Chapter III: Part 3

I am not likely to forget the incidents of that day. I went up to London, and made my way to the specialist’s house. After a dreary period of waiting, in a dark room looking out on a blank wall, the table abundantly furnished with periodicals whose creased and battered aspect betokened the nervous handling to which they had been subjected, I was at last summoned to the presence of the great man himself. He presented an appearance of imperturbable good-nature; his rosy cheeks, his little snub nose, his neatly groomed appearance, his gold-rimmed spectacles, wore an air of commonplace prosperity that was at once reassuring. He asked me a number of questions, made a thorough examination, writing down certain details in a huge volume, and finally threw himself back in his chair with a deliberate air that somewhat disconcerted me. At last my sentence came. I was undoubtedly suffering from the premonitory symptoms of a serious, indeed dangerous complaint, and I must at once submit myself to the condition of an invalid life. He drew out a table diet, and told me to live a healthy, quiet life under the most restful conditions attainable. He asked me about my circumstances, and I told him with as much calmness as I could muster. He replied that I was very fortunate, that I must at once give up professional work and be content to _vegetate_. “Mind,” he said, “I don’t want you to be _bored_—that will be as bad for you as to be overworked. But you must avoid all kinds of worry and fatigue—all extremes. I should not advise you to travel at present, if you _like_ a country life—in fact I should say, live the life that attracts you, apart from any professional exertions; don’t do anything you don’t like. Now, Mr. ——,” he continued, “I have told you the worst—the very worst. I can’t say whether your constitution will triumph over this complaint: to be candid, I do not think it will; but there is no question of any immediate risk whatever. Indeed, if you were dependent on your own exertions for a livelihood, I could promise you some years of work—though that would render it almost impossible for you ever to recover. As it is, you may consider that you have a chance of entire recovery, and if you can follow my directions, and no unforeseen complications intervene, I think you may look forward to a fairly long life; but mind that any work you do must be of the nature of amusement. Once and for all, _strain_ of any sort is out of the question, and if you indulge in any excessive or exciting exertions, you will inevitably shorten your life. There, I have told you a disagreeable truth—make the best of it—remember that I see many people every week who have to bear far more distressing communications. You had better come to see me every three months, unless you have any marked symptoms, such as”—(there followed medical details with which I need not trouble the reader)—“in that case come to me at once; but I tell you plainly that I do not anticipate them. You seem to have what I call the patient temperament—to have a vocation, if I may say so,” (here he smiled benevolently) “for the invalid life.” He rose as he spoke, shook hands kindly, and opened the door.

15

[Sidenote: NEW PERCEPTIONS]

I will confess that at first this communication was a great shock to me; I was for a time bewildered and plunged into a deep dejection. To say farewell to the bustle and activity of life—to be laid aside on a shelf, like a cracked vase, turning as far as possible my ornamental front to the world, spoilt for homely service. To be relegated to the failures; to be regarded and spoken of as an invalid—to live the shadowed life, a creature of rules and hours, fretting over drugs and beef tea—a degrading, a humiliating rôle. I admit that the first weeks of my enforced retirement were bitter indeed. The perpetual fret of small restrictions had at first the effect of making me feel physically and mentally incapable. Only very gradually did the sad cloud lift. The first thing that came to my help was a totally unexpected feeling. When I had got used to the altered conditions of life, when I found that the regulated existence had become to a large extent mechanical, when I had learnt to decide instinctively what I could attempt and what I must leave alone, I found my perceptions curiously heightened and intensified by the shadowy background which enveloped me. Sounds and sights thrilled me in an unaccustomed way—the very thought, hardly defined, but existing like a quiet subconsciousness, that my tenure of life was certainly frail, and might be brief, seemed to bring out into sharp relief the simple and unnoticed sensations of ordinary life. The pure gush of morning air through the opened casement, the delicious coolness of water on the languid body, the liquid song of birds, the sprouting of green buds upon the hedge, the sharp and aromatic scent of rosy larch tassels, the monotonous babble of the stream beneath its high water plants, the pearly laminæ of the morning cloudland, the glowing wrack of sunset with the liquid bays of intenser green—all these stirred my spirit with an added value of beauty, an enjoyment at once passionate and tranquil, as though they held some whispered secret for the soul.

The same quickening effect passed, I noticed, over intellectual perceptions. Pictures in which there was some latent quality, some hidden brooding, some mystery lying beneath and beyond superficial effect, gave up their secrets to my eye. Music came home to me with an intensity of pathos and passion which I had before never even suspected, and even here the same subtle power of appreciation seemed to have been granted me. It seemed that I was no longer taken in by technical art or mechanical perfection. The hard rippling cascades which had formerly attracted me, where a musician was merely working out, if I may use the word, some subject with a mathematical precision, seemed to me hollow and vain; all that was pompous and violent followed suit, and what I now seemed to be able to discern was all that endeavoured, however faultily, to express some ardour of the spirit, some indefinable delicacy of feeling.

