EDWARD THOMAS
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Robert V. Merrill
 
 fr-i-r, 
 
 . g. !/.
 
 Rose Acre Papers
 
 BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 REST AND UNREST 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 BEAUTIFUL WALES 
 
 THE HEART OF ENGLAND 
 
 LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 
 
 THE SOUTH COUNTRY
 
 Rose Acre Papers 
 
 Including Essays from 
 "Horae Solitariae" 
 
 Author of 
 "Rest and Unrest' 
 
 London 
 
 Duckworth (& Co. 
 
 3 Henrietta Street, W.C. 
 1910
 
 PA 
 
 So 
 
 GORDON BOTTOMLEY 
 
 POET
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 CARYATIDS 1 
 
 EXILES AT PLAY 9 
 
 THE PASSING OF PAN ..... 26 
 
 ON THE EVENLODE 48 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OP NOVEMBER ... 68 
 
 FEBRUARY IN ENGLAND 75 
 
 AN AUTUMN HOUSE 92 
 
 RAIN 108 
 
 A GENTLE CRAFTSMAN 127 
 
 DIGRESSIONS ON FISH AND FISHING . . 136 
 
 HENGEST : A KENTISH STUDY . . . 145 
 
 TWO SCHOLARS 153 
 
 BROKEN MEMORIES ... . 164 
 
 ISOUD WITH THE WHITE HANDS . 175 
 
 Vli
 
 Most of the chapters in this book are 
 reprinted from my " Horae Solitarise," 
 first published in 1902. ' ' An Autumn 
 House" and "Rain" formed part of a 
 little book entitled "Rose Acre Papers." 
 All were written between 1898 and 
 
 1901. 
 
 E. T.
 
 Caryatids 
 
 THE oriel surveys an angular plain of roofs 
 blue slate, auburn tile- work, grizzled stone 
 and soaring thence a steeple, the clustered 
 masonry at its base inhabited and ever 
 guarded by sad crowned women, with faces 
 lifted skyward. Very likely these are saints, 
 perhaps martyrs ; but I never heard their 
 legend from the pigeon that sways about 
 them, or the wind that sharpens the angles 
 of their faces. Night after night I see them, 
 and after many vigils, whilst bells are calling 
 to each other above us, and night closes over 
 the placid city, faces seen in the enchanted 
 past reappear, faces of men and women like 
 Caryatids, and close kin to these guardians 
 of the spire, among cloud and star. Nor 
 A i
 
 Caryatids 
 
 merely faces I have seen, but the long-en- 
 during I have read of also. One by one 
 as I watch the queenly stone figures, wrought 
 upon by the magic of distance and lofty 
 place (nearer the stars than we!) such 
 faces emerge from the past, with more of 
 the uncomplaining benedictionless. These 
 are the Caryatids of life. Fearful burdens 
 rest on their tender necks. Yet one sees 
 not wherefore they should undergo so much, 
 any more than should the Caryatids that 
 bear mountains of carven stone. Silent, 
 immobile, like Caryatids, their palms are 
 crossed with tearless supplication on their 
 bosoms. Children, too, are of their 
 number. . . . 
 
 Go one humming May afternoon to the 
 fields, along a sweet and wildsome pathway 
 startled by your footfalls from which you 
 may fancy you hear the wounded note of a 
 spirit of the spot escaping. Out of sight, 
 bees are noisy in the willow top. On almost 
 leafless blackthorns the blossom is delicate
 
 Caryatids 
 
 like summer snow. And the foliage of lime 
 and poplar is heavy scented, after rain ; the 
 blackbird's note is mellow for it. ... Those 
 children crowning themselves with coils of 
 docile bryony, with flowers between, and 
 now running toward a tuneless voice of 
 command in the distance they are Caryatids. 
 Farther on, I used to meet an idiot, day 
 after day, holding in leash a pair of divine, 
 chestnut horses. He is kind, fraternally 
 kind, to the field creatures ; and they to 
 him, in return. They are indeed his only 
 pleasure, his sole interest. Also he is more 
 truly related to them than you might think. 
 Not one of their voices there is he will not 
 copy the whew of plovers, the bullfinch's 
 delicate, internal soprano, the sob of unchilded 
 otters and especially the hiss of snakes. 
 His sense of smell is fine and undeceivable. 
 I never heard a sigh from him ; for he seems 
 to have no longings, no regrets ; the source 
 of tears has run dry, since the time when 
 children baited and derided him pitilessly. 
 
 3
 
 Caryatids 
 
 Yet he draws from solitude a kind of sati< 
 faction, like a mere herb, or like a solitary 
 fir on a peak, whose very life is the west 
 wind, by which it was shapen. I think of 
 him I am not certain wherefore as a 
 martyr, a saint, notwithstanding that he 
 might rather seem little above the trees he 
 equals in tranquillity. But Wordsworth 
 alone, with his power of assigning to the 
 humblest their unique, proper niche in the 
 scheme of things, could fitly write of him. 
 Who else could so well follow at a few yards 
 an hour the grazing horses ? He also, though 
 not exempt from the blithe ministries of the 
 south wind to flower and plant, is among 
 the Caryatids. 
 
 Or come on a dead, bleak day in February, 
 when the trees moan as if they covered a 
 tomb and they do cover a tomb, the tomb 
 of the voices, the " thrones and dominations " 
 of summer past. The rabbits are housed. 
 Dead as soon as born, the first lesser 
 celandine puts forth one flower. Now and 
 4
 
 Caryatids 
 
 then a bird crosses the sky with a shriek. 
 So day follows day ; and night is so dark 
 that the heavens seem a mirage of earth. 
 On such a day the only light in the prospect 
 is the white bonnet of a grandmother, creep- 
 ing wearily over the interminable ploughlands 
 alone, picking up stones. She sings a song, 
 and her soul has already gone forward into 
 the silences. At this season, year after year, 
 she is there she or another keeping the 
 generations of undespairing sorrow unbroken. 
 And she, too, is among the Caryatids. 
 
 Along with these are the faces of other 
 field women. ... On the Downs we heard 
 the reapers chanting a song in the motionless 
 corn. All day they reaped, reaped, and never 
 turned to behold the sun, in whose rebound- 
 ing beams their faces whitened, whilst their 
 napes and shoulders became brown as they 
 stooped. Sometimes they seemed to hail the 
 sun with wistful pity for their babes, and even 
 for the feverish blossoms. To the sun, which 
 had been gracious to them all the year, and 
 
 5
 
 Caryatids 
 
 now was cruel, they were praying that he 
 would still be kind ; for then, after he was 
 gone, or at least when they saw him not, in 
 the muffled winter, they would suspend a 
 fruited branch of his own ripening over the 
 chimney-piece, thankfully in memoriam ; or 
 if he would not listen, they seemed to say, in 
 half-laughing indignation, they would evoke 
 a rain-shower that should veil his glory before 
 evening, or trample upon his triumphs at 
 dawn. But evermore the burden was that 
 the sun would lightly deal with the hills 
 where the reapers reaped, as with the valleys 
 where he raised up a beatific haze. Now 
 charging angrily at the corn rows with 
 sickles, now resting a minute, the reapers 
 presently disappeared in the gulfs they hewed. 
 The women piled the harvest in shining heaps, 
 and after nightfall travelled home, Caryatid- 
 like, with children upon their arms, a faggot 
 upon their heads, and the wreck of sunset 
 was scattered round them with a pomp which 
 in human things we should call grandiose. 
 6
 
 Caryatids 
 
 There are many more. There is, for in- 
 stance, the flower-seller, with a step always 
 as soft as if she feared to wake a sleeper 
 who yesterday, as she passed along the river- 
 side carrying early honeysuckle and fritillaries 
 in a basket on her head, refused to sell her 
 flowers, and for one day at least seemed to 
 prefer hunger to parting with what had 
 brought her to that reedy, tranquil riverside. 
 There are many more ; but the night grows 
 late ; and the thoughts travel beyond the 
 city, to where the wind-carven firs line the 
 hilltop in open order, against the blanched 
 sky. Now deepens the peace of all those 
 trees that veil so much in their hushed 
 mantles of foliage, though if we enter among 
 them, all will have gone. ... It is a still 
 midnight in white and black. In the sky 
 there are several lonely stars ; one or two, no 
 more ; and even these wither, one at a time, 
 behind invisible cloud, as if refined by a 
 gradual retreat into distance. So grand the 
 silence, the nightingale dares not sing ; only 
 
 7
 
 Caryatids 
 
 now and then its voice leaps forth like a 
 sigh from the breast of the silence ; the vasty 
 night heaves through and through ; the 
 birch tree sprays rise and fall once, and are 
 still.
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 FOR a little time, we turned aside into a 
 circuit of brown walls. They and two aerial, 
 pointed arches were the remains of a famous 
 abbey : and it was pleasant still to lie under 
 a tall, gracious linden, that stood on the site 
 of the west front Several Welsh maidens 
 joined us presently. They w r ere very sprightly, 
 setting free their hair, singing, and laughing 
 continually. One climbed the wall, and 
 posing motionless in a niche, made an effec- 
 tive Madonna; only her tresses were blown 
 over her face, like wings. But it was a 
 plaintive place the generous Catholic and 
 Apostolic oven cold and ruinous desolate 
 the great barn wherein the winnowing fan 
 rose and fell murmurously, and the dust 
 
 9
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 was gilded all day, seen through the open 
 door. Nevertheless, we paced in fancy 
 down umbrageous, overtraceried cathedral 
 aisles. In fancy we spied the carver of 
 that celandine flower on the hidden face of 
 a slab, with the legend : Jam mens prcetre- 
 pidans avet vagari. We heard in fancy the 
 dewy voices of the choir singing together 
 lonesomely. 
 
 On the walls and about the still perfumed 
 linden a glow was tarrying as we left. It 
 was an amber fervid evening. In the placid, 
 breathless sunset, over the colours of the sky 
 folded a harmonizing mist. Footsore way- 
 farers now and again found a pretext for 
 turning round to take a last look at the sun. 
 All the world gazed westwards ; on the gate 
 of many a cottage lay a long white hand, 
 growing transparent in the sad light, and 
 looking wonderful against the torrid blue sky ; 
 and the unquiet stars seemed to hang in 
 their black hair as the women lingered. A 
 waggon or two glided along the horizon The 
 10
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 poplars, that all day had sung and shivered 
 busily, "with a sound of showers," muffled 
 their heads, put on a cloak of silence and 
 gloom. We expected words like diamonds 
 or fine gold from our host ; but he answered 
 in Welsh, which was a second best. Until 
 the hour for candles, we listened to Welsh 
 songs, devised sweetly about the streams and 
 hills of the very place where we lay. Then 
 the moon gave the word : Monte dans la tour 
 d'ivoire et advienne que pourra. And this 
 was my dream. 
 
 Low, massy, and in colour auburn, the full 
 moon was perched upon a hill-top, very near ; 
 etched in black on its surface was the 
 skeleton of an elm. To the cottager moving 
 in his orchard it hung like a great fruit, upon 
 each tree in turn. The rooks, even yet, were 
 crossing the sky from side to side, straight to 
 the moon. We kept it in sight until it grew 
 pallid and frail in the cold wind, and rose in 
 the centre of its hazy circles, pent in like 
 some white maiden by a magician's lines, for 
 
 ii
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 ever haunted by the pale grey and crocus 
 circles. Before us lay a broad estuary 
 moon-enriched, and presently like an even 
 silver trencher, with tree shadows upon it 
 like islets of ebony. A little starry rivulet 
 flowed past us. And on one hand a long 
 road wound upward, shining white, to the 
 top of a hill, and then the moon, with all 
 her stars. . . . This road and the wind that 
 traded in freshest perfumes enticed us forth. 
 It passed near to the abbey ; and on the way, 
 we met nobody. Not even an owl was 
 abroad. 
 
 Now and then a leaf fidgeted. A butter- 
 fly slept on a branch, like a flower. 
 
 The abbey was faintly lighted by torches, 
 upheld by four girls one at each corner of 
 the nave, who were clad in white raiment. 
 The girls were immobile ; their torches gave 
 a pleasant smell in burning. But the light 
 hardly touched the chancel, where several 
 figures, all in white, save two that wore 
 purple, were standing. They were five : 
 12
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 three men, two women ; and the men were 
 more aged than the women. The two eldest 
 might have been brothers. Both had faces 
 deeply trenched, and the eyes almost shut by 
 overmuch weeping ; but the long beard and 
 locks of the one were black, over his purple 
 cloak ; he held manacles in one hand, as if 
 he were gaoler to his own captives ; his voice 
 was like a passing bell ; and he was a head 
 shorter than the second. The snow white 
 hair of the other was well preened, and 
 helped the lines of his face worn perhaps 
 as much by deep joy as by suffering to add 
 a grace to his august demeanour. Stooping 
 a little, his expression was always courteous 
 and benign. A festal garland encircled his 
 head. From time to time he sighed, but like 
 one whose grief has grown old along with 
 him. The third was lame, and leant on an 
 ivory staff. His face was haggard and tanned ; 
 his beard grew like a furze-bush from his 
 chin ; his mien was astringent, making one 
 who saw it purse his lips. Yet he was the 
 
 13
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 most active of all, tapping the floor im- 
 patiently with his staff. 
 
 They were, as I afterwards leamed, l>ls, 
 Zeus, and Hephaestus. 
 
 So old was the elder of the women, that 
 she scarce ever moved ; yet the gracious oval 
 of her face was almost flawless, her hair all 
 gold. She seemed to be blind ; for her eyes 
 never looked earthwards, and when posMhle 
 she held the younger woman's sleeve. Her 
 lips were still lax and full and red, after 
 trembling with passionate speech Where 
 were her altars ? Where were the offerings 
 of fruit and wine and flowers that once smelt 
 so delicately to her in the twilight? The 
 younger woman was a copy of her done in 
 pearl, instead of marble, and so tenderer and 
 of more evasive beauty. Her raven hair was 
 all of her that looked real, covering her as 
 clouds the moon when it has waned many 
 autumn days. From all the rest, except the 
 elder woman, she shrank away, especially 
 from the black beard; but her wandering 
 14
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 touch she met with a shudder of joy. Stand- 
 ing at her left heel, haunting her when 
 she moved, was a leopard, his face towards 
 the light, with a look of wonder, but silent, 
 and one eye flashing. Afterwards, when 
 she went out, he followed, and did not 
 return. 
 
 Soon came in a sixth person, one that 
 would have been no more than a man, with- 
 out his subtle and piercing eyes. He bore 
 a rhabdos. Before the others, he broke 
 silence, though what he said, even what he 
 meant, I could not guess, until I heard a 
 wave of sound begin to plunge with the 
 words aklamtos, ataphos unlamented, with- 
 out a tomb. Amazed, I asked one of the 
 torch-bearers what it meant. 
 
 " I am from Sicily," she answered. 
 
 "I am from Sicily, and my name is 
 Arethusa. Many a time and oft, I used to 
 hear celebrations of my name and power. 
 But those yonder were mightier far than I. 
 They are the Gods ; and since time now 
 
 15
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 weighs heavily upon them, they try to lighten 
 it and warm their frozen hearts with the 
 remembrance of true human woe, and of 
 
 ' Sad stories chauc6d in the times of old.' 
 
 The acting of old tragedies is a great joy to 
 us. We love Euripides above alL Alccstis 
 almost caused us to have hope. The agonies 
 of Electra revived our own, and in the hot 
 rush of blood that followed it, we felt that 
 we were alive at least. Even now, they are 
 acting the Hecuba. Zeus plays Agamemnon : 
 Dis Odysseus : Hephaestus Polymestor : 
 Hermes both Polydorus and Talthybius : 
 Demeter plays Hecuba : her child Persephone 
 Pohj.com. . . . Hush ! The ghost of 
 Polydorus speaks ; and Hecuba is at 
 hand." 
 
 Hermes was in fact speaking to Demeter : 
 " Now on the beach, now borne over the 
 sea by ebb and flow, I lie, unlamented, 
 without a tomb. . . . O mother ! slavery 
 instead of a queenly life is before you ; 
 16
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 you are fallen upon days as evil as the past 
 was blissful; some God lays destruction in 
 the balance against your happiness gone 
 by." 
 
 I kept my place beside Arethusa, who 
 chanted, with her three fellows, the words of 
 the Chorus : and sometimes spoke to me. 
 The aged Demeter then spoke (" She chose 
 this part herself," whispered the nymph at 
 my ear) : 
 
 "Lead me, my maidens; lend a guiding 
 hand to me in my old age, a slave like your- 
 selves, though once your mistress. ... 
 mighty Earth ! I understand my last night's 
 dream, the sad vision of my son secure 
 now in Thrace, and of my sweet daughter 
 Polyxena ; it still alarms me nevertheless. 
 . . . For my heart broke when I saw 
 the spotted deer torn from my shelter by a 
 bloody wolf, and slain. This too appals me. 
 The shade of Achilles rose above his tomb, 
 and claimed one of the long-suffering Trojan 
 maidens, for a sacrifice. Let it not be, I 
 B 17
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 beseech you, Oh ! ye gods, let it not be my 
 daughter." 
 
 Demeter sank down upon the altar, almost 
 in a swoon, and when the news came that 
 her daughter was chosen, she sat on, and 
 so made known her fate to the maiden. 
 Arethusa laid her fingers on my sleeve in her 
 agitation, to indicate Persephone who began 
 to speak : 
 
 " miserable, unhappy mother ! no longer 
 shall I be with you : I shall not relieve the 
 pain of your captivity with my own. You 
 will see me torn pitifully away, offered up to 
 Hades, and sent down to the shades, luckless 
 even in my death. I pity and weep for thee : 
 but my own portion I can not deplore ; it is 
 a great good fortune to die." 
 
 Had Demeter a knife, or an adder, or 
 some other weapon ; and would she use it 
 against Dis as he bowed and the point of 
 his beard swept her garment obsequiously ; 
 I wondered, as he came to take her 
 daughter ; for she did much that was not in 
 18
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 the book. No. She was pleading with him, 
 putting him in mind of her early hospitality 
 at Troy : 
 
 "As a suppliant," she cried, "you laid 
 your hand in mine and on my cheek. I 
 supplicate now that you fulfil the promise 
 then made. . . . Do not take her away and 
 slay her. Ton tethnekoton halis the dead 
 are numerous enough." 
 
 " Ton tethnekoton halis" I said. " Ton 
 tethnekoton halis," said Arethusa, Demeter 
 still spoke : 
 
 " She is my consolation. She is all to me. 
 The mighty should not for ever be exerting 
 their strength ; nor should the prosperous 
 think they must always prosper : for I too 
 but I am so no more ; I was bereft of all in 
 a day. Go. Pity me. Go and dissuade the 
 Greeks." 
 
 Dis turned aside and his beard quivered 
 as he said 
 
 " I should like my tomb to be seen covered 
 with honours. Such honours endure." 
 
 19
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 The Chorus lamented with pathetic 
 emphasis 
 
 " Alas ! how wretched it is to be a slave, to 
 suffer evil, from necessity te bid nikomenon." 
 
 And Demeter stole up to Persephone and 
 whispered 
 
 " My words are in vain. Go you therefore, 
 you may be more convincing speak, like 
 a nightingale, with all the chords of sorrow, 
 to avoid death. Fall at his feet he too 
 has children." 
 
 What Persephone replied, I could scarcely 
 hear, so transported was I by her exquisite 
 dignity, the sweetness of her voice, and the 
 tragedy that shook her. Now and then I 
 caught such a line as he theoisi plen to 
 katthunein monon " Equal to the Gods 
 except that one day I was to die " as she 
 evoked scenes of her early life, when she 
 was Hector's sister, and, with her beauty 
 and famous lineage, worthy of princes, turan- 
 non exiomena " but now a slave." 
 
 I feared she would collapse, being fragile 
 20
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 and tremulous as a falling wave, when she 
 urged her mother, not to contend with the 
 strong. 
 
 " Surely you would not be thrown down, 
 bruised, thrust away, and ignominiously 
 treated, by a mere youth. Nay; do not; 
 for it is not seemly. But, dearest mother, 
 give me your sweet hand, and let us kiss, 
 for never more shall I behold the sun and 
 the sunbeams, never more." 
 
 Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, was 
 going, but turned back, to ask what message 
 she might take to " Hector and Priam." 
 
 " Tell them," was the answer, " that I am 
 the most unhappy of women." 
 
 Demeter was sitting as once she sat by 
 the wayside, watching for Persephone ; when 
 Hermes entered, and thus reported the 
 maiden's death to " the Queen of the opulent 
 Trojans Poluchruson Phrugon, the wife of 
 the fortunate Priam. 
 
 "... He beckoned to the Greek youths 
 chosen to hold the maiden. But she, seeing 
 
 21
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 that, spoke these words : ' Conquerors of 
 ray city, Greeks! I am willing to die, and 
 no one shall lay hands on me. My neck 
 shall be at your disposal. But by the Gods ! 
 leave me free and slay me, that so I may 
 perish free; for being the daughter of a 
 king I should be shamed if I were to die 
 a slave.' At this, amid cries of assentation 
 from the soldiery, Agamemnon the king bade 
 the youths loose her. Straightway, taking 
 her mantle from her shoulders, she tore it 
 down to her waist, and laid bare her lovely 
 bosom like a statue. Then she knelt, and 
 more boldly than ever spoke : ' Lo ! if you 
 would strike here, here is my breast ; if here 
 at my throat, it is ready.' So he, between 
 willingness and unwillingness, for pity of 
 her, clove the channels of her breath with 
 his sword . . . But, though dying, she was 
 most careful to fall as was modest and fit. 
 And the Greeks all found a service to do for 
 her. Some cast leaves on the corpse ; others 
 built a pyre of fir trunks, and he that did 
 22
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 nothing was upbraided thus : ' Knave ! have 
 you nothing for her that so excelled in 
 courage and dignity ? ' These are my tidings 
 to you, most blessed and yet most unhappy 
 of mothers." 
 
