THE SILENT ISLE

BY

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge

1913






Nec prohibui cor meum.



To PERCY LUBBOCK




INTRODUCTION

There are two ways of recording and communicating to others an
impression, say, of a building or a place. One way is to sit down at a
definite point, and make an elaborate picture. It is thus perhaps that
one grasps the artistic significance and unity of the object best; one
sees it in a chosen light of noon or eve; one feels its dominant
emotion, its harmony of proportion and outline. Or else one may wander
about and take sketches of it from a dozen different points of view,
record little delicacies of detail, tiny whims and irregularities; and
thus one learns more of the variety and humours of the place, its
gestures and irritabilities, its failures of purpose or design. The
question is whether you like a thing idealised or realised. As to the
different methods of interpretation, they can hardly be compared or
subordinated. An artist does not choose his method, because his method
is himself.

The book that follows is an attempt, or rather a hundred attempts, to
sketch some of the details of life, seen from a simple plane enough,
and with no desire to conform it to a theory, or to find anything very
definite in it, or to omit anything because it did not fit in with
prejudices or predilections. The only unity of mood which it reflects
is the unity of purpose which comes from a decision. I had chosen a
life which seemed to me then to be wholesome, temperate, and simple, in
exchange for a life that was complicated, restless, and mechanical. The
choice was not in the least a revolt against conventions; it was only
the result of a deliberate belief that conventions were not necessary
to contentment, and that if one never ventured anything in general, one
would never gain anything in particular. It was not, to speak with
absolute frankness, intended to be an attempt to shirk my fair share of
the natural human burden. If I had believed in my own power of bearing
that burden profitably and efficiently, I hope I should not have laid
it down. It was rather that I thought that I had carried a burden long
enough, without having the curiosity to see what it contained. When I
did untie it and inspect it, it seemed to me that a great part of what
it contained was not particularly useful, but designed, like the
furniture of the White Knight's horse, in _Through the Looking Glass_,
to provide against unlikely contingencies. I thought that I might live
life, of the brevity and frailty of which I had become suddenly aware,
upon simpler and more rational lines.

I was then, in embarking upon this book, in what may be described as a
holiday-making frame of mind, as a man might be who, after a long
period of sedentary life, finds himself at leisure, strolling about on
a sunny morning in a picturesque foreign town, in that delicious mood
when the smallest sights and sounds and incidents have a sharpness and
delicacy of flavour which brings back the untroubled and joyful
passivity of childhood, when one had no need to do anything in
particular, because it was enough to be. It seemed so futile to go on
consuming stolidly and grimly the porridge of life, when one might take
one's choice of its dainties! I had no temptation to waste my substance
in riotous living. I had no relish for the passionate and feverish
delights of combat and chase. It did not seem to be worth while to
pretend that I had, merely for the sake of being considered robust and
full-blooded. To speak the truth, I did not particularly care what
other people thought of my experiment. It seemed to me that I had
deferred to all that too long; and though I had no wish to break
violently with the world or to set it at defiance, I thought I might
venture to find a little corner and a little book, and see the current
spin by. It seemed to me, too, that most of the people who waxed
eloquent about the normal duties and responsibilities of life chose
them not reluctantly and philosophically, but because, on the whole
they preferred them, and felt dull without them; and I imagined that I
had my right to a preference too, particularly if it was not pursued at
the expense of other people.

Whether or not the choice was wise or foolish will be seen, or may be
inferred. But I do not abjure the theory. I think and believe that
there are a good many people in the world who pursue lives for which
they are not fitted, and lose all contentment in the process, simply
because they respect conventions too much, and have not the courage to
break away from them. Some of the most useful people I know are people
who not only think least about being useful, but are ready to condemn
themselves for their desultoriness. The people who have time to listen
and to talk, to welcome friends and to sympathise with them, to enjoy
and to help others to enjoy, seem to me often to do more for the world
than the people who hurry from committee to committee, address
meetings, and do what is called some of the drudgery of the world,
which might in a hundred cases be just as well undone. It is most of it
merely a childish game either way; and the child who looks on and
applauds is often better employed than the child who makes a long
score, and thinks of nothing else for the rest of the afternoon.

And anyhow, this is what I saw and thought and did; not a very
magnificent performance, but a little piece of life observed and
experienced and written down.