Something of the same power seemed to be mine in dealing with literature. All hard brilliance, all exaggerated display, all literary agility and diplomacy that might have once deceived me, appeared to ring cracked and thin; _mere_ style, style that concealed rather than expressed thought, fell as it were in glassy tingling showers on my initiated spirit; while, on the other hand, all that was truthfully felt, sincerely conceived or intensely desired, drew me as with a magical compulsion. It was then that I first perceived what the sympathy, the perception born of suffering might be, when that suffering was not so intrusive, so severe, as to throw the sick spirit back upon itself—then that I learnt what detachment, what spectatorial power might be conferred by a catastrophe not violent, but sure, by a presage of distant doom. I felt like a man who has long stumbled among intricate lanes, his view obscured by the deep-cut earth-walls of his prison, and by the sordid lower slopes with their paltry details, when the road leads out upon the open moor, and when at last he climbs freely and exultingly upon the broad grassy shoulders of the hill. The true perspective—the map of life opened out before me; I learnt that all art is only valuable when it is the sedulous flowering of the sweet and gracious spirit, and that beyond all power of human expression lies a province where the deepest thoughts, the highest mysteries of the spirit sleep—only guessed at, wrestled with, hankered after by the most skilled master of all the arts of mortal subtlety.

Perhaps the very thing that made these fleeting impressions so perilously sweet, was the sense of their evanescence.

But oh, the very reason why
I love them, is because they die.

[Sidenote: THE SHADOW]

In this exalted mood, with this sense of heightened perception all about me, I began for awhile to luxuriate. I imagined that I had learnt a permanent lesson, gained a higher level of philosophy, escaped from the grip of material things. Alas! it was but transitory. I had not triumphed. What I did gain, what did stay with me, was a more deliberate intention of enjoying simple things, a greater expectation of beauty in homely life. This remained, but in a diminished degree. I suppose that the mood was one of intense nervous tension, for by degrees it was shadowed and blotted, until I fell into a profound depression. At best what could I hope for?—a shadowed life, an inglorious gloom? The dull waste years stretched before me—days, weeks, months of wearisome little duties; dreary tending of the lamp of life; and what a life! life without service, joy, brightness, or usefulness. I was to be stranded like a hulk on an oozy shore, only thankful for every month that the sodden timbers still held together. I saw that something larger and deeper was required; I saw that religion and philosophy must unite to form some definite theory of life, to build a foundation on which I could securely rest.

16

The service of others, in some form or another, must sustain me. Philosophy pointed out that to narrow my circle every year, to turn the microscope of thought closer and closer upon my frail self, would be to sink month by month deeper into egotism and self-pity. Religion gave a more generous impulse still.

[Sidenote: BEGINNINGS]

What is our duty with respect to philanthropy? It is obviously absurd to think that every one is bound to tie themselves hand and foot to some thoroughly uncongenial task. Fitness and vocation must come in. Clergy, doctors, teachers are perhaps the most obvious professional philanthropists; for either of the two latter professions I was incapacitated. Some hovering thought of attempting to take orders, and to become a kind of amateur, unprofessional curate, visited me; but my religious views made that difficult, and the position of a man who preaches what he does not wholly believe is inconsistent with self-respect. Christianity as taught by the sects seemed to me to have drifted hopelessly away from the detached simplicity inculcated by Christ; to have become a mere part of the social system, fearfully invaded and overlaid by centuries of unintelligent tradition. To work, for instance, even with Mr. Woodward, at his orders, on his system, would have been an impossibility both for him and for myself. I had, besides, a strong feeling that work, to be of use, must be done, not in a spirit of complacent self-satisfaction, but at least with some energy of enjoyment, some conviction. It seemed moreover clear that, for a time at all events, my place and position in the world was settled: I must live a quiet home life, and endeavour, at all events, to restore some measure of effective health. How could I serve my neighbours best? They were mostly quiet country people—a few squires and clergy, a few farmers, and many farm labourers. Should I accept a country life as my sphere, or was I bound to try and find some other outlet for whatever effectiveness I possessed? I came deliberately to the conclusion that I was not only not bound to go elsewhere, but that it was the most sensible, wisest, and Christian solution to stay where I was and make some experiments.

[Sidenote: MY SCHEMES]

The next practical difficulty was _how_ I could help. English people have a strong sense of independence. They would neither understand nor value a fussy, dragooning philanthropist, who bustled about among them, finding fault with their domestic arrangements, lecturing, dictating. I determined that I would try to give them the help they wanted; not the help I thought they ought to want. That I would go among them with no idea of _improving_, but of doing, if possible, neighbourly and unobtrusive kindnesses, and that under no circumstances would I diminish their sense of independence by weak generosity.

