Books: Pages from a Journal with Other Papers
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Mark Rutherford >> Pages from a Journal with Other Papers
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12 Transcribed from the 1901 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
PAGES FROM A JOURNAL, WITH OTHER PAPERS.
Contents:
A Visit to Carlyle in 1868
Early Morning in January
March
June
August
The End of October
November
The Break-up of a Great Drought
Spinoza
Supplementary Note on the Devil
Injustice
Time Settles Controversies
Talking about our Troubles
Faith
Patience
An Apology
Belief, Unbelief, and Superstition
Judas Iscariot
Sir Walter Scott's Use of the Supernatural
September, 1798
Some Notes on Milton
The Morality of Byron's Poetry. "The Corsair"
Byron, Goethe, and Mr. Matthew Arnold
A Sacrifice
The Aged Three
Conscience
The Governess's Story
James Forbes
Atonement
My Aunt Eleanor
Correspondence between George, Lucy, M.A., and Hermione Russell, B.A.
Mrs. Fairfax
A VISIT TO CARLYLE IN 1868
On Saturday, the 22nd of March, 1868, my father and I called on Carlyle
at 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, with a message from one of his intimate
friends.
We were asked upstairs at once, and found Carlyle at breakfast. The
room was large, well-lighted, a bright fire was burning, and the window
was open in order to secure complete ventilation. Opposite the
fireplace was a picture of Frederick the Great and his sister. There
were also other pictures which I had not time to examine. One of them
Carlyle pointed out. It was a portrait of the Elector of Saxony who
assisted Luther. The letters V.D.M.I.AE. ("Verbum Dei Manet in
AEternum") were round it. Everything in the room was in exact order,
there was no dust or confusion, and the books on the shelves were
arranged in perfect EVENNESS. I noticed that when Carlyle replaced a
book he took pains to get it level with the others. The furniture was
solid, neat, and I should think expensive. I showed him the letter he
had written to me eighteen years ago. It has been published by Mr.
Froude, but it will bear reprinting. The circumstances under which it
was written, not stated by Mr. Froude, were these. In 1850, when the
Latter-day Pamphlets appeared--how well I remember the eager journey to
the bookseller for each successive number!--almost all the reviews
united in a howl of execration, criticism so called. I, being young,
and owing so much to Carlyle, wrote to him, the first and almost the
only time I ever did anything of the kind, assuring him that there was
at least one person who believed in him. This was his answer:-
"CHELSEA, 9th March, 1850.
"MY GOOD YOUNG FRIEND,--I am much obliged by the regard you entertain
for me; and do not blame your enthusiasm, which well enough beseems your
young years. If my books teach you anything, don't mind in the least
whether other people believe it or not; but do you for your own behoof
lay it to heart as a real acquisition you have made, more properly, as a
real message left with you, which YOU must set about fulfilling,
whatsoever others do! This is really all the counsel I can give you
about what you read in my books or those of others: PRACTISE what you
learn there; instantly and in all ways begin turning the belief into a
fact, and continue at that--till you get more and ever more beliefs,
with which also do the like. It is idle work otherwise to write books
or to read them.
"And be not surprised that 'people have no sympathy with you'; that is
an accompaniment that will attend you all your days if you mean to lead
an earnest life. The 'people' could not save you with their 'sympathy'
if they had never so much of it to give; a man can and must save
himself, with or without their sympathy, as it may chance.
"And may all good be with you, my kind young friend, and a heart stout
enough for this adventure you are upon; that is the best 'good' of all.
"I remain, yours very sincerely,
"T. CARLYLE."
Carlyle had forgotten this letter, but said, "It is undoubtedly mine.
It is what I have always believed . . . it has been so ever since I was
at college. I do not mean to say I was not loved there as warmly by
noble friends as ever man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has
ever since then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of
rubbish, thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother
me--turned round with amazement and said, 'What, you alive yet?' . . .
While I was writing my Frederick my best friends, out of delicacy, did
not call. Those who came were those I did not want to come, and I saw
very few of them. I shook off everything to right and left. At last
the work would have killed me, and I was obliged to take to riding,
chiefly in the dark, about fourteen miles most days, plunging and
floundering on. I ought to have been younger to have undertaken such a
task. If they were to offer me all Prussia, all the solar system, I
would not write Frederick again. No bribe from God or man would tempt
me to do it."
