Chapter 23

What I find to regret in these latter days is--I say it with shame--that there is no house of any living writer which I should visit with this sense of awe and desire and sacredness. There are writers whom I honour and admire greatly, whose work I reverence and read, but there is no author alive a summons to whose presence I should obey with eager solemnity and devout expectation. That is perhaps my own fault, or the fault perhaps of my advancing years; but, to put it differently, there is no author now writing whose book I should order the moment I saw it announced, and await its arrival with keen anticipation. There are books announced that I determine I will see and read, but no books that I feel are sure to hold some vital message of truth and beauty. I cannot help feeling that this is a great loss. I remember the almost terrible excitement with which I saw Tennyson stalking out of Dean's Yard at Westminster, with his dark complexion, his long hair, his strange, ill-fitting clothes, his great glasses, his dim yet piercing look. I recollect the timid expectation with which I went to meet Robert Browning--and the disappointment which I endured in his presence at his commonplace bonhomie, his facile, uninteresting talk. I remember, as an undergraduate, begging and obtaining an introduction to Matthew Arnold, who stood robed in his scarlet gown at an academical garden-party; and I shall never forget the stately and amiable condescension with which he greeted me. But what seer of high visions, what sayer of ineffable things, transforming the commonplace world into a place of spirits and heavenly echoes, now moves and breathes among us? The result of our present conditions of life seems to be to develop a large number of effective and accomplished people, but not to evolve great, lonely, majestic figures of indubitable greatness.

Perhaps there are personalities whom the young and ardent as whole-heartedly desire to see and hear as I did the gods of my youth. But at present the sea and the depth alike concur in saying, "It is not in me."

But I do not cease to hope. I care not whether my hero be old or young; I should like him better to be young; and if I could hear of the rise of some great and gracious personality, full of fire and genius, I would make my way to his presence, even though it involved a number of cross-country journeys and solitary evenings in country inns, to lay my wreath at his feet and to receive his blessing.

LIV

The other day I was at Peterborough, and strolled into the Close under a fine, dark, mouldering archway, to find myself in a romantic world, full of solemn dignity and immemorial peace. There in its niche stood that exquisite crumbled statue that Flaxman said summed up the grace of mediaeval art. The quiet canonical houses gave me the sense of stately and pious repose; of secluded lives, cheered by the dignity of worship and the beauty of holiness. And then presently I was in the long new street leading out into the country; the great junction with its forest of signals, where the expresses come roaring in and out, and the huge freight-trains clank north and south. The street itself, with its rows of plane-trees, its big brick-built chapels, its snug comfortable houses, with the electric trams gliding smoothly under the crossing wires--what a picture it gave of the new democracy, with its simple virtues, its easy prosperity, its cheerful lack of taste, of romance! Life runs easily enough, no doubt, in these contented homes, with their regular meals, their bright ugly furniture, their friendly gossip, their new clothes; for amusement the bicycle, the gramophone, the circulating novel. I have no doubt that there is abundance of wholesome affection and camaraderie within, of full-flavoured, local, personal jests, all the outward signs and inner resources of sturdy British prosperity. A certain civic pride exists, no doubt, in the ancient buildings, in the influx of visitors, the envious admiration of Americans. But, at first sight, what a difference between the old and the new! The old, no doubt, stood for a few very wealthy and influential people, priests and barons, with a wretched and down-trodden poor, labouring like the beasts of the field for life. The new order stands for a few wealthy people whose hearts are in their amusements and social pleasures; a great, well-to-do, busy, comfortable middle class, and a self-respecting and, on the whole, prosperous artisan class. No one, surveying the change from the point of view of human happiness, can doubt for an instant that the new order is far richer in happiness, in comfort, and in contentment than the old.

And then, too, how easy it is to make the mistake of thinking that all the grace of antiquity and mellowness that hangs about the old buildings was part of the mediaeval world. Go back in fancy for a little to the time when that great front of the Cathedral, with its forests of towers and pinnacles, its three vast portals, was brand-new and white, all free from the scaffolding, and fitting on so strangely to the Norman work behind. I can well imagine that some one who loved what was old and quiet might have thought it even then a very bustling modern affair, and heaved a sigh over the progress that had made it possible.

Moreover, looking closely at that great grey front, with its three portals, I am almost sure that the design is an essentially vulgar one. It is much of it a front with no back to it; it is crowded with useless and restless ornament. The rose-windows, for instance, in the gables, give light to nothing but the rafters of the roof. The designer was evidently afraid of leaving any surface plain and unadorned; he felt impelled to fill every inch with decoration. Indeed, I cannot doubt that if one saw the West Front reproduced now, the connoisseurs, who praise it so blandly in its mellow softness, would overwhelm it with disapproval and stern criticism.

