The Secret Glory Part 9

There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar; Its voice is golden, like the ringing of the saints' bells; Sweet is the valley, echoing with melodies.

There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar; Tegfeth in the south won red martyrdom.

Her song is heard in the perpetual choirs of heaven.

There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar; Dewi in the west had an altar from Paradise.

He taught the valleys of Britain to resound with Alleluia.

There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar; Cybi in the north was the teacher of Princes.

Through him Edlogan sings praise to heaven.

There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar When shall I hear again the notes of its melody?

When shall I behold once more Gwladys in that valley?'[3]

[Footnote 3: The following translation of these verses appeared in _Poems from the Old Bards_, by Taliesin, Bristol, 1812:

"In Soar's sweet valley, where the sound Of holy anthems once was heard From many a saint, the hills prolong Only the music of the bird.

In Soar's sweet valley, where the brook With many a ripple flows along, Delicious prospects meet the eye, The ear is charmed with _Phil'mel's_ song.

In Soar's sweet valley once a Maid, Despising worldly prospects gay, Resigned her note in earthly choirs Which now in Heaven must sound alway.

In Soar's sweet valley David preached; His Gospel accents so beguiled The savage Britons, that they turned Their fiercest cries to music mild.

In Soar's sweet valley Cybi taught To haughty Prince the Holy Law, The way to Heaven he showed, and then The subject tribes inspired with awe.

In Soar's sweet valley still the song Of Phil'mel sounds and checks alarms.

But when shall I once more renew Those heavenly hours in Gladys' arms?"

"Taliesin" was the pseudonym of an amiable clergyman, the Reverend Owen Thomas, for many years curate of Llantrisant. He died in 1820, at the great age of eighty-four. His original poetry in Welsh was reputed as far superior to his translations, and he made a very valuable and curious collection of "Cymric Antiquities," which remains in ma.n.u.script in the keeping of his descendants.]

"When I think of what I know, of the wonders of darkness and the wonders of dawn, I cannot help believing that I have found something which all the world has lost. I have heard some of the fellows talking about women. Their words and their stories are filthy, and nonsense, too. One would think that if monkeys and pigs could talk about their she-monkeys and sows, it would be just like that. I might have thought that, being only boys, they knew nothing about it, and were only making up nasty, silly tales out of their nasty, silly minds. But I have heard the poor women in the town screaming and scolding at their men, and the men swearing back; and when they think they are making love, it is the most horrible of all.

"And it is not only the boys and the poor people. There are the masters and their wives. Everybody knows that the Challises and the Redburns 'fight like cats,' as they say, and that the Head's daughter was 'put up for auction' and bought by the rich manufacturer from Birmingham--a horrible, fat beast, more than twice her age, with eyes like pig's. They called it a splendid match.

"So I began to wonder whether perhaps there are very few people in the world who know; whether the real secret is lost like the great city that was drowned in the sea and only seen by one or two. Perhaps it is more like those s.h.i.+ning Isles that the saints sought for, where the deep apple orchards are, and all the delights of Paradise. But you had to give up everything and get into a boat without oar or sails if you wanted to find Avalon or the Gla.s.sy Isle. And sometimes the saints could stand on the rocks and see those Islands far away in the midst of the sea, and smell the sweet odours and hear the bells ringing for the feast, when other people could see and hear nothing at all.

"I often think now how strange it would be if it were found out that nearly everybody is like those who stood on the rocks and could only see the waves tossing and stretching far away, and the blue sky and the mist in the distance. I mean, if it turned out that we have all been in the wrong about everything; that we live in a world of the most wonderful treasures which we see all about us, but we don't understand, and kick the jewels into the dirt, and use the chalices for slop-pails and make the holy vestments into dish-cloths, while we wors.h.i.+p a great beast--a monster, with the head of a monkey, the body of a pig and the hind legs of a goat, with swarming lice crawling all over it. Suppose that the people that they speak of now as 'superst.i.tious' and 'half-savages'

should turn out to be in the right, and very wise, while we are all wrong and great fools! It would be something like the man who lived in the Bright Palace. The Palace had a hundred and one doors. A hundred of them opened into gardens of delight, pleasure-houses, beautiful bowers, wonderful countries, fairy seas, caves of gold and hills of diamonds, into all the most splendid places. But one door led into a cesspool, and that was the only door that the man ever opened. It may be that his sons and his grandsons have been opening that one door ever since, till they have forgotten that there are any others, so if anyone dares to speak of the ways to the garden of delight or the hills of gold he is called a madman, or a very wicked person.