He was re-reading his Frederick, to correct it for the stereotyped
edition. "On the whole I think it is very well done. No man perhaps in
England could have done it better. If you write a book though now, you
must just pitch it out of window and say, 'Ho! all you jackasses, come
and trample on it and trample it into mud, or go on till you are
tired.'" He laughed heartily at this explosion. His laughter struck
me--humour controlling his wrath and in a sense ABOVE it, as if the
final word were by no means hatred or contempt, even for the jackass. "
. . . No piece of news of late years has gladdened me like the victory
of the Prussians over the Austrians. It was the triumph of Prussian
over French and Napoleonic influence. The Prussians were a valiant,
pious people, and it was a question which should have the most power in
Germany, they or Napoleon. The French are sunk in all kinds of filth.
Compare what the Prussians did with what we did in the Crimea. The
English people are an incredible people. They seem to think that it is
not necessary that a general should have the least knowledge of the art
of war. It is as if you had the stone, and should cry out to any
travelling tinker or blacksmith and say, 'Here, come here and cut me for
the stone,' and he WOULD cut you! Sir Charles Napier would have been a
great general if he had had the opportunity. He was much delighted with
Frederick. 'Frederick was a most extraordinary general,' said Sir
Charles, and on examination I found out that all that Sir Charles had
read of Frederick was a manual for Prussian officers, published by him
about 1760, telling them what to do on particular occasions. I was very
pleased at this admiration of Frederick by Sir Charles . . .
"Sir John Bowring was one of your model men; men who go about imagining
themselves the models of all virtues, and they are models of something
very different. He was one of your patriots, and the Government to
quiet him sent him out to China. When he got there he went to war with
a third of the human race! He, the patriot, he who believed in the
greatest-happiness principle, immediately went to war with a third of
the human race!" (Great laughter from T.C.) "And so far as I can make
out he was all wrong.
"The Frederick is being translated into German. It is being done by a
man whose name I have forgotten, but it was begun by one of the most
faithful friends I ever had, Neuberg. I could not work in the rooms in
the offices where lay the State papers I wanted to use, it brought on
such a headache, but Neuberg went there, and for six months worked all
day copying. He was taken ill, and a surgical operation was badly
performed, and then in that wild, black weather at the beginning of last
year, just after I came back from Mentone, the news came to me one night
he was dead."
On leaving Carlyle shook hands with us both and said he was glad to have
seen us. "It was pleasant to have friends coming out of the dark in
this way."
Perhaps a reflection or two which occurred to me after this interview
may not be out of place. Carlyle was perfectly frank, even to us of
whom he knew but little. He did not stand off or refuse to talk on any
but commonplace subjects. What was offered to us was his best. And yet
there is to be found in him a singular reserve, and those shallow
persons who taunt him with inconsistency because he makes so much of
silence, and yet talks so much, understand little or nothing of him. In
half a dozen pages one man may be guilty of shameless garrulity, and
another may be nobly reticent throughout a dozen volumes. Carlyle feels
the contradictions of the universe as keenly as any man can feel them.
He knows how easy it is to appear profound by putting anew the riddles
which nobody can answer; he knows how strong is the temptation towards
the insoluble. But upon these subjects he also knows how to hold his
tongue; he does not shriek in the streets, but he bows his head. He has
found no answer--he no more than the feeblest of us, and yet in his
inmost soul there is a shrine, and he worships.
Carlyle is the champion of morals, ethics, law--call it what you like--
of that which says we must not always do a thing because it is pleasant.
There are two great ethical parties in the world, and, in the main, but
two. One of them asserts the claims of the senses. Its doctrine is
seductive because it is so right. It is necessary that we should in a
measure believe it, in order that life may be sweet. But nature has
heavily weighted the scale in its favour; its acceptance requires no
effort. It is easily perverted and becomes a snare. In our day nearly
all genius has gone over to it, and preaching it is rather superfluous.
The other party affirms what has been the soul of all religions worth
having, that it is by repression and self-negation that men and States
live.
It has been said that Carlyle is great because he is graphic, and he is
supposed to be summed up in "mere picturesqueness," the silliest of
verdicts. A man may be graphic in two ways. He may deal with his
subject from the outside, and by dint of using strong language may
"graphically" describe an execution or a drunken row in the streets.
But he may be graphic by ability to penetrate into essence, and to
express it in words which are worthy of it. What higher virtue than
this can we imagine in poet, artist, or prophet?
