APR 11 1918 LIFE AND LETTERS OF STOPFORD BROOKE Brooke in 1905. From a phutoyrapli. Iiy (1. f. IleresJ'ovd. [Frontis2nece to ^'ol. II. LIFE AND LETTERS OF STOPFORD BROOKE 1/ BY LAWRENCE PEARSALL JACKS M.A., HON. LL.D. and D.D. PRINCIPAL OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD Thy voice is on the roUing air ; I hear thee where the waters run. ' VOLUME II NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1917 PRINTED BT WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED LONDON AND BECOLES, ENGLAND All rights reserved CONTENTS BOOK IV PROPHET AND POET CHAPTER PAGE XVIII. Afteb Secession. 1880-1890 351 XIX. Letters to Various Correspondents. 1882-1894 . 382 XX. Home Life 412 XXI. Letters to his Daughters. 1882-1896 . . . 426 XXII. Last Years at Bedford Chapel. 1890-1895 . 447 BOOK V THE SECOND HARVEST XXIIT. A Renewal of Youth XXIV. Brooke's Relations with the Unitarians . XXV. Extracts prom the Diary of 1899 XXVI. Letters to Various Correspondents. 1894-1906 XXVII. The Myth op the Three Springs. 1898-1908 XXVIII. Extracts from the Diary op 1904 471 493 501 518 547 567 VI CONTENTS BOOK VI OLD AGE CHAPTER XXIX. Attainment XXX. EXTBACTS FROM THE DiAEY OF 1908. XXXI. Extracts prom the Diary of 1909 XXXII. Letters to Various Correspondents. 1908 XXXIII. Letters to Viscount Bryce. 1899-1916 XXXIV. His Thoughts on the Great War XXXV. The End. 1916 XXXVI. Last Letters ...... INDEX 1914 PAGE 581 593 608 618 635 651 665 677 691 ILLUSTRATIONS TO FACE PAQB 1. Brooke in 1905 . . . Frontispiece to Vol II. 2. The Father op Brooke 392 3. Brooke in the Garden of Wordsworth's Cottage, Grasmere, in 1892 464 4. William Brooke 488 5. Brooke in 1901 606 6. Under the Great Beech at the Four Winds, 1915 . 670 LIFE AND LETTEES OP STOPFOED BEOOKE CHAPTER XVIII AFTER SECESSION 1880-1890 " I went to the Tate Gallery to see the Turners, and we walked back to Westminster Abbey, and entered and sat down in the Nave. I felt regret that I could no longer preach there : but it was no mistake, my leaving the Church."— (Diar^/, June 28, 1907.) " I listened [as I stood] outside the church to the hymns — emblem of my position in the religious world of England. . . . But I, as I read the papers, and see that the Church has learnt nothing, but still goes on talking of certain debateablc doctrines as realities, and persuading their world that these inventions are celestial truths, and not the mere rags of the lies they were of old, when alive and bold they were the tyrants of mankind — I wonder if men will ever, or can ever, on this earth, distinguish death from life, lies from truth, and the things that endure from those that perish. And I don't regret that I am out of it all, free as the wind on a mountain moor and as alone." — (Diary, August 11, 1907.) Brooke's secession was not imitated by other clergy- men except in one or two instances, nor is it clear that even these were directly due to his example. Its chief influence was on the lay rather than on the clerical mind : and it was a moral rather than an ecclesiastical event. A mass of letters written to Brooke by laymen, of which some specimens have been given in the last chapter, lies before me. Their drift may be summarized in a sentence. They inform Brooke that his action has con- firmed the writers in their attitude towards the Church — that of refusal to take part in its services on the ground 352 AFTEE SECESSION that the Creeds cannot be honestly believed nor honestly recited. I say nothing of the justice of this argument ; to discuss that is no part of my present business. But it is a point of great importance in view of the statement which has been so often made, that Brooke's secession was without effect on the Church of England. To prove this would be difficult even if the clergy alone had to be considered; for though it were true that not a single clergyman imitated the example of Brooke, it would not follow that the clergy were unaffected. Professional teachers of religion are apt to look at such matters too exclusively from their own point of view, and if they are not moved from their places, to draw the inference that nothing is moving in the world. We shall get a truer measure of Brooke's action if we look away from its ecclesiastical bearings and consider it as an event in the moral history of the times. It took place at a time, not yet expired, when the standard of truth in religion was suffering discredit by comparison with the standard of truth in the sciences, and it was one of the efforts which a few bold spirits were making to bring the two standards to the same level. Whether it was necessary to secede from the Church in order to accomplish this may be open to dispute, and no doubt there is a danger of Jjophistry on both sides of the argument. But, rightly or wrongly, Brooke felt that the sophistry was all on one side, and, since no man could be more unfitted to play the part of a sophist either with pleasure or success, he resolved to cut himself clear of the mists and bring the matter down to the simple test of yea, yea, and nay, nay. This, at all events, was well meant, and the right intention of it was widely and quickly recognized. A great deal was said about it in the press, but even the Church Times, which was CHABACTER OF HIS CONGREGATION 353 strongly opposed to his teaching, did not fail to give him credit for honesty; and this was the general tone of the newspaper comments. All which tends to show that the secession, altogether apart from ecclesiastical considerations, was having a moral effect. This was most timely, and gave him a wider public than he had commanded before. A small number of people left Bedford Chapel, but that surely is not to be weighed as a moral fact against the general recognition of his honesty and courage. The congregation he attracted was composed predominantly of thoughtful men and women, many of whom had given up the habit of public worship until they came under Brooke's influence, men of science, doctors, barristers, artists, actors, public singers, journalists, members of Parliament. It was upon people of this class, and they were a great multi- tude, that his example and his influence produced their chief effects. Through them his message was touching the central currents of English life. He was preaching the religion of Love unhampered by dogma — of human love which, in its noblest form, becomes divine, and holding forth a great ideal of public duty as its necessary consequence and chief form of expression. Many persons of weight and influence were learning this lesson from Brooke who would not have learnt it from anybody else. Mr Haweis indeed declared that his action in seceding was "an anachronism."^ So perhaps it was from the point of view of clergymen holding Mr Haweis' opinions about the ethics of subscription. But to multitudes of the laity, who had come to the conclusion that men of religion are under the same obligation as men of science to say what they mean, there was no anachronism. It is true, as was often pointed out at the time, that ' In a letter to the Daily News. 354 AFTER SECESSION Brooke's secession was a loss to progressive tendencies within the Church of England. But we must not forget that it was a gain, and perhaps a greater gain, to pro- gressive tendencies elsewhere. More akin to our present purpose is the question of the effect on Brooke himself. This may be shortly answered. The effect was a liberation of mental, moral, spiritual energy. The freedom that he won was freedom for the unrestricted expression of his own personality, and his whole nature rushed forward in a fresh outburst of prophetic fire and creative imagination. The years that followed were years of intense and many- sided activity. And this in spite of the fact that a time was now come when the ills of the body began to exact their toll. To the end of the seventies Brooke had enjoyed exuberant health, save for such interruptions as were incident to a finely balanced nervous organization. His frame was tall, massive, and exactly proportioned, his movements vigorous, his step rapid, his eye kindled, his face aglow with light and colour. He was capable of great physical exertion, and loved it. As he climbed the mountains or walked in the wind his blood would take fire in the pure air and his whole being overflow with elemental joy. In moments when he was eager or impassioned his fine hair, which stood like a cloud about his head, would stir and creep and expand itself as though it possessed a life of its own — a strange thing which I have often witnessed. This radiant vitality Brooke never lost, notwithstanding that during the years of his greatest activity, and indeed to the time of his death, he had to endure recurrent and protracted battles with pain. The habit of standing at his desk had gradually brought on an injury to the veins of the legs, and in '77 he was suddenly attacked by HIS BATTLE WITH PAIN 355 phlebitis and compelled to lie low for several months. This distressing malady continued to recur at intervals for many years ; the threat of it was always present, and though the menace to life was not direct, there were dangers connected with the disease which momentary carelessness might at any time render fatal. In the earlier attacks he was occasionally inclined to defy his doctors — and paid a penalty in consequence. But early in the eighties he put himself under the care of Dr Morriston Davies, who subsequently became an intimate friend and was able to put a salutary check upon his imprudence. The amount of physical pain that fell to the lot of Brooke during the last thirty or forty years of his life was a severe trial of his patience and fortitude. But, thanks to his immense physical and moral vitality, he showed little sign of suffering either in his person or his work. Nothing seemed to dim his radiance, to quench the light of his imagination, or to break his will. For example, the whole of his work on the Liher Studiorum of Turner (1885), than which the literature of English art criticism has nothing finer to show, was written during a particularly dangerous attack which kept him a prisoner to his couch for many weary months. When Brooke left the Church a score of seat-holders, as I have said, gave up their pews in Bedford Chapel. Their places were immediately taken by others, and the Chapel was crowded to the doors. The congregation included large numbers of visitors from all parts of the world. The forms of the Book of Common Prayer were retained with the omission of the Creeds and those parts of the Liturgy which involved, directly or indirectly, the doctrine of the Miraculous Incarnation. A new 356 AFTER SECESSION collection of hymns was also made by Brooke, most of them familiar to Christian worshippers, but including not a few, of singular beauty, of which he himself was the author.^ In all this there was no violent breach with the past. A stranger entering Bedford Chapel in the eighties would not be aware of much difference from the earlier period. There was nothing to suggest Nonconformity, either in the character of the services or the person of the preacher. No attack upon the Church of England was heard, and when once the necessary explanations had been given, no further reference was made to his secession, nor to the causes which had led up to it. Instead of talking about his freedom or contrasting it with the condition of those who were less free than himself, he used it to develop his positive message of the Kingdom, " not according to another man's idea of it, but according to his own idea of it," dwelling continually on the Fatherhood of God, the leadership of Christ, and the Immortality of the Soul. These were his constant themes, and in their light he read the lessons of science, of art, of history, of social progress, in all of which he found a continuous revelation of God and an opportunity for realizing the Christian ideal. His method was positive, direct, con- structive, personal. He addressed men and women as individuals and not as mere units in a mass, and he possessed a natural insight into the human heart which enabled him to interpret his hearers to themselves. His message never seemed a burden to him : it came forth unlaboured, a spontaneous utterance sustained with joy, with passion, and with an affluence of fine and fitting ' See the article on his hymns by Dr W, Garrett Horder in Julian's Dictionary of Hynmology. BROOKE IN THE PULPIT 357 words. His form and figure in the pulpit were a vision of the higher possibilities of man. To look at him was to be lifted up, kindled, reassured. He had the air of one born in a better world than this, and a cloud of glory from his birthplace seemed to follow him. Virtue went out from his presence, and though some were left cold and untouched, there were always many to whom the sight of his face as he delivered his mes- sage or administered the Holy Communion was as the breath of a new life. His published sermons stand high in the literature of the pulpit, but no eloquence of the written word can convey the power of enforcement that lay in his personality. The influence struck deep while he was in the act of speaking, and when the sermon was over the mind would linger on the image of the man, and unconsciously construct a greater sermon for itself. At Bedford Chapel there were none of the ** insti- tutions " commonly connected with a place of worship, and the work Brooke did there was mainly confined to the pulpit. Large numbers of his regular congregation were unknown to him personally ; indeed, they came from areas so scattered and distant that pastoral visi- tation was impossible ; nor did Brooke regard that kind of activity as the most profitable use of his time. Some of his hearers were his personal friends ; they frequented his house in Manchester Square, and were constantly visited by him when they were in sickness or trouble; and there were large numbers of others whose acquaint- ance he would make when they sought his advice in his own study, as many of them did. His principal churchwarden was Mr R. A. Potts, the chemist -of Audley Street, for whom Brooke had a great regard. This gentleman, a gifted bibliophile and collector of first editions, whose knowledge and judgment were constantly 358 AFTER SECESSION consulted by Brooke in the extensive purchases he was then making, was one of a small group of Brooke's hearers who became intimately connected with his family circle. For many years he was seldom absent from the joyous company which gathered in the study on Sunday evenings, when Brooke, with the day's work off his mind, and a box of cigars at his elbow, would gather about him his children, his brothers, his sisters, and friends, and pass the swift hours in delightful and excellent talk, until towards midnight he would suddenly give the order that everybody was to go to bed, and the company would disperse wearied with happiness. How well at these times would he practise his doctrine "that the supreme duty of life is to make other people happy " ! To those who knew him superficially, the impassioned preacher of Bedford Chapel and the gay companion, the eager political talker, the brilliant litterateur of Man- chester Square, might appear two very different men, but to those who were privy to the springs of his life the two characters were one. In the early eighties Brooke appeared before the public, who were somewhat taken by surprise, as an ardent advocate of Total Abstinence. Throughout his life he had been extremely sparing in the use of alcohol, and he was fully alive to its physiological dangers, which he had learnt from his friend Sir B. W. Richardson. Moreover, he had no need of artificial stimulants to rouse ' his vitality. All the same he loved a glass of wine, provided the vintage were of the best, and it must have been a real sacrifice to abandon its occasional use, and still more to preclude himself from providing good wine for his friends. For several winters there were weekly temperance meetings in Bedford Chapel, forcible addresses were given by Brooke, and pledges were THE DEBATING SOCIETY 359 abundantly gathered from the audience. But in '85 he was again stricken down by the malady of which I have spoken, and Sir Andrew Clarke, having regard to his general habits, advised him that total abstinence was not for his good. Brooke was not the man to attempt a compromise between his social doctrines and his doctor's orders. Accordingly his " faculty of dismissing things " came once more into operation : his blue ribbon was laid aside, and from that time onwards no more was heard of the matter. He also established the once famous Bedford Chapel Debating Society, one of the best of its kind, where all the great questions of the day were discussed by a large group of talented and eager minds. Bernard Shaw, just then rising into fame, Sidney Webb, the late William Clark, Sir William Collins, Frank Wright, Michael Davitt, Herbert Burroughs, Graham Wallas, John Muirhead, are names which will arise at once to those who remember these meetings. The speaking was exceptionally good, and although there was always a tendency to merge the discussion into the general problem of socialism, the range of subjects was very wide. Mr Charles Wright, who was the Secretary of the Society, has furnished me with the following notes, which, though they refer in part to Brooke's preaching, are properly inserted in this place : — " My recollection of Stopford Brooke goes back to the seventies and to the old chapel, since demolished, in York Street, St -James's. It is difficult to estimate what his personality and teaching meant to eager young men to whom the evangelical theology of the day had become meaningless or repulsive. No doubt the perfect literary form of his discourses was an important element in their attractiveness, whilst the noble countenance of the VOL. II. B 360 AFTER SECESSION speaker itself " Drew audience and attention still as night," but the main thing was the earnest and effective presentation of Christianity as a living force in the life of to-day. The sermons were read from manuscript, which always seems a very serious defect in preaching, but Mr Brooke read with such extraordinary freedom and power that it never seemed a defect in him. And to some who