THE SILENT ISLE

I


The Silent Isle, I name it; and yet in no land in which I have ever
lived is there so little sight and sound of water as here. It oozes
from field to drain, it trickles from drain to ditch, it falls from
ditch to dyke, and then moves silently to the great seaward sluice; it
is not a living thing in the landscape, bright and vivacious, but
rather something secret and still, drawn almost reluctantly away,
rather than hurrying off on business of its own. And yet the whole
place gives me the constant sense of being an island, remote and
unapproachable; the great black plain, where every step that one takes
warns one of its quivering elasticity of soil, runs sharply up to the
base of the long, low, green hills, whose rough, dimpled pastures and
old elms contrast sharply and pleasantly with the geometrical monotony
of the immense flat. The village that I see a mile away, on a further
promontory of the old Isle, has the look of a straggling seaport town,
dipping down to wharves and quays; and the eye almost expects a fringe
of masts and shipping at the base of the steep streets. Then, too, the
encircling plain is like water in its tracklessness. There are no short
cuts nor footpaths in the fen. You may strike out for the village that
on clear days looks so close at hand, and follow a flood-bank for miles
without drawing a pace nearer to the goal. Or you may find yourself
upon the edge of one of the great lodes or levels, and see the
pale-blue stripe of water lie unbridged, like a pointed javelin of
steel, to the extreme verge of the horizon. The few roads run straight
and strict upon their reed-fringed causeways; and there is an infinite
sense of tranquil relief to the eye in the vast green levels, with
their faint parallel lines of dyke or drift, just touched into
prominence here and there by the clump of poplars surrounding a lonely
grange, or the high-shouldered roof of a great pumping-mill. And then,
to give largeness to what might else be tame, there is the vast space
of sky everywhere, the enormous perspective of rolling cloud-bank and
fleecy cumulus: the sky seems higher, deeper, more gigantic, in these
great levels than anywhere in the world. The morning comes up more
sedately; the orange-skirted twilight is more lingeringly withdrawn.
The sun burns lower, down to the very verge of the world, dropping
behind no black-stemmed wood or high-standing ridge; and how softly the
colour fades westward out of the sky, among the rose-flushed
cloud-isles and green spaces of air! And out of all this spacious
tracklessness comes a sense of endless remoteness. While the roads
converge like the rays of a wheel upon the inland town, each a stream
of hurrying life, here the world flows to you more rarely and
deliberately. Indeed, there seems no influx of life at all, nothing but
a quiet interchange of voyagers. Promotion arrives from no point of the
compass; nothing but a little tide of homely life ebbs and flows in
these elm-girt villages above the fen. Of course, the anxious and
expectant heart carries its own restlessness everywhere; but to read of
the rush and stress of life in these grassy solitudes seems like the
telling of an idle tale. And then the silence of the place! The sounds
of life have a value and a distinctness here that I have never known
elsewhere. I have lived much of my life in towns; and there, even if
one is not conscious of distinct sound, there is a blurred sense of
movement in the air, which dulls the ear. But here the sharp song of
the yellow-hammer from the hedge, or the cry of the owl from the
spinney, come pure and keen through the thin air, purged of all
uncertain murmurs. I can hear, it seems, a mile away, the rumble of the
long procession of red mud-stained field-carts, or the humming of the
threshing-gear; or the chatter of children on the farm-road beyond my
shrubberies breaks clear and jocund on the ear. I become conscious here
of how noisily and hurriedly I have lived my life; happily enough, I
will confess; but the thought of it all--the class-room, the street,
the playing-field--bright and vivacious as it all was, seems now like a
boisterous prelude of blaring brass and tingling string, which lapses
into some delicate economy of sweet melody and gliding chord. It has
its shadows, I do not doubt, this Silent Isle; but to-day at least it
is all still and translucent as its clear-moving quiet waters, free as
its vaulted sky, rich as its endless plain.

It is not that I mean to be idle here! I have my web to weave; I have
my lucid mirror. But instead of scrambling and peeping, I mean to see
it all clearly and tranquilly, without dust and noise. I have lived
laboriously and hastily for twenty years; and surely there is a time
for garnering the harvest and for reckoning up the store? I want to see
behind it all, into the meaning of it all, if I can. Surely when we are
bidden to consider the lilies of the field, and told that they neither
toil nor spin, it is not that we may turn aside from them in scorn, and
choose rather to grow rank and strong, bulging like swedes, shoulder by
shoulder, in the gross furrow. It is not as though we content ourselves
with the necessary work of the world; we multiply vain activities, we
turn the songs of poets and the words of the wise into dumb-bells to
toughen our intellectual muscles; we make our pastimes into envious
rivalries and furious emulations; and when we have poured out our
contempt upon a few quiet-minded dreamers for their lack of spirit,
scarified a few lovers of leisure for their absence of ability,
ploughed up a few pretty wastes where the field-flowers grew as they
would, bred up a few hundred gay golden birds, that we may gloat over
the thought of striking them blood-bedabbled out of the sky on a winter
afternoon, we think complacently of the Kingdom of God, and all we have
done so diligently to hasten its coming.

