PART II.
In our last paper on this subject we reduced the word “culture” to its simple and original meaning, and used the familiar illustration of a plot of garden ground, showing that weeds would spring up if cultivation were neglected; that things useful and beautiful alike flourish in the ideal garden; that the quality of the soil and other conditions should be taken into account by the wise cultivator; and that, culture being a process as well as a result, a little work in that direction is better than none at all. We might follow the simile further; but we are now met by a difficulty, and can imagine some critic expostulating, “Your illustration of the garden is all very well, but it breaks down at the most important point. The ground cannot cultivate itself, and needs an experienced gardener. If let alone, it becomes, as you have said, a tangle of weeds and deserves Hamlet’s words—
“‘Fie on’t! Ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed.’
“So our mental faculties, our whole nature, are like a garden susceptible of being properly cultivated; but when there is no gardener, no intelligence from without to direct the process, what is to be done?”
The simile, it is true, does break down, as similes are apt to do if pushed too far. And, dear reader, we freely confess that in the term “self-culture” all the difficulty is expressed. It is a hard matter to be dependent upon one’s unaided efforts in this matter. We may even go further and confess that nothing can quite make up for the contact with people of culture, the student life in the atmosphere of a college, the marvellous, enchanting process of education received when one is old enough to appreciate it.
We cannot perhaps wonder if those who know the stimulus of University life at its keenest, the delight of interchange of thought, the unspeakable associations
“Of that sweet city with her dreaming spires,”
look with serenest pity on any attempt at “culture” outside that and kindred regions.
But it is exclusive and cruel to laugh down the attempts of the partially educated to attain farther; and certainly it is unreasonable to tell them, “You must have all, or nothing.”
Much can be done by the most ignorant—no one can say how much—and at any rate it is worth the while of every reader who scans this page to do something towards the process of self-culture. For there are outside helps within the reach of all. No girl, however cut off she may be from people who can help her to study, can be, especially in the present day, altogether cut off from Books.
How much books may do, is a commonplace often dilated upon. But have you, who are glancing down this column, ever reflected upon it as regards your own individual self?
How fine a thing you would think it if you had the privilege of introduction to some great author and could exchange a few words with him! How great an honour if you could enjoy his friendship, and spend an hour with him from time to time in intimate conversation! What a means of culture you would consider it to be!
But the power of reading admits you to the society of the wise and great without let or hindrance, and to their society at their best moments. It is often a very disappointing thing to be introduced to the literary hero or heroine of one’s adoration. One expects an utterance equal to the author’s reputation, and there comes instead some commonplace suggested by the surrounding circumstances. We have heard of a young lady devotee taken down to dinner by a great poet, whom to meet had been her dream for years. She listened for his voice in breathless silence, unable to eat for excitement, but he said nothing during soup, fish, entrées; until at length, on the appearance of a fresh course, he remarked, “I like mutton cut in wedges.”
Whether the story be true or not, it is a good illustration. On first meeting a stranger it is impossible for the wisest man to drag up from the depths of his being some remark equal to his reputation. There is nothing to call it forth, and it would probably sound affected, or far-fetched, if he began instantly to “talk like a book,” especially like his own books. You cannot get at the inner nature of the man without long friendship, and without a likeness of disposition. But in his book you find him at once, with no tedious preliminary process, at his very best. As Mr. J. R. Lowell has said, the art of reading is the talisman that admits “to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments; that enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.”
To the girl, then, who has aspirations, or even a dim stirring of faint desire, after self-culture, we may say, “Read; in the second place, Read; and yet again, Read.”
In Matthew Arnold’s published Letters, he gives a piece of excellent advice to a young lady who is a relation of his:
“If I were you, I should now take to some regular reading, if it were only an hour a day. It is the best thing in the world to have something of this sort as a point in the day, and far too few people know and use this secret. You would have your district still and all your business as usual, but you would have this hour in your day, in the midst of it all, and it would soon become of the greatest solace to you. Desultory reading is a mere anodyne, regular reading, well chosen, is restoring and edifying.”
It would be a good thing if every girl would study Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, and follow the advice therein contained. It has been so often quoted that we hesitate again to transcribe it; but it cannot be read too frequently.
