On grass, on gravel, in the sun,And now beneath the shade,They went in pleasant Kensington.
On grass, on gravel, in the sun,And now beneath the shade,They went in pleasant Kensington.
On grass, on gravel, in the sun,And now beneath the shade,They went in pleasant Kensington.
On grass, on gravel, in the sun,
And now beneath the shade,
They went in pleasant Kensington.
Let it remind you of the ancient Kensington Gardens, Fresh from the oven, it is, I assure you,tibi primo confisum. I am still resident in Gordon Square, and very little certain whether I shall or not continue so. The work does, however, well enough.
May 16, 1851.
This has lingered, I believe, chiefly because I desired toadd some self-introducing phrase to your wife, the precise form of which was difficult; so pray give what you think becoming an ancient ally of her husband’s—best wishes—submission? For to a certain extent, even at this distance, old friends have to make their graceful withdrawal. It seems to me, at any rate on this side the water, that a wife is a sort of natural enemy to a man’s friends.
I, like you, have jumped over a ditch for the fun of the experiment, and would not be disinclined to be once again in a highway with my brethren and companions. ButSpartam nactus es, hanc orna. And you, I should think, though amongst the poor sinful blackguards of yearly multiplying convicts and convictidæ, may make some pretty thing out of your Sparta.
Nothing is very good anywhere, I am afraid. I could have gone cracked last year with one thing or another, I think, but the wheel comes round.
To ——
January 1852.
I certainly am free to tell you that while I do fully think that the Christian religion is the best, or perhaps the only really good religion that has appeared, on the other hand, as to how it appeared, I see all possible doubt. Whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the gospels, is profoundly dubious. St. Paul wrote his epistles, I should think, pretty certainly, but he hadseennext to nothing. The religion of those epistles is very different from that of the gospels, or of St. James’s epistle. The whole origin of Christianity is lost in obscurity; if the facts are to be believed, it is simply on trust, because the religion of which they profess to be the origin is a good one. But its goodness is not proved by them; we find it out for ourselves by the help of good people, good books, &c. &c. Such is my present feeling, and the feeling of many.But I don’t urge it on any one, or mention it, except when I am specially asked, and seldom then. You remember you complained of my silence.
I mean to wait, but at present that’s what I think. A great many intelligent and moral people think Christianity a bad religion. I don’t, but I am not sure, as at present preached, it is quite the truth. Meantime, ‘the kingdom of heaven cometh not of observation,’ but ‘is in ourselves.’
To ——
London: January 1852.
The single life, according to the doctrine of compensation, has some superiorities, as, for example, that of being morepainful, which, in a state of things that offers but little opportunity for elevatedaction, may be considered a temptation to the aspiring temper. To live in domestic comfort, toiling in some business not in itself of any great use, merely for the sake of bread for the household, does look at times a little ignoble, or at any rate unchivalrous. The Sydney project had some little relish of chivalry in it. What I looked forward to originally, in case of not going to Sydney, was unmarried poverty and literary work.
To ——
London: January 1852.
People who have got at all accustomed to write as authors are so incapable of writing, or even speaking, except ‘in character,’ and will run through a whole list of dramatis personæ as occasion occurs, without giving you a chance of seeing what they really are off the stage; if they try to be sincere, it often makes bad worse. There! that is one of the mischiefs and miseries of authorship which deters me. Ten years hence, perhaps! which would notbe at all too late; but if never, no matter. I have myself been rather spoilt by somewhatover-quicksighted men, and thus have got into a perverse habit of hiding. Have you looked at my sometime pamphlet?15I should not write it now, you must know, I am wiser; but it meant something at the time.
Pictorial-ness, yes;that, when it becomes a wonderful vision of all things, is the ‘Spirit of the Universe.’ The pictorial attitude is not a good one for one’s continuous life, but for a season it transports one out of reality.
February 21, 1852.
I may perhaps be idle now; but when I was a boy, between fourteen and twenty-two throughout, I may say, you don’t know how much regular drudgery I went through. Holidays after holidays, when I was at school, after a week or so of recreation, which very rarely came in an enjoyable form to me, the whole remaining five or six weeks I used to give to regular work at fixed hours. That wasn’t so very easy for a schoolboy, spending holidays, not at home, but with uncles, aunts, and cousins. All this, and whatever work, less rigorous through pretty regular, that has followed since during the last ten years, has been, so far as external results go, perhaps a mere blank and waste; nothing very tangible has come of it; but still it is some justification to me for being less strict with myself now. Certainly, as a boy, I had less of boyish enjoyment of any kind whatever, either at home or at school, than nine-tenths of boys, at any rate of boys who go to school, college, and the like; certainly, even as a man I think I have earned myself some title to live for some little interval, I do not say in enjoyment, but without immediate devotion to particular objects; on matters as it were of business.
A bad style is as bad as bad manners, and manners you admit do mean something. Things really ill-written it does one a little harm to read. Would you forgive bad music because it was well meant? discord because concordantly intended?
