I know the "pip," the "black pigs" too, know them well; but they are quite beneath contempt; and nothing on earth would induce me to cross the bright blue of my serenity. I have a great notion of being the master of my own happiness, and not suffering it to be contingent on the manners and conduct of other people.
If a man slights me, he does me no harm; but if his conduct is detrimental to the general good, if he is unjust, a villain in high place, a seducer, a poison, a snare to the innocent, then have at him!
though, _const.i.tutionally_ I had rather leave him alone.
The sum of happiness in the world is not too large. I would like, if possible, to increase it by the modest contribution of my own store. If so, I must guard it from all disturbance; and poetry enables me to do this, gives me a thousand springs of joy, in none of which there is one drop of bitterness--and thank G.o.d for that!
We are here in the I. of Wight, busy comparing it with the I. of Man, of course. It is really a beautiful island, not merely as regards richness of vegetation, an ornament that just now is not available, but also for its configuration. The "lay of the land," the att.i.tude, and gesture of the lines are admirable. The coast is dismally inferior to ours; glens are not to be seen, and streams are puny, but very clean. On the whole we give the preference to Mona, and that upon purely aesthetic, not patriotic, grounds.
I hope you are all well and thriving. Accept my best wishes for the New Year. Your satire discloses perhaps a slight biliary secretion--all satire, I fear, is bile. I hope I may impute it to Christmas festivities rather than to any permanent disorder!
P.S.--I return the verses, as I think you would like to keep them....
I did very well in the Isle of Man; had two good solitary walks, drank deep draughts of--don"t know how to describe it--that social brewage which I get nowhere else. Very likely other people get it in their own habitats. But it really does seem to me as if the whole island was quivering and trembling all over with _stories_--they are like leaves on a tree. The people are always telling them to one another, and any morning or evening you hear, whether you like it or not, innumerable anecdotes, sayings, tragedies, comedies--I wonder whether they lie fearfully. They are a marvellously _narrational_ community. And you"ve not been there a day before all this closes round you with a quiet familiarity of "use and custom" which is most fascinating. Nothing else in the universe seems of any consequence.
And warly cares, and warly men, May a" gae tapsalteerie, O!
A week more and I should have become reabsorbed into this medium past recovery and past recognition....
I have been musing a good deal over my "Dooiney-molla"[1]: he is now taking shape, and looms rather large. I believe you will like him, and his fiery little groom. These good souls do well to visit my dreams: they are such a comfort; and, do you know, they positively do "go on" in my dreams. Here are two lines which came tripping at the window of my slumbers last night:
1. "When the sun was jus" puttin" on his shoes" (morning),
for which I instantly seemed to discover a parallel--to wit:
"Sthreelin" oft his golden stockings" (the sun again, evening).
2. "Jus" rags tore off the Divil"s ould shirt" (=witches" charms, or spells).
There will be a very good witch in this poem, I promise you: look out!
----[2] are sounding me about "The Doctor";... They would try to make it a popular book. The others tried to make it a drawing-room book, with the result that the few purchasers thereof hid it somewhere behind their book-shelves, and even there trembled for the morals of the housemaids....
We went into the church, and sat at a long service. The curate preached on Judas Iscariot; the vicar conducted a service in the churchyard.
"Judas did this, Judas thought that"; then from the churchyard, in stentorian chorus, "Crown Him! crown Him! crown Him! crown Him Lord of all." Thus, you see, there was an element of the comic; but how, how sad it was to me, how incomprehensible! Verily, I am left behind; I can"t, after all these years, adjust myself to the dimensions of such a change.
The people behaved better than they used to do in our time; but the numbers! the systematisation! the total absence of the native population! the show atmosphere! the "Walk up, gentlemen" style of thing! Over all this Vanity Fair the dear old bells rang out precisely as of old....
Yesterday, at the Kerroo-Kiel, I met a delightfully bright and witty man. He soon got to know who I was, and we had the most glorious talk.
The mischief of it is that these worthies are only too glad to get into a _coosh_ with you, and they would talk all day, leaving a spade, or forsaking plough and horses to lean over a hedge, leaning on something at any rate, and talking away. Their talk is bright, aimless, rambling, not without dives into the depths, and pokes into your personality, above all, _engouement_ the most absolute, and desire of intercommunication the most insatiable. And you are up on the mountain-side at the farther limit of plough-range, and the wind whistles just the right sort of accompaniment to such talk.
I think I must have a sail here. But, do you know? the Manx seamen and fishermen tend to become self-conscious: the "strangers" are spoiling them. Not so the farmer; of course no one can make him understand that the visitors do him any good by raising the prices of his produce, so he cares very little about them, and in no way guides himself according to them or their fashions. So far as the outer world comes to him, it is by the channel of the newspapers. He has all the boundless curiosity, the thirst for knowledge miscellaneous, pulpy, and piquant, which characterise those that dwell remote. When he gets hold of you he flies at you, hugs you, gets every blessed thing he can out of you.
"Favourable specimen," you will say. That is true; but, as regards the independence and primitive state of mind, what I say applies to almost all. You see, you must get down beneath the gentleman or would-be gentleman-farmer, down to the man who never conceived the idea of ruffling it with gentlefolk. Also, you must not go down to the mere labourer. But they are desperate gossips--gossips not so much in matters local and insular, as in matters universal. The gossiping tone does proceed into the universal, does it not? The hilarity with which they will range the far horizons of thought is so childlike (you know how children are about that); a chatter that sparkles on the surface like their own _divers_, and then, with an "Aw bless me sowl," or "Aye, man, aye," down into the deepest soundings of the spirit....
