Part 2

At the same time if there is trouble in any house, no matter of what kind, she goes there straight by instinct, and has none of the dread of emotional scenes which make so many of us cowards in the presence of sorrow and suffering. I do not think she feels any duty about it, but it is as natural and spontaneous for her to go as it is for most of us to desire to keep away. A shrewd woman of the village, a labourer’s wife, whom my mother had seen through a dreadful tragedy a year or two before, once said in reply to a question of mine, “It isn’t as if her ladyship said or did more than any one else—every one was kind to us—but she used to come in and sit with me and look at me, and after a little I used to feel that it was all right.”

She manages the household with less expenditure of trouble than I have ever seen. Our servants never seem to leave us; they are paid what many people would call absurdly high wages, but I do not think that is the attraction. My mother does not see very much of them, and finds fault, when rarely necessary, with a simple directness which I have in vain tried to emulate; but her displeasure is so impersonal that there seems to be no sting in it. It is not that they have failed in their duty to herself, but they have been untrue to the larger duty to which she is herself obedient.

She never seems to labour under any strong sense of the imperative duty of philanthropic activity—indeed it is hard to say how her days are filled—but in her simplicity, her unselfishness, her quiet acceptance of the conditions of life, her tranquillity and her devoted lovingness she seems to me the best Christian I have ever seen, and to come nearest to the ideals of Christ. But, though a large part of her large income is spent in unostentatious benevolence, she would think it preposterous if it were suggested to her that Christianity demanded an absolute sacrifice of worldly possessions. Yet she sets no store on comfort or the evidences of wealth; she simply accepts them, and has a strong instinctive feeling of stewardship.

I cannot help thinking that such women are becoming rarer; and yet it is hard to believe that they can ever have been other than rare.

6

I gratefully acknowledge the constant presence of an element in my life which for want of a better name I will call the sense of beauty. I mean by that the unaccountable thrill of emotion by which one is sometimes surprised, often quite suddenly and unexpectedly; this sense of wonder, which darts upon the mind with an almost physical sensation, seems to come in two different ways. With some, the majority I believe, it originates entirely in personal relations with other human beings and is known as love; with others it arises over a larger region, and is inspired by a sudden perception of some incommunicable beauty in a flower, a scent, a view, a picture, a poem. Those in whom the latter sense predominates are, I think, less apt to be affected by human relationships, but pass through the world in a certain solitary and wistful mood, with perhaps more wide and general sources of happiness but less liable to be stirred to the depths of their being by a friendship or a passion. To take typical examples of such a class I conceive that Wordsworth and William Morris were instances. Wordsworth derived, I believe, his highest inspiration from the solemn dignities of nature, in her most stupendous and majestic forms; while to Morris belonged that power, which amounted in him to positive genius, for seeing beauty in the most homely and simple things.

[Sidenote: BEAUTY AND MYSTERY]

I was myself haunted from a very early date by the sense of beauty and mystery, though not for many years could I give it a name; but I have found in my case that it originated as a rule in some minute effect of natural things. I have seen some of the wildest and most astounding natural prospects in Europe; I have climbed high rocky peaks and threaded mountain solitudes, but some overshadowing of horror and awe has robbed emotion of its most intimate joy; and I have always found myself more thrilled by some tranquil vignette—the moon rising through a forest glade, a red sunset between the boughs of pines, the crisping wave of some broken eddy, the “green-dense and dim-delicious” depth of a woodland pool, the weathered gables of an ancient manor, an orchard white with the snows of spring—than I have ever been by the sight of the most solemn mountain-head or the furious breakers of some uncontrolled tide.

Two or three of these sacred sights I may venture to describe, taking them at random out of the treasure-house of memory; two belong to my schooldays. I was a pupil at a big suburban school; the house which we inhabited had once been the villa of a well-known statesman, and had large and dignified grounds, where with certain restrictions, we were allowed to ramble. They were bounded on one side by a high paling, inaccessible to small limbs, and a vague speculation as to what was behind the fence long dwelt with me. One day, however, I found that I could loose a portion of a broken paling, and looking through I saw a quiet place, the tail of a neglected shrubbery; the spot seemed quite unvisited; the laurels grew thickly about, and tall elms gave an austere gloom to the little glade; the ground was pathless, and thickly overgrown with periwinkles, but in the centre were three tiny grave-mounds, the graves, I have since reflected, of dogs, but which I at the time supposed to be the graves of children. I gazed with a singular sense of mystery, and strange dream-pictures rose instinctively in my mind, weaving themselves over the solitary and romantic spot. It is strange how often in dreams and gentle reveries I have visited the place.