 She struggled as if to rise and seek her 
 daughter ; but with a sigh merely sent one 
 to bid the Greeks not to touch the body, 
 and one to bring sea water for the last 
 ablutions. At intervals she shrieked loudly. 
 Her memory was working convulsively. She 
 passed her days in dreams, and had become 
 skilled in the interpretation thereof oneiro- 
 phron ; so she moaned 
 
 " O gorgeous palaces once my home ! O 
 mansions once so happy! imperial, and 
 in thy children most favoured, Priam! 
 euteknotate Priame. How have we come to 
 naught, losing our mettle." Then with 
 despair and some contempt 
 
 "He that lives on without accident is 
 luckiest." 
 
 The tenth wave of passion burst, when 
 
 23
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 a servant brought to her the corpse of Poly- 
 dorus, found on the beach. She begged, 
 entreated, commanded Zeus to help her 
 against the murderer, Polymestor 
 
 " I am a slave, and feeble, I grant ; but 
 the Gods are puissant ; so too is the law by 
 which even they must live . . . Therefore, 
 stepping back like an artist before his picture, 
 appraise my calamities ... Or would that 
 by some magic Daedalian or divine, I had a 
 voice in my amis my hands my feet my 
 hair! to fall about your knees, and besiege 
 you with weeping and persuasion." . . . 
 
 There were cries and blows in a far-off 
 angle of the cloisters ; the false Polymestor 
 had lost his sight and his children by the 
 hands of Hecuba and the Trojan women. 
 No blood, however, spoilt those white and 
 purple garments, or the peaceful chancel. 
 
 " The Gods," muttered Polymestor, " shuffle 
 things this way and that, so that we may 
 worship them out of ignorance." 
 
 With the play, the summer night was 
 24
 
 Exiles at Play 
 
 drawing to an end. With voices of elvish 
 birds that haunt the mist, I heard the Chorus 
 singing mournfully " One whose grief is 
 beyond his strength may justly set himself 
 free from this cheap life." 
 
 The Olympians drew closer and closer 
 together; the torches fell, hissed, and went 
 out ; the frightened swallows alighted on the 
 chancel windows. From all eyes tears were 
 falling fast, but not from Hecuba's : Demeter 
 asked if those were poppies she could taste 
 in the early wind. Agamemnon spoke 
 briefly : Hecuba was to go bury the corpses 
 of her children. 
 
 I could stay no longer, but as I went, I 
 heard the Chorus singing for the last time 
 
 "To the harbour, to the tents, my com- 
 panions, and to the service of your masters 
 Necessity is God. sierra gar ananke."
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 AMIDST a wood I came once upon an idiot, 
 seated on a fallen tree, and was astonished 
 by the classic beauty of his posture and the 
 curls of golden hair on his head. His lips 
 were empurpled by wild fruit. Just one 
 bead of blood adhered to his singularly clear 
 cheeks. The face was noble ; only the mouth 
 was discordant rather large, and like a 
 child's, uncontrolled. He must have been 
 godlike as a child. Now, all but this had 
 grown up and left the eyes wandering and 
 the mouth lisping in a disappointing way. 
 Fresh and bright as the fur of a beast, his 
 long hair was full of dead leaves, with one 
 crow's feather. His lips continually wavered 
 with murmuring sounds. His dress I did not 
 observe, because, I suppose, it became him 
 26
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 naturally, after the manner of all the poor. 
 As I went by he plucked and gave me a reed. 
 He meant to give me one with a flower, and 
 did not see his mistake, I thought. The look 
 of expectancy, as of a brute for food, confused 
 me, so that he laughed, showing his red 
 tongue between his white teeth. Before 
 leaving, I gave him a coin, which he scorn- 
 fully cast away and continued his murmuring. 
 But I had not gone far when I heard him 
 ferreting about in the underwood where it 
 fell. He was searching for it doubtless, 
 while his cry, soon after, a very melodious 
 one, was full of triumph at the find. I had, 
 however, nearly forgotten him, the hour 
 verging on sunset and unfavourable to the 
 recollection of such matters, when he came 
 up rapidly and grunting aloud, though in 
 perfect composure like a beast out of breath, 
 to offer me a little sheaf of fragrant reeds, all 
 flowerless as before. He laid the weight of 
 his hand on my shoulder and watched my 
 lips as I spoke, imitating them with his own, 
 
 27
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 breathing all the time lustily into my face. 
 With what surprise I noticed the savage but 
 not unclean flavour of his breath and the 
 indefinable scent of grass, herbs and bark ! 
 With a repetition of his melodious cry and a 
 petulant stamp he went away into the wood. 
 Afterwards I learnt that he hoarded coin for 
 the purchase of honey, in quest of which he 
 was irresistible. By this food he was easily 
 intoxicated. The half malign juices of the 
 forest combined in the honey to overthrow 
 the feeble brain, for Nature has odd, im- 
 moderate ways of putting into action her 
 empire over men. For the rest, I was able to 
 learn much of the idiot's way. He would 
 often sit motionless for hours in the great 
 wood, looking at naught, while the birds used 
 rude, pretty intimacies towards him. Children 
 had seen him listening for a voice at the trunk 
 of an oak tree on moody summer days. Once 
 he had been detected in a four-footed pur- 
 suit of rabbits by means of a keen, and (as 
 it were) reasoning sense of smelL 
 28
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 Years afterwards I came again. But he 
 was painfully changed. He was tending 
 several fat horses tethered in a lane of 
 hawthorn and waving wild hops, where the 
 country people sauntered by to church, gaily 
 apparelled in purple and crimson, so as to 
 check one's breathing on that fiery day ; the 
 neat wives bounded alongside their ungainly 
 husbands, so light and graceful as to seem 
 merely the clouds scattered by them in their 
 walk. Now and then the children teased him. 
 He recognised me at once, laying his hand 
 tentatively on my shoulder, with the words, 
 " I am very cold ! " My teeth chattered at 
 the touch. Being in haste, I gave him 
 tobacco and passed onward. 
 
 Next morning I met a strolling piper at 
 the inn, who was full of stories about his 
 masterful pipe. In one place he had piped 
 a city street silent, then into a dance ; in 
 another, a fellow had split his instrument 
 that he might find the secret a smell of 
 tobacco smoke apparently. "But the greatest 
 
 29
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 fun was late last night." He had been 
 journeying towards the inn, piping a melody 
 he had learned in Wales, when he heard 
 footsteps following. He piped on. The steps 
 reeled ; it must have been a drunkard. Still 
 he pursued, through pond and copse, until he 
 dropped, probably in cosy grasses, out in the 
 moonlight. " But he must have risen long 
 ago to escape the lightning and rain." 
 
 I hurried out in alarm. It must be the 
 idiot ! I said : Heaven knows how the night 
 would deal with him. 
 
 At a distance I recognised my friend, as he 
 lay in the short grass, with rooks feeding 
 many yards clear of him. His loose mouth 
 was evenly shut. His chin closed the lines 
 of his face very handsomely with an emphasis 
 unlike its wont, through the clinging wet 
 beard. The rain had left his face white and 
 polished, except where friendly small birds 
 had been tapping the corners of his eyes, 
 with intent to awaken him. A shower of 
 petals had not yet shrivelled on his breast, 
 30
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 and gave a fresh smell in the rainy air ; the 
 two stately horses forgot to graze where they 
 stood. In fact, he was dead, a clay pipe 
 rigid between his teeth. 
 
 While I stood there, pondering the wonder- 
 ful beauty of the corpse, which seemed now 
 to be enjoying a perfect kind of life, perfect 
 calm, certainly to be far more impressive 
 than the moving frame, and to have gotten 
 all that was once lacking, the piper came up. 
 Perhaps his were the sensations of the hunter 
 who has struck down some lovely harmless 
 bird ; at least he was deeply moved. For he 
 understood the whole event immediately, and 
 readily showed when I asked for the instru- 
 ment that he had been playing on the last 
 night. To my surprise he drew from his 
 pocket a simple set of reeds bound side by 
 side together. They reminded me of the 
 reeds I had been given so strangely in the 
 wood long ago ; and to my inquiry how he 
 had come by this peculiar kind, for the thing 
 was evidently his own handiwork, he answered 
 
 31
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 in such a manner that I was convinced 
 that the dead man had been the giver of 
 the reeds. At this he was greatly distressed, 
 and parted eagerly with the pipe at my 
 request. The body was buried in solitude. 
 That day I hurried westward to a distant 
 town. 
 
 The shorn wheat-fields in that mounded 
 country were of a pale fluid yellow that 
 mingled with the sky's blue, and was only 
 here and there invaded by the lustrous green 
 of an aftermath or the solid shadow of an 
 immense elm ; in it the little woods actually 
 seemed to float. Meadowsweet like foam, 
 and a small scabious flower always haunted 
 by blue butterflies of the same hue, lingered 
 by the wayside, with faint red campions and 
 cranesbills, and yellow buttercups, hawk- 
 weeds, ragwort, and agrimony spires. On a 
 white cottage wall flowered several great red 
 roses. In a hedge I found one hawkweed 
 blossom of a deep flame colour, like a dusky 
 volcanic fire creeping out of the stones, the 
 32
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 colour of the sun then about to set. One 
 or two bramble leaves had been coloured 
 likewise, but with green veins remaining. 
 Placid and yet luxurious, there was some- 
 thing in the sunset like the old age of 
 Lucullus. The sun itself was burning mildly 
 and warm ; the dark trees towards the 
 west lay round it like a party of children 
 half circling a fire, and listening to strange 
 tales. 
 
 For in September, the early evening of the 
 year, when darkness and light, Summer and 
 Winter, meet without contention and combine 
 their loveliest symbols, at sunset, a profound 
 sense of the whole past of men and Nature is 
 born of the sense of the year that is passing 
 and the season that is dead, and we 
 individuals are blended with the universe 
 in one mellow, tranquil passion of regret. 
 Launched by this passion upon a course of 
 many memories, I was still far from land 
 when I fell into deep sleep ; and in my sleep 
 I had a dream. 
 
 c 33
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 The mind takes a delight in contrast as 
 one refuge from the present ; so in my dream 
 it was broad noon ; and because the actual 
 season was autumn, the atmosphere of my 
 dream was that of spring, of early spring 
 with its poignant colours. A great forest 
 hung round about. The might of its infinite 
 silence and repose, indeed, never ceased to 
 weigh upon me in niy dream. I could hear 
 sounds : they were leagues away. The trees 
 which I could see were few : I felt that they 
 must be thousands deep on every hand. 
 Just where I found myself, the trees opened 
 wide apart and enclosed a fair space of 
 sunlight and flowery grass. At the edge 
 of this space arborets of underwood grew, 
 whose foliage turned to rough silver in the 
 sun. Beyond, trees of every kind clustered 
 together, or, rather, stood each in its own 
 demesne, at aristocratic distance, not as in 
 English woods. Airy, noiseless acacias were 
 there ; stilly, religious oaks ; beeches, with 
 boughs like human limbs, disclosed here and 
 34
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 there by the light cirrus foliage, and possessed 
 of liquid voices in their glossy, humid leaves ; 
 volatile birches ; fruit trees that mounted 
 stiffly to a certain height, where they threw 
 off their stony character and expanded into 
 waves of branch work and flying spray of 
 leaves ; and beneath many, the palmy hem- 
 lock climbed the air as meaner plants climb 
 the bushes. Not one of the trees but cast 
 an ample shadow, like the train of a mantle 
 falling from their shoulders and spreading 
 outward on the sward. As the day 
 grew, the trees appeared to retreat into 
 the wood and leave their trains upon the 
 grass. 
 
 Suddenly out of this great silence came 
 the figure of a youth, walking with down- 
 ward eyes, placid pace, and an attitude that 
 expressed all the flattering thoughts of happy 
 love and joy in life. There was much har- 
 mony in the transient grouping of his limbs, 
 as he walked in the raised and rounded 
 knee, in the foot balanced on the air as on 
 
 35
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 a step. A profusion of hair covered his 
 temples like a tawny fleece thrown over his 
 head in play. Coming nearer, his face told 
 of a passion far deeper than for any maiden, 
 though of a maiden he thought. His skin, 
 like rose leaves, too pure to be red, too 
 healthy to be white, had a kind of ardency 
 or radiance, such as is seen in women, 
 which subtly expounds a kinship between 
 soul and mere bodily breath that men rarely 
 show. 
 
 After he had long been in sight, a wondrous 
 clear music arose, the music of a human voice 
 fluting cunningly, for now and again the voice 
 stopped and the singer let silence speak for 
 him in the interval ; but took up the strain 
 again, naturally as when the tones of a 
 nightingale emerge from the quiet night, 
 whilst the forest is listening, aware. The 
 youth presently turned in search of this voice. 
 In my dream I followed him. 
 
 When I saw him next, he was leaning 
 upon a blossomy crag. The light just there 
 36
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 was green under the trees like sunny ocean 
 water. He was listening, eyes closed, "all 
 ear." 
 
 On the other side of the crag a terrible 
 figure stood near him, unobserved. 
 
 The figure seemed to be that of Pan, 
 changed by the long wanderings since he 
 fled, in advance of the general banishment 
 of the Olympians, before the westward 
 marches of Roman legionaries. He had 
 often gone on hands and feet. The stones 
 had bitten his flesh. He had drunken of 
 his own tears. This very day the clap of 
 axes and the volleying sound of trees falling 
 invaded his cave. The wild bees chased him 
 away from his customary pittance of honey- 
 comb. Thus tormented, he was first aware 
 of his rapid undeification. While the wild 
 creatures avoided their suspicious co-mate 
 more than human beings, one consolation 
 was still effective. He retained his pipe, 
 and could play ! Moreover, sorrow had 
 sweetened his voice that voice to which 
 
 37
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 the youth was listening, not by chance, it 
 would seem, if one might judge from Pan's 
 anxious sentry over the forest pathways, and 
 the persistence of his tunes. The encounter 
 was apparently aforethought, and welcome 
 to Pan. He was surely looking for some- 
 thing from this stranger that other wayfarers 
 could not give. For the many wayfarers, 
 threading the forest like puppet forms, with 
 all their fatigue and ungainliness, flattered 
 the languid self-esteem of the embittered god 
 by comparison ; so much so, that he amused 
 himself by piping them far astray from their 
 companions, playing upon their fears, until at 
 last, horn and hoof under cover, in the guise 
 of a mute rustic, he led them safely back, 
 and disappeared without their thanks. But 
 that was a slender triumph. Afterwards he 
 often mused, reviewing the treasures of his 
 memory, drawing fresh powers from silence, 
 and compacting all into one brilliant song 
 that took flight as if it must penetrate 
 heaven, but falling splendidly, seemed to 
 38
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 bury itself in earth with shrieks. He would 
 then lament that this melody was mortal 
 nevertheless ; he had listened to men singing 
 like that ! And he was filled with a supreme 
 pity pity for the flowers, the grass, for all 
 things that quickly pass away. To prove 
 his old supremacy in music he must, then, 
 compete with one of the loftiest among those 
 mortals whom he so despised. With this in 
 view, he seemed now to be in peaceable 
 ambuscade ; yet with such a rival, he would 
 loathe to do his best. 
 
 The song he was now singing made much 
 of reminiscences of the old time, but seemed 
 to have been turned in such a way that it 
 should overpower the youth by the strange 
 fascination of the forest life, enjoyed in animal 
 liberty and with spiritual reflection. It ex- 
 pressed the inexpressible magic of certain 
 hours and places ; of autumn's holy purple 
 eve, for example ; of landscapes beheld in 
 a kind of haze of the spirit ; of the moon- 
 enriched flood, the moon aloft with all her 
 
 39
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 stars. It was full of the idiom of trees and 
 the motion of great waters. 
 
 At a pause in the song, the youth quaked 
 to see the horned brow, the fleecy hair on 
 the legs, and the slender bony calves ending 
 in cloven feet, that seemed to connect the 
 singer with the brutes, whose covering changes 
 character in some one place at least, as at 
 heel or muzzle, as if to remind one of the 
 earth. 
 
 The song broke again in a fountain of clear 
 sound from the coarse throat. One hand lay 
 on the youth's neck, like ice ; the other hung 
 down, grasping a seven-reeded pipe, which 
 Pan raised to his own lips in the pauses and 
 seemed to play but silently. Something 
 fond crept into the expression of that touch 
 and the anxious little eyes fixed on the youth, 
 as though to evoke and translate his inmost 
 thought. Pan also was leaning on the rock, 
 but towered above the youth. For by a 
 brute-like artifice he was hoisted up so that 
 only the point of one foot grated the earth. 
 40
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 After he had again checked the melody, 
 Pan offered the reeds to the youth, earnestly 
 inviting him to play. But he refused. When 
 the god insisted, he refused a second time, 
 saying, "Tempt me not. The limits of my 
 being are overthrown. If I were to play, my 
 music would be my doom." 
 
 To which the god, in harmonious speech, 
 made an angry reply : " Stupid mortal ! Dost 
 thou think it a slight honour to touch this 
 pipe ? Orpheus borrowed it. The Bacchanals 
 heard the same on Mount Cithairon. It has 
 never changed ; it will never change. The 
 singer passes away ; the song remains. Your 
 poets have stolen it in the hush of midnight 
 or of noon. But it is not vouchsafed to all, 
 and lest the few betray us lest the few 
 betray us, we intoxicate them, we madden 
 them, and so the world cannot believe or 
 understand. Those who have once heard it 
 may be sad or joyous, but their sadness is 
 not the world's, nor their joy ; there is ever- 
 more a joy in their sorrow, a sorrow in their 
 
 41
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 joy ; they will weep at the bridal, at the 
 burial laugh. But none ever touched these 
 reeds, and thou rejectest them." 
 
 " Thou hast," the youth answered fearfully, 
 " made me hate men with thy song. How 
 joyous I yet could be if other men were my 
 only foes ! " 
 
 " Foolish one ! " cried the god. " What 
 matters it to lose men if thou couldst 
 share in the workings of the young year, 
 be one with spring ? Deep in the forest, 
 enthroned immortally, sits a godlike 
 
 woman ." Pan had laid his hand 
 
 upon the pipe that hung down in the 
 youth's reluctant grasp, and throwing his 
 head forward, with flashing eyes, until 
 nothing but they and the horns could have 
 been seen by his disciple, "Aye! but raise 
 not expectant eyes," he continued, as the 
 listener was about to interrupt, " not even 
 the gods have often seen her. We know 
 only her thresholds. Around that throne is 
 peace, whom thou knowest not peace, 
 42
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 where hardly the seasons bring change, where 
 the years roll in vain, vain, at least, for harm. 
 The very trees have voices of comfort. ' Rest, 
 rest, perturbed earth,' is their cry. Her, too, 
 thou mightest know. And consider what 
 empire over the hearts of men thy new 
 wisdom must give thee." 
 
 " Power I covet not," said the youth. 
 
 " If thou shouldst still desire what the 
 world desires, that also thou shouldst have 
 in plenty," Pan went on. " Your magicians 
 dreamed of making gold from leaves. I 
 know, I can tell thee, the mystery of the 
 buttercup's gold palpable sunshine ; mere 
 earth become matter almost spiritual." 
 
 " I will not have it," murmured the youth. 
 "Alas! how melancholy the chill coming on 
 of night ! I fear to-morrow's dawn. I will 
 not play." 
 
 " Unwise ! but think of thy skill in love, 
 having this lore," insinuated Pan. 
 
 " I will not." 
 
 " Thou couldst enjoy the liberties of earth 
 
 43
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 and air and sea and things thou dreamst 
 not of." 
 
 " I will not" 
 
 " Thou couldst make men wiser ." 
 
 The youth raised the pipe and began to 
 play. First, he essayed a rural tune, from 
 which he circled upward in widening sweep, 
 as of eagles climbing, through love, ambition, 
 grief, joy, and still upward to an utterance of 
 the deep fears and hopes of men. One sound 
 was a tone as of souls looking back with 
 earth-memories while passing the gate of the 
 unknown. Yet the song was puissant rather 
 in aspiration than achievement ; and when 
 he ceased, the singer wept at the thought of 
 what the song might have been, crying at 
 last, " Let me try once again ! " That was 
 unnecessary. Pan had already capitulated. 
 He took the youth by the hand, entrusting 
 him even with the pipe. Deeper and deeper 
 into the forest they went In the afternoon 
 a gauzy moon had scaled cloud after cloud 
 of the pallid east ; now for a moment a sole 
 44
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 tender star throbbed in that one placid space 
 of milky blue amid the tumultuous cloud ; 
 and at length, in the quiet evening, with 
 a few planets in the blanched blue, and a 
 transparent golden silk drawn across the 
 west, the gloomy, tranquil cattle were noisily 
 ruminating in a white mist over the grass. 
 Far away, sunny cones of wheat still glim- 
 mered on the hills. Boughs made no sound 
 as these two passed seemed, in fact, to 
 yield like the arms of a sleeper when we 
 alter their place. Now and then they halted, 
 while Pan taught the secrets of the earth, 
 the value of this and that blossom or stem. 
 The fingers of the god shook like a child's 
 as he offered the plants in turn. " This," 
 he explained at last, with a languid purple 
 flower in his hand, "blesses the eater with 
 eternal bliss of sleep." 
 