Like all great men, Carlyle is infinitely tender. That was what struck
me as I sat and looked in his eyes, and the best portraits in some
degree confirm me. It is not worth while here to produce passages from
his books to prove my point, but I could easily do so, specially from
the Life of Sterling and the Cromwell. {10} Much of his fierceness is
an inverted tenderness.
His greatest book is perhaps the Frederick, the biography of a hero
reduced more than once to such extremities that apparently nothing but
some miraculous intervention could save him, and who did not yield, but
struggled on and finally emerged victorious. When we consider
Frederick's position during the last part of the Seven Years' War, we
must admit that no man was ever in such desperate circumstances or
showed such uncrushable determination. It was as if the Destinies, in
order to teach us what human nature can do, had ordained that he who had
the most fortitude should also encounter the severest trial of it. Over
and over again Frederick would have been justified in acknowledging
defeat, and we should have said that he had done all that could be
expected even of such a temper as that with which he was endowed. If
the struggle of the will with the encompassing world is the stuff of
which epics are made, then no greater epic than that of Frederick has
been written in prose or verse, and it has the important advantage of
being true. It is interesting to note how attractive this primary
virtue of which Frederick is such a remarkable representative is to
Carlyle, how MORAL it is to him; and, indeed, is it not the sum and
substance of all morality? It should be noted also that it was due to
no religious motive: that it was bare, pure humanity. At times it is
difficult not to believe that Carlyle, notwithstanding his piety, loves
it all the more on that account. It is strange that an example so
salutary and stimulating to the poorest and meanest of us should be set
by an unbelieving king, and that my humdrum existence should be secretly
supported by "Frederick II. Roi de Prusse."
* * *
Soon after Carlyle died I went to Ecclefechan and stood by his grave.
It was not a day that I would have chosen for such an errand, for it was
cold, grey, and hard, and towards the afternoon it rained a slow,
persistent, wintry rain. The kirkyard in Ecclefechan was dismal and
depressing, but my thoughts were not there. I remembered what Carlyle
was to the young men of thirty or forty years ago, in the days of that
new birth, which was so strange a characteristic of the time. His books
were read with excitement, with tears of joy, on lonely hills, by the
seashore and in London streets, and the readers were thankful that it
was their privilege to live when he also was alive. All that excitement
has vanished, but those who knew what it was are the better for it.
Carlyle now is almost nothing, but his day will return, he will be put
in his place as one of the greatest souls who have been born amongst us,
and his message will be considered as perhaps the most important which
has ever been sent to us. This is what I thought as I stood in
Ecclefechan kirkyard, and as I lingered I almost doubted if Carlyle
COULD be dead. Was it possible that such as he could altogether die?
Some touch, some turn, I could not tell what or how, seemed all that was
necessary to enable me to see and to hear him. It was just as if I were
perplexed and baffled by a veil which prevented recognition of him,
although I was sure he was behind it.
EARLY MORNING IN JANUARY
A warm, still morning, with a clear sky and stars. At first the hills
were almost black, but, as the dawn ascended, they became dark green, of
a peculiarly delicate tint which is never seen in the daytime. The
quietude is profound, although a voice from an unseen fishing-boat can
now and then be heard. How strange the landscape seems! It is not a
variation of the old landscape; it is a new world. The half-moon rides
high in the sky, and near her is Jupiter. A little way further to the
left is Venus, and still further down is Mercury, rare apparition, just
perceptible where the deep blue of the night is yielding to the green
which foretells the sun. The east grows lighter; the birds begin to
stir in the bushes, and the cry of a gull rises from the base of the
cliff. The sea becomes responsive, and in a moment is overspread with
continually changing colour, partly that of the heavens above it and
partly self-contributed. With what slow, majestic pomp is the day
preceded, as though there had been no day before it and no other would
follow it!
MARCH
It is a bright day in March, with a gentle south-west wind. Sitting
still in the copse and facing the sun it strikes warm. It has already
mounted many degrees on its way to its summer height, and is regaining
its power. The clouds are soft, rounded, and spring-like, and the white
of the blackthorn is discernible here and there amidst the underwood.
The brooks are running full from winter rains but are not overflowing.
All over the wood which fills up the valley lies a thin, purplish mist,
harmonising with the purple bloom on the stems and branches. The buds
are ready to burst, there is a sense of movement, of waking after sleep;
the tremendous upward rush of life is almost felt. But how silent the
process is! There is no hurry for achievement, although so much has to
be done--such infinite intricacy to be unfolded and made perfect. The
little stream winding down the bottom turns and doubles on itself; a
dead leaf falls into it, is arrested by a twig, and lies there content.