were suspicious of rhetoric the evidence of careful preparation was by no means ungrateful, and yet the listener was deeply impressed by the power of the spoken word, and the inspiration of a sympathetic personality. " The mind lingers with affection over the memories linked with the old chapel, but it was at Bedford Chapel and still more at the Debating Society that his per- sonality seemed to unfold. I do not remember any trace of humour in his sermons, but one of our members once said that the Debating Society was his real Church, and there undoubtedly his mind seemed to have freer play. Those were the days of early Socialism when a new heaven and a new earth were expected next week, the protagonists in deadly earnest taking gloomy views of each other's character. The President's summing up was always a model of good temper, discerning the best in each speaker, ignoring stupidities, making violence absurd by his delicate humour. " In literary subjects he was supreme, and although there were sometimes present men whose fame will pro- bably outlast his, there never seemed to be any question as to his leadership. I doubt whether any of those who came in contact with him are not richer in mind and spirit by reason of his influence." He was also deeply interested at this time, and indeed to the end of his life, in the movement for providing country holidays for the slum children of London, a movement which his eldest daughter, Miss Honor Brooke, had been among the first to set on foot. His annual sermon on behalf of this cause gave him an EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE 861 opportunity for the description of nature in which he excelled, and the pictures he \YOuld draw of the poor children surprised and enraptured in the green fields, or gazing open-eyed at the wonderful ways of birds and beasts, would show him at the summit of his poetic power. The Domestic Missions established by the Unitarians in the London slums also appealed to him strongly; he would plead for them in the pulpit and on the platform. His literary activity during this period was great. All through the eighties he was engaged in the prepara- tion of his " History of Early English Literature " which appeared in two volumes in 1892. This book, he says in the Preface, is " the history of the beginnings of EngHsh Poetry," carried down to the accession of Alfred in 871. It was intended by Brooke as the first instal- ment of a complete history of English poetry to modern times — a design which, in consequence of the frequent interruptions to his health, was never completed, though it was partly carried out in his volumes on Shakespeare and on the modern poets. To qualify himself for the first part of his task he had to learn Anglo- Saxon, and this he did with ease and rapidity. An immense range of study had to be mastered, which Brooke accomplished with great thoroughness, though with some irritation at the mere footnote character of much that had been pre- viously written on the subject. But the value of the book does not lie in the learning which it amasses or displays. It lies in the imaginative power which, pene- trating the secret of all this dim and distant literature — " Beowulf," Caedmon, Cynewulf — raises these names, quick with a life of their own, from the tomb in which Dryasdust had so long sealed them up. From the foot- note scholars the book received a chill and guarded welcome, and there were some of them who would have 362 AFTER SECESSION treated Brooke as a poacher. They charged him with indifference to the commentators — a charge happily not altogether untrue — and they pounced upon minor errors in the translations, which were free, imaginative, and sometimes daring. Ther&was not enough deference to the accredited authorities, and since this kind of lese- majeste is slow to be forgiven, full justice has not yet been done to the merits of the work. As on the occasion of his leaving the Church, so in this instance the chief effect was produced on the lay mind, on those, that is, who had no professional axes to grind, but were capable of being awakened to a new and living interest in the springs of English poetry. Nearly the whole of this book was written in a dark and dingy room at the back of Bedford Chapel, which he had fitted up as a study, that he might have immunity from the constant attentions of his friends. In this sun- less den, where in winter the gas had to be lit at midday, sat Brooke, the lover of sunshine, surrounded by roses and azaleas, the roar of Oxford Street incessantly in his ears, the air pervaded with the mingled odours of flowers, of tobacco, and of a London vestry ; a pile of volumes at his side, a pipe in his mouth, and a few photographs of the people he loved on the table before him. But he himself was elsewhere, travelling on the wings of his imagination in the morning of the world. Often, I confess, have I interrupted him while he was thus engaged, as did many others with a greater claim. In an instant he would come back, his face radiant with the joy which he always showed at the appearance of his friends; there would be an hour of pleasant talk, unless the conscience of his visitor were too sensitive ; and the end would be " Now then, get away with you, and let me finish what I am doing." "RIQUET OF THE TUFT" 363 He composed verse freely at this time. lu the year of his secession he pubUshed his lyrical drama — " Riquet of the Tuft," ^ of which he wrote as follows to Mr. Bryce, commenting on the conjunction of the two events : — To James Bryce. ' ' Naworth. August 31, '80. "... I have asked them to send you ' Riquet.' . . . As to myself, things of more importance have put it out of my head, and I feel almost unconcerned about its fate. I told Macmillan that he might let the authorship slip into the Academy and Athenaeum. He seemed so very anxious to do so, and I didn't care. It is odd — so odd is life — that a Love Drama and leaving the Church should come together. I am glad you like my letter ; ^ and some of your suggestions I have partly adopted. I rather hesitate about doctrinally italicizing in short sen- tences my view of Christ's person and revelation, not that I have any hesitation as to my view, which is quite clear and defined, but that short statements on so infinitely ramified a subject are so liable to mistake and attack, and the statements cannot be long. " When I have written and published a few short sermons, which I hope to do before the end of the year, my position will not be mistaken, and I can afford to be mistaken for a few months. The action itself and the reason why will cause plenty of attack, if men trouble themselves about it, and then by and by, they will find out that I am not as black as they painted me, and there will be a reaction. Anyway, I can wait— it is the only thing I do really well — and go on quietly saying what I mean. It will tell in the end, if it is worth anything. If it isn't, why — down it goes into the abyss. • D. G. Rossetti said of the " Marriage Song" in " Riquet," " It is one of the most beautiful lyrics I havo read. Every night I repeat it to myself." I have this on good authority. - To his congregation explaining his secession. 364 AFTER SECESSION " I leave this house very soon and shall probably join the children in Ireland. If so, I shall go by Belfast and down by the west coast to Killarney." In 1888 he published his volume of " Poems." In these, as in " Eiquet," the influences at work are plainly evident : we see his debt to Shakespeare, Shelley, Words- worth, and Keats. " Riquet of the Tuft " was pronounced by the critic of the Examiner to be " a gem of the purest water." The ** Poems " are pitched in many keys and range over a great variety of themes, but all are alive with his passionate humanity and love of nature ; many spring from the romantic side of his temperament, or show his affinity with the Early Renaissance ; some, which are probably the best of all, reveal him as the sympathizer with the sufferings of the poor, and espe- cially as the champion of poor women. The chief of these last are " The Sempstress " and the " Crofter's Wife." Of all the critics of his poetry there was none whose opinion Brooke valued more highly than that of his youngest brother, the Rev. Arthur Brooke.^ On the appearance of the volume of " Poems " Mr Arthur Brooke .. wrote a long and discriminating criticism of the kind '" which the elder brother loved. The following is the latter's reply : — To Rev. Arthur Brooke. " Shere, Surrey. July 30, '88. "... You are the only person who has taken the trouble to think at all about those lyrics which deal with recondite phases of human love, the only person, it V. 1 Mr Arthur Brooke is himself a poet. In 1913 he published a volume of " Occasional Verses " among which are many lyrics of great beauty. HIS POEMS 365 seems to me, who has seen that they are worth anything — as it seems to me they are — not much worth indeed, but still having a certain quality. For instance, in that httle poem of * Venice,' the two lines — " ' why is it in water and air, And nevermore in me ? ' really describe a phase which is curious and true, when a man feels that the passion which filled his life is entirely gone from himself, but yet feels it moving through memory in Nature. In times past, Nature and he were together filled with it. Now he has lost it, yet Nature keeps it still, and he regrets he can have it no more. " You say I am saturated with fatalism. Of that I was not aware. I'm not a bit of a fatalist. But I dare say it is there. It is one of the phases which belong to life. I remember writing the ' Vapour of Fate ' in such a phase, as I stood here — at Hurstcote — and saw the mist rise out of the valley and encroach on all the world. But not all the Poems have that. However, love is always fatalistic, and these Poems are all about love. " The next book of Poems I write will have httle or nothing about that passion. I think you are quite right in saying that I ought to lighten the gloom and show the nobler strength. But you see I am always doing that in the pulpit, every week of my life. Fight on, fight on, fortitude, hoped victory, the certainty of it, the glory of the war — these I preach incessantly, and the tempta- tion to write the other side, or rather the strong impulse to write the other side, to speak of other phases, not to preach, was strong on me. " However, if I write any more, it shall be about other phases altogether of human life. "As to the Vengeance Poems, they came. Once in my life at least — nay twice or three times — I have felt that, so I wrote it, but I've got rid of it. Then a number of Poems which seem this or that were the most momentary of emotions, and jotted down as I walked the 366 AFTER SECESSION streets. They have all gone by now. Positively I seem to have forgotten the whole book. I am longing to write another, and a quite different one. All those, with the exception of two, were written in the last three years. Well, I hope the book will endure for a little and give some pleasure." The two letters which follow, from Professor Edward Dowden, and Mr Gladstone, refer to his literary work at this time. From Professor Edward Dowden. " Winstead, Temple Road, Rathmines, "Dublin. "Oct. 19, 1880. " Deae Mr Brooke, — It is not long since I have seen Riquet and Callista entering the Fairy Hall, for I have been pestered with my college work, and did not choose to read your drama in broken scraps of time. I have not the knack of gauging with elegant infallibility the length and breadth of each new spiritual product brought into the world ; but at least I know that I have had more enjoyment from Eiquet than from any volume of recent poetry that I have read for a good long time. And if you were not doing more valuable work I suspect you could do good service by enriching the English stage with that kind of short poetical drama, which is one of the special charms of the French theatre, and which is delightful to read, apart from its theatrical surroundings, as a poem. I think you have been remarkably successful in preserving a harmony of love throughout. Had your gardener,^ for instance, said clever rusticities we should have got out of fairyland. And the problem you solved, how to make a fairy tale a passionate human tale, and to find a tone and manner that would harmonize the fantastic and the reality of passion was a puzzling one — puzzling at least to solve intellectually, though perhaps not so when the imagination took it in hand. " I hope your church is filled, and that those who ' A character in the play. LETTER FROM GLADSTONE 367 adhere to you, adhere strenuously. That you took the right course I have not the sHghtest doubt, though to be disingenuous in conduct may be an * anachronism.' I Uked the plainness of speech, and the good feeling of your letter much. " When you were here I forgot to mention, what you have probably noticed yourself, an unhappy misprint in the ' Ode to the West Wind ' (p. 319 of your ' Selections '). Sweet thought in sadness. " With many thanks for Riquet, I am, sincerely yours, *' Edward Dowden. "I suppose you are still addressed as * The Rev.,' or is this an ' anachronism ' ? " From Ml- Gladstone. " Ha warden Castle, Chester, " May 20, '97. " My dear Sir, — I have to thank you for kindly presenting to me the volumes on English Literature into which you have compressed so much of useful informa- tion and of sound criticism. "I do not wonder at your calling attention to the tautology and iteration which mark the * Dearly Be- loved.' It seems to be in contrast with the general terseness of the prayers of the Church. For that and other reasons I sometimes ask myself whether it has not been deliberately employed, and whether its aim is not to rally scattered thoughts and minds feebly interested. " I am afraid there are important questions on which we might not agree ; but I remember with pleasure an intense sympathy with which I once heard you preach at Westminster Abbey (what I called) a sermon against respectability. — I remain, my dear Sir, yours very faithfully, " W. Gladstone." In the early eighties he held the position of Principal of the Men and Women's College in Queen's Square, 368 AFTER SECESSION which involved him in a good deal of work in addition to weekly lectures on English literature. Some difficulty arose from the fact that the lecture hall was apt to be crowded by admirers of Brooke, who had no connection with the College ; and when social functions were held these would surround him, so that the working men and women seldom got a chance of conversing with him. I have heard that one consequence of the presence of so large a number of educated persons was that he got into the habit of pitching his lectures above the heads of the audience for which they were originally intended. There were other difficulties, and in 1884 he resigned his office. The College had many faithful workers who loyally supported him, of whom the chief was Miss Guest, his friend and the friend of his children. With her he maintained a constant correspondence till the time of his death. One of her remarks concerning him, made to myself, deserves to be recorded. " After hearing him I always felt that I was able to make a new start in life. I could live the thing he taught me, and what better proof could I have that it was true ? " Letters. To Ids daughter Honor. " London. " Good Friday, 1880. " Yes, you will soon be back now, and that will be a good thing for you and me and every one. Perhaps you will be able to take ' Riquet ' in your hands and kiss him too, like Callista. He is half born, but the other half wants a little more shaping, so I have put him back into my brain. A few weeks more and out he will rush, like Athena out of Zeus' skull, and amaze the world with wisdom. He is on his way, be sure. And certainly you will see Shelley selected and a Preface written, and THE COERCION BILL 369 Notes, and that book you shall have by the time you arrive. He is done, all in the printer's hands, ready and rejoiced to go to be pressed and bound and then launched upon mankind, and I wish him good luck, and me good luck with him and plenty of money to buy pictures out of him. I get £120 for him now, and I shall send another £100 to Costa.^ Poor Costa is ill I hear, so he will like his £100 at once, and I will deny myself the joy of spending it— dear, good boy that I am." To James Bryce. Shere, Surrey. •' March, 1880, " Only this moment got your news.^ From papers yesterday I expected it ; but to know there is no doubt is great delight to me. I can't say how much I wished this nor how glad I am. For your sake — for the sake of the Cause — for the sake of Parliament. Now you are in you will make your mark on our time — thank goodness. It has been a hard battle, well and righteously fought, fought with courage, endurance, against great difficulties, and won in the way that is full of satisfaction — by plenty to spare. I like the whole of the story. You see — but I need not say that, for you agree with me — that what really tells in England, in the long run — is emo- tional enthusiasm for ideas, at the back of knowledge." To James Bryce. "London. 1881. " I could not dine at the Athenseum to-day, but any day next week I will. I sent you a postcard last night to ask you a question. I wonder if you think with all the rest apparently of the world that the H. of C. and especially the Liberal Government exhibit to the world a noblo example, and the H. Rulers a disgraceful one ? I at least take exactly the opposite view. The Coercion Bill is a disgrace to the Government, and its almost ' Giovanni Costa, the painter of Italian landscape. "^ Mr Bryce had just been elected for Tower Hamlets. 