Chapter 2

fruitful and stainless life. His letter to me about _Miss Bretherton_ is dated December 9, 1884. He had already come to see me about it, and there was never any critical discussion like his, for its suggestion of a hundred points of view, its flashing of unexpected lights, its witness to the depth and richness of his own artistic knowledge.

The whole thing is delicate and distinguished [he wrote me] and the reader has the pleasure and security of feeling that he is with a woman (distinctly a woman!) who knows how (rare bird!) to write. I think your idea, your situation, interesting in a high degree--But [and then come a series of most convincing "buts"! He objects strongly to the happy ending]. I wish that your actress had been carried away from Kendal [her critical lover, who worships herself, but despises her art] altogether, carried away by the current of her artistic life, the sudden growth of her power, and the excitement, the ferocity and egotism (those of the artist realizing success, I mean; I allude merely to the normal dose of those elements) which the effort to create, to "arrive" (once she had had a glimpse of her possible successes) would have brought with it. (Excuse that abominable sentence.) Isabel, the Isabel you describe, has too much to spare for Kendal--Kendal being what he is; and one doesn't feel her, see her, enough, as the pushing actress, the _cabotine_! She lapses toward him as if she were a failure, whereas you make her out a great success. No!--she wouldn't have thought so much of him at such a time as that--though very possibly she would have come back to him later.

The whole letter, indeed, is full of admirable criticism, sprung from a knowledge of life, which seemed to me, his junior by twelve years, unapproachably rich and full. But how grateful I was to him for the criticism!--how gracious and chivalrous was his whole attitude toward the writer and the book! Indeed, as I look over the bundle of letters which concern this first novel of mine, I am struck by the good fortune which brought me such mingled chastening and praise, in such long letters, from judges so generous and competent. Henry James, Walter Pater, John Morley, "Mr. Creighton" (then Emmanuel Professor at Cambridge), Cotter Morrison, Sir Henry Taylor, Edmond Scherer--they are all there. Besides the renewal of the old throb of pleasure as one reads them, one feels a sort of belated remorse that so much trouble was taken for so slight a cause! Are there similar friends nowadays to help the first steps of a writer? Or is there no leisure left in this choked life of ours?

The decisive criticism, perhaps, of all, is that of Mr. Creighton: "I find myself carried away by the delicate feeling with which the development of character is traced." But--"You wrote this book as a critic not as a creator. It is a sketch of the possible worth of criticism in an unregenerate world. This was worth doing once; but if you are going on with novels you must throw criticism overboard and let yourself go, as a partner of common joys, common sorrows, and common perplexities. There--I have told you what I think, just as I think it."

* * * * *

_Miss Bretherton_ was a trial trip, and it taught me a good deal. When it came out I had nearly finished the translation of Amiel, which appeared in 1885, and in March of that year some old friends drove me up the remote Westmorland valley of Long Sleddale, at a moment when the blackthorn made lines of white along the lanes; and from that day onward the early chapters of _Robert Elsmere_ began to shape themselves in my mind. All the main ideas of the novel were already there. Elsmere was to be the exponent of a freer faith; Catharine had been suggested by an old friend of my youth; while Langham was the fruit of my long communing with the philosophic charm and the tragic impotence of Amiel. I began the book in the early summer of 1885, and thenceforward it absorbed me until its appearance in 1888.