Whatever that front, those soaring towers, may mean to us now, they stood then for a busy and eager activity. What one does desire to know, what is really important, is whether the spirit that prompted that activity was a purer, holier, more gracious spirit than the spirit that underlies the middle-class prosperity of the present day. Did it all mean a love of art, a sacrifice of comfort and wealth to a beautiful idea, a radiant hope? Did the monks or the great nobles that built it, build it in a humble, ardent, and loving spirit--or was it partly in a spirit of ostentation, that their church might have a new and impressive front, partly in the spirit indicated by the hymn:

"Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee, Repaid a thousand-fold will be"?

Was it an investment, so to speak, made for the sake of improving their spiritual prosperity?

It is very difficult to say. The monks in their earlier missionary times were full of enthusiasm and faith, no doubt. But when the Abbeys were at the full height of their prosperity, when they were vast landowners and the Abbot had his place in parliament, when the monastic life was a career for an ambitious man, was the spirit of the place a pure and holy one? That they submitted themselves to a severe routine of worship does not go for very, much, because men very easily accommodate themselves to a traditional and a conventional routine.

And thus one is half inclined to believe that the spirit of the monks in their prosperous days was not very different from the spirit that prompts railway extension, and that builds a railway terminus with an ornamental façade.

And so when one sees prosperity spreading wider and lower, and the neat villa residences begin to cluster round the knot of ancient buildings, we must not conclude too hastily that our new wealth has swamped ancient ideals; probably the ideals of prosperous people do not vary very much, whether they are monks or railway officials. The monks in their decadent days have no abounding reputation for virtue or austerity. One likes to think of them as lost in splendid dreams of God's glory and man's holiness, but there is little to show that such was the case.

I do not want to decry the ideas of the monks in order to magnify our modern middle-class ideals. I do not for a moment pretend to think that our national ideals are very exalted ones nowadays. I wish I could believe it; but there is no sign of any particular interest in religion or cultivation or art or literature or romance. We have a certain patriotism, of a somewhat commercial type; we have a belief in our honesty, not, I fear, wholly well-founded. We claim to be plain people who speak our mind; which very often does not mean more than that we do not take the trouble to be polite; we should all say that we valued liberty, which means little more than that we resent interference, and like to do things in our own way. But I do not think that we are at present a noble-minded or an unselfish nation, though we are rich and successful, and have the good humour that comes of wealth and success.

Peterborough is to me a parable of England; it stands for a certain pride in antiquity, coupled with a good-natured contempt for the religious spirit--for, though these cathedrals of ours are well cared for and well-served, no one can say that they have any very deep influence on national life. And it stands, too, for the thing that we do believe in with all our hearts--trim, comfortable material prosperity; a thing which bewilders a dreamer like myself, because it seems to be the deliberate gift and leading of God to our country, while all the time I long to believe that he is pointing us to a far different hope, and a very much quieter and simpler ideal. How little we make of Christ's blessing on poverty, on simplicity, on tenderness! How ready we are to say that his strong words about the dangers of wealth were only counsels given to individuals! The deepest article of our creed, that a man must make his way, fight for his own hand, elbow himself to the front if he can--how little akin that is to the essential spirit of Christ, by which a man ought to lavish himself for others, and quit the world poorer than he entered it!

I turn again into the great, shadowy, faintly lit church, with all its interlaced arches, its colour, its richness of form; I see the figures of venerable, white-robed clergy in their tabernacled stalls, a--little handful of leisurely worshippers. The organ rises pouring sweet music from its forest of pipes. Hark to what they are singing to the rich blending of artful melodies:--

"He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things; but the rich He hath sent empty away."

What a message to thrill through this palace of art, with the pleasant town without, and all the great trains thundering past! To whom is it all addressed? The spirit of that meek religion seems to sit shivering in its gorgeous raiment, heard and heeded of none. Yet here as everywhere there are quiet hearts that know the secret; there are patient women, kind fathers, loving children, who would think it strange and false if they were told that over their heads hangs the bright aureole of the saints. What can we do, we who struggle faintly on our pilgrimage, haunted and misled by hovering delusions, phantoms of wealth and prosperity and luxury, that hide the narrow path from our bewildered eyes? We can but resolve to be simple and faithful and pure and loving, and to trust ourselves as implicitly as we can to the Father who made us, redeemed us, and loves us better than we love ourselves.

