At Large by Arthur Christopher Benson (free ebook reader for android .txt) 📕

portions of a mighty, an overwhelming problem. The fragments of that mighty mystery are sorrow, sin, suffering, joy, hope, life, death. Things of their nature sharply opposed, and yet that are, doubtless, somehow and somewhere, united and composed and reconciled. It is at this sad point that many men and most artists stop short. They see what they love and desire; they emphasise this and rest upon it; and when the surge of suffering buffets them away, they drown, bewildered, struggling for breath, complaining.

But for the true man it is otherwise. He is penetrated with the desire that all should share his joy and be emboldened by it. It casts a cold shadow over the sunshine, it mars the scent of the roses, it wails across the cooing of the doves--the sense that others suffer and toil unhelped; and still more grievous to him is the thought that, were these duller natures set free from the galling yoke, their mirth would be evil and hideous, they would have no inkling of the sweeter and the purer joy. And then, if he be wise, he tries his hardest, in slow and wearied hours, to comfort, to interpret, to explain; in much heaviness and dejection he labours, while all the time, though he knows it not, the sweet ripple of his thoughts spreads across the stagnant pool. He may be flouted, contemned, insulted, but he heeds it not; while all the strands of the great mystery, dark and bright alike, work themselves, delicately and surely, into the picture of his life, and the picture of other lives as well. Larger and richer grows the great design, till it is set in some wide hall or corridor of the House of Life; and the figure of the toil-worn knight, with armour dinted and brow dimmed with dust and sweat, kneeling at the shrine, makes the very silence of the place beautiful; while those that go to and fro rejoice, not in the suffering and weariness, not in the worn face and the thin, sun-browned hands, but in the thought that he loved all things well; that his joy was pure and high, that his clear eyes pierced the dull mist that wreathed cold field and dripping wood, and that, when he sank, outworn and languid after the day's long toil, the jocund trumpets broke out from the high-walled town in a triumphant concert, because he had done worthily, and should now see greater things than these.



XII. A SPEECH-DAY

In the course of the summer it was my lot to attend the Speech-Day festivities of a certain school--indeed, I attended at more than one such gathering, vocatus atque non vocatus, as Horace says. They are not the sort of entertainments I should choose for pleasure; one feels too much like a sheep, driven from pen to pen, kindly and courteously driven, but still driven. One is fed rather than eats. One meets a number of charming and interesting people, and one has no time to talk to them. But I am always glad to have gone, and one carries away pleasant memories of kindness and courtesy, of youth and hope.

This particular occasion was so very typical that I am going to try and gather up my impressions and ideas. It was an old school and a famous school, though not one of the most famous. The buildings large and effective, full of modern and up-to-date improvements, with a mellow core of antiquity, in the shape of a venerable little courtyard in the centre. There were green lawns and pleasant gardens and umbrageous trees; and it was a beautiful day, too, sunny and fresh, so that one was neither baked nor boiled. The first item was a luncheon, at which I sate between two very pleasant strangers and exchanged cautious views on education. We agreed that the value of the classics as a staple of mental training was perhaps a little overrated, and that possibly too much attention was nowadays given to athletics; but that after all the public-school system was the backbone of the country, and taught boys how to behave like gentlemen, and how to govern subject races. We agreed that they were ideal training-grounds for character, and that our public-schools were the envy of the civilised world. In such profound and suggestive interchange of ideas the time sped rapidly away.

Then we were gathered into a big hall. It was pleasant to see proud parents and charming sisters, wearing their best, clustered excitedly round some sturdy and well-brushed young hero, the hope of the race; pleasant to see frock-coated masters, beaming with professional benevolence, elderly gentlemen smilingly recalling tales of youthful prowess, which had grown quite epical in the lapse of time; it was inspiriting to feel one of a big company of people, all bent on being for once as good-humoured and cheerful as possible, and all inspired by a vague desire to improve the occasion.