About this time, my mother at luncheon happened to mention that the widow of a small farmer, who was living in a cottage not fifty yards from our gate, was in trouble about her eldest boy, who was disobedient, idle, and unsatisfactory. He had been employed by more than one neighbour in garden work, but had lost two places by laziness and impertinence. Here was a _point d’appui_. In the afternoon I strolled across; nervous and shy, I confess, to a ridiculous degree. I knew the woman by sight, and little more. I felt thoroughly unfitted for my rôle, and feared that patronage would be resented. However, I went and found Mrs. Dewhurst at home. I was received with real geniality and something of delicate sympathy—the news of my illness had got about. I determined I would ask no leading questions, but bit by bit her anxieties were revealed: the boy was a trouble to her. “What did he want?” She didn’t know; but he was discontented and naughty, had got into bad company. I asked if it would be any good my seeing the boy, and found that it would evidently be a relief. I asked her to send the boy to me that evening, and went away with a real and friendly handshake, and an invitation to come again. In the evening Master Dewhurst turned up—a shy, uninteresting, rather insolent boy, strong and well-built, and with a world of energy in his black eyes. I asked him what he wanted to do, and after a little talk it all came out: he was sick of the place; he did not want garden work. “What would he do? What _did_ he like?” I found that he wanted to see something of the world. Would he go to sea? The boy brightened up at once, and then said he didn’t want to leave his mother. Our interview closed, and this necessitated my paying a further call on the mother, who was most sensible, and evidently felt that what the boy wanted was a thorough change.

To make a long story short, it cost me a few letters and a very little money, defined as a loan; the boy went off to a training ship, and after a few weeks found that he had the very life he wanted; indeed, he is now a promising young sailor, who never fails to write to me at intervals, and who comes to see me whenever he comes home. The mother is a firm friend. Now that I am at my ease with her, I am astonished at the shrewdness and sense of her talk.

It would be tedious to recount, as I could, fifty similar adventures; my enterprises include a village band, a cricket club, a co-operative store; but the personal work, such as it is, has broadened every year: I am an informal adviser to thirty or forty families, and the correspondence entailed, to say nothing of my visits, gives me much pleasant occupation. The circle now insensibly widens; I do not pretend that there are not times of weariness, and even disagreeable experiences connected with it. I am a poor hand in a sick-room, I confess it with shame; my mother, who is not particularly interested in her neighbours, is ten times as effective.

[Sidenote: THE REWARD]

But what I feel most strongly about the whole, is the intense interest which has grown up about it. The trust which these simple folk repose in me is the factor which rescues me from the indolent impulse to leave matters alone; even if I desired to do so, I could not for very shame disappoint them. Moreover, I cannot pretend that it takes up very much time. The institutions run themselves for the most part. I don’t overdo my visits; indeed, I seldom go to call on my friends unless there is something specific to be done. But I am always at home for them between seven and eight. My downstairs smoking-room, once an office, has a door which opens on the drive, so that it is not necessary for these Nicodemite visitors to come through the house. Sometimes for days together I have no one; sometimes I have three or four callers in the evening. I don’t talk religion as a rule, unless I am asked; but we discuss politics and local matters with avidity. I have persistently refused to take any office, and I fear that our neighbours think me a very lazy kind of dilettante, who happens to be interested in the small-talk of rustics. I will not be a Guardian, as I have little turn for business; and when it was suggested to me that I might be a J. P., I threw cold water on the scheme. Any official position would alter my relation to my friends, and I should often be put in a difficulty; but by being absolutely unattached, I find that confidential dealings are made easy.

I fear that this will sound a very shabby, unromantic, and gelatinous form of philanthropy, and I am quite unable to defend it on utilitarian principles. I can only say that it is deeply absorbing; that it pays, so to speak, a large interest on a small investment of trouble, and that it has given me a sense of perspective in human things which I never had before. The difficulty in writing about it is to abstain from platitudes; I can only say that it has revealed to me how much more emotion and experience go to make up a platitude than I ever suspected before in my ambitious days.

17

Ennui is, after all, the one foe that we all fear; and in arranging our life, the most serious preoccupation is how to escape it. The obvious reply is, of course, “plenty of cheerful society.” But is not general society to a man with a taste for seclusion the most irritating, wearing, _ennuyeux_ method of filling the time? It is not the actual presence of people that is distressing, though that in some moods is unbearable, but it is the consciousness of duties towards them, whether as host or guest, that sits, like the Old Man of the Sea, upon one’s shoulders. A considerable degree of seclusion can be attained by a solitary-minded man at a large hotel. The only time of the day when you are compelled to be gregarious is the table d’hôte dinner; and then, even if you desire to talk, it is often made impossible by the presence of foreigners among whom one is sandwiched. But take a visit at a large English country-house; a mixed party with possibly little in common; the protracted meals, the vacuous sessions, the interminable promenades. Men are better off than women in this respect, as at most periods of the year they are swept off in the early forenoon to some vigorous employment, and are not expected to return till tea-time. But take such a period in August, a month in which many busy men are compelled to pay visits if they pay them at all. Think of the desultory cricket matches, the futile gabble of garden parties.

Of course the desire of solitude, or rather, the nervous aversion to company, may become so intense as to fall under the head of monomania; doctors give it an ugly name, I know not exactly what it is, like the agoraphobia, which is one of the subsections of a certain form of madness. Agoraphobia is the nervous horror of crowds, which causes persons afflicted by it to swoon away at the prospect of having to pass through a square or street crowded with people.