"_July 15._ The other day a very strange thing happened. I had gone for a short walk out of the town before dinner on the Dunham road and came as far as the four ways where the roads cross. It is rather pretty for Lupton just there; there is a plot of gra.s.s with a big old elm tree in the middle of it, and round the tree is a rough sort of seat, where tramps and such people are often resting. As I came along I heard some sort of music coming from the direction of the tree; it was like fairies dancing, and then there were strange solemn notes like the priests'

singing, and a choir answered in a deep, rolling swell of sound, and the fairies danced again; and I thought somehow of a grey church high on the cliff above a singing sea, and the Fair People outside dancing on the close turf, while the service was going on all the while. As I came nearer I heard the sea waves and the wind and the cry of the seagulls, and again the high, wonderful chanting, as if the fairies and the rocks and the waves and the wild birds were all subject to that which was being done within the church. I wondered what it could be, and then I saw there was an old ragged man sitting on the seat under the tree, playing the fiddle all to himself, and rocking from side to side. He stopped directly he saw me, and said:

"'Ah, now, would your young honour do yourself the pleasure of giving the poor old fiddler a penny or maybe two: for Lupton is the very h.e.l.l of a town altogether, and when I play to dirty rogues the Reel of the Warriors, they ask for something about Two Obadiahs--the devil's black curse be on them! And it's but dry work playing to the leaf and the green sod--the blessing of the holy saints be on your honour now, this day, and for ever! 'Tis but a scarcity of beer that I have tasted for a long day, I a.s.sure your honour.'

"I had given him a s.h.i.+lling because I thought his music so wonderful. He looked at me steadily as he finished talking, and his face changed. I thought he was frightened, he stared so oddly. I asked him if he was ill.

"'May I be forgiven,' he said, speaking quite gravely, without that wheedling way he had when he first spoke. 'May I be forgiven for talking so to one like yourself; for this day I have begged money from one that is to gain Red Martyrdom; and indeed that is yourself.'

"He took off his old battered hat and crossed himself, and I stared at him, I was so amazed at what he said. He picked up his fiddle, and saying 'May you remember me in the time of your glory,' he walked quickly off, going away from Lupton, and I lost sight of him at the turn of the road. I suppose he was half crazy, but he played wonderfully."

IV

I

The materials for the history of an odd episode in Ambrose Meyrick's life are to be found in a sort of collection he made under the t.i.tle "Concerning Gaiety." The episode in question dates from about the middle of his eighteenth year.

"I do not know"--he says--"how it all happened. I had been leading two eager lives. On the outside I was playing games and going up in the school with a rush, and in the inside I was being gathered more and more into the sanctuaries of immortal things. All life was transfigured for me into a radiant glory, into a quickening and catholic sacrament; and, the fooleries of the school apart, I had more and more the sense that I was a partic.i.p.ant in a splendid and significant ritual. I think I was beginning to be a little impatient with the outward signs: I _think_ I had a feeling that it was a pity that one had to drink wine out of a cup, a pity that kernels seemed to imply sh.e.l.ls. I wanted, in my heart, to know nothing but the wine itself flowing gloriously from vague, invisible fountains, to know the things 'that really are' in their naked beauty, without their various and elaborate draperies. I doubt whether Ruskin understood the motive of the monk who walked amidst the mountains with his eyes cast down lest he might see the depths and heights about him. Ruskin calls this a narrow asceticism; perhaps it was rather the result of a very subtle aestheticism. The monk's inner vision might be fixed with such rapture on certain invisible heights and depths, that he feared lest the sight of their visible counterparts might disturb his ecstasy. It is probable, I think, that there is a point where the ascetic principle and the aesthetic become one and the same. The Indian fakir who distorts his limbs and lies on spikes is at the one extreme, the men of the Italian Renaissance were at the other.

In each case the true line is distorted and awry, for neither system attains either sanct.i.ty or beauty in the highest. The fakir dwells in _surfaces_, and the Renaissance artist dwelt in _surfaces_; in neither case is there the inexpressible radiance of the invisible world s.h.i.+ning through the surfaces. A cup of Cellini's work is no doubt very lovely; but it is not beautiful in the same way as the old Celtic cups are beautiful.

