The Altar Fire by Arthur Christopher Benson (golden son ebook txt) 📕

to think of all the reasons against it--not the selfish reasons, by any means; in this case he reflected, I am sure, how little he had to offer; he could not bring himself to feel that any one could really care for him; and then, too, he never really cared for anything quite enough himself. Or if he did, he found all sorts of refined reasons why he ought not to do so. If only he had been a little more selfish, it would have been all right. Indeed," said Mrs. T----, with a smile, "he is the only person of whom I could truthfully say that if he had only been a little more vulgar, he would have been a much happier person."

I saw a good deal of Willett after that, and he interested me increasingly. I verified Mrs. T----'s judgment about him, and found it true in every particular. I suppose there was some lack of vitality about him, because the more I knew of him the more I found to admire. He was an exquisitely delicate person, affectionate, responsive, with a fine sense of humour--indeed, the most disconcerting thing was that he saw to the full the humour of his own position. But none of the robust motives that spur men to action affected him. He was ambitious, but he would not make any sacrifices to gain the objects of his ambition. He could not use his powers on conventional lines. He was, I think, deeply desirous of confidence and affection, but he could never believe that he deserved either, or that it was possible for him to be interesting to others. He was laborious, pure-minded, transparently honest, and had a shrewd and penetrating judgment of other people; but he seemed to labour under a sense of shame at his deficiencies, and to feel that he had no claims or rights in the world. He existed on sufferance. The smallest shadow of disapproval caused him to abandon any design, not resentfully but eagerly, as though he was fully aware of his own incompetence.

I grew to feel a strong affection for him, and tried in many ways to help and encourage him. But he always discounted encouragement, and it is a clumsy business trying to help a man who does not demand or desire help.

He seemed to me to have schooled himself into a kind of tender patience; and this attitude, I am ashamed to say, used to irritate me considerably, because it seemed to me to be so much power wasted on accepting defeat, which might have ensured victory.

He was with me a few weeks ago. I was up in town, and he dined with me by appointment. He told me, with a gentle philosophy, a story which made my blood boil. He had been asked to write a book by a publisher, and the lines had been laid down for him. "It was such a comfort to me," he said, "because it supplied just the stimulus I could not myself originate. My book was really rather a good piece of work; but a week ago I sent it to the publisher, and he returned it, saying it was not the least what he wanted--he suggested my retaining about a third of it, and rewriting the rest. Of course I could do nothing of the kind." "What have you done with it?" I asked. "Oh, I have destroyed it." "But didn't you see him," I said, "or do something--or at all events insist on payment?" "Oh no," he said, "I could not do that--the man was probably right--he wanted a particular kind of book, and mine was not what he wanted. I did say that I wished he had explained to me more clearly what he wanted--but after all it doesn't very much matter. I can get along all right, if I am careful."

"Well," I said, "you are really a very aggravating person. If I could not have got my book published elsewhere, I would certainly have had a row--I would have taken out my money's worth in vituperation."

Willett smiled; "I dare say you would have had some fun," he said, "but that is not my line. I have told you before that I can't interest people--I don't think it is wholly my fault."

We sate late, talking; and for the only time in his life he spoke to me, with a depth of emotion of which I should hardly have suspected him, of the value he set upon my friendship, and his gratitude for my sympathy.

