I was so much attracted to the watchmaker that I often called on him, when I had no business with him. He had a wife and daughter, both of whom were his companions. Melissa, the daughter, was about nineteen. She was not beautiful according to the Grecian model, but her figure was elegant, there was depth in her eyes, and she was always dressed with simplicity and taste. She spoke correctly, and surprised me by the justness of her observations, not merely on local and personal matters, but upon subjects with which women of more exalted rank are not usually familiar. Admission had been refused to her by every school in Bath, but she had been taken in charge by two elderly gentlewomen, distant relations of her grandfather, who had instructed her in the usual branches of polite learning, including French. I will content myself, Mr. Rambler, with informing you that I fell in love with Melissa, and that she did not discourage my attentions. I had not altogether overlooked the possibility of embarra.s.sment at A., but my pa.s.sion prevented the clear foresight of consequences. I have often found that evils which are imaginary will press upon me with singular vivacity, while those which may with certainty be deduced from any action are but obscurely apprehended, so that in fact intensity of colour is an indication of unreality. I must add that if the future had presented itself to me with prophetic distinctness, my love for Melissa was so great that I should not have hesitated. My frequent visits to B. had not pa.s.sed unnoticed at A., and the reason was suspected. Hints were not wanting, and the custom-house surveyor told me a harrowing tale of a fellow-surveyor who had alienated all his friends and had been obliged to leave his house near Tower Hill because he had chosen to marry the daughter of a poor author who lived in Whitefriars. One day early in the morning I was in B. and met the squire"s young ladies with their mother. She was a very proud dame. Her maiden name was Bone, and her father had been a sugar-baker in Bristol, but this was not a retail trade, and she had often told me that she was descended from Geoffrey de Bohun, who was in the retinue of William the Conqueror and killed five Saxons with his own hand at the battle of Hastings. Her children, she bade me observe, had inherited the true Bohun ears as shown in an engraving she possessed of a Bohun tomb in Normandy. I walked with the party up the High Street, and had not gone far when I saw Melissa coining towards us. O, Mr. Rambler, can I utter it! She approached us, she knew that I must have recognised her, but I turned my head towards a shop-window and called my companions" attention to the display of silks and satins. After Melissa had pa.s.sed, my lady asked me if that was not the watchmaker"s daughter and whether I knew anything about her. I replied that I believed it was, and that I had heard she was a respectable young woman. My lady remarked that she had understood that she was virtuous, but that she had been unbecomingly brought up, and considered herself superior to her position. Her ladyship confessed that she would not be surprised any day to hear that Miss -----had been obliged to leave B., for she had noticed that when a female belonging to the lower orders strove to acquire knowledge unsuitable to her station, the consequence was often ruin.
It is almost incredible--I was silent!--but when I reached home I was overcome with shame and despair. This then was all that my love was worth; this was my esteem for intelligence and learning; and I was the man who had thanked G.o.d I was not as my neighbours at A.!
If in the beginning I had deliberately resolved that it would be a mistake to ally myself with Melissa"s family because my usefulness might be diminished, something might have been pleaded on my behalf, but I was without excuse. I had sacrificed Melissa to no principle, but to detestable vulgar cowardice. It was about two hours after noon when I returned, and in my confusion a note from Melissa which lay upon my table was not at once noticed. It had been written the day before, and it tenderly upbraided me because I had been absent for a whole week. Enclosed was a copy of verses by Sir Philip Sidney beginning, "My true love hath my heart." I mounted my horse again, and in less than half an hour was in B. I flew to Melissa.
She received me in silence, but without rebuke. Indeed, before she had time for a word, I had knelt at her feet and had covered my face with her hands. On my way through the town I had seen my lady with her children, and one or two fashionably-dressed women, friends who lived in B. My lady was completing her purchases. I implored Melissa immediately to come out with me. She was astonished and hesitated, but my impetuosity was so urgent that she feared to refuse, and without any explanation I almost dragged her into the street. On the opposite side I descried my lady and her party. I crossed over, took Melissa"s arm in mine, came close to them face to face, bowed, and then pa.s.sed on. We then recrossed the road and turned into Melissa"s house. I looked back and saw that they were standing still, stricken with astonishment. We went into the little parlour: n.o.body was there. Melissa threw her arms round my neck, and happier tears were never shed. In all the long years which have now gone by since that memorable day I have never had to endure from that divine creature a word or a hint which even the suspicion of wounded self-respect could interpret as a reproach.