"I think I was in some danger of going wrong at the time I am talking about. I was altogether too impatient of surfaces. Heaven forbid the notion that I was ever in danger of being in any sense of the word a Protestant; but perhaps I was rather inclined to the fundamental heresy on which Protestantism builds its objection to what is called Ritual. I suppose this heresy is really Manichee; it is a charge of corruption and evil made against the visible universe, which is affirmed to be not 'very good,' but 'very bad'--or, at all events, too bad to be used as the vehicle of spiritual truth. It is extraordinary by the way, that the thinking Protestant does not perceive that this principle d.a.m.ns all creeds and all Bibles and all teaching quite as effectually as it d.a.m.ns candles and chasubles--unless, indeed, the Protestant thinks that the logical understanding is a competent vehicle of Eternal Truth, and that G.o.d can be properly and adequately defined and explained in human speech. If he thinks _that_, he is an a.s.s. Incense, vestments, candles, all ceremonies, processions, rites--all these things are miserably inadequate; but they do not abound in the horrible pitfalls, misapprehensions, errors which are inseparable from speech of men used as an expression of the Church. In a savage dance there may be a vast deal more of the truth than in many of the hymns in our hymn-books.

"After all, as Martinez said, we must even be content with what we have, whether it be censers or syllogisms, or both. The way of the censer is certainly the safer, as I have said; I suppose because the ruin of the external universe is not nearly so deep nor so virulent as the ruin of men. A flower, a piece of gold, no doubt approach their archetypes--what they were meant to be--much more nearly than man does; hence their appeal is purer than the speech or the reasoning of men.

"But in those days at Lupton my head was full of certain sentences which I had lit upon somewhere or other--I believe they must have been translations from some Eastern book. I knew about a dozen of these maxims; all I can remember now are:

"_If you desire to be inebriated: abstain from wine._"

"_If you desire beauty: look not on beautiful things._"

"_If you desire to see: let your eyes be blindfolded._"

"_If you desire love: refrain from the Beloved._"

"I expect the paradox of these sayings pleased me. One must allow that if one has the inborn appet.i.te of the somewhat subtle, of the truth not too crudely and barely expressed, there is no such atmosphere as that of a Public School for sharpening this appet.i.te to an edge of ravening, indiscriminate hunger. Think of our friend the Colonel, who is by way of being a _fin gourmet_; imagine him fixed in a boarding-house where the meals are a repeating cycle of Irish Stew, Boiled Rabbit, Cold Mutton and Salt Cod (without oyster or any other sause)! Then let him out and place him in the Cafe Anglais. With what a fierce relish would he set tooth into curious and sought-out dishes! It must be remembered that I listened every Sunday in every term to one of the Doctor's sermons, and it is really not strange that I gave an eager ear to the voice of _Persian Wisdom_--as I think the book was called. At any rate, I kept Nelly Foran at a distance for nine or ten months, and when I saw a splendid sunset I averted my eyes. I longed for a love purely spiritual, for a sunset of vision.

"I caught glimpses, too, I think, of a much more profound _askesis_ than this. I suppose you have the _askesis_ in its simplest, most rationalised form in the Case of Bill the Engine-driver--I forget in what great work of _Theologia Moralis_ I found the instance; perhaps Bill was really _Quidam_ in the original, and his occupation stated as that of _Nauarchus_. At all events, Bill is fond of four-ale; but he had perceived that two pots of this beverage consumed before a professional journey tended to make him rather sleepy, rather less alert, than he might be in the execution of his very responsible duties. Hence Bill, considering this, wisely contents himself with _one_ pot before mounting on his cab. He has deprived himself of a sensible good in order that an equally sensible but greater good may be secured--in order that he and the pa.s.sengers may run no risks on the journey. Next to this simple asceticism comes, I suppose, the ordinary discipline of the Church--the abandonment of sensible goods to secure spiritual ends, the turning away from the type to the prototype, from the sight of the eyes to the vision of the soul. For in the true asceticism, whatever its degree, there is always action to a certain end, to a perceived good. Does the self-tormenting fakir act from this motive? I don't know; but if he does not, his discipline is not asceticism at all, but folly, and impious folly, too. If he mortifies himself merely for the sake of mortifying himself; then he defiles and blasphemes the Temple. This in parenthesis.

"But, as I say, I had a very dim and distant glimpse of another region of the _askesis_. Mystics will understand me when I say that there are moments when the Dark Night of the Soul is seen to be brighter than her brightest day; there are moments when it is necessary to drive away even the angels that there may be place for the Highest. One may ascend into regions so remote from the common concerns of life that it becomes difficult to procure the help of a.n.a.logy, even in the terms and processes of the Arts. But suppose a painter--I need not say that I mean an artist--who is visited by an idea so wonderful, so super-exalted in its beauty that he recognises his impotence; he knows that no pigments and no technique can do anything but grossly parody his vision. Well, he will show his greatness by _not_ attempting to paint that vision: he will write on a bare canva.s.s _vidit anima sed non pinxit ma.n.u.s_. And I am sure that there are many romances which have never been written. It was a highly paradoxical, even a dangerous philosophy that affirmed G.o.d to be rather _Non-Ens_ than _Ens_; but there are moods in which one appreciates the thought.