There is a pleasant story of a man who was asked by an ardent
missionary for a subscription to some enterprise or other in the ends
of the earth. The man produced a shilling and a sovereign. "Here is a
shilling for the work," he said, "and here is a sovereign to get it out
there!" That seems to me an allegory of much of our Western work. So
little of it direct benefit, so much of it indirect transit! When I was
a schoolmaster, it always seemed to me that nine-tenths of what we did
was looking over work which we had given the boys to do to fill up
their time, and to keep them, as we used to say, out of mischief. The
worst of bringing up boys on that system is that they require to be
kept out of mischief all their life long; and yet the worst kind of
mischief, after all, may be to fill life with useless occupations.
There are two ways of going out into your garden. You may walk out
straight from the bow-window on to the lawn; or you may go out into the
street, take the first turn to the right, then the next to the right,
and let yourself in at the back-garden door. But there is no merit in
that! It is not a thing to be complacent about; still less does it
justify you in saying to the simple person who prefers the direct
course that the world is getting lazy and decadent and is always trying
to save itself trouble. The point is to have lived, not to have been
merely occupied. I remember once, when I was an undergraduate, staying
at a place in Scotland for a summer holiday. There were all sorts of
pleasant things to be done, and we were there to amuse ourselves. One
evening it was suggested that we should go out yachting on the
following day. I agreed to go, but being a miserable sailor, added that
I should only go if it were fine. We were to start early, and when I
was called and found it an ugly, gusty morning I went gratefully back
to bed, and spent the rest of the day fishing. There was a dreadful,
strenuous old Colonel staying in the house; he had been with the
yachting party, and they had had a very disagreeable day. That evening
in the smoking-room, when we were recounting our adventures, the old
wretch said to me: "Now I should like to give you a piece of advice.
You said you would go with us, and shirked because you were afraid of a
bit of wind. You must excuse an older man who knows something of the
world saying straight out that that sort of thing won't do. Make up
your mind and stick to it; that's a golden rule." It was in vain that I
said that I had never intended to go if it was windy, and that I should
have been ill the whole time. "Ah, that's what I call cry-baby talk,"
said the old ruffian; "I always say that if a thing is worth doing at
all, it is worth doing thoroughly." I said meekly that I should
certainly have been thoroughly sea-sick, but that I did not think it
_was_ worth while being sea-sick at all. At which he felt very much
nettled, and said that it was effeminate. I was very much humiliated,
but not in the least convinced; and I am afraid that I enjoyed the most
unchristian exultation when, two or three days after, the Colonel
insisted on walking to the deer-forest, instead of riding the pony that
was offered him; in consequence of which he not only lost half the day,
but got so dreadfully tired that he missed two stags in succession, and
came home empty-handed, full of excellent excuses, and more pragmatical
than ever.

Of course, a man has to decide for himself. If he does not desire
leisure, if he finds it wearisome and mischievous, he had better not
cultivate it; if his conscience tells him that he must go on with a
particular work, he had better simply obey the command. But it is very
easy to educate a false conscience in these matters by mere habit; and
if you play tricks with your mind or your conscience habitually, it has
an ugly habit of ending by playing tricks upon you, like the Old Man of
the Sea. The false conscience is satisfied and the real conscience
drugged, if a person with a sense of duty to others fills up his time
with unnecessary letters and useless interviews; worse still if he goes
about proclaiming with complacent pride that his work gives him no time
to read or think. If he has any responsibility in the matter, if it is
his business to help or direct others, he ought to be sure that he has
something to give them beyond platitudes which he has not tested. In
the story of Mary and Martha, which is a very mysterious one, it is
quite clear that Martha was rebuked, not for being hospitable, but for
being fussy; but it is not at all clear what Mary was praised
for--certainly not for being useful. She was not praised for visiting
the sick, or for attending committees, but apparently for doing
nothing--for sitting still, for listening to talk, and for being
interested. Presumably both were sympathetic, and Martha showed it by
practical kindness, and attention to the knives and the plates. But
what was the one thing needful? What was the good part, which Mary had
chosen, and which would not be taken from her? The truth is that there
is very little said about active work in the Gospel. It is, indeed,
rather made fun of, if one may use such an expression. There is a great
deal about simple kindness and neighbourliness, but nothing about
making money, or social organisation. In a poor village community the
problem was no doubt an easier one; but in our more complicated
civilisation it is not so easy to see how to act. Suppose that I am
seized with a sudden impulse of benevolence, what am I to do? In the
old storybooks one took a portion of one's dinner to a sick person, or
went to read aloud to some one. But it is not so easy to find the right
people. If I set off here on a round with a slop-basin containing apple
fritters, my intrusion would be generally and rightly resented; and as
for being read aloud to or visited when I am ill, there is nothing I
should personally dislike more than a succession of visitors bent on
benevolence. I might put up with it if I felt that it sprung from a
genuine affection, but if I felt it was done from a sense of duty, it
would be an intolerable addition to my troubles. Many people in grief
and trouble only desire not to be interfered with, and to be left
alone, and when they want sympathy they know how and where to ask for
it. Personally I do not want sympathy at all if I am in trouble,
because it only makes me suffer more; the real comfort under such
circumstances is when people behave quite naturally, as if there were
no troubles in the world; then one has to try to behave decently, and
that is one's best chance of forgetting oneself.

