Book: Dreamthorp

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"The Cross leads generations on." Believing as I do that my own personal
decease is not more certain than that our religion will subdue the world,
I own that it is with a somewhat saddened heart that I pass my thoughts
around the globe, and consider how distant is yet that triumph. There
are the realms on which the crescent beams, the monstrous many-headed
gods of India, the Chinaman's heathenism, the African's devil-rites.
These are, to a large extent, principalities and powers of darkness with
which our religion has never been brought into collision, save at trivial
and far separated points, and in these cases the attack has never been
made in strength. But what of our own Europe--the home of philosophy, of
poetry, and painting? Europe, which has produced Greece, and Rome, and
England's centuries of glory; which has been illumined by the fires of
martyrdom; which has heard a Luther preach; which has listened to Dante's
"mystic unfathomable song"; to which Milton has opened the door of
heaven--what of it? And what, too, of that younger America, starting in
its career with all our good things, and enfranchised of many of our
evils? Did not the December sun now shining look down on thousands
slaughtered at Fredericksburg, in a most mad, most incomprehensible
quarrel? And is not the public air which European nations breathe at
this moment, as it has been for several years back, charged with thunder?
Despots are plotting, ships are building, man's ingenuity is bent, as it
never was bent before, on the invention and improvement of instruments of
death; Europe is bristling with five millions of bayonets: and this is
the condition of a world for which the Son of God died eighteen hundred
and sixty-two years ago! There is no mystery of Providence so
inscrutable as this; and yet, is not the very sense of its mournfulness a
proof that the spirit of Christianity is living in the minds of men?
For, of a verity, military glory is becoming in our best thoughts a
bloody rag, and conquest the first in the catalogue of mighty crimes, and
a throned tyrant, with armies, and treasures, and the cheers of millions
rising up like a cloud of incense around him, but a mark for the
thunderbolt of Almighty God--in reality poorer than Lazarus stretched at
the gate of Dives. Besides, all these things are getting themselves to
some extent mitigated. Florence Nightingale--for the first time in the
history of the world--walks through the Scutari hospitals, and "poor,
noble, wounded and sick men," to use her Majesty's tender phrases, kiss
her shadow as it falls on them. The Emperor Napoleon does not make war
to employ his armies, or to consolidate his power; he does so for the
sake of an "idea," more or less generous and disinterested. The soul of
mankind would revolt at the blunt, naked truth; and the taciturn emperor
knows this, as he knows most things. This imperial hypocrisy, like every
other hypocrisy, is a homage which vice pays to virtue. There cannot be
a doubt that when the political crimes of kings and governments, the
sores that fester in the heart of society, and all "the burden of the
unintelligible world," weigh heaviest on the mind, we have to thank
Christianity for it. That pure light makes visible the darkness. The
Sermon on the Mount makes the morality of the nations ghastly. The
Divine love makes human hate stand out in dark relief. This sadness, in
the essence of it nobler than any joy, is the heritage of the Christian.
An ancient Roman could not have felt so. Everything runs on smoothly
enough so long as Jove wields the thunder. But Venus, Mars, and Minerva
are far behind us now; the Cross is before us; and self-denial and sorrow
for sin, and the remembrance of the poor, and the cleansing of our own
hearts, are duties incumbent upon every one of us. If the Christian is
less happy than the Pagan, and at times I think he is so, it arises from
the reproach of the Christian's unreached ideal, and from the stings of
his finer and more scrupulous conscience. His whole moral organisation
is finer, and he must pay the noble penalty of finer organisations.

