Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft — Autumn (parts 19-25)

XIX.

I was at ramble in the lanes, when, from somewhere at a distance, there sounded the voice of a countryman--strange to say--singing.

The notes were indistinct, but they rose, to my ear, with a moment's musical sadness, and of a sudden my heart was stricken with a memory so keen that I knew not whether it was pain or delight.

For the sound seemed to me that of a peasant's song which I once heard whilst sitting among the ruins of Paestum.

The English landscape faded before my eyes.

I saw great Doric columns of honey-golden travertine; between them, as I looked one way, a deep strip of sea; when I turned, the purple gorges of the Apennine; and all about the temple, where I sat in solitude, a wilderness dead and still but for that long note of wailing melody.

I had not thought it possible that here, in my beloved home, where regret and desire are all but unknown to me, I could have been so deeply troubled by a thought of things far off.

I returned with head bent, that voice singing in my memory.

All the delight I have known in Italian travel burned again within my heart.

The old spell has not lost its power.

Never, I know, will it again draw me away from England; but the Southern sunlight cannot fade from my imagination, and to dream of its glow upon the ruins of old time wakes in me the voiceless desire which once was anguish.

In his _Italienische Reise_, Goethe tells that at one moment of his life the desire for Italy became to him a scarce endurable suffering; at length he could not bear to hear or to read of things Italian, even the sight of a Latin book so tortured him that he turned away from it; and the day arrived when, in spite of every obstacle, he yielded to the sickness of longing, and in secret stole away southward.

When first I read that passage, it represented exactly the state of my own mind; to think of Italy was to feel myself goaded by a longing which, at times, made me literally ill; I, too, had put aside my Latin books, simply because I could not endure the torment of imagination they caused me.

And I had so little hope (nay, for years no shadow of reasonable hope) that I should ever be able to appease my desire.

I taught myself to read Italian; that was something.

I worked (half-heartedly) at a colloquial phrase-book.

But my sickness only grew towards despair.

Then came into my hands a sum of money (such a poor little sum) for a book I had written.

It was early autumn.

I chanced to hear some one speak of Naples--and only death would have held me back.

XX.

Truly, I grow aged.

I have no longer much delight in wine.

But then, no wine ever much rejoiced me save that of Italy.

Wine-drinking in England is, after all, only make-believe, a mere playing with an exotic inspiration.

Tennyson had his port, whereto clings a good old tradition; sherris sack belongs to a nobler age; these drinks are not for us.

Let him who will, toy with dubious Bordeaux or Burgundy; to get good of them, soul's good, you must be on the green side of thirty.

Once or twice they have plucked me from despair; I would not speak unkindly of anything in cask or bottle which bears the great name of wine.

But for me it is a thing of days gone by.

Never again shall I know the mellow hour _cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli_.

Yet how it lives in memory!

"What call you this wine?"

I asked of the temple-guardian at Paestum, when he ministered to my thirst.

"_Vino di Calabria_," he answered, and what a glow in the name!

There I drank it, seated against the column of Poseidon's temple.

There I drank it, my feet resting on acanthus, my eyes wandering from sea to mountain, or peering at little shells niched in the crumbling surface of the sacred stone.

The autumn day declined; a breeze of evening whispered about the forsaken shore; on the far summit lay a long, still cloud, and its hue was that of my Calabrian wine.

How many such moments come back to me as my thoughts wander!

Dim little _trattorie_ in city byways, inns smelling of the sun in forgotten valleys, on the mountain side, or by the tideless shore, where the grape has given me of its blood, and made life a rapture.

Who but the veriest fanatic of teetotalism would grudge me those hours so gloriously redeemed?

No draught of wine amid the old tombs under the violet sky but made me for the time a better man, larger of brain, more courageous, more gentle.

'Twas a revelry whereon came no repentance.

Could I but live for ever in thoughts and feelings such as those born to me in the shadow of the Italian vine!

There I listened to the sacred poets; there I walked with the wise of old; there did the gods reveal to me the secret of their eternal calm.

I hear the red rillet as it flows into the rustic glass; I see the purple light upon the hills.

Fill to me again, thou of the Roman visage and all but Roman speech!

Is not yonder the long gleaming of the Appian Way?

