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

effected in no other way. And in this spirit we may look back on our mistakes, sad as they were, and on our triumphs, which are sometimes sadder still, and know that they were not mere accidents and obstacles which might have been otherwise--they were rather the very stuff and essence of the soul showing through its enfolding garb.

And then, too, if we have suffered, as we all must suffer if we have any heart or blood or brain at all, we can learn the blessed fact of the utter powerlessness of suffering to hurt or darken us. Its horror lies in the continuance of it, in the shuddering anticipation of all we may yet have to endure; but once over, it becomes instantly either like a cloud melting in the blue of heaven, or, better still a joyful memory of a pain that braced and purified. No one ever gives a thought, except a grateful one, to past suffering. If it leaves its handwriting on brow and cheek, it leaves no shadow on the spirit within. It is so easy to see this in the lives of others, however hard it is to realise it for oneself. What interest is there in the record of the life of a perfectly prosperous and equable person? And what inspiration is equal to that which comes when we read the life of one who suffered much, when we see the hope that rose superior to thwarted designs and broken purposes, and the joy that came of realising that not through easy and graceful triumph is the soul made strong? Why does one ask oneself about the dead hero, when his life rounds itself to the view, not whether he had enough of prosperity and honour to content him, but whether he had enough of pain and self-reproach to perfect his humanity? Suffering is no part of the soul; the soul has need to suffer, but it is made to rejoice; and when it has earned its joy, it will abide in it.

And now a word of personal experience. This book is a record of an experiment in happiness. I had the opportunity, and I took it, of arranging my life in every respect exactly as I desired. It was my design to live alone in joy; not to exclude others, but to admit them for my pleasure and at my will. I thought that by desiring little, by sacrificing quantity of delight for quality, I should gain much. And I will as frankly confess that I did not succeed in capturing the tranquillity I desired. I found many pretty jewels by the way, but the pearl of price lay hid.

And yet it would be idle to say that I regret it. I may wish that it had all fallen out otherwise, that things had been more comfortably arranged, that I had been allowed to dream away the days in my hermitage; but it was not to be; and I have at least learned that not thus can the end be attained. The story of my failure cannot be told here, but I hope yet to find strength and skill to tell it. At present I have but endeavoured to catch the texture of the pleasant days, before my visions began to fade about me. And indeed I can say sincerely that those days were happy; but the root of the mistake was this: I have by nature a very keen appetite for the subtle flavours of life, a sense of beauty in simple things, a relish for the absurdities and oddities as well as for the beauties and finenesses of temperament, a critical appreciation of the characteristic qualities of landscapes and buildings, a sense which finds satisfaction as well in such commonplace things as the variety of grotesque vehicles that go to compose a luggage train, or the grass-grown, scarped, water-logged excavations of a brick-field, as in the sharp rock-horns of some craggy mountain, impulsive as a frozen flame, or the soft outlines of fleecy clouds that race over a sapphire heaven. If one is thus endowed by nature, it seems such an easy thing to seclude oneself from life, and to find endless joy in sight and hearing and critical appreciation. Instead of mingling with the throng, marching and fighting, fearing and suffering, it seems easy to stand apart and let nature and art and life unfold itself before one in a rich panorama. But not on such terms can life be lived. One hopes to avoid suffering by aloofness; but there falls upon the spirit a worse sickness than the weariness of toil--the ache of pent-up activities and self-tortured mystifications. The soul becomes involved in a dreary metaphysic, wondering fruitlessly what it is that mars the sweet and beautiful world. The fact is that one is purloining experience instead of paying the natural price for it, estimating things by the outside instead of from the inside, and growing thus to care more for the strangeness, the contrast, the picturesqueness of it all, than for the love and the hope and the elemental forces, of which the world is but the garb and scene.

Here in this book the mind turns from itself and its rest, when it has satisfied its first delight in creating the home, the setting, the scenery, so to speak, of the drama; turns to the men and women who cross the stage, surveys their gestures and glances, interprets their movements and silences; and then winds out into the further distance, the towns, the buildings, the roads, that stand for the designs and desires of pilgrims that have passed into the unknown country, leaving their provender for later hands to use. But the whole book, if I may say it, is the prelude to the further scene, the silent entry of Fate, the coming of the Master to survey the servant's work.

Those pleasant days have a savour of their own for this one reason--that they were not spent in a mere drifting indolence or a luxurious abandonment. They were deliberately planned, intently lived, carefully employed; behind the pleasures lay a great tract of solid work, very diligently pursued. That was to have been the backbone of the whole; and it is for this that I have no sense of regret or contrition about it. It was an experiment; and if in one sense it failed, because it did not take account of energies and elements unused, in another sense it succeeded, because one cannot learn things in this world by hearsay, but only by burning one's fingers in what seemed so comfortable a flame. It was done, too, on the right lines, with the desire not to be dependent upon diversion and stir and business, but to approach life simply and directly, practising for the days of loneliness and decline; and this was the error, that it tried to mould life too much, to select from its material, to reject its dross and debris, to rifle rather than to earn the treasure, to limit hopes, to dip the wings of inconvenient desires.

But it is difficult, without experiment, to realise the strain of living life too much in one mood and in one key. Neither is it the sign of a healthy appetite to be particular about one's food. This I freely admit. I came to see that, trained as I had been in certain habits of life and work, habituated to certain experiences, the savour of the interludes had owed their pungency to their economy and rarity.

And so, like some weft of opalescent mist, the sweet mirage melted in the noonday. What I then saw I will leave to be told hereafter; but it was not what I desired nor what I expected.

What, then, remains of the time of plenty? Not, I am thankful to say, either vanity or vexation of spirit. It was what remains to the ruffled bird, as he shivers in the leafless tree, in which he had sung so loud in the high summer, embowered in greenness and rustling leafage. No sense of the hollowness or sadness of life; but rather a quickened knowledge of its delight and its intensity. It is the same feeling that one has when one speeds swiftly in a train near to some place where one lived long ago, and sees glimpses of familiar woods and roads and houses. One knows well that others are living and working, sauntering and dreaming, in the rooms, the gardens, the paths where one's own energies once ran so swiftly; yet the old life seems to be there all the time, hidden away behind the woods and walls, if one could but find it! But I no more wish my experience away, or wish it otherwise, than I wish I had never loved one who is gone from me, or that I had never heard a strain of sweet music, because it has died upon the air. Because I did not find what I was in search of, or only found a shadow of it, I do not believe that it is not there--the wheat-flour and the honey are in the hand of God. I should have tasted them if I had but walked in His way! Nay, I did taste them; and when He gives me grace to hearken, I shall be fed and satisfied.
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Publication Date: 08-23-2010

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