A Writer's Recollections Volume I Part 4

And he winds up with yearning affection toward the elder brother so far away.

I think of you very often--our excursion to Keswick and Greta Hall, our walk over Hardknot and Wrynose, our bathes in the old Allen Bank bathing-place [Grasmere], our parting in the cab at the corner of Mount St. One of my pleasantest but most difficult problems is when and where we shall meet again.

In another letter, written a year later, the tone is still despondent.

"It is no affectation to say that I feel my life, in one way, cannot now be a happy one." He feels it his duty for the present to "lie still," as Keble says, to think, it may be to suffer. "But in my castle-buildings I often dream of coming to you." He appreciates, more fully than ever before, Tom's motives in going to New Zealand--the desire that may move a man to live his own life in a new and freer world. "But when I am asked, as I often am, why you went, I always grin and let people answer themselves; for I could not hope to explain without preaching a sermon.

An act of faith and conviction cannot be understood by the light of worldly motives and interests; and to blow out this light, and bring the true one, is not the work of a young man with his own darkness to struggle through; so I grin as aforesaid." "G.o.d is teaching us," he adds--i.e., the different members of the family--"by separation, absence, and suffering." And he winds up--"Good-by. I never like finis.h.i.+ng a letter to you--it seems like letting you fall back again to such infinite distance. And you are often very near me, and the thought of you is often cheery and helpful to me in my own conflict." Even up to January, 1850, he is still thinking of New Zealand, and signing himself, "ever, dear Tom, whether I am destined to see you soon, or never again in this world--Your most truly affectionate brother."

Alack! the brothers never did meet again, in this world which both took so hardly. But for w.i.l.l.y a transformation scene was near. After two years in India, his gift and his character had made their mark. He had not only been dreaming of New Zealand; besides his daily routine, he had been working hard at Indian languages and history. The Lawrences, both John and Henry, had found him out, and realized his quality. It was at Sir Henry Lawrence's house in the spring of 1850 that he met Miss f.a.n.n.y Hodgson, daughter of the distinguished soldier and explorer, General Hodgson, discoverer of the sources of the Ganges, and at that time the Indian Surveyor-General. The soldier of twenty-three fell instantly in love, and tumult and despondency melted away. The next letter to New Zealand is pitched in quite another key. He still judges Indian life and Indian government with a very critical eye. "The Alpha and Omega of the whole evil in Indian Society" is "the regarding India as a rupee-mine, instead of a Colony, and ourselves as Fortune-hunters and Pension-earners rather than as emigrants and missionaries." And outside his domestic life his prospects are still uncertain. But with every mail one can see the strained spirit relaxing, yielding to the spell of love and to the honorable interests of an opening life.

"To-day, my Thomas [October 2, 1850], I sit, a married man in the Bengal army, writing to a brother, it may be a married man, in Van Diemen's Land." (Rumors of Tom's courts.h.i.+p of Julia Sorell had evidently just reached him.) He goes on to describe his married home at Hoshyarpore, and his work at Indian languages. He has been reading Carlyle's _Cromwell_, and marveling at the "rapid rush of thought which seems more and more to be engrossing people in England!" "In India you will easily believe that the torpor is still unbroken." (The Mutiny was only seven short years ahead!) And he is still conscious of the "many weights which do beset and embitter a man's life in India." But a new stay within, the reconciliation that love brings about between a man and the world, upholds him.

"'To draw homeward to the general life,' which you, and dear Matt himself, and I, and all of us, are--or at least may be--living, independent of all the accidents of time and circ.u.mstance--this is a great alleviation." The "_fundamentals"_ are safe. He dwells happily on the word--"a good word, in which you and I, so separated, as far as accidents go, it may be for all time, can find great comfort, speaking as it does of Eternity." One sees what is in his mind--the brother's "little book of poems" published a year before:

Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from chance, have conquered fate, They, winning room to see and hear, And to men's business not too near Though clouds of individual strife Draw homeward to the general life.

To the wise, foolish; to the world Weak;--yet not weak, I might reply, Not foolish, Fausta, in His eye, To whom each moment in its race, Crowd as we will its neutral s.p.a.ce, Is but a quiet watershed Whence, equally, the seas of life and death are fed.

Six months later the younger brother has heard "as a positive fact" of Tom's marriage, and writes, with affectionate "chaff":

I wonder whether it has changed you much?--not made a Tory of you, I'll undertake to say! But it is wonderfully sobering. After all, Master Tom, it is not the very exact _finale_ which we should have expected to your Republicanism of the last three or four years, to find you a respectable married man, holding a permanent appointment!

Matt's marriage, too, stands pre-eminent among the items of family news.

