Part 5
But by ’71 and ’72 I began to feel that continued existence in my surroundings was becoming impossible to me. The tension and dislocation of my life was increasing, and I became aware that a crisis was approaching. In May of the former year I had taken a holiday and got away from Cambridge. In October I returned to my lecturing and College work, but not to the church duties; and all ’72 I continued on, going through the daily round—but in a torpid, perfunctory manner—feeling probably that I ought to throw it all up, yet without the pluck to do so till I was fairly forced. By the end of ’72 I was obviously ill and incapacitated, and when I asked for leave of absence for a couple of terms it was readily granted—my own object in asking (so I put it to myself) being to get quite away and for long enough to be able to estimate my position and future action fairly and deliberately.
The year ’73 was an important one for me. Feeling shattered and exhausted, and with a big holiday before me, I determined to go to Italy. It was a new life and I may almost say inspiration. I spent two months in Rome, a month in the Bay of Naples, and a month at Florence. I was alone, still alone; but the healing influences of the air and the sunshine were upon me. Amid the bright external life of the day, and the rich records and suggestions of the past, all the questions which had been tormenting me faded away. I _thought_ about them no more; but new elements came into my life which decided them for me.
The Greek sculpture had a deep effect. The other things, pictures, architecture, etc., interested me much from an historical or æsthetic point of view; but this had something more, a germinative influence on my mind, which adding itself to and corroborating the effect of Whitman’s poetry, left with me as it were the seed of new conceptions of life. The marvellous beauty and cleanliness of the human body as presented by the Greek mind, the way in which the noblest passions of the soul—the tender pitying love of Diana for Endymion, the haughty inspiration of Juno, the heroic endurance of the fallen warrior, the childlike gladness of the faun—were united and blended with the corporeal form—or rather scarcely conceived of as separated from it; the emotional atmosphere which went with this, the Greek ideal of the free and gracious life of man at one with nature and the cosmos—so remote from the current ideals of commercialism and Christianity!—to become aware of all this in the midst of that “delicate air” and delightful landscape and climate of Italy, was indeed a new departure for me.
There are magnificent fragments of Greek sculpture in the British Museum, not forgetting the priceless frieze of the Parthenon—things which to a skilled artistic eye are as suggestive as any that can be found—but to me the great range and completeness of the Italian galleries, the almost perfect Cupids, fauns, Venuses, athletes, warriors, youths, maidens, sages, gods, in unending procession under that southern sky, gave a poetic impulse which I could not, at any rate at that time, have surmised from a broken marble seen in a London fog!
Nor must I omit, as part of the Greek impression, a visit to the Temples of Pæstum—which helped to give a habitation in the mind’s eye to those strings of sculptured figures, exiles in alien Rome, and to intensify the sense of harmonious life and divine proportion which they had excited.
I stayed in Italy long enough to see, at Florence, the fireflies skim and flicker over the blossoming wheat-fields of May and June, and then returned home, to find that without worrying about it a change had taken place in my mental attitude which would make my return to the Cambridge life impossible.
And here I must not omit to mention another influence which played a large part in the shaping of my life at this time. Most men own a deep debt to women’s influence in the ordering and guidance of their lives. I cannot say that I have felt this. With the exception of my mother and one other person, I cannot remember a single case in which a woman came to me as a strong motive-force or inspiration, or as a help or a guide in doubt or difficulty. Perhaps on the emotional side women did not supply what I needed; while on the intellectual side a woman with decisive, originative, authentic mind is certainly not often to be met with. Such a woman, however, of the latter type, was the person to whom I allude, and whom I may call Olivia (which indeed was one of her Christian names).
She was a connection by marriage with one of my sisters, a woman about fifty, still retaining traces of an exceedingly handsome youth. Married, but separated from her husband; artistic to the finger-tips; brought up in Italy, and loving the South; hating everything British and Philistine and commercial; detesting the Bible and religion; she had fought her way through social odium and disability, and then through severe illness and suffering, till she was but the wreck (she used to say) of her former self. Nevertheless a remarkable fire and enthusiasm still survived in her, and though one of those natures who see everything rather violently black or white, yet the decisive artistic quality of her mind was most refreshing and inspiring. I have given some general account founded on her life and character in a separate sketch.[4] Sufficient to say here that her conversations on literature and art, her criticisms of art work (and of my own efforts), her views on marriage, on religion—though we disagreed a thousand times and often saw things from opposite points—were most helpful to me. They served to liberate my mind, corrected in many respects the native vagueness of my thought, and certainly helped me greatly on the road to choose my own way in life. I find a scrap of a letter from her, written during this period of my suffering and doubt as to my continuance at Cambridge and in the Church: “I ought not to write this morning, _caro mio_, I am too depressed. It is terrible to me to know how you suffer. Your letter last night made me cold to the finger-ends. One thing is clear anyhow, your present life is intolerable, _change it you must_.... When you get away from the depressing influence of your present life with all its worries you will breathe and clap your hands and thank God!” It is needless to say that my move to Italy and my preparations for abandoning Orders were things truly after her own heart.