 They went on, both alarmed whenever 
 night loosened a leaf or two from the forest 
 roof, and at the lights glancing overhead in 
 the green clerestory of the wood, when Pan 
 
 45
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 presently missed his companion. He had 
 noticed the youth loitering somewhat, as if 
 anxious to learn more, and now saw him 
 sinking to the ground. On reaching the 
 spot, a deep sleep already claimed him ; the 
 purple petals lay over his cheeks like blood. 
 " Foolish one ! " sighed Pan, " he sleeps, and 
 will never wake. As for me, I will wait 
 no longer." Tenderly he folded the youth's 
 white fingers across his breast, wiped the 
 crimson lips, took away the seven - reeded 
 pipe and began to play. Slowly, earnestly, 
 like one making a testament, while death is 
 still out of sight but not out of thought, he 
 brought once again to light all the famous 
 memories of his old life, by means of that 
 music which was of all the most renowned. 
 He recalled how, in hiding among the cattle 
 at Bethlehem, he had witnessed the Nativity, 
 with its cordon of venerable bystanders. He 
 had been a wanderer. He had followed the 
 chase, and his huntsmen had been those 
 spirits of the dead who make the echo; in 
 46
 
 The Passing of Pan 
 
 Wales it had been called " Arthur's " hunt- 
 ing. The moist eyes flashed again at the 
 thought of his gamesome tasting of the 
 mere odours of the sacrifice, before the 
 pious worshippers had gone and he could 
 press his teeth into it ! Now, however, the 
 vanity of all that seemed great ; he would 
 never repeat it. He could command adora- 
 tion from none : it was time to be gone. 
 Never again should strange ardours riot in 
 his frame after a draught of the crimson 
 hedgerow vintages. Mortals should now 
 take an overflowing measure of revenge for 
 the death of Marsyas at Apollo's hands. 
 
 He rose, therefore, and took the seven- 
 reeded pipe, and buried it, whence none 
 perhaps might ever disinter it ; then re- 
 turned, and took his place beside the youth, 
 where he also entered an eternal sleep. 
 
 47
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 IT was the season when days are so long 
 that we must sleep lightlier than swallows, 
 if sunset and sunrise are not to pass un- 
 saluted. That day had been dedicated long 
 ago to indolence. One of my festal, holy 
 days it was, a day italicized on my calendar 
 of saints, whose tranquil names I may not 
 betray. On its eve, I composed my thoughts 
 for the night with that vague sense of ex- 
 pectation with which I always enter upon 
 sleep, wondering what dreams may come, 
 and with what gifts. 
 
 When I rose it was light, though not yet 
 day. Alone in my room, high up among the 
 spires, the horned turrets, the acres of dark 
 blue gleaming slate, I took a mouthful of 
 fruit and milk, with hopes that the summer 
 48
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 morning would bring me somewhere pleas- 
 antly to breakfast. Then I set out. Even 
 now the milk must be drumming yonder in 
 the pails ! The morning was already hot, so 
 that the chill bath of shadow underneath the 
 lindens here and there was pleasant. At the 
 river I took a dinghy and sculled for nearly 
 two hours, while the fresh perfumes, refined 
 by gale and dew the blackbird's listless 
 note, with a freshness as if the dew were in 
 it the wings rising and falling in twinkling 
 thickets the vinous air of June, all dealt 
 with me as they would. Hardly a thought 
 or memory shaped itself. Nevertheless, I 
 was conscious of that blest lucidity, that 
 physical well-being of the brain, "like the 
 head of a mountain in blue air and sunshine," 
 which is so rarely achieved except in youth. 
 Thus in a prolongation of the mood of sleep, 
 whose powerful touch was on me still, as I 
 knew when I could find no answer for a 
 questioning wayfarer, I covered several miles 
 by one impulse, and as if nothing had inter- 
 D 49
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 vened, resumed my breakfast thoughts. For 
 the pebbles of a shallow had been shrieking 
 under the boat, which could go no farther. 
 Sounds and odours suddenly invaded and 
 startled my senses. Solitude asserted itself. 
 The day had come : and beads of night mist 
 were humming as they fell upon the stream 
 from off the willows. 
 
 Precisely there I had never been before, 
 though I knew the river well. Drawn, how- 
 ever, by a clamour of poultry and brass pans, 
 I presently found myself at a farmhouse door. 
 The river was out of sight and even of hear- 
 ing, for in summer it stole through the land 
 like a dream. 
 
 After a flutter at the unexpected arrival, 
 the farm folk gave me a bowl of cream and 
 a golden loaf with honey : then left me. 
 Something puritanic in the place or was it 
 something in the air before the cockcrow of 
 civilization ? endowed the meal with a holy 
 sweetness as of a sacrament. I seemed to 
 enjoy the merely physical life of the moment 
 50
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 more purely and loftily than at other times 
 the spiritual even. And there was still an 
 awful purity in the air : on the smooth, stony 
 beech-tree bark lay as if carved, the clear, 
 subtle-shapen shadows of leaf and blossom ; 
 the lawn, level as a pond, was exquisitely 
 damaskeened by daisies and buttercups. 
 
 In a sitting room, where I had leave to 
 rest, the aged calm was startled by my entry. 
 The perfectly still cool atmosphere had a 
 flavour of centuries despite the open window. 
 Amid such appropriate circumstances there 
 hung before me the portrait of a young girl, 
 a swan-throated, languid damsel, her raven 
 hair concealing all of her ear save a white 
 crescent, a semicircle of golden beads over 
 her breast, and pervading all an expression 
 more tragic than if Oedipus cried " Mother ! " 
 in the dark catastrophe. Was it our Lady 
 looking for the Cross, in that great darkness 
 over all the earth? Was it Polyxena, 
 Hecuba's sweet and magnanimous daughter, 
 with the dignity of a statue and the sensitive- 
 
 51
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 ness of a flower? Was it the Magdalen 
 beholding angels in the dove's twilight? 
 Was it Joan of Arc, transported by her own 
 magic perhaps, for one hour from fatal 
 Rouen, to see the loving faces under the 
 shadow of Domremy Woods? Was it St 
 Cecilia listening to music ? or was it Guine- 
 vere in her father's house, lit by the strange 
 light of things not yet above the horizon ? 
 Looking carefully I found the name. In 
 a corner I found the initials of that 
 name. It was therefore a piece of auto- 
 biography. 
 
 The room was oak-furnished in a sombre 
 but fantastic style, apparently the work of a 
 rustic craftsman who had set his fancy free, 
 not unsuccessfully. It looked little used, 
 and, as such rooms in the country often are, 
 given over to the dead (for whom one might 
 fancy those great chairs had so long been 
 left empty), with its photographs all but 
 faded away, its frail old china, its recording 
 Bible, its curious keepsakes from alien shores 
 52
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 and savannahs. Through its old world savour 
 came a thin breath of perfume from a bowl 
 of reed colonnettes and foamy meadow-sweet. 
 Now and then I espied, in a mirror, the 
 mowers dreamily swaying like summer waves, 
 or resting a moment on their scythes. I could 
 sometimes catch faint sounds : yet they seemed 
 but echoes. Thus the world outside was 
 realised only as in a book. So I had opened 
 a chance volume, and was reading : 
 
 " Will no one tell me what she sings ? 
 Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 
 For old, unhappy far-off" things, 
 And battles long ago : 
 Or is it some more humble lay, 
 Familiar matter of to-day ? 
 Some natural sorrow, loss or pain, 
 That has been, and may be again !" 
 
 when a young girl came in, neither Polyxena, 
 nor Magdalen, nor Guinevere, though it was 
 her portrait that hung upon the wall. If her 
 hair had not whispered in the air, I should 
 have called her spirit or fay : so light she 
 was, moving softly as if she flew. Though a 
 
 53
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 noticeable face, hers was not easily to be 
 remembered. It seemed a type rather than 
 an individual face, the sum of many diverse 
 souls. The ivory features were grave, yet 
 ready to smile, with a meaning, old-fashioned 
 sweetness, as of a century of different thoughts 
 and passions from ours. Her large grey eyes 
 were thinking continually. Often a long 
 time passes ere we look into the eyes even of 
 a lover. We could not say whether they were 
 blue, or grey, or brown. But her eyes cried 
 out to me instantly. Over them, almost op- 
 pressing them, the space up to the brows was 
 full and wide, the eyebrows themselves fine, 
 long, and curved like a hawk's outspread 
 wings. The mouth was perhaps a little 
 wide, because the corners, curling upwards, 
 were unusually long : the lips delicately cut, 
 their crimson wonderfully contrasting with 
 her cheeks, as I have seen a creeper leaf lie 
 in November on a film of earliest snow. The 
 hands were small, but the fingers seemed 
 long, being taper, arched and languid. Her 
 54
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 whole expression was one of holy wistfulness, 
 but changed ceaselessly and even contradicted 
 itself, like a picture seen again in other days : 
 it was full of the sorrow there is in laughter, 
 the joy in tears. To think of her in the 
 vulgar contacts of life was impossible. Even 
 her simple " Good morning " could not dispel 
 the dreams by which I was besieged : it 
 sounded so odd, that I could not respond. 
 So she sat down and played simple tunes on 
 an organ. It was mere practice, earnest, 
 sensitive, but unskilful : yet the sound 
 mastered and swayed me inexorably. One 
 stop there was that when touched laid open 
 the gates of Paradise and let free its 
 harmonies. 
 
 I laid aside my book and watched. She 
 was too intent to observe. She was seated 
 on a tall, straight-backed chair, and made a 
 quaint figure, her face more serious than 
 before, her abundant hair falling in a cascade 
 over her shoulders, and occasionally creeping 
 rebelliously over the silver half moon of her 
 
 55
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 forehead which it framed, until she had to 
 pause in order to persuade it back. Some- 
 how within me was touched a chord that I 
 knew I had heard I knew not how long 
 ago. As often at sunset the mind stirs afresh 
 with impulses long thought ensepulchred, so 
 it was now. Nor was the spell broken when 
 she rose, and after shifting a few chairs, 
 began to dance, with the same earnestness, 
 a severe gaiety. 
 
 My brain was full of gracious phrases of 
 salute as she left ; my tongue refused ; and 
 all I said concerned the weather ; to which 
 she laughed divinely in reply. 
 
 Perhaps I should never see her again, but 
 she haunted the memory of that resplendent 
 day, immortalising the fragrance of the blue 
 cottage smoke mounting in still air, the 
 shadows lying in pools (as it were) upon 
 the lawns, and the gauzy moon far away 
 eastward. Laid up in the musk and 
 lavender of my memory, she had become 
 according to my mood Polyxena, Magdalen, 
 56
 
 On the Evenlode 
 
 Joan of Arc, but above all a St Cecilia, " near 
 gilded organ pipes." 
 
 Before noon I left, with a plan of soon 
 returning. But the next day passed, and 
 several more. When at last I went, my 
 flowers from that sweet place had withered. 
 A friend accompanied me. I need say no 
 more. The river is branched and serpentine 
 just there, and we searched in vain. Even I 
 sometimes think there never was such a 
 farmhouse and St Cecilia, though in my 
 dreams it is otherwise. 
 
 57
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 IN the green country it is often hard to say, 
 unprejudiced, what the season is ; and if a 
 revenant noted such things, he would find 
 that many days belied the calendar. Indeed, 
 on first going afield after a long imprisonment 
 by illness, I have detected autumnal savours 
 in a stagnant February day, and mistaken the 
 bravery of October for the nuptial splendour 
 of the spring. Seen afar off, the poplars 
 seem to be on fire with blossoms instead of 
 dying foliage in September. In April the 
 young creeper leaves have a look of autumn 
 in their bronzed luxuriance. I have known 
 many a beaming day with " June in her eyes," 
 as Thomas Carew says 
 
 " June in her eyes, in her heart January." 
 with a drear wind that kills the budding 
 58
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 roses. But in my suburban street every 
 season, almost every month, is marked as it 
 were in heavy black letter at its entrance. 
 Nature here uses a brief language, like the 
 hand at Belshazzar's feast, and I know that 
 it is November by the dull, sad trampling of 
 the hoofs and feet ; by that testy wind 
 among the chimneys (the mere body of the 
 wind ; its soul it left among the hills) ; by 
 the light, as of an unsnufFed candle, of the 
 sun, that scarcely at midday surmounts the 
 tallest housetops ; by the barren morning 
 twilight, broken by no jolly sound of boys 
 whistling or ballad-singing on their errands. 
 The fire should rightly grow pale toward 
 noon, and I detest its continual brightness, 
 which cannot check a shudder as I read the 
 lines on November by a Welsh poet of four 
 or five centuries back. In his Novembers, 
 pigs became fat and men dreamed of 
 Christmas. The minstrels began to appear, 
 making a second spring. The barns were 
 full a pleasant thought that made the 
 
 59
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 bread taste sweet. The butcher was hard 
 at work. The sea, he says, was joyful, and 
 "marrowy the contents of every pot." The 
 nights were " long to sprightly prisoners," 
 which I take to refer to the delicious even- 
 ings the old Welsh spent, exchanging by the 
 fireside proverbs and tales. He ends char- 
 acteristically : " There are three classes that 
 are not often contented the sorrowful, the 
 ill-tempered, the miserly." As if hardly 
 these, in his day, could resist the balm 
 and oil of festal tables, good fires, and 
 minstrelsy ! Oh, happy days ! 
 
 And yet I have joys he never dreamed of, 
 in this mean street. How shall I say with 
 what thoughts I spy a seagull from my 
 window ? spreading her great wings in 
 flight at altitudes whence perhaps she beholds 
 the sea an emblem of that liberty I boast, 
 but do not feel. Sometimes an autumn leaf 
 of vermeil or of gold is blown into my room, 
 and such a feeble knocking will throw open 
 many doors of memory. At night, too, there 
 60
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 is often a moon. I do not think the moon is 
 anywhere half so wonderful as in the town. 
 We see " the other side " of her, as a half- 
 wise rustic once said to me. How like to 
 some pale lady of pity she will arise, softly, 
 as if she feared to wake us, out of yonder 
 dismal chimneys ! In summer she seems to 
 pass from house to house, low down, a 
 celestial watchman, blessing the doors and 
 windows. Sometimes, more like Aphrodite 
 than Hecate, she comes up all rosy warm. 
 Sometimes, in November, she sits aloft 
 like a halcyon brooding over the strange 
 and lethal calm of London, her face ex- 
 pressing undecipherable things, like La 
 Joconde. Sometimes, white and frostbit, 
 she flies across the mighty dark blue spaces 
 as if she were hurrying to Actajon's fate, 
 and those hungry clouds were the hounds 
 pursuing. 
 
 There has been but one sunset since I came 
 hither, and in the cold succeeding light, so 
 countercharged with darkness, great clouds 
 
 61
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 began to troop toward the west, sombre, 
 stealthy, noiseless ; hastening and yet stead- 
 fast, as if some fate marshalled their jetty 
 columns hushing all that lay beneath- 
 all moving in one path, yet never jostling, 
 like hooded priests. To what weird banquet, 
 to what mysterious shrine, were they advanc- 
 ing to what shrine among the firs of an 
 unseen horizon, with the crow and the bat ? 
 Or were they retreating, dejected guests, from 
 some palace in the leaden east ? In the west, 
 just above the roofs, hung the white evening 
 star. As the cloud approached she seemed 
 to be a maiden Una, perhaps, encircled by 
 a crew of satyrs. Anon she seemed to be a 
 witch alluring them. 
 
 The moon is my closest neighbour, but 
 there is also close at hand a superb labourer, 
 who, if he were of stone, and not of gnarled 
 brown flesh, might stand in a temple of fame 
 as Cincinnatus. At times I drink a cup of 
 tea or something warmer with him. Even 
 without a cup, he sits, as it were, " with his 
 62
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 feet by the fire, his stomach at the board," so 
 genial is he, and would shake Alexander by 
 the hand, with a greeting like the old French 
 bacchanal's, bon vieux dr6le Anacrgon. I 
 feel warmer in my bed as I hear him shout- 
 ing good-day, in the shrewd early morning, 
 long before dawn. His bad jokes are more 
 laughable than the very best of good ones. 
 Like all good men, he is an assiduous smoker; 
 his pipe is to him a temple of Vesta, and he 
 a goodly stoker; out of his nostrils goeth 
 smoke, and his wife calls him Leviathan. 
 When I remarked that I thought he had no 
 difficulty in stopping smoking, if he liked, 
 " No," he answered, " but the difficulty is in 
 the liking." I would rather live a day 
 such as he lives than have written The 
 Tempest. 
 
 The only other neighbours with whom I 
 am on calling terms are certain tall poplars, 
 half a mile away. There the calendar is 
 observed less slavishly, and though it be 
 November I go to see a fine yellow sunlight 
 
 63
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 slanting among the only half-denuded 
 branches, hardly touched until yesterday's 
 rainy tempest broke up for ever the sibylline 
 summer meanings of their leaves. But they 
 ought to be visited by night. By day they 
 may appear insignificant among the houses 
 that have risen around. They seem exotic, 
 out of place Heliades, daughters of the 
 Sun indeed, condemned to weep amber tears 
 horribly slender, unprotected, naked to the 
 world. In the night, however, they seem to 
 have grown by magical increase. They have 
 a solemn look in the evenfall of these sad 
 fading days. The place is too mournful. 
 There is usually one empty house, and the 
 withering foliage whips the panes. I have 
 spent many an evening inside, listening to 
 the wind. But I could not live there ; I 
 should be bound to open the window at that 
 piteous sound, as if to let in a storm-stricken 
 bird, and expect to find the dryad wringing 
 her hands in sorrow. The poplars contrive 
 in summer to look cheerful, yet I think they 
 64
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 love the autumn best. They are in love with 
 their own decay, like old and widowed ladies 
 that have lived on into these flat unprofitable 
 times. 
 
 On another side, and farther still, lies a 
 common, beautiful with gorse, though in the 
 main a mournful place. I sometimes walk 
 there in the morning, between eleven and 
 noon, and meet a number of odd people, in 
 this hour when the prosperous are at their 
 work. They stare at me, and I at them, 
 wondering what the shabby raiment hides. 
 For they I might say we are usually ill- 
 dressed, eccentrically-groomed, dreamy, self- 
 conscious people, evidently with secrets. I 
 surmise that they are such as have failed 
 in the world for some vices of honesty, 
 or strangeness, or carelessness of opinion. 
 Laudatur et alget. One seems to be a 
 cadet of some grand fallen house, with 
 no insignia left save a gold snuffbox (sans 
 snuff) and a pair of ivory hands. Another is 
 perhaps an author, stately, uncomplaining, 
 E 65
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 morose withal, whose nonsense did not suit 
 the times. 
 
 " The world is all before him, where to choose 
 His place of rest," 
 
 but at his garret the duns are in occupation. 
 Another, though singularly jaded, is evidently 
 an old beau, once, no doubt, a Fastidious 
 Brisk, " a good property to perfume the boot 
 of a coach," using delicate oaths ; with soiled 
 necktie scrupulously folded, his trousers 
 turned up (only to display their threadbare 
 edges and a pair of leanest shanks) ; brought 
 to the dust by the law and some indignant 
 plotter for his hand. One is a man of eighty, 
 who wears a stock probably a superannu- 
 ated clerk, one who has seen his master's 
 failure (it may be), and refuses another place. 
 I see him conning the law news though he 
 seems too blind to read always with a 
 knowing smile or frown. They are always 
 solitary. They regard one another with 
 suspicion, seem to fear lest questions be 
 asked, and never exchange greetings. They 
 66
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 give themselves airs, as hoping to draw to- 
 ward them the respect they once commanded. 
 And for the most part they are men. One 
 lady I remember, a venerable but grim and 
 unapproachable dame the relict, perhaps, 
 of a gentleman, an insolvent rake. I have 
 heard her mutter, in a temper out of keeping 
 with her gentility, and shake her slender stafl^ 
 as if she cried, like Lear : 
 
 " I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion 
 I would have made them skip : I am old now." 
 
 She is a great reader, in sunny intervals, on 
 a seat overhung, but not shaded, by haw- 
 thorn, and I love to see her poring, with tears 
 in her eyes, over a book which I have pur- 
 posely left there as she approached. In 
 this way she has read George Herbert's 
 Temple, The Worldling's Looking Glass, 
 and many more. ... It would be easy to 
 laugh when she and three or four of these 
 poor souls are sheltered under the same 
 tree from the rain never speaking, and 
 
 67
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 looking unconcerned, but all the time 
 nervously anxious to impress, and the beau 
 arranging his tie. 
 
 In the evenings I could almost love these 
 brand-new streets, so nimbly do they set the 
 mind working to find anodynes and fantasies 
 "to batter the walls of melancholy." My 
 books seem to be fond of the night poor 
 ghosts of buried minds and are never so 
 apt as in the faint candlelight to be taken 
 down and read, or perhaps merely glanced 
 at as I turn the pages, which I think they 
 best enjoy. The portrait of Andrea del 
 Sarto, by his own censorious hand, hangs 
 near, and loves the twilight. If ever, he 
 seems now to smile. 'Tis such a light 
 that in it fancy can without apparent false- 
 ness weave suitable environment for all the 
 ghostly lords and ladies. Proserpina, with 
 the pomegranate, may now have Enna within 
 sight. Beatrice d'Este, with passion long 
 subdued, gazes upon the pageantry of Milan, 
 and cares no more for Sforza and the San- 
 68
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 severini does not even hate Lucrezia and 
 Cecilia. . . . 
 
 I recall November holidays in a tangled 
 wood, having all the perfume and sequestered 
 sense of virgin forest, that lay in the hollows 
 of some undulating upland, whence, with 
 "morning souls" alert, we used to be able 
 to see the dawn, a rust-red smoke waving 
 along the horizon, and presently turned to 
 saffron; then a sky of pearl, with a faint 
 bloom of the night blue upon it ; and one 
 by one the stars went out, so slowly that 
 we fancied they would never disappear if 
 we watched them vigilantly; the consump- 
 tive moon went down, having outlived her 
 light, as the first blackbird awakened with a 
 cornet call ; the sparrows, like schoolboys, on 
 those cold mornings, chattered and fluttered, 
 but dared not leave the eaves; and all the 
 cold of the windy dawn seemed to be in the 
 starling's thin piping. Sometimes on the 
 lawny interspaces of the wood we saw fallen 
 leaves and fruit, gold and silver, like shed- 
 
 69
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 dings from Hesperidian gardens, in the noon- 
 day sun. And oh for the tang of acorns eaten 
 for wantonness in sunshine from which \ve 
 never missed the heat ! Not until nightfall 
 did we return, and then, " happy, happy 
 livers," laughed as our feet shivered the frost 
 into a myriad prisms. 
 
