In the Days of My Youth: A Novel
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CHAPTER LIV.
TREATETH OF MANY THINGS; BUT CHIEFLY OF BOOKS AND POETS.
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good.
WORDSWORTH.
There are times when this beautiful world seems to put on a mourninggarb, as if sympathizing, like a gentle mother, with the grief thatconsumes us; when the trees shake their arms in mute sorrow, and scattertheir faded leaves like ashes on our heads; when the slow rains weepdown upon us, and the very clouds look cold above. Then, like Hamlet theDane, we take no pleasure in the life that weighs so wearily upon us,and deem "this goodly frame, the earth, a sterile promonotory; this mostexcellent canopy, the air, this brave, overhanging firmament, thismajestical roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilentcongregation of vapors."
So it was with me, in the heavy time that followed my return to Paris. Ihad lost everything in losing her I loved. I had no aim in life. Nooccupation. No hope. No rest. The clouds had rolled between me and thesun, and wrapped me in their cold shadows, and all was dark about me. Ifelt that I could say with an old writer--"For the world, I count it,not an inn, but an hospital; and a place, not to live, but to die in."
Week after week I lingered in Paris, hoping against hope, and alwaysseeking her. I had a haunting conviction that she was not far off, andthat, if I only had strength to persevere, I must find her. Possessed bythis fixed idea, I paced the sultry streets day after day throughout theburning months of June and July; lingered at dusk and early morningabout the gardens of the Luxembourg, and such other quiet places as shemight frequent; and, heedless alike of fatigue, or heat, or tempest,traversed the dusty city over and over again from barrier to barrier, inevery direction.
Could I but see her once more--once only! Could I but listen to hersweet voice, even though it bade me an eternal farewell! Could I but laymy lips for the last, last time upon her hand, and see the tender pityin her eyes, and be comforted!
Seeking, waiting, sorrowing thus, I grew daily weaker and paler,scarcely conscious of my own failing strength, and indifferent to allthings save one. In vain Dr. Cheron urged me to resume my studies. Invain Mueller, ever cheerful and active, came continually to my lodgings,seeking to divert my thoughts into healthier channels. In vain Ireceived letter after letter from Oscar Dalrymple, imploring me tofollow him to Switzerland, where his wife had already joined him. I shutmy eyes to all alike. Study had grown hateful to me; Mueller'scheerfulness jarred upon me; Dalrymple was too happy for mycompanionship. Liberty to pursue my weary search, peace to brood over mysorrow, were all that I now asked. I had not yet arrived at that stagewhen sympathy grows precious.
So weeks went by, and August came, and a slow conviction of the utterhopelessness of my efforts dawned gradually upon me. She was reallygone. If she had been in Paris all this time pursuing her dailyavocations, I must surely have found her. Where should I seek her next?What should I do with life, with time, with the future?
I resolved, at all events, to relinquish medicine at once, and for ever.So I wrote a brief farewell to Dr. Cheron and another to Mueller, andwithout seeing either again, returned abruptly to England.
I will not dwell on this part of my story; enough that I settled myaffairs as quickly as might be, left an old servant in care of thesolitary house that had been my birthplace, and turned my back once moreon Saxonholme, perhaps for years--perhaps for ever; and in less thanthree weeks was again on my way to the Continent.
The spirit of restlessness was now upon me. I had no home; I had nopeace; and in place of the sun there was darkness. So I went with thethorns around my brow, and the shadow of the cross upon my breast. Iwent to suffer--to endure,--if possible, to forget. Oh, the grief ofthe soul which lives on in the night, and looks for no dawning! Oh, theweary weight that presses down the tired eyelids, and yet leaves themsleepless! Oh, the tide of alien faces, and the sickening remembrance ofone, too dear, which may never be looked upon again! I carried with methe antidote to every pleasure. In the midst of crowds, I was alone. Inthe midst of novelty, the one thought came, and made all stale to me.Like Dr. Donne, I dwelt with the image of my dead self at my side.
Thus for many, many months we journeyed together---I and my sorrow--andpassed through fair and famous places, and saw the seasons change undernew skies. To the quaint old Flemish cities and the Gothic Rhine--to theplains and passes of Spain--to the unfrequented valleys of the Tyrol andthe glacier-lands of Switzerland I went, but still found not theforgetfulness I sought. As in Holbein's fresco the skeleton plays hispart in every scene, so my trouble stalked beside me, drank of my cup,and sat grimly at my table. It was with me in Naples and among theorange groves of Sorrento. It met me amid the ruins of the Roman Forum.It travelled with me over the blue Mediterranean, and landed beside meon the shores of the Cyclades. Go where I would, it possessed andfollowed me, and brooded over my head, like the cloud that rested onthe ark.
