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

a material one, for there is no security there; it cannot be purely intellectual, for that is a shifting thing too. The well of the spirit is emptied, gradually and tenderly; we must find out what the spring is that can fill it up. Some would say that one's faith could supply the need, and I agree in so far as I believe that it must be a species of faith, in a life where our whole being and ending is such an impenetrable mystery. But it must be a deeper faith even than the faith of a dogmatic creed; for that is shifting, too, every day, and the simplest creed holds some admixture of human temperament and human error.

To me there are but two things that seem to point to hope. The first is the strongest and deepest of human things, the power of love--not, I think, the more vehement and selfish forms of love, the desire of youth for beauty, the consuming love of the mother for the infant--for these have some physical admixture in them. But the tranquil and purer manifestations of the spirit, the love of a father for a son, of a friend for a friend; that love which can light up a face upon the edge of the dark river, and can smile in the very throes of pain. That seems to me the only thing which holds out a tender defiance against change and suffering and death.

And then there is the faith in the vast creative mind that bade us be; mysterious and strange as are its manifestations, harsh and indifferent as they sometimes seem, yet at worst they seem to betoken a loving purpose thwarted by some swift cross-current, like a mighty river contending with little obstacles. Why the obstacles should be there, and how they came into being, is dark indeed. But there is enough to make us believe in a Will that does its utmost, and that is assured of some bright and far-off victory.

A faith in God and a faith in Love; and here seems to me to lie the strength and power of the Christian Revelation. It is to these two things that Christ pointed men. Though overlaid with definition, with false motive, with sophistry, with pedantry, this is the deep secret of the Christian Creed; and if we dare to link our will with the Will of God, however feebly, however complainingly, if we desire and endeavour not to sin against love, not to nourish hate or strife, to hold out the hand again and again to any message of sympathy or trust, not to struggle for our own profit, not to reject tenderness, to believe in the good faith and the good-will of men, we are then in the way. We may make mistakes, we may fail a thousand times, but the key of heaven is in our hands. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.


UPTON, July 29, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--You must forgive me if this is a very sentimental letter, but this is the day that, of all days in the year, is to me most full of pathos--the last day of the summer half. My heart is like a full sponge and must weep a little. The last few days have been full to the brim of work and bustle--reports to be written, papers to be looked over. Yesterday was a day of sad partings. Half-a-dozen boys are leaving; and I have tried my best to tell them the truth about themselves; to say something that would linger in their minds, and yet to do it in a tender and affectionate way. And some of these boys' hearts are full to bursting too. I remember as if it were yesterday the last meeting at Eton of a Debating Society of which I was a member. We were electing new members and passing votes of thanks. Scott, who was then President and, as you remember, Captain of the Eleven, sate in his high chair above the table; opposite him, with his minute-book, was Riddell, then Secretary--that huge fellow in the Eight, you recollect. The vote of thanks to the President was carried; he said a few words in a broken voice, and sate down; the Secretary's vote of thanks was proposed, and he, too, rose to make acknowledgment. In the middle of his speech we were attracted by a movement of the President. He put his head in his hands and sobbed aloud. Riddell stopped, faltered, looked round, and leaving his sentence unfinished, sate down, put his face on the book and cried like a child. I don't think there was a dry eye in the room. And these boys were not sentimental, but straightforward young men of the world, honest, and, if anything, rather contemptuous, I had thought, of anything emotional. I have never forgotten that scene, and have interpreted many things in the light of it.

Well, this morning I woke early and heard all the bustle of departure. Depression fell on me; soon I got up, with a blessed sense of leisure, breakfasted at my ease, saw one or two boys, special friends, who came to me very grave and wistful. Then I wrote letters and did business; and this afternoon--it is fearfully hot--I have been for a stroll through the deserted fields and street.

So another of these beautiful things which we call the summer half is over, never to be renewed. There has been some evil, of course. I wish I could think otherwise. But the tone is good, and there have been none of those revelations of darkness that poison the mind. There has been idleness (I don't much regret that), and of course the usual worries. But the fact remains that a great number of happy, sensible boys have been living perhaps the best hours of their life, with equal, pleasant friendships, plenty of games, some wholesome work and discipline to keep all sweet, with this exquisite background of old towers and high-branching elms, casting their shade over rich meadow-grass; the scene will come back to these boys in weary hours, perhaps in sun-baked foreign lands, perhaps in smoky offices--nay, even on aching deathbeds, parched with fever.