We were married at B. The custom-house surveyor never entered his parish church again, but went over to B. once every Sunday. He wrote me a letter to say that it was with much regret that he left the church of his own village, but that it was no longer possible to derive any edification from the services there. The captain remained, but discontinued his civilities. The squire informed me that as I was still a priest and possessed authority to administer the holy sacraments he should continue his attendance, but that of course all personal intercourse must cease. I expected that the common people would have been confirmed in their attachment to me, but the opinion of the little village butcher was that I had disgraced myself, and the farmers and labourers would not even touch their hats to my wife when they met her. However, we did not care, and in time it was impossible even to the squire not to recognise her tact, manners, and sense. Her father had constructed an ingenious sun-dial which he had placed on the front of his shop.
The great Mr. Halley was staying with Mr. M., who lives about five miles from B., and seeing the dial when he was in the town, called on my father-in-law, and was so much struck with him that he obtained permission to invite him to dinner. There the squire met him and was obliged to sit opposite him, amazed to hear him converse on equal terms with Mr. Halley and his host, and to discover that he knew how to behave with decency. Hostility continued to wear away.
Few people are endowed with sufficient perseverance to continue a quarrel unless the cause is constantly renewed.
My betrayal of Melissa has not been altogether without profit. I had imagined myself morally superior to my parishioners, and if I had put the question to myself I should have said with confidence that it was impossible that there should exist in me a weakness I had never suspected, one which every day moved me to laughter or to scorn. But, sir, I now feel how true it is that in our immortal poet"s words, "Man, proud man, is most ignorant of what he"s most a.s.sured, his gla.s.sy essence." I hope you will pardon a reference to sacred history: I understand how the Apostle Peter came to deny his Lord. A few minutes before the dreadful crime was committed he would have considered himself as incapable of it as he was of the sale of his Master for money or of that d.a.m.ning kiss, and a few minutes afterwards he would have suffered death for His sake. This, Mr. Rambler, is the lesson which induced me to write to you. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall; and indeed he may take all heed and yet will fall, unless Divine Providence mercifully catches him and holds him up.
A LETTER FROM THE AUTh.o.r.eSS OF "JUDITH CROWHURST"
You have asked me to tell you all about Judith Crowhurst. I will tell you something more and begin at the beginning. You will remember that Miss Hardman said to Mrs. Pryor, Mrs. Hardman"s governess: "WE need the imprudences, extravagances, mistakes and crimes of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which WE reap the harvest of governesses. The daughters of tradespeople, however well educated, must necessarily be under-bred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children"s minds and persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring, who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as OURSELVES." I was one of those unhappy women who, mercifully for the upper cla.s.ses, inherit manners and misery in order that the children of these superior creatures may not put an "r" at the end of "idea" and may learn how to sit down in a chair with propriety. My father was a clergyman holding a small country living. He died when I was five-and-twenty, and I had to teach in order to earn my bread. I obtained a tolerably good situation, but at the end of two years I was informed that, although a clergyman"s daughter would "do very well" so long as her pupils were quite young, it was now time that they should be handed over to a lady who had been accustomed to Society. I had become thoroughly weary of my work. I was not enthusiastic to instruct girls for whom I did not care. I suppose that if I had been a born teacher, I should have been as happy with the little Hardmans as I was in the nursery with my youngest sister now dead. I should not have said to myself, as I did every morning, "What does it matter?" In my leisure moments and holidays during those two years I had written a novel. I could supply conversation and description, but it was very difficult to invent a plot, and still more difficult to invent one which of itself would speak. I had collected a quant.i.ty of matter of all kinds before I began, and then I cast about for a frame in which to fit it. At last I settled that my hero, if hero he could be called, should fall in love with a poor but intelligent and educated girl.
He had a fortune of about two thousand pounds a year, nearly the whole of which he lost through the defalcations of a brother, whose creditors received about five shillings in the pound. He felt that the fair name of his family was stained, and he was consumed with a pa.s.sion to repay his brother"s debts and to recover possession of the old house and land which had been sold. He went abroad, worked hard, and met with a lady who was rich whom he really admired. His love for his betrothed had been weakened by absence, the engagement, for some trifling reason, was broken off, and he married the heiress. At the end of five years he returned to England, discharged every liability, and in two years more was the owner of his birthplace. The marriage, alas! was unhappy. There was no obtrusive fault in his wife, but he did not love her. She could not understand his resolution to take upon himself his brother"s debts, and she thought the price he paid for the house was excessive, as indeed it was. She was a good manager, but without imagination. He was rejoicing, in her presence, one spring morning that he had been wakened by the clamour of the rooks with which he had been familiar ever since he was a boy, and her reply was that an estate equal in value to his own and possessing a bigger rookery had been offered him for less money by one-third than he had thrown away.
