The Altar Fire

by Arthur Christopher Benson

I had intended to allow the records that follow—the records of a pilgrimage sorely beset and hampered by sorrow and distress—to speak for themselves. Let me only say that one who makes public a record so intimate and outspoken incurs, as a rule, a certain responsibility. He has to consider in the first place, or at least he cannot help instinctively considering, what the wishes of the writer would have been on the subject. I do not mean that one who has to decide such a point is bound to be entirely guided by that. He must weigh the possible value of the record to other spirits against what he thinks that the writer himself would have personally desired. A far more important consideration is what living people who play a part in such records feel about their publication. But I cannot help thinking that our whole standard in such matters is a very false and conventional one. Supposing, for instance, that a very sacred and intimate record, say, two hundred years old, were to be found among some family papers, it is inconceivable that any one would object to its publication on the ground that the writer of it, or the people mentioned in it, would not have wished it to see the light. We show how weak our faith really is in the continuance of personal identity after death, by allowing the lapse of time to affect the question at all; just as we should consider it a horrible profanation to exhume and exhibit the body of a man who had been buried a few years ago, while we approve of the action of archaeologists who explore Egyptian sepulchres, subscribe to their operations, and should consider a man a mere sentimentalist who suggested that the mummies exhibited in museums ought to be sent back for interment in their original tombs. We think vaguely that a man who died a few years ago would in some way be outraged if his body were to be publicly displayed, while we do not for an instant regard the possible feelings of delicate and highly-born Egyptian ladies, on whose seemly sepulture such anxious and tender care was expended so many centuries ago.

But in this case there is no such responsibility. None of the persons concerned have any objection to the publication of these records, and as for the writer himself he was entirely free from any desire for a fastidious seclusion. His life was a secluded one enough, and he felt strongly that a man has a right to his own personal privacy. But his own words sufficiently prove, if proof were needed, that he felt that to deny the right of others to participate in thoughts and experiences, which might uplift or help a mourner or a sufferer, was a selfish form of individualism with which he had no sympathy whatever. He felt, and I have heard him say, that one has no right to withhold from others any reflections which can console and sustain, and he held it to be the supreme duty of a man to ease, if he could, the burden of another. He knew that there is no sympathy in the world so effective as the sharing of similar experiences, as the power of assuring a sufferer that another has indeed trodden the same dark path and emerged into the light of Heaven. I will even venture to say that he deliberately intended that his records should be so used, for purposes of alleviation and consolation, and the bequest that he made of his papers to myself, entrusting them to my absolute discretion, makes it clear to me that I have divined his wishes in the matter. I think, indeed, that his only doubt was a natural diffidence as to whether the record had sufficient importance to justify its publication. In any case, my own duty in the matter is to me absolutely clear.

But I think that it will be as well for me to sketch a brief outline of my friend's life and character. I would have preferred to have done this, if it had been possible, by allowing him to speak for himself. But the earlier Diaries which exist are nothing but the briefest chronicle of events. He put his earlier confessions into his books, but he was in many ways more interesting than his books, and so I will try and draw a portrait of him as he appeared to one of his earliest friends. I knew him first as an undergraduate, and our friendship was unbroken after that. The Diary, written as it is under the shadow of a series of calamities, gives an impression of almost wilful sadness which is far from the truth. The requisite contrast can only be attained by representing him as he appeared to those who knew him.

He was the son of a moderately wealthy country solicitor, and was brought up on normal lines. His mother died while he was a boy. He had one brother, younger than himself, and a sister who was younger still. He went to a leading public school, where he was in no way distinguished either in work or athletics. I gathered, when I first knew him, that he had been regarded as a clever, quiet, good-natured, simple-minded boy, with a considerable charm of manner, but decidedly retiring. He was not expected to distinguish himself in any way, and he did not seem to have any particular ambitions. I went up to Cambridge at the same time as he, and we formed a very close friendship. We had kindred tastes, and we did not concern ourselves very much with the social life of the place. We read, walked, talked, played games, idled, and amused ourselves together. I was more attached to him, I think, than he was to me; indeed, I do not think that he cared at that time to form particularly close ties. He was frank, engaging, humorous, and observant; but I do not think that he depended very much upon any one; he rather tended to live an interior life of his own, of poetical and fanciful reflection. I think he tended to be pensive rather than high-spirited—at least, I do not often remember any particular ebullition of youthful enthusiasm. He liked congenial company, but he was always ready to be alone. He very seldom went to the rooms of other men, except in response to definite invitations; but he was always disposed to welcome any one who came spontaneously to see him. He was a really diffident and modest fellow, and I do not think it even entered into his head to imagine that he had any social gifts or personal charm. But I gradually came to perceive that his mind was of a very fine quality. He had a mature critical judgment, and, though I used to think that his tastes were somewhat austere, I now see that he had a very sure instinct for alighting upon what was best and finest in books and art alike. He used to write poetry in those days, but he was shy of confessing it, and very conscious of the demerits of what he wrote. I have some of his youthful verses by me, and though they are very unequal and full of lapses, yet he often strikes a firm note and displays a subtle insight. I think that he was more ambitious than I perhaps knew, and had that vague belief in his own powers which is characteristic of able and unambitious men. His was certainly, on the whole, a cold nature in those days. He could take up a friendship where he laid it down, by virtue of an easy frankness and a sympathy that was intellectual rather than emotional. But the suspension of intercourse with a friend never troubled him.