Once again, for the purpose of taking away all solitariness of feeling,
and of connecting myself, albeit only in fancy, with the proper gladness
of the time, let me think of the comfortable family dinners now being
drawn to a close, of the good wishes uttered, and the presents made,
quite valueless in themselves, yet felt to be invaluable from the
feelings from which they spring; of the little children, by sweetmeats
lapped in Elysium; and of the pantomime, pleasantest Christmas sight of
all, with the pit a sea of grinning delight, the boxes a tier of beaming
juvenility, the galleries, piled up to the far-receding roof, a mass of
happy laughter which a clown's joke brings down in mighty avalanches. In
the pit, sober people relax themselves, and suck oranges, and quaff
ginger-pop; in the boxes, Miss, gazing through her curls, thinks the
Fairy Prince the prettiest creature she ever beheld, and Master, that to
be a clown must be the pinnacle of human happiness: while up in the
galleries the hard literal world is for an hour sponged out and
obliterated; the chimney-sweep forgets, in his delight when the policeman
comes to grief, the harsh call of his master, and Cinderella, when the
demons are foiled, and the long parted lovers meet and embrace in a
paradise of light and pink gauze, the grates that must be scrubbed
tomorrow. All bands and trappings of toil are for one hour loosened by
the hands of imaginative sympathy. What happiness a single theatre can
contain! And those of maturer years, or of more meditative temperament,
sitting at the pantomime, can extract out of the shifting scenes meanings
suitable to themselves; for the pantomime is a symbol or adumbration of
human life. Have we not all known Harlequin, who rules the roast, and
has the pretty Columbine to himself? Do we not all know that rogue of a
clown with his peculating fingers, who brazens out of every scrape, and
who conquers the world by good humour and ready wit? And have we not
seen Pantaloons not a few, whose fate it is to get all the kicks and lose
all the halfpence, to fall through all the trap doors, break their shins
over all the barrows, and be forever captured by the policeman, while the
true pilferer, the clown, makes his escape with the booty in his
possession? Methinks I know the realities of which these things are but
the shadows; have met with them in business, have sat with them at
dinner. But to-night no such notions as these intrude; and when the
torrent of fun, and transformation, and practical joking which rushed out
of the beautiful fairy world gathered up again, the high-heaped happiness
of the theatre will disperse itself, and the Christmas pantomime will be
a pleasant memory the whole year through. Thousands on thousands of
people are having their midriffs tickled at this moment; in fancy I see
their lighted faces, in memory I hear their mirth.

By this time I should think every Christmas dinner at Dreamthorp or
elsewhere has come to an end. Even now in the great cities the theatres
will be dispersing. The clown has wiped the paint off his face.
Harlequin has laid aside his wand, and divested himself of his glittering
raiment; Pantaloon, after refreshing himself with a pint of porter, is
rubbing his aching joints; and Columbine, wrapped up in a shawl, and with
sleepy eyelids, has gone home in a cab. Soon, in the great theatre, the
lights will be put out, and the empty stage will be left to ghosts.
Hark! midnight from the church tower vibrates through the frosty air. I
look out on the brilliant heaven, and see a milky way of powdery
splendour wandering through it, and clusters and knots of stars and
planets shining serenely in the blue frosty spaces; and the armed
apparition of Orion, his spear pointing away into immeasurable space,
gleaming overhead; and the familiar constellation of the Plough dipping
down into the west; and I think when I go in again that there is one
Christmas the less between me and my grave.




MEN OF LETTERS

Mr. Hazlitt has written many essays, but none pleasanter than that
entitled "My First Acquaintance with Poets," which, in the edition edited
by his son, opens the _Wintersloe_ series. It relates almost entirely to
Coleridge; containing sketches of his personal appearance, fragments of
his conversation, and is filled with a young man's generous enthusiasm,
belief, admiration, as with sunrise. He had met Coleridge, walked with
him, talked with him, and the high intellectual experience not only made
him better acquainted with his own spirit and its folded powers, but--as
is ever the case with such spiritual encounters--it touched and
illuminated the dead outer world. The road between Wem and Shrewsbury
was familiar enough to Hazlitt, but as the twain passed along it on that
winter day, it became etherealised, poetic--wonderful, as if leading
across the Delectable Mountains to the Golden City, whose gleam is
discernible on the horizon. The milestones were mute with attention, the
pines upon the hill had ears for the stranger as he passed. Eloquence
made the red leaves rustle on the oak; made the depth of heaven seem as
if swept by a breath of spring; and when the evening star appeared,
Hazlitt saw it as Adam did while in Paradise and but one day old. "As we
passed along," writes the essayist, "between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I
eyed the blue hill tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red,
rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the wayside, a sound was in my
ears as of a siren's song. I was stunned, startled with it as from deep
sleep; but I had no notion that I should ever be able to express my
admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light
of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering in the
puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless,
like a worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now,
bursting from the deadly bands that bound them, my ideas float on winged
words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the golden light of other
years. My soul has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark,
obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the
prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a
heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb and
brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to
Coleridge." Time and sorrow, personal ambition thwarted and fruitlessly
driven back on itself, hopes for the world defeated and unrealised,
changed the enthusiastic youth into a petulant, unsocial man; yet ever as
he remembered that meeting and his wintry walk from Wem to Shrewsbury,
the early glow came back, and a "sound was in his ears as of a siren's
song."