Unfortunately it is not in management or morality that we crave companionship. It is in religion and in the deepest emotions that we thirst for it. Gradually he became wretched, and life was almost unbearable. She took no pleasure in the ancient place and its beautiful garden, he never asked her to admire them, and there was neither son nor daughter to inherit his pious regard. At this point I was obliged to introduce the Deus ex machina, and the wife died.
The widower sought out his first love; she had never wavered in her affection to him; they were married, had children, and were happy.
My tale was a youthful blunder. It was not really a tale. I introduced, in order to provide interest, all sorts of accessories-- aunts, parsons, gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts not worthless were those which were autobiographical.
One of them I remember very well, although my MS. was burnt long ago. I believed then that Nature is not merely beautiful, but that she can speak words which we can hear if we listen devoutly, and that if personality has any meaning she is personal,
"The guide, the guardian of the heart and soul."
Towards the end of an autumn afternoon I had rambled up to the pillar which was a landmark to seven counties. It was wet during the morning, but at five o"clock the rain ceased and a long, irregular line of ragged cloud, dripping here and there, stretched itself above the opposite hills from east to west. Underneath it was a border of pale-golden, open sky, and below was the sea. The hills hid it, but I knew it was there. I was hushed and rea.s.sured.
When I got home I transferred my emotion to my deserted heroine, and tears blotted the paper. But it was a mere episode, without connection and, in fact, an obstruction.
I sent my ma.n.u.script to a publisher and need hardly say that it was returned as unsuitable. I tried two others, but with no success.
The third enclosed a copy of his reader"s opinion. Here it is:-
" . . . is obviously a first attempt. It evinces some power in pa.s.sages, but the characters lack distinction and are limited by ordinary conventional rules. I cannot recommend it to you for its own sake, and there is no prospect in it of anything better. The author might be capable of short stories for a religious magazine.
It is singular that Miss C."s Mariana, which you also sent me, should be on somewhat the same lines, but Mariana, his first love, is seduced by the man who forsakes her and, in the end, marries her as his second wife. During his first marriage his intimacy with Mariana continues and Miss C. thereby has an opportunity, which she used with much power, for realistic scenes, that I believe will prove attractive. I had no hesitation therefore in advising you to purchase Mariana, although the plot is crude." I could not take the publisher"s hint. I put my papers back into my box and obtained another situation. In about a twelvemonth, notwithstanding my disappointment, I was unable to restrain myself from trying again.
I fancied that I might be able to project myself into actual history and appropriate it. I had been much attracted to Mary Tudor, and I had studied everything about her on which I could lay my hands. I did not love her, but I pitied her profoundly, and the Holbein portrait of her seemed to me to indicate a terrible and pathetic secret. I cannot, however, give a complete explanation of her fascination for me. It is impossible to account for the resistless magnetism with which one human being draws another. The elements are too various and are compounded with too much subtlety. Bitter Roman Catholic as Mary was, I wished I could have been one of the ladies of her court, that I might have offered my heart to her and might have wept with her in her sorrow. But my intense feeling for a picture of the Queen was no qualification to paint the original, and although I strove to keep close to facts she insensibly became myself. I was altogether stopped when I happened to meet with Aubrey de Vere"s Mary Tudor and Tennyson"s Queen Mary.
Soon afterwards I read Jane Eyre again, and was more than ever astonished at it. It is not to be cla.s.sed; it is written not by a limited human personality but by Nature herself. The love in it is too great for creatures who are "even as the generations of leaves"; the existence of two mortals does not account for it. There is an irresistible sweep in it like that of the Atlantic Ocean in a winter"s storm hurling itself over the western rocks of Scilly. I do not wonder that people were afraid of the book and that it was cursed. The orthodox daughter of a country parson broke conventional withes as if they were cobwebs. Jane Eyre is not gross in a single word, but its freedom is more complete than that of a licentious modern novel. Do you recollect St. John Rivers says to Jane: "Try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don"t cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite, transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?"
She replies--"Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I WILL be happy. Good-bye!"
Therein speaks the worshipper of the Sun. Do you also recollect that voice in the night from Rochester? She breaks from St. John, goes up to her bedroom and prays. "In my way--a different way to St. John"s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in grat.i.tude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down, unscared, enlightened--eager but for the daylight." The Mighty Spirit, who was Jane Eyre"s G.o.d, had directed her not to go to India as St. John"s bride to save souls from d.a.m.nation by conversion to Jehovah, but to set off that very day to Rochester at Thornfield Hall.