But the dislike of visitors is a distinct, but quite as specific form of nervous mania. One lady of whom I have heard was in the habit of darting to the window and involving herself in the window-curtain the moment she heard a ring at the bell; another, more secretive still, crept under the sofa. Not so very long ago I went over a great house in the North; my host took me to a suite of upper rooms with a charming view. “These,” he said, “were inhabited by my old aunt Susan till her death some months ago; she was somewhat eccentric in her habits”—here he thrust his foot under a roomy settee which stood in the window, and to my intense surprise a bell rang loudly underneath—“Ah,” he said, rather shamefacedly, “they haven’t taken it off.” I begged for an explanation, and he said that the old lady had formed an inveterate habit of creeping under the settee the moment she heard a knock at the door; to cure her of it, they hung a bell on a spring beneath it, so that she gave warning of her whereabouts.

[Sidenote: SOLITUDE]

Society is good for most of us; but solitude is equally good, as a tonic medicine, granted that sociability is accepted as a factor in our life. A certain deliberate solitude, like the fast days in the Roman Church, is useful, even if only by way of contrast, and that we may return with fresh zest to ordinary intercourse.

People who are used to sociable life find the smallest gap, the smallest touch of solitude oppressive and _ennuyeux_; and it may be taken for granted that the avoidance of ennui, in whatever form that whimsical complaint makes itself felt, is one of the most instinctive prepossessions of the human race; but it does not follow that solitude should not be resolutely practised; and any sociable person who has strength of mind to devote, say, one day of the week to absolute and unbroken loneliness would find not only that such times would come to have a positive value of their own, but that they would enhance infinitely the pleasures of social life.

It is a curious thing how fast the instinct for solitude grows. A friend of mine, a clergyman, a man of an inveterately sociable disposition, was compelled by the exigencies of his position to take charge of a lonely sea-coast parish, the incumbent of which had fallen desperately ill. The parish was not very populous, and extremely scattered; the nearest houses, inhabited by educated people were respectively four and five miles away—my friend was poor, an indifferent walker, and had no vehicle at his command.

He went off, he told me, with extreme and acute depression. He found a small rectory-house with three old silent servants. He established himself there with his books, and began in a very heavy-hearted way to discharge the duties of the position; he spent his mornings in quiet reading or strolling—the place lay at the top of high cliffs and included many wild and magnificent prospects. The afternoon he spent in trudging over the parish, making himself acquainted with the farmers and other inhabitants of the region. In the evening he read and wrote again. He had not been there a week before he became conscious that the life had a charm. He had written in the first few days of his depression to several old friends imploring them to have mercy on his loneliness. Circumstances delayed their arrival, and at last when he had been there some six weeks, a letter announcing the arrival of an old friend and his wife for a week’s visit gave him, he confessed, far more annoyance than pleasure. He entertained them, however, but felt distinctly relieved when they departed. At the end of the six months I saw him, and he told me that solitude was a dangerous Circe, seductive, delicious, but one that should be resolutely and deliberately shunned, an opiate of which one could not estimate the fascination. And I am not speaking of a torpid or indolent man, but a man of force, intellect, and cultivation, of a restless mind and vivid interests.

[_The passages that follow were either extracted by the author
himself from his own diaries, or are taken from a notebook
containing fragments of an autobiographical character. When the
date is ascertainable it is given at the head of the piece._—J. T.]

18

Now I will draw, carefully, faithfully, and lovingly, the portraits of some of my friends; they are not ever likely to set eyes on the delineation: and if by some chance they do, they will forgive me, I think.

I have chosen three or four of the most typical of my not very numerous neighbours, though there are many similar portraits scattered up and down my diaries.

It happened this morning that a small piece of parish business turned up which necessitated my communicating with Sir James, our chief landowner. Staunton is his name, and his rank is baronet. He comes from a typically English stock. As early as the fourteenth century the Stauntons seem to have held land in the parish; they were yeomen, no doubt, owning a few hundred acres of freehold. In the sixteenth century one of them drifted to London, made a fortune, and, dying childless, left his money to the head of the house, who bought more land, built a larger house, became esquire, and eventually knight; his brass is in the church. They were unimaginative folk, and whenever the country was divided, they generally contrived to find themselves upon the prosaic and successful side.

[Sidenote: THE BISHOP]

Early in the eighteenth century there were two brothers: the younger, a clergyman, by some happy accident became connected with the Court, made a fortunate marriage, and held a deanery first, and then a bishopric. Here he amassed a considerable fortune. His portrait, which hangs at the Park, represents a man with a face of the shape and colour of a ripe plum, with hardly more distinction of feature, shrouded in a full wig. Behind him, under a velvet curtain, stands his cathedral, in a stormy sky. The bishop’s monument is one of the chief disfigurements, or the chief ornaments of our church, according as your taste is severe or catholic. It represents the deceased prelate in a reclining attitude, with a somewhat rueful expression, as of a man fallen from a considerable height. Over him bends a solicitous angel in the attitude of one inquiring what is amiss. One of the prelate’s delicate hands is outstretched from a gigantic lawn sleeve, like a haggis, which requires an iron support to sustain it; the other elbow is propped upon some marble volumes of controversial divinity. In an alcove behind is a tumid mitre, quite putting into the shade a meagre celestial crown with marble rays, which is pushed unceremoniously into the top of the recess.

