The Upton Letters, Arthur Christopher Benson [red seas under red skies txt] 📗

aedae muri' eseidon oneirata, koudepo aos.


1905

PREFACE


These letters were returned to me, shortly after the death of the friend to whom they were written, by his widow. It seems that he had been sorting and destroying letters and papers a few days before his wholly unexpected end. "We won't destroy these," he had said to her, holding the bulky packet of my letters in his hand; "we will keep them together. T---- ought to publish them, and, some day, I hope he will." This was not, of course, a deliberate judgement; but his sudden death, a few days later, gives the unconsidered wish a certain sanctity, and I have determined to obey it. Moreover, she who has the best right to decide, desires it. A few merely personal matters and casual details have been omitted; but the main substance is there, and the letters are just as they were written. Such hurried compositions, of course, abound in literary shortcomings, but perhaps they have a certain spontaneity which more deliberate writings do not always possess. I wrote my best, frankest, and liveliest in the letters, because I knew that Herbert would value both the thought and the expression of the thought. And, further, if it is necessary to excuse so speedy a publication, I feel that they are not letters which would gain by being kept. Their interest arises from the time, the circumstance, the occasion that gave them birth, from the books read and criticised, the educational problems discussed; and thus they may form a species of comment on a certain aspect of modern life, and from a definite point of view. But, after all, it is enough for me that he appreciated them, and, if he wished that they should go out to the world, well, let them go! In publishing them I am but obeying a last message of love.

T. B.
MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON,
Feb. 20, 1905.



THE UPTON LETTERS

MONK'S ORCHARD, UPTON, Jan. 23, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have just heard the disheartening news, and I write to say that I am sorry toto corde. I don't yet know the full extent of the calamity, the length of your exile, the place, or the conditions under which you will have to live. Perhaps you or Nelly can find time to let me have a few lines about it all? But I suppose there is a good side to it. I imagine that when the place is once fixed, you will be able to live a much freer life than you have of late been obliged to live in England, with less risk and less overshadowing of anxiety. If you can find the right region, renovabitur ut acquila juventus tua; and you will be able to carry out some of the plans which have been so often interrupted here. Of course there will be drawbacks. Books, society, equal talk, the English countryside which you love so well, and, if I may use the expression, so intelligently; they will all have to be foregone in a measure. But fortunately there is no difficulty about money, and money will give you back some of these delights. You will still see your real friends; and they will come to you with the intention of giving and getting the best of themselves and of you, not in the purposeless way in which one drifts into a visit here. You will be able, too, to view things with a certain detachment--and that is a real advantage; for I have sometimes thought that your literary work has suffered from the variety of your interests, and from your being rather too close to them to form a philosophical view. Your love of characteristic points of natural scenery will help you. When you have once grown familiar with the new surroundings, you will penetrate the secret of their charm, as you have done here. You will be able, too, to live a more undisturbed life, not fretted by all the cross-currents which distract a man in his own land, when he has a large variety of ties. I declare I did not know I was so good a rhetorician; I shall end by convincing myself that there is no real happiness to be found except in expatriation!

Seriously, my dear Herbert, I do understand the sadness of the change; but one gets no good by dwelling on the darker side; there are and will be times, I know, of depression. When one lies awake in the morning, before the nerves are braced by contact with the wholesome day; when one has done a tiring piece of work, and is alone, and in that frame of mind when one needs occupation but yet is not brisk enough to turn to the work one loves; in those dreary intervals between one's work, when one is off with the old and not yet on with the new--well I know all the corners of the road, the shadowy cavernous places where the demons lie in wait for one, as they do for the wayfarer (do you remember?), in Bewick, who, desiring to rest by the roadside, finds the dingle all alive with ambushed fiends, horned and heavy-limbed, swollen with the oppressive clumsiness of nightmare. But you are not inexperienced or weak. You have enough philosophy to wait until the frozen mood thaws, and the old thrill comes back. That is one of the real compensations of middle age. When one is young, one imagines that any depression will be continuous; and one sees the dreary, uncomforted road winding ahead over bare hills, till it falls to the dark valley. But later on one can believe that "the roadside dells of rest" are there, even if one cannot see them; and, after all, you have a home which goes with you; and it would seem to be fortunate, or to speak more truly, tenderly prepared, that you have only daughters--a son, who would have to go back to England to be educated, would be a source of anxiety. Yet I find myself even wishing that you had a son, that I might have the care of him over here. You don't know the heart-hunger I sometimes have for young things of my own to watch over; to try to guard their happiness. You would say that I had plenty of opportunities in my profession; it is true in a sense, and I think I am perhaps a better schoolmaster for being unmarried. But these boys are not one's own; they drift away; they come back dutifully and affectionately to talk to their old tutor; and we are both of us painfully conscious that we have lost hold of the thread, and that the nearness of the tie that once existed exists no more.

