Letters on life

Contents

I. The Art of Life ....

II. That Literature is Autobiography

III. The Art of Conversation

II That Literature is Autobiography

The other day I came across an observation which set me thinking. It was to the effect that autobiographies are a very unimportant part of our Hterary treasure. Taking it in the Hteral sense, this is not true. Taking it with a broad construction, it is so utterly false that it may even be plausibly asserted that all the enduring part in literature is autobiography.

This is a bold saying, and I must at the outset define my terms. There are many formal autobiographies which are not literature in any sense ; that is, they are neither sincere nor in any way complete. In other words, they are not autobiographies. Perhaps the truest autobiographies are those which do not take the prescribed form — which are indirect. Very few people have the courage to tell the true story of their lives. There is a noble modesty

^ Literature is Autobiography ^

of the soul which makes it impossible to draw the veil back which hides from the world its hopes and its joys, its losses and wounds and sacrifices, the struggles, the victories and the defeats of conscience. An autobiography may be true so far as it goes, but unless it admits the reader into the sanctuary of life it makes no impression. This is perhaps the reason why stories written in the first person singular so rarely attain success. To the young an autobiographical novel appears the easiest. In reality it is the most difficult, and I doubt whether it has ever been successfully accomplished, save by those who have directly or indirectly unveiled the inner secrets of their heart. Often the person who writes it gives no true picture of his experience in the world of action or in the world of thought. He tries to make imagination do a work for which it is not competent. For example, a commonplace prosperous man, incapable of any deeper feeling, may write a novel which he intends to be steeped in melancholy. But the book turns out unreal, mawkish, maudlin, describing not a real agony, but a dull and dismal languor of weakness. Those who have read Lamartine's Jocelyn will

That Literature understand what I mean. When Charles Dickens wrote his David Copperfield he told more of himself than is told in Forster's three volumes of biography, and yet even he failed to make his hero vivid and interesting. Sir Walter Scott, who in one sense was the most open and in another sense the most reticent of men, could do nothing with Francis Osbaldistone, though he allotted to him the great prize of Di Vernon. Still the aphorism of Coleridge, that a man of genius is a man of deep feeling, holds good, and so every fragment of autobiography from the elect, even when it is not meant seriously, is apt to be true and memorable. For myself, I often turn to Charles Lamb's little sketch of himself, and find more in it than in Canon Ainger, or Mr. Procter, or Mr. Fitzgerald, or Thomas Westwood. Take such touches as these : " Can remember few specialities in his life except that he once caught a swallow flying." " Stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism or a poor quibble than in set or edifying speeches : has consequently been libelled with aiming at wit, which, as he told

i6 is Autobiography a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good at aiming at dulness." " Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked incondite things — villainously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his if they had not been other than such : and better it is that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness than to affect a naturalness (so-called) that should be strange to him." Still more authentic and memorable things about Lamb will be found where he professed to speak for other people. And so I am inclined to think it is almost everywhere. A writer may appear to be studiously impersonal, and yet be personal nearly all the way through, or personal at least in special passages. It will be found, I think, that these passages of personality are the living part of his work, giving him his power and influence, impressing themselves upon the minds of readers, and defying the assaults of time. Occasionally a biography will give us the key to much from which we have been barred out, or, to change the figure, v/ill throw a flood of light upon what has been obscure. Even if we never

^ That Literature ^

have that key, when we come upon something that strangely moves us, we may be sure as a rule that the words and thoughts have been passed through the fires of life. I might even say that in the most ephemeral forms of writing, such as journalism, what is most interesting is what has been part of the writer's experience. I have just been reading a review of Mark Pattison's life of Casaubon, by Mrs. Oliphant. As an expert criticism it is ludicrous. Mrs. Oliphant was no scholar, and she had no sympathy with scholarship, while Mark Pattison was a true scholar. But when she remarks on Pattison's treatment of Casaubon's domestic arrangements you see at once that she is much wiser than Pattison, and if you have read her autobiography you recognise that she is talking about things she has gone through.

