The Upton Letters Part 13

Now we are all one body here, no doubt, like the Christian Church in the hymn; but unhappily, and unlike the hymn, we ARE very much divided.

We are in two camps. There is a conservative section who, doubtless for very good reasons, want to keep things as they are; they see strongly all the blessings of the old order; they like the old ways and believe in them; they think, for instance, that the old cla.s.sical lines of education are the best, that the system fortifies the mind, and that, when you have been through it, you have got a good instrument which enables you to tackle anything else; a very coherent position, and, in the case of our conservatives, very conscientiously administered.

Then there is a strong Progressive party numerically rather stronger, to which I myself belong. We believe that things might be a good deal better. We are dissatisfied with our results. We think, to take the same instance, that cla.s.sics are a very hard subject, and that a great many boys are not adapted to profit by them; we believe that the consequence of boys being kept at a hard subject, which they cannot penetrate or master, leads to a certain cynicism about intellectual things, and that the results of a cla.s.sical education on many boys are so negative that at all events some experiments ought to be tried.

Well, if all discussions could be conducted patiently, good-humouredly, and philosophically, no harm would be done; but they can't! Men will lose their temper, indulge in personalities, and import bitterness into the question. Moreover, a number of my fiercest opponents are among my best friends here, and that is naturally very painful. Indeed, I feel how entirely unfitted I am for these kinds of controversy. This disgusting business deprives me of sleep, makes me unable to concentrate my mind upon my work, destroys both my tranquillity and my philosophy.

It is a relief to write to you on the subject. Yet I don't see my way out. One must have an opinion about one's life-work. My business is education, and I have tried to use my eyes and see things as they are.

I am quite prepared to admit that I may be wrong; but if everybody who formed opinions abstained from expressing them out of deference to the people who were not prepared to admit that they themselves could be mistaken, there would be an end of all progress. Minds of the st.u.r.dy, unconvinced order are generally found to range themselves on the side of things as they are; and that is at all events a good guarantee that things won't move too fast, and against the trying of rash experiments.

But I don't want to be rash; I think that for a great many boys our type of education is a failure, and I want to see if something cannot be devised to meet their needs. But my opponents won't admit any failure. They say that the boys who, I think, end by being hopelessly uneducated would be worse off if they had not been grounded in the cla.s.sics. They say that my theory is only to make things easier for boys; and they add that, if any boy's education is an entire failure (they admit a few incapables are to be found), it is the boy's own fault; he has been idle and listless; if he had worked properly it would have been all right; he would have been fortified; and anyhow, they say, it doesn't matter what you teach such boys--they would have been hopeless anyhow.

Of course the difficulty of proving my case is great. You can't, in education, get two exactly parallel boys and try the effect of different types of education on the two. A chemist can put exactly the same quant.i.ty of some salt in two vessels, and, by treating them in different ways, produce a demonstration which is irrefragable. But no two boys are exactly alike, and, while cla.s.sics are demanded at the university, boys of ability will tend to keep on the cla.s.sical side; so that the admitted failure of modern sides in many places to produce boys of high intellectual ability results from the fact that boys of ability do not tend to join the modern sides.

So one hammers on, and, as it is always easier to leave an object at rest than to set it moving, we remain very much where we were.

The cynical solution is to say, let us have peace at any cost; let the thing alone; let us teach what we have to teach, and not bother about results. But that appears to me to be a cowardly att.i.tude. If one expresses dissatisfaction to one of the cheerful stationary party, they reply, "Oh, take our word for it, it is all right; do your best; you don't teach at all badly, though you lack conviction; leave it to us, and never mind the discontent expressed by parents, and the cynical contempt felt by boys for intellectual things."

"Meanwhile, regardless of their doom, The little victims play."

They do indeed! they find work so dispiriting a business that they put it out of their thoughts as much as they can. And when they grow up, conscious of intellectual feebleness, they have no idea of expressing their resentment at the way they have been used--if they are modest, they think that it is their own fault; if they are complacent, they think that intellectual things don't matter.

While I write there comes in one of my cheerful opponents to discuss the situation. We plunge into the subject of cla.s.sics. I say that, to boys without apt.i.tude, they are dreary and hopelessly difficult. "There you go again," he says, "always wanting to make things EASIER: the thing to do is to keep boys at hard, solid work; it is an advantage that they can't understand what they are working at; it is a better gymnastic." The subject of mathematics is mentioned, and my friend incidentally confesses that he never had the least idea what higher Algebra was all about.