 But to-night, as I take the self-same walk, 
 tinder the flying rags of a majestic sunset, the 
 gray and silent landscape of few trees and 
 many houses seems a deserted camp (which I 
 startle when I tread among the fallen leaves), 
 or a Canaan from which the happy savage, 
 childhood, has been banished. High up 
 on a blank wall lingers one pure white 
 rose. White with cold, and flickering as il 
 the powerful wind might blow them out, a 
 few stars shine. Far away the leafless 
 branches of an elm grove look like old print 
 against the sky. 
 
 And now, by the hearthside, I like best 
 among books the faint perfumes of those old 
 forgotten things that claim a little pity along 
 70
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 with my love. I had rather the Emblems of 
 Quarles than mightier books where there is 
 too much of the fever and the fret of real 
 passionate life. Odd books of devotion, of 
 church music, the happy or peevish fancies of 
 religious souls, please me well. I plead guilty 
 to liking a thing because 'tis old. I believe, 
 were I alive two hundred years hence, I 
 should like silk hats. As George Herbert 
 says of two words he set great store by : 
 
 " As amber-gris leaves a rich scent 
 
 Unto the taster, 
 
 So do these words a sweet content, 
 An oriental fragrancy. . . . 
 With these all day I do perfume my mind, 
 My mind e'en thrust into them both ; 
 
 That I might find 
 
 What cordials make this curious broth, 
 This broth of smells, that feeds and fats my 
 mind." 
 
 Were it always evening I could live ever 
 thus, and find in it a pleasing substitute for 
 Arcadia, in which, as the bricks mellowed 
 around me and all things took "a deep 
 autumnal tone," I should be as much in 
 
 71
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 love with the life as Charles Cotton with 
 his, and capable of a vanity like his, and 
 I hope as pardonable. How delicious 
 are those execrable " irregular stanzas " 
 of his, where he seems to expect to go to 
 heaven, because 
 
 " Good Lord ! how sweet are all things here, 
 
 How cleanly do we feed and lie. 
 
 Lord ! what good temperate hours we keep 1 
 
 How quietly we sleep ! 
 How innocent from the lewd Fashion 
 Is all our Business, all our Recreation ! " 
 
 Perhaps, indeed, of such is the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 It has been observed that we " devour " a 
 book, and " discuss " a turkey or chine ; in 
 Lilly I find a good fellow who wants to " con- 
 fer " certain liquor : and with the help of these 
 metaphors I have often dined well, though I 
 have eaten little. I have meditated, indeed, 
 a new cookery book for the library, or 
 every bookman his own cook," but the 
 tradesmen's dissuasions have prevailed. But 
 72
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 out upon them ! I had hoped by this means 
 to record those messes of old calf and dog's- 
 
 ears that so reduced our bills at . Many 
 
 a time and oft have I seen a guest's lips 
 glorified as if he tasted ambrosia, after read- 
 ing Greek Euripides, perhaps, or something 
 solemn from Callimachus. A Welshman of 
 the company declared that in speaking his 
 own fine tongue he seemed to taste butter- 
 milk and fruit at some mountain farm, a 
 mile nearer heaven than one commonly 
 lives. Corydon used to say he would never 
 read Shelley save at midnight, because he 
 could not bear to eat soon after the taste 
 of those melodious syllables. Give me that 
 man whose mind is, in a better sense than 
 Terence intended, always among the pots 
 
 and pans. And I think, on this humming 
 midnight, I could sleep well, even supper- 
 less, after Ben Jonson's lusty lines " Inviting 
 a Friend to Supper :> : 
 
 " To-night, grave sir, both my poor house and I 
 Do equally desire your company ; 
 
 73
 
 Recollections of November 
 
 Not that we think us worthy such a guest, 
 But that your worth will dignify our feast, 
 With those that come ; whose grace may make that 
 
 seem 
 
 Something, which else could hope for no esteem. 
 It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates 
 The entertainment perfect, not the cates. 
 Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate, 
 An olive, capers, or some better salad 
 Ushering the mutton . . . 
 
 " I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come, 
 Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some 
 May yet be there ; and godwit, if we can ; 
 Knat, rail, and ruff, too. Howsoe'er, my man 
 Shall read a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, 
 Livy, or of some better book to us, 
 Of which we'll speak our minds, amidst our meat. 
 
 "Nor shall our cups make any guilty men ; 
 But at our parting, we will be, a3 when 
 We innocently met. No simple word 
 That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, 
 Shall make us sad next morning ; or affright 
 The liberty that well enjoy to-night." 
 
 74
 
 February in England 
 
 How pleasant smelt the wood smoke as it 
 rose in a blue column between the pines ! 
 Against the sky its ethereal woof was in- 
 visible. For a space the pines, with their 
 wintry noise that never ceases, alternating 
 with grizzled oak trees, lined the roadside. 
 A sudden freshness told us where they ended ; 
 then the trees grew farther apart, and ash, 
 beech and elm made a great silence that was 
 startling, after the companionable murmur of 
 the firs. Their colour was that green which, 
 though never old, is never quite youthful. 
 Every other tree was black for miles, dis- 
 covering those deep-hued cantles of the sky, 
 betwixt the branchwork, that are the peculiar 
 wonder of leafless woods. On every side rose 
 
 75
 
 February in England 
 
 and fell leagues of untenanted lawn, of a cold 
 green, that in the light of a February dawn, 
 so clear, so absolutely clear, looked as the 
 savannahs of Eden must have looked on the 
 first day of the world. There were gardens, 
 ingeniously remarked Sir Thomas Browne, 
 before there were men; and these pastoral 
 solitudes seemed not to have been "made 
 with hands." For aught I knew, no one was 
 abroad in all the world. It was hard to 
 believe otherwise; for there was an extra- 
 ordinary, virginal purity in the notes of a 
 thrush that sang (as it sang every day) on its 
 particular bough of elm, in the sheen of the 
 first celandines, and in the herbage that 
 waved, encased in dew. Everything was 
 the same as of old yet not the same. I 
 seemed to be on the eve of a revelation. 
 I could have wept that my senses were not 
 chastened to celestial keenness, to understand 
 the pipits singing as they flew. In a short 
 time the common look of things returned. 
 The rooks began to pass overhead, and some 
 76
 
 February in England 
 
 alighted, their feathers changing to silver as 
 they turned in the sun. A gate was banged 
 far off. The cock crew, and the sound stirred 
 the sleeping air farther and farther round, 
 like a stone falling into a pool. I felt that 
 it was cold. Beside a distant pool the ash 
 trees had still some magic. Some "potent 
 spirit" was surely hidden among their boughs ; 
 as we approached them, indeed, we expected 
 to discover their secret. But on passing 
 underneath all had fled except a whimper- 
 ing of the breeze, and instead of something 
 " mystic, wonderful," nothing appeared save a 
 robin singing alone 
 
 " And the long ripple washing in the reeds." 
 
 The afternoon of that same day was in 
 another style. A railway journey had effected 
 just such an inconsequent change as comes in 
 dreams. The air was full of that oppressive 
 silence into which changes the unintelligible 
 clamour of towns. Looking scarce farther or 
 higher than the cathedral tower, the sun 
 
 77
 
 February in England 
 
 vainly competed M r ith the clock face gleaming 
 beside the Thames. Over the grey water 
 rose and fell continually the grey wings of 
 gulls ; others screamed with a melancholy 
 " dying fall " in the grey spaces of heaven, 
 soaring doubtless into silence beyond the mist, 
 in the enjoyment of we knew not what 
 amenities of light and warmth. 
 
 " Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt." 
 
 Grey roofs, grey ships ; indeed, only one 
 immobile ruddy sail of a barge, drifting up, 
 coloured the Quakerish raiment of the day. 
 By dipping my pen into the grey Thames 
 ripple I am fain to make grey the reader's 
 mind as it did mine. But words are frail ; 
 even the word " grey," which of all chromatic 
 epithets is most charged with mental and 
 sentimental meaning, has boundaries. The 
 grey changed somewhat ; it was night. If 
 the day had seemed a dying thing, the night 
 seemed dead, and not a funeral note came 
 through the mist. So a week passed, and, 
 78
 
 February in England 
 
 defrauded thus of a sweet tract of life (such 
 as that February dawn had promised), I 
 watched the clockwork movements of the 
 grey -minded men and women pacing the 
 streets. I met hundreds of people in the 
 streets that might have taken roles in the 
 Inferno. And in a more personal and horrible 
 sense than Goethe meant, I felt that here on 
 earth we have veritably to enact hell, as I 
 looked down from a great bridge. A steamer 
 the ghost of a steamer passed under. I 
 could hear a voice, perhaps two ; I could 
 see a form the shadow of a form flit past 
 upon the deck. 
 
 "Is that a Death ? and are there two ?" 
 
 But the ship slid softly away under her 
 pyramid of almost motionless smoke. A 
 barge soon afterwards followed : it seemed 
 a league long, and at the stern ridiculously 
 small was what must have been the figure 
 of a man straining at an immense oar, and 
 black, thrice black, in that horrid twilight. 
 
 79
 
 February in England 
 
 He passed : I was powerless to speak, though 
 
 I felt he was drifting on to hell calmly as 
 
 at the smoothly swirling outmost circle of a 
 
 whirlpool. Close to the bridge where I stood 
 
 were many ships aground, with many men at 
 
 work, climbing masts, walking dreadfully on 
 
 rippling planks to land, going and coming, 
 
 coming and going. Only those nearest were 
 
 thus visible. Those farther off seemed more 
 
 grisly or more fantastic in their employments. 
 
 The sun, lying as it were in blood-red pools 
 
 upon the mud left by the ebb, unnaturally 
 
 exaggerated men and trades. There was 
 
 a sense of continuous, inexorable motion. 
 
 Surely I could see wheels revolving? Almost 
 
 as surely did I see Ixions bound thereon. I 
 
 saw yokefellows to Pirithous, Salmoneus, and 
 
 Tityus. Some of the forms were certainly 
 
 not human, and the scene, under the doubtful 
 
 conflict of fierce light with shadow and mist 
 
 seemed 
 
 " a palace bright 
 Bastioned \vith pyramids of glowing gold ; 
 
 80
 
 February in England 
 
 And all its curtains of Aurorean clouds 
 Flushed angerly : while sometimes eagle's wings, 
 Unseen before by gods or wondering men, 
 Darkened the place ; and neighing steeds were 
 
 heard, 
 Not heard before by gods or wondering men." 
 
 It was almost more horrible still that nothing 
 groaned. The air was left silent with a 
 sense that over all watched some omnipotent 
 assessor who grimly shook the urn. I had no 
 sleepy, honeyed passport for the Cerberus 
 thereof. But I would not for a great price 
 have ventured there, though close behind 
 rang the noise of hoofs, slightly drowned by 
 the hiss of mud. I felt as some lonely 
 spectator of a tragedy in a great theatre, 
 "In vacuo tristis sessor plausorque theatro." 
 
 The sun was burning like newly minted 
 copper. 
 
 From London, I remember, we travelled to 
 
 the county of , in South Wales. February 
 
 was making the best of his short life, and 
 
 leaving March a great deal to undo. "Is 
 
 F 81
 
 February in England 
 
 there no religion for the temperate and frigid 
 zones ? " asks Thoreau, at the end of his 
 "Winter Walk." Round the great open Welsh 
 hearths we found a sufficient creed in the 
 sweet paganisms of a fire worship which in 
 that country insists on a blaze in June ; pre- 
 ferring it, since for mental and sentimental 
 warmth the sun is some few millions of miles 
 too distant. Spending such an evening by 
 the fireside, it was pleasant to note a culinary 
 genius which experiments evoked. I know 
 nothing that makes the conversation go more 
 " trippingly on the tongue " than the dis- 
 cussion of such dainties as hands modestly 
 declared inexperienced will compose out of 
 scant elements. 
 
 " Matter ! with six eggs and a strike of rye meal 
 I had kept the town till Doomsday, perhaps 
 longer ; " 
 
 and with less than old Furnace, the cook in 
 Massinger's play, we did succeed in keeping 
 melancholy from the door. Through the 
 82
 
 February in England 
 
 window we saw a grey beggar feeding a 
 party of sparrows with his crumbs a fine 
 economy, charity reduced to its lowest terms. 
 Not, however, that it was a hard season. 
 But the willows were in bud, and for that 
 very reason there were so many tender 
 things to look cold the sting was more 
 keen. All day were seen rapid clouds 
 tumbling past a white horizon, firmly 
 stamped with the outlines of trees ; the 
 willow undulating all together, like a living 
 wave of foliage and limber boughs ; the river 
 flowing out of silver into blue shadow, and 
 again into silver where the sky bent as if to 
 touch it ; leaf and flower of celandine gleam- 
 ing under the briers ; whilst the air was 
 vibrant though windless stirred like water 
 in a full vessel when more is still poured 
 in. It was the most perfect of days. The 
 air had all the sparkling purity of winter. It 
 had, too, something of the mettle and gusto 
 of the spring. The scent of young grass, un- 
 contested by any flower or fruit, was sharp 
 
 83
 
 February in England 
 
 though faint, and thus the air was touched 
 with a summer perfume. Now and then a 
 blackbird fluted a stave or two. But the 
 silence was mysteriously great, because the 
 incalculably subtle sound of the ocean was 
 ever there, solemnizing, deepening, and as it 
 were charging with "large utterance" the 
 silence it could not break. The whole 
 countryside of grassy level and rolling copse 
 was like a shell put to the ear. For the shore 
 was never still. A little way out the fisher 
 boats might be curtseying on the tranquil tide ; 
 but reaching the shore, the same tide came 
 upon fantastic rocks that were an organ out 
 of which it contrived an awful music. Under 
 the beams of the rocking moon, those tall, 
 cadaverous crags rose up like stripped reapers, 
 gigantic and morose, reaping and amassing 
 the dolorous harvest of wrecks, waist-deep in 
 a surge whose waves seemed not to flow and 
 change, but to turn, turn ceaselessly in the 
 contracted corridors among the rocks, like 
 wheels revolving, and bespattered by the 
 84
 
 February in England 
 
 foam that huddled, yellow, coagulate, quak- 
 ing, in the crevices. 
 
 Soon afterward snow fell, apparently 
 making the air meeter for its freight of scent 
 from the first violets, which certainly smelt 
 sweeter than they had ever done before. The 
 strong bells were choked by snow, and tinkled 
 very timidly in the church. Lightly clothed 
 by the same fall, the pillared tower of white 
 stone looked wonderfully radiant in the 
 moonlight, as if fresh from the footsteps of 
 angels or garnished for a day of extraordinary 
 celebration. Then, too, was the bell note 
 sweetest, though always unequalled in pure 
 aerial quality, because 
 
 " We cannot see, but feel that it is there," 
 
 hid as it is in some dim belfry or mossy 
 turret from which one never expects so fine 
 a voice. 
 
 As we passed upward to the hills, one day, 
 the snow was fading in the sun, and the 
 laurels rose suddenly up as they shook it off 
 
 85
 
 February in England 
 
 in shower after shower. On one hand the 
 ghost of a distant mountain hung lighter than 
 cloud. For a moment another snow shower 
 fell, but settled only on the scattered green of 
 the arable fields : so on that hand lay miles of 
 dark land under a veil of delicatest cirrus. 
 Two miles ahead, on the boldest height of 
 all, was the ruin the mere dust and ashes 
 of a castle, pale, continually lost among clouds 
 of which it seemed a part, and as unreal as if 
 it were still in " the region of stories," and we 
 were reading of it in the monkish chronicle. 
 
 The path followed one side of a steep 
 wooded valley, and at the bottom a moun- 
 tain river ran fast over great stones, its noise 
 muffled by the trees, as if it talked in its 
 beard. For almost a mile we could hear the 
 sounding smoke of a white cataract which 
 gave the river its speed. The great marsh 
 marigolds had come. Fragments of an ancient 
 wall stood here and there among the trees : 
 the stones were blessed with mosses, in whose 
 miniature forests an autumnal red prevailed, 
 86
 
 February in England 
 
 which, however, loaded with dew, turned to 
 perfect silver in the sun. 
 
 Reaching the castle on the hill, I came 
 from those creatures of the seasons and the 
 hours as if straight upon time itself. The 
 noble masonry preserved the curves of several 
 pointed arches; some of the apartments might 
 still have sheltered a stout physique from the 
 pleasantries of wind and rain ; but the build- 
 ing had unmistakably been overtaken by 
 eternity. It had for centuries ceased to live. 
 Now death itself was dead within these 
 stones ; it was resolved into its elements 
 again. Approaching the castled crag, it was 
 hard to say where crag ended and castle 
 began. Examining the masonry, it was in- 
 distinguishable from the rock on which it lay. 
 In summer the wild thyme and the harebell 
 did their best to conceal what was written in 
 terse hieroglyphics on the stones. But winter 
 had undone these sweet deceits. By degrees 
 a feeling of horror grew and became less 
 vague. I accidentally loosened a stone, which 
 
 87
 
 February in England 
 
 fell noisily down the almost perpendicular 
 cliff for two hundred feet to the fields below, 
 and by no hard feat of the fancy I felt myself 
 as insignificant as that stone ; I too was cast 
 over the abyss. One of the walls rose almost 
 in line with this sheer cliff, and I could not 
 help picturing the dreadful trade when that 
 side was building. Many a slave must have 
 dropped from the rising wall on to the plain. 
 It is said that Roman mortar was made so 
 durable by addition of human blood. That 
 may be ; here, it is certain, every stone owes 
 its place to human blood. I passed several 
 gaps for the crossbowmen, and looked out: 
 nothing nearer than three hundred feet was 
 visible, and that was below. I followed all 
 the grisly windings of the dripping dungeon, 
 and had scarce the heart to trace back my 
 footsteps into the light. How well these 
 builders expressed themselves ! How perfect 
 is their style, the shadow of their personality ! 
 There is no mistaking the superb brutality 
 of their nature. So forcibly was this still 
 88
 
 February in England 
 
 expressed that unwillingly I conjured up 
 their subtlest cruelties to ray mind. I too, 
 like the prisoner five hundred years ago, was 
 thrust through that deep and narrow window 
 on to the plain below ! 
 
 I cannot imagine any beings more unlike 
 the builders and owners of this castle than 
 the legendary mediaeval knights. What has 
 a Kehydius or a Perceval to do with shrieks 
 which I still could hear amidst this ruin? 
 Yet tradition connected these walls with 
 Urien. 
 
 Then we passed into the little chapel of 
 the castle, still a holy place, where a furze 
 bush flowered, and the ancient turf lay 
 innocent of the footprints even of wind. It 
 was a refuge of eternal peace peace entailed 
 and handed down through centuries of 
 pleasant and melodious calm,* to the chant- 
 ing of holy men. Our entering footsteps and 
 voices sounded most unreal. We were the 
 ghosts. Antiquity the echo, the shadow 
 was the one thing real. In a short time the 
 
 89
 
 February in England 
 
 ruins were lit by that weird light "sent from 
 beyond the skies," just after sunset, when far- 
 off things are dim, but near things are strangely 
 near. Those who walked there took deep 
 draughts of eternity, 
 
 " Secures latices et longa oblivia potent." 
 
 A lark was scaling the clouds as day fell, 
 and sang, though driven madly backward by 
 the wind. In their motion past the sun the 
 monstrous clouds were transmuted into fiery 
 vapours, " such stuff as dreams are made on," 
 light and graceful as Aphrodite rising from 
 the sea. And already a valley here and there 
 was full of night. 
 
 Day was almost gone, when again, just as 
 at a certain part of dawn, for a short time 
 spring seemed to be coming down the wind 
 into the land, undeniably the genius of spring, 
 though invisible, inaudible. This promise was 
 nearer a perfume than anything else as of 
 remote blossom, driven hither across leagues 
 of drenching Atlantic air, making the nostrils 
 90
 
 February in England 
 
 dilate with half-diffident expectation and 
 surprise. A bat flew round the keep, and 
 his snipping sound could be heard overhead. 
 Hesperus came out, and burned longer than 
 it had done before that year, so that in its 
 tender light the land seemed in that brief 
 half hour to advance a long way toward the 
 season of catkins, through which the first 
 voices from the south chiff-chaff and wood 
 wren would presently creep and stir vapours 
 of golden pollen, while in the clear noon 
 there would be no shadow save the fly's on 
 the great buttercup.
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 ON that October day, nothing was visible at 
 first save yellow flowers, and sometimes a 
 bee's quiet shadow crossing the petals : a 
 sombre river, noiselessly sauntering seaward, 
 dropped with a murmur, far away among 
 leaves, into a pool. That sound alone made 
 tremble the glassy dome of silence that ex- 
 tended miles and miles. All things were 
 lightly powdered with gold, by a lustre that 
 seemed to have been sifted through gauze. 
 The hazy sky, striving to be blue, was re- 
 flected as purple in the waters. There, too, 
 sunken and motionless, lay amber willow 
 leaves ; some floated down. Between the 
 sailing leaves, against the false sky, hung the 
 willow shadows, shadows of willows over- 
 head, with waving foliage, like the train of 
 92
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 a bird of paradise. One standing on a 
 bridge was seized by an Hylean shock, and 
 wondered as he saw his face, death-pale, 
 among the ghostly leaves below. Every- 
 where, the languid perfumes of corruption. 
 Brown leaves laid their fingers on the cheek 
 as they fell ; and here and there the hoary 
 reverse of a willow leaf gleamed at the 
 crannied foot of the trees. 
 
 One lonely poplar, in a space of refulgent 
 lawn, was shedding its leaves as if it scattered 
 largess among a crowd. Nothing that it 
 gave it lost ; for each leaf lay sparkling upon 
 the turf, casting a splendour upwards. A 
 maiden un wreath ing her bridal garlands 
 would cast them off with a grace as pensive 
 as when the poplar shed its leaf. 
 