And now this morning I have heard of his sudden death. He was found dead in his room, bent over his papers. He must have been writing late at night, as his custom was; and it proved on examination that he must have long suffered from an unsuspected disease of the heart. Perhaps that may explain his failure, if it can be called a failure. There is something to me almost insupportably pathetic to think of his lonely and uncomforted life, his isolation, his sensitiveness. And yet I do not feel sure that it is pathetic, because his life somehow seems to me to have been one of the most beautiful I have ever known. He did nothing much for others, he achieved nothing for himself; but it is only our miserable habit of weighing every one's life, in a hard way, by a standard of performance and success, which makes one sigh over Francis Willett's life. It is very difficult at times to see what it is that life is exactly meant to do for us. Most of the men and women I know--I say this sadly but frankly--seem to me to leave the world worse, in essential respects, than they entered it. There is generally something ingenuous, responsive, eager, sweet, hopeful about a child--but though I admit that one does encounter beautiful natures that seem to flower very generously in the light of experience, yet most people grow dull, dreary, conventional, grasping, commonplace--they grow to think rather contemptuously of emotion and generosity--they think it weak to be amiable, unselfish, kind. They become fond of comfort and position and respect and money. They think such things the serious concerns of life, and sentiment a kind of relaxation. But with Willett it was the precise reverse. He claimed nothing for himself, he never profited at the expense of another; he was utterly humble, gentle, unpretentious, kind, sincere. An hour ago I should have called him "poor fellow," and wished that he had had a more robust kind of fibre; now that I know he is dead, I cannot find it in my heart to wish him any such qualities. His life appears to me utterly beautiful and fragrant. He never incurred any taint of grossness from prosperity or success; he never grew indifferent or hard; and in the light of his last passage, such a failure seems the one thing worth achieving, and to carry with it a hope all alive and rich with possibilities of blessing and glory. He would hardly have called himself a Christian, I think; he would have said that he could not have attained to anything like a vital faith or a hopeful certainty; but the only words and thoughts that haunt my mind about him, echoing sweetly and softly through the ages, are the words in which Christ described the tender spirits of those who were nearest to the Father's heart, and to whom it is given to see God.


July 28, 1889.


Health of body and mind return to me, slowly but surely. I have given up all attempt at writing; I rack my brain no longer for plots or situations. I keep, it is true, my note-book for subjects beside me, and occasionally jot down a point; but I feel entirely indifferent to the whole thing. Meanwhile the flood of letters about my book, invitations from editors, offers from publishers, continues to flow. I reply to these benignantly and courteously, but undertake nothing, promise nothing. I seem to have recovered my balance. I think no more about my bodily complaints, and my nerves no longer sting and thrill. The day is hardly long enough for all I have to do. It may be that when the novelty of the experiment in education wears off, I shall begin to hanker after authorship again. Alec will have to go to school in a year or two, I suppose; but it shall be a day-school at first, if I can find one. As to the question of a public school, I am much exercised. Of course there are nightmare terrors about tone and morals; but I am not really very anxious about the boy, because he is sensible and independent, and has no lack of moral courage. The vigorous barrack-life is good for a boy, the give-and-take, the splendid equality, the manly code, the absence of affectation. But the intellectual tone of schools is low, and the conventionality is great. I don't want Alec to be a conventional man, and yet I want him to accept current conventions instinctively about matters of indifference. I have a horror of the sporting public-school type, the good-humoured, robust fellow, who does his work and fills his spare time with games, and thinks intellectual things, and artistic interests, and emotion, and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people live a wholesome enough life; they make good soldiers, good officials, good men of business. But they are woefully complacent and self-satisfied. The schools develop a Spartan type, and I want Alec to be an Athenian. But the experiment will have to be made, because a man is at a disadvantage in ordinary life if he has not the public school bonhomie, courtesy, and common sense. I must try to keep the other side alive, and I don't despair of doing it.

Meantime we are a very contented household, in spite of the fact that now, if ever, is the time for me to make my mark as a writer, and I have to pass all the opportunities that offer. On the other hand, this is the point at which one sees, in the history of letters, so many writers go to pieces. They suddenly find, after their first great success, that they have arrived, by a tortuous and secret path, at being a sort of public man. They are dazzled by contact with the world. They go into society, they make speeches, they write twaddle, they drain their energy, already depleted by creation, in fifty different ways. Now I am strongly of Ruskin's opinion that the duty of the artist is to make himself fit for the best society, and then to abstain from it. Very fortunately I have no sort of taste for these things, beyond the simple human satisfaction in enjoying consideration. That is natural and inevitable. But I don't value it unduly, and I dislike its penalties more than I love its rewards.

And then, too, I reflect that it is, after all, life that we are here to taste, and life that so many of us pass by. Work is a part of life, perhaps the essence of life; but to be absorbed in work is to be like a man who is absorbed in collecting specimens, and never has time to sort them. I knew of a man who determined, early in life, to write the history of political institutions. He had a great library, and he devoted himself to study. He put in his books, as he read them, slips of paper to indicate passages and chapters that he would have to consult, and as he finished with a book, he put it in a certain place on a certain shelf. He made no other notes or references--he was a man with a colossal memory,