The year 1885, indeed, was one of expanding horizons, of many new friends, of quickened pulses generally. The vastness of London and its myriad interests seemed to be invading our life more and more. I can recall one summer afternoon, in particular, when, as I was in a hansom driving idly westward toward Hyde Park Gate, thinking of a hundred things at once, this consciousness of _intensification_, of a heightened meaning in everything--the broad street, the crowd of moving figures and carriages, the houses looking down upon it--seized upon me with a rush. "Yes, it is good--the mere living!" Joy in the infinite variety of the great city as compared with the "cloistered virtue" of Oxford; the sheer pleasure of novelty, of the kind new faces, and the social discoveries one felt opening on many sides; the delight of new perceptions, new powers in oneself--all this seemed to flower for me in those few minutes of reverie--if one can apply such a word to an experience so vivid. And meanwhile the same intensity of pleasure from nature that I had always been capable of flowed in upon me from new scenes; above all, from solitary moments at Borough Farm, in the heart of the Surrey commons, when the September heather blazed about me; or the first signs of spring were on the gorse and the budding trees; or beside some lonely pool; and always heightened now by the company of my children. It was a stage--a normal stage, in normal life. But I might have missed it so easily! The Fates were kind to us in those days.

As to the social scene, let me gather from it first a recollection of pure romance. One night at a London dinner-party I found myself sent down with a very stout gentleman, an American Colonel, who proclaimed himself an "esoteric Buddhist," and provoked in me a rapid and vehement dislike. I turned my back upon him and examined the table. Suddenly I became aware of a figure opposite to me, the figure of a young girl who seemed to me one of the most ravishing creatures I had ever seen. She was very small, and exquisitely made. Her beautiful head, with its mass of light-brown hair; the small features and delicate neck; the clear, pale skin, the lovely eyes with rather heavy lids, which gave a slight look of melancholy to the face; the grace and fire of every movement when she talked; the dreamy silence into which she sometimes fell, without a trace of awkwardness or shyness. But how vain is any mere catalogue to convey the charm of Laura Tennant--the first Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton--to those who never saw her!

I asked to be introduced to her as soon as we left the dining-room, and we spent the evening in a corner together.

I fell in love with her there and then. The rare glimpses of her that her busy life and mine allowed made one of my chief joys thenceforward, and her early death was to me--as to so many, many others!--a grief never forgotten.

The recent biography of Alfred Lyttelton--War Minister in Mr. Balfour's latest Cabinet--skilfully and beautifully done by his second wife, has conveyed to the public of thirty years later some idea of Laura's imperishable charm. And I greatly hope that it may be followed some day by a collection of her letters, for there are many in existence, and, young as she was, they would, I believe, throw much light upon a crowded moment in our national life. Laura was the fourth daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, a rich Glasgow manufacturer, and the elder sister of Mrs. Asquith. She and her sisters came upon the scene in the early 'eighties; and without any other extrinsic advantage but that of wealth, which in this particular case would not have taken them very far, they made a conquest--the younger two, Laura and Margot, in particular--of a group of men and women who formed a kind of intellectual and social _élite_; who were all of them accomplished; possessed, almost all of them, of conspicuous good looks, or of the charm that counts as much; and among whom there happened to be a remarkable proportion of men who have since made their mark on English history. My generation knew them as "The Souls." "The Souls" were envied, mocked at, caricatured, by those who were not of them. They had their follies--why not? They were young, and it was their golden day. Their dislike of convention and routine had the effect on many--and those not fools--of making convention and routine seem particularly desirable. But there was not, I think, a young man or woman admitted to their inner ranks who did not possess in some measure a certain quality very difficult to isolate and define. Perhaps, to call it "disinterestedness" comes nearest. For they were certainly no seekers after wealth, or courters of the great. It might be said, of course, that they had no occasion; they had as much birth and wealth as any one need want, among themselves. But that does not explain it. For push and greed are among the commonest faults of an aristocracy. The immortal pages of Saint Simon are there to show it. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," says the Gospel. Now the "treasure" among The Souls was, ultimately--or at least tended to be--something spiritual. The typical expression of it, at its best, is to be found in those exquisite last words left by Laura Lyttelton for her husband, which the second Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton has, as I think, so rightly published. That unique "will," which for thirty years before it appeared in print was known to a wide circle of persons, many of whom had never seen the living Laura, was the supreme expression of a quality which, in greater or lesser degree, The Souls seemed to demand of one another, and of those who wished to join their band. Yet, combined with this passion, this poetry, this religious feeling, was first the maddest delight in simple things--in open air and physical exercise; then, a headlong joy in literature, art, music, acting; a perpetual spring of fun; and a hatred of all the solemn pretenses that too often make English society a weariness.