[Sidenote: THE ENCHANTED LAND]

The next is a later vision. Near the public school where I was educated lay a forest to which we had free admittance. I found that by hard walking it was just possible to reach a wooded hill which was a conspicuous feature of the distant landscape, but the time at my disposal between two school engagements never sufficed to penetrate farther. From the top of this hill it was possible to get a view of a large tract of forest ground, an open grassy glade, with large trees of towering greenness standing sentinel on either side; the bracken grew luxuriantly in places, and at the end of the glade was a glint of water in the horn of some forest pool. This place was to me a veritable “magic casement”; beyond lay the enchanted land into which I could not penetrate, the blue hills on the horizon seen over the tree-tops. I never dreamt of them as inhabited by human beings like myself, but as some airy region, with leagues of dreaming woods and silent forest spaces. At times a deer would slowly cross the open vale, and stand to sniff the breeze; the very cooing of the doves in their leafy fastnesses had a richer and drowsier sound.

But the home of incommunicable dreams, beyond all others, is to me a certain mill—Grately Mill—that is not many miles from my present home. My mother had an old aunt who lived in a pleasant house in the neighbourhood, and we used to go there when I was a child to spend a few weeks of the early summer.

A little vague lane led to it: a lane that came from nowhere in particular, and took you nowhere; meandering humbly among the pastures wherever it was convenient to them to permit it, like a fainthearted Christian. Hard by was a tall, high-shouldered, gabled farm of red brick, with a bell perched on the roof in a white pavilion of its own. Down the lane on hot summer days we used to walk—my mother and I: my mother whom I revered as a person of unapproachable age and dim experience, though she had been in the schoolroom herself but a year or two before my birth; I trotting by her side with a little fishing-rod in a grey holland case, to fish for perch in the old pond at the Hall.

The lane grew sandier and damper: a rivulet clucked in the ditch, half-hidden in ragged-robin with its tattered finery, and bright varnished ranunculus; the rivulet was a mysterious place enough ever since the day when we found it full of waving clusters of strange dark creatures, more eel than fish, which had all appeared with miraculous unanimity in a single night—lamperns, the village naturalist called them, and told us that in ancient days they were a delicacy; while I, in my childish mind, at once knew that it was this which had gone to the composition of that inexplicable dish, a surfeit of lampreys, as the history had it, of which some greedy monarch died.

Once, too, a bright-coloured eel had been seen at a certain point, who had only just eluded the grasp of hot little fingers. How many times I looked for master eel, expecting to meet him at the same place, and was careful to carry a delightful tin box in my pocket, in which he might travel home in my pocket, and live an honoured life in a basin in the night nursery. Poor eel! I am glad now that he escaped, but then he was only a great opportunity missed—an irreparable regret.

[Sidenote: GRATELY MILL]

Then the poor lane, which had been getting more like a water-course every moment, no longer made any pretence, and disappeared into a shallow sheet of clear water—the mill at last! The scene, as I remember it, had a magical charm. On the left, by the side of the lane, rose a crazy footpath of boards and posts with a wooden handrail, and a sluice or two below. Beyond, the deep mill-pool slept, dark and still, all fringed with trees. On the right the stream flowed off among the meadows, disappearing into an arch of greenery; in summer the banks and islets were all overgrown with tall rich plants, comfrey, figwort, water-dock. The graceful willow-herb hung its pink horns; the loosestrife rose in sturdier velvet spires. On the bank stood the shuttered, humming mill, the water-wheel splashing and thundering, like a prisoned giant, in a penthouse of its own. It was a fearful joy to look in and see it rise dripping, huge and black, with the fresh smell of the river water all about it. All the mill was powdered with the dust of grain; the air inside was full of floating specks; the hoppers rattled, and the gear grumbled in the roof, while the flour streamed merrily into the open sack. The miller, a grave preoccupied man, all dusted over, like a plum, with a thin bloom of flour, gave us a grave nod of greeting, which seemed to make us free of the place. I dare say he was a shy mild man, with but little of the small change of the mind at his disposal; but he seemed to me then an austere and statesmanlike person, full to the brim of grave affairs. Beyond the mill, a lane of a more determined character led through arches of elms to the common. And now, on secular days, the interests of the chase took precedence of all else; but there were Sundays in the summer when we walked to attend Grately Church. It seems to me at this lapse of time to have been almost impossibly antique. Ancient yews stood by it, and it had a white boarded spire with a cracked bell. Inside, the single aisleless nave, with ancient oak pews, was much encumbered in one place by a huge hand-organ, with a forest of gold pipes, turned by a wizened man, who opened a little door in the side and inserted his hand at intervals to set the tune. The clergyman, an aged gentleman, wore what was, I suppose, a dark wig, though at the time I imagined it to be merely an agreeable variety on ordinary hair; another pleasant habit he had of slightly smacking his lips, at every little pause, as he read, which gave an air of indescribable gusto to the service:—“Moab—tut—is my washpot—tut—; over Edom—tut—will I cast out my shoe—tut—; upon Philistia—tut—will I triumph.”