JUNE
It is a quiet, warm day in June. The wind is westerly, but there is
only just enough of it to waft now and then a sound from the far-off
town, or the dull, subdued thunder of cannon-firing from ships or forts
distant some forty miles or more. Massive, white-bordered clouds, grey
underneath, sail overhead; there was heavy rain last night, and they are
lifting and breaking a little. Softly and slowly they go, and one of
them, darker than the rest, has descended in a mist of rain, blotting
out the ships. The surface of the water is paved curiously in green and
violet, and where the light lies on it scintillates like millions of
stars. The grass is not yet cut, and the showers have brought it up
knee-deep. Its gentle whisper is plainly heard, the most delicate of
all the voices in the world, and the meadow bends into billows, grey,
silvery, and green, when a breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across
it. The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught,
and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the
blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in
the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past
the ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and
sea from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they
mean. The chance visitor, or he who looks now and then, never
understands them. While I have lain here, the clouds have risen, have
become more aerial, and more suffused with light; the horizon has become
better defined, and the yellow shingle beach is visible to its extremest
point clasping the bay in its arms. The bay itself is the tenderest
blue-green, and on the rolling plain which borders it lies intense
sunlight chequered with moving shadows which wander eastwards. The wind
has shifted a trifle, and comes straight up the Channel from the
illimitable ocean.
AUGUST
A few days ago it was very hot. Afterwards we had a thunderstorm,
followed by rain from the south-west. The wind has veered a point
northerly, and the barometer is rising. This morning at half-past five
the valley below was filled with white mist. Above it the tops of the
trees on the highest points emerged sharply distinct. It was
motionless, but gradually melted before the ascending sun, recalling
Plutarch's "scenes in the beautiful temple of the world which the gods
order at their own festivals, when we are initiated into their own
mysteries." Here was a divine mystery, with initiation for those who
cared for it. No priests were waiting, no ritual was necessary, the
service was simple--solitary adoration and perfect silence.
As the day advances, masses of huge, heavy clouds appear. They are well
defined at the edges, and their intricate folds and depths are
brilliantly illuminated. The infinitude of the sky is not so impressive
when it is quite clear as when it contains and supports great clouds,
and large blue spaces are seen between them. On the hillsides the
fields here and there are yellow and the corn is in sheaves. The birds
are mostly dumb, the glory of the furze and broom has passed, but the
heather is in flower. The trees are dark, and even sombre, and, where
they are in masses, look as if they were in solemn consultation. A
fore-feeling of the end of summer steals upon me. Why cannot I banish
this anticipation? Why cannot I rest and take delight in what is before
me? If some beneficent god would but teach me how to take no thought
for the morrow, I would sacrifice to him all I possess.
THE END OF OCTOBER
It is the first south-westerly gale of the autumn. Its violence is
increasing every minute, although the rain has ceased for awhile. For
weeks sky and sea have been beautiful, but they have been tame. Now for
some unknown reason there is a complete change, and all the strength of
nature is awake. It is refreshing to be once more brought face to face
with her tremendous power, and to be reminded of the mystery of its
going and coming. It is soothing to feel so directly that man,
notwithstanding his science and pretentions, his subjugation of steam
and electricity, is as nothing compared with his Creator. The air has a
freshness and odour about it to which we have long been strangers. It
has been dry, and loaded with fine dust, but now it is deliciously wet
and clean. The wind during the summer has changed lightly through all
the points of the compass, but it has never brought any scent save that
of the land, nothing from a distance. Now it is charged with messages
from the ocean.
The sky is not uniformly overcast, but is covered with long horizontal
folds of cloud, very dark below and a little lighter where they turn up
one into the other. They are incessantly modified by the storm, and
fragments are torn away from them which sweep overhead. The sea, looked
at from the height, shows white edges almost to the horizon, and
although the waves at a distance cannot be distinguished, the tossing of
a solitary vessel labouring to get round the point for shelter shows how
vast they are. The prevailing colour of the water is greyish-green,
passing into deep-blue, and perpetually shifting in tint. A quarter of
a mile away the breakers begin, and spread themselves in a white sheet
to the land.