I refrain from saying what comes into my mind. Supposing that he, without any taste for Mathematics, had been kept year after year at them, surely that would have been acting on his principle, viz. to find out what boys can't do and make them do it. No doubt he would say that his mind had been fortified, as it was, by cla.s.sics. But, if a rigid mathematical training had been employed, his mind might have been fortified into an enviable condition of inaccessibility. But I don't say this; he would only think I was making fun of the whole thing.

Fun, indeed! There is very little amus.e.m.e.nt to be derived from the situation. My opponents have a strong sense of what they call liberty--which means that every one should have a vote, and that every one should register it in their favour. Or they are like the old-fas.h.i.+oned Whigs, who had a strong belief in popular liberty, and an equally unshaken belief in their own personal superiority.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON, Nov. 22, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--"Be partner of my dreams as of my fis.h.i.+ng," says the old fisherman to his mate, in that delicious idyll of Theocritus--do read it again. It is one of the little masterpieces that hang for ever in one of the inner secret rooms of the great halls of poetry. The two old men lie awake in their wattled cabin, listening to the soft beating of the sea, and beguiling the dark hour before the dawn, when they must fare forth, in simple talk about their dreams. It is a genre picture, full of simple detail, but with a vein of high poetry about it; all remote from history and civic life, in that eternal region of perfect and quiet art, into which, thank G.o.d, one can always turn to rest awhile.

But to-day I don't want to talk of fishermen, or Theocritus, or even art; I want you to share one of my dreams.

I must preface it by saying that I have just experienced a severe humiliation; I have been deeply wounded. I won't trouble you with the sordid details, but it has been one of those severe checks one sometimes experiences, when a mirror is held up to one's character, and one sees an ugly sight. Never mind that now! But you can imagine my frame of mind.

I bicycled off alone in the afternoon, feeling very sore and miserable in spirit. It was one of those cool, fresh, dark November days, not so much gloomy as half-lit and colourless. There was not a breath stirring. The long fields, the fallows, with hedges and coverts, melted into a light mist, which hid all the distant view. I moved in a narrow twilight circle, myself the centre; the road was familiar enough to me; at a certain point there is a little lodge, with a road turning off to a farm. It is many years since I visited the place, but I remembered dimly that there was some interest of antiquity about the house, and I determined to explore it. The road curved away among quiet fields, with here and there a belt of woodland, then entered a little park; there I saw a cl.u.s.ter of buildings on the edge of a pool, all grown up with little elms and ashes, now bare of leaves. Here I found a friendly, gaitered farmer, who, in reply to my question whether I could see the place, gave me a cordial invitation to come in; he took me to a garden door, opened it, and beckoned me to go through. I found myself in a place of incomparable beauty. It was a long terrace, rather wild and neglected; below there were the traces of a great, derelict garden, with thick clumps of box, the whole surrounded by a large earthwork, covered with elms. To the left lay another pool; to the right, at the end of the terrace, stood a small red-brick chapel, with a big Perpendicular window. The house was to the left of us, in the centre of the terrace, of old red brick, with tall chimneys and mullioned windows. My friend the farmer chatted pleasantly about the house, but was evidently prouder of his rose-trees and his chrysanthemums. The day grew darker as we wandered, and a pleasant plodding and clinking of horses coming home made itself heard in the yard. Then he asked me to enter the house. What was my surprise when he led me into a large hall, with painted panels and a painted ceiling, occupying all the centre of the house. He told me a little of the history of the place, of a visit paid by Charles the First, and other simple traditions, showing me all the time a quiet, serious kindness, which reminded one of the entertainment given to the wayfarers of the Pilgrim's Progress.

Once more we went out on the little terrace and looked round; the night began to fall, and lights began to twinkle in the house, while the fire glowed and darted in the hall.

But what I cannot, I am afraid, impart to you is the strange tranquillity that came softly down into my mind; everything took its part in this atmosphere of peace. The overgrown terrace, the mellow brickwork, the bare trees, the tall house, the gentle kindliness of my host. And then I seemed so far away from the world; there was nothing in sight but the fallows and the woods, rounded with mist; it seemed at once the only place in the world, and yet out of it. The old house stood patiently waiting, serving its quiet ends, growing in beauty every year, seemingly so unconscious of its grace and charm, and yet, as it were, glad to be loved. It seemed to give me just the calm, the tenderness I wanted. To a.s.sure me that, whatever pain and humiliation there were in the world, there was a strong and loving Heart behind. My host said good-bye to me very kindly, begging me to come again and bring any one to see the place. "We are very lonely here, and it does us good to see a stranger."

I rode away, and stopped at a corner where a last view of the house was possible; it stood regarding me, it seemed, mournfully, and yet with a solemn welcome from its dark windows. And here was another beautiful vignette; close to me, by a hedge, stood an old labourer, a fork in one hand, the other shading his eyes, watching with simple intentness a flight of wild-duck that was pa.s.sing overhead, dipping to some sequestered pool.