We are not all hero-worshippers like Hazlitt, but most of us are so to a
large extent. A large proportion of mankind feel a quite peculiar
interest in famous writers. They like to read about them, to know what
they said on this or the other occasion, what sort of house they
inhabited, what fashion of dress they wore, if they liked any particular
dish for dinner, what kind of women they fell in love with, and whether
their domestic atmosphere was stormy or the reverse. Concerning such men
no bit of information is too trifling; everything helps to make out the
mental image we have dimly formed for ourselves. And this kind of
interest is heightened by the artistic way in which time occasionally
groups them. The race is gregarious, they are visible to us in clumps
like primroses, they are brought into neighbourhood and flash light on
each other like gems in a diadem. We think of the wild geniuses who came
up from the universities to London in the dawn of the English drama.
Greene, Nash, Marlowe--our first professional men of letters--how they
cracked their satirical whips, how they brawled in taverns, how pinched
they were at times, how, when they possessed money, they flung it from
them as if it were poison, with what fierce speed they wrote, how they
shook the stage. Then we think of the "Mermaid" in session, with
Shakspeare's bland, oval face, the light of a smile spread over it, and
Ben Jonson's truculent visage, and Beaumont and Fletcher sitting together
in their beautiful friendship, and fancy as best we can the drollery, the
repartee, the sage sentences, the lightning gleams of wit, the
thunder-peals of laughter.

"What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid? Heard words that hath been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole soul in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life."

Then there is the "Literary Club," with Johnson, and Garrick, and Burke,
and Reynolds, and Goldsmith sitting in perpetuity in Boswell. The Doctor
has been talking there for a hundred years, and there will he talk for
many a hundred more. And we of another generation, and with other things
to think about, can enter any night we please, and hear what is going on.
Then we have the swarthy ploughman from Ayrshire sitting at Lord
Monboddo's with Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart, Henry Mackenzie, and the rest.
These went into the presence of the wonderful rustic thoughtlessly
enough, and now they cannot return even if they would. They are
defrauded of oblivion. Not yet have they tasted forgetfulness and the
grave. The day may come when Burns will be forgotten, but till that day
arrives--and the eastern sky as yet gives no token of its approach--_him_
they must attend as satellites the sun, as courtiers their king. Then
there are the Lakers,--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, De Quincey
burdened with his tremendous dream, Wilson in his splendid youth. What
talk, what argument, what readings of lyrical and other ballads, what
contempt of critics, what a hail of fine things! Then there is Charles
Lamb's room in Inner Temple Lane, the hush of a whist table in one
corner, the host stuttering puns as he deals the cards; and sitting round
about. Hunt, whose every sentence is flavoured with the hawthorn and the
primrose, and Hazlitt maddened by Waterloo and St. Helena, and Godwin
with his wild theories, and Kemble with his Roman look. And before the
morning comes, and Lamb stutters yet more thickly--for there is a slight
flavour of punch in the apartment--what talk there has been of Hogarth's
prints, of Izaak Walton, of the old dramatists, of Sir Thomas Browne's
"Urn Burial," with Elia's quaint humour breaking through every
interstice, and flowering in every fissure and cranny of the
conversation! One likes to think of these social gatherings of wit and
geniuses; they are more interesting than conclaves of kings or
convocations of bishops. One would like to have been the waiter at the
"Mermaid," and to have stood behind Shakspeare's chair. What was that
functionary's opinion of his guests? Did he listen and become witty by
infection? or did he, when his task was over, retire unconcernedly to
chalk up the tavern score? One envies somewhat the damsel who brought
Lamb the spirit-case and the hot water. I think of these meetings, and,
in lack of companionship, frame for myself imaginary conversations--not
so brilliant, of course, as Mr. Landor's, but yet sufficient to make
pleasant for me the twilight hour while the lamp is yet unlit, and my
solitary room is filled with ruddy lights and shadows of the fire.