Thinking over this period of my life, I seem to be turning the leaves ofa rich album, or wandering through a gallery of glowing landscapes, andyet all the time to be dreaming. Faces grown familiar for a few days andnever seen after--pictures photographed upon the memory in all theirvividness--glimpses of cathedrals, of palaces, of ruins, of sunset andstorm, sea and shore, flit before me for a moment, and are gone likephantasmagoria.
And like phantasmagoria they impressed me at the time. Nothing seemedreal to me. Startled, now and then, into admiration or wonder, my apathyfell from me like a garment, and my heart throbbed again as of old. Butthis was seldom--so seldom that I could almost count the times when itbefell me.
Thus it was that travelling did me no permanent good. It enlarged myexperience; it undoubtedly cultivated my taste; but it brought meneither rest, nor sympathy, nor consolation. On the contrary, it widenedthe gulf between me and my fellow-men. I formed no friendships. I keptup no correspondence. A sojourner in hotels, I became more and morewithdrawn from all tender and social impulses, and almost forgot thevery name of home. So strong a hold did this morbid love ofself-isolation take upon me, that I left Florence on one occasion, aftera stay of only three days, because I had seen the names of a Saxonholmefamily among the list of arrivals in the Giornale Toscano.
Three years went by thus--three springs--three vintages--threewinters--till, weary of wandering, I began to ask myself "what next?" Myold passion for books had, in the meantime, re-asserted itself, and Ilonged once more for quiet. I knew not that my pilgrimage was hopeless.I know that I loved her ever; that I could never forget her; thatalthough the first pangs were past, I yet must bear
"All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing, All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience!"
I reasoned with myself. I resolved to be stronger--at all events, to becalmer. Exhausted and world-worn, I turned in thought to my nativevillage among the green hills, to my deserted home, and the greatsolitary study with its busts and bookshelves, and its vista ofneglected garden. The rooms where my mother died; where my father wrote;where, as a boy, I dreamed and studied, would at least have memoriesfor me.
Perhaps, silently underlying all these motives, I may at this timealready have begun to entertain one other project which was not so mucha motive as a hope--not so much a hope as a half-seen possibility. I hadwritten verses from time to time all my life long, and of late they hadcome to me more abundantly than ever. They flowed in upon me at timeslike an irresistible tide; at others they ebbed away for weeks, andseemed as if gone for ever. It was a power over which I had no control,and sought to have none. I never tried to make verses; but, whenthe inspiration was upon me, I made them, as it were, in spite ofmyself. My desk was full of them in time--sonnets, scraps of songs,fragments of blank verse, attempts in all sorts of queer and ruggedmetres--hexameters, pentameters, alcaics, and the like; with, here andthere, a dialogue out of an imaginary tragedy, or a translation fromsome Italian or German poet. This taste grew by degrees, to be a rareand subtle pleasure
to me. My rhymes became my companions, and when theinterval of stagnation came, I was restless and lonely till itpassed away.
At length there came an hour (I was lying, I remember, on a ledge ofturf on a mountain-side, overlooking one of the Italian valleys of theAlps), when I asked myself for the first time--
"Am I also a poet?"
I had never dreamed of it, never thought of it, never even hoped it,till that moment. I had scribbled on, idly, carelessly, out of whatseemed a mere facile impulse, correcting nothing; seldom even readingwhat I had written, after it was committed to paper. I had sometimesbeen pleased with a melodious cadence or a happy image--sometimes amusedwith my own flow of thought and readiness of versification; but that I,simple Basil Arbuthnot, should be, after all, enriched with thissplendid gift of song--was it mad presumption, or were these thingsproof? I knew not; but lying on the parched grass of the mountain-side,I tried the question over in my mind, this way and that, till "my heartbeat in my brain," How should I come at the truth? How should I testwhether this opening Paradise was indeed Eden, or only the mirage of myfancy--mere sunshine upon sand? We all write verses at some moment orother in our lives, even the most prosaic amongst us--some because theyare happy; some because they are sad; some because the living fire ofyouth impels them, and they must be up and doing, let the work bewhat it may.
"Many fervent souls, Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel, If steel had offer'd."