I rode away with a quiet hopefulness in my heart. I seemed like a dusty and weary wayfarer, who has flung off his heated garments and plunged into the clear waters of comfort; to have drawn near to the heart of the world; to have had a sight, in the midst of things mutable and disquieting, of things august and everlasting. At another time I might have flung myself into busy fancies, imagined a community living an orderly and peaceful life, full of serene activities, in that still place; but for once I was content to have seen a dwelling-place, devised by some busy human brain, that had failed of its purpose, lost its ancient lords, sunk into a calm decay; to have seen it all caressed and comforted and embraced by nature, its scars hidden, its grace replenished, its harshness smoothed away.

Such gentle hours are few; and fewer still the moments of anxiety and vexation when so direct a message is flashed straight from the Mind of G.o.d into the unquiet human heart; I never doubted that I was led there by a subtle, delicate, and fatherly tenderness, and shown a thing which should at once touch my sense of beauty, and then rising, as it were, and putting the superficial aspect aside, speak with no uncertain voice of the deep hopes, the everlasting peace on which for a few years the little restless world of ours is rocked and carried to and fro. . .

.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON, Nov. 29, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--To-day the world is shrouded in a thick, white, dripping mist. Glancing up in the warm room where I sit, I see nothing but grey window s.p.a.ces. "How melancholy, how depressing," says my generally cheerful friend, Randall, staring sadly out into the blank air. But I myself do not agree. I am conscious of a vague, pleasurable excitement; a sense, too, of repose. This half light is grateful and cooling alike to eye and brain. Then, too, it is a change from ordinary conditions, and a change has always something invigorating about it. I steal about with an obscure sense that something mysterious is happening. And yet imagine some bright spirit of air and suns.h.i.+ne, like Ariel, flitting hither and thither above the mist, dipping his feet in the vapour, as a sea-bird flies low across the sea. Think of the pity he would feel for the poor human creatures, buried in darkness below, creeping hither and thither in the gloom.

It is pleasurable enough within the house, but still more pleasurable to walk abroad; the little circle of dim vision pa.s.ses with you, just revealing the road, the field, the pasture in which you walk.

There is a delightful surprise about the way in which a familiar object looms up suddenly, a dim remote shape, and then as swiftly reveals the well-known outline. My path takes me past the line, and I hear a train that I cannot see roar past. I hear the sharp crack of the fog signals and the whistle blown. I pa.s.s close to the huge, dripping signals; there, in a hut beside a brazier, sits a plate-layer with his pole, watching the line, ready to push the little disc off the metals if the creaking signal overhead moves. In another lonely place stands a great luggage train waiting. The little chimney of the van smokes, and I hear the voices of guards and shunters talking cheerily together. I draw nearer home, and enter the college by the garden entrance. The black foliage of the ilex lowers overhead, and then in a moment, out of an overshadowing darkness, rises a battlemented tower like a fairy castle, with lights in the windows streaming out with straight golden rays into the fog. Below, the arched doorway reveals the faintly-lighted arches of the cloisters. The hanging, clinging, soaking mist--how it heightens the value, the comfort of the lighted windows of studious, fire-warmed rooms.

And then what a wealth of pleasant images rises in the mind. I find myself thinking how the reading of certain authors is like this mist-walking; one seems to move in a dreary, narrow circle, and then suddenly a dim horror of blackness stands up; and then, again, in a moment one sees that it is some familiar thought which has thus won a stateliness, a remote mystery, from the atmosphere out of which it leans.

Or, better still, how like these fog-wrapped days are to seasons of mental heaviness, when the bright, distant landscape is all swallowed up and cherished landmarks disappear. One walks in a vain shadow; and then the surprises come; something, which in its familiar aspect stirs no tangible emotion, in an instant overhangs the path, shrouded in dim grandeur and solemn awe. Days of depression have this value, that they are apt to reveal the sublimity, the largeness of well-known thoughts, all veiled in a melancholy magnificence. Then, too, one gains an inkling of the sweetness of the warm corners, the lighted rooms of life, the little centre of brightness which one can make in one's own retired heart, and which gives the sense of welcome, the quiet delights of home-keeping, the warmth of the contented mind.