“Have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know if you read this that you cannot read that; that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable boy when you may talk with queens and kings? Will you jostle with the common crowd for entrée here and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time?”
Time is precious and is fleeting fast. There would be less poring over fashion-plates, fewer pennies spent on miscellaneous collections of tawdry scraps of useless information garnished with comic anecdotes, if it were realised that each hour spent in aimless, silly reading is an hour lost, never to be regained.
This may seem “a counsel of perfection.” We do not say, read nothing at all of the ephemeral literature whose aim is to enliven and amuse, but if you have any desire for self-culture, read something else as well. If you get into the habit of this light, disconnected, desultory reading, you will find it spoil your taste and your appetite for anything else. The loss you will suffer will be simply incalculable. Amuse a few spare minutes at the railway station, on the tedious journey, by all means: but do not let your reading stop short at mere entertainment or information about dress.
It is a terrible thing when this power of reading—the instrument, almost the only instrument, of self-culture—is turned so persistently to other ends that it becomes a warped and worthless tool.
“It is of paramount importance,” says Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, “to acquire the art not to read.... We should recollect that he who writes for fools finds an enormous audience, and we should devote the ever scant leisure of our circumscribed existence to the master spirits of all ages and nations—those who tower over humanity, and whom the voice of Fame proclaims; only such writers cultivate and instruct us.”
Too stringent perhaps! and yet a truth lies here which may well be taken to heart. A more modern critic, Frederic Harrison, puts it thus:
“Every book that we take up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose; every bit of stray information which we cram into our heads without any sense of its importance is for the most part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from our minds.... We know that books differ in value as much as diamonds differ from the sand on the seashore ... and I cannot but think the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us of the actual power of using them.”
What to read, will form the subject of future articles; only let the girl who scans this page make up her mind that she will follow its advice and read something. “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability” is a familiar sentence of Lord Bacon. Even the busiest girl can lay this to heart and profit by it, as was shown by some articles which appeared in The Girl’s Own Paper on the life of working girls—“My Daily Round.” Some of the most charming sentences in those interesting papers were the sentences where appreciation of literature as a companion to the scant hour of freedom held a conspicuous place.
Life is often a very hard and sordid thing, and far too many women are forced to spend their days in detail of a distasteful kind. We must not extol a spirit of discontent with “the trivial round, the common task,” and must remember the French motto, “When one cannot have what one likes, one must like what one has.” Yet we all need a resource. Every man or woman, young or old, ought to have a refuge wherein to flee from the worries and minute cares of “this troublesome world”—a refuge that shall prove
“The world’s sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil.”
And for this self-culture is invaluable.
Walter Besant somewhere observes that he often sees in London omnibuses, girls returning from the work of the day, whose lips are noiselessly moving. Their look is harassed, and they are talking to themselves in irritated fashion of what has gone wrong; perhaps uttering imaginary repartees to unreasonable employers. Some engrossment in poetry or romance, some mental diversion which should force them to turn away their thoughts, would be a panacea, and they might dwell with consolation, remembering such employers, on one of the antitheta of Lord Bacon—“In reading we hold converse with the wise; in the business of life, generally with the foolish.”
And study is a priceless relief and refuge to women in any grade of society. A girl who really loves reading possesses an inexhaustible charm to lift her above the little worries of daily life, in whatever sphere that life may be.
In Switzerland one finds a summer stay in the valleys, beautiful and fertile as they are, beset by certain annoyances, of which perhaps the most dire and disturbing is a peculiar sort of fly, like a horse-fly, that settles and stings even through a thick glove. The most lovely summer resorts beside the lakes are infested by this creature, which comes everywhere with slow, sleepy virulence, alighting upon face and hands and thrusting in its poison. To escape it, one must go to the mountains; far up on the fragrant slopes where the pine trees hang in air, and the torrent leaps down among them, and the blue gloom of the valley lies below, and the everlasting snows stretch far away behind, up and up against the sky. Here there are no poisonous insects to buzz and sting; the wanderer has ascended too high.
So in life we can escape the trivial vexations and irritations of life by rising above them to the height of some lofty thought, some beautiful idea, whence we can view the plains of daily existence with its petty cares and stings far, far below.
Lily Watson.
(To be continued. )