 We could not walk as slowly as the river 
 flowed; yet that seemed the true pace to 
 move in life, and so reach the great gray sea. 
 Hand in hand with the river wound the 
 path, and that way lay our journey. 
 
 In one place slender coils of honeysuckle 
 
 93
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 tried to veil the naked cottage stone, or in 
 another the subtle handiwork of centuries 
 had covered the walls with lichen. And it 
 was in the years when Nature said 
 
 ft Incipient magni procedere menses," 
 
 when a day meant twenty miles of sunlit 
 forest, field, and water, 
 
 " Oh ! moments as big as years, '' 
 
 years of sane pleasure, glorified in later 
 reveries of remembrance. . . . Near a reedy, 
 cooty backwater of that river ended our 
 walk. 
 
 The day had been an august and pompous 
 festival. On that day, burning like an 
 angry flame until noon, and afterwards sink- 
 ing peacefully into the soundless deeps of 
 vesperal tranquillity as the light grew old, 
 life seemed in retrospect like the well-told 
 story of a rounded, melodious existence, 
 such as one could wish for one's self. 
 How mild, dimly golden, the comfortable 
 94
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 dawn ! Then the canvas of a boat creeping 
 like a spider down the glassy river pouted 
 feebly. The slumberous afternoon sent the 
 willow shadows to sleep and the aspens to 
 feverish repose, in a landscape without 
 horizon. Evening chilled the fiery cloud, 
 and a gray and level barrier, like the jetsam 
 of a vast upheaval, but still and silent, lay 
 alone across the west. Thereafter a light 
 wind knitted the willow branches against a 
 silver sky with a crescent moon. Against 
 that sky, also, we could not but scan the 
 fixed grasses bowing on the wall top. For 
 a little while, troubled tenderly by autumnal 
 maladies of soul, it was sweet and suitable 
 to follow the path towards our place of rest, 
 a gray, immemorial house with innumer- 
 able windows. 
 
 The house, in that wizard light " sent from 
 beyond the sky," for the moon cast no 
 beams through her prison of oak forest, 
 seemed to be one not made with hands. 
 Was it empty ? The shutters of the plain, 
 
 95
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 square windows remained unwhitened, 
 flapped ajar. Up to the door ran a yellow 
 path, levelled by moss, where a blackbird 
 left a worm half swallowed, as he watched 
 our coming. A large red rose, divided and 
 spilt by birds, petal by petal, lay as 
 beautiful as blood, upon the ground. This 
 path and another carved the lawn into 
 three triangles; and in each an elm rose 
 up, laying forth auburn foliage against the 
 house in November even. 
 
 The leaves that had dropped earlier lay, 
 crisp and curled, in little ripples upon the 
 grass. There is a perfect moment for coming 
 upon autumn leaves, as for gathering fruit. 
 The full, flawless colour, the false, hectic 
 well-being of decay, and the elasticity, are 
 attained at the same time in certain favoured 
 leaves ; and dying is but a refinement of life. 
 
 In one corner of the garden stood a yew 
 
 tree and its shadow ; and the shadow was 
 
 more real than the tree, the shadow inlaid 
 
 in the sparkling verdure like ebony. In 
 
 96
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 the branches the wind made a low note of 
 incantation, especially if a weird moon of 
 blood hung giddily over it in tossing cloud. To 
 noonday the ebony shadow was as lightning 
 to night. Towards this tree the many front 
 windows guided the sight ; and beyond, a 
 deep valley was brimmed with haze that 
 just exposed the tree tops to the play of 
 the sunset's last random fires. To the left, 
 the stubborn leaves of an oak wood soberly 
 burned like rust, among accumulated shadow. 
 To the right, the woods on a higher slope 
 here and there crept out of the haze, like 
 cloud, and received a glory, so that the hill 
 was by this touch of the heavens exagger- 
 ated. And still the sound of waters falling 
 among trees. Quite another scene was dis- 
 covered by an ivy-hidden oriel, lit by ancient 
 light, immortal light travelling freely from 
 the sunset, and from the unearthly splendour 
 that succeeds. There the leaves were golden 
 for half a year upon the untempestuous 
 oaks in that sunken land. The tranquillity, 
 G 97
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 the fairiness, the unseasonable hues, were 
 melancholy : that is to say, joy was here 
 under strange skies ; sadness was fading into 
 joy, joy into sadness, especially when we 
 looked upon this gold, and heard the dark 
 sayings of the wind in far-off woods, while 
 these were still. Many a time and oft was 
 the forest to be seen, when the chillest 
 rain descended, fine and hissing, seen 
 standing like enchanted towers, amidst it 
 all, untouched and aloof, as in a picture. 
 But when the sun had just disappeared red- 
 hot in the warm, gray, still eventide, and 
 left in the west a fiery tissue of wasting 
 cloud, when the gold of the leaves had 
 an April freshness, in a walk through the 
 sedate old elms there was "a fallacy of 
 high content." 
 
 Several roses nodded against the gray 
 brick, as if all that olden austerity was ex- 
 pounded by the white blossoms that emerged 
 from it, like water magically struck from 
 the rock of the wilderness. In the twilight 
 98
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 silence the rose petals descended. So tender 
 was the air, they lay perfect on the grass, 
 and caught the moonlight. 
 
 In ways such as these the mansion spoke. 
 For the house had a characteristic person- 
 ality. Strangely out of keeping with the 
 trees, it grew incorporate with them, by 
 night. Behold it, as oft we did, early in 
 the morning, when a fiery day was being 
 born in frost, and neither wing nor foot 
 was abroad, and it was clothed still in 
 something of midnight; then its shadows 
 were homes of awful thoughts ; you surmised 
 who dwelt therein. Long after the sun was 
 gay, the house was sombre, unresponsive to 
 the sky, with a Satanic gloom. 
 
 The forest and meadow flowers were rooted 
 airily in the old walls. The wildest and 
 delicatest birds had alighted on the trees. 
 
 Things inside the house were contrasted 
 with the lugubrious wall as with things 
 
 o o 
 
 without. The hangings indeed were sad, 
 with a design of pomegranates ; but the 
 
 99
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 elaborate silver candelabra dealt wonderfully 
 with every thread of light entering contra- 
 band. One braided silver candlestick threw 
 white flame into the polished oaken furni- 
 ture, and thence by rapid transit to the 
 mirror. An opening door would light the 
 apartment as lightning. Under the lights 
 at night the shadowy concaves of the candel- 
 abra caught streaked reflections from the 
 whorls of silver below. The Holy Grail might 
 have been floating into the room when a white 
 linen cloth was unfolded, dazzling the eyes. 
 
 In the upper rooms, the beds (and especi- 
 ally that one which owned the falcon's eye 
 of an oriel) the beds, with their rounded 
 balmy pillows, and unfathomable eider down 
 that cost much curious architecture to shape 
 into a trap for weary limbs, were famous. 
 All the opiate influence of the forest was 
 there. Perhaps the pillow was daily filled 
 with blossoms that whisper softliest of sleep. 
 There were perfumes in the room quite inex- 
 plicable. Perhaps they had outlived the 
 100
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 flowers that bore them ages back, flowers 
 now passed away from the woods. The walls 
 were faded blue ; the bed canopy a combina- 
 tion of three gold and scarlet flags crossed 
 by a device in scarlet and gold, " Blessed is 
 he that sleepeth well, but he that sleeps here 
 is twice blessed." 
 
 The whole room was like an apse, with 
 altar, and pure, hieratic ornament. To sleep 
 there was a sacramental thing. Such dreams 
 we had. 
 
 Against that window were flowers whose 
 odour the breeze carried to our nostrils 
 when it puffed at dawn. If excuses could be 
 found, it was pleasant to be early abed in 
 summer, for the sake of that melancholy 
 western prospect, when the songs of the lark 
 and the nightingale arose together. We fell 
 suddenly asleep with a faint rush of the 
 scent of juniper in the room, and the light 
 still fingering the eyelashes. Or, if we closed 
 the window, in that chamber 
 " That chamber deaf of noise and blind of sight," 
 
 IOI
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 we could hear our own thoughts. More- 
 over, there was a graceful usage of making 
 music while the owl hooted vespers; for a 
 bed without music is a sty, the host used 
 to say, as the philosopher called a table 
 without it a manger. 
 
 Alongside the bed, and within reach of 
 the laziest hand, ran two shelves of books. 
 One shelf held an old Montaigne ; the Lyrical 
 Ballads ; the Morte Darthur ; The Compleat 
 Angler; Lord Edward Herbert's Autobio- 
 graphy ; George Herbert's Temple ; Browne's 
 Urn Burial ; Cowper's Letters. The other 
 shelf was filled by copies, in a fine feminine 
 hand and charmingly misspelt, of the long- 
 dead hostess's favourites, all bound according 
 to her fancy by herself : Keat's Odes ; Twelfth 
 Night ; L' Allegro and II Penseroso ; the 
 Twenty-first Chapter of St. John and the 
 Twenty -third Psalm; Virgil's Eclogues; 
 Shelley's Adonais ; part ii. section ii. member 
 4, of the Anatomy of Melancholy, called 
 " Exercise Rectified of Body and Mind " ; 
 102
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 Lord Clarendon's Eulogy of Falkland, in 
 the History of the Great Rebellion ; a great 
 part of The Opium Eater, and Walter Pater's 
 Child in the House and Leonardo da Vinci, 
 added by a younger but almost equally 
 beautiful hand. 
 
 What healing slumbers had here been 
 slept, what ravelled sleaves of care knit up ! 
 Ancient room that had learned peacefulness 
 in centuries, to them whose hunger bread 
 made of wheat doth not assuage, to those 
 that are weary beyond the help of crutches, 
 you, ancient room in that gray immemorial 
 house, held sweet food and refuge. To the 
 bereaved one, sleeping here, you redeemed 
 the step that is soundless for ever, the eyes 
 that are among the moles, the accents that 
 no subtlest hearing shall ever hear again ; 
 You, ancient bed, full of the magic mightier 
 than " powerfullest lithomancy," had bles- 
 sings greater than St Hilary's bed, on which 
 distracted men were laid, with prayer and 
 ceremonial, and in the morning rose restored. 
 
 103
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 With you, perhaps, was Sleep herself: Sleep 
 that sits, more august than Solomon or 
 Minos, in a court of ultimate appeal, whither 
 move the footsteps of those who have 
 mourned for justice at human courts, and 
 mourned in vain : Sleep, by whose equity 
 divine the bruised and dungeoned inno- 
 cent roams again emparadised in the 
 fields of home, under the smiles of familiar 
 skies : Sleep, whose mercy is not bounded, 
 but 
 
 " droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/' 
 
 even upon the beasts. Sleep soothes the 
 hand of poverty with gold, and pleases with 
 the ache of long-stolen coronets the brows 
 of fallen kings. Had Tantalus dropped his 
 eyelids, sleep had ministered to his lips. 
 The firman of sleep goes forth : the 
 peasant is enthroned, and accomplished in 
 the superb appurtenances of empire; the 
 monarch finds himself among the placid 
 fireside blisses of light at eventide; and 
 104
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 those in cities pent sleep beguiles with the 
 low summons, 
 
 " Ad claras Asiae volemus urbes." 
 
 Because sleep clothes the feet of sorrow with 
 leaden sandals and fastens eagles' wings 
 upon the heels of joy, I wonder that some 
 ask at nightfall what the morrow shall see 
 concluded : I would rather ask what sleep 
 shall bring forth, and whither I shall travel 
 in my dreams. It seems indeed to me that 
 to sleep is owed a portion of the deliberation 
 given to death. If life is an apprenticeship 
 to death, waking may be an education for 
 sleep. We are not thoughtful enough about 
 sleep ; yet it is more than half of that 
 great portion of life spent really in solitude. 
 " Nous sommes tous dans le desert ! Per- 
 sonne ne comprend personne." In the desert 
 what then shall we do? We truly ought 
 to enter upon sleep as into a strange, fair 
 chapel. Fragrant and melodious ante- 
 chamber of the unseen, sleep is a novitiate 
 
 105
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 for the beyond. Nevertheless, it is likely 
 that those who compose themselves carefully 
 for sleep are few as those who die holily; 
 and most are ignorant of an art of sleeping 
 (as of dying). The surmises, the ticking of 
 the heart, of an anxious child, the awful 
 expectation of Columbus spying the fringes 
 of a world, such are my emotions, as I go 
 to rest. I know not whether before the 
 morrow I shall not pass by the stars of 
 heaven and behold the "pale chambers of 
 the west," returning before dawn. To many 
 something like Jacob's dream often happens. 
 The angels rising are the souls of the dreamers 
 dignified by the insignia of sleep. Without 
 vanity, I think in my boyhood, in my sleep, 
 I was often in heaven. Since then, I have 
 gone dreaming by another path, and heard 
 the sighs and chatterings of the underworld ; 
 have gone from my pleasant bed to a fearful 
 neighbourhood, like the fifth Emperor Henry, 
 who, for penance, when lights were out, the 
 watch fast asleep, walked abroad barefoot, 
 106
 
 An Autumn House 
 
 leaving his imperial habiliments, leaving 
 Matilda the Empress. And when the world 
 is too much with me, when the past is a 
 reproach harrying me with dreadful faces, 
 the present a fierce mockery, the future an 
 open grave, it is sweet to sleep. I have 
 closed a well-loved book, ere the candle 
 began to fail, that I might sleep, and let 
 the soul take her pleasure in the deeps of 
 eternity. It may be that the light of morning 
 is ever cold, when it breaks in upon my 
 sleep and disarrays the palaces of my dreams. 
 
 "Each matin bell . . . 
 " Knells us back to a world of death." 
 
 The earth then seems but the fragments of 
 my dream, that was so high. 
 
 107
 
 Rain 
 
 THE prejudice of poets against water has 
 perhaps kept rain out of fashion in literature. 
 It is true that rain is among the subtle, 
 anonymous dramatis persorue of Lear, and 
 that Milton wove into the harmonies of 
 melancholy "the minute-drops from off 
 the eaves." Swift's famous " Shower " knocks 
 somewhat grossly at the door. " There never 
 was such a shower since Danae's" ran 
 contemporary compliment. There is, too, 
 an allusion to rain in "Childe Harold," 
 as a pianissimo accompaniment to storms. 
 But it is characteristic of modern poetry, as 
 a criticism of life by livers, that it has left 
 the praise of rain to hop farmers and of mud 
 to shoe-blacks. If literature were faithful to 
 life, there would have been a chorus of bene- 
 108
 
 Rain 
 
 dictions after the rain that whispered on the 
 hansom window-panes and sent the grum- 
 bling Thames to sleep with soft hands, as we 
 drove from the play on a Midsummer night ; 
 the French Academy would have elected 
 at least one member for his rendering of the 
 meaning of sleet, during a gray and purple 
 sunset over the coast of Brittany. Even at 
 the fireside I am washed by rain until I 
 seem to glimmer and rejoice like the white 
 headstones on the hill ! 
 
 It is falling now as I sit with paper-spoiling 
 intention, and the sound brings back the rain 
 that used to come from heaven on summer 
 mornings at Oxford, while invisible cattle 
 were lowing and doves cooing, and a distant 
 bell was tolled : brings back the rain in a city 
 street by night, that softened the sky to a deep 
 blue that was the very hue of mercy thrown 
 over the awful darkness ; and gaily, daintily 
 the drops that came and went (like stars 
 in a restless sky) on the fir-tree foliage as we 
 came to the trout river, in sudden sunlight. 
 
 109
 
 Rain 
 
 Now it is near sunset. The blackbirds are 
 singing lazily in the gardens. The traffic 
 has ceased as if the silence had cried : " No 
 thoroughfare." A Circean lady is playing 
 Grieg. She could turn us into swine ; that her 
 quiet smile proclaims : she does for the time 
 change into gods some of those who are sitting 
 in the great blue apartment, half shadowed, 
 as the expression fluctuates, tender, minatory, 
 tumultuous, hypnotic, vast. Still the rain is 
 falling, and the horse-chestnuts in the street 
 expand, their leaves shine. Their size and 
 beauty are as things newly acquired. Two 
 especially that rise between distant groups 
 of houses fill the whole space of sky touch 
 the stars ; in a few minutes, the constellations 
 hang in their branches and swing as the trees 
 are shaken. The rain has gone to their very 
 hearts. They sigh tremulously as if the drops 
 moved them with a tranquil joy. I could 
 wish I were a horse-chestnut now. ... In 
 winter I have seen them made much of by 
 the heavens, and, against the rainy blue, so 
 no
 
 Rain 
 
 vast as to touch the roof of the temple, like 
 the Zeus of Pheidias, particularly when all 
 day the shower has descended pensively and 
 without wind. Then songs were hushed ; the 
 pools rocked only with smooth leaden waves. 
 Before evening the rain had worked its spell. 
 Thrushes' songs filled the hawthorns among 
 the gorse. The wan grass was beautiful ; 
 but for a time the young blades were domin- 
 ant, deep green with the depth of night, yet 
 fresh with the freshness of day; black, 
 dripping trees overhung the grass, and both 
 had a colour like that of hues and forms seen 
 through water. All things smiled faintly 
 so that I seemed to touch the pericardium of 
 eternity. The slight melancholy and the great 
 solemnity of the rain that had passed away 
 entered the song of the robin. 
 
 Few pictures deal nobly with rain and mud. 
 Yet in a great city what elvish effects they 
 prepare ! Coruscating, sadly but brilliantly, 
 the mud gravely relieves the white faces and 
 gaudy raiment that pass by night, and adds 
 
 in
 
 Rain 
 
 to the dreaminess of a scene, in which the 
 pageant of life is like a strange flora to the 
 eye. Of all the mud I have known, the 
 most beautiful is that which is often to be 
 seen on the bank of Thames below Waterloo 
 bridge, lying like a crude monster, while the 
 sunset is rosy and green and purple on its 
 flanks, and two swans float and barges heave 
 at rest ; or while at dawn the city is all its 
 own, a quiet grey city that has vanished 
 when the mud has sunk below the tide. 
 
 One shower I remember that wrought 
 magic in a London garden. A kind of 
 judicious neglect by the owner had made the 
 garden a kindly party to any unusual trick 
 of the elements. On the lawn was a sundial 
 that made Time an alluring toy. At the 
 bottom of the garden, beyond the lawn, was 
 an enclosed space of warm rank grasses, and, 
 rising over them a vapour of cow-parsley 
 flowers. A white steam from the soil faintly 
 misted the grass to the level of the tallest 
 buttercups. Rain was falling, and the grasses 
 112
 
 Rain 
 
 and overhanging elm trees seemed to be 
 suffering for their quietness and loneliness, 
 to be longing for something, as perhaps Eden 
 also dropped " some natural tears " when left 
 a void. A hot, not quite soothing, perfume 
 crept over the lawn. All night I was 
 haunted by those elms which appeared as 
 grey women in cloaks of that strange mist. 
 For the time, that garden was the loneliest 
 place on earth, and I loved and feared its 
 loneliness. 
 
 Of rain seen from indoors, falling on a 
 broad rich land of grass and trees, or seen 
 (from heavenly altitudes) falling on the gray 
 and blue slates of a town I dare not speak. 
 But I have known the rain, hissing on the 
 lawn, complete the luxury of tea at Oxford 
 in November, when the heart is fresh from 
 walking. There is a generous fire ; seven 
 league slippers on the feet; hot buttered 
 brown toast, and, as evening changes from 
 gray to gray in quiet crescendo, still the 
 rain. 
 
 H 113
 
 Rain 
 
 In this London garden there was one day 
 which I may not omit, for the rain that 
 buried it said many things which I have 
 copied. 
 
 The shadow of the lime trees lay soft upon 
 the grass, wonderfully soft because of the 
 shy early sunlight. A bird sang such blithe 
 notes as wakened the soul, disrobing it of 
 the dishonours and disgusts of ages, restor- 
 ing it to Paradise. From a corner of the 
 garden I could see, over many steeples and 
 chimneys, the side of a great wave of land, 
 fledged with a few white cloudlets; and as 
 yet I could not say whether these were of 
 snow or blackthorn flowers. Fainter still, 
 among distant trees, I saw a doubtful glimmer 
 which might be the forward sweeping hem 
 of vernal splendour. In such moments of 
 doubt I have found the calendar's positive 
 announcement of Spring a solace. A mist 
 muffled the angles of the landscape, a mist 
 where the whole force of spring might lie in 
 ambush. The sun had burnt for an hour 
 114
 
 Rain 
 
 like the fire of a, thrifty candle. Presently it 
 flushed (it almost crackled like a faggot) with 
 a good-humoured lustihead. Then I knew 
 that in the grass the dewy charities of the 
 south winds were beginning to tell, and that 
 the haze had fostered that slumbrous warmth 
 in which chaffinches love to sing. Through 
 the gray air at first the sky was invisible, 
 save a misted blue pane here and there 
 appearing, and vanishing, and engrailed by 
 the grey cloud. Some windows northward 
 glowed. Something undefinable that was 
 Spring's and Dawn's richly mounted every- 
 thing; it entered the new stone church and 
 gave it centuries backward and forward of 
 glory and repose. Even the shadows on a 
 dusty road were mysterious as shadow on deep 
 water, and had an azure unknown before. 
 And still the blackbirds sang : 
 
 " High trolollie lollie loe 
 High trolollie lee. 
 
 Tho' others think they have as much 
 Yet he that says so lies.
 
 Rain 
 
 " Then come away, 
 Turn country man with me." 
 
 A wind just lifted the coltsfoot down. 
 Such a wind it was as brings to corners 
 where the willow - wrens never wander a 
 sound like the song of willow -wrens and 
 all that their bland southern voices mean 
 among English trees. It comes in March 
 from between the South and the East, 
 and passes into the cold and odourless 
 meadows, with the odour of all the 
 flowers of the orient and the sweetness of 
 the sea. 
 