The only thing, it seems to me, that one may do, is to love people, if
one can. It is the mood from which sympathy and help spring that
matters, not the spoken word or the material aid. In the worst troubles
one cannot help people at all. The knowledge that others love you does
not fill the aching gap made by the death of child or lover or friend.
And now too, in these democratic days, when compassion and help are
more or less organised, when the sense of the community that children
should be taught issues in Education Bills, and the feeling that sick
people must be tended is expressed by hospitals--when the world has
thus been specialised, tangible benevolence is a much more complex
affair. It seems clear that it is not really a benevolent thing to give
money to anyone who happens to ask for it; and it is equally clear, it
seems to me, that not much is done by lecturing people vaguely about
their sins and negligences; one must have a very clear sense of one's
own victories over evil, and the tactics one has employed, to do that;
and if one is conscious, as I am, of not having made a very successful
show of resistance to personal faults and failings, the pastoral
attitude is not an easy one to adopt. But if one loves people, the
problem is not so difficult--or rather it solves itself. One can
compare notes, and discuss qualities, and try to see what one admires
and thinks beautiful; and the only way, after all, to make other people
good, if that is the end in view, is to be good oneself in such a way
that other people want to be good too.

The thing which really differentiates people from each other, and which
sets a few fine souls ahead of the crowd, is a certain clearness of
vision. Most of us take things for granted from the beginning, accept
the opinions and conventions of the world, and muddle along, taking
things as they come, our only aim being to collect in our own corner as
many of the good things of life as we can gather round us. Indeed, it
must be confessed that among the commonest motives for showing kindness
are the credit that results, and the sense of power and influence that
ensues. But that is no good at all to the giver. For the fact is that
behind life, as we see it, there lies a very strange and deep mystery,
something stronger and larger than we can any of us at all grasp. There
are a thousand roads to the city of God, and no two roads are the same,
though they all lead to the same place. If we take up the rôle of being
useful, the danger is that we become planted, like a kind of
professional guide-post, giving incomplete directions to others,
instead of finding the way for ourselves. The mistake lies in thinking
that things are unknowable when they are only unknown. Many mists have
melted already before the eyes of the pilgrims, and the tracks grow
plainer on the hillside; and thus the clearer vision of which I speak
is the thing to be desired by all. We must try to see things as they
are, not obscured by prejudice or privilege or sentiment or
selfishness; and sin does not cloud the vision so much as stupidity and
conceit. I have a dream, then, of what I desire and aspire to, though
it is hard to put it into words. I want to learn to distinguish between
what is important and unimportant, between what is beautiful and ugly,
between what is true and false. The pomps and glories of the world are
unimportant, I believe, and all the temptations which arise from
wanting to do things, as it is called, on a large scale. Money, the
love of which as representing liberty is a sore temptation to such as
myself, is unimportant. Conventional orthodoxies, whether they be of
manners, or of ways of life, or of thought, or of religion, or of
education, are unimportant. What then remains? Courage, and patience,
and simplicity, and kindness, and beauty, and, last of all, ideas
remain; and these are the things to lay hold of and to live with.