LV

I have had a fortnight of perfect weather here--the meteorologists call it by the horrible and ugly name of "anticyclone," which suggests, even more than the word "cyclone" suggests, the strange weather said by the Psalmist to be in store for the unrighteous--"Upon the ungodly he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest." I have often wondered what the fields would look like after a rain of snares! The word "cyclone" by itself suggests a ghastly whorl of high vapours, and the addition of "anti" seems to make it even more hostile. But an anticyclone in the springtime is the opening of a door into paradise. Day after day the fields have lain calm beneath a cool and tranquil sun, with a light breeze shifting from point to point in the compass. Day after day I have swept along the great fen-roads, descending from my little hill-range into the flat. Day by day I have steered slowly across the gigantic plains, with the far-off farms to left and right across acres of dark plough-land, rising in dust from the feet of horses dragging a harrow. Every now and then one crosses a great dyke, a sapphire streak of calm water between green flood-banks, running as straight as a line from horizon to horizon. One sweeps through a pretty village at long intervals, with its comfortable yellow-brick houses, and an old church standing up grey in the sun. It was on a day always to be marked with letters of gold in my calendar that I found the house of Bellasyze in a village in the fen. Imagine a great red-brick wall running along by the high road, with a pair of huge gate-posts in the centre, with big stone wyverns on the top. Inside, a little park of ancient trees, standing up among grass golden with buttercups. A quarter of a mile away in the park, an incredibly picturesque house of red brick, with an ancient turreted gate-house, innumerable brick chimney-stacks, gables, mullioned windows, and oriels, rising from great sprawling box-trees and yews. By a stroke of fortune, the young kindly squire was coming out at the gate as I stood gazing, and asked me if I would care to look round. He led me up to the gate-house, and then into a great hall, with vast doors of oak, flagged with stone. "There is our ugliest story!" he said, pointing to the flags. I do not profess to explain what I saw; but there was in one place a stain looking like dark blood just sopped up; and close by, outlined in a damp dimness, the rough form of a human body with outstretched arms, just as though a warm corpse had been lying on the cold stones. "That was where the young heir was killed by his father," said the squire; "his blood fell down here--he was stabbed in the back--and he stumbled a pace or two and fell; we can't scrub it out or dry it out." "I suppose you are haunted?" I said. He laughed. "Well,-it is a great convenience," he said. "I only live here in the summer; I have a little house which is more convenient in the winter, a little distance away. I can never get a caretaker here for the winter--but, bless you, if I left every door and window open, there is not a soul in the place that would come near it!" He led me through ranges of rooms panelled, recessed, orieled--there were staircases, turret-chambers, galleries in every direction. I think there must have been nearly fifty rooms in the house, perhaps half-a-dozen of them inhabited. At one place he bade me look out of a little window, and I saw below a small court with an ancient chapel on the left, the windows bricked up. It had a sinister and wicked air, somehow. The squire told me that they had unearthed a dozen skeletons in that little yard as they were laying a drain, and had buried them in the neighbouring churchyard. But the back of the house was still more ravishing than the front; surrounded by great brick walls, curving outwards, lay a grassy garden, with huge box-trees at the sides, and in the centre many ancient apple-trees in full bloom. The place was bright with carelessly ordered flowers; and behind, the ground fell a little to some great pools full of sedge, some tumbled grassy hillocks covered with blackthorns, and a little wood red with buds and full of birds, called by the delicious name of "My Lord's Wood." The great flat stretched for miles round.

One of the singular charms of the place was that it had never undergone a restoration; it had only been carefully patched just as it needed it. I never saw a place so soaked with charm from end to end, its very wildness giving it a grace which trimness would have utterly destroyed. I stood for a while beside the pool, with a woodpecker laughing in the holt, to watch the long roofs and huddled chimneys rise above the white-flowered orchard. Perhaps in a stormy, rugged day of November it would be sad and mournful enough in its solitary pastures; but on this spring day, with the sun lying warm on the brickwork, it seemed to have a perfection of charm about it like the design of a mind intent upon devising as beautiful a thing as could be made. The old house seemed to have grown old and mellow like a rock or crag; to have sprung up out of the ground; and nature, working patiently with rain and sun and wind, drooping the stonecrop from the parapet, fringing the parapets with snapdragons and wallflowers, touching the old roofs with orange and grey lichens, had done the rest. No one shall learn from me where the House of Bellasyze lies; but I will revisit it spring by spring, like a hidden treasure of beauty.

