The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

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THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF HENRY RYECROFT


PREFACE


The name of Henry Ryecroft never became familiar to what is called the
reading public. A year ago obituary paragraphs in the literary papers
gave such account of him as was thought needful: the date and place of
his birth, the names of certain books he had written, an allusion to his
work in the periodicals, the manner of his death. At the time it
sufficed. Even those few who knew the man, and in a measure understood
him, must have felt that his name called for no further celebration; like
other mortals, he had lived and laboured; like other mortals, he had
entered into his rest. To me, however, fell the duty of examining
Ryecroft's papers; and having, in the exercise of my discretion, decided
to print this little volume, I feel that it requires a word or two of
biographical complement, just so much personal detail as may point the
significance of the self-revelation here made.

When first I knew him, Ryecroft had reached his fortieth year; for twenty
years he had lived by the pen. He was a struggling man, beset by poverty
and other circumstances very unpropitious to mental work. Many forms of
literature had he tried; in none had he been conspicuously successful;
yet now and then he had managed to earn a little more money than his
actual needs demanded, and thus was enabled to see something of foreign
countries. Naturally a man of independent and rather scornful outlook,
he had suffered much from defeated ambition, from disillusions of many
kinds, from subjection to grim necessity; the result of it, at the time
of which I am speaking, was, certainly not a broken spirit, but a mind
and temper so sternly disciplined, that, in ordinary intercourse with
him, one did not know but that he led a calm, contented life. Only after
several years of friendship was I able to form a just idea of what the
man had gone through, or of his actual existence. Little by little
Ryecroft had subdued himself to a modestly industrious routine. He did a
great deal of mere hack-work; he reviewed, he translated, he wrote
articles; at long intervals a volume appeared under his name. There were
times, I have no doubt, when bitterness took hold upon him; not seldom he
suffered in health, and probably as much from moral as from physical over-
strain; but, on the whole, he earned his living very much as other men
do, taking the day's toil as a matter of course, and rarely grumbling
over it.

Time went on; things happened; but Ryecroft was still laborious and poor.
In moments of depression he spoke of his declining energies, and
evidently suffered under a haunting fear of the future. The thought of
dependence had always been intolerable to him; perhaps the only boast I
at any time heard from his lips was that he had never incurred debt. It
was a bitter thought that, after so long and hard a struggle with
unkindly circumstance, he might end his life as one of the defeated.

A happier lot was in store for him. At the age of fifty, just when his
health had begun to fail and his energies to show abatement, Ryecroft had
the rare good fortune to find himself suddenly released from toil, and to
enter upon a period of such tranquillity of mind and condition as he had
never dared to hope. On the death of an acquaintance, more his friend
than he imagined, the wayworn man of letters learnt with astonishment
that there was bequeathed to him a life annuity of three hundred pounds.
Having only himself to support (he had been a widower for several years,
and his daughter, an only child, was married), Ryecroft saw in this
income something more than a competency. In a few weeks he quitted the
London suburb where of late he had been living, and, turning to the part
of England which he loved best, he presently established himself in a
cottage near Exeter, where, with a rustic housekeeper to look after him,
he was soon thoroughly at home. Now and then some friend went down into
Devon to see him; those who had that pleasure will not forget the plain
little house amid its half-wild garden, the cosy book-room with its fine
view across the valley of the Exe to Haldon, the host's cordial, gleeful
hospitality, rambles with him in lanes and meadows, long talks amid the
stillness of the rural night. We hoped it would all last for many a
year; it seemed, indeed, as though Ryecroft had only need of rest and
calm to become a hale man. But already, though he did not know it, he
was suffering from a disease of the heart, which cut short his life after
little more than a lustrum of quiet contentment. It had always been his
wish to die suddenly; he dreaded the thought of illness, chiefly because
of the trouble it gave to others. On a summer evening, after a long walk
in very hot weather, he lay down upon the sofa in his study, and there--as
his calm face declared--passed from slumber into the great silence.