[Sidenote: THE BARONETS]

The bishop succeeded his elder brother in the estate, and added largely to the property. The bishop’s only son sat for a neighbouring borough, and was created a baronet for his services, which were of the most straightforward kind. At this point, by one of the strange freaks of which even county families are sometimes guilty, a curious gleam of romance flashed across the dull record. The baronet’s eldest son developed dim literary tastes, drifted to London, became a hanger-on of the Johnsonian circle—his name occurs in footnotes to literary memoirs of the period; married a lady of questionable reputation, and published two volumes of “Letters to a Young Lady of Quality,” which combine, to a quite singular degree, magnificence of diction with tenuity of thought. This Jack Staunton was a spendthrift, and would have made strange havoc of the estate, but his father fortunately outlived him; and by the offer of a small pension to Mrs. Jack, who was left hopelessly destitute, contrived to get the little grandson and heir into his own hands. The little boy developed into the kind of person that no one would desire as a descendant, but that all would envy as an ancestor. He was a miser pure and simple. In his day the tenants were ground down, rents were raised, plantations were made, land was acquired in all directions; but the house became ruinous, and the miserable owner, in a suit of coarse cloth like a second-rate farmer, sneaked about his lands with a shy and secret smile, avoiding speech with tenants and neighbours alike, and eating small and penurious meals in the dusty dining-room in company with an aged and drunken bailiff, the discovery of whose constant attempts to defraud his master of a few shillings were the delight and triumph of the baronet’s life. He died a bachelor; at his death a cousin, a grandson of the first baronet, succeeded, and found that whatever else he had done, the miser had left immense accumulations of money behind him. This gentleman was in the army, and fought at Waterloo, after which he imitated the example of his class, and became an unflinching Tory politician. The fourth baronet was a singularly inconspicuous person whom I can just remember, whose principal diversion was his kennel. I have often seen him when, as a child, I used to lunch there with my mother, stand throughout the meal in absolute silence, sipping a glass of sherry on the hearthrug, and slowly munching a large biscuit, and, before we withdrew, producing from his pocket the envelopes which had contained the correspondence of the morning, and filling them with bones, pieces of fat, fag-ends of joints, to bestow upon the dogs in the course of the afternoon. This habit I considered, as a child, to be distinctly agreeable, and I should have been deeply disappointed if Sir John had ever failed to do it.

[Sidenote: SIR JAMES]

The present Sir James is now a man of forty. He was at Eton and Trinity, and for a short time in the Guards. He married the daughter of a neighbouring baronet, and at the age of thirty, when his father died, settled down to the congenial occupation of a country gentleman. He is, in spite of the fact that he had a large landed estate, a very wealthy man. I imagine he has at least £20,000 a year. He has a London house, to which Lady Staunton goes for the season, but Sir James, who makes a point of accompanying her, soon finds that business necessitates his at once returning to the country; and I am not sure that the summer months, which he spends absolutely alone, are not the most agreeable part of the year for him. He has three stolid and healthy children—two boys and a girl. He takes no interest whatever in politics, religion, literature, or art. He takes in the _Standard_ and the _Field_. He hunts a little, and shoots a little, but does not care about either. He spends his morning and afternoon in pottering about the estate. In the evening he writes a few letters, dines well, reads the paper and goes to bed. He does not care about dining out; indeed the prospect of a dinner-party or a dance clouds the pleasure of the day. He goes to church once on Sunday; he is an active magistrate; he has, at long intervals, two or three friends of like tastes to stay with him, who accompany him, much to his dislike, in his perambulations, and stand about whistling, or staring at stacks and cattle, while he talks to the bailiff. But he is a kindly, cheery, generous man, with a good head for business, and an idea of his position. He is absolutely honourable and straightforward, and faces an unpleasant duty, when he has made up his mind to it, with entire tranquillity. No mental speculation has ever come in his way; at school he was a sound, healthy boy, good at games, who did his work punctually, and was of blameless character. He made no particular friends; sat through school after school, under various sorts of masters, never inattentive, and never interested. He had a preference for dull and sober teachers, men with whom, as he said, “you knew where you were;” a stimulating teacher bewildered him,—“always talking about poetry and rot.” At Cambridge it was the same. He rowed in his College boat; he passed the prescribed examinations; he led a clean healthy decorous life; and no idea, small or great, no sense of beauty, no wonder at the scheme of things, ever entered his head. If by chance he ever found himself in the company of an enthusiastic undergraduate, whose mind and heart were full of burning, incomplete, fantastic thoughts, James listened politely to what he had to say, hazarded no statements, and said, in quiet after-comment, “Gad, how that chap does jaw!” No one ever thought him stupid; he knew what was going on; he was sociable, kind, not the least egotistical, and far too much of a gentleman to exhibit the least complacency in his position or wealth—only he knew exactly what he liked, and had none of the pathetic admiration for talent that is sometimes found in the unintellectual. When he went into the Guards it was just the same. He was popular and respected, friendly with his men, perfectly punctual, capable and respectable. He had no taste for wine or gambling, or disreputable courses. He admired nobody and nothing, and no one ever obtained the slightest influence over him. At home he was perfectly happy, kind to his sisters, ready to do anything he was asked, and to join in anything that was going on. When he succeeded to the estate, he went quietly to work to find a wife, and married a pretty, contented girl, with the same notions as himself. He never said an unkind thing to her, or to any of his family, and expressed no extravagant affection for any one. He is trustee for all his relations, and always finds time to look after their affairs. He is always ready to subscribe to any good object, and had contrived never to squabble with an angular ritualistic clergyman, who thinks him a devoted son of the Church. He has declined several invitations to stand for Parliament, and has no desire to be elevated to the Peerage. He will probably live to a green old age, and leave an immense fortune. I do not fancy that he is much given to meditate about his latter end; but if he ever lets his mind range over the life beyond the grave, he probably anticipates vaguely that, under somewhat airy conditions, he will continue to enjoy the consideration of his fellow-beings, and deserve their respect.