370 AFTER SECESSION unique provisions make its guilt. The Irish members were justified in resisting it by every means that could be invented within the Law. They have done so, and a new Statute has to be made by which all but half the members for Ireland, and these the representatives of most of the Catholic opinion, and of the farmer and peasant class, of Ireland are turned out of the House in order to get a bill through which practically puts all whom they represent outside the pale of the Constitution. I allow that the boredom of the Obstructionists was in- tolerable. But the Bill is still more intolerable, and so will Ireland feel it. I allow that some Coercion was necessary, but not till justice had been done, or promised to be done, by stating at least the clauses of the Land Bill. Then — if the Government of England had done its best for justice — then, if outrage, etc., went on, would be the time to coerce. Now the only result of this Bill, brought in when it has been, carried through as it will be, will be to deepen rebellion in Ireland, to deepen hatred and jealousy and the scorn which the weak feel towards the strong who oppress them, to divide still more bitterly class from class, and to put off all modera- tion, all wisdom in the Land Question for I know not how long. " The main struggle of the Irish, under the Land League, is a struggle against bad and unjust laws for justice. To be content with, to abide those laws, as the English peasant is, is disgraceful to a people. The laws are worse in operation in Ireland than in England. They have been the cause of famines, of plagues, of depopulation, of misery unspeakable. The first thing a Government ought to have done would be to say — I don't wonder at these outrages, I don't wonder at the mean- ness of the Land League, I deplore the outrages, but they are natural enough among a wild people — they must be stopped, and I appeal to the Irish people to stop them. And I make this apjpeal because I am convinced the laws they live under are unjust and I am going to make them as just as I can. Here are my propositions for a Land Law. This is all I can hope to get through HIS APPRECIATION OF J. R. GREEN 371 yet. It will help you against wrong and give you a chance of life. Try it, and let me have no more outrages. If, having done all I can, outrages continue, then I must use coercion. This would be right, but the present action of the Government is, in my mind, the real outrage. And out of it will arise new rebellions, new miseries, new hatreds, new oppressions for the Irish people. And I have lived to see Gladstone do this ! And English and Scotch Liberals cheering and hooting with Conservatives and Tories. All the House of Commons hand and glove together to take away from Ireland the rights of a free people, because they have risen against injustice. It is a sin against light, to use the old Calvinist phrase. Just think what History will say of it ! " To J. R. Green (who was noiv in his last illness). " London. " Feb. 12, '82. " I ought to have written to you before, but I have been laid up for ten weeks, very shortly after my return from Italy, and I have had no heart to write to anybody. I was so provoked at being laid by, when I was appa- rently so well, that I did little but read. And it has lasted so long and become so wearisome. Even now you see I am obliged to write in pencil. I have just got out of the wood, but I do not know whether I may not be thrown back into it. But I cannot refrain from writing to thank you for one of the greatest literary pleasures I have ever had in my life. I think your book^ en- chanting. I have no special fondness for history any more than you have now for poetry, yet with maps, and with unbroken eagerness and delight I have gone through your book. Of course I cannot criticize the history, but I can scarcely say too much of the form, and of the grouping, or of the imagination which has wrought the wliole together into unity. And the style is more than attractive : it is weighty, more than brilliant, it is tempered by enough restraint to make one wish the » " The Making of England." 372 AFTER SECESSION artist had sometimes put in more colour : and yet one knows that the artist is right and that our wish is wrong. Indeed the truth is, if I may borrow an illustration from painting, that the book is wrought in colour, and not in white and black, and that the shadows are all in colour and the light also. It is passion and genius that has done this ; and I do not think that while the language lives or England is loved by men, that this book of yours will ever die. It will always be loved by Englishmen. " Of course a great deal of the beginning must be conjecture, but I think that you have proved your case ; and at any rate, the main movements have been cleared. Moreover you have established the lines on which others must work, and you have made a new method intelligible and capable of being used. It is a great thing to do. As to your usage of materials, and your way of bringing together from every quarter of learning everything that can bear upon your subject, strengthen your argument and illuminate the dim places — it is as admirable as Gibbon, and is not troubled by his monotonous style. Then there is the whole picture ! I will not speak too much of it. But it is a splendid piece of that high imagination which creates truth; and makes the Past live again. I suppose there will be critics who will find out all possible errors, but do not mind them. No errors — if there are such, and I have seen no criticism but that in the Times — can touch the real value of the book. It will abide with us all for ever. " I do not hear tidings of you which satisfy all I should wish. I hear that you have not got much stronger. But all progress after so severe an attack must be slow, and you have so much power of resist- ance. So I have great hope that those beloved shores and sun [of Italy] will soon bring all their healing to you. How much I wish it to you, I need not say. Do not mind writing, for I am sure it will be a trouble. But I could not help writing, and it may not bore you to read my letter. — Give my love to Alice,^ and believe me, affec- tionately yours, " S. A. Brooke." ' Brooke's cousin, Mrs J. P. Green, nie Alice Stopford, CAEDMON 373 To J. R. Green. " Nov. 16, '82. ** I am just home a fortnight ago. And a violent cold awaited me on the threshold of the house, and brought me very low. I am all well now, and employ one of my first gay hours in answering your pleasant letter. I was sorry not to see you ere you went, but as glad to hear that you got out so well. You may be rejoiced to be out of this aere hnino which Dante only saw in Hell; though, after all, sunshine now and then strays into my room, then dies exhausted with the effort. I wish I were in Italy. I am beginning to hate London. I see nobody, but were I to see more folk, I should hate London still more. I have, or seem to have, a need of quiet solitude, and at least the ten days I had of it at Axenfels at the head of the bay of Uri were enchanting to me. It is true I worked hard and the time fled. I was shut up by the floods in Italy. But I saw Bergamo well, and most beautiful it is. And I saw Brescia, or rather Brescia saw me, for the darkness and storm and rain were so violent that I could see nothing. I managed to see one picture by wax candles in the middle of the day. . . . " You ask about the English Verse. Well ' Caedmon,' that is the Genesis, and the Exodus, are thrown into book form ; and I have v/ritten enough, I think, of the critical matter as well with regard to authorship, etc. I think you will be surprised by these poems. I know I am. Nor do I think it possible they could be written by the same man, unless six or seven years of writing had developt Caedmon into almost another artist. Then I have gone carefully line by line through all Cynewulf 'a work, and there is a great deal to say about it. It differs as much from the earlier work such as Caedmon's as artistic poetry differs from poetry in the rough. Cyne- wulf cared for form, Caedmon not. It is so interesting — so poetical often, so strangely modern too in its note, that I am not satisfied with blundering through with a translation. So I have begun to learn Anglo-Saxon, and so far as prose goes find it easy enough. Where it isn't 374 AFTER SECESSION English, it is German — at least nearly all the words have their High German equivalents. I should think that in six months I shall know it fairly well; and I give a year to my book. It interests me beyond all I can say, and I hope I shall make it interesting." To J. R. Green. London. " Feb. 7, '83. " The better news I hear of you to-day, which re- joiced my heart, encourages me to hope that I may write to you direct and not to Alice ; and so, on chance I send this to you. I need not say all I felt when I heard of your severe attack : it was all I should be sure to feel when an old friend was in such trouble, for I never forget the ancient days. But I will not talk of your trouble, rejoiced as I am to hear that it is past. I was so glad to hear that the book was all in type : I saw it, but though I longed to read it, did not dare to demand it. What a splendid thing it is for you to have done in the midst of so much weakness and distress ! I think it is the most courageous and the most triumphant thing I ever heard of, and it shames us all, whom so little illness renders lazy or indifferent. No one who has ever known you (and thousands in the next genera- tion who will not have known you) will ever forget the moral impression that effort makes, and I say this as I should say it of any one who was not a friend of mine. " We are all fairly well here. I have been ill and well week by week in this foul climate. How I abhor London ! More and more and more I long for the time when I shall shake off the dust of my feefc against it, and retire to some sunny place where I can write half the day and spend the rest in tilling the ground from whence I was taken. The children shoot higher and higher every day. I am overwhelmed by them, but I am much fonder of them all than I used to be, and live a good deal with them. " I have missed you incessantly all through this work : for I wanted again and again to consult you. I think LAST ILLNESS OF J. K GREEN 375 the end of the Caedmon MS, the * Crist and Satan,' the ' Riming Poem,' the ' Salomo and Saturn,' are all of the time of Alfred or of his near successors, as well as the Translation of the Psalms and the Menologium. So we then should have religious English poems belonging to the great prose times as well as the odes in the Chronicle and the Battle of Maldon and the rest of the war songs, of which we conjecture. " Does this worry you now you are ill ? I hope not." To J. R. Green. "Feb. 23, '83. " I was glad to hear from Alice this morning that you were battling so bravely against your troubles, and that your mind had been so much set at rest about your book. I am certain it will add to your fame, so well and finely deserved, and that we shall one and all here in England be grateful to you. I know I shall, and I am sure thousands are in the same condition as myself. You make English History comprehensible more than the others, and you do that because, owing to the good form in which you put it, you supply means which an inquirer can profitably use for his inquiries. You start him on the right lines. Freeman does too much. He repeats himself so incessantly that he not only wearies, he confuses. His map of history is so crowded with names that unless you are already a scholar, you cannot find your way, or see the great divisions or the counties of history. Stubbs of course writes only — in his Constitu- tional History — for scholars, and it is only when you begin to know half as much as he knows that you find out the immense value of his work. I say that you have mapped your history out, so that men can see what England was, can find their way, and can, if they want to investigate any special century, or any special thing, know the limits to which they ought to confine them- selves, the lie of the historical position to which they specially address themselves. Work has been made easier at every point. I have found this in my own VOL. II. o 376 AFTER SECESSION work, and it must be the experience of thousands. We know what to do, and we know how to do it. "There are things no one— except scholars — learn from either Freeman or Stubbs ; and I don't think you have any notion of the enormous impulse you have given to thousands of small inquirers, like myself, in this matter. As to tiny errors, they don't count. They are easily corrected, and no one is free from them. Even the ' uncrowned King ' of history, Stubbs, is not free from them. His statement about the English Literature of the 11th century is practically wrong, and self- contradictory into the bargain. I have finished all my notes on English Literature up to the Conquest, and I wish I could talk over a dozen questions with you. I am getting on fast enough with Anglo-Saxon, and shall, long before my book comes out, be able to read it well. I have already translated direct three or four of Cynewulf's poems. You can have no conception how modern they are in spirit. It is no exaggeration to say that, two or three things being excepted, they might have been written by Tennyson. I have been amazed. The German translation gives no idea of them. It cannot catch the special English note, does not represent it. The difference between these poems and Icelandic poems, or High German Epics of a later date, or Anglo-Saxon poems like the Heliand, is as great as if an ocean separated them. Then, they differ from things like the Song of Brunanburh in being really works of Art. Northumbria in the 8th century must have been an extraordinary place. A man like Cynewulf could not have arisen, and could not have had the * form ' he had except in the midst of a cultured literary society. . . . " I have plenty to do and do it, sometimes well, sometimes poorly, but things move. England is white with fear and terror and rage about these Irish Revela- tions, and seems to have lost its head altogether. Forster's speech of last night is the voice of | of the country, and a more melancholy exhibition to my mind was never made. I will not go into society now. If one says one word in favour of the Irish leaders — * Oh, FEARS OF WAR WITH RUSSIA 377 you too sympathize with murder and abet assassination,' and the days of dueUing are over. We must wait, and let the howling mob in Parliament and the country howl themselves hoarse. Then perhaps the truth may be listened to." To his daughter Honor. " Loudon. "April 13, '85. ** I am tired and sleepy to-day but otherwise well, not at all in bad spirits. But there is not half enough excitement in life. Even the fear of Russian war does not move me, except to disgust that national quarrels must still be settled by fists and clubs. I am sickened when I think of all it means of torture and death and shame and wickedness, and that it should be ' inevitable ' is the worst shame of all. Moreover I think it of the utmost danger to our Indian Empire. I have no more faith in the Ameer being a faithful ally than I have in a fox being faithful to a lion, but let the lion be wounded and the fox will gnaw out his entrails. It is a desperate mistake, I think, to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. I know what I should do were I the Ameer, and hated the English infidel : get the English Army to Herat, raise the country in its rear, call on the Russians to fall on in front, send emissaries to all the Mahometan centres in India, lift a new mutiny, blot out the whole English army in Afghanistan, and it would be quite possible, and lose them or all but lose India to this country. Bare treachery in our eyes, but excellent craft in Oriental eyes." To Ids daughter Honor. " London. " May 8, '85. "I got down to the Temperance meeting all right, however, and then violent headache began. Young spouted, and sent his hands about like a windmill as drunk as a hatter, and ludicrous he looked. But I was in no humour for fun, and could not enjoy him. He 378 AFTER SECESSION became part of the hideous dream of my head. Miss sang fairly, the Choir warbled dimly. Dr read a speech which he had printed. It was all about culture and very uncultivated. He talked of the ' high-toned Anglo-Saxon ' — confound him ! I had expected an enthusiastic rousing speech, and we had a drivelling thing about the ideal life, and temperance dragged in here and there. I spoke at the end, but though I talked sense, and was grimly resolved to give the exact opposite of 's wish-wash, I could scarcely see out of my eyes, and only just managed to speak clearly. I was obliged to leave the platform immediately and scarcely got home. . . . " Pfleiderer ^ was very pleasant and gracious, and very complimentary, and I enjoyed my lunch ; a gray, strong, rugged man — humorous and not over-pleased with Oxford courtesy ; rather alone, he said, in Berlin, for he was too Christian for them, but the atheistic and pessimistic wave was beginning to ebb. ' Hartmann,' he said, ' whom you take seriously over here, is not taken seriously in Germany.' That was good news, I said, but I expected it. " What is it you cannot get which you want to get ? Define it, and it is probable you will get it. Not till far too late in life did I find out what I wanted, for I lived in dreams. I ought to have realized clearly what I wanted. Hence I am always driving at people to put into form what they think and feel. Shape it, shape it, shape it ! " To his daughter Honor. " London. " Jan. 29, '86. "... The debate [at the Bedford Chapel Debating Society] was amusing last night. The paper was the most wonderful glorification of Dizzy I ever heard or could ever have imagined. I could scarcely think Beeton serious, but he was. They took him seriously, especially Clarke, who grew graver and graver. So when I got up, I represented D. as the great Artist alone, and ' Professor Otto Pfleiderer of Berlin. HIS VIEW OF DISRAELI 379 sketched his politics as Art, and his poHtical work as novel writing : and himself as the great hero of the long Novel which he made his life. " I thought this would irritate the Tories more than anything else, and I am glad to say that it did. It is mighty true too, which is the best and the worst of it. I had meant to quote from Shelley to describe Dizzy's state of mind when he looked round on the Tory majority falling to pieces in '80 — but unfortunately I forgot it. I quote them to you. 