And now for the first time I seriously entertained the idea of taking to literature as a profession. I saw that my Cambridge career was at an end, and that I must do something else; and for a time (though only for a short time) it appeared to me that I might make a living by writing.
I believe I felt that I really had something to write, that I must write, though certainly my mind and purpose was only vague as yet; and as to the professional side of the question, though I realized, I only partly realized, how difficult it would be to make writing of any kind ‘pay.’ There were plenty of ‘candid friends’ however to impress _that_ upon me, and I well remember the derisive chorus of the other Fellows which greeted (at some College meeting or other) the announcement of my intention! I stayed at home, at Brighton, during the summer and autumn and gathered my verses—those more careful and academic productions which I had perpetrated in the late years—together in a volume for publication. Of course no publisher would take the volume at his risk, and I was content, after a few efforts, to pay the piper myself for the pleasure of seeing the work in print, and on the chance of its leaping to a world-wide success! The book, under the title _Narcissus, and other Poems_, was published in November 1873, and needless to say fell practically dead—a few notices, mostly depreciatory, in the papers, a few copies bought by friends, and then it ceased to stir.
Nor was there any reason why it should stir. There was nothing of any moment in the book; only a vague sentiment of Nature and humanity running through, not definite enough at any point to carry weight; and really not so much of the author’s own self in it, as of his effort to reach a certain literary standard. Perhaps one of the best of the pieces, both in form and intention, was “The Artist to his Lady”: which I remember expressed in its indefinite way the dominant feeling which I had those last years, of being drawn away from my surroundings by another ideal than that which I could realize at Cambridge. Of the other pieces, “The Carpenter and the King”—an extract from an unfinished revolutionary drama of which the scene was laid in Austria and Italy in 1848—indicates a certain advance in political ideas and the germ of future developments; while “The Angel of Death and Life” contains in embryo some of the dominant conceptions of _Towards Democracy_.
It so happened that at the time of publication of _Narcissus_, in November ’73, I was at Cannes, in the South of France, whither I had gone with my sister Lizzie (to whom I was much attached) on account of her illness. I stayed two or three weeks, and then it became necessary for me to return home, in order to make preparations for and be present at our College Fellows’ meeting at Christmas. It had of course become quite imperative that I should make some distinct announcement of my intentions with regard to the future; and for my part I had now quite decided that I would relinquish my Orders, and go through the legal formalities of unfrocking myself. Sincerely I hoped that this would lead to my disappearance from Cambridge. If, before, I had recoiled from such a thought, the torpor and misery I had experienced since then had quite altered my point of view.
And in all this matter it was not by any means only the clerical difficulty that troubled me. As I have hinted before I had come to feel that the so-called intellectual life of the University was (to me at any rate) a fraud and a weariness. These everlasting discussions of theories which never came anywhere near actual life, this cheap philosophizing and ornamental cleverness, this endless book-learning, and the queer cynicism and boredom underlying—all impressed me with a sense of utter emptiness. The prospect of spending the rest of my life in that atmosphere terrified me; and as I had seemed to see already the vacuity and falsity of society life at Brighton, so in another form I seemed to see the same thing here.
And now it dawned upon me that my abandonment of Orders, instead of being a thing to be dreaded, would be my veritable deliverance, and would provide just that valid excuse for breaking with my old life, which otherwise might prove hard to find. When friends, relations, Fellows of the College, and others, were all urging upon me the folly of committing professional suicide, I felt that the argument of _conscience_—though not really to myself the final and convincing thing (since that was Necessity)—was one which I could make use of, and which I should _have_ to make use of, since every one, whether I liked it or not, would credit me with it!
I therefore, to avoid all possible lapses or failures that might ensue if I left the matter over to a personal explanation at the College meeting, _wrote_ beforehand to the Master of Trinity Hall, explaining that I had entirely made up my mind to formally relinquish my Orders, and placing my Fellowship in his hands, in accordance with what I supposed would be necessary under the circumstances. Then two or three weeks afterwards I followed in person to join in the Christmas festivities.