 My path lay between rows of houses that 
 were hidden by almond flowers among black 
 boughs. If I paused and the wind dropped 
 I could just detect the reluctant savour 
 of struggling green life. Then the " lane " 
 became the bordering road of a common. 
 Here the sun was the genius of a company 
 of haggard poplars in whose branches it 
 seemed to hang, and the paths are haunted 
 by ghosts of divers faces, Memory ! 
 116
 
 Rain 
 
 "Tuis hie omnia plena 
 Muneribus." 
 
 One of these ghosts the rain was begin- 
 ning to hiss in the trees and patter on the 
 dead leaves below was of an old man who 
 had played Edmund in his youth. Beaten 
 by a slow mortal disease in his prime, he 
 had lived happily in the midst of friends 
 who never abated the services which his 
 gracious feebleness exacted and made appear 
 a duty. He who should have died first 
 survived them all. His mind nodded and 
 slept, leaving a childishness that was not 
 happy. All the pleasant valetudinarian 
 space disappeared from his memory ; the 
 tumultuous early days returned, and at 
 intervals he strayed amidst the pageant in 
 which the figures of Lear and Richard the 
 Second towered with minatory pomp. For 
 his part had ever been traitorous and base. 
 The evil acted "in his days of nature" 
 haunted him fearfully. In a great voice (so 
 that he used to say : " I fear my mother hears 
 
 117
 
 Rain 
 
 me ") he would repeat the speech of Lear : 
 " Howl, howl, howl, howl, Oh ! ye are men 
 of stones," as often he had heard it when, 
 as Edmund, he was borne off before the 
 end: he seemed to whimper behind the 
 stage, crying bitterly to be admitted to die 
 before the King. Luckily, before his death 
 all became dark. It was with surprise that 
 I heard he was dead. For years he seemed 
 not to have lived. . . . 
 
 Now the road went near several great 
 houses, of a kind which rain makes eloquent. 
 And the rain was falling then with a sound 
 like the silence of a multitude. They were 
 not the old, beautiful houses of London, but 
 such as were built not more than sixty years 
 ago for someone grown suddenly rich. The 
 old houses can always chatter of what has 
 fallen from them by indiscreet neglect or 
 foolish care, and all must regret the blotting 
 of the little unnecessary trifles that were 
 part of their nobility, like the grassy spaces 
 between the garden wall and the public 
 118
 
 Rain 
 
 road, where the fowls paraded, and the ivy 
 was plaited with periwinkle to the edge of 
 the macadam. These middle-aged houses 
 make no such appeal. They gibber in 
 premature senility, between tragedy and 
 comedy. Nobody will live there now ; the 
 gardens are feeble and disordered, and the 
 dahlias fade one by one. Passers by laugh 
 at their "style." Even the creepers have 
 taken no hold of the wall and have fallen 
 dishevelled. I do not believe the former 
 occupants ever come a little way out of their 
 path to see their house. Yonder, were the 
 gaudy doors, and blinds still hanging; the 
 romantic name on the folding gates ; and 
 I remembered the autumn rain in which they 
 took heart. Each was the gloomier for the 
 one lamp glimmering near the gate; the 
 soiled crimson leaves w r ere shaken out over 
 the path ; the starlings screamed mechanic- 
 ally ; the bleared sunset was swallowed up 
 in rain. And in that hour the house, once 
 an anachronism, a mixture of parts of several 
 
 119
 
 Rain 
 
 incongruous styles, seemed to have grown 
 very old, and against the wildly moving sky 
 and stars, it gained an indubitable style, that 
 of Stonehenge and the mountain crag the 
 natural style, the immortal style of things 
 too old. 
 
 Beyond these houses lay the Little House, 
 and behind a high exclusive fence, a holly 
 hedge and a lawn. It was empty. Its 
 orchards were praised almost as they de- 
 served, its rent lowered, in advertisements ; 
 nobody came. Yet the lawn was always 
 green ; a gardener or who ? kept sharp the 
 angles which it made with the drive. The 
 crocuses came out and lasted till the west 
 wind spilt their petals in the deep grass. 
 The only sign of neglect was the temerity of 
 the ivy, which crept through the chinks of the 
 door, through the keyhole, into the letter-box. 
 
 The rooms could be dimly seen from with- 
 out, especially the great shaded children's 
 nursery that faced the north and has said to 
 me as I have passed : 
 1 20
 
 Rain 
 
 "I know the secret of the unhappiness of childhood. 
 A fate abides with me and through her I know the 
 laws that mingle with the roses of life the lilies of 
 death. I have made festal days awful. Many a sad 
 dreamer curses the shadows that he used to see 
 falling on my walls in early firelight.'' 
 
 And it continued until I wished for a Blakes- 
 moor where I could quiet my alarms. As a 
 rule, there was no hint of mysterious in- 
 habitants. The emptiness was far more 
 mysterious. It was wonderful to see how 
 wild the garden looked after a short deser- 
 tion not disordered or weedy, but wild 
 though the flowers were of the daintiest and 
 most elaborate kinds. Years ago I heard 
 some one playing the Didone abandonnata in 
 The Little House, and in the garden the 
 echoes struck something that repeats them 
 still. 
 
 To us, as children, it used to be a famous 
 day when a new tenant came to this house. 
 We had a cruel standard of fitness to apply 
 to whomsoever came. Best of all we liked 
 the ancient who lived in one room of it, 
 
 121
 
 Rain 
 
 kept no servants, put up no curtains, and in 
 fact left the house exactly as we wished. We 
 used to hear him singing in a cheerful rasping 
 voice under the big cedar when he thought 
 no one was near. When he quitted it, sitting 
 among his furniture in an open cart, we 
 implored him to stay. For a time we 
 were alternately sorry and pleased at 
 the emptiness of the house. We used to 
 save our pocket money continuously for 
 whole months, to buy the freehold. And so 
 we came to have a sense of possession, if 
 not of occupation, which (we thought) was 
 stronger because it was not known. To the 
 sequestered Sylvans whose escaping foot- 
 steps were heard in very early morning, we 
 prayed 
 
 " Be present aye with favourable feet 
 And all profane, audience far remove." 
 
 So intimate we grew that the garden seemed 
 to understand us. I would that I could 
 understand it in return. 
 
 On Spring days like this when a grass 
 122
 
 Rain 
 
 scent came into the streets as if the fields 
 and woods were insurgent, near at hand, it 
 was to the garden we went, counted daffodils 
 and lime leaves, listening for the new-come 
 martins that sang before they were seen, in 
 the dark. In these early visits we found 
 more in the garden than was in the articles 
 of sale. So we hated the rhododendrons 
 that were planted by a later tenant. He 
 took an interest in the garden that was 
 horrible ; frivolous music was played in the 
 house. Nevertheless, in spite of the laughter, 
 the splendour, and the glossy carriage, the 
 house had a defiant air, hating the young gods 
 and goddesses that supplanted the Olympians 
 it once knew. All its peers in the neigh- 
 bourhood had given way to villas ; I thought 
 that perchance it was time for the Little 
 House to go. At evening the thought grew 
 stronger ; the house itself cried 
 
 " Now mark me how I will undo myself.'' 
 It went on 
 
 " God pardon all oaths that are broke to me " 
 
 123
 
 Rain 
 
 as if perhaps it knew that I had been vain 
 enough to think I could have lived there 
 happily, as if it cared for the foolish ritual 
 of my sorrow. If it were destroyed, no 
 one could assail my ownership. I might be 
 content Car il en est toujours qu'on pent 
 aimer. . . . Yet I am not sure that I would 
 have possessed it actually. One day two of 
 us were looking over the gate gathering 
 honey with our eyes, when a gracious little 
 girl came smiling towards us ; we slunk away. 
 A little later she surprised us on tiptoe at 
 the same place and at her invitation we 
 entered the garden for the first time. We 
 were persuaded to sit down near the lilacs. 
 But we did not look round ; left alone 
 for a moment, we planned an escape. 
 Even when she came out with a tray 
 and sat beside us, we were not happy. 
 I remember that we whispered together, 
 and the child laughed and tried to put us 
 at our ease. My friend said with a voice 
 of discovery: "They have tea here." We 
 124
 
 Rain 
 
 were near disillusion ; only, we did not 
 know! 
 
 I have said there was a common next to 
 the house. The garden was more ours than 
 that. Independence commonly means a state 
 in which we never know on whom we 
 depend; the term common was false, and 
 those who walked on it knew no such liberty 
 as we. The garden belonged to us as truly 
 as the world to the children who in a great 
 library, colour the globe, red, green, and 
 blue, for Mary, Arthur and Dick. On the 
 common there were "strange fetters to the 
 feet, strange manacles to the hands." If any 
 should wonder at this let them go to the 
 garden at evening. A half-moon is alone in 
 the sky. Is it green or is it white? Here 
 and there clusters of poplars vein the horizon- 
 At that hour the waving trees are as delicate 
 as grasses. Some windows are lit. Here a 
 song is ending; there a door is violently 
 shut ; but already London is growing silent. 
 The sounds are so faint that if I pause to 
 
 125
 
 Rain 
 
 listen and unravel them, I can hear my 
 heart, the ticking of my watch, but not the 
 enormous city. Go to the garden and see, 
 in the shadow of a cedar, the apple blossom 
 glow. 
 
 126
 
 A Gentle Craftsman 
 
 MY friend had twice hooked me ; the parson 
 had risen to a March brown, and in fact 
 been hooked; but I failed to land, thus 
 losing the only chance of an overflowing 
 creel. For some hours we had been sowing 
 the wind with flies. The busy nut-brown 
 water of the ripples barely wetted the stones, 
 and could not hold a trout. The pools, that 
 had been glass all day, were changed to 
 silver by the great splendour of twilight ; 
 over them now and then wavered a flash as 
 of swords unsheathed for a moment, where 
 the large trout leapt. (Yet the biggest fish 
 of the season had just been landed below us 
 by a clothes-line and a rod like "the mast 
 of some great amiral.") The rise and fall of 
 the green-heart, the tossing of the silk as it 
 
 127
 
 A Gentle Craftsman 
 
 evolves a perfectly straight line out of subtlest 
 curves, always exert a kind of sorcery, to 
 which your own silence ministers, amid all 
 the jewel and blossom of summer in the grass 
 and air. At twilight the sorcery is rein- 
 forced. The mere excellence of casting 
 achieved by that time of day encourages you 
 to go on. And when you stop perhaps to 
 change a fly you are too deep in the en- 
 chantment to resist. 
 
 It had been a day that made us all more 
 than happy, as if it were the beginning of 
 " the world's great age." It was well to be 
 there, as we were 
 
 " If the dream lasts 'twill turn the age to gold." 
 
 The twilight was peculiarly fine. A casual 
 passer-by would have detected the hum of 
 gnats, the liquid whisper of poplars, the far- 
 off sea speaking in muffled under-breath, or 
 the snipping sound of bats. We, ourselves, 
 had noticed them at first, and yet, without 
 ceasing, they had mingled and combined into 
 128
 
 the orchestral silence of summer. Along 
 with the night a mist was coming, and 
 through it the moon and stars were white. 
 We were casting all the time mechanically, 
 dreamily. Overhead we could hear the lost, 
 mournful voices of plovers that wandered 
 invisible. Insects grew horribly bold, and 
 stayed to be crushed by the hand that was 
 meant to drive them off. The bats came 
 closer and closer some of them followed our 
 flies in the air one, indeed, hooked itself 
 and fell. For a short time there was some- 
 thing diabolic in the air, in the shapes around 
 us, and in the fancies that came. Was there 
 not an elvish leer traced on the silver bark 
 of the birch we passed just now ? I confess 
 that when a thought of the outer world did 
 come, it was heartily to wish ourselves at 
 the Three Dragons. There was a sense of 
 stealthy preparation in the silence. There 
 might be ghosts abroad, or something solemn 
 was happening near at hand. Or were we 
 come suddenly on fairy-land ? 
 
 I 129
 
 A Gentle Craftsman 
 
 c< This is the fairy land 
 We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites," 
 
 As if we had passed into a strange land. We 
 really seemed to be suspected by the things 
 around, for the cattle stepped gradually up 
 to our side, sniffed us, and would not be 
 repulsed. I could scent the fume of a per- 
 nicious and alluring herb. Now and then, as 
 before, a fish rose. We longed for the splash 
 to linger, so haunting was the silence become. 
 
 A home-returning miner came to our re- 
 lease, and we were glad of his company for 
 a mile. He, too, had observed "something 
 funny" in the air just there. "'Tis the ale 
 at the Three Dragons, I'm thinking," was his 
 conclusion, as he left. 
 
 As a fitting anodyne to our experiences, 
 we determined to call on Captain Rowland, 
 a worshipful old man, and master of the 
 gentle craft, who lived near in a great house 
 in a wood, where he cheated ennui with 
 some choice books and a cabinet of tea cups, 
 " With antic shapes in China's azure dy'd." 
 130
 
 The house, indeed, we found, but the 
 Captain was gone. We had forgotten that 
 it was five years since our last meeting. The 
 walls of the garden were levelled and over- 
 grown with moss, the famous "little red 
 apples" were still unpicked. Ivy had dis- 
 located the masonry, and towered above the 
 chimney in a gloomy pavilion of umbrage and 
 flower. The house itself was a possession of 
 nettles. Nothing remained save the superb 
 ancestral turf, whose inconspicuous beauty 
 like the Captain's antique courtesy had 
 grown up in the family seat, as the result of 
 peaceful centuries that scarcely raised an 
 echo in the world. 
 
 In the village I learned that he was dead. 
 It was hard to learn more, for he was 
 generally loved, and his gamekeeper who 
 knew him best, could not speak of him 
 without distress. 
 
 He lived a bachelor in the great old house 
 until he died. At home, he was a sharp- 
 tempered, indolent, yet always occupied man,
 
 A Gentle Craftsman 
 
 with rosy carbimcled face, who swore freely. 
 It was easier for him to forget than to forgive. 
 " Who could love one that never made an 
 enemy ? " was a favourite question of his, to 
 which an answer was not expected. I have 
 noticed also that those who suffered oftenest 
 by his temper loved him best. Yet he was 
 not, in the ordinary sense, a generous 
 man ; his charity began and ended at 
 home. 
 
 For days together he would sit in one 
 room, smoking over theology, night-capped, 
 slippered, wearing a waistcoat whose folds 
 were a diary of years past in vigorous 
 characters. Into this faded room he used 
 to summon his household before the dinner- 
 hour, when he read aloud to them an 
 odd solemnity a passage from the New- 
 gate Calendar in a stormy bass voice. 
 At the more terrible parts the maids were 
 asked to conceal their faces. "Amen," he 
 bellowed, at the end. "Amen," whispered 
 the trembling assembly. " And now, if you 
 132
 
 like, you can go to church," was his valedic- 
 tion on Sundays. 
 
 He was seldom abroad, save to fish, and 
 out of doors he was metamorphosed. He 
 then invariably wore black clothes, a tall 
 silk hat, and a white cravat. His attitude 
 was in accord. He would sit, amid the 
 Hosannahs of jubilant Nature, as summer 
 passed into the land, like an old tree beside 
 the stream, like a figure in a frieze 
 
 " With marble men and maidens overwrought." 
 
 Whilst fishing he never spoke a word, nor 
 would he accept society, though the most 
 sociable of men. "Fishing is fishing," he 
 used to say, elliptically. Youthful and 
 feminine anglers he gravely hated ; the latter, 
 I think, because they sometimes laughed 
 aloud in their triumphs. According to the 
 Captain, whatever the casus belli, war was 
 declared against fish. The rules of warfare 
 must be obeyed. You must play the game 
 as if (or, the Captain said, " because ") your 
 
 133
 
 A Gentle Craftsman 
 
 opponents were intellectual and moral crea- 
 tures. A fish accidentally hooked he re- 
 turned to the water ; and yet, I admit, it 
 was his glory to pull the same out again by 
 fair play. It was significantly whispered in 
 the neighbourhood that unless Captain Row- 
 land was out no fish would be caught. 
 
 His only faiilt was his scorn of the Corn- 
 pleat Angler. " The old liar," he exclaimed ; 
 "but," he said, softening, "a setter of night- 
 lines is beneath contempt." Secretly, I be- 
 lieve, he loved the book. Only he would not 
 countenance the man who was first a lover of 
 the picturesque, and merely, in the second 
 place, an angler. " There are too many of 
 them," was his opinion ; " besides, they pick 
 my daffodils and ruin the fruit trees when 
 they ask leave to sit in the orchard and hear 
 the nightingale." 
 
 I loved the man for certain invaluable 
 
 delusions, which formed his philosophy, and, 
 
 being one of the poor objects of his scorn, I 
 
 am grateful to him for taking me to many a 
 
 134
 
 A Gentle Craftsman 
 
 delicate place on the whistling moors 
 under the woods, in "the morning world's 
 fresh gold," or when the noonday heat de- 
 frauds the lilies of their dew and in the 
 meadows beside the still waters. 
 
 135
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 "PRAY to God," writes William Lawson, 
 commenting on Dennys's Secrets of Angling, 
 in 1653, that annus mirabilis of angling 
 " pray to God with your heart to bless your 
 lawful exercise," which perhaps explains the 
 triumphs of clerical anglers. In the early 
 Church, of course, casting the net was a 
 preliminary and probationary stage to high 
 apostolic place and catching of souls. Now- 
 adays it may seem that the order is reversed. 
 I have observed that the finest anglers have 
 served their apprenticeship in the Church. 
 Nor would I appear exclusive and non-jiiring. 
 For by this means the Church, the Roman 
 Church, and Nonconformity are united in 
 delicate union, safe against those controversies 
 of which the episcopal mace is such a pleasant 
 136
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 symbol. This I may not omit. I see in it 
 the seed of an everlasting Church. Dean 
 Nowel and old Ken should be its fountains 
 of glory, and large already is their posthumous 
 diocese. Yet the curious will raise objections, 
 I foresee. Discord may rise over the culinary 
 issues of the art. In the directions " How to 
 roste a pike," in Walton's seventh chapter, 
 sleep the principles of a broad and a low, a 
 high and a narrow church. Who, for instance, 
 shall decide on the exact quantity expressed 
 by " a little winter savoury " with which he 
 must be seasoned ? And he is to be " often 
 basted with claret wine and anchovies and 
 butter mixed together." How often? The 
 question might fill a Bodleian with handsome 
 tomes and remain unanswered. Nor can my 
 piscatorial and reverend friends formulate the 
 doctrine of the true Church on " Let him be 
 roasted very leisurely." The lay mind will 
 doubtless go on being content with mine 
 hostis's cooking of its pike. 
 
 To be an angler is something better than 
 
 137
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 to be a " very honest man." But not all his 
 critics have the same lofty expectations of 
 the angler as old John Dennys. Often, in- 
 deed, they must needs imitate that great- 
 hearted African kinglet who demanded a 
 tribute of scarlet apparel, yet was well 
 content with two or three bottles of brandy. 
 His virtues, according to Dennys, are twelve, 
 a glorious number, though not without a hint 
 of calamity. The first of these is Faith 
 
 " Not wavering and unstable, 
 But such as had that holy patriarch old." 
 
 It makes a noble sound. Then follow Hope, 
 and Love (i.e., a " liking to the game "), and 
 fourthly Patience ; but though I admire the 
 fisherman's patience, I admire the fish's more. 
 After "low Humility" and Strength comes 
 Liberality 
 
 " Like to that ancient hospitality 
 That sometime dwelt in Albion's fertile land." 
 
 But alas! he means only feeding the fish 
 " with full and plenteous hand," a proceeding 
 
 138
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 near allied to a confession of incapacity. 
 Knowledge and "Placability of Mind " ("con- 
 tented with a reasonable dish ") and " Thanks 
 to God" lead on to a virtue that involves 
 nearly all the rest, viz., "Fasting long," for 
 it is in his articles that he must 
 
 " Never on his greedy belly think 
 From rising sun until alow he sink." 
 
 Lovers of quietness and good ale, be patient. 
 The last is Memory, so as not "to leave 
 something behind forgetfully." We have 
 sometimes found bad memory a boon. It 
 frees the conscience and stimulates the brain, 
 and is of singular efficacy after a tedious day. 
 Some objectors to the godliness of angling 
 may be found. Many years ago, I remember 
 to have met a superannuated preacher of some 
 rigid sect in Wales, who had exchanged quite 
 naturally his symbolical crook for rod and 
 line. A fine patriarchal vision he was when 
 going a-fishing. "Go to chapel, you young 
 fool ... go to chapel ; you're no fisherman, 
 though maybe you will become a fisher of 
 
 139
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 men," was his pastoral advice to a Sunday 
 sportsman who lost a good pike before his 
 eyes. He himself grew into a famous Sabbath 
 rod in his later days, "still," as he used to 
 say, looking back on his long career, "still 
 the only man that did not rest on the seventh 
 day." His venerable aspect and great renown 
 were long his protection in these offences. 
 But one day, an "elder," a sitter for half a 
 century in the " great seat " below the pulpit, 
 and yet virgin as to Deiinys and Walton, 
 
 quietly hinted that old might be better 
 
 employed. The spring twilight was growing 
 cold, and all the land, with its congresses of 
 mighty trees, looked solemn in the silence 
 that reaches the ear of God. A big trout 
 was tumbling in the deeps. But the old 
 man tucked his rod under his arm and left 
 the bank. Placing his rod and his catch in 
 the vestry, he entered the chapel, and, even 
 truer to his craft than the excellent Dean 
 Nowel, preached in his steaming boots. That 
 sermon, with the text " He taketh up all of 
 140
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 them with the angle," is famous still. But 
 the old man was right. He should have 
 been allowed to go on and "cast all his sins 
 into the depths." He was too feeble for the 
 excitements of the fierce Welsh oratory. Not 
 very long after he "fell asleep in peace," 
 threading a bait beside the waters. 
 
