TWO rarely beautiful lives were theirs—close-welded, and thereby each sharing and each doubling the beauty of the other. Their beauty was spiritual, intellectual, influential.
William sprang from the mercantile classes of the Metropolis—from a race of evangelical Free Churchmen of such liberal leanings as to throw no obstacle in his way of becoming a theological and metaphysical thinker of a decidedly 'advanced' type; while an elder brother became an eloquent Episcopalian preacher at the celebrated Temple Church.
Lucy, whose maiden name was Cummings, was the daughter of a medical man who had married a lady socially superior to himself, and was brought up by her parents in an atmosphere of 'Welsh Calvinism.'
William was a shy, sensitive boy and lad, learning quickly, given to introspection, and taking a high place in his schools. His university life was spent at Glasgow—Oxford and Cambridge being at that time (the late forties of last century) closed against all except Anglicans—and there his mental bias towards philosophy was strengthened and developed, especially by the teaching of Dr. Chalmers. From college he was sent to study law under the well-known author, Sharon Turner. This study he cordially detested, yet in after-years he confessed that compulsory training for the Bar had invigorated and disciplined his reasoning powers to a degree he learned to be grateful for. Some travels abroad, too, though at a later period—notably to Italy—matured his character and widened his outlook. His first literary efforts were articles which were accepted by the Athenæum, then just started. In that paper, and in Blackwood (is it not singular that most of our Lake celebrities were contributors to 'Old Ebony'?) he had frequent enough insertions to earn thereby a modest income—small, but sure, and sufficient for the limited needs of a quiet-living single man. For years he followed the career of an essayist and reviewer, pondering deeply meanwhile problems that seem to admit of no definite solution during the present limitations of human knowledge—problems which have bewildered Christians and non-Christians alike for centuries past, and, if Milton's authority may be relied upon, even the fallen principalities and powers in Hades—'Fixed Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute'—the origin of evil, the eternal duration of sin's consequences, the nature of sin itself, the possibility of finding and knowing God, the attainment of final certitude on any question other than mathematical, the relation of revealed or natural religion to science, the unalterable reign of law in mental and moral as well as in physical regions—these, and many similar enigmas, whirled perpetually through his brain, and would not rest till at least an honest attempt had been made to solve them. The necessity that appeared to be laid on him to discover answers to the practically unanswerable induced a habit of seclusion and a shrinking from any society that might interrupt the flow of speculative thought. He would pass people in the streets and the country roads absolutely without seeing them; and though cheerful and apt in conversation when obliged to meet his fellows, he invariably preferred to be alone on long mountain walks that he might think his own thoughts, and by meditation work out his difficulties, and record in his MSS. for future publication the conclusions he had arrived at, even though those conclusions amounted to no more than that none could be attained to! It was while residing in solitary seclusion, first at sunny Bowness upon Windermere Lake and then across the watershed at Keswick, on the rainier side of the mountains, that his great books 'Thorndale' and 'Gravenhurst' were wrought in the secret recesses of his soul. The first, the sub-title of which is 'The Conflict of Opinion,' is constructed on the conversational model, as, indeed, is the second also. Materialist, Roman Catholic, Theist, or Unitarian, and Scientific Evolutionist, all are heard with fairness and courtesy, and the discussions are intensely interesting to readers with thoughtful minds. But there is, after all has been said that can be said, nothing more than an open verdict returned on the highest themes that can occupy human attention. There is no more settlement of any of the vast questions debated for the inquirer who has discarded Divine revelation than for him who accepts it in whole or in part. 'Gravenhurst' has for a secondary title 'Knowing and Feeling: a Contribution to Psychology.' So far as it leads us to an end that end seems hardly distinguishable from the Eastern 'Necessitarianism,' or 'Fatalism,' in which all metaphysicians sooner or later engulf us who get rid of human responsibility for sin and its consequences by making the Creator the author of both moral and material evil. Yet the conclusions are logical if only certain premises are granted. Both books are crowded with sweet and helpful thoughts—wayside flowers of brilliancy and fragrancy, the gathering of which may easily lure the reader from the watchfulness needed in travelling along these winding roads, so destitute of authoritative sign-posts; the sign-posts erected by previous explorers having been cut down by more modern pedestrians, because, forsooth! the painted directions were faded, and they had no brush wherewith to freshen them!