And even so one cannot help puzzling and grieving and wondering over
all the dreadful waste of time and energy, all the stupidities and
misunderstandings, all the unnecessary business and tiresome pleasure,
all the spitefulness and malignity, all the sham rules and artificial
regulations, all the hard judgments and dismal fears and ugly cruelties
of the world, beginning so early and ending so late. An hour ago I met
two tiny children, a boy and girl, in the road. The girl was the older
and stronger. The little boy, singing to himself, had gathered some
leaves from the hedge, and was enjoying his posy harmlessly enough.
What must his sister do? She wanted some fun; so she took the posy
away, dodged her brother when he tried to catch her, and finally threw
it over a paling, and went off rejoicing in her strength, while the
little boy sate down and cried. Why should they not have played
together in peace? On my table lie letters from two old friends of mine
who have had a quarrel over a small piece of business, involving a few
pounds. One complains that the other claims the money unjustly; the
other resents being accused of meanness; the result, a rupture of
familiar relations. One cannot, it seems, prevent sorrows and pains and
tragedies; but what is the ironical power which gives us such rich
materials for happiness, and then infects us with the devilish power of
misusing them, and worrying over them, and hating each other, and
despising ourselves? And then the little lives cut relentlessly short,
how does that fit in? And even when the life is prolonged, one becomes
a puckered, winking, doddering old thing, stiff and brittle,
disgraceful and humiliated, and, what is worse than anything, feeling
so young and sensible inside the crazy machine. If we knew that it was
all going to help us somewhere, sometime, no matter how far off, to be
strong and cheerful and brave and kind, how easy to bear it all!

But in spite of everything, how one enjoys it all; how interesting and
absorbing it all is! Wherever one turns, there are delicious things to
see, from the aconite with its yellow head and its green collar in the
bare shrubbery, to the streak of sunshine on the plain with the great
rays thrust downwards from the hidden sun, making the world an
enchanted place. And all the curious, fantastic, charming people that
one meets, from the boy sitting on the cart-shaft, with all sorts of
old love-histories hinted in his clear skin and large eye, to the
wizened labourer in his quaint-cut, frowzy clothes, bill-hook in hand,
a symbol of the patient work of the world. So helpless a crowd, so
patient in trouble, so bewildered as to the meaning of it all; and
zigzagged all across it, in nations, in families, in individuals, the
jagged lines of evil, so devastating, so horrible, so irremediable; and
even worse than evil--which has at least something lurid and fiery
about it--the dark, slimy streaks of meanness and jealousy, of boredom
and ugliness, which seem to have no use at all but to make things move
heavily and obscurely, when they might run swift and bright.

So here in my isle of silence, between fen and fen, under the spacious
sky, I want to try an experiment--to live simply and honestly, without
indolence or haste, neither wasting time nor devouring it, not refusing
due burdens but not inventing useless ones, not secluding myself in a
secret cell of solitude, but not multiplying dull and futile relations.
One thing I may say honestly and sincerely, that I do indeed desire to
fulfil the Will and purpose of God for me, if I can but discern it; for
that there is a great will at work behind it all, I cannot for a moment
doubt; nor can I doubt that I do it, with many foolish fears and
delays, and shall do it to the end. Why it is that, voyaging thus to
the haven beneath the hill, I meet such adverse breezes, such
headstrong currents, such wrack of wind and thwarting wave, I know not;
nor what that other land will be like, if indeed I sail beyond the
sunset; but that a home awaits me and all mankind I believe, of which
this quiet house, so pleasantly ordered, among its old trees and dewy
pastures, is but a faint sweet symbol. It may be that I shall find the
vision I desire; or it may be that I shall but fall bleeding among the
thorns of life; who can tell?

As I write, I see the pale spring sunset fade between the tree-stems;
the garden glimmers in the dusk; the lights peep out in the hamlet; the
birds wing their way home across the calm sky-spaces. Even now, in this
moment of ease and security, might be breathed the message I desire, as
the earth spins and whirls across the infinite tracts of heaven, from
the great tender mind of God. But if not, I am content. For this one
thing I hold as certain, and I dare not doubt it--that there is a Truth
behind all confusions and errors; a goal beyond all pilgrimages. I
shall find it, I shall reach it, in some day of sudden glory, of hope
fulfilled and sorrow ended; and no step of the way thither will be
wasted, whether trodden in despair and weariness or in elation and
delight; till we have learned not to fear, not to judge, not to
mistrust, not to despise; till in a moment our eyes will be opened, and
we shall know that we have found peace.




II


I realised a little while ago that I was getting sadly belated in the
matter of novel-reading. I had come to decline on a few old favourites
and was breaking no new ground. That is a provincial frame of mind,
just as when a man begins to discard dressing for dinner, and can
endure nothing but an old coat and slippers. It is easy to think of it
as unworldly, peaceable, philosophical; but it is mere laziness. The
really unworldly philosopher is the man who is at ease in all costumes
and at home in all companies.

I did not take up my novel-reading in a light spirit or for mere
diversion. To begin a new novel is for me like staying at a strange
house; I am bewildered and discomposed by the new faces, by the hard
necessity of making the acquaintance of all the new people, and in
determining their merits and their demerits. But I was bent on more
serious things still. I knew that it is the writers of romances, and
not the historians or the moralists, who are the real critics and the
earnest investigators of life and living. There may be at the present
day few subtle psychologists or surpassing idealists at work writing
novels, and still fewer great artists; but for a man to get out of the
way of reading contemporary fiction is not only a disease, it is almost
a piece of moral turpitude--or at best a sign of lassitude, stupidity,
and Toryism; because it means that one's mind is made up and that one
has some dull theory which life and the thoughts of others may confirm
if they will, but must not modify: from which deadly kind of
incrustation may common-sense and human interest deliver us.