Consider also how inseparably the important incidents in Jane Eyre are linked with one another and with character. Jane refused Rochester at first and St. John finally. She could not possibly do otherwise. But I must stop. You did not ask for an essay on Charlotte Bronte. Suffice it to say that when I had finished Jane Eyre I said to myself that I would not write any more. Nor did I ever attempt fiction again. Judith Crowhurst is a plain, true story, altered a little in order to prevent recognition. I knew her well. There is no suffering in any stage tragedy equal to that of the unmarried woman who is well brought up, with natural gifts above those of women generally, living on a small income, past middle-age, and unable to work. It is not the suffering which is acute torture ending in death, but worse, the black, moveless gloom of the second floor in Hackney or Islington. Almost certainly she has but few friends, and those she has will be occupied with household or wage- earning duties. She is afraid of taking up their time; she never calls without an excuse. What is she to do? She cannot read all day, and, if she could, what is the use of reading? Poets and philosophers do not touch her case; descriptions of moonlit seas, mountains, moors, and waterfalls darken by contrast the view of the tiles and chimneys from her own window. Ideas do not animate or interest her, for she never has a chance of expressing them and, lacking expression, they are indistinct. Her eyes wander down page after page of her book, but she is only half-conscious. Religion, such as it is now, gives no help. It is based on the necessity of forgiveness for some wrong done and on the notion of future salvation. She needs no forgiveness unless she takes upon herself a burden of artificial guilt. She rather feels she has to forgive-- whom or what she does not know. The heaven of the churches and chapels is remote, unprovable, and cannot affect her in the smallest degree. There is no religion for her and such as she, excepting that Catholic Faith of one article only--The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him. As I have said, I knew Judith Crowhurst well, and after she was dead I wrote her biography, because I believed there are thousands like her in London alone. I hoped that here and there I might excite sympathy with them. We sympathise when we sit in a theatre overpowered by stage agony, but a truer sympathy is that which may require some effort, pity for common, dull, and deadly trouble that does not break out in shrieks and is not provided with metre and scenery.
You were kind enough to get Judith Crowhurst published for me, and it has had what is called a "success," but I doubt if it will do any good. People devour books but, when they have finished one, they never ask themselves what is to be done. It is immediately followed by another on a different subject, and reading becomes nothing but a pastime or a narcotic. Judith may be admired, but it is by those who will not undergo the fatigue of a penny journey in an omnibus to see their own Judith, perhaps nearly related to them, and will excuse themselves because she is not entertaining.
I was asked the other day if I was not proud of some of the reviews.
Good G.o.d! I would rather have been Alice Ayres, {148} and have died as she died, than have been famous as the author of the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, or Hamlet. She is now forgotten and sleeps in an obscure grave in some London cemetery. No! there will be nothing more. I have said all I had to say.
CLEARING-UP AFTER A STORM IN JANUARY
A westerly storm of great strength had been blowing all day, shaking the walls of the house and making us fear for the chimneys. About four o"clock, although the wind continued very high, the clouds broke, and moved in a slow, majestic procession obliquely from the north-west to the south-east. Here and there small apertures revealed the undimmed heaven behind. Immense, rounded projections reared themselves from the main body, and flying, ragged fragments, apparently at a lower level, fled beside and before them. These fragments of lesser density showed innumerable tints of bluish grey from the darkest up to one which differed but little from the pure sky-blue surrounding them. Just after the sun set a rosy flush of light spread almost instantaneously up to the zenith and in an instant had gone. Low down in the west was a long, broadish bar of orange light, crossed by the black pines on the hill half a mile away. Their stems and the outline of each piece of foliage were as distinct as if they were but a hundred yards distant. Half the length of the field in front of me lay a small pool full to its gra.s.sy margin. It reflected with such singular fidelity the light and colour above it that it seemed itself to be an original source of light and colour. Of all the sights to be seen in this part of the world none are more strangely and suggestively beautiful than the little patches of rain or spring water in the twilight on the moorland or meadows. Presently the wind rose again, and a rain- squall followed. It pa.s.sed, and the stars began to come out, and Orion showed himself above the eastern woods. He seemed as if he were marching through the moonlit scud which drove against him. How urgent all the business of this afternoon and evening has been, and yet what it meant who could say? I was like a poor man"s child who, looking out from the cottage window, beholds with amazement a great army traversing the plain before him with banners and music and knows nothing of its errand.
THE END OF THE NORTH WIND
For about six weeks from the middle of February we had bitter northerly winds. The frost was not very severe, but the wind penetrated the thickest clothing and searched the house through and through. The shrubs, even the hardiest, were blackened by its virulence. There was scarcely any sunshine, and every now and then a gloomy haze, like the smoke in London suburbs, invaded us. The rise and fall of the barometer meant nothing more than a variation in the strength of the polar current. Growth was nearly arrested, although one morning I found three primroses in a sheltered hollow.