Of human notabilities men of letters are the most interesting, and this
arises mainly from their outspokenness as a class. The writer makes
himself known in a way that no other man makes himself known. The
distinguished engineer may be as great a man as the distinguished writer,
but as a rule we know little about him. We see him invent a locomotive,
or bridge a strait, but there our knowledge stops; we look at the engine,
we walk across the bridge, we admire the ingenuity of the one, we are
grateful for the conveniency of the other, but to our apprehensions the
engineer is undeciphered all the while. Doubtless he reveals himself in
his work as the poet reveals himself in his song, but then this
revelation is made in a tongue unknown to the majority. After all, we do
not feel that we get nearer him. The man of letters, on the other hand,
is outspoken, he takes you into his confidence, he keeps no secret from
you. Be you beggar, be you king, you are welcome. He is no respecter of
persons. He gives without reserve his fancies, his wit, his wisdom; he
makes you a present of all that the painful or the happy years have
brought him. The writer makes his reader heir in full. Men of letters
are a peculiar class. They are never commonplace or prosaic--at least
those of them that mankind care for. They are airy, wise, gloomy,
melodious spirits. They give us the language we speak, they furnish the
subjects of our best talk. They are full of generous impulses and
sentiments, and keep the world young. They have said fine things on
every phase of human experience. The air is full of their voices. Their
books are the world's holiday and playground, and into these neither
care, nor the dun, nor despondency can follow the enfranchised man. Men
of letters forerun science as the morning star the dawn. Nothing has
been invented, nothing has been achieved, but has gleamed a
bright-coloured Utopia in the eyes of one or the other of these men.
Several centuries before the Great Exhibition of 1851 rose in Hyde Park,
a wondrous hall of glass stood, radiant in sunlight, in the verse of
Chaucer. The electric telegraph is not so swift as the flight of Puck.
We have not yet realised the hippogriff of Ariosto. Just consider what a
world this would be if ruled by the best thoughts of men of letters!
Ignorance would die at once, war would cease, taxation would be
lightened, not only every Frenchman, but every man in the world, would
have his hen in the pot. May would not marry January. The race of
lawyers and physicians would be extinct. Fancy a world the affairs of
which are directed by Goethe's wisdom and Goldsmith's heart! In such a
case, methinks the millennium were already come. Books are a finer world
within the world. With books are connected all my desires and
aspirations. When I go to my long sleep, on a book will my head be
pillowed. I care for no other fashion of greatness. I'd as lief not be
remembered at all as remembered in connection with anything else. I
would rather be Charles Lamb than Charles XII. I would rather be
remembered by a song than by a victory. I would rather build a fine
sonnet than have built St. Paul's. I would rather be the discoverer of a
new image than the discoverer of a new planet. Fine phrases I value more
than bank notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of
words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.

But what of the literary life? How fares it with the men whose days and
nights are devoted to the writing of books? We know the famous men of
letters; we give them the highest place in our regards; we crown them
with laurels so thickly that we hide the furrows on their foreheads. Yet
we must remember that there are men of letters who have been equally
sanguine, equally ardent, who have pursued perfection equally
unselfishly, but who have failed to make themselves famous. We know the
ships that come with streaming pennons into the immortal ports; we know
but little of the ships that have gone on fire on the way thither,--that
have gone down at sea. Even with successful men we cannot know precisely
how matters have gone. We read the fine raptures of the poet, but we do
not know into what kind of being he relapses when the inspiration is
over, any more than, seeing and hearing the lark shrilling at the gate of
heaven, we know with what effort it has climbed thither, or into what
kind of nest it must descend. The lark is not always singing; no more is
the poet. The lark is only interesting _while_ singing; at other times
it is but a plain brown bird. We may not be able to recognise the poet
when he doffs his singing robes; he may then sink to the level of his
admirers. We laugh at the fancies of the humourists, but he may have
written his brilliant things in a dismal enough mood. The writer is not
continually dwelling amongst the roses and lilies of life, he is not
continually uttering generous sentiments, and saying fine things. On
him, as on his brethren, the world presses with its prosaic needs. He
has to make love and marry, and run the usual matrimonial risks. The
income-tax collector visits him as well as others. Around his head at
Christmas-times drives a snow-storm of bills. He must keep the wolf from
the door, and he has only his goose-quills to confront it with. And here
it is, having to deal with alien powers, that his special temperament
comes into play, and may work him evil. Wit is not worldly wisdom. A
man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles on
the road. A man may be able to disentangle intricate problems, be able
to recall the past, and yet be cozened by an ordinary knave. The finest
expression will not liquidate a butcher's account. If Apollo puts his
name to a bill, he must meet it when it becomes due, or go into the
gazette. Armies are not always cheering on the heights which they have
won; there are forced marches, occasional shortness of provisions,
bivouacs on muddy plains, driving in of pickets, and the like, although
these inglorious items are forgotten when we read the roll of victories
inscribed on their banners. The books of the great writer are only
portions of the great writer. His life acts on his writings; his
writings react on his life. His life may impoverish his books; his books
may impoverish his life.

"Apollo's branch that might have grown full straight,"

may have the worm of a vulgar misery gnawing at its roots. The heat of
inspiration may be subtracted from the household fire; and those who sit
by it may be the colder in consequence. A man may put all his good
things in his books, and leave none for his life, just as a man may
expend his fortune on a splendid dress, and carry a pang of hunger
beneath it.

