Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

After two years at University Hall, the founding of a new college at Sydney induced him to seek a change, and he presented himself as a candidate for its principalship, a post which Dr. Woolley eventually obtained. This would have brought him a safe income, and one on which he could afford to marry. He had great hopes of success, and this tempted him to engage himself to be married. But very soon after he had done this the appointment was decided against him, and he was at the same time obliged to give up University Hall. His prospects were thus less hopeful than ever. Yet the stimulus which he had received supported him in the struggle to obtain some kind of position in which he might gain a livelihood. His friends endeavoured to procure an appointment for him in the Education Office; but the downfall of the Liberal Ministry destroyed all his chances for the time. Then, after much deliberation and inward hesitation, he resolved to go out to America, and try what opening he might find there, as a teacher or a literary man. But to leave England, to make a new beginning in life, and to pull himself up again, as it were, by the roots, was not an easy matter to one of his tenacious temperament. Some expression of the feelings which possessed him comes out in the poems written on shipboard. Eventually he sailed, in October 1852, and settled at Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he was welcomed with remarkable cordiality, and formed many friendships which lasted to the end of his life. Still his position was too solitary to be cheerful, but he appreciated very highly the hopefulness and the moral healthiness of the new country, and he always retained warm feelings of admiration and affection for its citizens.

At Cambridge he remained some time without much employment, but by degrees he gathered a certain number of pupils. He also wrote several articles at this time in the ‘North American Review,’ and in ‘Putnam’s Magazine,’ and other magazines, and before long undertook a revision of the translation, known as Dryden’s, of Plutarch’s ‘Lives,’ for an American publisher. Thus he carried on a great deal of work, and was gradually making himself an assured position; and he would probably have felt no difficulty in settling down in America as his home, had not the offer of an examinership in the Education Office, which his friends obtained for him, come to draw him homewards again. The certainty of a permanent, though small income, the prospects of immediate marriage, and his natural affection for his own country, decided him to accept the place, and give up his chances in America, not without some regret, after he had gradually brought his mind to the idea of adopting a new country. His genuine democratic feeling rejoiced in the wider diffusion of prosperity and substantial comforts which he found in America; at the same time he would doubtless have suffered greatly from the expatriation, and would probably have always regretted his exclusion from what he calls ‘the deeper waters of ancient knowledge and experience’ to be found in the old country.

In July 1853 he returned to England, and at once entered on the duties of his office. Henceforth his career was decided for him. He was freed from perplexing questions as to choice of occupation. His business life was simple, straightforward, and hardworking; but it was made up of little beyond official drudgery, and the fact of his entering the public service so late diminished his prospect of reaching higher posts. His immediate objects, however, were answered; and in June 1854 he married. For the next seven years he lived quietly at home; and during this time three children were born to him, who formed his chief and unfailing delight. No events of any moment marked this period; but it was one of real rest and contentment. It is hard to speak of happiness which has vanished from the earth; yet what comfort remains lies chiefly in the thought that now at last his life did reach a sort of culmination, that a great-hearted man did for a short time find his natural repose in the pleasures of a home, and that he was able, for a short space at least, to devote his great faculties freely to the service of others. Up to this date we may almost say that he had been too free from active and absorbing employment for his own happiness. Circumstances had forced him to try different schemes and to engage in various undertakings with very moderate success, and the want of definite and continuous occupation left his mind free to deal restlessly with the great insoluble problems of the world, which had for him so true a vitality that he could not dismiss them from his thoughts. After his marriage there was none of this enforced and painful communing with self alone. He had plenty to do; and the close relations into which he was brought with various members of his wife’s family kept him actively employed, and tasked his sympathies to the full. All the new duties and interests of domestic life grew up and occupied his daily thoughts. The humour which in solitude had been inclined to take the hue of irony and sarcasm, now found its natural and healthy outlet. The practical wisdom and insight into life, for which he was distinguished, were constantly exercised in the service of his friends; and the new experience which he was daily gathering at home made many perplexed questions, both social and religious, clear and simple to his mind. In this way, though he did not cease to think about the problems which hitherto had occupied his leisure, he thought about them in a different way, and was able, so to speak, to test them by the facts of actual life, and by the intuitions and experience of those whose character he valued, instead of submitting them only to the crucible of his own reflection. The close and constant contact with another mind gave him a fresh insight into his own, and developed a new understanding of the wants of other people, so that the results of many years of meditation grew distinct and solid. Having thus passed from the speculative to the constructive phase of thought, it is quite certain, from little things which he was in the habit of saying, that, had he been permitted, he would have expressed his mature convictions in works of a more positive and substantial kind. But, unfortunately, he was too willing and too anxious to take work of every sort, and to spend himself for others. Therefore he soon became involved in labours too exciting for a constitution already somewhat overtasked, nor was he ever able to yield himself wholly to the healthful indolence of private life. To a period of wasting thought and solitude succeeded one of over-strenuous exertion; bracing indeed, but, for a man of his sympathetic temperament and laborious past life, too absorbing and engrossing. What, however, must always be remembered is, that Clough was happy in his work, and happy in his home life. It would be easy, were it necessary, to show from his poems how strong in him was the sense of family feeling, how tenderly and delicately he appreciated the family relations, how fond he was of children and young people, how naturally he enjoyed domestic life. Nor can any one doubt that in work itself he found full satisfaction, especially in such work as made him helpful to others, and brought him into vivid human contact with his fellow-workers. Both of these sources of satisfaction, home life and congenial work, had hitherto been denied him. Now they were largely given to him, and, had his strength been equal to the demands which were made upon it, a long life of happiness and usefulness was clearly open to him.