I became aware, in the course of a walking tour that I took with him in those days, that he had a deep perception of the beauties of nature; it was not a vague accessibility to picturesque impressions, but a critical discernment of quality. He always said that he cared more for little vignettes, which he could grasp entire, than for wide and majestic prospects; and this was true of his whole mind.

I suppose that I tended to idealise him; but he certainly seems to me, in retrospect, to have then been invested with a singular charm. He was pure-minded and fastidious to a fault. He had considerable personal beauty, rather perhaps of expression than of feature. He was one of those people with a natural grace of movement, gesture and speech. He was wholly unembarrassed in manner, but he talked little in a mixed company. No one had fewer enemies or fewer intimate friends. The delightful ears soon came to an end, and one of the few times I ever saw him exhibit strong emotion was on the evening before he left Cambridge, when he altogether broke down. I remember his quoting a verse from Omar Khayyam:—

"Yet ah! that spring should vanish with the rose,
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close,"

and breaking off in the middle with sudden tears.

It was necessary for me to adopt a profession, and I remember envying him greatly when he told me that his father, who, I gathered, rather idolised him, was quite content that he should choose for himself at his leisure. He went abroad for a time; and I met him next in London, where he was proposing to read for the bar; but I discovered that he had really found his metier. He had written a novel, which he showed me, and though it was in some ways an immature performance, it had, I felt, high and unmistakable literary qualities. It was published soon afterwards and met with some success. He thereupon devoted himself to writing, and I was astonished at his industry and eagerness. He had for the first time found a congenial occupation. He lived mostly at home in those days, but he was often in London, where he went a good deal into society. I do not know very much about him at this time, but I gather that he achieved something of a social reputation. He was never a voluble talker; I do not suppose he ever set the table in a roar, but he had a quiet, humorous and sympathetic manner. His physical health was then, as always, perfect. He was never tired or peevish; he was frank, kindly and companionable; he talked little about himself, and had a genuine interest in the study of personality, so that people were apt to feel at their best in his society. Meanwhile his books came out one after another—not great books exactly, but full of humour and perception, each an advance on the last. By the age of thirty he was accepted as one of the most promising novelists of the day.

Then he did what I never expected he would do; he fell wildly and enthusiastically in love with the only daughter of a Gloucestershire clergyman, a man of good family and position. She was the only child; her mother had died some years before, and her father died shortly after the marriage. She was a beautiful, vigorous girl, extraordinarily ingenuous, simple-minded, and candid. She was not clever in the common acceptance of the term, and was not the sort of person by whom I should have imagined that my friend would have been attracted. They settled in a pleasant house, which they built in Surrey, on the outskirts of a village. Three children were born to them—a boy and a girl, and another boy, who survived his birth only a few hours. From this time he almost entirely deserted London, and became, I thought, almost strangely content with a quiet domestic life. I was often with them in those early days, and I do not think I ever saw a happier circle. It was a large and comfortable house, very pleasantly furnished, with a big garden. His father died in the early years of the marriage, and left him a good income; with the proceeds of his books he was a comparatively wealthy man. His wife was one of those people who have a serene and unaffected interest in human beings. She was a religious woman, but her relations with others were rather based on the purest kindliness and sympathy. She knew every one in the place, and, having no touch of shyness, she went in and out among their poorer neighbours, the trusted friend and providence of numerous families; but she had not in the least what is called a parochial mind. She had no touch of the bustling and efficient Lady Bountiful. The simple people she visited were her friends and neighbours, not her patients and dependents. She was simply an overflowing fountain of goodness, and it was as natural to her to hurry to a scene of sorrow and suffering as it is for most people to desire to stay away. My friend himself had not the same taste; it was always rather an effort to him to accommodate himself to people in a different way of life; but it ought to be said that he was universally liked and respected for his quiet courtesy and simplicity, and fully as much for his own sake as for that of his wife. This fact could hardly be inferred from his Diary, and indeed he was wholly unconscious of it himself, because he never realised his natural charm, and indeed was unduly afraid of boring people by his presence.