Another distinction must be made. There are two lives — the life of actuality and the life of imagination and dream. In many cases the dream life is more real than the other. Sometimes the soul goes back and lives in the dismantled homes and the long vanished gardens. More often it goes forward, and has its home

i8

^ is Autobiography ^

in the life that might have been, that came once so near to being. We can often, if we read wisely, find out what came true in dream, what was so dear and so cherished that the dull grey world of fact was as nothing in comparison. And in speaking about autobiography we comprehend the two existences and accord them equal rights. Thus it is the fashion to say that Charlotte Bronte drew from her own experiences, and the commentators try to find a basis in her life for every incident described in her works. They are wrong in one sense, and right in another. Charlotte Bronte's life is written out in her work with a rare frankness and fulness, but it is rather her life in imagination than her life in fact. This is as it should have been, for few and sombre were the outward incidents of her days on earth. It was when her spirit took wings that she lived, and lived grandly. I have no space to prove and illustrate my statement. Let one fact suffice meanwhile. If any one has written a story of love in lines of living fire, it is Charlotte Bronte. Yet, do we find it in her life? If any one recognised the sacred obligations of family ties, and suffered

That Literature on their account, it was Charlotte Bronte. Her Hfe was a living sacrifice to her sisters, and especially to her father. Has there ever been any woman of her age and position who submitted so meekly to have her marriage put off and nearly made impossible by an unreasonable old father? She lived the life of humble duty, but that was not her true life. That life was in the world of love. Her heroines, let me note, are all of them quite free from family obligations. Jane Eyre, and Shirley, and Lucy Snowe, and the sweetest and dearest of them all, Frances Evans Henri, may have aunts, but they are, so far as I can remember, without father or mother, without brother or sister. They are free to live the life of love, to say, " All for love, and the world well lost," and to fulfil the words. Can we doubt that this was Charlotte Bronte's dream of life, a dream that did not translate itself into what we call actual reality, but a dream so vivid that, in comparison, reality was faint and dim ?

Let me give almost at random a few illustrations out of the many which immediately fill the mind when this subject comes up. Let us 20 is Autobiographytake fiction. I fully grant that for fiction of the first class the gift of story-telling is an absolute necessity. Nothing will make up for the want of it. In this field humour, and passion, and observation, and learning have exhausted themselves in vain, because they were unaided by the story-teller's special talent, the talent for making a plot, for creating an overpowering interest in the narrative. For success, a novelist must be able to cover and surround the reader with the story. Unless he can do this, everything seems to slip through the reader's fingers, and the book is merely a quarry from which people may steal with comparative impunity. And yet the mere art of story-telling is not enough. It may win immense temporary popularity, but it does not confer immortality. In all the immortal books there are what some one calls touches of blood and of the Old Night, revelations of the inner secrets and the last experiences of the soul. Without the personal element no work of fiction is vital. This is equally true in poetry. I do not believe that any command of language or matter will win the unwithering leaf Nor will any process of

^ That Literature ^

imitation or assimilation make up for the want of soul. The bard is a maker ; by which I do not mean that he is a creator, but that he works with the materials that his own heart gives him. Hackneyed enough, but eternally true, is the line Mrs. Browning loved to quote, the true Ars Poetica :

"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thine heart and write."

That is why so many clever and delightful volumes of poetry are bound to perish. They may please one very much. I am not ashamed to say that I can repeat many pages of Owen Meredith, but I know, all the same, that Owen Meredith has written nothing at first hand, and that he is dead already.

The same thing must apply very specially in preaching. The preacher should not in one sense talk about himself. I knew and revered one old minister who never used the first personal pronoun in the pulpit. And, of course, there are necessary qualifications for preaching which great preachers cannot be without. A great preacher should have certain physical 22 is Autobiography qualities. He should be an orator, he should have magnetic power. Many men have had all these, and have attracted great crowds, and left nothing to be read. No true revelation had been given to their souls. They had never entered into communion with God. They were no nearer than Asoka, who said to the priests at the Buddhist Council of Nice, " What has been said by Buddha, that alone was well said." But Mr. Myers, in his wonderful poem, " St. Paul," caught the true idea that without an inward disclosure to the heart there is no religion, and that if this disclosure is given no argument can ever shake its certainty.

Lo ! if some pen should write upon your rafter, Mene and me7te in the folds of flame ;

Think you could any memories thereafter Wholly retrace the couplet as it came ?

Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny ;

Yea, with one voice, oh ! world, though thou deniest. Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.

I cannot help adding that one feels this must be so in true art, though I know nothing about painting. The great artist must have seen in

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his soul that which he makes immortal. You have known a man or woman who has developed certain qualities, and the qualities are inseparably associated with them. When these qualities appear in some figure of the past of which no authentic image exists, you wish you had the power to reproduce your idea. The autobiography of J. K. Hunter, a book apparently forgotten, but full of matter, contains this saying, " I remarked that had I been painting a Judas, I would have selected a thin-lipped, smiling, silly-like, nice man." Such was the Judas whom Hunter knew.

Ill

I ONCE went, for journalistic purposes, to a well-known palmist. Among other things he said to me, " You have no social gifts whatever. You are not adapted for society." Lifting up his hands and making expressive gestures, he went on, " You have nothing to say, not one word." Taking compassion, I daresay, on my mortified and fallen countenance, he went on, " But when you are talking to a friend you speak well, very well indeed." I repeated this observation to some of my friends, expecting — never mind what. They were evidently much impressed with the profound truth of the palmist's observations — or, I should say, of his first observation, for on the second nobody said anything — so much impressed that some of them at once made up their minds to visit the discerning man.

From this it may be thought that the art of conversation is the last subject I should write on ; but there is an ancient sage saying that a man may not be a cook, and yet may know very well whether or not a dinner is well cooked. Who was it that declared that he surpassed most people in his faculty of explaining exactly how a thing ought to be done, though he could never do it himself? I think I know a good conversation when I hear it, and so let us compare notes about the subject. In the first place, a good conversationalist is not the same thing as a good talker. Sometimes very eminent men can talk most brilliantly, though they cannot converse. This is the case especially when they live in the country, and do not see too many people. Lesser men are very well content to listen, and to drink in the wisdom that flows from their illuminated minds. It is less easy to bear when the man is not very eminent. Everybody knows people who talk and talk, who might as well be stone deaf for all the attention they pay to any remarks of yours. These persons are usually enormous egotists, and they are never really liked. When you make your 26 modest remark after listening to a quarter of an hour's speech, and find that, without taking the sHghtest notice of it, your companion begins another oration, your hand does mysteriously move to the poker. I ought to say that there are very great men who listen as well as they can speak, and they are naturally very much loved and admired. Of these the most prominent example in recent times was, perhaps, Robert Browning. It must be owned that most of us, when we get on a subject which we think we know, are apt to say too much, and it might be wise for us to think, after a conversation, of how much share we have taken in it. As a rule we should listen more than we speak.

But when we speak about conversation it is another thing. Dr. Johnson, in the Rambler, says that the art of conversation is the only accomplishment which there are continual opportunities of exerting, and deficiency in it can always be remarked. When he speaks he is thinking about the man who talks in a large company, and whose entrance immediately raises everybody's spirits ; the man whose departure is like the setting of the sun. Dr. Johnson has not a very great opinion of these people, though he admires their gifts. He tells of one who was for fifteen years the darling of a club, because every night precisely at eleven he began his favourite song, and during the vocal performance, by corresponding motions of his hand chalked out a giant on the wall. Another endeared himself to a long succession of acquaintances by sitting among them with his wig reversed. Another was popular because he contrived to smut the nose of any stranger who was to be initiated in the club. Another could purr like a cat, and then pretend to be frightened ; and another could yelp like a hound, and call to the waiters to drive out the dog. There are, however, those who, by the sheer gaiety of their spirit and their radiant good-heartedness, are everywhere welcome, and make a dull dinner party something very different from what it would have been without them. These men are the benefactors of society, and it is a pity that they are so few.

I am thinking, however, of the best kind of conversation, the conversation between two people ; what the Scotch call a twa-handed crack. 28

This is almost the culmination of human happiness when it is at its best. Two are company, three are none. It happens seldom that really enjoyable conversation takes place between three people. One of the three is always more or less out of it, and the two others lose their pleasure by benevolent efforts to draw him in. I have heard very enjoyable conversation at very small dinner parties, where the table was round, and there could be a general interchange of ideas. Still, this kind of talk, even at its best, is not like the talk of two congenial spirits. Let us think what are the constituents of this particular enjoyment.