Chant in the old measure, the song imperishable "dum Capitolium Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex--" aye, and for how many an age when Pontiff and Vestal sleep in the eternal silence.

Let the slave of the iron gods chatter what he will; for him flows no Falernian, for him the Muses have no smile, no melody.

Ere the sun set, and the darkness fall about us, fill again!

XXI.

Is there, at this moment, any boy of twenty, fairly educated, but without means, without help, with nothing but the glow in his brain and steadfast courage in his heart, who sits in a London garret, and writes for dear life?

There must be, I suppose; yet all that I have read and heard of late years about young writers, shows them in a very different aspect.

No garretteers, these novelists and journalists awaiting their promotion.

They eat--and entertain their critics--at fashionable restaurants; they are seen in expensive seats at the theatre; they inhabit handsome flats--photographed for an illustrated paper on the first excuse.

At the worst, they belong to a reputable club, and have garments which permit them to attend a garden party or an evening "at home" without attracting unpleasant notice.

Many biographical sketches have I read, during the last decade, making personal introduction of young Mr. This or young Miss That, whose book was--as the sweet language of the day will have it--"booming"; but never one in which there was a hint of stern struggle, of the pinched stomach and frozen fingers.

I surmise that the path of "literature" is being made too easy.

Doubtless it is a rare thing nowadays for a lad whose education ranks him with the upper middle class to find himself utterly without resources, should he wish to devote himself to the profession of letters.

And there is the root of the matter; writing has come to be recognized as a profession, almost as cut- and-dried as church or law; a lad may go into it with full parental approval, with ready avuncular support.

I heard not long ago of an eminent lawyer, who had paid a couple of hundred per annum for his son's instruction in the art of fiction--yea, the art of fiction--by a not very brilliant professor of that art.

Really, when one comes to think of it, an astonishing fact, a fact vastly significant.

Starvation, it is true, does not necessarily produce fine literature; but one feels uneasy about these carpet-authors.

To the two or three who have a measure of conscience and vision, I could wish, as the best thing, some calamity which would leave them friendless in the streets.

They would perish, perhaps.

But set that possibility against the all but certainty of their present prospect--fatty degeneration of the soul; and is it not acceptable?

I thought of this as I stood yesterday watching a noble sunset, which brought back to my memory the sunsets of a London autumn, thirty years ago; more glorious, it seems to me, than any I have since beheld.

It happened that, on one such evening, I was by the river at Chelsea, with nothing to do except to feel that I was hungry, and to reflect that, before morning, I should be hungrier still.

I loitered upon Battersea Bridge--the old picturesque wooden bridge, and there the western sky took hold upon me.

Half an hour later, I was speeding home.

I sat down, and wrote a description of what I had seen, and straightway sent it to an evening newspaper, which, to my astonishment, published the thing next day--"On Battersea Bridge."

How proud I was of that little bit of writing!

I should not much like to see it again, for I thought it then so good that I am sure it would give me an unpleasant sensation now.

Still, I wrote it because I enjoyed doing so, quite as much as because I was hungry; and the couple of guineas it brought me had as pleasant a ring as any money I ever earned.

XXII.

I wonder whether it be really true, as I have more than once seen suggested, that the publication of Anthony Trollope's autobiography in some degree accounts for the neglect into which he and his works fell so soon after his death.

I should like to believe it, for such a fact would be, from one point of view, a credit to "the great big stupid public."

Only, of course, from one point of view; the notable merits of Trollope's work are unaffected by one's knowledge of how that work was produced; at his best he is an admirable writer of the pedestrian school, and this disappearance of his name does not mean final oblivion.

Like every other novelist of note, he had two classes of admirers--those who read him for the sake of that excellence which here and there he achieved, and the undistinguishing crowd which found in him a level entertainment.

But it would be a satisfaction to think that "the great big stupid" was really, somewhere in its secret economy, offended by that revelation of mechanical methods which made the autobiography either a disgusting or an amusing book to those who read it more intelligently.

A man with a watch before his eyes, penning exactly so many words every quarter of an hour--one imagines that this picture might haunt disagreeably the thoughts even of Mudie's steadiest subscriber, that it might come between him or her and any Trollopean work that lay upon the counter.

The surprise was so cynically sprung upon a yet innocent public.

