman has always seen in the patrician cla.s.s not merely a social, but a moral, superiority; the man of blue blood was to him a living representative of those potencies and virtues which made his ideal of the worthy life. Very significant is the cordial alliance from old time between n.o.bles and people; free, proud homage on one side answering to gallant championship on the other; both cla.s.ses working together in the cause of liberty. However great the sacrifices of the common folk for the maintenance of aristocratic power and splendour, they were gladly made; this was the Englishman's religion, his inborn _pietas_; in the depths of the dullest soul moved a perception of the ethic meaning attached to lordship. Your Lord was the privileged being endowed by descent with generous instincts, and possessed of means to show them forth in act. A poor n.o.ble was a contradiction in terms; if such a person existed, he could only be spoken of with wondering sadness, as though he were the victim of some freak of nature. The Lord was Honourable, Right Honourable; his acts, his words virtually const.i.tuted the code of honour whereby the nation lived.

In a new world, beyond the ocean, there grew up a new race, a scion of England, which shaped its life without regard to the principle of hereditary lordship; and in course of time this triumphant Republic began to shake the ideals of the Motherland. Its civilization, spite of superficial resemblances, is not English; let him who will think it superior; all one cares to say is that it has already shown in a broad picture the natural tendencies of English blood when emanc.i.p.ated from the old cult. Easy to understand that some there are who see nothing but evil in the influence of that vast commonwealth. If it has done us good, a.s.suredly the fact is not yet demonstrable. In old England, democracy is a thing so alien to our traditions and rooted sentiment that the line of its progress seems. .h.i.therto a mere track of ruin. In the very word is something from which we shrink; it seems to signify nothing less than a national apostasy, a denial of the faith in which we won our glory. The democratic Englishman is, by the laws of his own nature, in parlous case; he has lost the ideal by which he guided his rude, prodigal, domineering instincts; in place of the Right Honourable, born to n.o.ble things, he has set up the mere Plebs, born, more likely than not, for all manner of baseness. And, amid all his show of loud self-confidence, the man is haunted with misgiving.

The task before us is no light one. Can we, whilst losing the cla.s.s, retain the idea it embodied? Can we English, ever so subject to the material, liberate ourselves from that old a.s.sociation, yet guard its meaning in the sphere of spiritual life? Can we, with eyes which have ceased to look reverently on worn-out symbols, learn to select from among the grey-coated mult.i.tude, and place in reverence even higher him who "holds his patent of n.o.bility straight from Almighty G.o.d"? Upon that depends the future of England. In days gone by, our very Sn.o.b bore testimony after his fashion to our scorn of meanness; he at all events imagined himself to be imitating those who were incapable of a sordid transaction, of a plebeian compliance. But the Sn.o.b, one notes, is in the way of degeneracy; he has new exemplars; he speaks a ruder language.

Him, be sure, in one form or another, we shall have always with us, and to observe his habits is to note the tenor of the time. If he have at the back of his dim mind no living ideal which lends his foolishness a generous significance, then indeed--_videant consules_.

XXIII.

A visit from N-. He stayed with me two days, and I wish he could have stayed a third. (Beyond the third day, I am not sure that any man would be wholly welcome. My strength will bear but a certain amount of conversation, even the pleasantest, and before long I desire solitude, which is rest.)

The mere sight of N-, to say nothing of his talk, did me good. If appearances can ever be trusted, there are few men who get more enjoyment out of life. His hardships were never excessive; they did not affect his health or touch his spirits; probably he is in every way a better man for having--as he says--"gone through the mill." His recollection of the time when he had to work hard for a five-pound note, and was not always sure of getting it, obviously lends gusto to his present state of ease. I persuaded him to talk about his successes, and to give me a glimpse of their meaning in solid cash. Last Midsummer day, his receipts for the twelvemonth were more than two thousand pounds. Nothing wonderful, of course, bearing in mind what some men are making by their pen; but very good for a writer who does not address the baser throng. Two thousand pounds in a year! I gazed at him with wonder and admiration.

I have known very few prosperous men of letters; N--- represents for me the best and brightest side of literary success. Say what one will after a lifetime of disillusion, the author who earns largely by honest and capable work is among the few enviable mortals. Think of N---'s existence. No other man could do what he is doing, and he does it with ease. Two, or at most three, hours' work a day--and that by no means every day--suffices to him. Like all who write, he has his unfruitful times, his mental worries, his disappointments, but these bear no proportion to the hours of happy and effective labour. Every time I see him he looks in better health, for of late years he has taken much more exercise, and he is often travelling. He is happy in his wife and children; the thought of all the comforts and pleasures he is able to give them must be a constant joy to him; were he to die, his family is safe from want. He has friends and acquaintances as many as he desires; congenial folk gather at his table; he is welcome in pleasant houses near and far; his praise is upon the lips of all whose praise is worth having.