 And another reverend angler I knew in 
 Wales, whom I may not forget. There was 
 a singular finish and cadence about the 
 courses of his life. He himself would call 
 it modestly "a beautiful blank, like a fair 
 sheet of paper unsoiled by art." He was 
 born in a cottage whose wall rose sheer from 
 a bank where a little river died in the surges 
 of a tumultuous estuary. His boyhood and 
 manhood were spent partly in another cottage 
 whose garden slopes to the same river, but 
 chiefly in the river itself, he being a famous 
 truant in those days. When he came to the 
 years that bring ennui and the philosophic 
 mind, he wrote verse ; and when, according 
 to the happy Cambrian custom, he used a 
 
 141
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 bardic name, he took it from the stream 
 whose sound was ever in his ears, and which 
 being no " swan," but just a merry sand- 
 piper he tamed to suit the dainty melodies 
 of his verses. In one of his best lyrics I 
 think they are his ; anyhow, his frequent re- 
 petition made them his own he put his own 
 wild heart into the cry of the river, as it 
 turned and seemed in places to lose its way, 
 ever with its heart set towards the sea: 
 "The sea! the sea evermore." He was, he 
 said, no more than Carlyle's minnow, "Far 
 from the maine-sea deepe." Yet his soul 
 went out to the sea, to the great matters of 
 the world, ever giving these reality and colour 
 by references to the little river and its copses, 
 that furnished his house of thought with the 
 metaphors by which he lived. He was one 
 of the few genuine fishing philosophers I 
 ever knew. One who will sit through a 
 shower under a tree, discoursing, "And on 
 the world and his Creator think," is apt to 
 catch no fish. Most of my angling philosophers 
 142
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 bought their fish of the village barber, who 
 kept them in a bucket. 
 
 Some fishermen are great readers out of 
 doors, with a taste which argues (unless the 
 result of gross insensibility) no mean judg- 
 ment and knowledge of books. To know 
 what will stand the fierce outdoor light that 
 hopelessly demeans the average book is a 
 literary achievement. In this way the sun 
 is a true critic, and the only present test of 
 immortality. Sir Thomas Browne wears well 
 out of doors. So, strange to say, does Elia, 
 probably because he did late justice to Andrew 
 Marvell, though Hazlitt will have it that 
 Lamb was the worst company on a walk. 
 Among modern books, I think the sun likes 
 best Sunningwell, with its delicious quiet, 
 and that delicate book of verses lonica. 
 Richard Jefferies does not go quite well with 
 the red sun wine and all the pompous in- 
 vestiture of summer; nor, I humbly think, 
 does Thoreau. One humourist, indeed, I heard 
 of, who swore that he had killed more 
 
 143
 
 Digressions on Fish and Fishing 
 
 fish with Walden than the Limerick bend. 
 But, as a rule, the books that fill baskets 
 are not these ; they are best read away from 
 the sights and sounds which they are magically 
 fitted to recall. Others that are sweet out 
 of doors are old-fashioned poetry, and things 
 which have in them elements of weakness 
 and decay and will "grow old along with 
 you," not competing with their surroundings, 
 but soon wearing into a likeness to them, 
 as I have seen a ship's fantastic figure-head 
 lie moss-covered in an old garden among 
 the pansies. One companion will swear by 
 an odd volume of verses published by Dodsley ; 
 in fact, those eighteenth century verses will 
 sometimes gain wonderfully by the voices of 
 birds and waters which they so lack. One 
 old countryman I knew would always have 
 Culpeper by his side. But perhaps the book 
 is better away. Or let it lie among the 
 tackle and bait, where it will at least do 
 more good than "the marrow of the thigh- 
 bone of a heron." 
 144
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 HENGEST is a gardener of Kent, whom I first 
 met when amber was lingering in the maple 
 leaves of a long past autumn. He looks as 
 if he might have conquered worlds ; in fact, 
 he has chosen to conquer the individualities 
 of flowers and to leave no Roman peace 
 amongst them; and in the last of the 
 decades that are given to us, or perhaps the 
 first which we have to wrest for ourselves, he 
 admits that he has failed. Standing hardly 
 six feet high, he looks a great rather than a 
 big man. He bends he has been bending 
 all his life with a gracious stoop that also 
 expresses craft and eagerness to move, as of a 
 runner crouching at the start. His hair and 
 beard are furze-brushes ; the large, quiet eyes 
 are like sweet birds hiding therein. His 
 K 145
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 chest is so ample that to see him walking 
 reminds me of the verse : " The mountains 
 skipped like rams, and the little hills like 
 lambs." Yet he has spent all that part of 
 life which he cares to talk about, in growing 
 columbines and wistaria, in providing for 
 sweet-williams and tea roses. His gardening 
 always seems an infinite condescension. I 
 wonder how he can forbear to crush with his 
 craggy hand the little plants that are so often 
 recalcitrant. Alexander the Great listening 
 to music, or Caasar playing at love, would not 
 give a more perfect picture of repose than 
 Hengest watering the tender Malabar nut or 
 culling garden seeds on a choice August 
 eventide. With his great eyes, too, he is 
 something of a natural poet. Yet I think 
 the magnificent "overhanging firmament," the 
 white immobile or flying clouds, and the 
 glorious paths of sun and moon, impress 
 him very lightly. I could never persuade 
 him to take such delight in the silver and 
 gold of a summer twilight as he obviously 
 146
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 takes in pruning jessamine late in March, 
 turning his back upon a league of awful 
 woods set amidst delicate fields. Notwith- 
 standing, he will talk of simple garden things 
 and of his own countryside, with a sort of 
 dignified, intimate knowledge, as if verily he 
 were Groom of the Stole to Nature's self. I 
 have sometimes made far-off and, as it were, 
 purposely ill-aimed hints, that flowers were 
 rather small deer for a man of his style. His 
 replies are worthy of a Hengest who is content 
 to be called "Ichabod Larkin, Florist" with 
 the letters all reversed by the hamlet artist, 
 who has never realised that d becomes 6 
 when printed from a block. I gather that 
 his subtle trafficking in trifles was originally 
 of deliberate choice, and that the Hengest 
 lies buried alive under the coat of Ichabod 
 Larkin, as if it had had a tiny parchment 
 label with a sonorous name tied to it, like the 
 roses in the garden. He looks now a young 
 man, though he has always in a sense been 
 old, as most gardeners are perforce ; for by a 
 
 147
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 parodox of Nature, youth, that has the whole 
 of life before it, cannot contemplate with 
 equanimity the long years that are as a day's 
 sun to the surface of a lawn or the grain of 
 an oak. The old man, rather than the young 
 man, can plant (and not water with tears) a 
 tree that will never be glorious to his eyes. 
 Hengest has resolved, as he explained in one 
 of his replies, quoting almost his only author, 
 not to be "busy in actions that were done 
 under the sun, rather than those under the 
 shade." I have been sceptical at times as 
 to the complete ingenuousness of Hengest. 
 Perhaps he has been harshly driven to his 
 philosophy ? I cannot say ; but certainly 
 there are rumours ever on the lips of his 
 friends, and there is an empty scabbard 
 over the mantelpiece at his home, deceitfully 
 draped by texts; there are a few brilliant 
 buttons still to be seen amongst others on his 
 drab coat. If it is so ; if in the past he was a 
 soldier of rank, still more is his bearing to be 
 admired ; and his humble services take on 
 148
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 something of the pathos of that famous act 
 of Charles V., who, after his resignation of an 
 empire, called in vain for a servant to conduct 
 an ambassador from his presence, and himself 
 bore the candle out to the gate of the palace. 
 If I throw out any hints on this point, he says 
 that he would rather not be considered as the 
 carcass of a fine gentleman. Then he falls 
 back on his trenches. He speaks of a garden 
 as of a microcosm, laughing to scorn the 
 outsiders who count one flower like another. 
 No two flowers are alike. Out of this know- 
 ledge he has gained a kind of charity towards 
 flowers, and (I might say) a reverent humility. 
 He has come to me, wringing his hands, to 
 announce that a certain beautiful dahlia was 
 proud and would not " listen " to him. Even 
 as to weeds, he early taught me the variety 
 of their opposition, from the deep-rooted dock 
 to which deliberate siege must be laid, to 
 the speedwells that wage a guerilla warfare, 
 and the traveller's joy that with its gallant 
 flowers and plumy fruit is the light cavalry of 
 
 149
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 the weeds. As some old Puritan or imagina- 
 tive Welsh Calvinist would dwell upon the 
 world of spirits until in every detail it became 
 alive, splendid and terrible, so, yet not solely 
 in fancy, he has evolved a scheme of the 
 universe of flowers, passionate, intelligent, 
 enjoying and suffering, but hard for the 
 common eye to apprehend, because they are 
 slow with a kind of abstract slowness. The 
 result of his loving study is not in every way 
 profitable. He lets time slip away ; he seems 
 to deal in centuries and could find work 
 which would wear out seons. Years ago, 
 he lost a comfortable post because he had 
 spoiled all the gardenias by a too curious 
 observation of the difference made by plant- 
 ing gladiolas (I think they were gladiolas) in 
 their neighbourhood. But his best things 
 are prodigious. Here again his head is at 
 fault. He can only by extreme threats be 
 lured to give up his finest flowers. Out of 
 his own small cantel of the nursery he will 
 sell nothing, and hardly ever give anything: 
 150
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 it is therefore the astonishment of the 
 countryside. To several artifices this re- 
 markable perfection is ascribed. It is said, 
 for example, that when he sees a peerless 
 plant in his wanderings, he gathers a seed or 
 two, and puts them in his pocket. There the 
 seeds remain, until moist and well-favoured 
 they sprout forth to the sun. Whatever their 
 origin, these plants are even nearer than his 
 pocket to his heart. When a fire once burnt 
 house and garden, he was overwhelmed, until 
 next spring the flowers came up near the 
 ruins, sown by the flames where they 
 were cruellest. Burnishing his days with 
 patient labour, he has little need for other 
 companions than dwell among green leaves. 
 I do not believe he was ever in love with 
 anything save a rose. Certainly he never 
 hated anything but a weed. Of men he 
 rarely makes a judgment, though he once 
 remarked that gentlemen had one fault : 
 " They won't do what they are told," a vice 
 of which he is often the prey. Seeing
 
 Hengest: A Kentish Study 
 
 little society that is not floral, his charity 
 towards his fellows is exceeding great. He 
 says, despite his knowledge of bees, " a man 
 is as good as a bee, may-be," with all the air 
 of one publishing a discovery. 
 
 152
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 MAGICAL powers like those imputed to the 
 flesh of mummies abide in the languages we 
 call dead. They have the mystery of death, 
 of resurrection, too, of a perpetual life 
 in death, not due to the disentombing of 
 antiquaries, but to the loyalty of one dis- 
 tinguished class. This class of scholars truly 
 is magnificently repaid. Vital lampada 
 tradunt. Without them the lamp would 
 have fallen and expired. They, like vestals, 
 dwell apart, keep ever burning the holy fire, 
 and claim their immunities. The glories of 
 the languages haunt also their husband- 
 men. 
 
 Nothing so troubled the old Roman, 
 troubled him even in his grave, as a thought 
 that the rites of the hearth might be neglected, 
 
 153
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 and offerings to dead ancestors left unbrought. 
 Therefore a sanctity awaited the heir that 
 fulfilled these duties ; and even such a sanctity 
 clothes the scholar that cherishes their ancient 
 speech. Yet the glory about him is like 
 the glory of fire in a lampless room, that 
 "counterfeits a shade." For it is pathetic 
 that the language in which 
 
 " Saintly Camilus lived and firm Atilius died," 
 
 that the language of those who fought at 
 Marathon, should, if they have not perished, 
 no longer be transmitted with the mother's 
 milk to her son. Their posterity cannot read 
 their epitaphs. Montaigne was nursed by 
 one who spoke Latin, and he heard nothing 
 save that tongue around his cradle ; but it 
 was not in his blood ; he records, in fact, that 
 his Latin gradually degenerated, until he lost 
 the use of it. In this way, the handling of 
 Greek and Latin gives a solemnity, a touch of 
 pathos, to the scholar. But he is often poor 
 The words that would lay open the gates of 
 154
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 heaven are impotent at the tradesman's door. 
 The world calls Greek 
 
 "Greek in a hut, with water and a crust, 
 Learning, forgive us ! cinders, ashes, dust." 
 
 Still, learning is not ill paid. If it were, 
 so also would the martyr be, and mighty 
 poets that have died before their fame was 
 born. He that soweth roses must not look for 
 apples, or even poppies. " Aristotle is more 
 known than Alexander," says Democritus 
 Junior, "yet I stand not upon this; the 
 delight is what I aim at; so great pleasure, 
 such sweet content, there is in study." It is 
 much to speak the tongue that Shakespeare 
 spoke, but more perhaps to speak the tongue 
 of Greece that gave light, and Rome that gave 
 fire, to the world. The scholar has upon his 
 lips imperial accents. When I speak a line 
 of Greek I seem to taste nectar and ambrosia. 
 As in Heine's fable the eagle of Jupiter was 
 with him, antiquated and mournful though it 
 might be, in his exile on a northern island ; 
 so the eagle accompanies the scholar. 
 
 155
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 There is ever something ideal in the " dead 
 languages." They cannot be invaded, but 
 remain crystallized immortally. Ccesar semper 
 Augustus were words of incantatory effect on 
 mediaeval ears ; and the sound of Greek falls 
 freshly upon the mind, with a surprise, still 
 as great as to the scholars of the Renaissance 
 when Learning returned from her Babylonish 
 captivity. So much so that we often praise 
 the classic for a thought which in a modern 
 would perhaps draw little attention. For the 
 medium is as divine as marble ; and we 
 might say with Michelangelo, of certain 
 modern works, "If this were to become 
 marble, alas for the antiques." De Quincey 
 forgets his assumed contempt for the classical 
 world when he remembers the sound of 
 eTroyuxeue, or Consul Romanus. . . , 
 
 I remember once, travelling in a southern 
 county of England, coming across a servant 
 who, even without his melancholy, seemed 
 no ordinary man, and spoke with a kind of 
 splendour that was new to me. He was tall, 
 156
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 and had been straight, but now walked with 
 a majestic stoop, though like Vulcan he 
 limped. He was past middle age, his woes 
 were of the kind that invite expressions of 
 sympathy. On my inquiring what might be 
 his misfortune, he answered in tones so care- 
 fully modulated as to appear half satiric, 
 " Eheu ! mater mea obiit hodie. causa 
 mea3 vivendi sola senectas." The words, 
 however, seemed to carry their own balm ; 
 his face glowed continually, as we talked for 
 several minutes together, without a word that 
 would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. 
 His thoughts moved gracefully in a pomp 
 of altisonant syllables. Sometimes he spoke 
 English, but returned happily to Latin in the 
 flashes of humour with which he referred to 
 the university, when, for example, he spoke 
 of a languishing literary society (that had ex- 
 pelled him for a freak of classicism) as equalling 
 the number of the good, and no more 
 
 " vix numero stint totidem, quot 
 Thebse portarum vel divitis Ostia Nili." 
 
 157
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 He felt like a swallow kept among the 
 starlings of a cold clime, while his fellows 
 had flown eastward. . . . When I last heard 
 of him, he was earning his bread by the com- 
 position of advertisements for a firm of 
 merchants, and thus at last he found a 
 subject matter adaptable to his peculiarly 
 florid but melodious eloquence. I recognized 
 with a sigh more than one of his favourite 
 mighty words thus fallen. 
 
 In C shire, I know a hamlet (a mere 
 capful of houses) that lies, dimly seen below 
 the high-perched road, like a cluster of straw 
 beehives, under a great wood. Even these 
 few houses are divided from one another by 
 several tiny streams, that run in and out like 
 gay, live things. Thither I descended one 
 twilight from the hills, to buy honey from a 
 cottager. It was August. Across the road 
 went a stream, a tinkling chain of silver 
 beads, presently buried in trees, on which the 
 uncertain light was mixed with shade. Here 
 and there were sombre alders, noisy still with 
 158
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 the delicate southern voices of invisible birds 
 Here and there were poplars with a sound, 
 not of running water, but of rain (the shower 
 apparently dying away now and then as the 
 wind fluctuated). And in the sunset among 
 those enormous hills a bell was ringing out a 
 melancholy sweet sic transit. . . . There was 
 some light outside, but none in the low room, 
 where the beekeeper was writing. He rose 
 and greeted us with a bow. Then he left us, 
 after lighting a caudle for our good, and one 
 for his own use in a loft where the honey was 
 stored. The wooden frame, gray from the 
 touch of his hands, was contrasted with the 
 dewy, amber cells. While we were complet- 
 ing the purchase, and talking, he surprised 
 us by answering in Latin, Omnibus una 
 quies, etc., which Dryden has rendered 
 thus : 
 
 " Their toil is common, common is their sleep ; 
 They shake their wings when morn begins to 
 
 peep ; 
 
 Eush thro' the city gates without delay ; 
 Nor ends their work but with declining day." 
 
 159
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 Pronounced by a mellow elegiac voice, this 
 speech interested us profoundly. 
 
 Next day we went again with a freshened 
 memory of the Georgics. He was never once 
 at a loss, though we seldom spoke except in 
 hexameters of Virgil. He had lived a large, 
 roaming life, full of outward adventure, chiefly 
 on the plains of America. Thither he had 
 gone in his youth, accomplished in nothing 
 but books, and those Latin and Greek. Not- 
 withstanding, he had amassed great wealth. 
 Of this a mighty accident a prairie fire, or 
 some such insurrection of the elements had 
 all but despoiled him, and he came home at 
 the end of middle life to Wales. There he 
 took to bee farming. Economy and hard 
 work had made his life comfortable, and 
 might have made it luxurious, for he was said 
 to be rich. He remained unmarried. He had 
 no kinsmen. He made no friends : two aged 
 women of the hamlet were accustomed to 
 tend him in occasional sicknesses. For the 
 rest, he was contented, if not happy, with his 
 160
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 bees and a few books, mainly Delphin classics. 
 The bees would answer his call as they 
 answered the smitten brass ; and only when 
 thus engaged on a tranquil summer evening 
 did he betray a mellow complacency, except 
 when with his books. He took pleasure in 
 Claudian's verses on the sirens ; Virgil, how- 
 ever, was his dearest author. Virgil was his 
 oracle in all matters ; he practised sortes 
 VirgiliancE : to him, rhyme was reason. His 
 life was almost perfectly that of a scholar. 
 After adventure, after witnessing the downfall 
 of kings, and great peoples embattled one 
 against another, after shipwreck and scenes 
 of violent death, he concluded that 
 
 "the tears of Imogen 
 
 Are things to brood on with more ardency 
 Than the death-days of Empires." 
 
 He finds a refuge from the shadows of the 
 world among the realities of books. 
 
 But, says one, your knowledge is nothing 
 until another has acknowledged it. He con- 
 tradicts that entirely. He knows that at least 
 L 161
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 intellectual pleasure and the dulcitudes of a 
 sane self-approval are by no means like 
 snowflakes in the river, and that real joy 
 holds within itself the germs of an endless 
 self-reproduction. Electra, Aspasia, Lesbia, 
 are sweet friends to him, when Orestes and 
 Pericles and Catullus have been many cen- 
 turies underground. Cassar is nearer to him 
 than Napoleon, and Thyrsis nearer than either. 
 Experience has not impaired or clogged his 
 imagination. If it has taught him anything, 
 it has taught him the worth of silence. We 
 often found him by the river, " dazed," in 
 Virgilian phrase, " by the mighty motion of 
 the tide." He told us himself that he was 
 often "drunk with silence." In such moments, 
 as we afterwards learned, he had monitions 
 of an after life monitions arising merely, it 
 may be, from a thought that from things with 
 which he was in completest sympathy no 
 separation was possible. He was to become 
 part of the viewless winds. No writing of 
 his remains ; and it is improbable that he 
 162
 
 Two Scholars 
 
 was ever satisfied with his attempts. But, 
 with what is perhaps the true spirit of the 
 scholar, he laughs at the notion that to 
 expect the approbation of posterity is uncon- 
 soling and vain. With a touch of pleasantry, 
 he said, on one of my visits : " My door is 
 not strong enough to keep out the feeblest 
 person in the hamlet ; yet when I close it, I 
 effectually shut out the whole world ; like 
 Heinsius, I bolt the door, excluding ambition, 
 passion, desire, the children of ignorance and 
 nurslings of sloth, and in the very bosom of 
 eternity I sit down with a supreme content 
 in the company of so many famous minds, 
 that I compassionate the mighty who know 
 naught of this my felicity." Yes ! " in the 
 bosom of eternity," anticipating and making 
 little of death. When we last parted, 
 " Death," he said, " always brings into my 
 mind those closing verses of the last Eclogue, 
 
 ' Ite douium saturse venit Hesperus ite ca- 
 pelhe!"' 
 
 163
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 " Mr the well-known merchant, is building 
 
 a fine house, half a mile from the Road. Close 
 
 upon two acres of woodland have been felled, where, 
 by the way, the largest and juiciest blackberries I 
 know used to be found." London Local Newspaper. 
 