What blind judges, sometimes, the most attached brothers are of each other!

I hear too by this mail of Matt's engagement, which suggests many thoughts. I own that Matt is one of the very last men in the world whom I can fancy happily married--or rather happy in matrimony. But I dare say I reckon without my host, for there was such a "_longum intervallum"_ between dear old Matt and me, that even that last month in town, when I saw so much of him, though there was the most entire absence of elder-brotherism on his part, and only the most kind and thoughtful affection, for which I shall always feel grateful, yet our intercourse was that of man and boy; and though the difference of years was not so formidable as between "Matthew"

and Wordsworth, yet we were less than they a "pair of Friends,"

though a pair of very loving brothers.

But even in this gay and charming letter one begins to see the shadows cast by the doom to come. The young wife has gone to Simla, having been "delicate" for some time. The young husband stays behind, fighting the heat.

The hot weather, old boy, is coming on like a tiger. It is getting on for ten at night; but we sit with windows all wide open, the punkah going, the thinnest conceivable garments, and yet we sweat, my brother, very profusely.... To-morrow I shall be up at gun-fire, about half-past four A.M. and drive down to the civil station, about three miles off, to see a friend, an officer of our own corps ... who is sick, return, take my Bearer's daily account, write a letter or so, and lie down with _Don Quixote_ under a punkah, go to sleep the first chapter that Sancho lets me, and sleep till ten, get up, bathe, re-dress and breakfast; do my daily business, such as it is--hard work, believe me, in a hot sleep- inducing, intestine-withering climate, till sunset, when doors and windows are thrown open ... and mortals go out to "eat the air," as the natives say.

The climate, indeed, had already begun its deadly attack upon an organism as fine and sensitive as any of the myriad victims which the secret forces of India's sun and soil have exacted from her European invaders. In 1853, William Delafield Arnold came home invalided, with his wife and his elder two children. The third, Oakeley (the future War Minister in Mr. Balfour's Government), was born in England in 1855.

There were projects of giving up India and settling at home. The young soldier whose literary gift, always conspicuous among the nine in the old childish Fox How days, and already shown in _Oakfield_, was becoming more and more marked, was at this time a frequent contributor to the _Times_, the _Economist_, and _Fraser_, and was presently offered the editors.h.i.+p of the _Economist_. But just as he was about to accept it, came a flattering offer from India, no doubt through the influence of Sir John Lawrence, of the Directors.h.i.+p of Public Instruction in the Punjaub. He thought himself bound to accept it, and with his wife and two children went out again at the end of 1855. His business was to organize the whole of native education in the Punjaub, and he did it so well during the short time that remained to him before the Mutiny broke out, that during all that time of terror, education in the Punjaub was never interrupted, the attendances at the schools never dropped, and the young Director went about his work, not knowing often, indeed, whether the whole province might not be aflame within twenty-four hours, and its Anglo-Indian administration wiped out, but none the less undaunted and serene.

To this day, three portrait medals in gold and silver are given every year to the best pupils in the schools of the Punjaub, the product of a fund raised immediately after his death by William Arnold's fellow-workers there, in order to commemorate his short heroic course in that far land, and to preserve, if they could, some record of that "sweet stateliness" of aspect, to use the expression of one who loved him, which "had so fascinated his friends."

The Mutiny pa.s.sed. Sir John Lawrence paid public and flattering tribute to the young official who had so amply justified a great man's choice.

And before the storm had actually died away, within a fortnight of the fall of Delhi, while it was not yet certain that the troops on their way would arrive in time to prevent further mischief, my uncle, writing to my father of the awful days of suspense from the 14th to the 30th of September, says:

A more afflicted country than this has been since I returned to it in November. 1855--afflicted by Dearth--Deluge--Pestilence--far worse than war, it would be hard to imagine. _In the midst of it all, the happiness of our domestic life has been almost perfect_.

With that touching sentence the letters to my father, so far, at least, as I possess them, come to an end. Alas! In the following year the gentle wife and mother, worn out by India, died at a hill-station in the Himalayas, and a few months later her husband, ill and heartbroken, sent his motherless children home by long sea, and followed himself by the overland route. Too late! He was taken ill in Egypt, struggled on to Malta, and was put ash.o.r.e at Gibraltar to die. From Cairo he had written to the beloved mother who was waiting for him in that mountain home he so longed to reach, that he hoped to be able to travel in a fortnight.

But do not trust to this.... Do not in fact expect me till you hear that I am in London. I much fear that it may be long before I see dear, dear Fox How. In London I must have advice, and I feel sure I shall be ordered to the South of England till the hot weather is well advanced. I must wait too in London for the darling children.

