Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge by Arthur Christopher Benson (uplifting book club books TXT) 📖

of us: ay, and may be nearer it, too, than many of us, as it is expiating its willfulness in more terrible and direct punishment. There is not a single spasm in that decayed and nerveless frame, not a single horror of all the gloomy forebodings and irrational shudderings of the sickening delirium, not a single mile of the grim dusty roads he wearily traverses, which is not needed to bring him to the truth. The soul may be so clouded that it may not even be taking note of its punishment, may not be even conscious of it, may hardly calculate how low it has fallen and how wretched and hopeless the remainder of its earthly days are bound to be; but I assert that it is none of it blind suffering; that not a pang is unintentionally given, or thrown away; that I shall hand-in-hand with that soul go some day up the golden stairs that lead to the Father, and we shall say one to another, 'My brother, you despised me on earth; you took for a mark of the neglect and disfavour of God what was only a sign of His constant care; you took for an indwelling of foul spirits what was only a testimony of my distance from the truth.'

"And we shall speak together of new things, so marvellous that they will banish memory for ever.

"Who would have thought that the sight of a drunken tramp in a hedgerow would have brought one so close to a sight of God's purposes?

"Yet so it is, my friend. God keeps showing me by the strangest of surprises that He is all about us. This very incident, so seemingly trivial, is yet a part of my life already, it has set its mark upon me. All his life he has been led, from bad to worse, into drink, and haunted by all the other devils of sin, and piloted across the country thus, so that the lines of our lives cut at this instant never to cut again. There are no such things as _chance_ meetings. There is no smaller or greater in the sight of God. It is as much a purpose of his life that he should preach this sermon to Edward and myself to-day, as that he should be shown by God's own strokes what happiness really is, by the strong contrast of the bitterness of sin."

The idea of the purpose of God underlying every incident, however apparently trivial, was much in his thoughts just then.

"We often are taught how momentous every thing and every moment is, by the charging of some trivial incident with tremendous issues. A man fires off his gun. He has done so thousands of times already, and yet, like Mr. Jamieson, my neighbour, on this one January morning he kills his own son, converting in a single instant, by a trivial incident, the whole of the rest of his life from sweet into bitter, by the terrible punishment which falls upon 'carelessness.' God seems to be asking us to weigh the fact, that in a chain of events the tiniest link is every bit as important and necessary in its place as the largest.

"And so I begin to take more and more account of little things. The very people we pass in the street once, it may be never to pass again, the stream of faces that flows past us in London—has all that no real connection with our life, except to stir a faint and vague emotion about the size of life and our own infinitesimal share in it? I think it must be something more. Of course, one lets drop grain after grain of golden truth that God slips into our hands. I keep feeling that if we could only truly yield ourselves up for a single instant, put ourselves utterly and wholly in God's hands for a second, the meaning of the whole would flash upon us, and our lesson would be learnt. I think perhaps that comes in death. I remember the only time I took an anæsthetic (when the body really momentarily dies—that is, the functions are temporarily suspended), the great sensation was, after a brief passage of storm and agony, the sense of serenity and repose upon a lesson learnt, a truth grasped, so remote and so connected with infinite ideas, that the coming back into life was like the waking after years of experience; a phantom emotion, I expect; but, like many phantoms, a very good copy of the real one. That is what I expect dying to be like.

"I was going to say that I try not to let even little things—things that are thrust in my way curiously and without apparent reason that is—go uninterpreted. Why should I, for instance, have been introduced by my clergyman to the friend who was staying with him this morning, when I met them in the lane? and why should he have come in to lunch, and talked dull and trivial talk till three o'clock, and interrupted all our plans? There seems some design in it all; and yet one is so impotent to grasp what it can be.

"Yet I suppose no one has failed to notice several small coincidences in their lives, of what might almost be called a providential kind.

"I read in a book about Laennec's method, without the vaguest idea of who Laennec was, or what his method was. The next day, I see, in a chart in the village school-room, 'Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope;' and, the day following, I find and read his biography in a volume that I happen to take up to pass five minutes. And yet we say 'by chance.'

"Or I come across an expression of which I haven't grasped the precise meaning, 'gene,' let us say, or 'eclectic,' and the next day I hear the rector and curate discussing them. These are real cases.