It is a matter of endless debate whether a novel should have an ethical
purpose, or whether it should merely be an attempt to present
beautifully any portion of truth clearly perceived, faithfully
observed, delicately grouped, and artistically isolated. In the latter
case, say the realists, whatever the subject, the incident, the details
may be, the novel will possess exactly the same purpose that underlies
things, no more and no less; and the purpose may be trusted to look
after itself.

The other theory is that the novelist should have a definite motive;
that he should have a case which he is trying to prove, a warning he
wishes to enforce, an end which he desires to realise. The fact that
Dickens and Charles Reade had philanthropic motives of social reform,
and wished to improve the condition of schools, workhouses, lunatic
asylums, and gaols, is held to justify from the moral point of view
such novels as _Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, Hard Cash_, and _It is
Never too Late to Mend_. And from the moral point of view these books
are entirely justified, because they did undoubtedly interest a large
number of people in such subjects who would not have been interested by
sermons or blue-books. These books quickened the emotions of ordinary
people on the subject; and public sentiment is of course the pulse of
legislation.

Whether the philanthropic motive injured the books from the artistic
point of view is another question. It undoubtedly injured them exactly
in proportion as the philanthropic motive led the writers to distort or
to exaggerate the truth. It is perfectly justifiable, artistically, to
lay the scene of a novel in a workhouse or a gaol, but if the
humanitarian impulse leads to any embroidery of or divergence from the
truth, the novel is artistically injured, because the selection and
grouping of facts should be guided by artistic and not by philanthropic
motives.

Now the one emotion which plays a prominent part in most romances is
the passion of love, and it is interesting to observe that even this
motive is capable of being treated from the philanthropic as well as
from the artistic point of view. In a book which is now perhaps unduly
neglected, from the fact that it has a markedly early Victorian
flavour, Charles Kingsley's _Yeast_, there is a distinct attempt made
to fuse the two motives. The love of Lancelot for Argemone is depicted
both in the artistic and in the philanthropic light. The passion of the
lover throbs furiously through the odd weltering current of social
problems indicated, as a stream in lonely meadows may be seen and heard
to pulsate at the beat of some neighbouring mill which it serves to
turn. Yet the philanthropic motive is there, in that love is depicted
as a redeeming power, a cure for selfishness, a balm for unrest; and
the artistic impulse finally triumphs in the death of Argemone
unwedded.

In the hands of women-writers, love naturally tends to be depicted from
the humanitarian point of view. It is the one matchless gift which the
woman has to offer, the supreme opportunity of exercising influence,
the main chance of what is clumsily called self-effectuation. The old
proverb says that all women are match-makers; and Mr. Bernard Shaw goes
further and maintains that they act from a kind of predatory instinct,
however much that instinct may be concealed or glorified.

Now there was one great woman-writer, Charlotte Brontë, to whom it was
given to treat of love from the artistic side. She has been accused of
making her heroines, Jane Eyre, Caroline Helstone, Lucy Snowe, too
submissive, too grateful for the gift of a man's love. They forgive
deceit, rebuffs, severity, coldness, with a surpassing meekness. But it
is here that the artistic quality really emerges; these beautiful,
stainless hearts are preoccupied with what they receive rather than
with what they give. In that crude, ingenuous book _The Professor_, the
hero, who is a good instance of how Charlotte Brontë confused rigidity
of nature with manliness, surprised by an outbreak of passionate
emotion on the part of his quiet and self-contained wife, and still
more surprised by its sudden quiescence, asks her what has become of
her emotion and where it is gone. "I do not know where it is gone,"
says the girl, "but I know that whenever it is wanted it will come
back." That is a noble touch. It may be true that Paul Emmanuel and
Robert Moore cling too closely to the idea of rewarding their humble
mistresses, after testing them harshly and even brutally, with the gift
of their love--though even this humility has a touching quality of
beauty; but the supreme lover, Mr. Rochester, who, in spite of his
ridiculous affectations, his grotesque _hauteurs_, his impossible
theatricality, is a figure of flesh and blood, is absorbed in his
passion in a way that shows the fire leaping on the innermost altar.
The irresistible appeal of the book to the heart is due to the fact
that Jane Eyre never seems conscious of what she is giving, but only of
what she is receiving; and it is this that makes her gift so regal, so
splendid a thing.