When he left London, Ryecroft bade farewell to authorship. He told me
that he hoped never to write another line for publication. But, among
the papers which I looked through after his death, I came upon three
manuscript books which at first glance seemed to be a diary; a date on
the opening page of one of them showed that it had been begun not very
long after the writer's settling in Devon. When I had read a little in
these pages, I saw that they were no mere record of day-to-day life;
evidently finding himself unable to forego altogether the use of the pen,
the veteran had set down, as humour bade him, a thought, a reminiscence,
a bit of reverie, a description of his state of mind, and so on, dating
such passage merely with the month in which it was written. Sitting in
the room where I had often been his companion, I turned page after page,
and at moments it was as though my friend's voice sounded to me once
more. I saw his worn visage, grave or smiling; recalled his familiar
pose or gesture. But in this written gossip he revealed himself more
intimately than in our conversation of the days gone by. Ryecroft had
never erred by lack of reticence; as was natural in a sensitive man who
had suffered much, he inclined to gentle acquiescence, shrank from
argument, from self-assertion. Here he spoke to me without restraint,
and, when I had read it all through, I knew the man better than before.

Assuredly, this writing was not intended for the public, and yet, in many
a passage, I seemed to perceive the literary purpose--something more than
the turn of phrase, and so on, which results from long habit of
composition. Certain of his reminiscences, in particular, Ryecroft could
hardly have troubled to write down had he not, however vaguely,
entertained the thought of putting them to some use. I suspect that, in
his happy leisure, there grew upon him a desire to write one more book, a
book which should be written merely for his own satisfaction. Plainly,
it would have been the best he had it in him to do. But he seems never
to have attempted the arrangement of these fragmentary pieces, and
probably because he could not decide upon the form they should take. I
imagine him shrinking from the thought of a first-person volume; he would
feel it too pretentious; he would bid himself wait for the day of riper
wisdom. And so the pen fell from his hand.

Conjecturing thus, I wondered whether the irregular diary might not have
wider interest than at first appeared. To me, its personal appeal was
very strong; might it not be possible to cull from it the substance of a
small volume which, at least for its sincerity's sake, would not be
without value for those who read, not with the eye alone, but with the
mind? I turned the pages again. Here was a man who, having his desire,
and that a very modest one, not only felt satisfied, but enjoyed great
happiness. He talked of many different things, saying exactly what he
thought; he spoke of himself, and told the truth as far as mortal can
tell it. It seemed to me that the thing had human interest. I decided
to print.

The question of arrangement had to be considered; I did not like to offer
a mere incondite miscellany. To supply each of the disconnected passages
with a title, or even to group them under subject headings, would have
interfered with the spontaneity which, above all, I wished to preserve.
In reading through the matter I had selected, it struck me how often the
aspects of nature were referred to, and how suitable many of the
reflections were to the month with which they were dated. Ryecroft, I
knew, had ever been much influenced by the mood of the sky, and by the
procession of the year. So I hit upon the thought of dividing the little
book into four chapters, named after the seasons. Like all
classifications, it is imperfect, but 'twill serve.

G. G.




SPRING


I.


For more than a week my pen has lain untouched. I have written nothing
for seven whole days, not even a letter. Except during one or two bouts
of illness, such a thing never happened in my life before. In my life;
the life, that is, which had to be supported by anxious toil; the life
which was not lived for living's sake, as all life should be, but under
the goad of fear. The earning of money should be a means to an end; for
more than thirty years--I began to support myself at sixteen--I had to
regard it as the end itself.

I could imagine that my old penholder feels reproachfully towards me. Has
it not served me well? Why do I, in my happiness, let it lie there
neglected, gathering dust? The same penholder that has lain against my
forefinger day after day, for--how many years? Twenty, at least; I
remember buying it at a shop in Tottenham Court Road. By the same token
I bought that day a paper-weight, which cost me a whole shilling--an
extravagance which made me tremble. The penholder shone with its new
varnish, now it is plain brown wood from end to end. On my forefinger it
has made a callosity.