The prizes were given away to the accompaniment of a rolling thunder of applause; we had familiar and ingenuous recitations from youthful orators, who desired friends, Romans, and countrymen to lend them their ears, or accepted the atrocious accusation of being a young man; and then a Bishop, who had been a schoolmaster himself, delivered an address. It was delightful to see and hear the good man expatiate. I did not believe much in what he said, nor could I reasonably endorse many of his statements; but he did it all so genially and naturally that one felt almost ashamed to question the matter of his discourse. Yet I could not help wondering why it is thought advisable always to say exactly the same things on these occasions. The good man began by asserting that the boys would never be so happy or so important again in their lives as they were at school, and that all grown-up people were envying them. I don't know whether any one believed that; I am sure the boys did not, if I can judge by what my own feelings used to be on such occasions. Personally I used to think my school a very decent sort of place, but I looked forward with excitement and interest to the liberty and life of the larger world; and though perhaps in a way we elders envied the boys for having the chances before them that we had so many of us neglected to seize, I don't suppose that with the parable of Vice Versa before us we would really have changed places with them. Would any one ever return willingly to discipline and barrack-life? [Yes--ed.] Would any one under discipline refuse independence if it were offered him on easy terms? I doubt it!

Then the Bishop went on to talk about educational things; and he said with much emphasis that in spite of all that was said about modern education, we most of us realised as we grew older that all culture was really based upon the Greek and Latin classics. We all stamped on the ground and cheered at that, I as lustily as the rest, though I am quite sure it is not true. All that the Bishop really meant was that such culture as he himself possessed had been based on the classics. Now the Bishop is a robust, genial, and sensible man, but he is not a strictly cultured man. He is only sketchily varnished with culture. He thinks that German literature is nebulous, and French literature immoral. I don't suppose he ever reads an English book, except perhaps an ecclesiastical biography; he would say that he had no time to read a novel; probably he glances at the Christian Year on Sundays, and peruses a Waverley novel if he is kept in bed by a cold. Yet he considers himself, and would be generally considered, a well-educated man. I believe myself that the reason why we as a nation love good literature so little is because we are starved at an impressionable age on a diet of classics; and to persist in regarding the classics as the high-water mark of the human intellect seems to me to argue a melancholy want of faith in the progress of the race. However, for the moment we all believed ourselves to be men of a high culture, soundly based on the corner-stone of Latin and Greek. Then the Bishop went on to speak of athletics with a solemn earnestness, and he said, with deep conviction, that experience had taught him that whatever was worth doing was worth doing well. He did not argue the point as to whether all games were worth playing, or whether by filling up all the spare time of boys with them, by crowning successful athletes with glory and worship, by engaging masters who will talk with profound seriousness about bowling and batting, rowing and football, one might not be developing a perfectly false sense of proportion. He told the boys to play games with all their might, and he left on their minds the impression that athletics were certainly things to be ranked among the Christian graces. Of course he sincerely believed in them himself. He would have maintained that they developed manliness and vigour, and discouraged loafing and uncleanness. I am not at all sure myself that games as at present organised do minister directly to virtue. The popularity of the athlete is a dangerous thing if he is not virtuously inclined; while the excessive organisation of games discourages individuality, and emphasises a very false standard of success in the minds of many boys. But the Bishop was not invited that he might say unconventional things. He was asked on purpose to bless things as they were, and he blessed them with all his might.

Then he went on to say that the real point after all was character and conduct; that intellect was a gift of God, and that conspicuous athletic capacity was a gift--he did not like to say of God, so he said of Providence; but that in one respect we were all equal, and that was in our capacity for moral effort; and that the boy who came to the front was not always the distinguished scholar or the famous athlete, but the industrious, trustworthy, kindly, generous, public-spirited boy. This he said with deep emotion, as though it were rather a daring and unexpected statement, but discerned by a vigilant candour; and all this with the air that he was testifying faithfully to the true values of life, and sweeping aside with a courageous hand the false glow and glamour of the world. We did not like to applaud at this, but we made a subdued drumming with our heels, and uttered a sort of murmurous assent to a noble and far from obvious proposition.

But here again I felt that the thing was somehow not quite as high-minded as it seemed. The goal designated was, after all, the goal of success. It was not suggested that the unrewarded and self-denying life was perhaps the noblest. The point was to come to the front somehow, and it was only indicating a sort of waiting game for the boys who were conscious neither of intellectual nor athletic capacity. It was a sort of false socialism, this pretence of moral equality, a kind of consolation prize that was thus emphasised. And I felt that here again the assumption was an untrue one. That is the worst of life, if one examines it closely, that it is by no means wholly run on moral lines. It is strength that is rewarded, rather than good desires. The Bishop seemed to have forgotten the ancient maxim that prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, and affliction the blessing of the New. These qualities that were going to produce ultimate success--conscientiousness, generosity, modesty, public spirit--they are, after all,