'Twere a pity the quotation should be lost. " He looks round on the dropping majority and cries — " ' Till they fail, as I am failing, Dizzy, lost, but unbewailing.' " To his dcmghter Honor. * " Venice. " Sept. IG, '86. "... You see, after all, that we are in Venice, and our lodging is all that we can desire. Only I do not feel in Venice at all, but only in Italy. The long garden filled with alleys of grapes, the fig trees laden with fruit, the peach trees, bending with the peaches, the herb garden, full of broken statues, the stone benches and seats, the two turkeys which wander, snuffling everywhere— the distance of the Canal in front of the house from the part of the hall in which we live, fully 126 feet — so that it requires some energy in this heat to walk to the end to see the water, the deser- tion of the Canal itself, for being very remote a gon- dola rarely passes by — all make me fancy that I am in a country place in Italy, and not in Venice. But then I have only to take the gondola which lies ready at the steps to be in full city or in full lagoon in a moment. . . . " Scirocco has arrived this morning with all the lead it can carry on its wings. Our cloudless sky is covered, our souls are beginning to be ' voilees.' The mosquitoes, which are unusually ferocious and poisonous, owing, I 380 AFTER SECESSION think, to the absence of strangers (it is strange to see Venice so deserted, a few gondolas only in the G. Canal — nobody in the Piazza) are enchanted with the Sciroc, and have set themselves with eagerness to their bloody work. ... At night it is all right. I hear their fury outside my curtains, but I feel it not. They are like tigresses robbed of their cubs : but I lie, unappalled, in calm and sacred peace, and listen while they scream. . . . " There is no news to tell you here, not as yet at least. The sunsets themselves are tame. It is warm and silent and pleasant and Italy has always the sense of home, but life is altogether unsensational at present ; outwardly and inwardly. I can scarcely believe London exists — that far away half-house to hell. How curious that a man who hates it so heartily as I do should be forced to live in it ! But it may not last for ever." To his daughter Honor. " London. " January, 1888. "... I am not well, but not ill as I might be. I am beginning to despair about becoming strong. My leg seems all right, and as far as that goes, I think I might preach on Sunday next, but unless I am better arranged inside I think the exertion of preaching will bring on severe pain. I still live on milk only, and on very little of it. . . . " This is my condition, and it is a charming one. The sun is gone, and the wind wild. I read, but I can do nothing. Work calls me, but I know I shall break down if I do it. Perhaps not, however, and I shall test the perhaps. I remember the days in which I used to bring a long pin into the reading-desk with me, and when I felt inclined to faint, run it like a dagger into my leg. Very effective it was ! " I have read Shaw's book, it is far better done than the last, it is useful in many ways, but how much more useful it might have been ! It is too cynical, and ON "CRAMMING" IN LITERATURE 381 cynicism revolts the world. To prove that the world is a scoundrel is not the way to induce the world not to be scoundrelly." To Mrs Crackanthorpe. " Boscastle. Sept. 14, '88. "... I had nice experiences, when I used to examine for the Civil Service in English Literature, of the system of cramming. I used to wish they would allow me to set a paper to the coaches. Were we to examine the crammers we should have an enchanting result. I wrote my Primer with the intention, as far as possible, to make a book which would not be good to cram from, and that I partly succeeded was proved to me by an audacious request from Macmillan to rewrite it, because its sale was falling off in India and other dependencies. It was found not to be a book out of which the masters of schools could cram the pupils. I refused, of course. . . . " It is a fine coast, but the rest is nought : a fringe of beauty, but the body more than commonplace : * linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.' " CHAPTER XIX LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS 1882-1894 " Who knows how many men he is." — (Diary, June 20th, 1898.) " I have lived so many lives, and each so strange to the others, that the latter have put out the former. Those that came latest were the most exciting, and they seemed to blot out my youth and all my earlier manhood. Of late I look forward rather than backward, and what has been, even the most eager, seems now like a dream in which I scarcely recognize the figure that memory says was once myself." — (From a letter of 1892.) The first group of letters were all written to the same correspondent. They reveal him in a mood, which would overtake him at rare intervals, of violent rebellion against the limitations which custom and habit had imposed upon his life. It was a mood in which, as he wrote in 1911 to his friend Lord Bryce, he would feel " the Motherhood of the Earth and the All-Fatherhood of the sky till I became, at passing hours, a bit of the primeval man." ^ They are therefore presented together rather than in the order of sequence with those that follow. " Naworth Castle. " 3rd Sept., 1883. "I am as well as I shall ever be in this world now. What will be in the next I must leave to the next world to arrange for itself. Both here and there, there are ' See the letter to Lord Bryce on p. 648. TIRED OF HIS WORK 383 knots which another hand than mine will have to untie. I don't care to take the trouble to fumble about their tangle with foolish fingers. You see, I am in a fantastic mood, and fit to write a sermon. Sermon indeed ! More and more I am coming to dislike writing them, and it will not be long before I send them wholly overboard. People think I am settled and cannot make breaks in life — cannot cut life in two as with a sword — only young men do so — they say it is a mistake. It is that which men at my time of life — who are much detached from the world — can do and often determine to do. And I will do it ere long, and quietly enough. That is, I will flit one day, and never stop till I am out of hearing of all complaints and of all objections and of all abuse ; and most of all, of the nonsense they will talk of my giving up duties to mankind. I have done enough of that kind of duty, and it is high time, before I die, to undertake another kind. I allow that one owes oneself to men, but not always in the same way. And I am weary of the kind of work I now do, and beyond all measure im- patient with it. And impatience and weariness together — what must they end in — with a person like myself who has no one to talk to ? Only in winning freedom in a flash ! I hate ties of every kind, and when the tie has lasted 25 years, it is time to smash it, ere it becomes a chain. At present, you see, my holiday has not changed my temper of mind, I have not become the peaceful, serious, patient person the world would picture me. On the very contrary. Perhaps Italy may change me into rest, and leave me ready for work. The very name of work galls me now like a gadfly. I leave London on Wednesday morning for Florence ; and I shall be in London on Monday. I hear from the children that they are perfectly happy and excited, they have been at Vevey, and are now at Zermatt. They cross the Monte Moro to the Lago Maggiore, and I suppose, if I feel_ inchned, I shall see them at Florence. But I feel as if I should like some touch of solitude, and I will probably hide away in some Tuscan town for a time until I get a bit tired of myself, and then join them. 384 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS They will have some good of me then — at present, they would have but little of me. Could I have one of them alone to myself — it were well. But all of them — Stop- ford, Honor, Maud, and my Brother — what could I do with them all ? How could I go about instructing and * doing them good ' ? It would bore me to death. This place is lovelier than ever. It is a haunt of old Romance ; and the garden where I now write is so rich in flowers that grow as wildly as ballads in the Border as to be itself a book of Poems. The sun is setting— the rooks fill the air with their cries, there is a melancholy Song of Autumn in the air, and I am longing to be away, and out of the cold North in Italy where it is warm and bright, and where all the world is set to the musick of Mozart." " London. 8th Sept., 1883. " So you are beginning to realize that I mean to be off. Well, I wonder you did not see how impatient I have been for long to have done with what folk call my duties, but which I think I ought to hand over now to younger and abler men. I have said all I have to say, and I shall never say it better, poor as it has been. In two years I shall have said it all over again in a weaker fashion, and then it will be time to take off my hat and say. Vale ! Believe me, after the first fortnight it will leave no blank in any one's life. There is nothing so soon forgotten as a man. But I am grateful for your kindly words, so very kind to me ; and I am glad that you think now you would regret my vanishing. What will 3'ou do in two years ? By that time — miles and miles away — what may not have happened to make you think of my departure, not with regret, but with com- placency or with indifference ? Things I thought in- tolerable years ago I look at now with wonder that I should have fashed myself about them; and ordinary matters like my surrender of public work which seems wrong to you now, you will think but little of when the time comes. I shall be old then and past work, and no one will much care whether I go or stay, and I shall not stay to hear folk say, He is not what he was. You are "GIVE ME THE 8T0EM" 385 sure, you say, that whatever I do will be the right thing. That is just the thing you ought not to be sure of. I am much more likely to do the wrong thing, and not to care whether it is so. As to loneliness — did I say I was alone ? ' I have sisters and brothers and children and friends,' and aunts into the bargain, you say, how can I be alone ? That's very true ; but I don't talk to them, not as I count talking. But I did not say I was alone ; nor am I. I have had plenty of talk in life, and it suffices. At present, I am gay enough. I have my eyes on the future. At least, if I don't get ill, I shall save six weeks from the darkness and choking of London, and spend them in sunlight and sunny life. As to rest and peace and patience, I don't want them. Time enough for them when I am ten years older. Give me the storm at present, and plenty of it. And patience — how am I ever to be patient — save when I am lying on the sofa, when I bring a beautiful stock of it into play. I am off to-morrow morning, and I shall not stop till the City of the Lily receives me into its arms, and I can lean over the parapet of the Ponte Vecchio, and say, Thank God. And perhaps I may come home in the spirit of work and weary of unchartered freedom. I faintly hope so ; but at present I am in another world than work. I saw the girls yesterday at Shore. They looked well and bright, and Surrey was steady cultured England all over, and all the people I met quiet and serious and satisfied ; the B s and R s and W s, and they seemed to me creatures of another world ; and there were cows and pigs and plantations, and every one was interested in daily life. It was very nice and comfortable, and I thought of it benignly. . . . You are well, I hope, and Ireland is at least not England. It has that vast advantage." "Lynton. April 25, '84. "... The place is not at all like England, but has a foreign air, half Italy, half France, save for the cliffs and sea, which have the iron character of the Norsemen who so often landed on this coast. I have walked and 386 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS wandered and enjoyed myself; yesterday up the glen beside the gay tumbling of the Lyn, over which the trees were half brown and half green, and where the banks were as thick with primroses as the sky with stars ; to-day along the sea-coast, from valley to valley over their streams, and from cliff to cliff. It is very lovely and very varied, and I am very well ; and feel as much at home as if I had been here all my life. I have done no work, read nothing but one novel of an appalling length and dullness — I chose it for its dullness — tried to read other excellent and weighty books, but found my soul too flippant for them, entertained myself by making fun with Bryce and Stopford and Honor; have slept, eaten, walked, and wondered about life, and to-morrow mean to begin and do something, but what— I shall leave to chance to determine. All preaching, teaching, lectures, temperance societies, books, prints, shops, and profes- sion seem to have faded as far away as Kamschatka. Letters about sermons pursue me, but I do not answer them ; and Egypt and the Franchise and the dissolution and the mourning for the Duke of Albany, and the paving of Manchester Square, and the abolition of the Aldermen, and what the Turk intends, and what the French, and all the things London cares for seem only like the crying of the gulls as they sweep by the cliffs here and pass away to sea. What's Humanity to me or I to Humanity ! " I hope you are better. You seemed to me to want a holiday far more than I, and I wish you could get away somewhere and sleep the days away. It is a cruel pity one cannot, at will, put oneself by in a pleasant couch, in a warm land, and sleep so long as to wake up a new man. I think one ought to be able to die three or four times in life, and to rise again fresh and young and gay ; and perhaps the happiest folk in this world are those who every night sleep away the previous day and wake every morning as if they rose from the dead. But that is not your view ; at least I have not heard it." FLOATING STICKS 387 " Lynton. Sunday, May, 1884. " We start on our way back to-morrow, stopping at various places ca route, specially at Bristol to see Stop- ford,^ whom we intend to surprise. Honor is to call in the gloaming and send up a message that a young lady, deeply impressed by his sermon on Michal and David, wishes to have some confidential conversation with him. If that does not frighten him and amuse us I shall be surprised. Thank you very much for your letter. ... I call it a letter, but after all, was it more than a note ? A letter is a letter, and has its own note ; a note is a note, and is nothing but letters. I'm not uncivil, but I was driven into this epigram. But I dare say you have never written a letter in your life, and don't know what it "means. Oh, how cold it has been here ! Ever since last Sunday there have been gales and waves and clouds in wild career, and rain, small, thin, and close — and then large, fat, and spaced out ; and last night over the white sea, lightning and thunder, and sheeted phantoms of fleeting hail, moving swiftly — a wild scene as I looked out of window at three a.m. "We have always, however, done our duty — always walked for three hours at least— and one magnificent walk we had over the hills, in a flowing wind. Yester- day the stream was in flood, and we amused ourselves with floating sticks down it, and comparing them to human lives — and nearly all of them were failures. Nature was too much for them, poor souls, they either were whirled round and snapped in two in the tumbles of the water, or borne into some backwater, where they went round incessantly in prison, or left at last in some dead reach of dead water, crouching in distressful fear under a bank. And we used, like the Gods, to push them out into the turmoil again. If one has power, one is almost sure to make a bad use of it. However, one, and one alone, went nobly through all difficulties, and they were great, for a whole mile, and only resolved on rest when he had had a very full career of many kinds of life. And then he laid himself by — we did not disturb him — ' His son, then minister at Oakfield Road Chapel, Clifton. 