Perhaps one is that the two should be friends. They need not necessarily be intimate friends, but there should be a feeling of sympathy between them. There should be the basis of a common affection. Without these there is not the reciprocal interest in one another's affairs which is necessary. Each should be interested in the joys and sorrows, in the failures and successes of the other. One should be able to talk to his friend without feeling that his friend is bored, and the sympathy that he receives he should be able to give back in full measure. Then it is a great advantage if the two are working in the same line. It need not be identically the same, but it should be partially the same. Once more, the two should be fairly on a level. The sense of inequality ought not to come in disturbingly. One man may be superior to the other in some respects, but he should not be superior in every respect. Again, there ought to be that perfect frankness which is based upon firm mutual confidence. Conversation is ruined if you have the least suspicion that your companion, meaning to do no harm, will repeat your chance, half-meant observations. Of what will the talk consist ? Necessarily to some extent of personal experience. This is not only permissible, but delightful, on the condition of mutual sympathy. I have known three very clever people who could talk very well on almost any subject, and would do so, but who never became interested until they began to talk about themselves, their books, and their children. I have even known some who made no pretence of interest in the listener's affairs, who never asked any question about the home life, who never alluded to anything their friend might be working at. They to themselves were all in all. But most men want to share things, and if you have a friend with whom you can share equally, all I can say is, do not lightly lose that friend.

Another element in good conversation is that each should have news. That is why it is well that friends should be engaged in the same kind of work. We all love news, and we like it all the better when it does not come to us from the newspaper, or when it comes before the newspaper gets it. Those who have not much brilliancy in expression, who have no great command of words, should cultivate news, be able to tell in a kindly way what they see and hear. Everybody likes a man who tells him something that he did not know and is glad to know.

Dr. Johnson says that no conversation is more extensively acceptable than the narrative. "He who has stored his memory with slight anecdotes, private incidents, and personal peculiarities seldom fails to find his audience favourable." I think Dr. Johnson means pretty much what I have been trying to say, but one must pause on this word anecdote. The late Dr. Dale once said to me that he thought nothing killed conversation so much as anecdotes. One man tells a story, another man feels bound to cap it, and so the thing goes on till the streams are lost in the desert. There is immense truth in this. I knew a man who, when he went to a dinner party, studied beforehand the last number of Tit-Bits^ and made mysterious notes by which he contrived to recall and repeat the stories. He was justly considered an intolerable bore. It takes a great deal of skill to tell an anecdote acceptably, and in such a way that your companion does not feel himself challenged to tell another, but smiles and passes on. Another thing which gives me great pleasure is to compare notes upon some book that has been recently read or some public question that is being discussed. For my part, I care nothing at all about difference of opinion, provided it is not fierce and intolerant. On the contrary, I rather like to have things put before me in another light, and some of my closest friends are in almost every opinion entirely opposed to me. But, as Carlyle wisely said, " Except in opinion we do not disagree."

It does not always happen, perhaps does not often happen, that the conversation deepens before its end. When it does happen, when you feel that the discussion is perforce closed at the most interesting time, and that you could have gone on for hours, then you have been greatly enriched. As a rule, I think you cannot have the best kind of conversation with the same man oftener than once a week. Nobody can really talk well for any length of time whose mind is not full, and who is not always replenishing it. It is wonderful and pathetic to see how many fine minds live upon the past, say the same things over and over again, and become inaccessible to new ideas and new facts. None of us, I am afraid, can escape repeating. Our few stories will recur, do what we please. But it is a very good rule to talk out of the week's reading and experience and thought as much as possible. A great journalist once told me that he kept up the freshness of his articles by trying to use for them chiefly the books he had just read. That would not be possible for every one, but it indicates a direction in which it is wise to move. Many people would be much better talkers if they could even slightly enlarge their vocabulary. Studied talk never interests ; you must be interested yourself before you can interest any one, but an attentive reading of good books will help us to be less monotonous in our phrases and adjectives. If any one desires to be brilliant in conversation, he is apt to make an end of conversation. As Dr. Johnson wisely says, " The wit whose vivacity condemns slower tongues to silence ; the scholar whose knowledge allows no man to fancy that he instructs ; the critic who suffers no fallacy to pass undetected ; and the reasoner who condemns the idle to thought and the negligent to attention, are generally praised and feared, reverenced and avoided."