No doubt there is something--perhaps much--to be said on the other side. But I do not intend to say it. I was never a Soul, nor could have been. I came from too different a world. But there were a certain number of persons--of whom I was one--who were their "harborers" and spectators. I found delight in watching them. They were quite a new experience to me; and I saw them dramatically, like a scene in a play, full of fresh implications and suggestions. I find in an old letter to my mother an account of an evening at 40 Grosvenor Square, where the Tennants lived.

It was not an evening party--we joined a dinner party there, after dining somewhere else. So that the rooms were empty enough to let one see the pretty creatures gathered in it, to perfection. In the large drawing-room, which is really a ball-room with a polished floor, people were dancing, or thought-reading, or making music, as it pleased them.

Mr. Balfour was there, with whom we had made friends, as fellow-guests, on a week-end visit to Oxford, not long before; Alfred Lyttelton, then in the zenith of his magnificent youth; Lord Curzon, then plain Mr. Curzon, and in the Foreign Office; Mr. Harry Gust; Mr. Rennell Rodd, now the British Ambassador in Rome, and many others--a goodly company of young men in their prime. And among the women there was a very high proportion of beauty, but especially of grace. "The half-lit room, the dresses and the beauty," says my letter, "reminded one of some _festa_ painted by Watteau or Lancret." But with what a difference! For, after all, it was English, through and through.

A little after this evening, Laura Tennant came down to spend a day at Borough Farm with the children and me. Another setting! Our principal drawing-room there in summer was a sand-pit, shaded by an old ash-tree and haunted by innumerable sand-martins. It was Ascension Day, and the commons were a dream of beauty. Our guest, I find, was to have come down "with Mr. Balfour and Mr. Burne-Jones." But in the end she came down alone; and we talked all day, sitting under hawthorns white with bloom, wandering through rushy fields ablaze with marsh marigold and orchis. She wrote to me the same evening after her return to London:

I sit with my eyes resting on the medieval purple of the sweet-breathing orchis you gave me, and my thoughts feasting on the wonderful beauty of the snowy blossom against the blue.... This has been a real Ascension Day.

Later in the year--in November--she wrote to me from Scotland--she was then twenty-one:

I am still in Scotland, but don't pity me, for I love it more than anything else in the wide world. If you could only hear the wind throwing his arm against my window, and sobbing down the glen. I think I shall never have a Lover I am so fond of as the wind. None ever serenaded me so divinely. And when I open my window wide and ask him what he wants, and tell him I am quite ready to elope with him now--this moment--he only moans and sighs thro' my outblown hair--and gives me neuralgia.... I read all day, except when I am out with my Lover, or playing with my little nephew and niece, both of whom I adore--for they are little poets. We have had a houseful ever since August, so I am delighted to get a little calm. It is so dreadful never, never to be alone--and really the housemaid would do just as well! and yet, whenever I go to my sanctum I am routed out as if I was of as much use as plums to plum pudding, and either made to play lawn-tennis or hide-and-seek, or to talk to a young man whose only idea of the Infinite is the Looking-glass. All these are the trials that attend the "young lady" of the house. Poor devil! Forgive strong language--but really my sympathy is deep.

I have, however, some really nice friends here, and am not entirely discontented. Mr. Gerald Balfour left the other day. He is very clever--and quite beautiful--like a young god. I wonder if you know him. I know you know Arthur.... Lionel Tennyson, who was also here with Gerald Balfour, has a splendid humor--witty and "fin," which is rare in England. Lord Houghton, Alfred Lyttelton, Godfrey Webb, George Curzon, the Chesterfields, the Hayters, Mary Gladstone, and a lot more have been here. I went north, too, to the land of Thule and was savagely happy. I wore no hat--no gloves--I bathed, fished, boated, climbed, and kissed the earth, and danced round a cairn. It was opposite Skye at a Heaven called Loch Ailsa.... Such beauty--such weather--such a fortnight will not come again. Perhaps it would be unjust to the crying world for one human being to have more of the Spirit of Delight; but one is glad to have tasted of the cup, and while it was in my hands I drank deeply.