388 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS we could not — yet I must confess we couldn't get at him. Wisest of all perhaps was his last act. He just put him- self out of the power of the Gods. I don't believe I could have resisted pushing him out again into life, for just below where he hid there was a fierce rapid com- posed of three waterfalls among great rocks, all foam and roar, and I should have liked to have seen if he could have outlived them. And if I had resisted giving him all this sorrow for my own amusement, to purify my soul through the excitement of pity and terror for him — I am perfectly certain that Honor, as a woman, could not have resisted the temptation. Indeed, twice she cried. Father, can't we get at him? And I recognized the natural temper of the woman. But he remained at peace. The wretch knew he had escaped Fate. And the waterfalls roared for him in vain. I have been trying to write various things but have never got on with any of them — poetry and prose were alike failures. To write, one must have a settled time in front of one, or be at least in the humour, and I was in the idling humour, sometimes in a melancholy humour, wandering in silence, and sometimes too gay for anything but laughter, but most frequently too cold to hold a pencil. But it has been a pleasant fortnight, and we have been comfortable in this cottage. " I don't know when I shall be back, but certainly for next Sunday, when I think I had better preach on the East Wind." " Shere. " Sept., 1884. *' I am still on my back, worse luck. But Mr comes down to-morrow to report progress, and I shall be disappointed if he does not say to me, ' you may try and walk,' and once I begin, you may be sure I shall not let the grass grow under my feet. I am well enough, but have been a little knocked up, and lazy in con- sequence. Work has not got on as I should like, but I have only nine now of the Liber St°' to do, and then the book will be finished. It will never be of any use to the world, but it may entertain lovers of Turner, and it has HOW TO IMPROVE PARLIAMENT 389 amused me when I was not able for more difficult work. I shall have done it by the time I am well, and I hope to get the separate book out by Christmas. Nobody has been staying here since you left, except the P s for one night on their way to Tyrol. All our lovely weather has gone, and I can scarcely ever get out, for I don't care for sitting in rain and wind. But with fires and cosy talk the rooms are pleasant and life endurable. Honor came back last night and Sibyl, both well and happy and full of adventures. I am so glad you enjoyed your time, and indeed Shore was pleasant in the sweet light and air. How is Ireland ? How are the landlords, and, what I care for more, how are the peasants ? You need rest after all your hard work on the Society, and I hope you will come back, wonderfully refreshed, to that dull town, your own beloved London. How awful the winter will be ! — not a ray of sun, and, to crown all. Par- liament sitting with all its quaint imbecilities, and day by day degrading. Fate might have spared us this, but London deserves it. There is only one way in which the business of the H. of C. could be properly done, and that is, by its meeting at 10 a.m. and sitting through the day. All petitions, etc., might be presented from 9 to 10 a.m. One advantage of that, out of very many con- ducive to quick work, would be that none of the members, at least till after lunch at 2, would be affected with wine. Another vast, nay, incalculable, advantage would be that the lawyers would be so much more absent. Their in- terminable talk would be spared us. It is only the business of the Country — the most important business of all — which is done after dinner. ..." " Chagford. May 18, '86. "... Had it been fine I would have written before. But the rain makes me feel insulted by the universe, and grim, and when I feel so I am not fit to write, even to my closest friends. As to home, and the children, they never hear under these circumstances, and you must not say that you have heard to the children. I am waiting for a fine day when I can lie outstretched upon 390 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS the moors. This is a very lovely place, even in rain and storm, and I sat yesterday by a rushing stream, under beech and oak, writing lyrics, which A. S. may have for music, if he should like them. There are quite a number done. Poetry has been my only work, but it has amused me highly. To write it is a pleasure which never palls, and as it cannot be done in London, you may imagine how eagerly it is done here. Were I now to be placed in a remote part of England, here, for example, in this far-off village, I should never be one instant in want of subjects, or in want of interest in life. There are a hundred poems I want to write, and things occur to me incessantly. All I am afraid of is that the things done may not be worth the doing. I remember well that you did not show the smallest interest in that poem which you heard, and I was a bit dismayed by the ominous and dreadful silence with which you passed it by. But then — and it may be the only flattering unction I lay to my soul— the subject may have been disagreeable to you, or what you think poor work may seem better to others. At any rate, I cannot stop writing, at present, verses. But my first experiment on the public, who were con- centrated in you that night, was certainly a dead failure, and it was very sad. "It is raining hard now, and we are writing in our little sitting-room in this Inn. The trees above the churchyard, which is opposite the windows, slowly sway in the tiny wind which has succeeded yesterday's thun- dering tempest. All the world is dripping and drenched, and it is as cold as late October. My temper is beautiful, however. I wish the world were otherwise, but I am fairly content. It is pleasure to be away from sermons and lectures and letters, from all creation. I wish I were done with all that work and at home in other things." " Grindelwald. Sept. 1, '86. "... Of all that has been done in politics since I left, I know nothing, and I am glad of it. The Irish question alone interests me at present, and I do not think any conclusion can be arrived at for two years. I am not DEATH OF HIS FATHER 391 specially interested in knowing the steps that are being built up on which to found the conclusion. I am thoroughly disgusted with the whole temper of England, and wish I were not going back to the country. It is, at present, an incredibly base place to live in, and were it not that I look upon myself as a kind of guest in the country, and therefore bound not to attack my hosts, I would lonrr since have, so far as I am a public man, publicly declared my opinion. I would have done it also, had I been an Englishman, for one of the country has the right to speak of the country. But my mouth is tied." To his Mother (on the death of his Father). "London. August 6, '82. "... I wonder how you are now that all is over, and I think of you continually and pray that you may be comforted. Yet, you have much to comfort you. My Father had lived his life most nobly and fairly and sweetly, and had been the brightness of all who knew him, and chiefly of his home. Few have lived who have added so much to the charm of life, and as I grow older in a world of much pain and sorrow, that seems to me, among things lower than the things eternal, to be one of the best gifts a man can bestow. And yet it flows out into these higher things, for the gaiety that charms can only be out of a heart that loves, and is gentle, and that gives up its complaints to think of others, that follows Christ in the tenderness of love. You will always remember that, and how beautifully it appeared when he was dying. And every memory of that time when he lay there, rarely speaking — his faith and trust in God, his perfect hope, his love of Christ, his beautiful remem- brances of you all and of all of us, his thoughtfulness for all who watched him, his calm and the childlike ways which mingled so beautifully with the manliness and endurance — all will comfort you when you think on them, and there will be a great joy in your heart as well as a great sorrow. I have never seen so beautiful VOL. II. D 392 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS a death-bed, none so quiet, so at rest, so individual, so wrapt in God. I hope there is a tender peace in your heart, for that is the first and deepest thing I should imagine you would feel. It was not like death at all. It was going to sleep for a little on earth to waken into glorious life. I think of him now as wrapt in enjoyment, as in eternal youth, all ailments and sorrow for ever lost, and as hoping for the time when you will join him ; and often and often ag I watched him lying there, I said to myself : ' Anna is waiting for him, to welcome him. He will not feel it strange in the new land.' I feel it strange to see him no more here, and I am very sorry to miss his dear voice and no more to kiss that white smooth forehead, always so attractive ; but my own grief vanishes wholly away in joy that he is so happy, so full of radiant delight, having life no longer burdened with distress, but able now to be as light and vivid and as young as in the far-off days when he wooed you by the Swilly, among the alders which you and I walked among some years ago after I had lost Emma. " I am not sorry I did not see him die. I saw enough to remember with delight all my life, and I shall never forget the beauty of the scene, nor how nearly and lovingly it drew us all together. Poor Aunt E., I am most sorry for her. She will feel more lonely than any one of us. But with her faith, I can scarcely understand her sorrow. When one has lived as my Father, and seen and tasted and enjoyed all the best things that life can give, and been himself throughout noble, and fixed his love and faith beyond this world in God and his Saviour, there is no real sorrow to be felt at his death by those who were not like you and his children intimately bound up with his presence as to miss it every hour. But even the children must rejoice as I do. Only you, dearest, must miss as none of us can do the faithful and loving companion of more than fifty years. But God will com- fort, strengthen and cheer you. And you will think of his happiness more than of your own grief. Have you not been thinking of how to make him happy for many, many years ! And now he is happier than even you could have made him." The Fatheb of Brooke. [To face page 392. NATURE IS WOMAN 393 To his brother, Major-General Edward Brooke. " London. Feb, 24, '84. ** . . . If I had any peace at all I should write to you every mail, but day after day goes by, and I am almost too overwhelmed at present. For it is not only the days, but the nights also that are occupied, and I know when August comes round again that I shall be as prostrate as I was last year, when I thought I should never again have any pleasure in life. But I don't mean this to last for ever, and in October [of next] year, unless the unfore- seen occur, I shall leave London for at least two years and live abroad. And then, if you go to Italy, we shall live together, and nothing should I like better. I want to write my book, and there is no chance of doing it here. I have a lecture on English Literature once a week. I have a Debating Society once a fortnight, and I have all the management of these things and of the College on my hands, and then there is Sunday, and a large and necessary correspondence. I don't know where to turn at times. Well, it is at least life, and when I am well I enjoy it enough. . . . " The storm would have interested me, no doubt, but I agree with you, I don't like all the savage destruction of pretty and tender things. And the pitilessness of Nature in her tempestuous moods revolts me. But she certainly makes up for it. She is like a reckless woman whom one loves, and who loves with passion. Her savage moods are more than forgotten when she gives all her rapture in her love. The woman element is the most powerful in the Universe. Nature herself is Woman from head to foot. The Man has scarcely any place in the Universe. . . . " The Chapel gets on well. There is no falling off in the congregation or in the interest shown in things. I am astonished. For I should have thought they would all have been wearied out long ago, and have sought for other food. Of course I should not have liked their going away, but I have always expected it. Well, sooner or later it will come, and i am prepared for it. It is 394 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS high time a younger and abler man took up my work. But I feel no lessening of excitement in it, on the con- trary, I am much more full of life and of eagerness than I was five years ago. Trouble, of which I have had a quantity, has not beaten me, and my only difficulty now is that things kindle and stir me so much. I should like a little inward quiet, but the candle is burning at both ends. Total Abstinence has had this result on me. It has taken the drag off the coach wheels." To his Mother. " London. Dec. 24, '84. "... I cannot write a long letter, for I have so much to do, but Christmas Day must not pass without your receiving a little note from me to express my faithful love, and continual memory of our long and happy, and lately of our sad days together, * Sunshine and shadow is life, flower and thorn.' But we have always loved each other well, and I have always had for you, beyond love, the reverence and honour of a son to a noble mother. Dearest, I wish you all the joy God gives to those who love Him, and whom He loves, and though we have some difference concerning Him whom we most think of on Christmas Day, yet God will make all opinion right in the end, and you can scarcely love Jesus, our Saviour, more than I. He is with you, in my belief, and with me, and with all we love, and with my dear Father, and we are bound together in Him, and in God our Father. Therefore we are right to rejoice to-day, and to love one another well." To Miss Howard. " London. Feb. 13, '85. "... I have not yet read Geo. Eliot's Life, but then you know that 1 have not much interest in her personality. The only thing that really interested me in her as a person was that for which the world most abuses her. I was pleased to find she could fall headlong into love, GEORGE ELIOT 395 and spite of a hundred objections marry Mr Cross. This is quite a different thing from saying that I was glad she had regularised herself. For that I did not care a button. But she spoilt much of that action by making it a regular regularisation, by marrying at St George's, Hanover Square, etc., etc. " Oh what a falling off was there ! But you will think this wild talk, and perhaps it is foolish to say it. But then you will not mind it. " George Eliot at root was a Philistine. She was an artist hy the way, and never a real one. She had great human sympathy, she had keen observation and she had a fine intellect, and over and above, she could put what she felt, observed and thought into form, but the predominance of intellect in her, or shall I say the pre- dominance she chose — most foolishly — to give it, spoilt her formative power, and again and again made her commonplace. Above all, it gave that tone to her work, which more and more increased upon her — of teaching rather than feeling, of first thinking and then feeling a matter out, and of a consequent tentativeness in all she did — which is wholly apart from the work of a true artist. And I think she felt this herself. She ought to have followed her heart alone. Then she might have been truly great in art." To Rev. Arthur Brooke. "February 15, '85. "... Funny things happen every day. People have taken to sending me large cheques, in requital of the ' spiritual help ' I give them— fifty pounds two days ago, and this is the second time within a month. Very odd manners I think, and very inconsequent — one ought not to have cheques as reward for consolation. Of course I send them back, but I don't think the senders under- stand why I do. I wish they would send them for the poor. I could well spend £500 this moment in lifting people out of the Slough of Despond." 396 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS To Miss Hoivard. "London. Nov. 15, '85. "... I am sorry you do not like Dante; but I can- not make out whether you are reading him in Itahan or not. He is interesting — profoundly so — outside his own tongue ; but you are not reading poetry. But if you read him in Italian, it is not interest in the history or the opinions, or pleasure or displeasure in the justice or injustice of the awards, but passion for the poetry. Everything is lost in the magnificence of the imagi- nation, of the style, of the emotion and of the verse. After that sweep in the Thoughts." To Alfred Hayes} "London. July 11, '87. "... I don't believe that poetry is made one bit the worse, but even the better, for being written in the midst of work like yours. Chaucer spent most of his day in business, so did Shakespeare, so did Burns. " The retired gentleman who writes poetry in his place in the country is quite a modern creation. Art works of itself, the seed is sown and gathers life and grows up, no one knows how, while the man is working at something else, and then, in a moment of leisure the plant flowers. . . . " I am so glad that more work is coming from you. Write some more lyrics like those lovely ones at pages 131 and 134. It is a pleasure to think that I have ever helped you." To Alfred Hayes. "London. Jan. 16, '88. "... I have found the passage in my sermon of which I spoke to you ; but I do not know where it comes from. I have forgotten that. It seems to me to be from Eckermann's Conversations, but I cannot tell. But it is ' Now Principal of the Midland Institute, Birmingham. GOETHE'S IDEA OF GOD 397 interesting, in the light of what 1 was saying, to compare it with the impersonal conception of God (which was necessary to him as a Poet in contact with Universal Thought and Beauty) contained in his answer to Gretchen. You see, when he looked at the matter from the personal side, from the wants of the soul, as man would say, and from the necessity of finding some one in whose love he might leave those he loved, the whole note is changed. Having felt the impersonal, he also feels the personal. "This is the passage, written when he was 72 years old. " ' I have meant honestly all my life with myself and others, and in all my earthly strivings have looked upwards to the Highest. You and yours have done so likewise. Let us continue to work thus while there is daylight for us ; for others another sun will shine by which they will work, while for us a brighter Light will shine. And so let us remain untroubled about the future. In our Father's Kingdom there are many provinces, and as He has given us here so happy a resting place, so will He certainly care for us above. Perhaps we shall be blessed with what here on earth has been denied us, to know one another merely by seeing one another, and thence more fully to love one another.' " Contrast that with the wretched — I mean that abso- lutely, not contemptuously — pot-ition which a man like Shorthouse occupies. It is icant of intellect, I always say, which drives a man into the denial of Immortality, not fulness of intellect as they think." To Mrs Humphry Ward. " Shere. June 28, '88. "... I have been on the point several times of writing about Robert Elsmere, for I have read it through. But I knew that you would know how entirely I feel with you in the religious part of that book, and that I need say nothing about that. Of course you stand between two fires, between the orthodox like Gladstone, whose article 398 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS I can conjecture — I have not read it — and the — what shall I call them, their sects are legion, Agnostics, Spencerians, Mallockians, Materialists, Atheists, Posi- tivists — whose cue it is to say that if the supernatural be taken away from Christianity, Christianity has no exist- ence, which is much the same as to say, that if we take away the mists from a mountain, the mountain is gone, or that if we took off Frederic Harrison's clothes. Posi- tivism would be no more. " The only thing to do in these warring circumstances is to say nothing, and let the truth have its way. It is enough to put the thing clearly as you have done, and to go on putting it. When I say, ' To say nothing,' I mean to say nothing about the adversaries, not to hold one's peace