But once in London, I cannot but think my dearest mother will manage to see me, and I have even had visions of your making one of your spring tours, and going with me to Torquay or wherever I may go.... Plans--plans--plans! They will keep.

And a few days later:

As I said before, do not expect me in England till you hear I am there. Perhaps I was too eager to get home. a.s.suredly I have been checked, and I feel as if there were much trouble between me and home yet.... I see in the papers the death of dear Mrs.

Wordsworth....

Ever my beloved mother ...

Your very loving son,

W.D. ARNOLD.

He started for England, but at Gibraltar, a dying man, was carried ash.o.r.e. His younger brother, sent out from England in post haste, missed him by ill chance at Alexandria and Malta, and arrived too late. He was buried under the shelter of the Rock of Spain and the British flag. His intimate friend, Meredith Townsend, the joint editor and creator of the _Spectator_, wrote to the _Times_ shortly after his death:

William Arnold did not live long enough (he was thirty-one) to gain his true place in the world, but he had time enough given him to make himself of importance to a Government like that of Lord Dalhousie, to mold the education of a great province, and to win the enduring love of all with whom he ever came in contact.

It was left, however, for his poet-brother to build upon his early grave "the living record of his memory." A month after "w.i.l.l.y's" death, "Matt"

was wandering where--

beneath me, bright and wide Lay the low coast of Brittany--

with the thought of "w.i.l.l.y" in his mind, as he turns to the sea that will never now bring the wanderer home.

O, could he once have reached the air Freshened by plunging tides, by showers!

Have felt this breath he loved, of fair Cool northern fields, and grain, and flowers.

He longed for it--pressed on!--In vain!

At the Straits failed that spirit brave, The south was parent of his pain, The south is mistress of his grave.

Or again, in "A Southern Night"--where he muses on the "two jaded English," man and wife, who lie, one under the Himalayas, the other beside "the soft Mediterranean." And his first thought is that for the "spent ones of a work-day age," such graves are out of keeping.

In cities should we English lie Where cries are rising ever new, And men's incessant stream goes by!-- * * * * *

Not by those h.o.a.ry Indian hills, Not by this gracious Midland sea Whose floor to-night sweet moons.h.i.+ne fills Should our graves be!

Some Eastern sage pursuing "the pure goal of being"--"He by those Indian mountains old, might well repose." Crusader, troubadour, or maiden dying for love--

Such by these waters of romance 'Twas meet to lay!

And then he turns upon himself. For what is beauty, what wisdom, what romance if not the tender goodness of women, if not the high soul of youth?

Mild o'er her grave, ye mountains, s.h.i.+ne!

Gently by his, ye waters, glide!

To that in you which is divine They were allied.

Only a few days after their father's death, the four orphan children of the William Arnolds arrived at Fox How. They were immediately adopted as their own by William and Jane Forster, who had no children; and later they added the name of Forster to that of Arnold. At that moment I was at school at Ambleside, and I remember well my first meeting with the Indian children, and how I wondered at their fair skins and golden hair and frail, ethereal looks.

By this time Fox How was in truth a second home to me. But I have still to complete the tale of those who made it so. Edward Penrose, the Doctor's fourth son, who died in 1878, on the threshold of fifty, was a handsome, bearded man of winning presence and of many friends. He was at Balliol, then a Fellow of All Souls, and in Orders. But he first found his real vocation as an Inspector of Schools in Devon and Cornwall, and for eighteen years, from 1860 to 1878, through the great changes in elementary education produced by his brother-in-law's Education Act, he was the ever-welcome friend of teachers and children all over the wide and often remote districts of the West country which his work covered.

He had not the gifts of his elder brothers--neither the genius of Matthew nor the restless energy and initiative of William Delafield, nor the scholarly and researching tastes of my father; and his later life was always a struggle against ill-health. But he had Matthew's kindness, and Matthew's humor--the "chaff" between the two brothers was endless!--and a large allowance of William's charm. His unconscious talk in his last illness was often of children. He seemed to see them before him in the country school-rooms, where his coming--the coming of "the tall gentleman with the kind blue eyes," as an eye-witness describes him--was a festa, excellent official though he was. He carried enthusiasm into the cause of popular education, and that is not a very common enthusiasm in this country of ours. Yet the cause is nothing more nor less than the cause of _the international intelligence_, and its sharpening for the national tasks. But education has always been the Cinderella of politics; this nation apparently does not love to be taught! Those who grapple with its stubbornness in this field can never expect the ready palm that falls to the workers in a dozen other fields.

But in the seed sown, and the human duty done, they find their reward.