I have read very little. I am hungering for a month or two's silence.

But there was another lover than the west wind waiting for this most lovable of mortals. A few days afterward she wrote to me from a house in Hampshire, where many of her particular friends were gathered, among them Alfred Lyttelton.

The conversation is pyrotechnic--and it is all quite delightful. A beautiful place--paradoxical arguments--ideals raised and shattered--temples torn and battered--temptations given way to--newspapers unread--acting--rhyming--laughing--_ad infinitum_. I wish you were here!

Six weeks afterward she was engaged to Mr. Lyttelton. She was to be married in May, and in Easter week of that year we met her in Paris, where she was buying her trousseau, enjoying it like a child, making friends with all her dressmakers, and bubbling over with fun about it. "It isn't 'dressing,'" she said, "unless you apply main force to them. What they _want_ is always--_presque pas de corsage, et pas du tout de manches!_"

One day she and Mr. Lyttelton and Mr. Balfour and one or two others came to tea with us at the Hotel Chatham to meet Victor Cherbuliez. The veteran French novelist fell in love with her, of course, and their talk--Laura's French was as spontaneous and apparently as facile as her English--kept the rest of us happy. Then she married in May, with half London to see, and Mr. Gladstone--then Prime Minister--mounted on the chair to make the wedding-speech. For by her marriage Laura became the great man's niece, since Alfred Lyttelton's mother was a sister of Mrs. Gladstone.

Then in the autumn came the hope of a child--to her who loved children so passionately. But all through the waiting time she was overshadowed by a strangely strong presentiment of death. I went to see her sometimes toward the end of it, when she was resting on her sofa in the late evening, and used to leave her listening for her husband's step, on his return from his work, her little weary face already lit up with expectation. The weeks passed, and those who loved her began to be anxious. I went down to Borough Farm in May, and there, just two years after she had sat with us under the hawthorn, I heard the news of her little son's birth, and then ten days later the news of her death.

With that death a ray of pure joy was quenched on earth. But Laura Lyttelton was not only youth and delight--she was also embodied love. I have watched her in a crowded room where everybody wanted her, quietly seek out the neglected person there, the stranger, the shy secretary or governess, and make her happy--bring her in--with an art that few noticed, because in her it was nature. When she died she left an enduring mark in the minds of many who have since governed or guided England; but she was mourned also by scores of humble folk, and by disagreeable folk whom only she befriended. Mrs. Lyttelton quotes a letter written by the young wife to her husband:

Tell me you love me and always will. Tell me, so that when I dream I may dream of Love, and when I sleep dreamless Love may be holding me in his wings, and when I wake Love may be the spirit in my feet, and when I die Love may be the Angel that takes me home.

And in the room of death, when the last silence fell on those gathered there, her sister Margot--by Laura's wish, expressed some time before--read aloud the "will," in which she spoke her inmost heart. Since its publication it belongs to those records of life and feeling which are part of our common inheritance.

"She was a flame, beautiful, dancing, ardent," writes the second Mrs. Lyttelton. "The wind of life was too fierce for such a spirit; she could not live in it."

I make no apology for dwelling on the life and earthly death of this young creature who was only known to a band--though a large band--of friends during her short years. Throughout social and literary history there have been a few apparitions like hers, which touch with peculiar force, in the hearts of men and women, the old, deep, human notes which "make us men." Youth, beauty, charm, death--they are the great themes with which all art, plastic or literary, tries to conjure. It is given to very few to handle them simply, yet sufficiently; with power, yet without sentimentality. Breathed into Laura's short life, they affected whose who knew her like the finest things in poetry.