 AND in this way many suburbans have seen 
 the paradise of their boyhood effaced. The 
 building rises during some long farewell, and 
 steals away a fraction of the very sky in 
 which once we beheld Orion sink down like 
 a falling sword into the west and its line of 
 battlemented woods. Only here and there 
 a coppice will survive, blockaded by houses 
 a-row. Sometimes a well -beloved pleas- 
 aunce is left almost as it was ; the trees are 
 the same ; the voices are the same ; a silence 
 is there still ; but there is a caret somewhere 
 in ourselves or in the place. In childhood 
 164
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 we went there as often as our legs could 
 bear us so far ; oftener yet in youth ; but 
 less and less with time. Then, perhaps, we 
 travel anyway we live feverishly and 
 variously ; and only think of the old places 
 when the fire is tranquil and lights are out, 
 and "each into himself descends," or when 
 we meet one who was once a friend, or when 
 we lay open a forgotten drawer. A very 
 slender chain only binds us to the gods of 
 forest and field but binds us nevertheless. 
 Then we take the old walk, it may be, in a 
 walking suit of the best; fearful of mire; 
 carrying a field-glass too; and smoking the 
 pipe that used to seem an insult so intoler- 
 able in the great woods. We take the old 
 walk, and it seems shorter than before, a 
 walk not formidable at all, as it was in the 
 years when the end used to find us testy 
 with fatigue and over-powered by tumultuous 
 impressions ; when we ourselves thought the 
 sea itself could not be far, and the names 
 of village and hill we visited were unknown. 
 
 165
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 A railway bisects the common we cross. 
 Everything is haggard and stale ; the horizon 
 is gone ; and the spirit chafes and suffocates 
 for lack of it. (But the gorse is in flower 
 still.) Then the feet weary on gravel paths 
 downhill. On either side are fields, edged 
 by flaccid suburban grass, with an odour 
 as of tombs as though nothing fair could 
 blossom in a soil that must be the sepulchre 
 of many divinities. And again the pathway 
 is dogged by houses, interrupting the fields. 
 The former sanity and amenity of air is gone. 
 We can no longer shorten the way to the 
 next houses by a path from the willowy river- 
 side over fields, for the willows are down, 
 the fields heavily burdened with streets. 
 Another length of mean houses, neither urban 
 nor rustic, but both, where I remember the 
 wretched children's discordant admiration 
 of the abounding gold hair of a passer-by ; 
 and soon the bridge over a railway gives a 
 view across plantations of cabbage, etc. But 
 the view is comforting there is an horizon ! 
 166
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 There is an horizon barred with poplar trees 
 to the south ; the streets are behind, in the 
 north. The horizon is dear to us yet, as 
 the possible home of the unknown and the 
 greatly desired, as the apparent birthplace 
 and tomb of setting and rising suns; from 
 under it the clouds mount, and under it 
 again they return after crossing the sky. 
 A mystery is about it as when we were 
 children playing upon a broad, treeless com- 
 mon, and actually long continued running 
 in pursuit of the horizon. 
 
 After three miles in all we leave the turn- 
 pike, to follow a new but grassy road out 
 among the fields, under lines of acacia and 
 poplar and horse-chestnut last. Once more 
 the ploughland shows us the twinkling flight 
 of pewits ; the well, and the quaking water 
 uplifted in a shining band where it touches 
 the stones ; the voices of sparrows while the 
 trees are dripping in the dawn ; and over- 
 head the pompous mobilisation of cloud 
 armadas, so imposing in a country where 
 
 167
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 they tilt against ebony boughs. ... In a 
 thicket some gipsies have encamped, and 
 two of them superb youths, with favours 
 of raven hair blowing across the dusky roses 
 of their cheeks have jumped from their 
 labour to hear the postman reading their 
 letters. Several pipe-sucking bird-catchers 
 are at watch over an expanse of nets. We 
 cross a ploughland half within the sovereignty 
 of the forest shadow. Here is the wood ! 
 
 The big wood we called it. So well we 
 knew it, and for so many years wandered 
 here with weeping like Imogen's, and with 
 laughter like Yorick's laughter that when 
 past years bulk into the likeness of a forest, 
 through which the memory takes its pleasure 
 at eventide, 
 
 " Or in clear dream or solemn vision," 
 
 it is really this wood that we see, under a 
 halcyon sky. 
 
 It covered two acres in the midst of 
 ploughland ; but we thought of it as enor- 
 168
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 mous, because in it we often lost one 
 another; it had such diversity; it made so 
 genuine a solitude. The straight oaks rising 
 branchless for many feet expanded and 
 then united boughs in a firmament of leaves. 
 It seemed far enough from London for feelings 
 of security. But even of that our thoughts 
 have changed ; for the houses are fearfully 
 close a recollection of them lingers in the 
 heart of the wood; and perhaps they will 
 devour it also. . . . Who shall measure 
 the sorrow of him that hath set his heart 
 upon that which the world hath poAver to 
 destroy, and hath destroyed? Even to-day 
 the circuit of a cemetery is cutting into 
 the field where we gathered buttercups be- 
 fore the dignity of knickerbockers. . . . And 
 here was a solitude. We cannot summon 
 up any thought or reverie which had not 
 in this wood its nativity. Tis we have 
 changed ! And if we could paint, and 
 wished to make a picture of our youth 
 with its seriousness and its folly, we should 
 
 169
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 paint in this wood, instead of in a hostel- 
 yard, another Don Quixote watching his 
 armour all night after the false accolade. 
 
 The dark earth itself was pleasant to handle 
 earth one might wish to be buried in 
 and had the healthy and special quality of 
 wild earth : upon it you could rest deliciously. 
 (Compare the artificial soil of a London com- 
 mon with it!) Out of this rose up trees 
 that preserved their wild attitudes. The 
 age-fallen or tempest-uprooted oak tree lay 
 where it dropped, or hung balanced in the 
 boughs of others. Tenderest bramble spray 
 or feeler of honeysuckle bridged those gaps 
 in the underwood that served as paths. 
 And the winds were husbandmen, reapers 
 and sowers thereof. Though, indeed, the 
 trees were ordered with an incongruous 
 juxta-position of birch and oak and elm, it 
 seemed to us a fragment of the primaeval 
 forest left by a possible good fortune at the 
 city verge. But it was more than this. 
 With its lofty roof and the mysterious flashes 
 
 I/O
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 of light in the foliaged clerestory, with its 
 shapely boles in cluster and colonnade, and 
 the glimpses of bright white sky that came 
 and went among the leaves, the forest had 
 a real likeness to a temple. Shelley's "Ode 
 to the West Wind " and passages of Adonais 
 were the ediscenda of our devotions. 
 
 Here we saw the grim jewellery of winter 
 on fallen leaf and bow of grass ; gold and 
 purple colouring inseparable from the snow 
 upon boughs overhead ; the hills far away 
 sombre and yet white with snow ; and on 
 the last of the icy mornings, the sward 
 beaming with melted frost, and the frost only 
 persisting on the ample shadows with which 
 the trees stamp the grass. Here we saw 
 the coming of Spring, when the liquid orbed 
 leaves of toad -flax crept out of a barren 
 stone. Full of joy we watched here the 
 " sweet and twenty " of perfect Summer, 
 when the matin shadows were once deleted, 
 and the dew-globes evaporated from the 
 harebell among the fern, or twinkled as they 
 
 171
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 fell silently underfoot. But the favourite 
 of memory is a certain flower - shadowing 
 tree whose branches had been earthward 
 bent by the swinging of boyish generations. 
 Foliage and shadow muffled the sight, and 
 seated there in profound emerald moss, the 
 utmost you achieved was to find a name 
 for each of the little thicket flowers. If 
 you raised your head you would have seen 
 in a tumultuous spasm of sunshine say at 
 mid March the blue smoke upcoiling be- 
 tween the boughs of overhanging trees far off 
 and dissipated in the dashing air ; the trees 
 shining in their leaflessuess like amber and 
 dark agate ; above that the woodland seared 
 in black upon the heated horizon blue; 
 but you never raised your head. For hours 
 you could here have peace, among the shadows 
 embroidered with flowers of the colour of 
 gold. All which tantalises sun and clouds 
 and for ever inaccessible horizon was locked 
 out ; only (like a golden bar across a gloomy 
 coat of arms) one sunbeam across the brown 
 172
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 wood; thrushes and blackbirds warbled un- 
 seen. The soul this made a cage bird of 
 it. The eagle's apotheosis in the fires of the 
 sun was envied not. What a subtle diversity 
 of needled herbs and grass there is in the 
 plainest field carpet ! all miniature after close 
 cropping of rabbit and sheep; auriferous 
 dandelion, plumed self-heal, dainty trefoil, 
 plantain, delicate feathered grasses, starry 
 blossomed heather, illuminations of tormentil, 
 unsearchable moss forests, and there jewelled 
 insects, rosy centaury; nearly all in flower 
 together, and the whole not deep enough to 
 hide a field-mouse. 
 
 A dim solitude thus circumscribed liked 
 us hugely. We loved not the insolent and 
 importunate splendours of perfect light. 
 Cobwebs and wholesome dust we needed 
 some of both in the corners of our minds. 
 They mature the wine of the spirit perhaps. 
 We would always have had, as it were, a 
 topmost and nearly inaccessible file of tomes, 
 which we never read, but often planned to 
 
 J73
 
 Broken Memories 
 
 read records peradventure of unvictorious 
 alchymist and astrologer. Thither a sun- 
 beam never penetrated and unmasked. The 
 savour of paraffin and brick-dust should 
 never cling about it. Unfortunate (we 
 thought) is he who has no dusty and never- 
 explored recesses in his mind! 
 
 174
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 THAT road could lead nobody to Rome. 
 The only village that it passed was a mere 
 gap in the long hedge, holding a parson, two 
 or three fools, and a sense of ancient peace. 
 Then it entered gently into the secret places 
 of the land. On either side the fields and 
 woods lay open ; surprised but not alarmed 
 by so tranquil an intrusion, they were beheld 
 in all their divinity. The hedges of the road 
 were so low, that only at a hill-top was the 
 waving honeysuckle seen against the silver 
 sky of noon or the azure of night. Over- 
 head the oaks joined hands; through their 
 close leaves the fractions of shining sky came 
 and went like stars while I moved ; and 
 when the foliage of one tree met without 
 touching the next, a blade of sky, like a 
 
 175
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 sword gently unsheathed, was described by 
 the long lines of scalloped leaves. The trees 
 were silent, saving when they found a voice 
 in one of the birds whose faint songs are part 
 of the melodious quiet of summer. 
 
 Not too often, cottages grew (they seemed 
 to grow) beside the road, and their gossipy 
 hollyhocks curtsied in looking over the hedge. 
 Against the white wall, brave peonies looked 
 cool. Rose bushes stood at the borders of 
 the path in command of wild-flower beds, 
 that nevertheless slipped through with a 
 strand of delicate belled toadflux, or one 
 blossom of pimpernel like a volcanic flame be- 
 tween the pebbles. Sometimes the precious- 
 looking Morello cherries lay ardent as flame 
 and cool as dew in the heat of a southern 
 wall. In another place the latent splendour 
 of fifty summers had escaped and spent itself 
 in hiding the cottage with roses. A yew tree 
 more rarely stood at one side, and within its 
 influence, though not within its shadow, was 
 a nunnery of white flowers. The cottages 
 176
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 of grotesque mixtures of black oak and 
 whitened stone, or of golden brick and the 
 sombre inhabitants were in contrast with 
 the exuberant many-coloured, many-thoughted 
 flowers, which yet, at times, arrayed these 
 men and women with a divine garment. 
 Here and there, larger houses shone through 
 a skilful veil of holm-oaks and bays. They 
 never seemed to be aboriginal like the 
 cottages, but to be visitors, lightly planted in 
 the soil. For some distance around these, 
 the wild trees had withdrawn, standing, at 
 the edges of a road, with that continuous 
 motion and murmur of their branches that 
 gives these sentinels a timorous expression, 
 as if they had crept out into the light and, 
 becoming afraid, tried vainly to retire. 
 
 Every two or three miles a by-road set out 
 on either side, underneath elms and abeles, 
 and after carrying the eye delightfully for a 
 space, deceived it at last among the shadows 
 of many trees. 
 
 One by-road went to a lifeless mill, a tall 
 M 177
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 house with upper windows of ample prospect 
 Above the wheel the waters no longer slid 
 fast with awful repose, but cried and leapt 
 through the broken flood-gates into a pool 
 in the shadow of steep banks and underwood. 
 The house was peopled only by the beautiful 
 machinery of polished wood, now still and 
 morose. The wheel too was still. Callosities 
 of dry moss on the spokes, little by little, took 
 the place of the weed which the river had 
 combed into such excellence. And I could 
 not but wonder that these things had, accord- 
 ing to Hecuba's wish, voices " in hands and 
 feet and hair," the eloquence of death. The 
 place would have been sad, had it not been 
 for the meadow cranesbill at the door, a 
 mournful flower, but here, as part of the 
 ceremonial of decay by which this desola- 
 tion was made perfect, it left one thought, 
 "How beautiful is death." Each evening, 
 just when the first nightjar was skimming 
 the wood, the sedge-warblers began to sing 
 all together round the pool. The song might 
 178
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 have been the abstract voice of some old 
 pain, feebly persistent. It went far into the 
 night with a power of ghostly alarms, and 
 attuned to such thoughts as come when night 
 in certain places is malign, reverses the sweet 
 work of the day, and gives the likeness of a 
 dragon to the pleasant corner of a wood. 
 The birds were full of prelusive dark sayings 
 about the approaching night. 
 
 The footpath by the mill was fading away, 
 for it now led to nowhere whither few cared 
 to follow it. Possibly the last step may soon 
 linger among the encroaching flowers, the 
 rank growths of willowherb, tansy, and betony 
 which, poor enough by themselves, make the 
 thicket sumptuous by their profusion. And 
 who took the first step ? Someone in the 
 days when, wherever you went you came to 
 nowhere. For there are few footpaths that 
 are new, and those that are old may be 
 drowned or cut to pieces, or may be incor- 
 porated (as De Quincey has said) in some- 
 one's kitchen, but seem never to die, and the 
 
 179
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 more they are down-trodden the more they 
 flourish. Curiosity as to whether Shakespeare 
 ever started one is idle. They are footprints, 
 perhaps, of the immortals. They are vestiges 
 of that older day when this land also " was 
 in Arcady." Even to-day they may be seen, 
 after rising and falling in the fields, to be 
 gathered into that far country again, where 
 hills like clouds and clouds like hills are 
 mingled beneath the white sun of noon. 
 
 One of these paths entered a lane which 
 suddenly ceased, and round the corner was 
 the kingdom of heaven at my feet the 
 Kentish weald, just grass and corn and trees, 
 and like jewels on that delicate cloth, a white 
 hamlet or an auburn farmhouse with oast- 
 houses around. These conical buildings give 
 parts of Kent a unique geniality. They are 
 of many hues dull red, yellow, and the 
 colour of pomegranate rind; they may be 
 seen of the tint of good toast Something 
 of the ruddiness of earth, as it is found in 
 ripe wheat, in October leaves, and in the 
 1 80
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 lotus flower, has penetrated the brick, and 
 expresses the lust of the earth for a gaudier 
 flora. The oast-house is indeed among the 
 Lares on the vast hearth of the sun, and on 
 gloomiest days it has its divinity. In a fine 
 haze that genial, and, as it were, indoor 
 humour of Kent is complete. The haze 
 which comes with sudden heat after rain in 
 April, and that with which September, or 
 even June, chooses to veil her splendour, 
 both are elements in the characteristic scenes. 
 They have also a special goodness for the 
 mind, for those above all 
 
 " That soar but never roam." 
 
 By seeming to confine the outlook on which 
 their silken fringes have fallen, they enlarge 
 the sight, which an infinite view is apt to 
 distract and dissipate. Shutting out the few 
 miles immediately about us, they let in the 
 worlds and starry spaces to the inward eye. 
 When they cannot do this, they build up 
 an incomparable prison ; and as the inmate 
 
 181
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 moves, the moving walls invite him to a 
 happy expectation of more than liberty. In 
 all seasons the presence of the oast-house 
 amid the haze is like that of a wood fire such 
 as burns continually in many farmhouses ; so 
 that even in March the hollows are like great 
 kitchens, with a gentle sense of home. In 
 autumn I have seen gipsies and other 
 vagrants going to sleep under the moon. 
 There was an oast-house at the end of their 
 lane, two more on the slopes above. Their 
 fire was out and their clothes were thin. 
 Yet there seemed nothing extraordinary in 
 the act. I wondered why I was going farther 
 to sleep. The maternity of the earth is never 
 so attractive as at that time and in Kent. 
 Fruit abounds ; there are rabbits for the car- 
 nivorous. A sparkling liquor may be lifted 
 from the spring. The heather or grass is an 
 airy, dry and comfortable palliasse, and out 
 of doors you are never late for breakfast. 
 So well was I entertained, that I almost 
 breathed a grace when I tasted the air or 
 182
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 saw the tench rolling at nightfall among the 
 lilies. 
 
 Near the mill another path branched into 
 a park. The sea of turf was occupied by 
 great oaks and the shadows of oaks. In one 
 part the gardener had planted cypress, justly 
 confident in the effect of these pillars of dark- 
 ness seen against a hot blue sky, auburn roofs 
 and the pale grass. The shadows of the trees 
 fell upon me as I entered the park, and filled 
 me with solemn thought. I cannot walk 
 under trees without a vague powerful feel- 
 ing of reverence. Calmly persuasive, they 
 ask me to bow my head to the unknown 
 god. In the evening, especially, when the 
 main vocation of sight is to suggest what 
 eyes cannot see, the spacious and fragrant 
 shadow of oak or pine is a temple which 
 seems to contain the very power for whose 
 worship it is spread. 
 
 For a time the sky was grey with thoughts 
 of rain. The small birds twittered nervously 
 in the wood below ; the ring doves came 
 
 183
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 home gleaming in the humid horizontal 
 beams. But presently all that was left of 
 the grey was a tenderness in the golden 
 light From among the trees I could see 
 a pool at the foot of a sloping lawn, and a 
 swan moving to and fro so nobly, that I 
 should have thought she was borne by the 
 water, if that had not been as still as ice. 
 The colours of the sunset were doubled in 
 the pool with something added, as things 
 are seen in dreams. The turf had a 
 perfume peculiarly nourishing to the fancy, 
 and which, giving contentment, is on the 
 side of the old doctors who commended 
 the alimentary "virtues" of scents. 
 
 As quietly as the night was coming, and 
 as benignly, something floated under the 
 trees, turning an unknown face towards me ; 
 then passed away as softly as the day was 
 fading. I just saw the pale glorious face. 
 A bevy of dainty spaniels followed her 
 soberly, as if to make up for the state 
 which did not encircle her out of doors. 
 184
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 She herself was, like a cherub by Reynolds, 
 only a perfect face flying in the air; and 
 about her was a sense of inaudible harps. 
 . . . Could she be the face that had been 
 as a benediction, when I stared and was 
 baffled and stared again into the meaning- 
 less London crowd? For a day or two 
 such a remembered face has sometimes 
 been a guardian genius of my ways ; the 
 delirium of seeing the thousand faces again 
 when I had fallen asleep was comforted by 
 the one, though utterly unknown, and never 
 in reality to reappear. Was she one of those 
 holy ones met again by divine good chance ? 
 She, too, has revisited my closed eyes. Or 
 perhaps she was the "angel" of a heroine 
 from my childish books, one of those of 
 whom I fancied that I should seek their 
 faces in the shadows, and should not be 
 happy, or contented with my sorrow, until 
 I saw them once more. At times she has 
 come to me as that sweet saint, Dwynwen 
 of Wales. Unfortunate in her innocent 
 
 185
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 passion, Dwynwen was restored to tranquillity 
 in sleep. The friendly Deity also promised 
 her the fulfilment of any three wishes. She 
 chose therefore that the sentence against her 
 hostile lover should be revoked ; that all true 
 lovers should triumph or be healed ; and that 
 she (it was her only ungenerous choice) should 
 never wish to be married. She afterwards 
 took the veil and became a saint, and if the 
 true lover called upon her, he was cured or 
 satisfied. She became traditionally an Aphro- 
 dite, beautiful and unpolluted. And a saint, 
 gently befriending pure affection, my appari- 
 tion certainly must have been. But although 
 visionary smiles have answered me when I 
 called upon her spirit as Dwynwen, she 
 came in the end to embody perfectly my 
 fancies of Isoud with the White Hands. 
 In the "Morte D'arthur" she and her gal- 
 lant, mournful brother, the knight Kehydius, 
 are but as ghosts of desperate longing amid 
 all those knights and queens, so brilliant 
 even in their tragedies. Kehydius loved La 
 1 86
 
 Isoud with the White Hands 
 
 Beale Isoud ; but, if unsuccessful, he was 
 happy in comparison with his white sister. 
 "He," says Malory, "died for love." She lived 
 on, as if death scorned such easy victory. 
 In the "Morte D'arthur," she fades out of 
 sight, and, like a revenant in her faint life, 
 we may think of her as continuing so, and 
 here crossing my path among these fields, 
 in the likeness of a girl, merely pure and 
 beautiful, and a little sad, like Isoud with 
 the White Hands. 
 
 TCRNBULL AKD SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
 
 " Not a thought is expressed, nor a single view 
 of the world described in it, but has come naked 
 and direct from his own consciousness and obser- 
 vation of, and reflection on, life. What is ugly 
 and infamous in the world to the writer, what is 
 rare and beautiful to him, is here set down as 
 directly and simply as words allow. And, apart 
 from anything else, it is a real delight to read a 
 pure delicate prose, undulled and undiluted with 
 phrases that are simply convenient counters with- 
 out beauty of sound, or fineness and precision of 
 meaning. All these nine sketches and impressions 
 have at least one thought, one feeling in common 
 the love of all things simple and pure and child- 
 like; the hatred of all things mean, stereotyped, 
 pretentious. They are all the work of a mind as 
 sensitive to beauty as a child, and as consciously 
 critical of beauty as an artist. Filled with that 
 mystical haunting sense that time's defeat of all 
 man's works and ventures is yet somehow the 
 triumph of his inmost desires and imagination 
 time placid, impalpable, slowly heaping its ages 
 over a world mossed like a stone, and yet leaving 
 youth undimmed and beauty undefiled. It is 
 simplicity, whether of innocence or of wisdom, that 
 most attracts him. Beauty and tenderness. These 
 strangely individual, intensely quiet stories." The 
 Times. 
 
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