Part 3
In politics he was a strong Liberal—indeed in his most active period a philosophic Radical of the Mill school, and gave strong support to Henry Fawcett during the time when the latter represented Brighton. Though occasionally asked to stand himself he never as far as I know felt inclined to do so, and indeed a certain lack of glibness and difficulty of expression which he experienced always made him disinclined from taking part in any kind of public speechifying. In his quite latest years he veered round to the support of Beaconsfield’s Government; but this, if partly due to the reactionary tendency of old age, was also caused by his keen perception of the hypocrisy (unconscious or otherwise) of Gladstone, whom in the last few years of his life he never ceased to vilify.
Almost all general literature interested my father—especially works on natural history, travels, and science of any kind; but art and music were never much in his line. Any tale of heroism, or prodigy of science would bring ready tears to his eyes; and his love of reading—as in the case of his own father—lasted to the latest years of his life; for when he was over eighty years of age he would not unfrequently sit up till one or two in the morning, conning the last new book or running over favorite passages of his philosophical authors.
In a letter of his (written in ’73) I find the following passage: “Circumstances have been leading me to think a good deal lately about Instinct. I do not see how any distinction can be drawn between what we call Instinct in the lower animals—such as the insect when she deposits eggs and then brings to the place of deposit the food needful for the support of her offspring grub, and covering them up (eggs and food) together, flies away to perish—and that power in Plants that causes them to send forth their roots often to a great distance and in a special direction, in search of the material needful for their nutriment, the mineral perhaps without which they could not live. This can only be understood, as it seems to me, upon the assumption of there being a Life, an intelligent Life, in the Plant or Insect, of which they are unconscious. Think of the Swallow going to Egypt perhaps, and then at proper season returning to its old nest under the eaves of some cottage in England. The possession of sense-organs, therefore, does not expel from the Bird or Fish this Intelligent Life within them, which orders their migrations, etc., but of which they are unconscious. And why should it be otherwise with man? That he should be conscious of this life will one day be his highest blessing.”
And in another letter (of 1876): “Surely the true meaning of Nirvana is that at some future stage of our being man will be so conscious of the indwelling and inworking of Deity, that he will ascribe every movement, whether of his body or mind, to the One Will, the One _Vernunft_, the One Life, and thus think of himself as swallowed up by and absorbed, as it were, in that Being.”
These extracts will show what a priceless debt I owe to the early contact with his mind.
How strange and far-back all that early life seems now—and yet so vivid—I can see it all in brightest detail! Of an evening, after dinner or supper, how we sat round the drawing-room table, or in scattered chairs, reading. My father would get out his Fichte or his Hartmann and soon become lost in their perusal. Occasionally he would, when he came to a striking passage, play a sort of devil’s tattoo with his fingers on the table, or, getting up, would walk to and fro quarter-deck fashion, with creaky boots, and reciting his authors to himself. Then my mother or perhaps my eldest sister would remonstrate, and after a time he would settle down again. Sometimes if he was very quiet one might look up from one’s book and see from his upturned eyes and half-open lips that he had lapsed into inner communion and meditation.
His was a very religious nature, and it was his habit to think of the divinity as clearly present—as he would say: “When I am taking my bath or even when I am breathing I say to myself, ‘This is God working within and around me.’” In later years, however, his liability to extreme worry and anxiety would return; and there were times when even his books failed to save him from the sleepless nights and despondent days occasioned by the failure or possible failure of some Stock Exchange speculation. At such times reports of railway companies, maps, gazetteers, newspaper cuttings, etc., were got out and studied and restudied; I was called in to take part in the investigations (“put in the stocks” as I used to call it), and had to sit up till the small hours of the morning in attitudes of painful suspense and tension. The troubles, however, would pass away in due time, and on the whole my father was (owing chiefly to the care and thought he gave to them) very successful over his “investments.”
The rest of the family spent the evening, as a rule, in reading—of which we were all fond. My sisters would play or sing a little; and when they ceased, the sound of the near sea would reassert itself, or the roaring of the wind in the chimney. My mother sat on a low chair, with a book on her knee and some knitting in her hands, but occasionally, tired with the work of the day, would drop asleep; at ten o’clock the servant brought up wine and biscuits, and shortly afterwards we would all—except my father—retire.