With all this, he has the good sense to avoid manifest dangers; he has not abandoned his privacy, and he seems to be in no danger of being spoilt by good fortune. His work is more to him than a means of earning money; he talks about a book he has in hand almost as freshly and keenly as in the old days, when his annual income was barely a couple of hundred. I note, too, that his leisure is not swamped with the publications of the day; he reads as many old books as new, and keeps many of his early enthusiasms.

He is one of the men I heartily like. That he greatly cares for me I do not suppose, but this has nothing to do with the matter; enough that he likes my society well enough to make a special journey down into Devon. I represent to him, of course, the days gone by, and for their sake he will always feel an interest in me. Being ten years my junior, he must naturally regard me as an old buffer; I notice, indeed, that he is just a little too deferential at moments. He feels a certain respect for some of my work, but thinks, I am sure, that I ceased writing none too soon--which is very true. If I had not been such a lucky fellow--if at this moment I were still toiling for bread--it is probable that he and I would see each other very seldom; for N--- has delicacy, and would shrink from bringing his high-spirited affluence face to face with Grub Street squalor and gloom; whilst I, on the other hand, should hate to think that he kept up my acquaintance from a sense of decency. As it is we are very good friends, quite unembarra.s.sed, and--for a couple of days--really enjoy the sight and hearing of each other. That I am able to give him a comfortable bedroom, and set before him an eatable dinner, flatters my pride. If I chose at any time to accept his hearty invitation, I can do so without moral twinges.

Two thousand pounds! If, at N---'s age, I had achieved that income, what would have been the result upon me? Nothing but good, I know; but what form would the good have taken? Should I have become a social man, a giver of dinners, a member of clubs? Or should I merely have begun, ten years sooner, the life I am living now? That is more likely.

In my twenties I used to say to myself: what a splendid thing it will be _when_ I am the possessor of a thousand pounds! Well, I have never possessed that sum--never anything like it--and now never shall. Yet it was not an extravagant ambition, methinks, however primitive.

As we sat in the garden dusk, the scent of our pipes mingling with that of roses, N--- said to me in a laughing tone: "Come now, tell me how you felt when you first heard of your legacy?" And I could not tell him; I had nothing to say; no vivid recollection of the moment would come back to me. I am afraid N--- thought he had been indiscreet, for he pa.s.sed quickly to another subject. Thinking it over now, I see, of course, that it would be impossible to put into words the feeling of that supreme moment of life. It was not joy that possessed me; I did not exult; I did not lose control of myself in any way. But I remember drawing one or two deep sighs, as if all at once relieved of some distressing burden or constraint. Only some hours after did I begin to feel any kind of agitation. That night I did not close my eyes; the night after I slept longer and more soundly than I remember to have done for a score of years. Once or twice in the first week I had a hysterical feeling; I scarce kept myself from shedding tears. And the strange thing is that it seems to have happened so long ago; I seem to have been a free man for many a twelvemonth, instead of only for two. Indeed, that is what I have often thought about forms of true happiness; the brief are quite as satisfying as those that last long. I wanted, before my death, to enjoy liberty from care, and repose in a place I love. That was granted me; and, had I known it only for one whole year, the sum of my enjoyment would have been no whit less than if I live to savour it for a decade.

XXIV.

The honest fellow who comes to dig in my garden is puzzled to account for my peculiarities; I often catch a look of wondering speculation in his eye when it turns upon me. It is all because I will not let him lay out flower-beds in the usual way, and make the bit of ground in front of the house really neat and ornamental. At first he put it down to meanness, but he knows by now that that cannot be the explanation. That I really prefer a garden so poor and plain that every cottager would be ashamed of it, he cannot bring himself to believe, and of course I have long since given up trying to explain myself. The good man probably concludes that too many books and the habit of solitude have somewhat affected what he would call my "reasons."

The only garden flowers I care for are the quite old-fashioned roses, sunflowers, hollyhocks, lilies and so on, and these I like to see growing as much as possible as if they were wild. Trim and symmetrical beds are my abhorrence, and most of the flowers which are put into them--hybrids with some grotesque name--Jonesia, Snooksia--hurt my eyes. On the other hand, a garden is a garden, and I would not try to introduce into it the flowers which are my solace in lanes and fields. Foxgloves, for instance--it would pain me to see them thus transplanted.

