Confessions of a book-lover

by E. Walter Walters

So the day passed by, and the shadows lengthened, but the light still shone upon the hill-tops; whilst the sun set in a glory of red. ‘I wonder,’ said my friend, ‘if you remember Thoreau’s beautiful passage: “We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a herdsman driving us home at evening.

‘“So we saunter towards the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.”’

XIII
A PILGRIMAGE

‘SO we saunter towards the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.’ These were the last words I heard from my friend’s lips. He had a serious relapse, shortly after our visit to the country, and died within a few days. And now I am divided between a deep sense of personal loss and my duty to his memory. He would, I know, have had me look upon his journey to the ‘Other Side’ in the light of a pilgrimage, gone upon bravely, cheerfully, in perfect confidence.

By my side is a letter in which he speaks of this attitude in the course of a reference to our day in the country. ‘I have been reading,’ he says, ‘a volume of Mr. A. C. Benson’s essays, procured from a circulating library, and am filled with gratitude for their soothing influence. The following passage from his essay on “Beauty” will recall the conversation we had at our last meeting—our day in the country: “Nature has a magic for many of us—that is to say, a secret power that strikes across our lives at intervals, with a message from an unknown region. And this message is aroused by symbols; a tree, a flash of light on lonely clouds, a flower, a stream—simple things that we have seen a thousand times—have sometimes the power to cast a spell over our spirit, and to bring something that is great and incommunicable near us. This must be called magic, for it is not a thing which can be explained by ordinary laws, or defined in precise terms; but the spell is there, real, insistent, undeniable; it seems to make a bridge for the spirit to pass into a far-off, dimly apprehended region; it gives us a sense of great issues and remote visions; it leaves us with a longing which has no mortal fulfilment.”’

‘I mention this,’ the letter continues, ‘because it seems to me to lead to certain deep issues of life about which I have seldom spoken. I have always felt a certain diffidence in touching upon matters relating to the soul and the life hereafter. Yet, I have not let others do all the thinking. I have had my own thoughts, my own visions. But, after all, refined speculations are of little use if there be not some tangible belief at the back of them. I like the passage just quoted, and I like the author’s reference, in another part of the volume, to the guarded city of life. But I think the following passage makes the strongest appeal, for all may participate in the deep yet simple feelings expressed: “What are the thoughts of the mighty unresting heart, to whose vastness and agelessness the whole mass of these flying and glowing suns are but as a handful of dust that a boy flings upon the air? How has He set me here, a tiny moving atom, yet more sure of my own identity than I am of all the vast panorama of things which lie outside of me? Has He, indeed, a tender and patient thought of me, the frail creature whom He has moulded and made? I do not doubt it; I look upon the star-sown spaces, and the old aspiration rises in my heart, ‘Oh, that I knew where I might find Him! that I might come into His presence!’ How would I go, like a tired and sorrowful child to his father’s knee, to be comforted and encouraged, in perfect trust and love, to be raised in His arms, to be held to His heart! He would but look in my face, and I should understand without a question, without a word.”’

When I think of this passage and others which were included in letters written by my friend during his illness, I see clearly that he must have realized that he stood on the brink of the unknown. But no fears were expressed. Indeed, I gathered nothing from his letters regarding his physical condition. He made no mention of sickness or pain, dropped no hint of weariness. On the contrary, the letters of which I speak struck a deeper and truer note of cheerfulness and courage than any previous communications from his hand. I like to think that he continued, as of old, to speak of his rose-coloured spectacles, his point of view. ‘The secret of a happy life,’ he remarks, in the letter from which I have just quoted, ‘consists in immediately clearing away the specks of dust which are so apt to fall upon one’s rose-coloured spectacles, the little annoyances, the petty worries, the hundred and one little dark specks which I leave you to name at your leisure.’

Then follows a deeper note, taken, I think, from Epictetus: ‘Happiness is not in strength, or wealth or power, or all three. It lies in ourselves, in true freedom, in the conquest of every ignoble fear, in perfect self-government, in a power of contentment and peace, the even flow of life, even in poverty, exile, disease, and the very valley of the shadow of death.’

‘So you see,’ my friend continues, ‘there are also dark fogs and thick mists against which the would-be cheerful man must contend—deep trials compared to which our daily petty annoyances are, indeed, but specks of dust. But these, too, may be overcome. The truth is “the cheerful life is neither a matter of circumstance nor of temperament. It is a gift of God, and we can covet no better gift. The black hag of care can no longer sit on the shoulder of the man whose cheerfulness is the child of reason, not of impulse; whose heart is light because he can trust, not because the sky is blue and the world smiling.”’

I wish I could give you some account, from personal knowledge, of the way my friend spent his last days. This I cannot do, for many miles stood between us. But I am told by those who nursed him that up till the end his mind retained its clearness and vigour; that he never ceased to take an interest in his surroundings, in the great world outside his little room, in the many ill-favoured ones whom he had befriended.