"Or I am interrupted in my writing by Edward, who takes the letters to the post, and forces this from under my hand, as I write: not, surely, only to spare you the receipt of a dull and immature letter.

"Arthur Hamilton."

I have only one other letter of any especial interest about this date.

"If only a book could be written about a hermit, a man that deliberately left the world, retiring, not to an impracticable distance—let us say to a small farm, in a country village, with half an acre of garden—and there let no sound from the world without reach him, except incidentally, and lived a pure and uncontaminated life, watching his garden, and turning over, very slowly, such experience as he had gained in life, with the intention, if anything came of it, of telling the world any solution that occurred to him of the great question—'Is one bound to meet life in the ordinary manner, by plunging into it and swimming up the stream, or does one meet it best by abjuring it?' There is much to be said for both views. I am not at all sure that these or similar lives are not lived, and that the only practical bearing of them is that a man is _not_ bound to tell his discoveries of our enigmas. I mean, I can conceive a man, under such circumstances, reaching a very high standpoint, arriving at very lofty knowledge of the problems of fate and life, and at the same time finding a ban laid upon him, a tacit ἀνάγκη, not to reveal it to others, it being hinted to him that those who would attain to it at all must attain to it as he has himself attained, by finding out the way themselves."


CHAPTER XII


About this time he made the acquaintance of some neighbours whom he approved, and found companions for Edward Bruce in the boys of the family, who were home for the holidays. The boy brightened up so much under the new surroundings, that Arthur determined to get a boy of the same age to educate with Edward, and he accordingly inserted an advertisement in the _Times_. I have it before me now, in the fast-yellowing paper.

"A gentleman is anxious to find a companion to be educated with his adopted son; he offers him board and teaching free, but must see, personally, both the parent or guardian and the boy whom it is proposed to send."

But the advertisement was withdrawn, as a friend of mine, a certain General Ellis, not very well off, and with a large family, offered to send a boy of his to Tredennis—an offer which Arthur accepted provisionally. He had the boy to stay with him for a fortnight, and at the end of the time agreed to take him.

As the boys were not to go to a public school, and as neither of them looked forward to teaching as a career, the object of their teaching was to make them as quick in grasp of a subject as possible, as enthusiastic as possible, and as cultivated. Arthur favoured me with a letter, or rather a treatise, upon their education, fragments of which I submit to my readers.

"My aim will be to make them, generally speaking, as adequate as possible to playing a worthy part in the world. I want them to be as open-minded on all subjects as possible, to have no fixed prejudices on any subject, and yet to have an adequate basis of knowledge on important matters, enough not to leave them at the mercy of any new book or theory on any subject which handles its facts in at all a one-sided way—so that on reading a brilliant but narrow book on any point, they may be able to say, 'This and that argument have weight, they are valid; but he has suppressed this, and distorted that, which, if seen fairly and in a good light, would go far to contradict the other.' Then they must be without _prejudice_; they must not close their eyes or turn their backs on any view, because it is 'dangerous' or 'damaging' or 'subversive' or 'unpractical.' They must not be afraid to face an idea because of its probable consequences if its truth is proved. They must not call anything common or unclean.

"For this they must have a basis of knowledge on these points; history, political economy, philosophy, science. The first three I am fairly competent to give them; that is to say, I am studying these hard myself now, and I can, at any rate, keep well ahead of them; and I have managed to win their educational confidence, which is a great thing. They take for granted that a thing which is dull is necessary, and follow me with faith; while, I am thankful to say, they are keen enough not to want driving when a thing is interesting.

"Then they must know French and German, and a modicum of Greek and Latin. These last I teach them by a free use of translations; rudiments of grammar first, and then we attack the books, and let grammar be incidental. We don't compose in any of these languages; it's a mere waste of time.

"I teach them logic and Euclid, and get them taught some mathematics. Then as to science, by reading myself with them we get on very well together. And I have bought a few chemicals, and we try experiments freely, which is very satisfactory.

"Music I teach them both, and harmony. They don't much like it, but they will be glad some day. I make them practise regularly. I don't believe any but very exceptionally gifted boys like that; but they are so awfully thankful when they get to my age