Books: Pages from a Journal with Other Papers
M >>
Mark Rutherford >> Pages from a Journal with Other Papers
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12
DIARY.
January 1, 1838.--Three days ago she died. Henceforth there is no
living creature to whom my existence is of any real importance.
Crippled as she was, she could never have married. I might have held
her as long as she lived. She could have expected no love but mine.
God forgive me! Perhaps I did unconsciously rejoice in that disabled
limb because it kept her closer to me. Now He has taken her from me. I
may have been wicked, but has He no mercy? "I would speak to the
Almighty, and I desire to reason with God." An answer in anger could
better be borne than this impregnable silence.
January 3rd.--A day of snow and bitter wind. There were very few at the
grave, and I should have been better pleased if there had been none.
What claim had they to be there? I have come home alone, and they no
doubt are comforting themselves with the reflection that it is all over
except the half-mourning. Her death makes me hate them. Mr. Maxwell,
our rector, told me when my child was ill to remember that I had no
right to her. "Right!" what did he mean by that stupid word? How
trouble tries words! All I can say is that from her birth I had owned
her, and that now, when I want her most, I am dispossessed. "Self,
self"--I know the reply, but it is unjust, for I would have stood up
cheerfully to be shot if I could have saved her pain. Doubly unjust,
for my passion for her was a blessing to her as well as to me.
January 6th.--Henceforth I suppose I shall have to play with people, to
pretend to take an interest in their clothes and their parties, or, with
the superior sort, to discuss politics or books. I care nothing for
their rags or their gossip, for Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, or Mr.
James Montgomery. I must learn how to take the tip of a finger instead
of a hand, and to accept with gratitude comfits when I hunger for bread-
-I, who have known--but I dare say nothing even to myself of my hours
with him--I, who have heard Sophy cry out in the night for me; I, who
have held her hand and have prayed by her bedside.
January 10th.--I must be still. I have learned this lesson before--that
speech even to myself does harm. If I admit no conversation nor debate
with myself, I certainly will not admit the chatter of outsiders. Mr.
Maxwell called again to-day. "Not a syllable on that subject," said I
when he began in the usual strain. He then suggested that as this house
was too large for me, and must have what he called "melancholy
associations," I should move. He had suggested this before, when my
husband died. How can I leave the home to which I was brought as a
bride? how can I endure the thought that strangers are in our room, or
in that other room where Sophy lay? Mr. Maxwell would think it
sacrilege to turn his church into an inn, and it is a worse sacrilege to
me to permit the profanation of the sanctuary which has been consecrated
by Love and Death. I do not know what might happen to me if I were to
leave. I have been what I am through shadowy nothings which other
people despise. To me they are realities and a law. I shall stay where
I am. "A villa," forsooth, on the outskirts of the town! My existence
would be fractured: it will at least preserve its continuity here.
Across the square I can see the house in which I was born, and I can
watch the shadow of the church in the afternoon slowly crossing the
churchyard. The townsfolk stand in the street and go up and down it
just as they did forty years ago--not the same persons, but in a sense
the same people. My brother will call me extravagant if I remain here.
He buys a horse and does not consider it extravagant, and my money is
not wasted if I spend it in the only way in which it is of any value to
me.
January 12th.--I had thought I could be dumb, but I cannot. My sorrow
comes in rushes. I lift up my head above the waves for an instant, and
immediately I am overwhelmed--"all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone
over me." My nights are a terror to me, and I fear for my reason. That
last grip of Sophy's hand is distinctly on mine now, palpable as the
pressure of a fleshly hand could be. It is strange that without any
external circumstances to account for it, she and I often thought the
same things at the same moment. She seemed to know instinctively what
was passing in my mind, so that I was afraid to harbour any unworthy
thought, feeling sure that she would detect it. Blood of my blood was
she. She said "goodbye" to me with perfect clearness, and in a quarter
of an hour she had gone. In that quarter of an hour there could not be
the extinction of so much. Such a creature as Sophy could not
instantaneously NOT BE. I cannot believe it, but still the volume of my
life here is closed, the story is at an end; what remains will be
nothing but a few notes on what has gone before.