Of my mother’s life how can I say anything? That which is so vital to one, so intimate, how can one disengage it from oneself? There was an unspoken tragedy in those beautiful gazelle-like eyes—the tragedy as of dumbness itself. The tender loving spirit which beamed forth from them never found direct utterance in this world. It was the look of a prisoner. Her mother was a Scotchwoman. A baneful parental influence—Scottish pride and puritanism—had rested on my mother’s young life, making all expression of tender feeling little short of a sin; and this reserve, inculcated in youth, became in later days involuntary and inevitable. My mother had a sister to whom she was much attached, but who had offended my grandmother by marrying a man who was considered undesirable. The sister was never forgiven, nor even acknowledged again. She died soon after her marriage; and her death, with all the accompanying circumstances, was a great blow to my mother; but of it—as of other things which touched her nearly—she would never speak.
Her nature was not so much intellectual or imaginative as practical and prompt to act, with a kingly sense of duty and courage. Her life was one long self-sacrifice—first to her parents, then to her husband and children. All day and much of the night, without haste and without rest, she went about the house attending to our young wants, to my father’s comfort, and to the organization of a large household—wearing herself daily to a thinner and slighter frame, which even in age seemed by this means to maintain its activity—till at last when her children were grown up, and her husband’s growing infirmities demanded the services of a trained nurse, there came upon her the grievous sense—not the less grievous because wholly unwarranted—that she was “no longer of any use in the world.” Twice, I remember, she repeated these fatal words; and then, not long after, a brief attack of bronchitis parted easily the thread of life, already worn so fine. The manner of her death was as heroic as that of her life, with thought in lucid intervals for all around her, servants, and everybody in the house; and with closing smile, and words of calm, “All is as it should be.”
When my mother died (in January 1881) my father—who had been for the most part absorbed in business or philosophic speculations, and who had given indeed too little time to personal matters—suddenly became aware of the greatness of the loss he had sustained. He woke up from dreamland when it was too late. My mother’s silent and untiring forethought had unconsciously to himself been the great support and directing power of his life; and now he ceased not to say, “The mainspring is broken, the mainspring is broken.” His infirmities, which at eighty-three years of age were the natural ills of senile decay, rapidly gained upon him, and a year afterwards, in April 1882, he died and was laid in the same grave with her—in Hove cemetery, between the sea and the Downs, close to the little church to which, years before, we as children had trudged with these our parents every Sunday by the fields and footpaths which then separated the village of Hove from the growing West of Brighton.
My mother had very gracious manners, of gently-smiling dignity, yet her inflexible sense of truth and justice—inflexible especially as regards her own life and conduct—was easily apparent beneath the gentle exterior. Her ideas of social demarcation, etc., were of course of the old school; and she looked upon it quite as a duty to keep up a certain position in society—as the phrase is. Indeed, though much of the social life of Brighton was in reality irksome to her, I think that she never questioned the duty of conforming to it. But then—unlike many modern mistresses—she never questioned the duty of attending to the wants of dependents; and her care for the interests of the household servants, and others whom misfortune might bring to her door, was most unfailing and most sincere. The servants in fact were as a rule much devoted to her—though she was by no means lax in matters of discipline and daily superintendence.
A great feature of my mother’s character was her love of animals, especially dogs and horses. Outdoor and garden occupations she was also fond of—and I believe her natural inclination would have led her to a rural life. But Brighton offered nothing in this direction—and here again the promptings of her nature were destined only to be thwarted.
III CAMBRIDGE
Between school and College days I went to Germany for some months. I was already nineteen when I left school, full old enough to go to College, but it did not seem to be decided what was to become of me. I inclined to go into Orders. Possibly my father, dreading this, thought Heidelberg would be an antidote! At any rate I could learn German there. So off I went, lodged with a professor and his Frau for five months, wandered through the woods and over the hills of Heidelberg, heard Bunsen and Kirchhoff lecture on Physics and Chemistry, attended the English church on Sundays, and ate sausages with the Professor and his friends on weekdays. An odd secluded life, seeing but little of the Germans and less of the English, what I chiefly remember of it is those long moony rambles through the woods—not very clearly thinking about anything that I can make out, but wondering, and just waiting—and every now and then chancing in some secluded glade or gorgeous sunset scene upon something that caught my breath and held me still. Indeed on one occasion I perpetrated some rhymes in German about the Neckar—the first verses that I ever wrote. The Professor and his wife chaffed me about my odd ways. I even wore a tall hat to the English church on Sundays! He argued with me about the Bible and about the idiotic habits of my countrymen and women. I resisted his arguments, but secretly they touched me. Ultimately I gave up attending the church, and became so disgusted with my tall hat that when I returned to England I placed it in my carpet-bag! So I learned something besides German at Heidelberg.