I think of foxgloves, for it is the moment of their glory. Yesterday I went to the lane which I visit every year at this time, the deep, rutty cart-track, descending between banks covered with giant fronds of the polypodium, and overhung with wych-elm and hazel, to that cool, gra.s.sy nook where the n.o.ble flowers hang on stems all but of my own height.

Nowhere have I seen finer foxgloves. I suppose they rejoice me so because of early memories--to a child it is the most impressive of wild flowers; I would walk miles any day to see a fine cl.u.s.ter, as I would to see the shining of purple loosestrife by the water edge, or white lilies floating upon the still depth.

But the gardener and I understand each other as soon as we go to the back of the house, and get among the vegetables. On that ground he finds me perfectly sane. And indeed I am not sure that the kitchen garden does not give me more pleasure than the domain of flowers. Every morning I step round before breakfast to see how things are "coming on." It is happiness to note the swelling of pods, the healthy vigour of potato plants, aye, even the shooting up of radishes and cress. This year I have a grove of Jerusalem artichokes; they are seven or eight feet high, and I seem to get vigour as I look at the stems which are all but trunks, at the great beautiful leaves. Delightful, too, are the scarlet runners, which have to be propped again and again, or they would break down under the abundance of their yield. It is a treat to me to go among them with a basket, gathering; I feel as though Nature herself showed kindness to me, in giving me such abundant food. How fresh and wholesome are the odours--especially if a shower has fallen not long ago!

I have some magnificent carrots this year--straight, clean, tapering, the colour a joy to look upon.

XXV.

For two things do my thoughts turn now and then to London. I should like to hear the long note of a master's violin, or the faultless cadence of an exquisite voice, and I should like to see pictures. Music and painting have always meant much to me; here I can enjoy them only in memory.

Of course there is the discomfort of concert-hall and exhibition-rooms.

My pleasure in the finest music would be greatly spoilt by having to sit amid a crowd, with some idiot audible on right hand or left, and the show of pictures would give me a headache in the first quarter of an hour.

_Non sum qualis eram_ when I waited several hours at the gallery door to hear Patti, and knew not a moment's fatigue to the end of the concert; or when, at the Academy, I was astonished to find that it was four o'clock, and I had forgotten food since breakfast. The truth is, I do not much enjoy anything nowadays which I cannot enjoy _alone_. It sounds morose; I imagine the comment of good people if they overheard such a confession.

Ought I, in truth, to be ashamed of it?

I always read the newspaper articles on exhibitions of pictures, and with most pleasure when the pictures are landscapes. The mere names of paintings often gladden me for a whole day--those names which bring before the mind a bit of seash.o.r.e, a riverside, a glimpse of moorland or of woods. However feeble his criticism, the journalist generally writes with appreciation of these subjects; his descriptions carry me away to all sorts of places which I shall never see again with the bodily eye, and I thank him for his unconscious magic. Much better this, after all, than really going to London and seeing the pictures themselves. They would not disappoint me; I love and honour even the least of English landscape painters; but I should try to see too many at once, and fall back into my old mood of tired grumbling at the conditions of modern life. For a year or two I have grumbled little--all the better for me.

XXVI.

Of late, I have been wishing for music. An odd chance gratified my desire.

I had to go into Exeter yesterday. I got there about sunset, transacted my business, and turned to walk home again through the warm twilight. In Southernhay, as I was pa.s.sing a house of which the ground-floor windows stood open, there sounded the notes of a piano--chords touched by a skilful hand. I checked my step, hoping, and in a minute or two the musician began to play that nocturne of Chopin which I love best--I don't know how to name it. My heart leapt. There I stood in the thickening dusk, the glorious sounds floating about me; and I trembled with very ecstasy of enjoyment. When silence came, I waited in the hope of another piece, but nothing followed, and so I went my way.

It is well for me that I cannot hear music when I will; a.s.suredly I should not have such intense pleasure as comes to me now and then by haphazard. As I walked on, forgetting all about the distance, and reaching home before I knew I was half way there, I felt grat.i.tude to my unknown benefactor--a state of mind I have often experienced in the days long gone by. It happened at times--not in my barest days, but in those of decent poverty--that some one in the house where I lodged played the piano--and how it rejoiced me when this came to pa.s.s! I say "played the piano"--a phrase that covers much. For my own part, I was very tolerant; anything that could by the largest interpretation be called music, I welcomed and was thankful; for even "five-finger exercises" I found, at moments, better than nothing. For it was when I was labouring at my desk that the notes of the instrument were grateful and helpful to me. Some men, I believe, would have been driven frantic under the circ.u.mstances; to me, anything like a musical sound always came as a G.o.dsend; it tuned my thoughts; it made the words flow. Even the street organs put me in a happy mood; I owe many a page to them--written when I should else have been sunk in bilious gloom.