Besides the work of the office, the translation of Plutarch, begun in America, absorbed a great part of his scanty leisure during five years after his return from America. In the spring of 1856 he was appointed secretary to a commission for examining the scientific military schools on the Continent. He visited, in consequence, the great schools for artillery and engineers in France, Prussia, and Austria. The travelling lasted about three months, and besides being very interesting and agreeable, it afforded him much occupation during a considerable time afterwards. Another employment, which frequently fell to him, was the examining of candidates in his own special subject of English literature, sometimes for Woolwich, sometimes in his own office. But the work in which he took the deepest interest was that of his friend and relation, Miss Nightingale. He watched over every step in her various undertakings, affording her assistance not merely with advice, and little in his life gave him greater satisfaction than to be her active and trusted friend.

We see that his life, though uneventful, was full of work, and we can also understand why this period of his life produced no poetical result. The conditions under which he could create were at this time wholly wanting. He had not time or strength or leisure of mind to spend on his natural gift of writing; and to his friends it must ever be a source of sorrow that his natural vocation, what he himself felt as such, was unfulfilled. He himself always looked forward to some time when greater opportunity might be granted him, when the various experiences of later life, the results of his later thought, might ‘assort themselves upon the brain,’ and be given out in some definite form. In the meantime he waited, not impatiently or unwillingly, for he was slow to draw conclusions, as he was also patient in hearing the views of others, and ready in his appreciation of them. Yet his mind did not fail to exercise a powerful influence upon others. All who knew him well will bear witness to the strong impression left by his character, and by the force and originality of his intellect. He was not prompt to give out distinct opinions or answers to theoretical questions, but he seldom failed to find a practical solution to any immediate difficulty, whether mental or practical. His mind turned more and more to action as its natural relief; and in his family circle his gentle wisdom and patience and great tenderness of feeling caused him to be constantly appealed to in all difficulties. It was indeed only in the intimacy of daily life that the full charm and grace of his nature was felt, the intense lovableness of it, the tender unselfishness, and the manly courage with which he met the difficulties of life, and helped others through them. His was a character not easy to describe, whose charm was so personal that it seems to evaporate when translated into words. He was a singular combination of enthusiasm and calmness, of thoughtfulness and imagination, of speech and silence, of seriousness and humour. Ordinarily somewhat slow of utterance, he often seemed, as a friend said of him, ‘to be choked by his own fulness.’ His own words in the ‘Bothie’ not unaptly described him—

Author forgotten and silent of currentest phrases and fancies;

Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing;

Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics.

On special occasions he would pour out the accumulation of his mind, but most often the stream remained hid, and only came to the surface in his poetry, or in little incisive phrases, most apt to engrave themselves sharply on the minds of his hearers. He had a strong sense of humour, and was always ready to look on this side of the daily incidents of life; and his friends will long remember his genial smile, and his hearty, almost boyish, laugh. This brightness, and the sunny sweetness of his temper, gave cheerfulness to what might otherwise have been too serious a temperament, for though not specially anxious in personal things, yet the habit of his mind, his high-wrought conscientiousness and susceptibility of feeling, rendered him liable to be deeply impressed by the sad things of the world, the great difficulties especially of modern social life, which were in truth to him ‘a heavy and a weary weight.’

It has been remarked that in his later poems there is no distinct expression of the peace he had attained. It is true we find in them rather a freedom from disturbance than a positive expression of belief. But his peace was not the result of a crisis, of a sudden conversion, which often pours itself out in words; it was the fruit of years of patient thought and action, it was a temper of mind. He felt no impulse to speak of it. He turned his mind to the practical questions of the world, as appears in these later poems, which instantly began to flow forth as soon as his brain was relieved from the constant pressure of work.