Never had the weather seemed more hopeless than towards the close of March. On the last evening of the month the sky was curiously perplexed and agitated notwithstanding there was little movement in the air above or below. Next morning the change had come. The wind had backed to the south, and a storm from the Channel was raging with torrents of warm rain. O the day that followed! Ma.s.sive April clouds hung in the air. How much the want of visible support adds to their charm! One enormous cloud, with its base nearly on the horizon, rose up forty-five degrees or so towards the zenith. Its weight looked tremendous, but it floated lightly in the blue which encompa.s.sed it. Towards the centre it was swollen and dark, but its edges were dazzling white. While I was watching it, it went away to the east and partly broke up. A new cloud, like and not like, succeeded it . . . I followed the lane, stopped for a few minutes at a corner where the gra.s.sy road-margin widens out near the tumble- down barn, looked over the gate westward across the valley to the hills beyond, and then went down to the brook that winds along the bottom. It runs in a course which it has cut for itself, and is flanked on either side by delicately-carved miniature cliffs of yellow sandstone overhung with broom and furze. It was full of pure glittering moor-water, which seemed to add light to the stones in its bed, so brilliant was their colour. It fell with incessant, rippling murmur over its little ledges, gathering itself up into pools between each, and so it went on to the mill-pond a mile away.
Close to me a blackbird was building her nest. She moved when I peeped at her, but presently returned. Her back was struck by the warm sun and was glossy in its rays. A scramble of half a mile up a rough track brought me to the common, and there, thirty miles distant, lay the chalk downs, unsubstantial, a light-blue mist.
Youth with its heat in the blood may be more capable of exultation at this season, but to the old man it brings the sounder hope and deeper joy.
ROMNEY MARSH
"Proceeding from a source of untaught things"
(Prelude xiii. 310)
Here is Appledore; over there is Romney Marsh. The sky has partly cleared after heavy, south-westerly rain. On the horizon where the sea lies the clouds are in a line, and the air is so clear that their edges are sharp against the blue. Nearer to me they are slowly dissolving, re-forming, and moving eastwards, and their shadows are crossing the wide gra.s.sy plain on which in the distance Lydd Church is just discernible. I can report something of those greys and that azure, but the best part of what is before me will not outline itself to me. Still less can I shape it in speech.
Necessity, majestic inevitable movement, the folly of heat and hurry, all this emerges and again is blended in the simple unity of transcendent loveliness. But beyond there is something so close, so precious! and yet elusive of every effort to grasp it.
She came to meet me from the line Where lies the ocean miles away; And now she"s close; she must be mine: I wait the word that she must say.
The magic word is not for me: The vision fades, and far and near The west wind stirs the gra.s.sy sea In whispers to the watching ear.
AXMOUTH
A true Devonshire village, sloping upwards from the Axe. The cottages are thatched, and the walls are of cobbles, plastered. A little gurgling stream runs down the village street, and over the stream each cottage on its bank has a little bridge. The poor brook is much troubled, unhappily, by cabbage leaves and the like defilement, and does its best to oversweep them and carry them away, but does not quite succeed. In a few minutes, however, it will be in the Axe, and in half an hour it will be in the pure sea. A farmhouse stands at the end of the village with a farmyard of deep manure and black puddles coming up to the side-door. The church, once interesting, has been restored with more than usual barbarity, blue slates, villa ridge-tiles, the vulgarest cheap pavement, tawdry decorations and furniture, such as are supplied to churchwardens by ecclesiastical tradesmen. But the tower is still grey, and has looked unchanged over the Axe estuary for hundreds of years.
Turning up from the main street is a Devonshire lane eight feet wide or thereabouts. It ascends to a farm on the hillside, and its steep high banks are covered with ferns and primroses. A tiny brooklet twitters down by its side. At the top of the down is a line of old hawthorns blown slantingly by south-west storms into a close, solid ma.s.s of shoots and p.r.i.c.kles. They are dwarfed in their struggle, but have thick trunks, many of them covered with brilliant yellow lichen.
For miles and miles before it comes to Axmouth, and above Axminster, the Axe flows in singular loops, often returning almost upon itself, reluctant to quit the lovely land of its birth, youth, and maturity; but now it is straighter, for it is in the lowlands and feels the tide. Flocks of seagulls wade or float in it. It pa.s.ses quietly under its last bridge, but beyond it is confronted by a huge shingle barrier. Sweeping alongside it, it suddenly turns at right angles, cuts its way through with an exulting rush, holds back for a few yards the sea waves that ripple against it, and is then lost.