A charming Hibernian called on me the other day. Portentous! alarming!
He had been sent from Douglas by some evil-disposed friends of mine there, to consult me as the supreme authority on matters Manx. Now of this language I am, if not wholly, yet at least grammatically ignorant.
He was a tall, stalwart fellow; black-bearded, not handsome, but with a tremendously Irish face, eyes of fire, nose of peremptory interrogation.
Flourishing a wretched grammar in one hand, he proceeded rapidly to demonstrate its ineptness, and sternly to demand my explanation. As my weak-kneedness grew more painfully evident--
So scented the grim feature, and upturned His nostril wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his quarry--
he almost shouted with exultation. All the Manx scholars had completely failed--here was another. "Glory be to G.o.d! I"ll smite him hip and thigh." He was a splendid Irishman, and, of course, kind and generous.
He didn"t spare me, _destructed_ me utterly; but speedily constructed me upon new lines, and told me a lot about Celtic difficulties and how to overcome them. He spoke Irish like a bird, and, after about three-quarters of an hour, he rushed forth to catch the train, hairy, immense, with some wild wirrasthru of farewell. Imagine a very learned and linguistic Mulligan of Ballymulligan!...
O Wallaston, the delight of this leisure! I read, I write, I play. Good gracious! I shouldn"t wonder if my music came to something yet. I have actually gone back to singing, a vice of my youth. Don"t mention it at Clifton! I always think the sea the great challenger and promoter of song. Even the mountain is not the same thing. There may always be some d----d fool or another behind a rock. But the sea is open, and you can tell when you are alone, and the dear old chap is so confidential: I will trust him with my secret.
How about Devon! was it good? Did you all bathe and "rux" yourselves well about in the brine? I have not done much in that way: the storms have been so furious--unkind of them, eh? Well, I fancy it is like the boisterous welcome of some great dog--at least I take it in that sense.
And the old boy is so strong, and he doesn"t know, he thinks I am what I used to be. But I"m not: and every now and then he remembers that, and creeps to my feet so fawningly....
[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]
At a great prayer-meeting requests were being made that divers souls, supposed to be in evil case, should be interceded for. One arose and asked the prayers of the meeting for a little town on the east coast of Scotland, which was "wholly given to idolatry." Such was the expression.
A little city, with many schools, also the seat of a University. Having thus mysteriously indicated the place, the excellent individual plainly felt that no mortal could possibly guess what place he meant; and, putting his hand over his mouth, he said to his friends on the platform, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper distinctly heard over the entire hall, "St.
Andrews!" Isn"t that consummate? Isn"t it Scotland?...
[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]
Walters did an extremely kind thing the other day. Two old things going about with an _entertainment_ (!) of Recitations (really old, for I heard them "at it" thirty-five years ago), took a letter with them from me to Walters. It was the merest chance, I thought, but I suggested that just possibly Walters might give them an evening at the College.
By Jove! sir, he did give them an evening, and gave them a substantial fee, and filled their poor trembling cup of Auld lang syne with joy and thanksgiving, and dismissed them with honour, almost reeling with the intoxication of so unwonted a success, the boys giving them a mighty three-times-three which shook the welkin, and stirred amazingly the pulsation of two hearts that have long desisted from the exercise of hope....
[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]
I heard one or two good stories at Braddan when I preached there (last Sunday). One was of a child at the Sunday-school. "What ought you to do on Sunday?" "Go to church." "What ought you to do next?" "Go to chapel."
Was it not precisely the story for a vicar to tell? You feel the atmosphere--what?...
[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]
We sat down in some cottages. Some of the people were magnificent, throwing themselves upon you with such vigour of accent, such warmth and fun, and endless receptivity, bright, well pulled together, sonorous, that I nearly staggered under it--not chaff--good heavens! no--but would have been chaff, only it wasn"t, for they can"t chaff.
Kitty Kermode, _alias_ Kinvig, was the best. She said a very sweet and profound thing (but I can"t phrase it as I ought) about the value of friendship, as compared with that of love. A little happy creature of some seventeen giggled in a dark corner, but I let her giggle; the old woman pierced me through and through. Oh _fortunati_--Oh indeed! And these dear things seemed to know that their lot was a happy one. _Quod faustum!_ Unutterably precious to me is the woman, the native of the hills, almost my own age, or a little younger, whose spirit is set upon the finest springs, and her sympathies have an almost masculine depth, and a length of reflection that wins your confidence and stays your sinking heart.
The lady can"t do it. This cla.s.s, of what I suppose you would call peasant women (I won"t have the word), seems made for the purpose of rectifying everything, and redressing the balance, inspiring us with that awe which the immediate presence of absolute womanhood creates in us. The plain, practical woman, with the outspoken throat and the eternal eyes. Oh, mince me, madam, mince me your pretty mincings!
Deliberate your dainty reticences! Balbutient loveliness, avaunt! Here is a woman that talks like a bugle, and, in everything, sees G.o.d.
[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]
... The wreck of the _Drummond Castle_ is much in my mind. What lovely creatures those French are! The women and children, carrying their poor drowned sisters! that little baby in its coffin decked with roses! Don"t you yearn towards those dear souls? What are Agincourt and Waterloo in the presence of such sweetness? Well, I love them anyway, and shall brood over them and pray for them while I live....