19

For nearly ten years after we came to Golden End, the parish was administered by an elderly clergyman, who had already been over twenty years in the place. He was little known outside the district at all; I doubt if, between the occasion of his appointment to the living and his death, his name ever appeared in the papers. The Bishop of the diocese knew nothing of him; if the name was mentioned in clerical society, it was dismissed again with some such comment as “Ah, poor Woodward! an able man, I believe, but utterly unpractical;” and yet I have always held this man to be on the whole one of the most remarkable people I have ever known.

[Sidenote: MR. WOODWARD]

He was a tall thin man, with a slight stoop. He could not be called handsome, but his face had a strange dignity and power; he had a pallid complexion, at times indeed like parchment from its bloodlessness, and dark hair which remained dark up to the very end. His eyebrows were habitually drawn up, giving to his face a look of patient endurance; his eyelids drooped over his eyes, which gave his expression a certain appearance of cynicism, but when he opened them full, and turned them upon you, they were dark, passionate, and with a peculiar brightness. His lips were full and large, with beautiful curves, but slightly compressed as a rule, which gave a sense of severity. He was clean shaven, and always very carefully dressed, but in somewhat secular style, with high collars, a frock-coat and waistcoat, a full white cambric tie, and—I shudder to relate it in these days—he was seldom to be seen in black trousers, but wore a shade of dark grey. If you had substituted a black tie for a white one you would have had an ordinary English layman dressed as though for town—for he always wore a tall hat. He often rode about the parish, when he wore a dark grey riding-suit with gaiters. I do not think he ever gave his clothes a thought, but he had the instincts of a fine gentleman, and loved neatness and cleanliness. He had never married, but his house was administered by an elderly sister—rather a grim, majestic personage, with a sharp ironical tongue, and no great indulgence for weakness. Miss Woodward considered herself an invalid, and only appeared in fine weather, driving in a smart little open carriage. They were people of considerable wealth, and the rectory, which was an important house standing in a large glebe, had two gardeners and good stables, and was furnished within, in a dignified way, with old solid furniture. Mr. Woodward had a large library, and at the little dinner-parties that he gave, where the food was of the simplest, the plate was ancient and abundant—old silver candlesticks and salvers in profusion—and a row of family pictures beamed on you from the walls. Mr. Woodward used to say, if any one admired any particular piece of plate, “Yes, I believe it is good; it was all collected by an old uncle of mine, who left it to me with his blessing for my lifetime. Of course I don’t quite approve of using it—I believe I ought not even to have two coats—but I can’t sell it, and meantime it looks very nice and does no harm.” The living was a wealthy one, but it was soon discovered that Mr. Woodward spent all that he received on that head in the parish. He did not pauperise idle parishioners, but he was always ready with a timely gift to tide an honest man over a difficulty. He liked to start the boys in life, and would give a girl a little marriage portion. He paid for a parish nurse, but at the same time he insisted on almsgiving as a duty. “I don’t do these things to save you the trouble of giving,” he would say, “but to give you a lead; and if I find that the offertories go down, then my subscriptions will go down too;” but he would sometimes say that he feared he was making things difficult for his successor. “I can’t help that; if he is a good man the people will understand.”