Sunday Morning, London: March 1852.
Shall I begin by recommending patience about all questions, moral, mystical, &c.? It is not perhaps simply one’s business in life to ‘envisager’ the most remarkable problems of humanity and the universe simply for the sole benefit of having so done; still we may be well assured that only time can work out any sort of answer to them for us. ‘Solvitur ambulando.’ Meantime, in defence of silence, I have always an impression that what is taken to talk with is lost to act with; you cannot speak your wisdom and have it.
It is rain, rain, rain, and universal umbrellas travelling churchward. I meant to get another walk to Chelsea to see Mrs. Carlyle: but the waters are covering the face of the New Road, and the omnibuses, doubtless, would be full.
All things become clear to me by work more than by anything else. Any kind of drudgery will help one out of the most uncommon either sentimental or speculative perplexity; the attitude of work is the only one in which one can see things properly. One may be afraid sometimes of destroying the beauty of one’s dreams by doing anything, losing sight of what perhaps one will not be able to recover; it need not be so.
As to mysticism, to go along with it even counter to fact and to reason may sometimes be tempting, though to do so would take me right away off the terra firma of practicable duty and business into the limbo of unrevealed things, the forbidden terra incognita of vague hopes andhypothetical aspirations. But when I lose my legs, I lose my head; I am seized with spiritual vertigo and meagrims unutterable.
It seems His newer willWe should not think at all of Him, but turn,And of the world that He has given us makeWhat best we may.
It seems His newer willWe should not think at all of Him, but turn,And of the world that He has given us makeWhat best we may.
It seems His newer willWe should not think at all of Him, but turn,And of the world that He has given us makeWhat best we may.
It seems His newer will
We should not think at all of Him, but turn,
And of the world that He has given us make
What best we may.
What we are we know (says the beloved Apostle, does he not?), or at any rate, can make some sort of guess, which is much more than we can about what we shall be: howbeit we know, or rather hope, that if we have done something here, it will count for something there; nor will those be nothing to each other there that have consorted faithfully here.
Lay not your hand upon the veil of the inner sanctuary, to try and lift it up; go, thou proselyte of the gate, and do thy service where it is permitted thee. Is it for nothing, but for the foolish souls of men to be discontented and repine and whimper at, that He made this very tolerably beautiful earth, with its logic and its arithmetic, and its exact and punctual multifarious arrangements, &c. &c.? Is it the end and object of all finite creation that sentimental human simpletons may whine about their infinite longings? Was it ordered that twice two should make four, simply for the intent that boys and girls should be cut to the heart that they do not make five? Be content, when the veil is raised, perhaps they will make five! who knows?
April 3.
As for the objects of life, heaven knows! they differ with one’s opportunities. (a) Work for others—political, mechanical, or as it may be. (b) Personal relations. (c) Making books, pictures, music, &c. (d) Living in one’s shell. ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ I speakas a philosopher, otherwise fool; but you may look at things under some such heads.
It is odd that I was myself in a most Romanizing frame of mind yesterday, which I very rarely am. I was attracted by the spirituality of it. But what has hitherto always come before me as the truth is rather that—
It seems His newer willWe should not think at all of Him, but turn,And of the world that He has given us makeWhat best we can.
It seems His newer willWe should not think at all of Him, but turn,And of the world that He has given us makeWhat best we can.
It seems His newer willWe should not think at all of Him, but turn,And of the world that He has given us makeWhat best we can.
It seems His newer will
We should not think at all of Him, but turn,
And of the world that He has given us make
What best we can.
To ——
Rugby: April 11.
I am enjoying myself here. Jowett, the great Balliol tutor, is here. This morning I walked out into broad and breezy pasture-fields, eastwards, looking towards Naseby, where perhaps we shall ride to-morrow. Rugby, you know, lies not far from Naseby field, near the source of the Shakespearian Avon; a branch railway to Peterborough runs up through the wide pasture-slopes, pretty well past the very sources. We are on the blue lias formation, from which, westward, you pass at Coventry into the red sand-stone, which stretches away to Liverpool; while eastward, within four miles, the Northamptonshire villages are all built of their native yellow-brown oolite. The Northamptonshire peasantry, also, in their knee-breeches and fustian gaiters, have a yellow-brown oolitish appearance.
In the Warwickshire physiognomy I can frequently detect the dross of Shakespeare. You have another bright, light-haired, sanguine, less bilious type, which perhaps comes of the Northmen—for our villages all hereabouts, Barby, Kilsby, Buckby, Naseby, including Rugby itself, have the characteristic Danishbytermination.
April 13.
Well, we went our long ride: not quite to Naseby, but to the Hemplow Hills, a little short of it, starting at 2.30 and returning at seven. All through fields with chains of gates, broad grassy swells, where the Northamptonshire beef is fed, or used to be, for London markets; Shairp on his hunter, the pride of his heart, leading the way, and opening the gates, and commanding in chief. A party of six we were—two ladies, Mrs. Arnold and Miss Shairp; Conington was one. At 7.30 we reassembled, to dine with Shairp. Our course was eastward towards the sources of Avon; the wells of Avon are just below Naseby village, I believe. The whole country is a sheet of pasture (rather brown at present), over which you may well imagine King Charles and his Cavaliers riding south-westward from Leicester, to run their heads against the wall of Cromwell’s army.