Old companion, yet old enemy! How many a time have I taken it up,
loathing the necessity, heavy in head and heart, my hand shaking, my eyes
sick-dazzled! How I dreaded the white page I had to foul with ink! Above
all, on days such as this, when the blue eyes of Spring laughed from
between rosy clouds, when the sunlight shimmered upon my table and made
me long, long all but to madness, for the scent of the flowering earth,
for the green of hillside larches, for the singing of the skylark above
the downs. There was a time--it seems further away than childhood--when
I took up my pen with eagerness; if my hand trembled it was with hope.
But a hope that fooled me, for never a page of my writing deserved to
live. I can say that now without bitterness. It was youthful error, and
only the force of circumstance prolonged it. The world has done me no
injustice; thank Heaven I have grown wise enough not to rail at it for
this! And why should any man who writes, even if he write things
immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish?
Who promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? If my
shoemaker turn me out an excellent pair of boots, and I, in some mood of
cantankerous unreason, throw them back upon his hands, the man has just
cause of complaint. But your poem, your novel, who bargained with you
for it? If it is honest journeywork, yet lacks purchasers, at most you
may call yourself a hapless tradesman. If it come from on high, with
what decency do you fret and fume because it is not paid for in heavy
cash? For the work of man's mind there is one test, and one alone, the
judgment of generations yet unborn. If you have written a great book,
the world to come will know of it. But you don't care for posthumous
glory. You want to enjoy fame in a comfortable armchair. Ah, that is
quite another thing. Have the courage of your desire. Admit yourself a
merchant, and protest to gods and men that the merchandise you offer is
of better quality than much which sells for a high price. You may be
right, and indeed it is hard upon you that Fashion does not turn to your
stall.



II.


The exquisite quiet of this room! I have been sitting in utter idleness,
watching the sky, viewing the shape of golden sunlight upon the carpet,
which changes as the minutes pass, letting my eye wander from one framed
print to another, and along the ranks of my beloved books. Within the
house nothing stirs. In the garden I can hear singing of birds, I can
hear the rustle of their wings. And thus, if it please me, I may sit all
day long, and into the profounder quiet of the night.

My house is perfect. By great good fortune I have found a housekeeper no
less to my mind, a low-voiced, light-footed woman of discreet age, strong
and deft enough to render me all the service I require, and not afraid of
solitude. She rises very early. By my breakfast-time there remains
little to be done under the roof save dressing of meals. Very rarely do
I hear even a clink of crockery; never the closing of a door or window.
Oh, blessed silence!

There is not the remotest possibility of any one's calling upon me, and
that I should call upon any one else is a thing undreamt of. I owe a
letter to a friend; perhaps I shall write it before bedtime; perhaps I
shall leave it till to-morrow morning. A letter of friendship should
never be written save when the spirit prompts. I have not yet looked at
the newspaper. Generally I leave it till I come back tired from my walk;
it amuses me then to see what the noisy world is doing, what new self-
torments men have discovered, what new forms of vain toil, what new
occasions of peril and of strife. I grudge to give the first freshness
of the morning mind to things so sad and foolish.

My house is perfect. Just large enough to allow the grace of order in
domestic circumstance; just that superfluity of intramural space, to lack
which is to be less than at one's ease. The fabric is sound; the work in
wood and plaster tells of a more leisurely and a more honest age than
ours. The stairs do not creak under my step; I am waylaid by no unkindly
draught; I can open or close a window without muscle-ache. As to such
trifles as the tint and device of wall-paper, I confess my indifference;
be the walls only unobtrusive, and I am satisfied. The first thing in
one's home is comfort; let beauty of detail be added if one has the
means, the patience, the eye.

To me, this little book-room is beautiful, and chiefly because it is
home. Through the greater part of life I was homeless. Many places have
I inhabited, some which my soul loathed, and some which pleased me well;
but never till now with that sense of security which makes a home. At
any moment I might have been driven forth by evil hap, by nagging
necessity. For all that time did I say within myself: Some day,
perchance, I shall have a home; yet the "perchance" had more and more of
emphasis as life went on, and at the moment when fate was secretly
smiling on me, I had all but abandoned hope. I have my home at last.
When I place a new volume on my shelves, I say: Stand there whilst I have
eyes to see you; and a joyous tremor thrills me. This house is mine on a
lease of a score of years. So long I certainly shall not live; but, if I
did, even so long should I have the wherewithal to pay my rent and buy my
food.

I think with compassion of the unhappy mortals for whom no such sun will
ever rise. I should like to add to the Litany a new petition: "For all
inhabitants of great towns, and especially for all such as dwell in
lodgings, boarding-houses, flats, or any other sordid substitute for Home
which need or foolishness may have contrived."

In vain I have pondered the Stoic virtues. I know that it is folly to
fret about the spot of one's abode on this little earth.