Then came Cambridge. When my father after some hesitation consented to let me go to Cambridge, and asked me which College I would prefer, I said “Trinity Hall,” and for my reason that it was a _gentlemanly_ college. My father laughed, as he certainly was justified in doing—and I can only wonder now what sort of animal I was then. At any rate the answer shows that notwithstanding all my sufferings at Brighton I had not yet realized what was the true cause of them. There were however other reasons for my choice. One was that Romer, the last Senior Wrangler, was a “Hall” man; the other was that the same College was now Head of the River. Both events had brought Trinity Hall into notice.
So thither I went, and found myself immediately in the thick of a boating set. The whole College was given up to boating. Not to row or help in the rowing in some way or other was rank apostasy. A few might read besides, and a few—a dozen or two at most—did so. I boated and talked boating slang; was made stroke of the second boat, and it went down several places; became Secretary of the Boat Club; and for two years wore out the seat of my breeches and the cuticle beneath with incessant aquatic service. At the end of that time I got sadly bored with the business, and gave it up. Indeed I was obliged to give it up; for reading pretty hard for my degree, as I was later on, the two strains together were too much, and my health was breaking down. But so far perhaps boating had not been a bad thing. It was healthy exercise, and brought me in with healthy muscular companions who bothered their heads about no abstruse problems, and for the most part rarely read a book. Fives and rackets too occupied some of my time; but in athletic sports I was not so successful as I had been at school. At Brighton I had been a good high-jumper, having cleared 5 ft. 3 or 4, a good height in those days—but at Cambridge, probably owing to the relaxing quality of the air, I failed to make any mark. Thus, with games and wine parties and boat suppers, life slid easily onward.
Certainly nothing could be more unlike what I had expected. I had imagined a university where folk would talk Latin naturally and where I, lamely taught at school and late coming from loafing in Germany, would be an outcast and an object of contumely. I found myself at the end of the first term easily head of my year in the College examinations. Myself and another. He, Yate, was the son of a country doctor—keen on boating, but a fellow of some originality and thought as well and of singular gentleness and candour. A friendship sprang up between us; and for the next year or two we were always together. In examination honours (such as they were) we were quits, and it was sincerely I believe a matter of indifference to both of us which might win the prize. Then he fell ill of rheumatic fever, and ultimately died without taking his degree—my first experience of loss of this kind.
Other friends of this period were Ernest Gray—a very dear and affectionate creature who afterwards became the Vicar and very fatherly pastor of a country parish; Harry Spedding, son of Anthony Spedding of Bassenthwaite, and nephew of James Spedding of Baconian fame; and Francis Hyett of Painswick, who afterwards became my brother-in-law. Harry Spedding was one of those extraordinary beings who though quite unable to row himself cherished an immense enthusiasm for boating. Long and thin and weak-chested, hard work in the boats would probably have been fatal to him, but on the banks, running beside the boats and cheering the crews in the races, his pluck and lively humour never failed. Hyett did not take to the river, but kept to racquets and his law-studies, and was really one of the few undergraduates who took any interest in political affairs. In later years he has done much administrative and literary work in connection with his own county.
In coming up to Cambridge it had never occurred to me at the outset to go in for an honour degree; my opinion of the university was too high for that. But after a term or two the tutor to my surprise seriously recommended me to read for the mathematical tripos. I was of course frightfully behindhand in my subjects, but I took a private ‘coach,’ went through the routine of cram, and ultimately obtained a fellowship.
Mathematics interested me and I read them with a good deal of pleasure—but I have sometimes regretted that three years of my life should have been—as far as study was concerned—nearly entirely absorbed by so special and on the whole so unfruitful a subject. I think every boy (and girl) ought to learn some Geometry and Mechanics; without these the mind lacks form and definiteness, and its grip on the external world is not as strong as it should be; but the higher mathematics (certainly as they are read at Cambridge) are for the most part a mere gymnastic exercise unapplied to actual life and facts, and easily liable to become unhealthy, as all such exercises are.
After my degree, though retaining a certain general interest in the subject, I never again opened a mathematical book with the intention of seriously pursuing its study. I worked however at one time on “Taylor’s theorem” in the Differential Calculus, with the object of finding a simpler and more direct proof than Homersham Cox’s (the one usually adopted). But not being able to complete the proof, I handed it over to my friend Robert Muirhead, who has adopted and worked it to its conclusion in a contribution to the Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (Vol. 12, Session 1893–4).
It was just about this time of my degree (and curiously late) that my attention began to be turned towards literary production. I had won as an undergraduate—and to my surprise—two College prizes for English Essays (one, by the way, on Civilization); and shortly after my degree, in 1870, I was awarded a university prize (the Burney), £100, for an essay on “The Religious Influence of Art.” Meanwhile I kept scribbling, just for my own satisfaction, quantities of verse, very formless and incoherent—but which formed an outlet for my own feelings in the absence of any more tangible way of expressing them.