The whole place has an incredibly wistful air, as though it missed the young life that circulated all about it; as though it spread its beauties out to be used and enjoyed, and wondered why none came to claim them. As a counterpoise to this I like to think of all the happiness flowing into hundreds of homes; the father and mother waiting for the sound of the wheels that bring the boy back; the children who have gone down to the lodge to welcome the big brothers with shouts and kisses; and the boy himself, with all the dear familiar scene and home faces opening out before him. We ought not to grudge the loneliness here before the thought of all those old and blessed joys of life that are being renewed elsewhere.

But I am here, a lonely man, wondering and doubting and desiring I hardly know what. Some nearness of life, some children of my own. You are apt to think of yourself as shelved and isolated; yet, after all, you have the real thing--wife, children, and home. But, in my case, these boys who are dear to me have forgotten me already. Disguise it as I will, I am part of the sordid furniture of life that they have so gladly left behind, the crowded corridor, the bare-walled schoolroom, the ink-stained desk. They are glad to think that they have not to assemble to-morrow to listen to my prosing, to bear the blows of the uncle's tongue, as Horace says. They like me well enough--for a schoolmaster; I know some of them would even welcome me, with a timorous joy, to their own homes.

I have had the feeling of my disabilities brought home to me lately in a special way. There is a boy in my house that I have tried hard to make friends with. He is a big, overgrown creature, with a perfectly simple manner. He has innumerable acquaintances in the school, but only a very few friends. He is amiable with every one, but guards his heart. He is ambitious in a quiet way, and fond of books, and, being brought up in a cultivated home, he can talk more unaffectedly and with a more genuine interest about books than any boy I have ever met. Well, I have done my best, as I say, to make friends with him. I have lent him books; I have tried to make him come and see me; I have talked my best with him, and he has received it all with polite indifference; I can't win his confidence, somehow. I feel that if I were only not in the tutorial relation, it would be easy work. But perhaps I frightened him as a little boy, perhaps I bored him; anyhow the advances are all on my side, and there seems a hedge of shyness through which I cannot break. Sometimes I have thought it is simply a case of "crabbed age and youth," and that I can't put myself sufficiently in line with him. I missed seeing him last night--he was out at some school festivity, and this morning he has gone without a word or a sign. I have made friends a hundred times with a tenth of the trouble, and I suppose it is just because I find this child so difficult to approach that I fret myself over the failure; and all the more because I know in my heart that he is a really congenial nature, and that we do think the same about many things. Of course, most sensible people would not care a brass farthing about such an episode, and would succeed where I have failed, because I think it is the forcing of attentions upon him that this proud young person resents. I must try and comfort myself by thinking that my very capacity for vexing myself over the business is probably the very thing which makes it easy as a rule for me to succeed.

Well, I must turn to my books and my bicycle and my writing for consolation, and to the blessed sense of freedom which luxuriates about my tired brain. But books and art and the beauties of nature, I begin to have a dark suspicion, are of the nature of melancholy consolations for the truer stuff of life--for friendships and loves and dearer things.

I sit writing in my study, the house above me strangely silent. The evening sun lies golden on the lawn and among the apple-trees of my little orchard; but the thought of the sweet time ended lies rather heavy on my heart--the wonder what it all means, why we should have these great hopes and desires, these deep attachments in the short days that God gives us. "What a world it is for sorrow," wrote a wise and tender-hearted old schoolmaster on a day like this; "and how dull it would be if there were no sorrow." I suppose that this is true; but to be near things and yet not to grasp them, to desire and not to attain, and to go down to darkness in the end, like the shadow of a dream--what can heal and sustain one in the grip of such a mood?--Ever yours,

T. B.


UPTON, Aug. 4, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have just been over to Woodcote; I have had a few days here alone at the end of the half, and was feeling so stupid and lazy this morning that I put a few sandwiches in my pocket and went off on a bicycle for