All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to the wise man ports and happy havens.

But I have always worshipped wisdom afar off. In the sonorous period of
the philosopher, in the golden measure of the poet, I find it of all
things lovely. To its possession I shall never attain. What will it
serve me to pretend a virtue of which I am incapable? To me the place
and manner of my abode is of supreme import; let it be confessed, and
there an end of it. I am no cosmopolite. Were I to think that I should
die away from England, the thought would be dreadful to me. And in
England, this is the dwelling of my choice; this is my home.



III.


I am no botanist, but I have long found pleasure in herb-gathering. I
love to come upon a plant which is unknown to me, to identify it with the
help of my book, to greet it by name when next it shines beside my path.
If the plant be rare, its discovery gives me joy. Nature, the great
Artist, makes her common flowers in the common view; no word in human
language can express the marvel and the loveliness even of what we call
the vulgarest weed, but these are fashioned under the gaze of every
passer-by. The rare flower is shaped apart, in places secret, in the
Artist's subtler mood; to find it is to enjoy the sense of admission to a
holier precinct. Even in my gladness I am awed.

To-day I have walked far, and at the end of my walk I found the little
white-flowered wood-ruff. It grew in a copse of young ash. When I had
looked long at the flower, I delighted myself with the grace of the slim
trees about it--their shining smoothness, their olive hue. Hard by stood
a bush of wych elm; its tettered bark, overlined as if with the character
of some unknown tongue, made the young ashes yet more beautiful.

It matters not how long I wander. There is no task to bring me back; no
one will be vexed or uneasy, linger I ever so late. Spring is shining
upon these lanes and meadows; I feel as if I must follow every winding
track that opens by my way. Spring has restored to me something of the
long-forgotten vigour of youth; I walk without weariness; I sing to
myself like a boy, and the song is one I knew in boyhood.

That reminds me of an incident. Near a hamlet, in a lonely spot by a
woodside, I came upon a little lad of perhaps ten years old, who, his
head hidden in his arms against a tree trunk, was crying bitterly. I
asked him what was the matter, and, after a little trouble--he was better
than a mere bumpkin--I learnt that, having been sent with sixpence to pay
a debt, he had lost the money. The poor little fellow was in a state of
mind which in a grave man would be called the anguish of despair; he must
have been crying for a long time; every muscle in his face quivered as if
under torture, his limbs shook; his eyes, his voice, uttered such misery
as only the vilest criminal should be made to suffer. And it was because
he had lost sixpence!

I could have shed tears with him--tears of pity and of rage at all this
spectacle implied. On a day of indescribable glory, when earth and
heaven shed benedictions upon the soul of man, a child, whose nature
would have bidden him rejoice as only childhood may, wept his heart out
because his hand had dropped a sixpenny piece! The loss was a very
serious one, and he knew it; he was less afraid to face his parents, than
overcome by misery at the thought of the harm he had done them. Sixpence
dropped by the wayside, and a whole family made wretched! What are the
due descriptive terms for a state of "civilization" in which such a thing
as this is possible?

I put my hand into my pocket, and wrought sixpennyworth of miracle.

It took me half an hour to recover my quiet mind. After all, it is as
idle to rage against man's fatuity as to hope that he will ever be less a
fool. For me, the great thing was my sixpenny miracle. Why, I have
known the day when it would have been beyond my power altogether, or else
would have cost me a meal. Wherefore, let me again be glad and thankful.



IV.


There was a time in my life when, if I had suddenly been set in the
position I now enjoy, conscience would have lain in ambush for me. What!
An income sufficient to support three or four working-class families--a
house all to myself--things beautiful wherever I turn--and absolutely
nothing to do for it all! I should have been hard put to it to defend
myself. In those days I was feelingly reminded, hour by hour, with what
a struggle the obscure multitudes manage to keep alive. Nobody knows
better than I do _quam parvo liceat producere vitam_. I have hungered in
the streets; I have laid my head in the poorest shelter; I know what it
is to feel the heart burn with wrath and envy of "the privileged
classes." Yes, but all that time I was one of "the privileged" myself,
and now I can accept a recognized standing among them without shadow of
self-reproach.