The country is singularly destitute of gentlemen’s houses, and has a solitary unoccupied appearance, with its wide fields and its field-roads. A railway, however, with a single line of rails, and, I believe, three trains a day, looking quite afraid of what it is doing, runs up through them from Rugby to Stamford.
To ——
London: May 24.
The flowers are a great deal too beautiful for me, and I a great deal too unbeautiful for them. However, here they are now standing in my unartificial arrangement, glorifying this unfortunate apartment. I have not failed to find out the scarlet azalea. I have put it in a wine-glass with the lily, which, after all, is my chief friend.
How beautiful the falling leaves of flowers are! not decayed, not even as yet decaying, but ripe, full to their fullest of growth and adolescence. I cannot prevail upon myselfto empty the wine-glass, the surface of whose water is covered with fallen geranium petals, though there are still buds enough opening and opened to make a fair show. The kalmias still survive; they will perhaps last till Thursday—sufficiently, at least, to satisfy the eyes of a lover of falling petals.
People should not beverysceptical about things in general. ‘Wen Gott betrügt, ist wohl betrogen.’ There are plenty of good things in the world, and good persons. Fitness is a great deal, but truth is a great deal more. If things are good, we ought to accept them as such; looking atthem, and not thinking of our own fitness.
To R. W. Emerson, Esq.
London: June 17, 1852.
My dear Emerson,—I hope a letter from me will not be a disagreeable visitor, though it is to be all about business, and that entirely my own business. The business is, that I entertain thoughts of emigrating to your side of the water. University Hall has not flourished; I have left it some months. I am at present merely Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, here, the stipend for which honourable position amounts to some 30l.a year. Meantime, like the rest of mankind, I wish to be married and am as good or bad as engaged. Is there any chance, do you think, of earning bread and water, if not bread and flesh, anywhere between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, by teaching Latin, Greek, or English?
I am half loath now, after nearly three years’ apprenticeship, to quit this great town. It is almost like beginning to go down from a high mountain top which it has taken long hours to get to. But I dare say it would be for the best.
To ——
Weybridge: July 30, 1852.
Last night I came down here with Farrer, and walked straight away from the station to Chertsey. We went to St. Anne’s Hill, where there is a fine view; from it you can see Richmond and Betchworth beeches: thence across the ferry to Laleham, where Arnold lived before he went to Rugby, and where I had never been. We found our way to the house he used to occupy—a solidish red brick place, with a narrow turn for a carriage in front, and a tolerable garden alongside: it is unoccupied. We also looked in at the church window, and made out the pulpit whence he used to fulminate, and saw four gravestones in the churchyard over his mother, two sisters, and another, to me unknown, relation. We got back through the meadows only about 9P.M.
And this morning I have been to Chobham. I took the Ordnance Map, and walked, I should say, about eight miles, by road and by common, through sun and shade, specially the former, and about half-past twelve found myself seated under a beech avenue, looking out over wide heathy banks to the westward, and to the southward into a sort of wide, tolerably rich, and treey upper valley; the avenue leading to iron gates at the south-east end; some clumps of Scotch firs on the heath to the north, visible through the opposite rows of beeches. Really a very pretty place indeed. I walked down under the house, and on into the village, and refreshed myself at a tavern called the Sun, and walked on three miles to the railway, and so home. Certainly Chobham is a remarkably nice place—so green and rich, close to the very edge of the wide waste heath, and looking abroad far over all the expanse from Bagshot to Epsom, and I know not what more. The distance was dull in the heat of noon.
There is a letter from Emerson, with general encouragement towards America, and urging a preliminary visit by ‘first ship.’
To R. W. Emerson, Esq.
London: August 6, 1852.
Your letter came, a welcome surprise to me, on Saturday last. My best way of thanking you is, I believe, simply to accept your kind proposal. You will, I dare say, not refuse to recognise thanks in that shape. My ‘first ship,’ however, cannot, I fear, be earlier than the very middle of October. Come, however, I shall, and avail myself of your proffered hospitalities.
To ——
Min-y-don, Colwyn: August 1852.
I have been making farewell visits16to my relations. I have ridden seven miles and back to Conway, and walked two miles and back to make a call; all of which, however, scarcely keeps me properly awake in this dreamy seaside place, and dreamy late summer weather. I am continually stopping to look out at the view through the window before my table. I look out on the Little Orme’s Head, with its rounded weather-beaten limestone rocks. We are here half-way between Abergele and Conway, the sea a hundred yards off, with a bit of a lawn between, ending in a gorse hedge on the top of a steep bank going down direct upon the shore, in which bank now runs the line of railway; the Little Orme’s Head, four miles off, closing the view of the coast.