The result of these perfect days, full of life and freshness, with all the loveliness and without the languors of spring, is to produce in me a perfectly inconsequent mood of happiness, which is better than any amount of philosophical consolation. The air, the breeze, the flying hour are all full of delight. Everything is touched with a fine savour and quality, whether it be the wide view over the dappled plain, the blue waters of the lonely dyke, the old farm-house blinking pleasantly among its barns and outbuildings, the tall church-tower that you see for miles over the flat, the busy cawing of rooks in the village grove; the very people that one meets wear a smiling and friendly air, from the old labourer trudging slowly home, to the jolly, smooth-faced ploughboy riding a big horse, clanking and plodding down the highway. One sees the world as it was meant to be made; a life in the open air, labour among the wide fields, seems the joyful lot of man. The very food that one eats by the quick-set thorn on the edge of a dyke, where the fish poise and hang in dark pools, has a finer savour, and is like a sacrament of peace; hour after hour, from morning to sunset, one can range without weariness and without care, one's thoughts reduced to a mere flow of gentle perceptions, murmuring along like a clear stream. Pleasant, too, is the return home when one swings in at the familiar gate; and then comes the quiet solitary evening when one recounts the hoarded store of delicate impressions. Then follow hours of dreamless sleep, till one wakes again upon a bright world, with the thrushes fluting in the shrubbery and the morning sun flooding the room.

LVI

It was by what we clumsily call _chance_ but really by what I am learning to perceive to be the subtlest and prettiest surprises of the Power that walks beside us, that I found myself in Ely yesterday morning--the first real day of summer. The air was full of sunshine, like golden dust, and all the plants had taken a leap forward in the night, and were unfurling their crumpled flags as speedily as they might. I came vaguely down to the river, guided by the same good spirit, and there at the boat-wharf I found a little motor-launch lying, which could be hired for the day. I took it, like the Lady of Shalott; but I did not write my name on the prow, because it had already some silly, darting kind of name. A mild, taciturn man took charge of my craft; and without delay we clicked and gurgled out into the stream.

I wish I could describe the day, for it was sweeter than honey and the honeycomb; and I should like to pour out of my stored sweetness for others. But I can hardly say what happened. It was all just like the tale of Shalott, with this difference, that there was no shadow of doom overhanging me; I felt more like a fairy prince with some pretty adventure awaiting me as soon as the town, with gardens and balconies, should begin to fringe the stream; perhaps a hand would be waved from the lawn, embowered in lilacs, of some sequestered house by the water-side. There was no singing aloud of mournful carols either, but my heart made a quiet and wistful music of its own.

I thought that I should have liked a more grave and ancient mode of conveyance; but how silly to desire that! The Lady of Shalott's boat was no doubt of the latest and neatest trim, fully up to her drowsy date; and as for quaintness, no doubt a couple of hundred years hence, when our river-craft may be cigar-shaped torpedoes of aluminium for all I know, a picture of myself in my homely motor-boat, with antiquated hat and odd grey suit, will appear quaint and old-timed enough. And, anyhow, the ripple gurgled under the prow, the motor ticked tranquilly, and the bubbles danced in the wake. We went on swiftly enough, and every time that I turned the great towers had grown fainter in the haze; we slid by the green flood-banks, with here and there a bunch of kingcups blazing in glory, the elbows of the bank full of white cow-parsley, comfrey, and water-dock. I heard the sedge-warbler whistle drily in the willow-patch, and a nightingale sang with infinite sweetness in a close of thorn-bushes now bursting into bloom; blue sky above, a sapphire streak of waterway ahead, green banks on either side; a little enough matter to fill a heart with joy. Once I had a thrill when a pair of sandpipers flicked out of a tiny cove and flew, glancing white, with pointed wings ahead of us. Again we started them, and again, till they wearied of the chase and flew back, with a wide circuit, to their first haunt. A cuckoo in a great poplar fluted solemnly and richly as we murmured past; the world was mostly hidden from us, but now and then a church tower looked gravely over the bank, and ran beside us for a time, or the lowing of cattle came softly from a pasture, or I heard the laughter of unseen children from a cottage garth. Once or twice we passed an inn, with cheerful, leisurely people sitting smiling together on a lawn, like a scene out of a romance; and then at last, on passing Baitsbite lock, we slipped into a merrier world. Here we heard the beat of rowlocks, the horse-hoofs of a coach thudded on the bank, and a crew of jolly young men went gliding past, with a cox shouting directions, just as I might have been doing thirty years ago! Thirty years ago! And it seems like yesterday, and I not a scrap older or wiser, though, thank God, a good deal happier. Even so we drift on to the unseen. Then we passed a village, the thatched cottages with their white gables rising prettily from the blossoming orchards. Ditton on its little hill; and the old iron bridge thundered and clanked with a passing train; then came the rattle of the grinds; and the mean houses of Barnwell; and soon we were gliding up among the backs, under the bridge of St. John's, by the willow-hung walks of Trinity, by the ivied walls and trim gardens of Clare, past the great white palace-front of King's, and so by the brick gables and oriels of Queens' into the Newnham mill-pool. It was somehow not like Cambridge, but like some enchanted town of palaces; and I would not break the spell; so we swung about, made no stay, and then slowly reversed the whole panorama again, through the long, still afternoon.