Early Youth Under a Private Tutor—Poetry—Premonitions of Modern Liberalism
The tutor of whom I have spoken was the Rev. W. B. Philpot, a favorite pupil of Doctor Arnold's at Rugby, an intimate friend of Tennyson's, and himself a devotee of the Muses. His domed forehead was massive, his features were delicately chiseled, and his eyes were a clear gray. His back hair—the only hair he had got—showed a slight tendency to assume picturesque and flowing curves on the collars of his well-made coats; and, having heard from my father that I, too, was a poet, he declared himself eager to welcome me, not only as a disciple, but also as a valued friend. Mr. Philpot lived at Littlehampton, where he occupied a most capacious house. It was the principal house in a very old-fashioned terrace, which faced a sandy common, and enjoyed in those days an uninterrupted view of miles of beach and the racing waves of the sea. Mr. Philpot's disciples numbered from ten to twelve. They had, for the most part, been removed from Harrow or Eton, by reason of no worse fault than a signal inclination to indolence; and though, even under their preceptor's genial and scholarly auspices, none of them except myself showed much inclination for study, we formed together an agreeable and harmonious party, much of its amenity being due to the presence of Mrs. Philpot, his wife, whose brother, Professor Conington, was then the most illustrious representative of Latin learning at Oxford.
We enjoyed, under Mr. Philpot's care, the amplest domestic comforts, and we enjoyed, under our own care, almost unlimited credit at every shop in the town. We had carriages, the hire of which went down in Mr. Philpot's account, whenever we wanted them for expeditions; and we would often drive out in the warm after-dinner twilights to a tea garden three miles away, where we lingered among the scent of roses till the bell of some remote church tower sounded, through the dewy quiet, its nine notes to the stars. We had boats on the Arun, a stream on which our oars would take us sometimes beyond Amberly, and not bring us back till midnight. On other occasions we would, like Tennyson's hero, "nourish a youth sublime" in wandering on the nocturnal beach, and, pre-equipped with towels, would bathe in the liquid moonlight.
The Littlehampton season, so far as visitors were concerned, was summer, and from the middle of May onward various ladies of ornamental and interesting aspect would make their appearance on the pavement of Beach Terrace, or, seen on the balconies of houses which had just unclosed their shutters, would trouble and enliven the atmosphere with suggestions of vague adventures. Some of these we came to know, as Mr. Philpot and his wife had many mundane acquaintances. Others—and indeed most of them—remained tantalizing mysteries to the end. At all events they filled the air with the subtle pollen of a romance which a closer familiarity with them might very possibly have destroyed.
The effect on myself of such influences was presently betrayed by the fact that poetry, as understood by Pope, no longer satisfied me. I gradually submitted to the dominion of Keats, Browning, and Matthew Arnold. Even at Denbury, in my most conservative days, I had so far escaped from the atmosphere of Pope's Pastorals that I had described a beautiful valley in which I would often sequester myself as a place—
Where no man's voice, or any voice makes stir,
Save sometimes through the leafy loneliness
The long loose laugh of the wild woodpecker.
One of my fellow pupils, whose youth had an air of manhood, and who played with much expression on the cornet, confided to me, on returning from a summer holiday, his adventures on the Lake of Como, where, resting on his oars, he had agitated with his musical notes the pulses of a fair companion. "Now there," he said, "you have something which, if you tried, you might manage to make a verse about." I tried, and the result was this:
The stars are o'er our heads in hollow skies,
In hollow skies the stars beneath our boat,
Between the stars of two infinities
Midway upon a gleaming film we float.
My lips are on the sounding horn;
The sounding horn with music fills.
Faint echoes backward from the world are born,
Tongued by yon distant zone of slumbering hills.
The world spreads wide on every side,
But cold and dark it seems to me.
What care I on this charmèd tide
For aught save those far stars and thee?