How well I remember going down, as I so frequently did, alone to the riverside at night, amid the hushed reserve and quiet grace of the old College gardens, and pouring my little soul out to the silent trees and clouds and waters! I don’t know what kind of longing it was—something partly sexual, partly religious, and both, owing to my strangely slow-growing temperament, still very obscure and undefined; but anyhow it was something that brooded about and enveloped my life, and makes those hours still stand out for me as the most pregnant of my then existence.
Here are some verses (written in ’68) which I give as a specimen of the kind of thought and the half-formed emotional atmosphere in which I brooded, as well as of their juvenile style.
O pale and wan with watching, starless night! Far, far beyond thy cloudy banks Pass and repass in serried ranks The flaming watchfires of the infinite— Gliding and streaming through the realm of space In breathless adoration round The burning throne whose base profound Knoweth no resting-place.
To thy deep silence through the moving years Cometh no cry of misery, No sound of all the things that be, Upborne from this dark field of feverish tears; But all the myriad worlds thou dost enfold Move on before their Monarch hushed, And, looking forth, my soul is crushed Beneath a weight untold.
O great Humanity, that liest spread Beneath the gaze of the sleepless night, Who is there who will dare to fight To raise the tresses of thy drooping head? Who cares through the immensity of suns? Which of the angels shall arise? Oh! heavy and dark the burden lies On all thy noblest ones.
Far off the morning stars may shout and sing, For there is Love and Joy and Peace, And Life—true life that cannot cease— But here the ghastly shuddering of Death’s wing. And here faint whispers only come to die Upon the threshold of our hearts, Voices at which the sad soul starts With a half-uttered sigh.
O hanging cloud, O scarcely stirring trees, O velvet waters moved to sound By the gliding fishes’ bound, O Willow, whispering to the fitful breeze, O gentle touch of the sweet summer air, O solitary owl, alone, Nursing thy joy in low weird tone Within thy leafy lair!
O one and all, unveil! and let us see The flaming soul of world-wide Love Burning behind you, far above, Beneath, deep-fountained life, strange mystery! Unveil! O night that washest Earth’s dark shore, O suns, through space that ever roll, O Love, clasping us body and soul For evermore!
Curiously enough, as it happened, I was practically offered a Fellowship before I took my degree. The College was in want of an assistant Lecturer. There were three clerical Fellowships (the others being connected with the Bar as a profession), and one of these clerical Fellowships had lately become vacant by Leslie Stephen, who held it, relinquishing his Orders. It was understood that I was going into the Church; it seemed probable that I should take a fair degree; and for the rest, who could be found so suitable—so mild, so docile, so decently mannered and generally unaggressive—as the young man in question! Accordingly one day the tutor (Henry Latham) sounded me on the subject. I conveyed to him that I had not changed my intention of being ordained, and that I rather liked the prospect of staying on at Cambridge in connection with the College; and it became practically understood that if things turned out favorably that should be my destiny.
And things turned out accordingly. In the Mathematical Tripos of 1868 I came out tenth wrangler, which was a sufficiently high degree to justify a Fellowship at a small College; and in the autumn of that year I came into residence at Trinity Hall as a Lecturer; shortly afterwards I was elected to a clerical Fellowship; and in June ’69 I was ordained Deacon by the Bishop of Ely.
The story of my connection with the Church may be soon told. Brought up in the philosophical Broad Churchism of my father, with an ever-expanding horizon, my mind had at no time undergone any revulsion of feeling such as could be called a religious crisis; no sense of antagonism to the Church and its teachings had been developed. Though quite aware that my opinions were vastly different from those of the ordinary Churchman, I perhaps hardly appreciated _how_ far I had drifted; and with an easy faith in progress, such as I had, it seemed to me that anyhow in a few years the Church, widening and growing from within, would become adapted to the times, and be a perfectly habitable and a useful institution.
As soon as I was ordained I had services in the College Chapel to read, and sermons to preach—with the usual accompaniment of winks and grins from the fellow-students, shufflings of hassocks, racings half-dressed through the prayers on winter mornings, with clicks of watches timing the performance, and all the gaping signs of unconcealed boredom; but I thought I would like to see something more satisfactory and more definite in the way of Church work than that, and accordingly took a curacy at St. Edward’s under a dry evangelical of the steel-knife and lemon-juice type, named Pearson.