It does not mean that my larger sympathies are blunted. By going to
certain places, looking upon certain scenes, I could most effectually
destroy all the calm that life has brought me. If I hold apart and
purposely refuse to look that way, it is because I believe that the world
is better, not worse, for having one more inhabitant who lives as becomes
a civilized being. Let him whose soul prompts him to assail the iniquity
of things, cry and spare not; let him who has the vocation go forth and
combat. In me it would be to err from Nature's guidance. I know, if I
know anything, that I am made for the life of tranquillity and
meditation. I know that only thus can such virtue as I possess find
scope. More than half a century of existence has taught me that most of
the wrong and folly which darken earth is due to those who cannot possess
their souls in quiet; that most of the good which saves mankind from
destruction comes of life that is led in thoughtful stillness. Every day
the world grows noisier; I, for one, will have no part in that increasing
clamour, and, were it only by my silence, I confer a boon on all.

How well would the revenues of a country be expended, if, by mere
pensioning, one-fifth of its population could be induced to live as I do!



V.


"Sir," said Johnson, "all the arguments which are brought to represent
poverty as no evil, show it to be evidently a great evil. You never find
people labouring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a
plentiful fortune."

He knew what he was talking of, that rugged old master of common sense.
Poverty is of course a relative thing; the term has reference, above all,
to one's standing as an intellectual being. If I am to believe the
newspapers, there are title-bearing men and women in England who, had
they an assured income of five-and-twenty, shillings per week, would have
no right to call themselves poor, for their intellectual needs are those
of a stable-boy or scullery wench. Give me the same income and I can
live, but I am poor indeed.

You tell me that money cannot buy the things most precious. Your
commonplace proves that you have never known the lack of it. When I
think of all the sorrow and the barrenness that has been wrought in my
life by want of a few more pounds per annum than I was able to earn, I
stand aghast at money's significance. What kindly joys have I lost,
those simple forms of happiness to which every heart has claim, because
of poverty! Meetings with those I loved made impossible year after year;
sadness, misunderstanding, nay, cruel alienation, arising from inability
to do the things I wished, and which I might have done had a little money
helped me; endless instances of homely pleasure and contentment curtailed
or forbidden by narrow means. I have lost friends merely through the
constraints of my position; friends I might have made have remained
strangers to me; solitude of the bitter kind, the solitude which is
enforced at times when mind or heart longs for companionship, often
cursed my life solely because I was poor. I think it would scarce be an
exaggeration to say that there is no moral good which has not to be paid
for in coin of the realm.

"Poverty," said Johnson again, "is so great an evil, and pregnant with so
much temptation, so much misery, that I cannot but earnestly enjoin you
to avoid it."

For my own part, I needed no injunction to that effort of avoidance. Many
a London garret knows how I struggled with the unwelcome chamber-fellow.
I marvel she did not abide with me to the end; it is a sort of
inconsequence in Nature, and sometimes makes me vaguely uneasy through
nights of broken sleep.



VI.


How many more springs can I hope to see? A sanguine temper would say ten
or twelve; let me dare to hope humbly for five or six. That is a great
many. Five or six spring-times, welcomed joyously, lovingly watched from
the first celandine to the budding of the rose; who shall dare to call it
a stinted boon? Five or six times the miracle of earth reclad, the
vision of splendour and loveliness which tongue has never yet described,
set before my gazing. To think of it is to fear that I ask too much.



VII.


"Homo animal querulum cupide suis incumbens miseriis." I wonder where
that comes from. I found it once in Charron, quoted without reference,
and it has often been in my mind--a dreary truth, well worded. At least,
it was a truth for me during many a long year. Life, I fancy, would very
often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion; in cases
numberless, this it must be that saves from suicide. For some there is
great relief in talking about their miseries, but such gossips lack the
profound solace of misery nursed in silent brooding. Happily, the trick
with me has never been retrospective; indeed, it was never, even with
regard to instant suffering, a habit so deeply rooted as to become a
mastering vice. I knew my own weakness when I yielded to it; I despised
myself when it brought me comfort; I could laugh scornfully, even "cupide
meis incumbens miseriis." And now, thanks be to the unknown power which
rules us, my past has buried its dead. More than that; I can accept with
sober cheerfulness the necessity of all I lived through. So it was to
be; so it was. For this did Nature shape me; with what purpose, I shall
never know; but, in the sequence of things eternal, this was my place.