[Sidenote: GRATELY CHURCH]

In the vestry of the church reposed a curious relic—a pyx, I believe, is the correct name. It was a gilded metal chalice with a top, into which, if my memory serves me, were screwed little soldiers to guard the sacred body; these were loose, and how I coveted them! In the case were certain spikes and branches of crystal, the broken remains, I believe, of a spreading crystal tree which once adorned the top. How far my memory serves me I know not, but I am sure that the relic which may still survive, is a most interesting thing; and I can recollect that when a high dignitary of the Church stayed with us, it was kindly brought over by the clergyman for his inspection, and his surprise was very great.

The Hall lay back from the common, sheltered by great trees. The house itself, a low white building, was on those summer days cool and fragrant. The feature of the place was the great fish-ponds—one lay outside the shrubbery; but another, formerly I believe a monastic stew-pond, was a long rectangle just outside the windows of the drawing-room, and only separated from it by a gravel walk: along part of it ran an ancient red-brick wall. This was our favourite fishing-place; but above it, brooded over by huge chestnuts, lay a deeper and stiller pond, half covered with water-lilies—too sacred and awful a place to be fished in or even visited alone.

Upon the fishing hours I do not love to dwell; I would only say that of such cruelties as attended it I was entirely innocent. I am sure that I never thought of a perch as other than a delightful mechanical thing, who had no grave objection to being hauled up gasping, with his black stripes gleaming, and prickling his red fins, to be presently despatched, and carried home stiff and cold in a little basket.

The tea under the tall trees of the lawn; the admiring inspection of our prey; the stuffed dog in the hall with his foot upon a cricket-ball—all these are part of the dream-pictures; and the whole is invested for me with the purpureal gleams of childhood.

[Sidenote: GRATELY THIRTY YEARS AFTER]

The other day I found myself on a bicycle near enough to Grately to make it possible to go there; into the Hall grounds I did not venture, but I struck across the common and went down the lane to the mill. I was almost ashamed of the agitation I felt, but the sight of the common, never visited for nearly thirty years, induced a singular physical distress. It was not that everything had grown smaller, even changed the places that they occupy in my mental picture, but a sort of homesickness seemed to draw tight bands across my heart. What does it mean, this intense local attachment, for us flimsy creatures, snapped at a touch, and with so brief a pilgrimage? A strange thought! The very intensity and depth of the feeling seems to confer on it a right to permanence.

The lane came abruptly to an end by the side of a commonplace, straight-banked, country brook. There were no trees, no water-plants; the road did not dip to the stream, and in front of me lay a yellow brick bridge, with grim iron lattices. Alas! I had mistaken the turn, and must retrace my steps. But stay! what was that squat white house by the waterside? It was indeed the old mill, with its boarded projections swept away, its barns gone, its garden walled with a neat wall. The old high-timbered bridge was down; some generous landlord had gone to great expense, and Grately had a good convenient road, a sensible bridge, and an up-to-date mill. Probably there was not a single person in the parish who did not confess to an improvement.

But who will give me back the tall trees and the silent pool? Who will restore the ancient charm, the delicate mysteries, the gracious dignity of the place? Is beauty a mere trick of grouping, the irradiation of a golden mood, a chance congeries of water and high trees and sunlight? If beauty be industriously hunted from one place by ruthless hands, does she spread her wings and fly? Is the restless, ceaseless effort of nature to restore beauty to the dismal messes made by man, simply broken off and made vain? Or has she leisure to work harder yet in unvisited places, patiently enduring the grasp of the spoiling hand?

It was with something like a sob that I turned away. But of one thing no one can rob me, and that is the picture of Grately Mill, glorified indeed by the patient worship of years, which is locked into some portfolio of the mind, and can be unspread in a moment before the gazing eye.

[Sidenote: EGERIA]

And for one thing I can be grateful—that the still spirit of sweet and secret places, that wayward nymph who comes and goes, with the wind in her hair and the gleam of deep water in her eyes—she to whom we give many a clumsy name—that she first beckoned to me and spoke words in my ear beneath the high elms of Grately Mill. Many times have we met and spoken in secret since, my Egeria and I; many times has she touched my shoulder, and whispered a magic charm. That presence has been often withdrawn from me; but I have but to recall the bridge, the water-plants, the humming mill, the sunlight on the sandy shallows, to feel her hand in mine again.