about the thing itself. Ignore the opponents, and say your say over again. Then the opponents will in the end annihilate one another, and a weary or an amused world will turn to that form of Truth which has not wasted its wits or its emotion in argument. Make what you think lovely, that is the winning way. I am glad you have not answered Gladstone. I am sure I should be still more glad had I read his article. If you answer him, if you get into analysis, etc., you will take all the beauty out of the continuance of your book. " Well, the world has congratulated you on the book, and I am delighted that it has seen so clearly what is good and fair. There are many things I should like to say about it, but this letter is already too long. Like the high placed correspondents of the Times, I will ask for more space at a future time." To his Mother. " London. April 25, '88. "... The kind of letter you write about a man's poems is what I call really satisfactory. If you only knew the twaddle that is written to me, the undistinctive praise and blame, the senseless phrasing of vague flattery, the general mixture up, in what they say, of poems as distinct as the tropics and the arctic region, you mS MOTHER'S CRITICISM 399 would feel how consoling it is to get a letter from some one who takes the trouble to say, ' I like this, and this is why I like it ; I dislike that, and this is why I dislike it.' Of course this is not trouble you would ask from anyone but people who like you well, and indeed one does not ask it from anyone, but if they do write and if they come and call upon you to do this of tlieir own accord, you do expect some intelligence from them. One woman was here the other day — a woman I have known for twelve years, a woman too of intelligence and feeling — * 0,' she said, ' I like the " Six Days," it's awfully nice, but don't you think the girl is a little too flirty ? ' My poor girl whom I loved and thought was gay and tender. But that criticism was fair enough. It showed the woman's own mind. What I do object to is a phrase like ' awfully nice,' or that other female who said it was * not quite A 1.' What is the sense of these things ? " You must not take small lyrics like * Speak to me,' as if they represented the whole of a man's thinking on the subject. A lyric is the record of a passing — it may be — of a momentary mood. If the mood be sufficiently full of emotion, it will of itself get into poetry, but the very opposite mood may occur an hour afterwards. Nor do I think you will ever find, in any lyric in the world, the record of the settled conviction of a man con- cerning the graver elements of life. Nearly every lyric in that book arose out of things and feelings which did not take an instant to pass by, and were suggested by what I saw others doing and feeling. " In ' Lost for Ever ' the creature who is lost is not supposed to be dead at all. It is in fact love that is lost, not any loved person — lost association — it is as light as air, the whole force of the last verse is on the word if. I was much amused as I wrote that poem which I did in a quarter of an hour crossing the lake of Como from Meuaggio to Bellagio. " I am so glad the book, as a whole, pleases you, though you dislike portions of it. I believe all the more in you being pleased with much of it because of your dislike to parts of it. 400 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS " I can't get off the sofa yet. I hope to be better soon. It is provoking, but what am I to do, living in a place which is poison ? " To Francis Palgrave. " Tintagel. Oct. 4, '88. "... I have only just heard, in this remote place, of Gifford's death. I can scarcely believe it; but the more I believe it the greater is my sorrow. He was a very dear friend to me, and no man lived whom I loved more. We were always happy together. I shall never have another friend so dear. I am too old now to find another, and whom could I find worth so much ? I am sorry for you." To Miss Howard. " London. Oct. 16, '88. "... I mean by the Skeleton of the old Theology the whole of the Scheme business with its intellectual arrangement of interlaced doctrines, one of which being taken away, nay, one of which being re- shaped in other words, the whole falls to pieces, being not a spiritual but a logical labyrinth. In a spiritual labyrinth, as indeed every soul walks in with God, one can find one's way blindfold, because impassioned emotion leads us right. In the other, unless one takes the clue of the Church, the way is lost at once. " The truths on which you anchor yourself are clothed in flesh and warm with blood. They are living things with voice and hands, and they speak to each of us the same glory in various words and lead us to the same ends by various paths. What would be the use noiv of my preaching about the Fall and Eternal Punish- ment ? Were I to preach in Hyde Park — yes ! But to my congregation ? " To James Bryce. " London. Nov. 16, '88. " I wonder where you are, mid — Dusky faces with white turbans wreathed — and picking up knowledge as LONDON AIR 401 Tom Tiddler picked up gold and silver. I cannot place you anywhere, and whether you are at a ball at the Governor's, or on an elephant at an Indian court, or shooting tigers and catching fevers in the Terai, or poised on a peak of the Himalayas, I cannot tell. But I suppose you have not changed your view of your friends, and that you will not be displeased by a note from me. I only trust that you are well and happy. For me, I am getting overtired already. The weather is close and damp and warm, and I find it hard to breathe. Tintagel is all very well, but it ruins one for London air. To have drunk a wind which has blown over 3000 miles of sea, and perhaps only passed over the heads of a few watchers on the prows of ships, and then to swallow with diflQculty an air infected by five millions of grubby human beings half of whom are dis- eased, is a change I And I have not been able to get rid of my loathing of it yet. I'd rather be a needy knife- grinder and drive my wheel over the roads and sleep in the dingles under a canvas. I've scarcely been able, with incessant interruptions, to get half a dozen pages of writing done since I came back. But I am going to try what isolation in a lodging will do for me. I have not got in yet, but shall soon. When the time comes, in about a week, I shall have lost all the vigour with which I came back That, at least, is my impression to- day. We are panting for the American book. England lies like a dog waiting for its master to come out, waiting for your book to come out. And I am told that sixty millions or so of human beings in America, to say nothing of the millions more in Australia and the islands of the seas, are in the same enthralled condition." To Miss Howard. " Grasmere. Aug. 21, '89. "... Yes, I am sure, a reasonable and noble theology is the greatest of wants. But I have no care to read much about what I have got at last, after years of trouble. To 402 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS read of it only recalls the worries of the way. I prefer to rest in the green meadows where I am, and to know that every day God reveals new splendour and beauty, and that so it will be for ever. But that does not pre- vent my agreeing with you that it is well to preach the highest view that one can conceive of Him who is at once Law and Love. My dislike of Theology is only a per- sonal dislike of reading about all the views of others, of their analysis and comparison, etc., etc., all of which is of the intellect and not of the spirit." To Miss Hoivard. " Grasmere. Oct. 16, '89. "... As to Arnold, of course I admire and have always admired him, but he doesn't suit me. I prefer another type of man. He is very English, the best kind of Englishman, and I contemplate the best Englishman from a distance just as I contemplate the best kind of Roman, but I don't care for either Arnold or Cin- cinnatus. They are admirable and I praise them, but I should not care to live with them ; indeed they would bore me to death. Let me admire them at a distance ! " I suppose I shall glance at Rogers' life and letters. If he had not been a rich banker and had not given good dinners, and kept a good house, he would not have been much more than a merchant in excelsis. What Sidney Smith said of him settles his place : ' When Rogers makes a couplet, the pap is got ready, the nurse is in- stalled, the knocker is tied up with a white glove, and the servant has orders to say that his master is as well as can be expected.' " To Lady Mary Howard.^ " Nov. 21, '89. " How long, how very long I have known you, and how much affection I have for you ! Theye is no need of ' On her engagement to Professor Gilbert Murray. MILTON'S SATAN 403 words to tell you that, and you know with what gladness and hope I look forward to your life, and how much good work and blessing I wish into it. It is a good thing to live well and to be at one with another, and all effort and trouble are easy then. I am full of pleasure and tenderness and eagerness as I think of all you will do, and all the good your very presence and ways will be to many. There are those whose influence is as great when they are still, as the influence of those who are able to be very active ; and you are one of these, when you are unable to do much work. You will be a blessing and impulse to many, and I am glad of it. " Here is my little gift to you. I know it is bold giving you something to wear. But length of affection and knowledge may plead for me, and I could not but make this claim. If, when some association brings the giver to remembrance, you wear it once or twice a year, I shall be happy. " Yours ever affectionately, " Stopford a. Brooke." To Clement Shorter. " New Year's Day, 1890. " I have meant to write to you for some time, but forgot it. " What you said about my Milton mistook the scope of the book — but that is of no importance. It is only my own affair. " What is interesting is the question as to the hero of the Epic. Y^'ou and Garnett say Satan is the hero. I cannot even grasp your position. " It is, first, not a question as to what you or I or Garnett thinks — it is a question as to what Milton thought and whom he meant to be his hero. And it is secondly a question as to whom we are forced by the conduct of the Epic, and in accordance with the Epical Form to consider the hero. " Both the questions can be answered together. 404 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS " The hero of an Epic passes through a series of events, all of which, whether for Man or the Gods, cluster and centre round him — and through which he is to develop so as to be left, at the end of the epic, purified, ennobled, and his image on our minds. " This Homer does for Achilles — Vergil for ^neas, Dante for himself — and this Milton does for Man. " Then take the other side of the matter. In the Iliad Homer does not degrade Achilles in mind and body and leave him shamed and defeated at the end. Nor does Vergil do this for ^neas, nor Dante for himself in the Comedy. Nor do these three epic poets make their hero absolutely disappear out (of) the epic before its close. *' All these things Milton does for Satan whom you and others, in an extraordinary fashion, choose as hero, because he is not altogether apart from arch-angelic force and dignity at the beginning — Milton slowly de- grades Satan — in mind and body. Step by step he lowers his image. He leaves him shamed and degraded, at the moment of his greatest pride, he makes him a hipsing ; sends him on his belly before all his thanes, to eat the dust — joins them to him in his degradation; makes him disappear altogether out of the poem. *' No Epic writer in the whole world ever treated his hero in this fashion. Bring me a single proof of it — you and Garnett have known of the epic standard and are making a hero out of your own fancy." To one who had lost a brother through suicide. 1891. "... I was distressed by your letter, for it seemed so full of pain, and I was very much grieved for you. "When grief is so near, words are weak to meet it, and I often think that there are many who must go down to the very bottom of the cup and drink the last drop of its bitterness before comfort and peace come again. There is no end to our imagination of sorrow and to the subtleties of pain which we invent. Better to let DE PROFUNDIS 405 the pain invent all its modes, and then when all has been done, we get weary of pain, and resurrection begins. I say this, because I see that you are in that maze of trouble which I know so well. I was once tormented by my own imaginations to that degree that I did not know what to do. All the time I knew that my fancy was working on my pain, and that I should get through. At last, I said, I will go down to the last invention of pain and meet them all one by one as if they were realities, and then I shall see my way out. " I don't believe that your brother, in that higher land, and in that brighter air, does not see with clearer eyes than we think, his past, his misjudgments, or his troubles, and if he sees clear, he will be satisfied with whatever is allotted to him. Clearness will please him, and if he knows he has been driven into troubles he will also know that he can get out of them, and then, being of the character he was, it will not be so much sorrow as resolution which he will feel ; knowing an end of peace and light, he will not mind any battle he has to wage. And if, looking back, he sees that his home is in distress and that those he loved, like you, are in pain for him, he will of course sutler some deep distress, but God will be with him, and being a true man, he will say : Let me become worthier than ever of those I loved. Let me meet them, when life's troubles are over, midst of the joy of noble work and of all mistakes redeemed. If there is anything which the dead feel more than we of God, it is, I believe, more exalted hope for themselves, clearer views of trouble and more faith in the victory of good over all the failures of men. And I believe, also, if they know, as I think they do, of what we are thinking of them, they desire that we should not grieve so much for them as that we should say to ourselves — I know he is brave and true, that God is very near to him, and that he will conquer all pain in peace. That is the way I look at it. That is what the dead wish us to feel con- cerning them, and it is the natural human thing." 406 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS To Mrs Humphry Ward. " [London] Jan. 12, '92. "... I feel that this book ^ is one of those which will not pass away. I do not mean from the reading public, but from the thought and affection of men and women. It has a seizing power, and it will strengthen and comfort, and open ways of salvation to many troubled spirits for many years. If you only had been yourself a little more storm- tossed, it might have driven its plough somewhat deeper, but of that I am not quite sure. It is not always those who have been pitilessly beaten by the storm who can best describe the storm. That is sometimes best done by sensitive imagination which sometimes feels beyond experience, and there are passages in this book which give me that impression. " I have seen some reviews, but none of them have yet recognized what you have done in the way of creation, not only of types of ch^jiaeter of common people un- commonly treated, but of character new to fiction, but not new to human nature, and the number and variety of these is surprising and delightful. There is not one character in the book who is not quite after his own pattern and of his own building, and the result has been made a piece of art by the way in which it is presented. It is a perfect blessing that you can do this Vorstellung business without wearying us to death as George Eliot did by long disquisitions and explanations as to why her characters did what she has already made them do, or why they were going to do something three pages off in the future. Whenever I feared you were going to glide into this easy and aggravating thing, I found myself enchantingly relieved by some happy piece of objective representation. There was one place however where you permitted yourself this, and where you weighted your work where least it should have been weighted. It is perhaps an impertinence to say this, but I will modify the impertinence by not saying where it was. I con- gratulate you on your imagination, on your power of ' " David Grieve." "TAKE TO ENGLISH POETRY" 407 inventing fresh images and scenes in which to place your characters and make them play new plays ; and on the vividness with which these are seen and described with your eye upon them. Descriptions of scenery by themselves say little, but when they are woven in and out with human passion, when the passion often makes them, composes their materials, harmonizes and even creates their colour, when they are thus calling to or echoing humanity, then they light a second flame in a book, and I don't remember one of your descriptions which is not half the heart of nature and half the heart of man, and the latter, as is always true, dominates by a little the former. One of the best of all is where Dora looks out of her window over Manchester when the evening is closing in. " I think I have a great deal more to say, but I cannot write about the development of the whole book and about the protagonists until I have seen what you are finally going to do with them. Will you allow me to wait a little longer and forgive my long delay." To Miss Read. " Brunnen. Aug, 22, '92. "... I am much rested and ever so much better. The air is clear, the light brilliant and the heat great, all things that I love, especially the last. . . . Heat makes me feel younger by twenty years. I was born for the drier tropics. The only thing I should dislike there would be the insects. Lake, mountains, trees and grass and flowers are all lovely in this place, and the air is delicate and lucid. All night long the wind blows into the bedroom, warm and strong, till what hair age has left me is ruffled on the pillow. " As to literature, take to English Poetry. It will be a change of world ; and begin at the beginning. I will ask you to read my book when it