"I think I caught, as I say, a distant vision of that Night which excels the Day in its splendour. It began with the eyes turned away from the sunset, with lips that refused kisses. Then there came a command to the heart to cease from longing for the dear land of Gwent, to cease from that aching desire that had never died for so many years for the sight of the old land and those hills and woods of most sweet and anguished memory. I remember once, when I was a great lout of sixteen, I went to see the Lupton Fair. I always liked the great booths and caravans and merry-go-rounds, all a blaze of barbaric green and red and gold, flaming and glowing in the middle of the trampled, sodden field against a background of Lupton and wet, grey autumn sky. There were country folk then who wore smock-frocks and looked like men in them, too. One saw scores of these brave fellows at the Fair: dull, good Jutes with flaxen hair that was almost white, and with broad pink faces. I liked to see them in the white robe and the curious embroidery; they were a note of wholesomeness, an emba.s.sage from the old English village life to our filthy 'industrial centre.' It was odd to see how they stared about them; they wondered, I think, at the beastliness of the place, and yet, poor fellows, they felt bound to admire the evidence of so much money.

Yes, they were of Old England; they savoured of the long, bending, broad village street, the gable ends, the grave fronts of old mellow bricks, the thatched roofs here and there, the bulging window of the 'village shop,' the old church in decorous, somewhat dull perpendicular among the elms, and, above all, the old tavern--that excellent abode of honest mirth and honest beer, relic of the time when there were men, and men who _lived_. Lupton is very far removed from Hardy's land, and yet as I think of these country-folk in their smock-frocks all the essence of Hardy is distilled for me; I see the village street all white in snow, a light gleaming very rarely from an upper window, and presently, amid ringing bells, one hears the carol-singers begin:

'_Remember Adam's fall, O thou man._'

"And I love to look at the whirl of the merry-go-rounds, at the people sitting with grave enjoyment on those absurd horses as they circle round and round till one's eyes were dazed. Drums beat and thundered, strange horns blew raucous calls from all quarters, and the mechanical music to which those horses revolved belched and blazed and rattled out its everlasting monotony, checked now and again by the shriek of the steam whistle, groaning into silence for a while: then the tune clanged out once more, and the horses whirled round and round.

"But on this Fair Day of which I am speaking I left the booths and the golden, gleaming merry-go-rounds for the next field, where horses were excited to brief madness and short energy. I had scarcely taken up my stand when a man close by me raised his voice to a genial shout as he saw a friend a little way off. And he spoke with the beloved accent of Gwent, with those tones that come to me more ravis.h.i.+ng, more enchanting than all the music in the world. I had not heard them for years of weary exile! Just a phrase or two of common greeting in those chanting accents: the Fair pa.s.sed away, was whirled into nothingness, its shouting voices, the charging of horses, drum and trumpet, clanging, metallic music--it rushed down into the abyss. There was the silence that follows a great peal of thunder; it was early morning and I was standing in a well-remembered valley, beside the blossoming thorn bush, looking far away to the wooded hills that kept the East, above the course of the s.h.i.+ning river. I was, I say, a great lout of sixteen, but the tears flooded my eyes, my heart swelled with its longing.

"Now, it seemed, I was to quell such thoughts as these, to desire no more the fervent sunlight on the mountain, or the sweet scent of the dusk about the runnings of the brook. I had been very fond of 'going for walks'--walks of the imagination. I was afraid, I suppose, that unless by constant meditation I renewed the shape of the old land in my mind, its image might become a blurred and fading picture; I should forget little by little the ways of those deep, winding lanes that took courses that were almost subterranean over hill and vale, by woodside and waterside, narrow, cavernous, leaf-vaulted; cool in the greatest heats of summer. And the wandering paths that crossed the fields, that led one down into places hidden and remote, into still depths where no one save myself ever seemed to enter, that sometimes ended with a certain solemnity at a broken stile in a hedgerow grown into a thicket--within a plum tree returning to the savage life of the wood, a forest, perhaps, of blue lupins, and a great wild rose about the ruined walls of a house--all these ways I must keep in mind as if they were mysteries and great secrets, as indeed they were. So I strolled in memory through the Pageant of Gwent: 'lest I should forget the region of the flowers, lest I should become unmindful of the wells and the floods.'