While William was thus developing his life-work and weaving his intellectual robes, Lucy was growing into her charming womanhood amid the happy surroundings of her home in North Wales, and evolving the noblest of characters through self-denial and loving devotion to others. As a girl she was highly educated. When past her girlhood she proved a handsome and cultured lady, sought in marriage by at least two men, both of whose offers she refused, but neither of whom espoused any other. She remained single that she might help retrieve the fortunes of her parents, which had become so reduced that the house endeared to them by long residence had to be sold, and her own little patrimony given up to the clearance of debt. The broken father and mother were thenceforth tended, and, indeed, partly supported, by Lucy, who earned something by making translations from German, and in similar ways, till she lost them both in one sad week.
It was by an apparent chance, though by a very real providence of God, that these two met, William Smith and Lucy Cummings, while mother and daughter were in one set of apartments of a Keswick lodging-house, and 'Thorndale Smith,' as he came to be called, in an upper. A pleasant comradeship began on purely literary matters, and ripened into warm friendship, and frequent correspondence after parting for the season, till they met again some time afterwards at Patterdale. Then it was that friendship suddenly sprang upwards into the unique form of love most exquisitely portrayed in the ideal biography written of her husband by Lucy, after his premature decease. This biography was written originally for private circulation among her friends, and was afterwards attached, as a preface, to a new edition of 'Gravenhurst.' It is one of the most lovely stories of wedded life in our English tongue. All that poets have imagined of 'The Angel of the House,' of love's wealth, of love's visions, of 'Love's Young Dream,' seem to have been realized in the experiences of these kindred souls, brought together at a later period in life than most people enter on the married state. After a period of unalloyed happiness William's health began to fail, and a long time of anxious watching fell to Lucy Smith. Still was their talk ever of higher things and of the deeper problems of life and humanity. Despite his assumed negative position with regard to much that Christians hold to be essential truth, there was an undercurrent of devout belief in God left in William's heart, as is evidenced by lines in his verses, as for example:
'Earth can be earth, yet rise
Into the region of God's dwelling-place
If Light and Love are what we call His skies.'
In his 'Athelwood,' too—a tragedy, set on the stage and played by Macready and Helen Faucit—there are passages, notably those put into the mouth of Dunston, which show the same thing:
'God, where art Thou?
I call for Thee, they give me but a world,
Thy mechanism; I call aloud for Thee,
My Father, Friend, Sustainer, Teacher, Judge.'
Still more remarkable was his impromptu acknowledgment when he lay dying, and his wife, referring to some of his published views, said: 'William, such love as mine for you cannot be the result of mere mechanism or vital forces, can it?' 'Oh, no,' he responded; 'it has a far higher source.' 'Once,' adds his wife, 'I saw the hands clasped as in a speechless communion with the Unseen, and twice I caught the solemn word "God" uttered, not in a tone of appeal or entreaty, but as if the supreme contemplation which had been his very life meant more, revealed more, than ever!' In a former article I pointed out how seldom professed, and even perfectly sincere, doubters ever entirely shake off the impressions of Divine reality and the Divine Presence. My own conviction is that the God whom they seek (I am not thinking of the unbelief that springs from moral unfaithfulness or obliquity) does, after all, touch their hands in the darkness, and the Christ whom they fail to understand has included them in His great and universal atonement. It may be that the Holy Spirit, who shows the things of Christ to men, gives them a saving view of Calvary as they pass through the Valley of the Shadow. I cannot believe that any bonâ fide seeker after God ever became a 'lost soul' in any sense of those awful words, even though his seeking endured for a lifetime without conscious finding.