Side by side with this book I would set a recent work, Miss
Cholmondeley's _Prisoners_. Fine and noble as the book is in many ways,
it is yet vitiated by the sense of the value of the gift of love from
the woman's point of view. Love is there depicted as the one redeeming
and transforming power in the world. But in order to prove the thesis,
the two chief characters among the men of the book, Wentworth and Lord
Lossiemouth, are not, like Mr. Rochester, strong men disfigured by
violent faults, but essentially worthless persons, one the slave of an
oldmaidish egotism and the other of a frank animalism. The result in
both cases is an _experimentum in corpore vili_. The authoress, instead
of presiding over her creations like a little Deity, is a strong
partisan; and the purpose seems to be to bring out more clearly the
priceless nature of the gift which comes near their hand. No one would
dispute the position that love is a purifying and transforming power;
but love, conscious of its worth, loses the humility and the
unselfishness in which half its power lies. Even Magdalen, the finest
character in the book, is not free from a quality of condescension. In
the great love-scene where she accepts Lord Lossiemouth, she comforts
him by saying, "You have not only come back to me. You have come back
to yourself." That is a false touch, because it has a flavour of
superiority about it. It reminds one of the lover in _The Princess_
lecturing the hapless Ida from his bed-pulpit, and saying, "Blame not
thyself too much," and "Dearer thou for faults lived over." One cannot
imagine Jane Eyre saying to Mr. Rochester that he had come back to
himself through loving her. It just detracts at the supreme moment from
the generosity of the scene; it has the accent of the priestess, not of
the true lover; and thus at the moment when one longs to be in the very
white-heat of emotion, one is subtly aware of an improving hand that
casts water upon the flame.

The love that lives in art is the love of Penelope and Antigone, of
Cordelia and Desdemona and Imogen, of Enid, of Mrs. Browning, among
women; and among men, the love of Dante, of Keats, of the lover of
Maud, of Père Goriot, of Robert Browning.

It is the unreasoning, unquestioning love of a man for a woman or a
woman for a man, just as they are, for themselves only; "because it was
you and me," as Montaigne says. Not a respect for good qualities, a
mere admiration for beauty, a perception of strength or delicacy, but a
sort of predestined unity of spirit and body, an inner and instinctive
congeniality, a sense of supreme need and nearness, which has no
consciousness of raising or helping or forgiving about it, but is
rather an imperative desire for surrender, for sharing, for serving.
Thus, in love, faults and weaknesses are not things to be mended or
overlooked, but opportunities of lavish generosity. Sacrifice is not
only not a pain, but the deepest and acutest pleasure possible. Love of
this kind has nothing of the tolerance of friendship about it, the
process of addition and subtraction, the weighing of net results,
though that can provide a sensible and happy partnership enough. And
thus when an author has grace and power to perceive such a situation,
no further motive or purpose is needed; indeed the addition of any such
motive merely defames and tarnishes the quality of the divine gift.

It is not to be pretended that all human beings have the gift of loving
so. To love perfectly is a matter of genius; it may be worth while to
depict other sorts of love, for it has infinite gradations and
_nuances_. One of the grievous mistakes that the prophets and
prophetesses of love make is that they tend to speak as if only some
coldness and hardness of nature, which could be dispensed with at will
or by effort, holds men and women back from the innermost relationship.
It is the same mistake as that made by many preachers who speak as if
the moral sense was equally developed in all, or required only a little
effort of the will. But a man or a woman may be quite able to perceive
the nobility, the solemn splendour of a perfect love, and yet be
incapable of either feeling or inspiring it. The possession of such a
gift is a thing to thank God for; the absence of it is not a thing to
be shrewishly condemned. The power is not often to be found in
combination with high intellectual or artistic gifts. There is a law of
compensation in human nature, but there is also a law of limitations;
and this it is both foolish and cowardly to ignore.

When one comes to form such a list as I have tried to do of great
lovers in literature and life, it is surprising and rather distressing
to find, after all, how difficult it is to make such a list at all. It
is easier to make a list of women who have loved perfectly than a list
of men. Two rather painful considerations arise. Is it because, after
all, it is so rare, so almost abnormal an experience for one to love
purely, passionately, and permanently, that the difficulty of making
such a list arises? There are plenty of books, both imaginative and
biographical, to choose from, and yet the perfect companionship seems
very rare. Or is it that we nowadays exaggerate the whole matter? That
would be a conclusion to which I would not willingly come; but it is
quite clear that we have transcendentalised the power of love very much
of late. Is this due to the immense flood of romances that have
overwhelmed our literature? Does love really play so large a part in
people's lives as romances would have us think? Or do the immense
number of romances rather show that love does really play a greater
part than anything else in our lives? The transcendental conception of
love has found a high and passionate expression in the sonnets of
Rossetti, yet all that we know of Rossetti would seem to prove that in
his case it was actual rather than transcendental; and he is to be
classed in the matter of love rather among its voluptuaries and slaves
than among its true and harmonious exponents. I am disposed to think
that with men, at all events, or at least with Englishmen of the
present day, love is rather a bewildering episode than a guiding
principle; and that some of the happiest alliances have been those in
which passion has tranquilly transformed itself into a true and gentle
companionship. This would seem to prove that love was as a rule a
physical rather than a spiritual passion, cutting across life rather
than flowing in its channels.