January 21st.--I went to church to-day for the first time since the
funeral. Mr. Maxwell preached a dull, doctrinal sermon. Whilst my
husband and Sophy lived, I was a regular attendant at church, and never
thought of disputing anything I heard. It did not make much impression
on me, but I accepted it, and if I had been asked whether I believed it,
I should have said, "Certainly." But now a new standard of belief has
been set up in me, and the word "belief" has a different meaning.
February 3rd.--Whenever I saw anything beautiful I always asked Tom or
Sophy to look. Now I ask nobody. Early this morning, after the storm
in the night, the sky cleared, and I went out about dawn through the
garden up to the top of the orchard and watched the disappearance of the
night in the west. The loveliness of that silent conquest was
unsurpassable. Eighteen months ago I should have run indoors and have
dragged Tom and Sophy back with me. I saw it alone now, and although
the promise in the slow transformation of darkness to azure moved me to
tears, I felt it was no promise for me.
March 1st.--Nothing that is PRESCRIBED does me any good. I cannot leave
off going to church, but the support I want I must find out for myself.
Perhaps if I had been born two hundred years ago, I might have been
caught by some strong enthusiastic organisation and have been a private
in a great army. A miserable time is this when each man has to grope
his way unassisted, and all the incalculable toil of founders of
churches goes for little or nothing. . . . I do not pray for any more
pleasure: I ask only for strength to endure, till I can lie down and
rest. I have had more rapture in a day than my neighbours and relations
have had in all their lives. Tom once said to me that he would sooner
have had twenty-four hours with me as his wife than youth and manhood
with any other woman he ever knew. He said that, not when we were first
married, but a score of years afterwards. I remember the place and the
hour. It was in the garden one morning in July, just before breakfast.
It was a burning day, and massive white clouds were forming themselves
on the horizon. The storm on that day was the heaviest I recollect, and
the lightning struck one of our chimneys and dashed it through the roof.
His passion was informed with intellect, and his intellect glowed with
passion. There was nothing in him merely animal or merely rational. . .
. To endure, to endure! Can there be any endurance without a motive?
I have no motive.
March 10th.--My sister and my brother-in-law came to-day and I wished
them away. Now that my husband is dead I discover that the frequent
visitors to our house came to see him and not me. There must be
something in me which prevents people, especially women, from being
really intimate with me. To be able to make friends is a talent which I
do not possess, and if those who call on me are prompted by kindness
only, I would rather be without them. The only attraction towards me
which I value is that which is irresistible. Perhaps I am wrong, and
ought to accept with thankfulness whatever is left to me if it has any
savour of goodness in it. I have no right to compare and to reject. . .
I provide myself with little maxims, and a breath comes and sweeps them
away. What is permanent behind these little flickerings is black night:
that is the real background of my life.
April 24th.--I have been to London, and on Easter Sunday I went to High
Mass at a Roman Catholic Church. I was obliged to leave, for I was
overpowered and hysterical. Were I to go often my reason might be
drowned, and I might become a devotee. And yet I do not think I should.
If I could prostrate myself at a shrine I should want an answer. When I
came out into the open air I saw again the PLAINNESS of the world: the
skies, the sea, the fields are not in accord with incense or gorgeous
ceremonies. Incense and ceremonies are beyond the facts, and to the
facts we must cleave, no matter how poor and thin they may be.
May 5th.--If I am ill, I shall depend entirely on paid service. God
grant I may die suddenly and not linger in imbecility. So much of me is
dead that what is left is not worth preserving. Nearly everything I
have done all my life has been done for love. I shall now have to act
for duty's sake. It is an entire reconstruction of myself, the
insertion of a new motive. I do not much believe in duty, nor, if I
read my New Testament aright, did the Apostle Paul. For Jesus he would
do anything. That sacred face would have drawn me whither the Law would
never have driven me.
May 7th.--It is painful to me to be so completely set aside. When Tom
was alive I was in the midst of the current of affairs. Few men, except
Maxwell, come to the house now. My property is in the hands of
trustees. Tom continually consulted me in business matters. I have
nothing to look after except my house, and I sit at my window and see
the stream of life pass without touching me. I cannot take up work
merely for the sake of taking it up. Nobody would value it, nor would
it content me. How I used to pity my husband's uncle, Captain
Charteris! He had been a sailor; he had fought the French; he had been
in imminent danger of shipwreck, and from his youth upwards perpetual
demands had been made upon his resources and courage. At fifty he
retired, a strong, active man; and having a religious turn, he helped
the curate with school-treats and visiting. He pined away and died in
five years. The bank goes on. I have my dividends, but not a word
reaches me about it.
