The Upton Letters

by Arthur Christopher Benson

"Thy nakedness involves thy Spouse
In the soft sanguine stuff she wears."

So says an eager and vehement poet, apostrophising the tortured limbs, the drooping eye of the Crucified Lord; and is it true that these stately and solemn houses, these sweet strains of unearthly music, serve His purpose and will? Nay, is it not rather true that the serpent is here again aping the mildness of the dove, and using all the delicate, luxurious accessories of life to blind us to the truth?

I do not know; it leaves me in a sad and bewildered conflict of spirit. And yet I somehow feel that God is in these places, and that, if only the heart is pure and the will strong, such influences can minister to the growth of the meek and loving spirit.—Ever yours,

T. B.

I don't know what has happened to your letters. Perhaps you have not been able to write? I go back to work to-morrow.

UPTON,
May 2, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,—My holidays are over, and I am back at work again. I have got your delightful letter; it was silly to be anxious....

To-day I was bicycling; I was horribly preoccupied, as, alas, I often am, with my own plans and thoughts. I was worrying myself about my work, fretting about the thousand little problems that beset a schoolmaster, trying to think out a chapter of a book which I am endeavouring to write, my mind beating and throbbing like a feverish pulse. I kept telling myself that the copses were beautiful, that the flowers were enchanting, that the long line of distant hills seen across the wooded valleys and the purple plain were ravishingly tranquil and serene; but it was of no use; my mind ran like a mill-race, a stream of thoughts jostling and hurrying on, in spite of my efforts to shut the sluice.

Suddenly I turned a corner by a little wood, and found myself looking over into the garden of a small, picturesque cottage, which has been smartened up lately, and has become, I suppose, the country retreat of some well-to-do people. It was a pretty garden; a gentle slope of grass, borders full of flowers, and an orchard behind, whitening into bloom, with a little pool in the shady heart of it. On the lawn were three people, obviously and delightfully idle; an elderly man sate in a chair, smiling, smoking, reading a paper. The other two, a younger man and a young woman, were walking side by side, their heads close together, laughing quietly at some gentle jest. A perambulator stood by the porch. Both the men looked like prosperous professional people, clean-shaven, healthy, and contented. I inferred, for no particular reason, that the young pair were man and wife, lately married, and that the elder man was the father-in-law. I had this passing glimpse, no more, of an interior; and then I was riding among the spring woods again.

Of course it was only an impression, but this happy, sunshiny scene, so suddenly opened to my gaze, so suddenly closed again, was like a parable. I felt as if I should have liked to stop, to take off my hat, and thank my unknown friends for making so simple, pleasant, and sweet a picture. I dare say they were as preoccupied in professional matters, as careful and troubled as myself, if I had known more about them. But in that moment they were finding leisure simply to taste and enjoy the wholesome savours of life, and were neither looking backward in regret nor forward in anticipation. I dare say the jokes that amused them were mild enough, and that I should have found their conversation tedious and tiresome if I had been made one of the party. But they were symbolical; they stood for me, and will stand, as a type of what we ought to aim at more; and that is simply LIVING. It is a lesson which you yourself are no doubt learning in your fragrant, shady garden. You have no need to make money, and your only business is to get better. But for myself, I know that I work and think and hope and fear too much, and that in my restless pursuit of a hundred aims and ambitions and dreams and fancies, I am constantly in danger of hardly living at all, but of simply racing on, like a man intoxicated with affairs, without leisure for strolling, for sitting, for talking, for watching the sky and the earth, smelling the scents of flowers, noting the funny ways of animals, playing with children, eating and drinking. Yet this is our true heritage, and this is what it means to be a man; and, after all, one has (for all one knows) but a single life, and that a short one. It is at such moments as these that I wake as from a dream, and think how fast my life flows on, and how very little conscious of its essence I am. My head is full from morning to night of everything except living. For a busy man this is, of course, to a certain extent inevitable. But where I am at fault is in not relapsing at intervals into a wise and patient passivity, and sitting serenely on the shore of the sea of life, playing with pebbles, seeing the waves fall and the ships go by, and wondering at the strange things cast up by the waves, and the sharp briny savours of the air. Why do I not do this? Because, to continue my confession, it bores me. I must, it seems, be always in a fuss; be always hauling myself painfully on to some petty ambition or some shadowy object that I have in view; and the moment I have reached it, I must fix upon another, and begin the process over again. It is this lust for doing something tangible, for sitting down quickly and writing fifty, for having some definite result to show, which is the ruin of me and many others. After all, when it is done, what worth has it? I am not a particularly successful man, and I can't delude myself into thinking that my work has any very supreme value. And meanwhile all the real experiences of life pass me by. I have never, God forgive me, had time to be in love! That is a pitiful confession.