And, best of all, as one stumbles along the half-hidden street a shape, huge, intangible, comes stealing past; one wonders what strange visitant this is that comes near in the gathering darkness. And then in a moment the vagueness is dispelled; the form, the lineaments, take shape from the gloom, and one finds that one is face to face with a familiar friend, whose greeting warms the heart as one pa.s.ses into the mist again.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON, Dec. 5, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am very sorry to hear you have been suffering from depression; it is one of the worst evils of life, and none the better for being so intangible. I was reading a story the other day, in some old book, of a moody man who was walking with a friend, and, after a long silence, suddenly cried out, as if in pain. "What ails you?" said his friend. "My mind hurts me," said the other. That is the best way to look at it, I think--as a kind of neuralgia of the soul, to be treated like other neuralgias. A friend of mine who was a great sufferer from such depression went to an old doctor, who heard his story with a smile, and then said: "Now, you're not as bad as you feel, or even as you think. My prescription is a simple one. Don't eat pastry; and for a fortnight don't do anything you don't like."

It is often only a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air.

"A rec.u.mbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a great aid to cheerfulness."

I used, as you know, to be a great sufferer; or perhaps you don't know, for I was too miserable sometimes even to speak of it. But I can say humbly and gratefully that a certain freedom from depression is one of the blessings that advancing years have brought me. Still, I don't altogether escape, and it sometimes falls with an unexpected suddenness. It may help you to know that other people suffer similarly, and how they suffer.

Well, then, a few days ago I woke early, after troubled dreams, and knew that the old enemy had clutched me. I lay in a strange agony of mind, my heart beating thick, and with an insupportable weight on my heart. It always takes the same form with me--an overwhelming sense of failure in all that I attempt, a dreary consciousness of absolute futility, coupled with the sense of the brevity and misery of human life generally. I ask myself what is the use of anything? What is an almost demoniacal feature of the mood is that it lays a spell of utter dreariness upon all pleasures as well as duties. One feels condemned to a long perspective of work without interest, and recreation without relish, and all confined and bounded by death; whichever way my thoughts turned, a grey prospect met me.

Little by little the misery abated, recurring at longer and longer intervals, till at last I slept again; but the mood overclouded me all day long, and I went about my duties with indifference. But there is one medicine which hardly ever fails me--it was a half-holiday, and, after tea, I went to the cathedral and sate in a remote corner of the nave. The service had just begun. The nave was dimly lighted, but an upward radiance gushed behind the screen and the tall organ, and lit up the vaulted roof with a tranquil glory. Soon the Psalms began, and at the sound of the clear voices of the choir, which seemed to swim on the melodious thunder of the organ, my spirit leapt into peace, as a man drowning in a stormy sea is drawn into a boat that comes to rescue him.

It was the fourth evening, and that wonderful Psalm, My G.o.d, my G.o.d, look upon me--where the broken spirit dives to the very depths of darkness and despair--brought me the message of triumphant sorrow. How strange that these sad cries of the heart, echoing out of the ages, set to rich music--it was that solemn A minor chant by Battis.h.i.+ll, which you know--should be able to calm and uplift the grieving spirit. The thought rises into a burst of gladness at the end; and then follows hard upon it the tenderest of all Psalms, The Lord is my Shepherd, in which the spirit casts its care upon G.o.d, and walks simply, in utter trust and confidence. The dreariness of my heart thawed and melted into peace and calm. Then came the solemn murmur of a lesson; the Magnificat, sung to a setting--again as by a thoughtful tenderness--of which I know and love every note; and here my heart seemed to climb into a quiet hope and rest there; the lesson again, like the voice of a spirit; and then the Nunc Dimittis, which spoke of the beautiful rest that remaineth. Then the quiet monotone of prayer, and then, as though to complete my happiness, Mendelssohn's Hear my prayer. It is the fas.h.i.+on, I believe, for some musicians to speak contemptuously of this anthem, to say that it is over-luscious. I only know that it brings all Heaven about me, and reconciles the sadness of the world with the peace of G.o.d. A boy's perfect treble--that sweetest of all created sounds, because so unconscious of its pathos and beauty--floating on the top of the music, and singing as an angel might sing among the stars of heaven, came to my thirsty spirit like a draught of clear spring water.

And, at the end of all, Mendelssohn's great G major fugue gave the note of courage and endurance that I needed, the strong notes marching solemnly and joyfully on their appointed way.

I left the cathedral, through the gathering twilight, peaceful, hopeful, and invigorated, as a cripple dipped in the healing well.

While music is in the world, G.o.d abides among us. Ever since the day that David soothed Saul by his sweet harp and artless song, music has thus beguiled the heaviness of the spirit. Yet there is the mystery, that the emotion seems to soar so much higher and dive so much deeper than the notes that evoke it! The best argument for immortality, I think.

Now that I have written so much, I feel that I am, perhaps, inconsiderate in speaking so much of the healing music which you cannot obtain. But get your wife to play to you, in a quiet and darkened room, some of the things you love best. It is not the same as the cathedral, with all its glory and its ancient, dim tradition, but it will serve.