The Altar Fire

by Arthur Christopher Benson

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, and he knew exactly what his markers meant. In the middle of this life of acquisition, while he bored like a worm in a cheese, he died. His library was sold. The markers meant nothing to any one else; and the book-buyers merely took the markers out and threw them away, and that was the end of the history of political institutions.

I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to try and arrive at some solution, to draw some sort of conclusions—to reflect, to theorise; we may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only hope of doing so, the only hope that humanity will do so, is for some at least to try. And thus I think that I have perhaps been saved from a great delusion. I was spending my time in spinning romances, in elaborating plots, in manoeuvring life as I would; and it is not like that! Life is not run on physical lines, nor on emotional, nor social, nor even moral lines. It is not managed in the least as we should manage it; it is a resultant of innumerable forces, or perhaps the same force running in intricate currents. Of course the strange thing is that we men should find ourselves thrust into it, with strong intuitions, vehement preconceptions, as to how it ought to be directed; our happiness seems to depend upon our being, or learning to be, in harmony with it, but it baffles us, it resists us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to the end; sometimes it crushes us; and yet we believe that it means good; and even if we do not so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure; and one thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson of life by practising indifference or stoical fortitude, or by abandoning ourselves to despair; only by believing that our sufferings are fruitful, our mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sorrows gracious, can we hope to triumph. We go on, many of us, relying on useless defences, beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions, overlooking, as far as we can, stern realities; stopping our ears, turning away our gaze, shrinking and crying out like children at the prospect of experiences to which we are led by loving presences, that smile as they draw us to the wholesome and bracing incidents that we so weakly dread. We pray for courage, but we know in our souls that courage can only be won by enduring what we fear; and thus preoccupied by hopes and plans and fears, we miss the wholesome sweet and simple stuff of life, its quiet relationships, its tranquil occupations, its beautiful and tender surprises.