And then, too, the further consideration intervenes: Can any one, in
reflecting upon the instances of great and loving relationships that
have come within the range of his experience, name a single case in
which a deep passion has ever been conceived and consummated, without
the existence of physical charm of some kind in the woman who has been
the object of the passion? I do not, of course, limit charm to regular
and conventional beauty. But I cannot myself recall a single instance
of such a passion being evoked by a woman destitute of physical
attractiveness. The charm may be that of voice, of glance, of bearing,
of gesture, but the desirable element is always there in some form or
other.

I have known women of wit, of intellect, of sympathy, of delicate
perception, of loyalty, of passionate affectionateness, who yet have
missed the joy of wedded love from the absence of physical charm.
Indeed, to make love beautiful, one has to conceive of it as exhibited
in creatures of youth and grace like Romeo and Juliet; and to connect
the pretty endearments of love with awkward, ugly, ungainly persons has
something grotesque and even profane about it. But if love were the
transcendental thing that it is supposed to be, if it were within reach
of every hand, physical characteristics would hardly affect the
question. I wish that some of the passionate interpreters of love would
make a work of imagination that should render with verisimilitude the
love-affair of two absolutely grotesque and misshapen persons, without
any sense of incongruity or absurdity. I should be loth to say that
love depends upon physical characteristics; but I think it must be
confessed that impassioned love does so depend. A woman without
physical attractiveness, but with tenderness, loyalty, and devotion,
may arrive at plenty of happy relationships; she may be trusted,
confided in, adored by young and old; but of the redeeming and
regenerating love that comes with marriage she may have no chance at
all. It is a terrible question to ask, but what chance has love against
eczema? And yet eczema may co-exist with every mental and spiritual
grace in the world. In this case it is evident that the modern
transcendental theory of love crumbles away altogether, if it is at the
mercy of a physical condition.

The truth is that, like all the joys of humanity, love is unequally
distributed, and that it is a thing which no amount of desire or
admiration or hope can bring about, unless it is bestowed. Even in the
case of the faint-hearted lover, so mercilessly lashed in _Prisoners_,
who will pay a call to see the beloved, but will not take a railway
journey for the same object, is it not the physical vitality that is
deficient? I do not quarrel with the transcendental treatment of love;
I only say that if this is accompanied with a burning scorn and
contempt for those who cannot pursue it, it becomes at once a
pharisaical and bitter thing. No religion was ever propagated by
scolding backsliders or contemning the weak; no chivalry was ever worth
the name that did not stand for a desire to do battle only with the
strong.

The genius of Charlotte Brontë consists in the fact that she makes love
so splendid and glorifying a thing, and that she does not waste her
powder and shot upon the poor in spirit. The loveless man or woman,
after reading her book, may say, "What is this great thing that I have
somehow missed? Is it possible that it may be waiting somewhere even
for me?" And then such as these may grow to scan the faces of their
fellow-travellers in hope and wonder. In such a mood as this does love
grow, not under a brisk battery of slaps for being what, after all, God
seems to have meant us to be. There are many men and women nowadays who
must face the fact that they are not likely to be brought into contact
with transcendental passion. It is for them to decide whether they will
or can accept some lower form of love, some congenial companionship,
some sort of easy commercial union. If they cannot, the last thing that
they should do is to repine; they ought rather to organise their lives
upon the best basis possible. All is not lost if love be missed. They
may prepare themselves to be worthy if the great experience comes; but
the one thing in the world that cannot be done from a sense of duty is
to fall in love; and if love be so mighty and transcendent a thing it
cannot be captured like an insect with a butterfly-net. The more
transcendental it is held to be, the greater should be the compassion
of its interpreters for those who have not seen it. It is not those who
fail to gain it that should be scorned, but only the strong man who
deliberately, for prudence and comfort's sake, refuses it and puts it
aside. It is our great moral failure nowadays that legislation,
education, religion, social reform are all occupied in eradicating the