The Silent Isle by Arthur Christopher Benson (books to read this summer txt) 📕

world are unimportant, I believe, and all the temptations which arise from wanting to do things, as it is called, on a large scale. Money, the love of which as representing liberty is a sore temptation to such as myself, is unimportant. Conventional orthodoxies, whether they be of manners, or of ways of life, or of thought, or of religion, or of education, are unimportant. What then remains? Courage, and patience, and simplicity, and kindness, and beauty, and, last of all, ideas remain; and these are the things to lay hold of and to live with.

And even so one cannot help puzzling and grieving and wondering over all the dreadful waste of time and energy, all the stupidities and misunderstandings, all the unnecessary business and tiresome pleasure, all the spitefulness and malignity, all the sham rules and artificial regulations, all the hard judgments and dismal fears and ugly cruelties of the world, beginning so early and ending so late. An hour ago I met two tiny children, a boy and girl, in the road. The girl was the older and stronger. The little boy, singing to himself, had gathered some leaves from the hedge, and was enjoying his posy harmlessly enough. What must his sister do? She wanted some fun; so she took the posy away, dodged her brother when he tried to catch her, and finally threw it over a paling, and went off rejoicing in her strength, while the little boy sate down and cried. Why should they not have played together in peace? On my table lie letters from two old friends of mine who have had a quarrel over a small piece of business, involving a few pounds. One complains that the other claims the money unjustly; the other resents being accused of meanness; the result, a rupture of familiar relations. One cannot, it seems, prevent sorrows and pains and tragedies; but what is the ironical power which gives us such rich materials for happiness, and then infects us with the devilish power of misusing them, and worrying over them, and hating each other, and despising ourselves? And then the little lives cut relentlessly short, how does that fit in? And even when the life is prolonged, one becomes a puckered, winking, doddering old thing, stiff and brittle, disgraceful and humiliated, and, what is worse than anything, feeling so young and sensible inside the crazy machine. If we knew that it was all going to help us somewhere, sometime, no matter how far off, to be strong and cheerful and brave and kind, how easy to bear it all!

But in spite of everything, how one enjoys it all; how interesting and absorbing it all is! Wherever one turns, there are delicious things to see, from the aconite with its yellow head and its green collar in the bare shrubbery, to the streak of sunshine on the plain with the great rays thrust downwards from the hidden sun, making the world an enchanted place. And all the curious, fantastic, charming people that one meets, from the boy sitting on the cart-shaft, with all sorts of old love-histories hinted in his clear skin and large eye, to the wizened labourer in his quaint-cut, frowzy clothes, bill-hook in hand, a symbol of the patient work of the world. So helpless a crowd, so patient in trouble, so bewildered as to the meaning of it all; and zigzagged all across it, in nations, in families, in individuals, the jagged lines of evil, so devastating, so horrible, so irremediable; and even worse than evil--which has at least something lurid and fiery about it--the dark, slimy streaks of meanness and jealousy, of boredom and ugliness, which seem to have no use at all but to make things move heavily and obscurely, when they might run swift and bright.

So here in my isle of silence, between fen and fen, under the spacious sky, I want to try an experiment--to live simply and honestly, without indolence or haste, neither wasting time nor devouring it, not refusing due burdens but not inventing useless ones, not secluding myself in a secret cell of solitude, but not multiplying dull and futile relations. One thing I may say honestly and sincerely, that I do indeed desire to fulfil the Will and purpose of God for me, if I can but discern it; for that there is a great will at work behind it all, I cannot for a moment doubt; nor can I doubt that I do it, with many foolish fears and delays, and shall do it to the end. Why it is that, voyaging thus to the haven beneath the hill, I meet such adverse breezes, such headstrong currents, such wrack of wind and thwarting wave, I know not; nor what that other land will be like, if indeed I sail beyond the sunset; but that a home awaits me and all mankind I believe, of which this quiet house, so pleasantly ordered, among its old trees and dewy pastures, is but a faint sweet symbol. It may be that I shall find the vision I desire; or it may be that I shall but fall bleeding among the thorns of life; who can tell?

As I write, I see the pale spring sunset fade between the tree-stems; the garden glimmers in the dusk; the lights peep out in the hamlet; the birds wing their way home across the calm sky-spaces. Even now, in this moment of ease and security, might be breathed the message I desire, as the earth spins and whirls across the infinite tracts of heaven, from the great tender mind of God. But if not, I am content. For this one thing I hold as certain, and I dare not doubt it--that there is a Truth behind all confusions and errors; a goal beyond all pilgrimages. I shall find it, I shall reach it, in some day of sudden glory, of hope fulfilled and sorrow ended; and no step of the way thither will be wasted, whether trodden in despair and weariness or in elation and delight; till we have learned not to fear, not to judge, not to mistrust, not to despise; till in a moment our eyes will be opened, and we shall know that we have found peace.