Was this case mine? Was I fancying myself a poet, only because I was anidle man, and had lost the woman I loved? To answer these questionsmyself was impossible. They could only be answered by the public voice,and before I dared question that oracle I had much to do. I resolved todiscipline myself to the harness of rhythm. I resolved to go back to thefathers of poetry--to graduate once again in Homer and Dante, Chaucerand Shakespeare. I promised myself that, before I tried my wings in thesun, I would be my own severest critic. Nay, more--that I would nevertry them so long as it seemed possible a fall might come of it. Oncecome to this determination, I felt happier and more hopeful than I hadfelt for the last three years. I looked across the blue mists of thevalley below, and up to the aerial peaks which rose, faint, and far, andglittering--mountain beyond mountain, range above range, as if paintedon the thin, transparent air--and it seemed to me that they stood by,steadfast and silent, the witnesses of my resolve.
"I will be strong," I said. "I will be an idler and a dreamer no longer.Books have been my world. I have taken all, and given nothing. Now I toowill work, and work to prove that I was not unworthy of her love."
Going down, by-and-by, into the valley as the shadows were lengthening,I met a traveller with an open book in his hand. He was anEnglishman--small, sallow, wiry, and wore a gray, loose coat, with twolarge pockets full of books. I had met him once before at Milan, andagain in a steamer on Lago Maggiore. He was always reading. He read inthe diligence--he read when he was walking--he read all through dinnerat the _tables-d'-hote_. He had a mania for reading; and, might, infact, be said to be bound up in his own library.
Meeting thus on the mountain, we fell into conversation. He told me thathe was on his way to Geneva, that he detested continental life, and thathe was only waiting the arrival of certain letters before startingfor England.
"But," said I, "you do not, perhaps, give continental life a trial. Youare always absorbed in the pages of a book; and, as for the scenery, youappear not to observe it."
"Deuce take the scenery!" he exclaimed, pettishly. "I never look at it.All scenery's alike. Trees, mountains, water--water, mountains, trees;the same thing over and over again, like the bits of colored glass in akaleidoscope. I read about the scenery, and that is quite enoughfor me."
"But no book can paint an Italian lake or an Alpine sunset; and when oneis on the spot...."
"I beg your pardon," interrupted the traveller in gray. "Everythingis much pleasanter and more picturesque in books than inreality--travelling especially. There are no bad smells in books. Thereare no long bills in books. Above all, there are no mosquitoes.Travelling is the greatest mistake in the world, and I am going home asfast as I can."
"And henceforth, I suppose, your travels will be confined to yourlibrary," I said, smiling.
"Exactly so. I may say, with Hazlitt, that 'food, warmth, sleep, and abook,' are all I require. With those I may make the tour of the world,and incur neither expense nor fatigue."
"Books, after all, are friends," I said, with a sigh.
"Sir," replied the traveller, waving his hand somewhat theatrically,"books are our first real friends, and our last. I have no others. Iwish for no others. I rely upon no others. They are the only associatesupon whom a sensible man may depend. They are always wise, and they arealways witty. They never intrude upon us when we desire to be alone.They never speak ill of us behind our backs. They are never capricious,and never surly; neither are they, like some clever folks,pertinaciously silent when we most wish them to shine. Did Shakespeareever refuse his best thoughts to us, or Montaigne decline to becompanionable? Did you ever find Moliere dull? or Lamb prosy? or Scottunentertaining?"
"You remind me," said I, laughing, "of the student in Chaucer, whodesired for his only pleasure and society,
"'---at his bedde's head A'twenty bokes clothed in black and red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy!'"
"Ay," replied my new acquaintance, "but he preferred them expressly to'robes riche, or fidel or sautrie,' whereas, I prefer them to men andwomen, and to Aristotle and his philosophy, into the bargain!"
"Your own philosophy, at least, is admirable," said I. "For many ayear--I might almost say for most years of my life--I have been adisciple in the same school."
"Sir, you cannot belong to a better. Think of the convenience of alwayscarrying half a dozen intimate friends in your pocket! Good-afternoon."
We had now come to a point where two paths diverged, and the readingtraveller, always economical of time, opened his book where he had lastturned down the leaf, and disappeared round the corner.
I never saw him again; but his theory amused me, and, as trifles willsometimes do even in the gravest matters, decided me. So the result ofall my hopes and reflections was, that I went back to England and to thestudent life that had been the dream of my youth.