“Ah, my dear Tracey,” said I, mindful of my promise to Clara, “Henry Thornhill is much too fine a young fellow to be wasted upon ignoble slaughter, and still more ignoble agues and marsh fevers. I hope you do not intend to gratify his preposterous desire to plant laurels at the other end of the world, and on soil in which it may be reasonably doubted whether any laurels will grow——”
Tracey’s brow became clouded. He threw himself on a seat niched into the recess of a lattice window, looked out at first abstractedly, and then, as the cloud left his brow, observantly.
“See, my dear friend,” said he—“see, how listlessly, for a mere holiday pleasure, that brave lad is running up the sails. Do you think that he would be thus indifferent if he were clearing decks for a fight, if responsibility, and honour, and duty, and fame were his motive powers? No. If he stayed at home inactive, he would be miserable the more Clara and I tried to make him happy in our holiday way. That which a man feels, however unphilosophically (according to other men’s philosophy), to be an essential to the object for which he deems it noble to exist—that the man must do, or at least attempt; if we prevent him, we mar the very clockwork of his existence, for we break its mainspring. Henry must have his own way. And I say that for Clara’s sake; for if he has not, he will seek excitement in something else, and become a bad man and a very bad husband.”
“Hem!” said I; “of course you know him best; but I own I do not see in him a genius equal to his restlessness or his ambition; and I think his wife very superior to himself in intellect. If, besides giving him your sea-side villa, you gave him a farm, surely he might become famous for his mangold-wurzel; and it is easier for all men, including even Henry Thornhill, to grow capital wurzel than it is to beat Hannibal or Wellington.”
“Pish!” said Tracey, smiling, “you ought to know mankind too well to think seriously what you say in sarcasm. Pray, where and what would England be if every sharp young fellow in the army did not set a Hannibal or a Wellington before his eyes; or if every young politician did not haunt his visions with a Pitt, a Fox, or a Burke? What Henry Thornhill may become, Heaven only knows; but if you could have met Arthur Wellesley before he went to India, do you think you would have guessed that he would become the hero of England? Can any of us detect beforehand the qualities of a man of action?—Of a man of letters, yes, to a certain degree, at least. We can often, though not always, foresee whether a man may become a great writer; but a great man of action—no!! Henry has no literature, no literary occupation, nor even amusement. Probably Hannibal had none, and Wellington very little. Bref—he thinks his destiny is action, and military action. Every man should have a fair chance of fulfilling what he conceives to be his destiny. Suppose Henry Thornhill fail; what then? He comes back, reconciled to what fate will still tender him—reconciled to my sea-side villa—to his charming wife—reconciled to life as it is for him. But now he is coveting a life which may be. A man only does that which fate intends him to do, in proportion as he obeys the motive which gives him his power in life. Henry Thornhill’s motive is military ambition. It is no use arguing the point—what man thinks, he is.”
I bowed my head. I felt that Tracey was right, and sighed aloud, “Poor little Clara!”
“Poor little Clara!” said Tracey, sighing also, “must, like other poor dear little loving women, take her chance. If her Henry succeed, how proud she will be to congratulate him! if he fail, how proud she will be to console him!”
“Ah, Tracey!” said I, rising, “in all you have said I recognise your acute discernment and your depth of reasoning. But when you not only concede to, but approve, the motive power which renders this young man restless, pray forgive so old a friend for wondering why you yourself have never found some motive power which might, long ere this, have rendered you renowned.”
“Hush!” said Tracey, with his winning, matchless smile—“hush, look out on yon woods and waters. Has not the life which Nature bestows on any man who devoutly loves her a serener happiness than can be found in the enjoyments that estrange us from her charms? How few understand the distinction between life artificial and life artistic! Artificial existence is a reverence for the talk of men; artistic existence is in the supreme indifference to the talk of men. You and I, in different ways, seek to complete our being on earth, not artificially, but artistically. Neither of us can be insincere mouthpieces of talk in which we have no faith. You cannot write in a book—you cannot say in a speech—that which you know to be a falsehood. But the artificial folks are the very echoes of falsehood; the noise they make is in repeating its last sounds. An artist must be true to nature, even though he add to nature something from his soul of man which nature cannot give in her representations of truth. Is it not so?”
“Certainly,” said I, with warmth. “I could neither write nor speak what I did not believe to be, in the main, truthful. A man may or may not, according to the quality of his mind, give to nature that which clearly never can be in nature—viz., the soul or the intellect of man. But soul or intellect he must give to nature—that is, to everything which external objects present to his senses as truthful—or he is in art a charlatan, and in action a knave. But then truth, as Humanity knows it, is not what the schoolmen call it, One and Indivisible; it is like light, and splits not only into elementary colours, but into numberless tints. Truth with Raffaelle is not the same as truth with Titian; truth with Shakespeare is not the same as truth with Milton; truth with St Xavier is not the same as truth with Luther; truth with Pitt is not the same as truth with Fox. Each man takes from life his favourite truth, as each man takes from light his favourite colour.”