comes out. It is not a task I should impose on every one, but then you will not mind reading what the world will very likely call dull. And then do read some of the great men who have VOL. II. E 408 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS put human nature to music. As you read them you will begin to love Art for its own sake, and after Mathematics and Moral Science^ a little Beauty will open new windows in your soul. " What may be said about Religion I will say when I see you ; but it is in a more universal grasp of its ideas, of its mother-ideas, that you, with your training, will find the best ground for a personal religion. I believe that the particular best comes to many persons through the universal. It is through my conviction of the necessity of God the Father for nations and for all the community of Mankind, that I best arrive at my conviction of the necessity of Him for myself. Get and read Mazzini's Duties of Man. . . . That is a book full of great thinking and deep feeling, and it will not be apart from but accordant with your Moral Science, and it is profoundly religious." To Miss K. Warren^ " Axenfels. August 28, 1892. " . . .1 forget all about the * Secrets of Life ' I remember when I wrote it and why I wrote it, but nothing more; and I don't care now any more about the Secrets of Life. I'm half convinced that the world would be a better one to live in if we were unable to have any secrets at all, and it is a great comfort often to me to think that there is One who knows all our secrets, who sees everything in the pure light of abso- lute Love. Were we really quite alone with ourselves, how terrible that would be ! " To Miss K. Warren. " London. February 15, 1893. " I have never said that every pain came from some sin in the person who feels the pain. How could I say • Miss Read was at Cambridge. - Miss Warren rendered him great assistance in his work on Early English Literature. LAW AND LOVE 409 an3'thing so foolish ? The greatest amount of pain in this world comes from the wrong-doing of others on the innocent. The sulTering of Jesus was of that kind, and the suffering of those that follow Love. " Nor will pain ever cease in the world till self-desire ceases. Only in loss of self is joy. That is the Law. The greater part of the world say only in gratification of self is joy — that is, they fight against Law. When will people learn to be scientific in religion ? All joy is for them if they will obey the Law. All misery is for them if they disobey it. And as Humanity is one body, those who disobey the Law not only suffer themselves but make others suffer who obey. The only comfort the ' others ' have here on earth, in these circumstances, is that, obeying Love, they have inward joy. But those who disobey not only corrupt themselves but torture others, and their guilt is twofold. " Then God is blamed. I don't see why. There is the Law. Is He to change it to make men happy, as they call it ? If so, he violates Himself. " Is He to make men loving by omnipotent force ? Then He destroys what we call Humanity. There is no longer a race of spirits who grow, through struggle, into obedience to Law. " He cannot do either, but He can bring, in the end, all into obedience How do we know that we may not be the great object-lesson of the Universe ? " To Rev. V. D. Dav IS. " London. June 5, '93. " I do not agree with you about length of the Hymns being an undesirable thing. If necessar}'', verses can be left out, but that is not my point. My point is that all the Nonconformist Clergy are thoroughly mistaken, and none more than the Unitarians, in making their hymns short. I deliberately made them long. I believe con- gregations like long hymns. They like to have their part in the service ; they like to sing. There are a number of old conservative fellows in every congregation 410 LETTERS TO VARIOUS CORRESPONDENTS on whom the Ministers have for a long time imposed the notion that hymns should be short, and who if you give them a long hymn, make a noise about it. But the mass of people who come to Church like to hear their own voices, like to join in a rush of song, and like to have it long. I find no objection made to ten or even twelve verses when the air is a carrying and joyous air. Do you know, I think that the parson occupies too much of the Service; that a great deal more should be handed over to the congregation. Where there is no Liturgy, it is worse Half my service, e.g., is sung by the congrega- tion while I am silent, but in Unitarian and other Non- conformist Churches the clergyman does almost all, and the congregation almost nothing. It is one of the reasons why young people like the Church of England service better. Give them plenty to sing, plenty of Psalms, Canticles to chant, and hymns of eight verses instead of three or four, and you will soon find that twice as much personal interest will be taken in the service and in the Chapel. I should like to say, if it did not sound impertinent, that the whole of Unitarian practice in this matter is wrong The Minister is too much, the con- gregation too little in the Service." To his Mother. " [London]. July 10, '94. "... It is pleasant that you like my Tennyson. I have no special interest in speculative theology myself, but I was forced to lay clearly before the public what Tennyson's speculations were. And one can never forbid the world to speculate on what has not been revealed. What will happen after death has been the subject of speculation for more than 5000 years and will continue to be for more than 5000 years to come. That we shall live in God is clear, but hoiv, no one knows. It doth not yet appear what we shall be ; and though St John is satisfied to see God as He is, and though I am satisfied also therewith, yet you cannot stop speculation on the whole matter : moreover there are all that vast host of "THE SUBMISSION BUSINESS" 411 people who have not this faith when they die What is to become of them will always keep the world, and all those who believe also, in a constant speculation. My father speculated on that subject, and so has every Saint of Christ. I only did not quote those lines you mention because every one knew them, and I was not allowed to quote any poem in full." To Rev. Arthur Brooke. " Boscombe. October 13, '94. "... When I hear of folk climbing mountains and flying twenty miles an hour on a bicycle, I seem to listen to tales of the dwellers on another planet, so long have I been now laid by from all exertion. The last walk I took was on August 8, and it was a crawl. I'm driven now to set my house in order. The doctors say I must not resume work for at least six months, and the Chapel is to be closed certainly till May, perhaps till October, '95. So many plans have been quieted. I was afraid it would be so. I felt so broken down in July. Disalitcr visum, and I do the submission business, I hope, with sufficient fortitude. I do not think I shall ever go to America now. They ought to have asked me ten years ago. Perhaps I shall go abroad for the winter, but the loss of all the income derived from the Chapel is so serious that I do not know what can be managed. " It is a glorious day. I am lying on a high couch beside the window, and below are the yellow sandstone cliffs, and green dells running down to the strand full of heather, furze and tall heath, and fuller still of shadows ; and then, the wide blue sea, joined far away to the blue haze of the sky. Almost a summer wind flutters in through the open windows, and I hear the wild waves whist upon the sand. They might seem wild to Ariel or to Titauia, but on this quiet day they are scarcely more than the ripple which a mountain tarn makes on its white belt of pebbles. The houses are not Italian, but the air and water, and their colour have all the pleasure of the South." CHAPTER XX HOME LIFE " I feel a great deal the parting from this house with its thousand associations of life and death and love." — (Letter to the Hon, Mrs Wingfield, on leaving his house in Manchester Square, March, 1914.) " I positively refused to go out [in London] to-day. . . . Where are the cliffs and the shining sea and the milky way with long lines of blue light and fire, chalcedony and sapphire ? Where is the gleam and con- solation of the grass and the tufted heather, purple amid the yellow gorse, and the mossy rocks, worn by a thousand storms and coloured by the gnawing of the sunlight ? Where are the feeding sheep and the geese whose conversation amuses me so much, and the gossip of the gulls and the staid importance of the cormorants, philosophic as Kant, innocent as curates ? Where is the joy and the beauty and the fresh- ness of life ? Not one trace left — dirt and devilment only. ... At least in my own room there are things to look at which do not send shudders of horror through me like spasms of cholera." — (Diary, October 28, 1902.) " I have no patience with those fathers and mothers who make of their children's sense of duty to them a daily scourge for the backs of their children, and who deliberately forget and ignore that they have a duty to their children. Cannibals, I call them, who live on the flesh and blood of their own offspring." — (Diary, October 19, 1902.) There is a familiar distinction between living in a house and spending one's time under its roof. There are many houses, large and well appointed, where, strictly speaking, the inmates do not live, but only prepare them- selves for living elsewhere, repeating the process when "elsewhere" is reached. Such "homes" are means to ends beyond themselves, points of departure, bases of operation, inns, shelters, places of passage. HIS HOME IN LONDON 413 Brooke's home was to him an end in itseh. " No. 1, Manchester Square," was the place where he really lived. I do not mean by this that he was always there. On the contrary, he was restless, loved change of place, disliked London, was away from it for months every year, and finally escaped from it altogether. I mean that his house and his household provided him with final satis- factions of many kinds. Indeed it were as true to say that his home lived in him, as that he lived in his home. It was a truthful expression of his personality and a part of himself. One may say of him what he once wrote of Scott and Abbotsford, " his spirit streamed into every- thing and everybody." ^ Among the final satisfactions which Brooke found there one, and perhaps the chief, was the knowledge that his house gave pleasure to spirits kindred with his own, and to all lovers of beauty. " Your house," wrote Burne Jones in 1885, " is one where I am always happy, and where I have never known a dull moment." Had a stranger been suddenly introduced and asked to guess the calling of the master he would have said " artist " immediately. On learning that he was a clergyman the stranger might have experienced a momentary surprise. But there would have been no ultimate incredulity. With a little patience he would have found the true perspective, and perhaps read much of the story which these pages have endeavoured to tell. I think he would have concluded with some such reflexion as this : " If a clergyman is to be also an artist it is well that he should be the kind of artist which the contents of this house reveal. For there is nothing here that is not excellent." Neither comfort nor splendour nor possession was ' Diary, 1894. 414 HOME LIFE the keynote of " No. 1." The keynote was art— and that ■with the meaning the word has for the artist. Every room in the house was adorned with imagery. From the ground floor to the fifth story there was hardly a corner, hardly a fragment of available space that did not contain or exhibit some beautiful thing. The very backs of the bedroom doors were hung with pictures, etchings of Meryon, or copies of the Liber Studiorum; and Brooke, before bidding you good night, would hold the candle above these precious things, explain how the etcher does his work, or show you the secret of Turner's skies. Noble portraits surrounded your bed, bronze Buddhas from old Japan kept watch over your slumbers ; you washed your face in porcelain of the East, shaved in a Venetian mirror, and brought to the breakfast-table questions about Giorgione or Tintoret. Pictures confronted you everywhere, not in the rooms alone but in the passages and on the stairways. There were Costas, Wilsons, and Legros in the dining-room ; there were Turners and more Costas in the drawing- room; there were Burne Jones, Gainsborough, Blake, Inchbold in the study. In the hall and on the landings were seascapes and landscapes, drawings, studies by great masters, etchings, engravings, prints innumerable. Every room had its scheme of colour, the hand of William Morris being much in evidence. Every piece of furniture, the hangings, the carpets, the candelabra, the chairs and tables revealed the lover of fine work- manship and noble colour. Brooke's study was at the top of the house, perched, as he would often say, " like an eagle's nest." There, encompassed but not overwhelmed by such things as I have described, he read, wrote, and painted ; or received visitors, at all hours of the day, with a lavish prodigality "THE EAGLE'S NEST" 415 of time. A mass of flowers, the gifts of his friends, always surrounded him ; he needed their company, he said, to get on with his work. Upon the table and under his hand lay a hundred fairy objects in silver and gold, tortoiseshell or bronze. Bookcases contended with pictures for the wall space, and the books in them were preciously bound. His bedroom, hardly distinguishable from a study, adjoined. If you were a night visitor you might be received in the bedroom, where Brooke, reclining among the mighty pillows of his sofa, and smoking the most aromatic of cigars — half recovered, it might be, from a long illness — would entertain you until the small hours with conversation not easily forgotten. Of talks with Brooke in his study, talks both grave and gay, I have innumerable memories ; but the happiest, I had almost said the most glorious, of these nights and banquets of the gods, were those passed in the bedroom. I recall a remark made to me by one of his visitors — a well-known man of science — as we descended the stairs together after one of these nights, and paused from time to time to look at the pictures on the walls : " What a wonderful house this is ! But Brooke himself is so entertaining that he leaves you no leisure to study his possessions." That the house formed an artistic whole is more than I would venture to assert. To have that character a house must be built for the purpose, and Brooke had to make the best of the conditions as he found them. The result was a series of treasure chambers which owed their unity with one another to the fact that in each of them there was a reflection of his personality, and a sure witness of his almost infallible good taste. The presence of so much that was beautiful and precious, it must be confessed, was somewhat confusing to the 416 HOME LIFE uninstructed. One felt like the Queen of Sheba at the court of Solomon. But Brooke himself knew each one of his treasures, and loved it well. On every wall, at every turn and step of the long ascent which led to his study, there was something which gave him joy to linger over, something at which he would pause and engage his visitor in delightful conversation. As a collector of works of art he had a quality which I believe is not common in that class. His zeal in gathering these things about him, and his joy in possess- ing them, was equalled by his delight in giving them away. His generosity knew no bounds. Towards the close of his life he would sometimes amuse himself with the idea of a " progress " among the houses of his married children " for the purpose of re-visiting his long lost treasures " — houses, which were once described by one who knew them well, as " Manchester Square in the provinces." These visits were always the occasion of a little drama. His first act on arriving was to make a tour of the house for the purpose of inspecting his former gifts ; which done he would roundly charge the recipient with having stolen them. A great argument followed, sometimes protracted for days. Brooke would pose as Lear, robbed by wicked daughters, and weave innumerable tragedies out of his deplorable condition. A further gift was the usual form of reconciliation. Of Brooke's quality as a host the following passage will bear witness. It is written by Sir Frederick Wedmore, who was a frequent guest of the family for many years. " I do not know what claim I have to appraise Stop- ford Brooke's qualities or characteristics as a host — what claim, I mean, that is not shared by many others, surviv- ing like myself to recollect his hospitality in the late BROOKE AS HOST 417 seventies of the nineteenth century, while having profited as much by his exercise of that engaging virtue in, roughly speaking, the first dozen years of the twentieth. Elsewhere I have written briefly of a famous evening in which Brooke entertained Tenny- son ; ^ elsewhere 1 have written of him as a preacher, the contemporary of Liddon, almost the contemporary of Maurice. " The absence of all unrequired formalities was a characteristic of the Manchester Square dinner parties ; and another of their characteristics was the diversity of their elements : along with likely, you met unlikely people — though never with the startling abundance, with the rich surprise, experienced at Lord Houghton's gatherings. In Manchester Square the footing of famili- arity and friendship was reached with great promptitude, even where it did not exist from the first. You were there, not because it was desirable to have you, but because you were liked, or, it may be, because it was sought to do you a kindness and a service. The fusion was rapid. Sometimes it had magically begun even before the host's arrival upon the scene — his arrival a little tardy very often, and so just pleasantly apologetic. Sitting down together, we were, from the very first, any- thing but lugubrious. Things were in a light key. Brooke had on his right hand, or on his left — or pre- ferably upon both — a woman whom he liked : a woman generally who was young. The late Lady Stanley of Alderley was there sometimes. She indeed was not young in years; but then she was never old in cha- racter. . . . We talked of animals, and of what animal this or that person reminded us ; and one of us, I am sure, was a donkey, and another, I am sure, was a seal. And Stopford Brooke not only lightly tolerated, but at times, wickedly encouraged this order of conversation — from which, with deepening voice, he would in a minute suddenly turn, hearing something at once genial and learned from the present Lord Bryce ; or, seeing that ' See the passage in Sir Frederick Wedmore's volume, " Memories," p. 48. 