7

As a boy and a young man I went through the ordinary classical education—private school, public school, and university. I do not think I troubled my head at the time about the philosophical theory or motive of the course; but now, looking back upon it after an interval of twenty years, while my admiration of the theory of it is enhanced, as a lofty and dignified scheme of mental education, I find myself haunted by uneasy doubts as to its practical efficacy. While it seems to me to be for a capable and well-equipped boy with decided literary taste, a noble and refining influence, I begin to fear that for the large majority of youthful English minds it is narrowing, unimproving, and conspicuous for an absence of intellectual enjoyment.

Is it not the experience of most people that little boys are conscientious, duty-loving, interested not so much in the matter of work, but in the zealous performance of it; and that when adolescence begins, they grow indifferent, wearied, even rebellious, until they drift at last into a kind of cynicism about the whole thing—a kind of dumb certainty, that whatever else may be got from work, enjoyment in no form is the result? And is not the moral of this, that the apprenticeship once over and the foundation laid, special tastes should as far as possible be consulted, and subjects simplified, so as to give boys a sense of _mastery_ in something, and interest at all hazards.

[Sidenote: METHODS OF STUDY]

The champions of our classical system defend it on the ground that the accurate training in the subtleties of grammar hardens and fortifies the intelligence, and that the mind is introduced to the masterpieces of ancient literature, and thus encouraged in the formation of correct taste and critical appreciation.

An excellent theory, and I admit at once its value for minds of high and firm intellectual calibre. But how does it actually work out for the majority? In the first place, look at what the study of grammar amounts to—it comes, as a matter of fact, when one remembers the grammar papers which were set in examinations, to be little more than a knowledge of arbitrary, odd and eccentric forms such as a boy seldom if ever meets in the course of his reading. Imagine teaching English on the same theory, and making boys learn that metals have no plural, or that certain fish use the same form in the singular and in the plural—things of which one acquires the knowledge insensibly, and which are absolutely immaterial. Moreover, the quantity of grammatical forms in Latin and Greek are infinitely increased by the immensely larger number of inflexions. Is it useful that boys should have to commit to memory the dual forms in Greek verbs—forms of a repulsive character in themselves, and seldom encountered in books? The result of this method is that the weaker mind is warped and strained. Some few memories of a peculiarly retentive type may acquire these useless facts in a mechanical manner; but it is hardly more valuable than if they were required to commit to memory long lists of nonsense words. Yet in most cases they are doomed to be speedily and completely forgotten—indeed, nothing can ever be really learnt unless a logical connection can be established between the items.

[Sidenote: MASTERY AND SPIRIT]

Then after the dark apprenticeship of grammar comes the next stage—the appreciation of literature; but I diffidently believe here that not ten per cent of the boys who are introduced to the classics have ever the slightest idea that they are in the presence of literature at all. They never approach the point which is essential to a love of literature—the instinctive perception of the intrinsic beauty of majestic and noble words, and still less the splendid associations which grow to be inseparably connected with words, in a language which one really knows and admires.

[Sidenote: METHOD AND SPIRIT]

My own belief is that both the method of instruction and the spirit of that instruction are at fault. Like the Presbyterian Liturgy, the system depends far too much on the individuality of the teacher, and throws too great a strain upon his mood. A vigorous, brilliant, lively, humorous, rhetorical man can break through the shackles of construing and parsing, and give the boys the feeling of having been in contact with a larger mind; but in the hands of a dull and uninspiring teacher the system is simply famishing from its portentous aridity. The result, at all events, is that the majority of the boys at our schools never get the idea that they are in the presence of literature at all. They are kept kicking their heels in the dark and cold antechamber of parsing and grammar, and never get a glimpse of the bright gardens within.

What is, after all, the aim of education? I suppose it is twofold: firstly, to make of the mind a bright, keen, and effective instrument, capable of seeing a point, of grappling with a difficulty, of presenting facts or thoughts with clearness and precision. A young man properly educated should be able to detect a fallacy, to correct by acquired clearsightedness a false logical position. He should not be at the mercy of any new theory which may be presented to him in a specious and attractive shape. That is, I suppose, the negative side. Then secondly, he should have a cultivated taste for intellectual things, a power of enjoyment; he should not bow meekly to authority in the matter of literature, and force himself into the admiration of what is prescribed, but he should be possessed of a dignified and wholesome originality; he should have his own taste clearly defined. If his bent is historical, he should be eagerly interested in any masterly presentation of historical theory, whether new or old; if philosophical, he should keep abreast of modern speculation; if purely literary, he should be able to return hour after hour to masterpieces that breathe and burn.

[Sidenote: EDUCATIONAL RESULTS]