Well, I did not mean in this letter to begin bemoaning my own sorrows, but rather to try and help you to bear your own. Tell me as soon as you can what your plans are, and I will come down and see you for the last time under the old conditions; perhaps the new will be happier. God bless you, my old friend! Perhaps the light which has hitherto shone (though fitfully) ON your life will now begin to shine THROUGH it instead; and let me add one word. My assurance grows firmer, from day to day, that we are in stronger hands than our own. It is true that I see things in other lives which look as if those hands were wantonly cruel, hard, unloving; but I reflect that I cannot see all the conditions; I can only humbly fall back upon my own experience, and testify that even the most daunting and humiliating things have a purifying effect; and I can perceive enough at all events to encourage me to send my heart a little farther than my eyes, and to believe that a deep and urgent love is there.--Ever affectionately yours,

T. B.


UPTON, Jan. 26, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--So it is to be Madeira at present? Well, I know Madeira a little, and I can honestly congratulate you. I had feared it might be Switzerland. I could not LIVE in Switzerland. It does me good to go there, to be iced and baked and washed clean with pure air. But the terrible mountains, so cold and unchanged, with their immemorial patience, their frozen tranquillity; the high hamlets, perched on their lonely shelves; the bleak pine-trees, with their indomitable strength--all these depress me. Of course there is much homely beauty among the lower slopes; the thickets, the falling streams, the flowers. But the grim black peaks look over everywhere; and there is seldom a feeling of the rich and comfortable peace such as one gets in England. Madeira is very different. I have been there, and must truthfully confess that it does not suit me altogether--the warm air, the paradisal luxuriance, the greenhouse fragrance, are not a fit setting for a blond, lymphatic man, who pants for Northern winds. But it will suit you; and you will be one of those people, spare and compact as you are, who find themselves vigorous and full of energy there. I have many exquisite vignettes from Madeira which linger in my mind. The high hill-villages, full of leafy trees; the grassy downs at the top; the droop of creepers, full of flower and fragrance, over white walls; the sapphire sea, under huge red cliffs. You will perhaps take one of those embowered Quintas high above the town, in a garden full of shelter and fountains. And I am much mistaken if you do not find yourself in a very short time passionately attached to the place. Then the people are simple, courteous, unaffected, full of personal interest. Housekeeping has few difficulties and no terrors.

I can't get away for a night; but I will come and dine with you one day this week, if you can keep an evening free.

And one thing I will promise--when you are away, I will write to you as often as I can. I shall not attempt any formal letters, but I shall begin with anything that is in my mind, and stop when I feel disposed; and you must do the same. We won't feel bound to ANSWER each other's letters; one wastes time over that. What I shall want to know is what you are thinking and doing, and I shall take for granted you desire the same.

You will be happier, now that you KNOW; I need not add that if I can be of any use to you in making suggestions, it will be a real pleasure.--Ever yours,

T. B.


UPTON, Feb. 3, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--It seems ages since we said good-bye--yet it is not a week ago. And now I have been at work all day correcting exercises, teaching, talking. I have had supper with the boys, and I have been walking about since and talking to them--the nicest part of my work. They are at this time of the day, as a rule, in good spirits, charitable, sensible. What an odd thing it is that boys are so delightful when they are alone, and so tiresome (not always) when they are together. They seem, in public, to want to show their worst side, to be ashamed of being supposed to be good, or interested, or thoughtful, or tender-hearted. They are so afraid of seeming better than they are, and pleased to appear worse than they are. I wonder why this