At that happy time (already it seems so long ago) the literary news set before ordinary readers mostly had reference to literary work, in a reputable sense of the term, and not, as now, to the processes of "literary" manufacture and the ups and downs of the "literary" market.

Trollope himself tells how he surprised the editor of a periodical, who wanted a serial from him, by asking how many thousand words it should run to; an anecdote savouring indeed of good old days.

Since then, readers have grown accustomed to revelations of "literary" method, and nothing in that kind can shock them.

There has come into existence a school of journalism which would seem to have deliberately set itself the task of degrading authorship and everything connected with it; and these pernicious scribblers (or typists, to be more accurate) have found the authors of a fretful age only too receptive of their mercantile suggestions.

Yes, yes; I know as well as any man that reforms were needed in the relations between author and publisher.

Who knows better than I that your representative author face to face with your representative publisher was, is, and ever will be, at a ludicrous disadvantage?

And there is no reason in the nature and the decency of things why this wrong should not by some contrivance be remedied.

A big, blusterous, genial brute of a Trollope could very fairly hold his own, and exact at all events an acceptable share in the profits of his work.

A

shrewd and vigorous man of business such as Dickens, aided by a lawyer who was his devoted friend, could do even better, and, in reaping sometimes more than his publisher, redress the ancient injustice.

But pray, what of Charlotte Bronte?

Think of that grey, pinched life, the latter years of which would have been so brightened had Charlotte Bronte received but, let us say, one third of what, in the same space of time, the publisher gained by her books.

I know all about this; alas!

no man better.

None the less do I loathe and sicken at the manifold baseness, the vulgarity unutterable, which, as a result of the new order, is blighting our literary life.

It is not easy to see how, in such an atmosphere, great and noble books can ever again come into being.

May it, perhaps, be hoped that once again the multitude will be somehow touched with disgust?

--that the market for "literary" news of this costermonger sort will some day fail?

Dickens.

Why, there too was a disclosure of literary methods.

Did not Forster make known to all and sundry exactly how Dickens' work was done, and how the bargains for its production were made?

The multitudinous public saw him at his desk, learnt how long he sat there, were told that he could not get on without having certain little ornaments before his eyes, and that blue ink and a quill pen were indispensable to his writing; and did all this information ever chill the loyalty of a single reader?

There was a difference, in truth, between the picture of Charles Dickens sitting down to a chapter of his current novel, and that of the broad-based Trollope doing his so many words to the fifteen minutes.

Trollope, we know, wronged himself by the tone and manner of his reminiscences; but that tone and manner indicated an inferiority of mind, of nature.

Dickens--though he died in the endeavour to increase (not for himself) an already ample fortune, disastrous influence of his time and class--wrought with an artistic ingenuousness and fervour such as Trollope could not even conceive.

Methodical, of course, he was; no long work of prose fiction was ever brought into existence save by methodical labour; but we know that there was no measuring of so many words to the hour.

The picture of him at work which is seen in his own letters is one of the most bracing and inspiring in the history of literature.

It has had, and will always have, a great part in maintaining Dickens' place in the love and reverence of those who understand.

XXIII.

As I walked to-day in the golden sunlight--this warm, still day on the far verge of autumn--there suddenly came to me a thought which checked my step, and for the moment half bewildered me.

I said to myself: My life is over.

Surely I ought to have been aware of that simple fact;

certainly it has made part of my meditation, has often coloured my mood;

but the thing had never definitely shaped itself, ready in words for the tongue.

My life is over.

I uttered the sentence once or twice, that my ear might test its truth.

Truth undeniable, however strange; undeniable as the figure of my age last birthday.

My age?

At this time of life, many a man is bracing himself for new efforts, is calculating on a decade or two of pursuit and attainment.

I,

too, may perhaps live for some years; but for me there is no more activity, no ambition.

I have had my chance--and I see what I made of it.

The thought was for an instant all but dreadful.

What!

I, who only yesterday was a young man, planning, hoping, looking forward to life as to a practically endless career, I, who was so vigorous and scornful, have come to this day of definite retrospect?

How is it possible?

But, I have done nothing; I have had no time; I have only been preparing myself--a mere apprentice to life.

My brain is at some prank; I am suffering a momentary delusion; I shall shake myself, and return to common sense--to my schemes and activities and eager enjoyments.

