The Upton Letters by Arthur Christopher Benson (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📖

shading his eyes, watching with simple intentness a flight of wild-duck that was passing overhead, dipping to some sequestered pool.

I rode away with a quiet hopefulness in my heart. I seemed like a dusty and weary wayfarer, who has flung off his heated garments and plunged into the clear waters of comfort; to have drawn near to the heart of the world; to have had a sight, in the midst of things mutable and disquieting, of things august and everlasting. At another time I might have flung myself into busy fancies, imagined a community living an orderly and peaceful life, full of serene activities, in that still place; but for once I was content to have seen a dwelling-place, devised by some busy human brain, that had failed of its purpose, lost its ancient lords, sunk into a calm decay; to have seen it all caressed and comforted and embraced by nature, its scars hidden, its grace replenished, its harshness smoothed away.

Such gentle hours are few; and fewer still the moments of anxiety and vexation when so direct a message is flashed straight from the Mind of God into the unquiet human heart; I never doubted that I was led there by a subtle, delicate, and fatherly tenderness, and shown a thing which should at once touch my sense of beauty, and then rising, as it were, and putting the superficial aspect aside, speak with no uncertain voice of the deep hopes, the everlasting peace on which for a few years the little restless world of ours is rocked and carried to and fro. . . .--Ever yours,

T. B.


UPTON, Nov. 29, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--To-day the world is shrouded in a thick, white, dripping mist. Glancing up in the warm room where I sit, I see nothing but grey window spaces. "How melancholy, how depressing," says my generally cheerful friend, Randall, staring sadly out into the blank air. But I myself do not agree. I am conscious of a vague, pleasurable excitement; a sense, too, of repose. This half light is grateful and cooling alike to eye and brain. Then, too, it is a change from ordinary conditions, and a change has always something invigorating about it. I steal about with an obscure sense that something mysterious is happening. And yet imagine some bright spirit of air and sunshine, like Ariel, flitting hither and thither above the mist, dipping his feet in the vapour, as a sea-bird flies low across the sea. Think of the pity he would feel for the poor human creatures, buried in darkness below, creeping hither and thither in the gloom.

It is pleasurable enough within the house, but still more pleasurable to walk abroad; the little circle of dim vision passes with you, just revealing the road, the field, the pasture in which you walk.

There is a delightful surprise about the way in which a familiar object looms up suddenly, a dim remote shape, and then as swiftly reveals the well-known outline. My path takes me past the line, and I hear a train that I cannot see roar past. I hear the sharp crack of the fog signals and the whistle blown. I pass close to the huge, dripping signals; there, in a hut beside a brazier, sits a plate-layer with his pole, watching the line, ready to push the little disc off the metals if the creaking signal overhead moves. In another lonely place stands a great luggage train waiting. The little chimney of the van smokes, and I hear the voices of guards and shunters talking cheerily together. I draw nearer home, and enter the college by the garden entrance. The black foliage of the ilex lowers overhead, and then in a moment, out of an overshadowing darkness, rises a battlemented tower like a fairy castle, with lights in the windows streaming out with straight golden rays into the fog. Below, the arched doorway reveals the faintly-lighted arches of the cloisters. The hanging, clinging, soaking mist--how it heightens the value, the comfort of the lighted windows of studious, fire-warmed rooms.

And then what a wealth of pleasant images rises in the mind. I find myself thinking how the reading of certain authors is like this mist-walking; one seems to move in a dreary, narrow circle, and then suddenly a dim horror of blackness stands up; and then, again, in a moment one sees that it is some familiar thought which has thus won a stateliness, a remote mystery, from the atmosphere out of which it leans.

Or, better still, how like these fog-wrapped days are to seasons of mental heaviness, when the bright, distant landscape is all swallowed up and cherished landmarks disappear. One walks in a vain shadow; and then the surprises come; something, which in its familiar aspect stirs no tangible emotion, in an instant overhangs the path, shrouded in dim grandeur and solemn awe. Days of depression have this value, that they are apt to reveal the sublimity, the largeness of well-known thoughts, all veiled in a melancholy magnificence. Then, too, one gains an inkling of the sweetness of the warm corners, the lighted rooms of life, the little centre of brightness which one can make in one's own retired heart, and which gives the sense of welcome, the quiet delights of home-keeping, the warmth of the contented mind.

And, best of all, as one stumbles along the half-hidden street a shape, huge, intangible, comes stealing past; one wonders what strange visitant this is that comes near in the gathering darkness. And then in a moment the vagueness is dispelled; the form, the lineaments, take shape from the gloom, and one finds that one is face to face with a familiar friend, whose greeting warms the heart as one passes into the mist again.--Ever yours,

T. B.


UPTON, Dec. 5, 1904.


MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am very sorry to hear you have been suffering from depression; it is one of the worst evils of life, and none the better for being so intangible. I was reading a story the other day, in some old book, of a moody man who was walking with a friend, and, after a long silence, suddenly cried out, as if in pain. "What ails you?" said his friend. "My mind hurts me," said the other. That is the best way to look at it, I think--as a kind of neuralgia of the soul, to be treated like other neuralgias. A friend of mine who was a great sufferer from such depression went to an old doctor, who heard his story with a smile, and then said: "Now, you're not as bad as you feel, or even as you think. My prescription is a simple one. Don't eat pastry; and for a fortnight don't do anything you don't like."

It is often only a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air. "A recumbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a great aid to cheerfulness."

I used, as you know, to be a great sufferer; or perhaps you don't know, for I was too miserable sometimes even to speak of it. But I can say humbly and gratefully that a certain freedom from depression is one of the blessings that advancing years have brought me. Still, I don't altogether escape, and it sometimes falls with an unexpected suddenness. It may help you to know that other people suffer similarly, and how they suffer.

Well, then, a few days ago I woke early, after troubled dreams, and knew that the old enemy had clutched me. I lay in a strange agony of mind, my heart beating thick, and with an insupportable weight on my heart. It always takes the same form with me--an overwhelming sense of failure in all that I attempt, a dreary consciousness of absolute futility, coupled with the sense of the brevity and misery of human life generally. I ask myself what is the use of anything? What is an almost demoniacal feature of the mood is that it lays a spell of utter dreariness upon all pleasures as well as duties. One feels condemned to a long perspective of work without interest, and recreation without relish, and all confined and bounded by death; whichever way my thoughts turned, a grey prospect met me.

Little by little the misery abated, recurring at longer and longer intervals, till at last I slept again; but the mood overclouded me all day long, and I went about my duties with indifference. But there is one medicine which hardly ever fails me--it was a half-holiday, and, after tea, I went to the cathedral and sate in a remote corner of the nave. The service had just begun. The nave was dimly lighted, but an upward radiance gushed behind the screen and the tall organ, and lit up the vaulted roof with a tranquil glory. Soon the Psalms began, and at the sound of the clear voices of the choir, which seemed to swim on the melodious thunder of the organ, my spirit leapt into peace, as a man drowning in a stormy sea is drawn into a boat that comes to rescue him. It was the fourth evening, and that wonderful Psalm, My God, my God, look upon me--where the broken spirit dives to the very depths of darkness and despair--brought me the message of triumphant sorrow. How strange that these sad cries of the heart, echoing out of the ages, set to rich music--it was that solemn A minor chant by Battishill, which you know--should be able to calm and uplift the grieving spirit. The thought rises into a burst of gladness at the end; and then follows hard upon it the tenderest of all Psalms, The Lord is my Shepherd, in which the spirit casts its care upon God, and walks simply, in utter trust and confidence. The dreariness of my heart thawed and melted into peace and calm. Then came the solemn murmur of a lesson; the Magnificat, sung to a setting--again as by a thoughtful tenderness--of which I know and love every note; and here my heart seemed to climb into a quiet hope and rest there; the lesson again, like the voice of a spirit; and then the Nunc Dimittis, which spoke of the beautiful rest that remaineth. Then the quiet monotone of prayer, and then, as though to complete my happiness, Mendelssohn's Hear my prayer. It is the fashion, I believe, for some musicians to speak contemptuously of this anthem, to say that it is over-luscious. I only know that it brings all Heaven about me, and reconciles the sadness of the world with the peace of God. A boy's perfect treble--that sweetest of all created sounds, because so unconscious of its pathos and beauty--floating on the top of the music, and singing as an angel might sing among the stars of heaven, came to my thirsty spirit like a draught of clear spring water. And, at the end of all, Mendelssohn's great G major fugue gave the note of courage and endurance that I needed, the strong notes marching solemnly and joyfully on their appointed way.

I left the cathedral, through the gathering twilight, peaceful, hopeful, and invigorated, as a cripple dipped in the healing well. While music is in the world, God abides among us. Ever since the day that David soothed Saul by his sweet harp and artless song, music has thus beguiled the heaviness of the spirit. Yet there is the mystery, that the emotion seems to soar so much higher and dive so much deeper than the notes that evoke it! The best argument for immortality, I think.

Now that I have written so much, I feel