"But the time came, as I say, when it was represented to me that all this was an indulgence which, for a season at least, must be pretermitted. With an effort I voided my soul of memory and desire and weeping; when the idols of doomed Twyn-Barlwm, and great Mynydd Maen, and the silver esses of the Usk appeared before me, I cast them out; I would not meditate white Caerleon s.h.i.+ning across the river. I endured, I think, the severest pains. De Quincey, that admirable artist, that searcher into secrets and master of mysteries, has described my pains for me under the figure of the Opium Eater breaking the bonds of his vice. How often, when the abominations of Lupton, its sham energies, its sham morals, its sham enthusiasms, all its battalia of cant surged and beat upon me, have I been sorely tempted to yield, to suffer no more the press of folly, but to steal away by a secret path I knew, to dwell in a secure valley where the foolish could never trouble me. Sometimes I 'fell,' as I drank deep then of the magic well-water, and went astray in the green dells and avenues of the wildwood. Still I struggled to refrain my heart from these things, to keep my spirit under the severe discipline of abstention; and with a constant effort I succeeded more and more.

"But there was a yet deeper depth in this process of _catharsis_. I have said that sometimes one must expel the angels that G.o.d may have room; and now the strict ordinance was given that I should sever myself from that great dream of Celtic sanct.i.ty that for me had always been _the_ dream, the innermost shrine in which I could take refuge, the house of sovran medicaments where all the wounds of soul and body were healed.

One does not wish to be harsh; we must admit, I suppose, that moderate, sensible Anglicanism must have _something_ in it--since the absolute sham cannot very well continue to exist. Let us say, then, that it is highly favourable to a respectable and moral life, that it encourages a temperate and well-regulated spirit of devotion. It was certainly a very excellent and (according to her lights) devout woman who, in her version of the _Anima Christi_ altered 'inebriate me' to 'purify me,' and it was a good cleric who hated the Vulgate reading, _calix meus inebrians_. My father had always instructed me that we must conform outwardly, and bear with _Dearly Beloved Brethren_; while we celebrated in our hearts the Ancient Ma.s.s of the Britons, and waited for Cadwaladr to return. I reverenced his teaching, I still reverence it, and agree that we must conform; but in my heart I have always doubted whether moderate Anglicanism be Christianity in any sense, whether it even deserves to be called a religion at all. I do not doubt, of course, that many truly religious people have professed it: I speak of the system, and of the atmosphere which emanates from it. And when the Public School _ethos_ is added to this--well, the resultant teaching comes pretty much to the dogma that Heaven and the Head are strict allies. One must not degenerate into ecclesiastical controversy; I merely want to say that I never dreamed of looking for religion in our Chapel services. No doubt the _Te Deum_ was _still the Te Deum_, but the n.o.blest of hymns is degraded, obscured, defiled, made ridiculous, if you marry it to a tune that would disgrace a penny gaff. Personally, I think that the airs on the piano-organs are much more reverend compositions than Anglican chants, and I am sure that many popular hymn tunes are vastly inferior in solemnity to _'E Dunno where 'e are_.

"No; the religion that led me and drew me and compelled me was that wonderful and doubtful mythos of the Celtic Church. It was the study--nay, more than the study, the enthusiasm--of my father's life; and as I was literally baptized with water from a Holy Well, so spiritually the great legend of the Saints and their amazing lives had tinged all my dearest aspirations, had become to me the glowing vestment of the Great Mystery. One may sometimes be deeply interested in the matter of a tale while one is wearied or sickened by the manner of it; one may have to embrace the bright divinity on the horrid lips of the serpent of Cos. Or, on the other hand, the manner--the style--may be admirable, and the matter a mere nothing but a ground for the embroidery. But for me the Celtic Mythos was the Perfect Thing, the King's Daughter: _Omnis gloria ejus filiae Regis ab, intus, in fimbriis aureis circ.u.mamicta varietatibus_. I have learned much more of this great mystery since those days--I have seen, that is, how entirely, how absolutely my boyhood's faith was justified; but even then with but little knowledge I was rapt at the thought of this marvellous knight-errantry, of this Christianity which was not a moral code, with some sort of metaphorical Heaven held out as a reward for its due observance, but a great mystical adventure into the unknown sanct.i.ty.

Imagine a Bishop of the Established Church getting into a boat without oar or sails! Imagine him, if you can, doing anything remotely a.n.a.lagous to such an action. Conceive the late Archbishop Tait going apart into the chapel at Lambeth for three days and three nights; then you may well conceive the people in the opposite bank being dazzled with the blinding supernatural light poured forth from the chapel windows. Of course, the end of the Celtic Church was ruin and confusion--but Don Quixote failed and fell, while Sancho Panza lived a fat, prosperous peasant. He inherited, I think, a considerable sum from the knight, and was, no doubt, a good deal looked up to in the village.