October 10th.--Five months, I see, have passed since I made an entry in
my diary. What a day this is! The turf is once more soft, the trees
and hedges are washed, the leaves are turning yellow and are ready to
fall. I have been sitting in the garden alone, reading the forty-ninth
chapter of Genesis. I must copy the closing verses. It does me good to
write them.
"And Jacob charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my
people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of
Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which
is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the
field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place. There
they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and
Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field
and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. And when
Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet
into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his
people." There is no distress here: he gathers up his feet and
departs. Perhaps our wild longings are unnatural, and yet it seems but
nature NOT to be content with what contented the patriarch. Anyhow,
wherever and whatever my husband and Sophy are I shall be. This at
least is beyond dispute.
October 12th.--I do not wish to forget past joys, but I must simply
remember them and not try to paint them. I must cut short any yearning
for them.
October 20th.--We do not say the same things to ourselves with
sufficient frequency. In these days of book-reading fifty fine thoughts
come into our heads in a day, and the next morning are forgotten. Not
one of them becomes a religion. In the Bible how few the thoughts are,
and how incessantly they are repeated! If my life could be controlled
by two or three divine ideas, I would burn my library. I often feel
that I would sooner be a Levitical priest, supposing I believed in my
office, than be familiar with all these great men whose works are
stacked around me.
October 22nd.--Sometimes, especially at night, the thought not only that
I personally have lost Tom and Sophy, but that the exquisite fabric of
these relationships, so intricate, so delicate, so highly organised,
could be cast aside, to all appearance so wastefully, is almost
unendurable. . . . I went up to the moor on the top of the hill this
morning, where I could see, far away, the river broaden and lose itself
in the Atlantic. I lay on the heather looking through it and listening
to it.
October 23rd.--The 131st Psalm came into my mind when I was on the moor
again. "Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too
high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that
is weaned of its mother: my soul is even as a weaned child."
October 28th--Tom once said to me that reasoning is often a bad guide
for us, and that loyalty to the silent Leader is true wisdom. Wesley,
when he was in trouble, asked himself "whether he should fight against
it by thinking, or by not thinking of it," and a wise man told him "to
be still and go on." A certain blind instinct seems to carry me
forward. What is it? an indication of a purpose I do not comprehend? an
order given by the Commander-in-Chief which is to be obeyed although the
strategy is not understood?
November 3rd.--Palmer, my maid, who has been with me ever since I began
to keep house, was very good-looking at one-and-twenty. When she had
been engaged to be married about a twelvemonth, she burned her face and
the burn left a bad scar. Her lover found excuses for breaking off the
engagement. He must have been a scoundrel, and I should like to have
had him whipped with wire. She was very fond of him. She had an offer
of marriage ten years afterwards, but she refused. I believe she feared
lest the scar, seen every day, would make her husband loathe her. Her
case is worse than mine, for she never knew such delights as mine.
She has subsisted on mere friendliness and civility. "Oh," it is
suggested at once to me, "you are more sensitive than she is." How dare
I say that? How hateful is the assumption of superior sensitiveness as
an excuse for want of endurance!
November 4th.--Ellen Charteris, my husband's cousin, belongs to a Roman
Catholic branch of the family, and is an abbess. I remember saying to
her that I wondered that she and her nuns could spend such useless
lives. She replied that although she and all good Catholics believe in
the atonement of Christ, they also believe that works of piety in excess
of what may be demanded of us, even if they are done in secret, are a
set-off against the sins of the world. In this form the doctrine has
not much to commend itself to me, and it is assumed that the nuns' works
are pious. But in a sense it is true. "The very hairs of your head are
all numbered." The fall of a grain of dust is recorded.
November 7th--A kind of peace occasionally visits me. It is not the
indifference begotten of time, for my husband and my child are nearer
and dearer than ever to me. I care not to analyse it. I return to my
patriarch. With Joseph before him, the father, who had refused to be
comforted when he thought his son was dead, gathered up his feet into
the bed and slept.
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GEORGE LUCY M.A., AND HIS GODCHILD, HERMIONE
RUSSELL, B.A.