At that time, every year at the Christmas season, not only did all the Fellows assemble for the transaction of College business at our meetings, but there was a week of dinner-parties, with often fifty or sixty guests each evening (no women) and very serious junketings! This was, of course, in Commemoration of the Founder of the College—and with money partly left for the purpose. We sat down to dinner, a most extensive one, at six o’clock, which lasted, with the passing of the loving-cup and the serving of wine and dessert, till about eight; then we adjourned to the combination-room to take coffee and to chat for an hour; after which the elder men generally resolved themselves into whist parties, while the younger would retire in batches to college rooms in order to smoke and drink brandies and soda. Soon after ten _supper_ was served; and returning to the combination-room one found a table spread with the traditional boar’s head, supplemented by oysters, game-pie, and other little delicacies. In order to stimulate the exhausted powers, bottled stout was found useful at this period. Some of the old hands did no scant justice to the supper; others remained at the whist tables. Finally and as the _coup de grâce_, about 11.30 hot milk punch and roast apples appeared!
It was generally the duty of the younger Fellows to look after the ceremonies a little, to arrange the whist parties, invite the guests to supper, and ply them with meat and drink. I remember one evening, somewhat past midnight, finding the Mayor of Cambridge (who had been invited) by himself in a remote corner discussing a roast apple. I went and got a good big glass of milk-punch, and brought it him, saying, “Now, Mr. Mayor, I’m sure this will do you good”—but he waived it away, with a comical gesture, replying: “No, no more—I _can’t_ drink any more, thank you; but this apple is delicious!” Shortly afterwards, leaning on my arm, he was to be seen carefully descending the stairs to his carriage.
My feelings at this particular Christmas were of rather a mixed kind. As to the Fellows they were berating me of one accord for my madness in writing to the Master and practically resigning my Fellowship before it was proved needful to do so; also for my supposed Quixotism in troubling about my Orders. As to the Dean, being of course in Orders himself he made short work of the difficulty: “It is all such tomfoolery,” he said, “that it doesn’t matter whether you say you believe in it, or whether you say you don’t. Look at my sermons in chapel now—are they not models of unaffected piety! You let the matter drop, and it will all blow over.”
Among the Fellows and members of my own and other colleges with whom at that time I was often in contact were Henry Fawcett (afterwards Postmaster-General), Henry Latham (Tutor of Trinity Hall), Charles Wentworth Dilke, W. K. Clifford, George Darwin, Robert Romer (afterwards Lord Justice), Lumley Smith, Henry Fielding Dickens, Augustine Birrell, Edward Beck (present Master of Trinity Hall), and others of course. Most of these—though not all—did their best from their different points of view to dissuade me from the course I had embarked on; but I was not going to be dissuaded it was obvious to me that half-measures would be no good, and that if I wanted to make my escape from Cambridge I must throw the whole thing overboard; so underneath all the unpleasantness there was the secret satisfaction of feeling that unknown to everybody I was really going to gain a point instead of lose one!
What kind of debates they had in College meeting over my case I don’t know, for of course I was not present, but it was conveyed to me that though there was a general wish that I should stay on as before, yet if I persisted in relinquishing my Orders, it would be doubtful if I could be asked to remain in the College—owing to the scandal of the thing! As to the question whether my relinquishment of Orders should involve the loss of my fellowship, that was adjourned for the present.
So again next term I did not rejoin; but remained at home, at Brighton, occupied with another important literary project! _Moses_: a drama. Early one morning I had woken from sleep in the midst of a heavy thunderstorm, with an extraordinarily vivid conception (I don’t know how it came to be there) of Moses on the top of Sinai. Then and there I wrote out a long soliloquy (Act II. Sc. 1), which now insisted on expanding itself into a considerable poem in dramatic form—the ruling idea being to take the Bible story, treat it in a rationalistic way, as an obscure tradition of an actual event, and to show Moses as a noble but entirely human reformer, embarrassed in his great enterprise more by the apathy, stupidity and superstition of the people he desired to save than by anything else.[5]
Meanwhile through solicitors I set the ecclesiastical law in operation with a view to my unfrockment. The process takes six months for its completion. It was not necessary for me to see my Bishop again; but I had one or two gravely regretful letters from him. I spent the ‘Long’ at Cambridge—July and August—the last ‘Long’ that I spent there; and during that time received the legal document which rendered me once again a layman.
These summer vacations spent at Cambridge were the part of my university life that—even from my undergraduate days—I had most enjoyed. Chapels and lectures were in abeyance, the monotonous tyranny of boating-practice and training was unknown; a few students only were up, perhaps twenty or so at our College—but these would be the more intelligent and congenial spirits. During the long morning from nine to two one got through a lot of reading unhindered by lectures and other interruptions; then came afternoons canoeing up the river, two or three together, in the dreamy sheen of the water and the overhanging willows, or through beds of iris; or bathing; or playing fives or rackets; or walking the country lanes, or sitting long on some turfy bank with a friend. Sometimes we would make quite a party and go, a fleet of canoes, with provisions, far up the river and not return till dark. Then as a rule there were two or three hours more work in the evening, though sometimes this was broken through by some little entertainment.