[Sidenote: THE CHURCH]

Mr. Woodward was a great politician and used to say that it was a perpetual temptation to him to sit over the papers in the morning instead of doing his work. But the result was that he always had something to talk about, and his visits were enjoyed by the least spiritual of his parishioners. He was of course eclectic in his politics, and combined a good deal of radicalism with an intense love and veneration for the past. He restored his church with infinite care and taste, and was for ever beautifying it in small ways. He used to say that there were two kinds of church-goers—the people who liked the social aspect of the service, who preferred a blaze of light, hearty singing, and the presence of a large number of people; but that were others who preferred it from the quiet and devotional side, and who were only distracted from the main object of the service by the presence of alert and critical persons. Consequently he had a little transept divided from the body of the church by a simple screen, and kept the lights low within it. The transept was approached by a separate door, and he invited people who could not come for the whole service to slip in for a little of it. At the same time there was plenty of room in the church, and as the parish is not thickly populated, so that you could be sure of finding a seat in any part of the church that suited your mood. He never would have a surpliced choir; and in the morning service, nothing was sung except the canticles and hymns; but there was a fine organ built at his expense, and he offered a sufficiently large salary to secure an organist of considerable taste and skill. He greatly believed in music, and part of the organist’s duty was to give a little recital once a week, which was generally well attended. He himself was always present at the choir practices, and the result of the whole was that the congregation sang well, with a tone and a feeling that I have never heard in places where the indigenous materials for choral music were so scanty.

Mr. Woodward talked a good deal on religious subjects, but with an ease and a naturalness which saved his hearers from any feeling of awkwardness or affectation. I have never heard any one who seemed to live so naturally in the seen and the unseen together, and his transitions from mundane to religious talk were made with such simplicity that his hearers felt no embarrassment or pain. After all, the ethical side of life is what we are all interested in—moreover, Mr. Woodward had a decidedly magnetic gift—that gift which, if it had been accompanied with more fire and volubility, would have made him an orator. As it was, the circle to whom he talked felt insensibly interested in what he spoke of, and at the same time there was such a transparent simplicity about the man that no one could have called him affected. His talk it would be impossible to recall; it depended upon all sorts of subtle and delicate effects of personality. Indeed, I remember once after an evening spent in his company, during which he had talked with an extraordinary pathos and emotion, I wrote down what I could remember of it. I look at it now and wonder what the spell was; it seems so ordinary, so simple, so, may I say, platitudinal.

Yet I may mention two or three of his chance sayings. I found him one day in his study deeply engrossed in a book which I saw was the Life of Darwin. He leapt to his feet to greet me, and after the usual courtesies said, “What a wonderful book this is—it is from end to end nothing but a cry for the Nicene Creed! The man walks along, doing his duty so splendidly and nobly, with such single-heartedness and simplicity, and just misses the way all the time; the gospel he wanted is just the other side of the wall. But he must know now, I think. Whenever I go to the Abbey, I always go straight to his grave, and kneel down close beside it, and pray that his eyes may be opened. Very foolish and wrong, I dare say, but I can’t help it!”

Another day he found me working at a little pedigree of my father’s simple ancestors. I had hunted their names up in an old register, and there was quite a line of simple persons to record. He looked over my shoulder at the sheet while I told him what it was. “Dear old folk!” he said, “I hope you say a prayer now and then for some of them; they belong to you and you to them, but I dare say they were sad Socinians, many of them (laughing). Well, that’s all over now. I wonder what they do with themselves over there?”

[Sidenote: THE PEACOCK]

Mr. Woodward was of course adored by the people of the village. In his trim garden lived a couple of pea-fowl—gruff and selfish birds, but very beautiful to look at. Mr. Woodward had a singular delight in watching the old peacock trail his glories in the sun. They roosted in a tree that overhung the road. There came to stay in the next village a sailor, a ne’er-do-weel, who used to hang about with a gun. One evening Mr. Woodward heard a shot fired in the lane, went out of his study, and found that the sailor had shot the peacock, who was lying on his back in the road, feebly poking out his claws, while the aggressor was pulling the feathers from his tail. Mr. Woodward was extraordinarily moved. The man caught in the act looked confused and bewildered. “Why did you shoot my poor old bird?” said Mr. Woodward. The sailor in apology said he thought it was a pheasant. Mr. Woodward, on the verge of tears, carried the helpless fowl into the garden, but finding it was already dead, interred it with his own hands, told his sister at dinner what had happened, and said no more.

But the story spread, and four stalwart young parishioners of Mr. Woodward’s vowed vengeance, caught the luckless sailor in a lane, broke his gun, and put him in the village pond, from which he emerged a lamentable sight, cursing and spluttering; the process was sternly repeated, and not until he handed over all his available cash for the purpose of replacing the bird did his judges desist. Another peacock was bought and presented to Mr. Woodward, the offender being obliged to make the presentation himself with an abject apology, being frankly told that the slightest deviation from the programme would mean another lustral washing.

The above story testifies to the sort of position which Mr. Woodward held in his parish; and what is the most remarkable part of it, indicates the esteem with which he was regarded by the most difficult members of a congregation to conciliate—the young men. But then Mr. Woodward was at ease with the young men. He had talked to them as boys, with a grave politeness which many people hold to be unnecessary in the case of the young. He had encouraged them to come to him in all sorts of little troubles. The men who had resented the loss of Mr. Woodward’s peacock knew him as an intimate and honoured family friend; he had tided one over a small money difficulty, and smoothed the path of an ambition for another. He had claimed no sacerdotal rights over the liberties of his people, but such allegiance as he had won was the allegiance that always waits upon sympathy and goodwill; and further, he was shrewd and practical in small concerns, and had the great gift of foreseeing contingencies. He never forgot the clerical character, but he made it unobtrusive, kept it waiting round the corner, and it was always there when it was wanted.