More than once, too, when I was walking London streets by night, penniless and miserable, music from an open window has stayed my step, even as yesterday. Very well can I remember such a moment in Eaton Square, one night when I was going back to Chelsea, tired, hungry, racked by frustrate pa.s.sions. I had tramped miles and miles, in the hope of wearying myself so that I could sleep and forget. Then came the piano notes--I saw that there was festival in the house--and for an hour or so I revelled as none of the bidden guests could possibly be doing. And when I reached my poor lodgings, I was no longer envious nor mad with desires, but as I fell asleep I thanked the unknown mortal who had played for me, and given me peace.

XXVII.

To-day I have read _The Tempest_. It is perhaps the play that I love best, and, because I seem to myself to know it so well, I commonly pa.s.s it over in opening the book. Yet, as always in regard to Shakespeare, having read it once more, I find that my knowledge was less complete than I supposed. So it would be, live as long as one might; so it would ever be, whilst one had strength to turn the pages and a mind left to read them.

I like to believe that this was the poet's last work, that he wrote it in his home at Stratford, walking day by day in the fields which had taught his boyhood to love rural England. It is ripe fruit of the supreme imagination, perfect craft of the master hand. For a man whose life's business it has been to study the English tongue, what joy can equal that of marking the happy ease wherewith Shakespeare surpa.s.ses, in mere command of words, every achievement of those even who, apart from him, are great? I could fancy that, in _The Tempest_, he wrought with a peculiar consciousness of this power, smiling as the word of inimitable felicity, the phrase of incomparable cadence, was whispered to him by the Ariel that was his genius. He seems to sport with language, to amuse himself with new discovery of its resources. From king to beggar, men of every rank and every order of mind have spoken with his lips; he has uttered the lore of fairyland; now it pleases him to create a being neither man nor fairy, a something between brute and human nature, and to endow its purposes with words. These words, how they smack of the moist and sp.a.w.ning earth, of the life of creatures that cannot rise above the soil! We do not think of it enough; we stint our wonder because we fall short in appreciation. A miracle is worked before us, and we scarce give heed; it has become familiar to our minds as any other of nature's marvels, which we rarely pause to reflect upon.

_The Tempest_ contains the n.o.blest meditative pa.s.sage in all the plays; that which embodies Shakespeare's final view of life, and is the inevitable quotation of all who would sum the teachings of philosophy. It contains his most exquisite lyrics, his tenderest love pa.s.sages, and one glimpse of fairyland which--I cannot but think--outshines the utmost beauty of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_: Prospero's farewell to the "elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves." Again a miracle; these are things which cannot be staled by repet.i.tion. Come to them often as you will, they are ever fresh as though new minted from the brain of the poet. Being perfect, they can never droop under that satiety which arises from the perception of fault; their virtue can never be so entirely savoured as to leave no pungency of gusto for the next approach.

Among the many reasons which make me glad to have been born in England, one of the first is that I read Shakespeare in my mother tongue. If I try to imagine myself as one who cannot know him face to face, who hears him only speaking from afar, and that in accents which only through the labouring intelligence can touch the living soul, there comes upon me a sense of chill discouragement, of dreary deprivation. I am wont to think that I can read Homer, and, a.s.suredly, if any man enjoys him, it is I; but can I for a moment dream that Homer yields me all his music, that his word is to me as to him who walked by the h.e.l.lenic sh.o.r.e when h.e.l.las lived? I know that there reaches me across the vast of time no more than a faint and broken echo; I know that it would be fainter still, but for its blending with those memories of youth which are as a glimmer of the world's primeval glory. Let every land have joy of its poet; for the poet is the land itself, all its greatness and its sweetness, all that incommunicable heritage for which men live and die. As I close the book, love and reverence possess me. Whether does my full heart turn to the great Enchanter, or to the Island upon which he has laid his spell? I know not. I cannot think of them apart. In the love and reverence awakened by that voice of voices, Shakespeare and England are but one.

AUTUMN

I.

This has been a year of long sunshine. Month has followed upon month with little unkindness of the sky; I scarcely marked when July pa.s.sed into August, August into September. I should think it summer still, but that I see the lanes yellow-purfled with flowers of autumn.