418 HOME LIFE the eyes of a younger and newer guest were cast curiously upon the walls, he desired to help her to the beginning of an appreciation of Costa, the Italian landscape painter, or of Legros, that then little understood genius from France — whose canvases afforded a dignified and stately background to the cheerful life of the moment. " Nobody enjoyed his dinner party more than did Stopford Brooke himself. With nearly every one he was in touch ; and to be in touch was rendered easier some- times by the removal of the rising guests, not to the drawing-room at all, or rather only there on the way to the sanctum sanctorum — the study on the fourth floor. By the time we had reached that eminence everybody interested in everybody else was talking at fullest speed and with most pronounced interest. And when * Good nights ' began to be exchanged, Stopford Brooke— still obviously the youngest and freshest of the party — began to be provided with a grievance. Here was a chair, a cushion, another cigarette. Why not occupy yet awhile — it was not thus far midnight — why not occupy a place by the fire and go on talking ? " The Church was, I think, the profession least often and least thoroughly represented in the parties in Man- chester Square ; though it may be that the appearance of the actor on that scene was of almost equally rare occurrence. I think the Stage was the vocation with which our host had — amongst specially interesting ones — the least of natural sympathy. A general officer might be at the board — Brooke's own family would im- mediately furnish more than one. A Judge and his wife — or a Judge without his wife — would be heard with grave attention. A scientific investigator, a brilliant consulting physician, was in his proper place. But as time went on, Writers and Painters showed themselves in greater abundance ; and — to speak of earlier days alone — I have seen, not assembled together, but with Peeresses, and it might be, women novelists, and here and there a Slade student sandwiched in between, every then living leader of the ' PreEaphaelite ' movement. One met now Holman Hunt, now William Morris, and LETTER TO A CHILD 419 now Burne Jones. And leaving painting and design there was a most appreciative fellow student of life in Henry James." Brooke's nature was profoundly affectionate ; indeed he lived in the constant interchange of affection. His minor acts of graciousness and love were done with thought and imagination ; he gave them the personal touch, and was equally delighted whether he was doing these things for others, or whether others were doing them for him. None of his letters are more thoughtful or tender or charming or faultlessly expressed than those which he wrote to his children on their birthdays. All children indeed were his natural kinsfolk, and his fondness for them increased with years. To a small group ^ which he greatly loved he sent only a few months before his death a book of pressed seaweed, and wrote in it the following verse — " Dear children, here I send you flowers Pluckt from the garden of sea-kings. The great and noble sea is full Of these delightful, dainty things." To Mary Howard} " April 8, '76. " I ought to have written before this to thank you for your very pretty letter. I was so glad to get it, and I think your handwriting charming. Now that all your governesses are gone, you and Cecilia and Charley must have fine times of it. I suppose you spend all day long among the flowers and are as happy as fairies in a dell of ferns. And the sun has made you as brown as a berry, I hope, and I am sure you love the clear blue sky as much as I do. We have had a dreadful winter. I ' They wore the children of his friend Mr William Rothenstein, the artist. •^ Daughter of the Hon. George Howard, now Lady Mary Murray. 420 HOME LIFE may say we never had any daylight, of the right kind, for some months. Often when Honor used to come to wake me in the morning and bid me get up — I opened my eyes lazily and said—* Nonsense, child, it is night — why are you up ? — go to bed again.' But I was obliged to confess that it ought to be day and went down to breakfast by lamplight as cross as the letter X. Have you got any ' Possessions ' at San Kemo ? I hope so, and that you and I will take a long walk to see them, and that I shall hear a story about them as long as all tlie miles I shall travel to see you. If you have made none, you and I will have to make some for ourselves, and we shall be in the very middle of a tumbling stream into which I shall carry you, if you have not grown far too heavy. Don't think we are quite without flowers here. My room is like a greenhouse. Blue periwinkles, brown ivy, crimson rhododendrons, masses of daffodils from Westmoreland, primroses from Devonshire, violets wet with this morning's rain, cover all my tables. The spring sun is shining in upon them, but it will rain before night, a soft, rich rain which will make all the buds on the trees that are just ready to burst into life, open their green gates, and issue forth like people from a long besieged city, dancing and singing for joy. I am so happy that spring has come at last, so glad, and so well in my heart, that, monstrously old as I am, with grey hairs most impertinently coming on my head, I feel like a little child. That will seem very odd to you, and you will laugh, but then you know, though children cannot feel old, old people can feel young at times when the world is very pretty. The children are all gone to the North, and seem very well, but Stopford, whom you scarcely know, has got a bad sore throat, and is going to be laid up, I am afraid, for a week or so. It is so stupid, children being ill, do you not think so ? I think it was a good plan that was carried out in that world under the earth, where the only crime which was subject to severe punishment was the crime of getting ill. ... I hope you are not going away before I come. I shall be very much disappointed if I do not see you, and I expect to find you CANDOUR IN THE HOME 421 as tall as my shoulders and with a rosy colour in your cheeks which the sun who loves little girls gives to them as one of his prettiest gifts. Tell Cecilia not to forget me quite, and I hope Charley is bold and happy. I wish I were now at this moment with you all. I should like to get into the fork of an olive and fall asleep." Ten years later he wrote to the same correspondent : — "6 Jan. '85. " I have been too ill to answer before this your letter which gave me so much pleasure. I was glad to be remembered by you, and I am full of thanks to you for your good wishes for my happiness during this year. There is but little need for me to wish you joy. You know how much I desire that you should possess and value all the fine and noble joys of life, yet at this time, it is pleasant to say so in speech, and to mark the year by expression of long and aft'ectionate regard. How glad I am that you are young, that you have so much before you, so much good, use, faith, hope and love, so much beauty to admire and love, so much fine doing and fine work to admire in others and to honour. And every year I hope you will have more and more of those inward powers which will enable you to reverence and love more, things worthy of reverence and love. For that is the secret of life." In the midst of the family his self-communication was open, eager, spontaneous, and the effect of this was that candour and mutual trust became the operative law of his household. No head of a family ever wielded a greater authority under his own roof; and yet it was authority grounded on reciprocal affection, and the word of command was seldom heard. The independence of character which enabled him to go his own way when the opinion of the world was in question had its reverse side in his domestic Hfe. His children depended on his love, but, equally, he depended on theirs. He craved 422 HOME LIFE for the support of loyal hearts, for sympathetic under- standing, for the answering look, word or deed. And throughout his life he was singularly fortunate in having those about him who gave his nature all that it needed of these things. As one by one his daughters grew into womanhood they became his close companions. The relation between them and their father was one of friendship, not un- tinged with romance. They shared his interests, helped him in his work, ministered to him in sickness, accom- panied him in his travels, and acted their part in his pranks. Many pictures of this relationship survive in the family legends, and I will try to catch one or two of the lighter order. The family pew in St James' Chapel, was in the gallery, so close to the pulpit that a daring hand could touch the preacher. It was Brooke's custom, on concluding his sermon to look round and bestow a smile on the row of faces that topped the edge of the pew. But one day, being excited with his peroration, he forgot to give the usual salute. This omission, in the opinion of one of the little people, was an offence that needed a sharp reminder ; so, to the immense astonishment of the congregation, she reached over the edge of the gallery, laid violent hands on her father's waving hair, and did not let go till she had compelled him to do his duty. About this daughter Brooke had the whim to write a myth full of strange adventures in some antenatal world. I will not attempt to summarize the story; it lies before me in a series of letters that cover several years, a charming piece of fancy, and a curious witness of the tendency of Brooke's imagination to play with the elements of things. THE SPIEIT OF THE HOME 423 There is also a picture of a later time, which shows Brooke walking the West End with another daughter, then grown up, with whom he had made a compact to act " the Seven Ages of Man," as they went along the streets, and to finish the show before arriving at their destination, that "the Londoners might at last have the benefit of some really good Shakespearean acting." Their destination was the house of John Richard Green. Great was the amazement of the passers-by at the suc- cessive stages of the performance, especially when they recognized the performers, and greater still was the amazement of the celebrated historian when the twain burst in upon him with the cry, " Here we are. Green, sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything." Such were the fringes of a relationship whose essential nature was mutual devotion, trust and love. With all his tenderness Brooke was the least anxious of parents. He never worried himself about the characters or the education of his children, and interfered with them singularly little. He was the polar opposite to the type of parent who grounds his pro- ceedings on " Child-study," arranges an elaborate scheme of influence, and stands guard over every idea or interest that enters the young mind. Not only was he too busy to bother himself with such things, but he was inclined to regard these methods as mistaken, even pernicious. Being himself a child at heart he probably knew more about children than any text-book on the subject could teach him. He believed that children are naturally quick in penetrating the secret of any " system " on which they are being educated, and apt to play tricks with the discovery behind the backs of their educators. For the rest, he relied on the general happiness of the home, which had a radiating centre in his own VOL. II. p 424 HOME LIFE personality. On the whole, his method, if it may be called a method, was successful, and he lived to see its success. It reduced the friction incident to a large family to the vanishing point, and kept his children closely united to one another and to himself. It left them free to develop their own individualities, to form their own friendships, make their own marriages, do their own work ; which they did without aberration from the spirit which governed the home in which they had been nurtured. There were, of course, some disadvantages ; , for when dealing with human beings one cannot practice laissez /aire beyond a certain point without leaving some tangled edges for other people to gather up. With Brooke, how- ever, all these things seemed to arrange themselves automatically. He continued to the end rejoicing in his children, as his children rejoiced in him. There is an interesting reference to these matters in a letter written to J. R. Green from Naworth in 1870. Among the guests staying at the Castle were one or two typical specimens of the Mid- Victorian Radical, who had been expounding to him " somewhat heavily " their views of Education. To J. E. Green. " Naworth. 1870. " The worst of these new atheists is that they are so utterly convinced that the world needs much tinkering that tiiey can't let the old thing alone a moment. Now, the belief in God at least saves one from that. One can laugh a little when one knows that all things are being looked after by a wise Person ; and were it not for an atrocious paradox I can say that one can sin with a little comfort when one believes in a Father. You won't mistake me. " But it is quite too bad that they can't let us alone a little; that women must be taught to meddle with ON TRAINING CHILDREN 425 things ive don't care to touch ; that the unfortunate children should have all their education planned out for them, so that the utmost possible amount of knowledge should be rammed, crammed, and damned into their brains, till it is like the great gun of Athlone, ready to burst at the first touch of passion into madness— instead of letting the poor little things grow like flowers and find out a little where they are, and what sort of character they have and what they would like to learn, and be something of the wild briar rose, before they settle down into the Standard Rose in the grassy alley of the trim garden. But you see, dear boy, not being immortal in these persons' minds, the poor children have only a short time to do good to Humanity, and must be crammed for that, and only a short time to suck in the honey of Past Knowledge and enjoy it — wherefore every- body must be so villainously hurried ; and we shall soon, if these Philosophers win the day, have a nation of Grant DujBfs, and Mrs Grotes, married in and out with Congreves and Mrs Peter Taylors ; and then Humanity, having reached its acme, will subside into the nothing- ness from which it came — and a good riddance it will be, I say ! But, as I have a notion that Honor and Maud and Stopford will go on for ever, and have lots of time to learn and do good to others, I don't intend to hurry them, nor to cast them in a formal mould, but to let them grow by ' their own divine vitality.' It is funny to meet who is modern to the finger tips, here at Naworth, where the whole sentiment of the place is of the Past. Every minute I am hit by this incongruity, and no amount of enthusiasm on his part for the things which belong to Romance seems to be real, though I suppose it is. One detects, at least so one fancies, the note of self-education." CHAPTER XXI LETTERS TO HIS DAUGHTERS 1882-1896 " We arc sent into the world to communicate with oiu" fellows. And silence is generally sulks." — (Diary, December 9, 1901.) To V. "Brunnen, 1884 [?]. "... We spend our time here in braving the elements, and I am sorry to say that they don't seem to mind. They continue doing as they hke, and what they hke is sulks and passion, and tears, and blowing up. All our feigned indifference, all our stately airs are lost upon them. The snow is as low as it can be, and the clouds more mean than I can say. They will let us have no fun with the mountain peaks. Even the lake objects to the goings on above, if I may judge from the vain and petulant way in which it is continually beating the beach. Once this morning the sun appeared, but on seeing the state of things below retired in haught}-, but too swift, disgust. This made me ill ; and headache began. As you know well, all my headaches are caused, at first hand, by moral distress at the way Nature conducts her- self. In London I get accustomed to her bad conduct, and there is great excuse for her there, but here I cannot bear it, and I wish she would take a pew in Bedford Chapel. I would devote a course of discourses to her improvement." VENICE AND LONDON 427 To S. " [Londou]. May, '85. "... This is to reach you on your birthday, and to welcome you to another year of Hfe. May every year see your heart brighter, your spirit nearer to God, and your hfe more loving to others. There is but one thing in this world to aim at — it is self-forgetfuluess ; and the only passage to it is Love. With it comes Joy and Peace and Power. It is a long battle to get it, but my prayer for you is that every birthday you may attain a greater measure of it. — Good-bye, my little friend, remember me." To E. " Venice. Oct., '85. " The inclemency of the weather, actually three days without the sun— and a dirty sky prevailing, which makes Venice look like a bad photograph, and a kind of cold which seems to threaten me but which has not quite declared itself, compels me to remain at home, and I am sitting close to a blazing wood fire at 10 a.m., beginning to leel as if life were going to be bearable. If I feel thus broken by two days of cold and rain here where we still have flowers growing in the open air, verbenas and carna- tions and oleanders adorn our table ; if these things are done in the green tree of Venice what will happen in the dry tree of London, when the long months will crawl by like serpents, and the sun never appear, and the rain and frost and wind fight for the palm of disagreeability ? I do not know. It is often more than a mortal can bear. Those angels who have wing.-, and I pre^