Chapter 9

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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.

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April 24th.—I have been to London, and on Easter Sunday I went to High Mass 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.

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May 5th.—If I am ill, I shall depend entirely on paid service. God 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.

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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 pass without touching me. I cannot take up work merely for the sake of taking it up. Nobody 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.

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October 10th.—Five months, I see, have passed 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 Hittite, 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 Hittite 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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?

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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 assumption of superior sensitiveness as an excuse for want of endurance!

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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 assumed 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.

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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 analyse 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 GODCHILD, 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 amusement 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 godfather 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 GODFATHER,—The little _Musæ_ 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 classical art. It is wonderful, but I have come to the conclusion that the time spent on the classics, 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 godfather, 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 Æneas, 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 pædagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and Latin will then occupy the place which Assyrian 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, entitled _Positive Education_. It will appear anonymously, for society being constituted as it is, I am afraid that my name on the title-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 illustrations. 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 _Musæ_ 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 godchild, 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 _Musæ_ 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 God-speed in all your undertakings.

Your affectionate godfather, G. L.

MY DEAR GODFATHER,—What a blunderer I am! What deplorable want of tact! If I wanted your opinion on classical 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 anticipated. 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 association, 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, assured that we could do without them. Now, my dear godfather, do open out to me, and don’t put me off.

Your affectionate godchild, 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, Enfranchisement of Women, and Educational Reform, I have not a word to say. Is not this very unsatisfactory? Nobody is more willing to admit it than I am. It is so disappointing in talking to myself or to others to stop short of generalisation and to be obliged to confess that _sometimes it is and sometimes it is not_. I bless my stars that I am not a politician or a newspaper writer. When I was young these great matters, at least in our village, were not such common property as they are now. A man, even if he was a scholar, thought he had done his duty by living an honest and peaceable life. He was justified if he was kind to his neighbours and amused himself with his bees and flowers. He had no desire to be remembered for any achievement, and was content to be buried with a few tears and then to be forgotten. All Mrs. Lindsay’s folk want to do something outside their own houses or parishes which shall make their names immortal. . . . I was interrupted by a tremendous thunderstorm and hail. That wonderful rose-bush which, you will recollect, stood on the left-hand side of the garden door, has been stripped just as if it had been scourged with whips. If you have done, quite done with the Orelli you borrowed about two years ago, please let me have it. Why could you not bring it? Mrs. Lindsay was saying only the other day how glad she should be if you would stay with her for a fortnight before you return to town.

Your affectionate godfather, G. L.

MY DEAR GODFATHER,—I have sent back the Orelli. How I should love to come and to wander about the meadows with you by the river or sit in the boat with you under the willows. But I cannot, for I have promised to speak at a Woman’s Temperance Meeting next week, and in the week following I am going to read a paper called “An Educational Experiment,” before our Ethical Society. This, I think, will be interesting. I have placed my pupils in difficult historical positions, and have made them tell me what they would have done, giving the reasons. I am thus enabled to detect any weakness and to strengthen character on that side. Most of the girls are embarrassed by the conflict of motives, and I have to impress upon them the necessity in life of disregarding those which are of less importance and of prompt action on the stronger. I have classified my results in tables, so that it may be seen at a glance what impulses are most generally operative.

But to go back to your letter. I will not have you shuffle. You can say so much if you like. Talk to me just as you did when we last sat under the cedar-tree. I _must_ know your mind about theology and metaphysics.

Your affectionate godchild, HERMIONE.

MY DEAR HERMIONE,—I am sorry you could not come. I am sorry that what people call a “cause” should have kept you away. If any of your friends had been ill; if it had been a dog or a cat, I should not have cared so much. You are dreadful! Theology and metaphysics! I do not understand what they are as formal sciences. Everything seems to me theological and metaphysical. What Shakespeare says now and then carries me further than anything I have read in the system-books into which I have looked. I cannot take up a few propositions, bind them into faggots, and say, “This is theology, and that is metaphysics.” There is much “discourse of God” in a May blossom, and my admiration of it is “beyond nature,” but I am not sure upon this latter point, for I do not know in the least what φυσις or Nature is. We love justice and generosity, and hate injustice and meanness, but the origin of virtue, the life of the soul, is as much beyond me as the origin of life in a plant or animal, and I do not bother myself with trying to find it out. I do feel, however, that justice and generosity have somehow a higher authority than I or any human being can give them, and if I had children of my own this is what I should try, not exactly to teach them, but to breathe into them. I really, my dear child, dare not attempt an essay on the influence which priests and professors have had upon the world, nor am I quite clear that “shadowy” and “uncertain” mean the same thing. All ultimate facts in a sense are shadowy, but they are not uncertain. When you try to pinch them between your fingers they seem unsubstantial, but they are very real. Are you sure that you yourself stand on solid granite?

Your affectionate godfather, G. L.