My Dear Hermione,--I have sent you my little volume of verse
translations into English, and you will find appended a few attempts at
Latin and Greek renderings of favourite English poems. You must tell me
what you think of them, and you must not spare a single blunder or
inelegance. I do not expect any reviews, and if there should be none it
will not matter, for I proposed to myself nothing more than my own
amusement and that of my friends. I would rather have thoroughly good
criticism from you than a notice, even if it were laudatory, from a
magazine or a newspaper. You have worked hard at your Latin and Greek
since we read Homer and Virgil, and you have had better instruction than
I had at Winchester. These trifles were published about three months
ago, but I purposely did not send you a copy then. You are enjoying
your holiday deep in the country, and may be inclined to pardon that
incurable old idler, your godfather and former tutor, for a waste of
time which perhaps you would not forgive when you are teaching in
London. Verse-making is out of fashion now. Goodbye. I should like to
spend a week with you wandering through those Devonshire lanes if I
could carry my two rooms with me and stick them in a field.
Affectionately,
G. L.
My Dear Godfather,--The little Musae came safely. My love to you for
them, and for the pretty inscription. I positively refuse to say a
single syllable on your scholarship. I have deserted my Latin and
Greek, and they were never good enough to justify me in criticising
yours. I have latterly turned my attention to Logic, History, and Moral
Philosophy, and with the help of my degree I have obtained a situation
as teacher of these sciences. I confess I do not regret the change.
They are certainly of supreme importance. There is something to be
learned about them from Latin and Greek authors, but this can be
obtained more easily from modern writers or translations than by the
laborious study of the originals. Do not suppose I am no longer
sensible to the charm of classical art. It is wonderful, but I have
come to the conclusion that the time spent on the classics, both here
and in Germany, is mostly thrown away. Take even Homer. I admit the
greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but do tell me, my dear
godfather, whether in this nineteenth century, when scores of urgent
social problems are pressing for solution, our young people ought to
give themselves up to a study of ancient legends? What, however, are
Horace, Catullus, and Ovid compared with Homer? Much in them is
pernicious, and there is hardly anything in them which helps us to live.
Besides, we have surely enough in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and
Milton, to say nothing of the poets of this century, to satisfy the
imagination of anybody. Boys spend years over the Metamorphoses or the
story of the wars of AEneas, and enter life with no knowledge of the
simplest facts of psychology. I look forward to a time not far distant,
I hope, when our whole paedagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and
Latin will then occupy the place which Assyrian or Egyptian hieroglyphic
occupies now, and children will be directly prepared for the duties
which await them.
I have in preparation a book which I expect soon to publish, entitled
Positive Education. It will appear anonymously, for society being
constituted as it is, I am afraid that my name on the title-page would
prevent me from finding employment. My object is to show how the moral
fabric can be built up without the aid of theology or metaphysics. I
profess no hostility to either, but as educational instruments I believe
them to be useless. I begin with Logic as the foundation of all
science, and then advance by easy steps (a) to the laws of external
nature commencing with number, and (b) to the rules of conduct, reasons
being given for them, with History and Biography as illustrations. One
modern foreign language, to be learned as thoroughly as it is possible
to learn it in this country, will be included. I desire to banish all
magic in school training. Everything taught shall be understood. It is
easier, and in some respects more advantageous, not to explain, but the
mischief of habituating children to bow to the unmeaning is so great
that I would face any inconvenience in order to get rid of it. All
kinds of objections, some of them of great weight, may be urged against
me, but the question is on which side do they preponderate? Is it no
objection to our present system that the simple laws most necessary to
society should be grounded on something which is unintelligible, that we
should be brought up in ignorance of any valid obligation to obey moral
precepts, that we should be unable to give any account of the commonest
physical phenomena, that we should never even notice them, that we
should be unaware, for example, of the nightly change in the position of
planets and stars, and that we should nevertheless busy ourselves with
niceties of expression in a dead tongue, and with tales about Jupiter
and Juno? For what glorious results may we not look when children from
their earliest years learn that which is essential, but which now, alas!
is picked up unmethodically and by chance? I cannot help saying all
this to you, for your Musae arrived just as my youngest brother came
home from Winchester. He was delighted with it, for he is able to write
very fair Latin and Greek. That boy is nearly eighteen. He does not
know why the tides rise and fall, and has never heard that there has
been any controversy as to the basis of ethics.
Your affectionate godchild,
HERMIONE.