Nevertheless, my life is over.

What a little thing!

I knew how the philosophers had spoken; I repeated their musical phrases about the mortal span--yet never till now believed them.

And this is all?

A man's life can be so brief and so vain?

Idly would I persuade myself that life, in the true sense, is only now beginning; that the time of sweat and fear was not life at all, and that it now only depends upon my will to lead a worthy existence.

That may be a sort of consolation, but it does not obscure the truth that I shall never again see possibilities and promises opening before me.

I have "retired," and for me as truly as for the retired tradesman, life is over.

I can look back upon its completed course, and what a little thing!

I am tempted to laugh; I hold myself within the limit of a smile.

And that is best, to smile, not in scorn, but in all forbearance, without too much self-compassion.

After all, that dreadful aspect of the thing never really took hold of me; I could put it by without much effort.

Life is done--and what matter?

Whether it has been, in sum, painful or enjoyable, even now I cannot say--a fact which in itself should prevent me from taking the loss too seriously.

What does it matter?

Destiny with the hidden face decreed that I should come into being, play my little part, and pass again into silence; is it mine either to approve or to rebel?

Let me be grateful that I have suffered no intolerable wrong, no terrible woe of flesh or spirit, such as others--alas!

alas!

--have found in their lot.

Is it not much to have accomplished so large a part of the mortal journey with so much ease?

If I find myself astonished at its brevity and small significance, why, that is my own fault; the voices of those gone before had sufficiently warned me.

Better to see the truth now, and accept it, than to fall into dread surprise on some day of weakness, and foolishly to cry against fate.

I will be glad rather than sorry, and think of the thing no more.

XXIV.

Waking at early dawn used to be one of the things I most dreaded.

The night which made me capable of resuming labour had brought no such calm as should follow upon repose; I woke to a vision of the darkest miseries and lay through the hours of daybreak--too often--in very anguish.

But that is past.

Sometimes, ere yet I know myself, the mind struggles as with an evil spirit on the confines of sleep; then the light at my window, the pictures on my walls, restore me to happy consciousness, happier for the miserable dream.

Now, when I lie thinking, my worst trouble is wonder at the common life of man.

I see it as a thing so incredible that it oppresses the mind like a haunting illusion.

Is it the truth that men are fretting, raving, killing each other, for matters so trivial that I, even I, so far from saint or philosopher, must needs fall into amazement when I consider them?

I could imagine a man who, by living alone and at peace, came to regard the everyday world as not really existent, but a creation of his own fancy in unsound moments.

What lunatic ever dreamt of things less consonant with the calm reason than those which are thought and done every minute in every community of men called sane?

But I put aside this reflection as soon as may be; it perturbs me fruitlessly.

Then I listen to the sounds about my cottage, always soft, soothing, such as lead the mind to gentle thoughts.

Sometimes I can hear nothing; not the rustle of a leaf, not the buzz of a fly, and then I think that utter silence is best of all.

This morning I was awakened by a continuous sound which presently shaped itself to my ear as a multitudinous shrilling of bird voices.

I knew what it meant.

For the last few days I have seen the swallows gathering, now they were ranged upon my roof, perhaps in the last council before their setting forth upon the great journey.

I know better than to talk about animal instinct, and to wonder in a pitying way at its resemblance to reason.

I know that these birds show to us a life far more reasonable, and infinitely more beautiful, than that of the masses of mankind.

They talk with each other, and in their talk is neither malice nor folly.

Could one but interpret the converse in which they make their plans for the long and perilous flight--and then compare it with that of numberless respectable persons who even now are projecting their winter in the South!

XXV.

Yesterday I passed by an elm avenue, leading to a beautiful old house.

The road between the trees was covered in all its length and breadth with fallen leaves--a carpet of pale gold.

Further on, I came to a plantation, mostly of larches; it shone in the richest aureate hue, with here and there a splash of blood-red, which was a young beech in its moment of autumnal glory.

I looked at an alder, laden with brown catkins, its blunt foliage stained with innumerable shades of lovely colour.

Near it was a horse-chestnut, with but a few leaves hanging on its branches, and those a deep orange.

The limes, I see, are already bare.

To-night the wind is loud, and rain dashes against my casement; to-morrow I shall awake to a sky of winter.

WINTER