There are few less exhilarating books than the biographies of men of
letters, and of artists generally; and this arises from the pictures of
comparative defeat which, in almost every instance, such books contain.
In these books we see failure more or less,--seldom clear, victorious
effort. If the art is exquisite, the marble is flawed; if the marble is
pure, there is defect in art. There is always something lacking in the
poem; there is always irremediable defect in the picture. In the
biography we see persistent, passionate effort, and almost constant
repulse. If, on the whole, victory is gained, one wing of the army has
been thrown into confusion. In the life of a successful farmer, for
instance, one feels nothing of this kind; his year flows on harmoniously,
fortunately; through ploughing, seed-time, growth of grain, the yellowing
of it beneath meek autumn suns and big autumn moons, the cutting of it
down, riotous harvest-home, final sale, and large balance at the
banker's. From the point of view of almost unvarying success the
farmer's life becomes beautiful, poetic. Everything is an aid and help
to him. Nature puts her shoulder to his wheel. He takes the winds, the
clouds, the sunbeams, the rolling stars into partnership, and, asking no
dividend, they let him retain the entire profits. As a rule, the lives
of men of letters do not flow on in this successful way. In their case
there is always either defect in the soil or defect in the husbandry.
Like the Old Guard at Waterloo, they are fighting bravely on a lost
field. In literary biography there is always an element of tragedy, and
the love we bear the dead is mingled with pity. Of course the life of a
man of letters is more perilous than the life of a farmer; more perilous
than almost any other kind of life which it is given a human being to
conduct. It is more difficult to obtain the mastery over spiritual ways
and means than over material ones, and he must command _both_. Properly
to conduct his life he must not only take large crops off his fields, he
must also leave in his fields the capacity of producing large crops. It
is easy to drive in your chariot two horses of one breed; not so easy
when the one is of terrestrial stock, the other of celestial; in every
respect different--in colour, temper, and pace.

At the outset of his career, the man of letters is confronted by the fact
that he must live. The obtaining of a livelihood is preliminary to
everything else. Poets and cobblers are placed on the same level so far.
If the writer can barter MSS. for sufficient coin, he may proceed to
develop himself; if he cannot so barter it, there is a speedy end of
himself, and of his development also. Literature has become a
profession; but it is in several respects different from the professions
by which other human beings earn their bread. The man of letters, unlike
the clergyman, the physician, or the lawyer, has to undergo no special
preliminary training for his work, and while engaged in it, unlike the
professional persons named, he has no accredited status. Of course, to
earn any success, he must start with as much special knowledge, with as
much dexterity in his craft, as your ordinary physician; but then he is
not recognised till once he is successful. When a man takes a
physician's degree, he has done something; when a man betakes himself to
literary pursuits, he has done nothing--till once he is lucky enough to
make his mark. There is no special preliminary training for men of
letters, and as a consequence, their ranks are recruited from the vagrant
talent of the world. Men that break loose from the professions, who
stray from the beaten tracks of life, take refuge in literature. In it
are to be found doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and the motley nation of
Bohemians. Any one possessed of a nimble brain, a quire of paper, a
steel-pen and ink-bottle, can start business. Any one who chooses may
enter the lists, and no questions are asked concerning his antecedents.
The battle is won by sheer strength of brain. From all this it comes
that the man of letters has usually a history of his own: his
individuality is more pronounced than the individuality of other men; he
has been knocked about by passion and circumstance. All his life he has
had a dislike for iron rules and common-place maxims. There is something
of the gipsy in his nature. He is to some extent eccentric, and he
indulges his eccentricity. And the misfortunes of men of letters--the
vulgar and patent misfortunes, I mean--arise mainly from the want of
harmony between their impulsiveness and volatility, and the staid
unmercurial world with which they are brought into conflict. They are
unconventional in a world of conventions; they are fanciful, and are
constantly misunderstood in prosaic relations. They are wise enough in
their books, for there they are sovereigns, and can shape everything to
their own likings; out of their books, they are not unfrequently
extremely foolish, for they exist then in the territory of an alien
power, and are constantly knocking their heads against existing orders of
things. Men of letters take prosaic men out of themselves; but they are
weak where the prosaic men are strong. They have their own way in the
world of ideas, prosaic men in the world of facts. From his practical
errors the writer learns something, if not always humility and amendment.
A memorial flower grows on every spot where he has come to grief; and the
chasm he cannot over-leap he bridges with a rainbow.

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