To conclude, multitudes have to go through life, without ever tasting the real pleasures of conversation. They never, somehow, find congenial friends. That is often the great drawback of living in the country. You meet pleasant people, and can speak with them up to a certain point, but you never are able to express ijr The Art of Conversation ^

your real mind. Many men go through life practically condemned to silence as to all that is deepest in them. They may not feel the want, and indeed, as a rule, people get to acquiesce in their circumstances. It is a want nevertheless, and the American suggestion, that conversation ought to be carefully taught as an art in schools and colleges, I believe to be a wise one. If we had a rational system of education, then we could talk ; we could have our pleasant evenings unplagued with Scotch ballads, and recitations, and the mandoline.

IV On the Art of taking Things coolly

My subject may be illustrated by two or three anecdotes collected from an essayist of long ago. An Irish squire, when his house was attacked, admitted his assailants one by one through the partially open door, and killed each of them with a knife whenever the threshold was passed. An old nobleman was assailed on Hounslow Heath by a highwayman, who clapped a pistol to his lordship's breast, and cried, " I have you now, my lord, after all your boasts no single man should rob you." " Nor should he now," said the gentleman, " but for that fellow peeping over your shoulder." The highwayman turned, and his lordship blew his brains out. On the other side take two stories. Late on a winter's night a clergyman heard a tap at the window shutter. Excited by the recollection of a recent burglary and murder, he seized a

(|r On taking Things coolly ^

pistol, rushed to the front door, flung it open, fired into the darkness, bolted his door, and returned to his family, little thinking that he had killed his housemaid's sweetheart. An agitated old bachelor in a retired country residence heard a noise in his garden. He sallied forth, took one pistol himself, and gave another to his parlourmaid. " Mary, I go this way, you go that, and mind you shoot the first man you meet." The first man Mary met was the old bachelor, and the old bachelor was shot. But the most wonderful story of coolness I have ever heard was that of Mrs. Burdock, who was hanged at the beginning of the century at Bristol for murdering an old lady. Mrs. Burdock was proceeding to the place of execution outside her prison, followed by the usual procession of a clergyman, sheriff, and other officers. Suddenly the procession came to a pause. What was the matter? Rain had begun to fall, and Mrs. Burdock resolutely declined to move an inch without an umbrella. So clergyman, hangman, sheriff, and all were kept waiting till one of the party ran to the governor's house, to borrow the umbrella which was to shield Mrs. Burdock

On the Art of from the storm for the remaining few minutes of her existence.

Some men take their work coolly, and others do not. The contrast is between two types. To visit one man and observe his ways leads you to think that he can be doing very little. He has, apparently, plenty of leisure, does not seem burdened by his task, does not talk about it, is not particularly tidy in his habits, and even seems glad of an excuse to escape from the routine of his existence. Another man is as noisy as a steam-engine. He has everything in perfect order, as neat as a new pin. He tells you that he does not know how he is to get through the multitude of his occupations. He tells you that he can spare you five minutes, taking out a watch, and unwilling to avert his gaze from it. You will almost certainly find that the quiet man is the man who gets through most work. You can hardly believe it, talking to him, but it is forced upon you by the results. In fact, fussiness is a great hindrance in the way of doing much. The energy that ought to be concentrated in putting things through is wasted in steam, and through sheer flurry taking Things coolly and excitement the work is spoilt. I believe in method. I also believe in every man being allowed to choose his own method. It is of no importance, comparatively, whether a man rises late or early, what his hours are, how he arranges his office. What is important is that he should have in his mind a clear plan for each of his days, and stick to that plan. To stick to the plan is everything. To resist distractions and temptations, to set the force of the will upon the accomplishment of the day's programme whatever may allure, is to succeed in doing much. A man who takes things coolly will be able to do as a rule all that he wants to do, and yet have plenty of leisure time. It is difficult to understand why people complain of want of time, though it is easy to see that they may often mourn over the want of strength. A man with physical and mental vigour steadily directed to one object will never find the days too short.