A couple of gulls rise from the base of the cliffs to a height of about
a hundred feet above them. They turn their heads to the south-west, and
hover like hawks, but without any visible movement of their wings. They
are followed by two more, who also poise themselves in the same way.
Presently all four mount higher, and again face the tempest. They do
not appear to defy it, nor even to exert themselves in resisting it.
What to us below is fierce opposition is to them a support and delight.
How these wonderful birds are able to accomplish this feat no
mathematician can tell us. After remaining stationary a few minutes,
they wheel round, once more ascend, and then without any effort go off
to sea directly in the teeth of the hurricane.
NOVEMBER
A November day at the end of the month--the country is left to those who
live in it. The scattered visitors who took lodgings in the summer in
the villages have all departed, and the recollection that they have been
here makes the solitude more complete. The woods in which they wandered
are impassable, for the rain has been heavy, and the dry, baked clay of
August has been turned into a slough a foot deep. The wind, what there
is of it, is from the south-west, soft, sweet and damp; the sky is
almost covered with bluish-grey clouds, which here and there give way
and permit a dim, watery gleam to float slowly over the distant
pastures. The grass for the most part is greyish-green, more grey than
green where it has not been mown, but on the rocky and broken ground
there is a colour like that of an emerald, and the low sun when it comes
out throws from the projections on the hillside long and beautifully
shaped shadows. Multitudes of gnats in these brief moments of sunshine
are seen playing in it. The leaves have not all fallen, down in the
hollow hardly any have gone, and the trees are still bossy, tinted with
the delicate yellowish-brown and brown of different stages of decay.
The hedges have been washed clean of the white dust; the roads have been
washed; a deep drain has just begun to trickle and on the meadows lie
little pools of the clearest rainwater, reflecting with added loveliness
any blue patch of the heavens disclosed above them. The birds are
silent save the jackdaws and the robin, who still sings his
recollections of the summer, or his anticipations of the spring, or
perhaps his pleasure in the late autumn. The finches are in flocks, and
whirl round in the air with graceful, shell-like convolutions as they
descend, part separating, for no reason apparently, and forming a second
flock which goes away over the copse. There is hardly any farm-work
going on, excepting in the ditches, which are being cleaned in readiness
for the overflow when the thirsty ground shall have sucked its fill.
Under a bank by the roadside a couple of men employed in carting stone
for road-mending are sitting on a sack eating their dinner. The roof of
the barn beyond them is brilliant with moss and lichens; it has not been
so vivid since last February. It is a delightful time. No demand is
made for ecstatic admiration; everything is at rest, nature has nothing
to do but to sleep and wait.
THE BREAK-UP OF A GREAT DROUGHT
For three months there had been hardly a drop of rain. The wind had
been almost continuously north-west, and from that to east.
Occasionally there were light airs from the south-west, and vapour rose,
but there was nothing in it; there was no true south-westerly breeze,
and in a few hours the weather-cock returned to the old quarter. Not
infrequently the clouds began to gather, and there was every sign that a
change was at hand. The barometer at these times fell gradually day
after day until at last it reached a point which generally brought
drenching storms, but none appeared, and then it began slowly to rise
again and we knew that our hopes were vain, and that a week at least
must elapse before it would regain its usual height and there might be a
chance of declining. At last the disappointment was so keen that the
instrument was removed. It was better not to watch it, but to hope for
a surprise. The grass became brown, and in many places was killed down
to the roots; there was no hay; myriads of swarming caterpillars
devoured the fruit trees; the brooks were all dry; water for cattle had
to be fetched from ponds and springs miles away; the roads were broken
up; the air was loaded with grit; and the beautiful green of the hedges
was choked with dust. Birds like the rook, which fed upon worms, were
nearly starved, and were driven far and wide for strange food. It was
pitiable to see them trying to pick the soil of the meadow as hard as a
rock. The everlasting glare was worse than the gloom of winter, and the
sense of universal parching thirst became so distressing that the house
was preferred to the fields. We were close to a water famine! The
Atlantic, the source of all life, was asleep, and what if it should
never wake! We know not its ways, it mocks all our science. Close to
us lies this great mystery, incomprehensible, and yet our very breath
depends upon it. Why should not the sweet tides of soft moist air cease
to stream in upon us? No reason could be given why every green herb and
living thing should not perish; no reason, save a faith which was blind.
For aught we KNEW, the ocean-begotten aerial current might forsake the
land and it might become a desert.
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