What a curious romance ran through all that life—and yet on the whole, with few exceptions, how strangely unspoken it was and unexpressed! This succession of athletic and even beautiful faces and figures, what a strange magnetism they had for me, and yet all the while how insurmountable for the most part was the barrier between! It was as if a magic flame dwelt within one, burning, burning, which one could not put out, and yet whose existence one might on no account reveal.[6] How the walks under the avenues of trees at night, and by the riversides, were haunted full of visionary forms for which in the actual daylight world there seemed no place!
Yet as time went on I think it must have become clearer to me that Cambridge never would afford in this direction the actual that I wanted. Expectation grew dry at the fount, and torpor and distress in the last year or two took the place of the romance of the years before. Somehow I think I must have dimly understood that the trouble arose partly from a deep want of sympathy between myself and the whole mental attitude, mode of life, and ideals of the university, and of the gilded or silvered youth who lived and moved within it; for I remember that on the memorable journey from Cannes homewards, when I was revolving the whole situation—the abandonment of my Orders and Fellowship, the failure (as it already appeared) of my first literary venture, and the doubt of what I should or _could_ do in the future, it suddenly flashed upon me, with a vibration through my whole body, that I would and must somehow go and make my life with the mass of the people and the manual workers.
It was in pursuance of this last idea that shortly after the eventful College meeting above mentioned I went to see James Stuart at Trinity, who was just then organizing the first outlines of the University Extension Lecturing Scheme, and asked him if he could find me a place on it. He agreed to do so; and suggested that I should take the subject of Astronomy. I consented, and shortly after was appointed to begin a course of Lectures (in October 1874) at Leeds, Halifax and Skipton.
IV UNIVERSITY EXTENSION AND NORTHERN TOWNS
I sometimes think myself singularly fortunate in the way in which my dreams of life (the wildest and most unlikely) have from time to time been realized; but in this connection I have noticed two things that have generally happened—one is that the new life-purpose would come, to begin with, with great force, making me believe it was going to be realized at once, and that then it would seem to fail and almost be abandoned, and then again, some years after, it _would_ be realized. The second thing is (and this is in accordance with the general law of the “cussedness of things”) that just in the moment of the realization of the first endeavour, _another_ ideal would make itself felt, which would in some degree supersede the former.
It had come on me with great force that I would go and throw in my lot with the mass-people and the manual workers. I took up the University Extension work perhaps chiefly because it seemed to promise this result. As a matter of fact it merely brought me into the life of the commercial classes; and for seven years I served—instead of the Rachel of my heart’s desire—a Leah to whom I was not greatly attached. Nevertheless this period was of interest and useful to me. I had never been in the Northern Towns. I was profoundly ignorant of commercial life. The manners, customs, ideas, ideals, the types of people, the trades, manufactures, the dominance of Dissent, the comparative weakness of the Established Church, the absence of art, literature and science, the dirt of the towns, the rough heartiness and hospitality—all formed a strange contrast to Cambridge and Brighton.
I spent the two winters ’74–’75 and ’75–’76 at Leeds—lecturing there, and at Halifax and Skipton—living in Leeds, in lodgings—and seeing a good deal of the people (mostly ladies) who were actively engaged in promoting the Extension lectures. My subject was Astronomy. It was a curious subject for these towns where seldom a star could be seen. As far as the heavens were witness I might have told any fables. My own knowledge was derived almost entirely from books, and my pupils’ knowledge was practically limited to books. Occasionally I used to drag an evening class onto Woodhouse Moor, at Leeds, to look at the actual subjects of our discussions, but the latter generally withdrew themselves from observation! I don’t know whether this kind of learning was of much use; but it was on the same lines as most modern learning. I think the study of books educates the constructive imagination—and teaches people to figure to themselves things and situations they have never seen. That is perhaps the chief use of it. The bulk of the pupils at this time and during my later connection with the University Extension were of the “young lady” class. These were the main support of the movement, and they might be said to fall into three groups—namely, the best scholars from girls’ schools, especially some very intelligent ones from the Friends’ Schools; girls living at home and having nothing particular to do; and elder women in the same plight. These formed the great majority of the afternoon classes, and a considerable fraction of the evening classes; the remainder being elderly clerks and a few extra-intelligent young men, and a very small sprinkling of manual workers.
Though for the most part incapable of any mathematical processes, I found my students open to simple geometrical reasoning and consequently able to follow a great deal of formal Astronomy. They took a real interest in the work, which carried them on and which made the teaching a pleasure—a great pleasure in comparison with my experience of the tuition of “poll” men at Cambridge, whose dulness and distaste for their work were crushing.