II


I realised a little while ago that I was getting sadly belated in the matter of novel-reading. I had come to decline on a few old favourites and was breaking no new ground. That is a provincial frame of mind, just as when a man begins to discard dressing for dinner, and can endure nothing but an old coat and slippers. It is easy to think of it as unworldly, peaceable, philosophical; but it is mere laziness. The really unworldly philosopher is the man who is at ease in all costumes and at home in all companies.

I did not take up my novel-reading in a light spirit or for mere diversion. To begin a new novel is for me like staying at a strange house; I am bewildered and discomposed by the new faces, by the hard necessity of making the acquaintance of all the new people, and in determining their merits and their demerits. But I was bent on more serious things still. I knew that it is the writers of romances, and not the historians or the moralists, who are the real critics and the earnest investigators of life and living. There may be at the present day few subtle psychologists or surpassing idealists at work writing novels, and still fewer great artists; but for a man to get out of the way of reading contemporary fiction is not only a disease, it is almost a piece of moral turpitude--or at best a sign of lassitude, stupidity, and Toryism; because it means that one's mind is made up and that one has some dull theory which life and the thoughts of others may confirm if they will, but must not modify: from which deadly kind of incrustation may common-sense and human interest deliver us.

It is a matter of endless debate whether a novel should have an ethical purpose, or whether it should merely be an attempt to present beautifully any portion of truth clearly perceived, faithfully observed, delicately grouped, and artistically isolated. In the latter case, say the realists, whatever the subject, the incident, the details may be, the novel will possess exactly the same purpose that underlies things, no more and no less; and the purpose may be trusted to look after itself.

The other theory is that the novelist should have a definite motive; that he should have a case which he is trying to prove, a warning he wishes to enforce, an end which he desires to realise. The fact that Dickens and Charles Reade had philanthropic motives of social reform, and wished to improve the condition of schools, workhouses, lunatic asylums, and gaols, is held to justify from the moral point of view such novels as Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, Hard Cash, and It is Never too Late to Mend. And from the moral point of view these books are entirely justified, because they did undoubtedly interest a large number of people in such subjects who would not have been interested by sermons or blue-books. These books quickened the emotions of ordinary people on the subject; and public sentiment is of course the pulse of legislation.

Whether the philanthropic motive injured the books from the artistic point of view is another question. It undoubtedly injured them exactly in proportion as the philanthropic motive led the writers to distort or to exaggerate the truth. It is perfectly justifiable, artistically, to lay the scene of a novel in a workhouse or a gaol, but if the humanitarian impulse leads to any embroidery of or divergence from the truth, the novel is artistically injured, because the selection and grouping of facts should be guided by artistic and not by philanthropic motives.

Now the one emotion which plays a prominent part in most romances is the passion of love, and it is interesting to observe that even this motive is capable of being treated from the philanthropic as well as from the artistic point of view. In a book which is now perhaps unduly neglected, from the fact that it has a markedly early Victorian flavour, Charles Kingsley's Yeast, there is a distinct attempt made to fuse the two motives. The love of Lancelot for Argemone is depicted both in the artistic and in the philanthropic light. The passion of the lover throbs furiously through the odd weltering current of social problems indicated, as a stream in lonely meadows may be seen and heard to pulsate at the beat of some neighbouring mill which it serves to turn. Yet the philanthropic motive is there, in that love is depicted as a redeeming power, a cure for selfishness, a balm for unrest; and the artistic impulse finally triumphs in the death of Argemone unwedded.

In the hands of women-writers, love naturally tends to be depicted from the humanitarian point of view. It is the one matchless gift which the woman has to offer, the supreme opportunity of exercising influence, the main chance of what is clumsily called self-effectuation. The old proverb says that all women are match-makers; and Mr. Bernard Shaw goes further and maintains that they act from a kind of predatory instinct, however much that instinct may be concealed or glorified.

Now there was one great woman-writer, Charlotte Bronte, to whom it was given to treat of love from the artistic side. She has been accused of making her heroines, Jane Eyre, Caroline Helstone, Lucy Snowe, too submissive, too grateful for the gift of a man's love. They forgive deceit, rebuffs, severity, coldness, with a surpassing meekness. But it is here that the artistic quality really emerges;