[Sidenote: THE PROFESSOR]

I was present once at an interesting conversation between Mr. Woodward and a distinguished university professor who by some accident was staying with myself. The professor had expressed himself as much interested in the conditions of rural life and was lamenting to me the dissidence which he thought was growing up between the clergy and their flocks. I told him about Mr. Woodward and took him to tea. The professor with a courteous frankness attacked Mr. Woodward on the same point. He said that he believed that the raising of theological and clerical standards had had the effect of turning the clergy into a class, enthusiastic, no doubt, but interested in a small circle of things to which they attached extreme importance, though they were mostly traditional or antiquarian. He said that they were losing their hold on English life, and inclined not so much to uphold a scrupulous standard of conduct, as to enforce a preoccupation in doctrinal and liturgical questions, interesting enough, but of no practical importance. Mr. Woodward did not contradict him; the professor, warming to his work, said that the ordinary village sermon was of a futile kind, and possessed no shrewdness or definiteness as a rule. Mr. Woodward asked him to expand the idea—what ought the clergy to preach about? “Well,” said the professor, “they ought to touch on politics—not party politics, of course, but social measures, historical developments and so forth. I was present,” he went on, “some years ago when, in a country town, the Bishop of the diocese preached a sermon at the parish church, the week after the French had been defeated at Sedan, and the Bishop made not the slightest allusion to the event, though it was the dominant idea in the minds of the sensible members of the congregation; the clergy ought not only to preach politics—they ought to talk politics—they ought to show that they have the same interests as their people.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Woodward, leaning forward, “I agree with much that you say, Professor—very much; but you look at things in a different perspective. We don’t think much about politics here in the country—home politics a little, but foreign politics not at all. When we hear of rumours of war we are not particularly troubled;” (with a smile) “and when I have to try and encourage an old bedridden woman who is very much bewildered with this world, and has no imagination left to deal with the next—and who is sadly afraid of her long journey in the dark—when I have to try and argue with a naughty boy who has got some poor girl into trouble, and doesn’t feel in his heart that he has done a selfish or a brutal thing, am I to talk to them about the battle of Sedan, or even about the reform of the House of Lords?”

The professor smiled grimly, but perhaps a little foolishly, and did not take up the challenge. But Mr. Woodward said to me a few days afterwards: “I was very much interested in your friend the professor—a most amiable, and, I should think, unselfish person. How good of him to interest himself in the parish clergy! But you know, my dear boy, the intellectual atmosphere is a difficult one to live in—a man needs some very human trial of his own to keep him humble and sane. I expect the professor wants a long illness!” (smiling) “No, I dare say he is very good in his own place, and does good work for Christ, but he is a man clothed in soft raiment in these wilds, and you and I must do all we can to prevent him from rewriting the Lord’s Prayer. I am afraid he thinks there is a sad absence of the intellectual element in it. It must be very distressing to him to think how often it is used; and yet there is not an allusion to politics in it—not even to comprehensive measures of social reform.”

[Sidenote: MR. WOODWARD’S SERMONS]

Mr. Woodward’s sermons were always a pleasure to me. He told me once that he had a great dislike to using conventional religious language; and thus, though he was in belief something of a High Churchman, he was so careful to avoid catch-words or party formulas that few people suspected how high the doctrine was. I took an elderly evangelical aunt to church once, when Mr. Woodward preached a sermon on baptismal regeneration of rather an advanced type. I shuddered to think of the denunciations which I anticipated after church; indeed, I should not have been surprised if my aunt had gathered up her books—she was a masculine personage—and swept out of the building. Both on the contrary, she listened intently, rather moist-eyed, I thought, to the discourse, and afterwards spoke to me with extreme emphasis of it as a real _gospel_ sermon. Mr. Woodward wrote his sermons, but often I think departed from the text. He discoursed with a simple tranquillity of manner that made each hearer feel as if he was alone with him. His allusions to local events were thrilling in their directness and pathos; and in passing, I may say that he was the only man I ever heard who made the giving out of notices, both in manner and matter, into a fine art. On Christmas Day he used to speak about the events of the year; one winter there was a bad epidemic of diphtheria in the village, and several children died. The shepherd on one of the farms, a somewhat gruff and unsociable character, lost two little children on Christmas Eve. Mr. Woodward, unknown to me at the time, had spent the evening with the unhappy man, who was almost beside himself with grief.

[Sidenote: THE CHRISTMAS SERMON]

In the sermon he began quite simply, describing the scene of the first Christmas Eve in a few picturesque words. Then he quoted Christina Rossetti’s Christmas Carol—

“In the bleak mid-winter
Wintry winds made moan,”

dwelling on the exquisite words in a way which brought the tears to my eyes. When he came to the lines describing the gifts made to Christ—

“If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,”

he stopped dead for some seconds. I feel sure that he had not thought of the application before. Then he looked down the church and said—

“I spent a long time yesterday in the house of one who follows the calling of a shepherd among us.... He has given _two_ lambs to Christ.”