My Dear Hermione,--Your letter was something like a knock-down blow. I
am sorry you have abandoned your old friends, and I felt that you
intended to rebuke me for trifling. A great deal of what you say I am
sure is true, but I cannot write about it. Whether Greek and Latin
ought to be generally taught I am unable to decide. I am glad I learned
them. My apology for my little Musae must be that it is too late to
attempt to alter the habits in which I was brought up. Remember, my
dear child, that I am an old bachelor with seventy years behind me last
Christmas, and remember also my natural limits. I am not so old,
nevertheless, that I cannot wish you God-speed in all your undertakings.
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
My Dear Godfather,--What a blunderer I am! What deplorable want of
tact! If I wanted your opinion on classical education or my scheme I
surely might have found a better opportunity for requesting it. It is
always the way with me. I get a thing into my head, and out it comes at
the most unseasonable moment. It is almost as important that what is
said should be relevant as that it should be true. Well, the mistake is
made, and I cannot unmake it. I will not trouble you with another
syllable--directly at any rate--about Latin and Greek, but I do want to
know what you think about the exclusion of theology and metaphysics from
the education of the young. I must have DEBATE, so that before
publication my ideas may become clear and objections may be anticipated.
I cannot discuss the matter with my father. You were at college with
him, and you will remember his love for Aristotle, who, as I think, has
enslaved him. If I may say so without offence, you are not a
philosopher. You are more likely, therefore, to give a sound,
unprofessional opinion. You have never had much to do with children,
but this does not matter; in fact, it is rather an advantage, for actual
children would have distorted your judgment. What has theology done?
It is only half-believed, and its rewards and punishments are too remote
to be of practical service. They are not seen when they are most
required. As to metaphysics, its propositions are too loose. They may
with equal ease be affirmed or denied. Conduct cannot be controlled by
what is shadowy and uncertain. We have been brought up on theology and
metaphysics for centuries, and we are still at daggers drawn upon
matters of life and death. We are as warlike as ever, and not a single
social problem has been settled by bishops or professors. I wish to try
a more direct and, as I believe, a more efficient method. I wish to see
what the effect will be of teaching children from their infancy the
lesson that morality and the enjoyment of life are identical; that if,
for example, they lie, they lose. I should urge this on them
perpetually, until at last, by association, lying would become
impossible. Restraint which is exercised in accordance with rational
principles, inasmuch as it proceeds from Nature, must be more
efficacious than an external prohibition. So with other virtues. I
should deduce most of them in the same way. If I could not, I should
let them go, assured that we could do without them. Now, my dear
godfather, do open out to me, and don't put me off.
Your affectionate godchild,
HERMIONE.
My Dear Hermione,--You terrify me. These matters are really not in my
way. I have never been able to tackle big questions. Unhappily for me,
all questions nowadays are big. I do not see many people, as you know,
and potter about in my garden from morning to night, but Mrs. Lindsay
occasionally brings down her friends from London, and the subjects of
conversation are so immense that I am bewildered. I admit that some
people are too rich and others are too poor, and that if I could give
you a vote you should have one, and that boys and girls might be better
taught, but upon Socialism, Enfranchisement of Women, and Educational
Reform, I have not a word to say. Is not this very unsatisfactory?
Nobody is more willing to admit it than I am. It is so disappointing in
talking to myself or to others to stop short of generalisation and to be
obliged to confess that SOMETIMES IT IS AND SOMETIMES IT IS NOT. I
bless my stars that I am not a politician or a newspaper writer. When I
was young these great matters, at least in our village, were not such
common property as they are now. A man, even if he was a scholar,
thought he had done his duty by living an honest and peaceable life. He
was justified if he was kind to his neighbours and amused himself with
his bees and flowers. He had no desire to be remembered for any
achievement, and was content to be buried with a few tears and then to
be forgotten. All Mrs. Lindsay's folk want to do something outside
their own houses or parishes which shall make their names immortal. . .
. I was interrupted by a tremendous thunderstorm and hail. That
wonderful rose-bush which, you will recollect, stood on the left-hand
side of the garden door, has been stripped just as if it had been
scourged with whips. If you have done, quite done with the Orelli you
borrowed about two years ago, please let me have it. Why could you not
bring it? Mrs. Lindsay was saying only the other day how glad she
should be if you would stay with her for a fortnight before you return
to town.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12