Things near & far Chapter 2: Part 2

had been the _petit manoir_ of some dead and forgotten race of little squires; it was of grey stone, of fifteenth-century workmanship, and the corbels supporting the chimney were still sound and clean cut. All about the old broken house were the ruins of the garden, apple trees and plum trees run wild, hedges that had become brakes, a confusion of degenerate flowers; and by the tumbledown stile that led to this deserted place I would linger for an hour or more, wondering and dreaming and setting my heart on the hopeless endeavour of letters. Weather made no difference to my goings; a heavy greatcoat, boots with soles an inch thick, and leather gaiters up to the knee, made a wild wet winter’s day a thing to be defied and enjoyed; and indeed I loved to get abroad on such days and see all the wells of the hills overflowing and rushing down to swell the Soar or the Canthwr, red and foaming, and making whirlpools of barmy froth as they fell into the brooks. And then, when the rain changed to snow, what a delight to stand on some high, lonely place and look out on the wide, white land, and on the hills where the dark pines stood in a ring about some ancient farm: to see the wonder of the icy sunlight, of the violet winter sky. These were my great adventures, and I know not whether in reality there are any greater, since it is a great thing to stand on the very verges of an unknown world. So the winter of ’84–85 went on and I dreamed and wondered and did nothing, though I was nearing the age at which many a young man has produced his first novel with success and acclaim. I never could do these things, and still I cannot do them. I knew that I had no business to be loafing and mooning about the rectory, a burden on my poor father--the “John” of that happy return of the ’fifties had by this time experienced sorrows and pains and miseries of all sorts. My mother had been a hopeless invalid for fifteen years, my father’s health had failed and he had become very deaf, the poor “living” of Llanddewi Fach had grown poorer still through the agricultural smash of 1880, he was in dire and perpetual straits for money, he underwent most of the mortifications which are allotted to the poor. It makes me grieve to this day to remember with what piteous sadness he would lean his head on his hand; he had lost hope; nothing had any savour for him any more. And seeing this, I was distressed to be an additional weight in the heavy pack of sorrows and trials that he bore daily, and I tried to get all sorts of employments for which I was utterly unfit, which would not have harboured me for twenty-four hours. Nothing came of these attempts, and so the time went on till we were in June, 1885. Then there was a letter from the publisher of “The Anatomy of Tobacco” to the effect that he thought he could find me some odd jobs of work if I would come up to London; and so I returned again to the well-remembered cell in Clarendon Road. With mixed feelings. I was glad indeed at the prospect of doing something for myself and so removing a little from the weary burden at the rectory: but, I had not forgotten the _peine forte et dure_; the dry bread, enough and no more than enough, the water from a bitter runnel of a sorrowful street, the heavy weight of perpetual loneliness. “Alone in London” has become a phrase, it is a title associated, I think, with some flaring melodrama; but the reality is a deadly thing. I was only twenty-two; and I shuddered a little one June night when I went out and bade farewell to the brooks and the woods and the flowers; to the scent of the evening air. All sorts of odd jobs and queer jobs awaited me. I was given a big folio book full of cuttings on a particular subject, and the publisher asked me to make a selection from these and so compile a book of oddments. Then, there were novels submitted to him that I was to read and advise upon: a weary business when the said novels were as a rule foolish things written in varieties of straggly and scraggy scripts. But the principal business was the making of the Catalogue. For the publisher of York Street was also a second-hand bookseller. He had a mass of odd literature stored in a garret in Catherine Street, and on these volumes I was let loose; my main business being to write notes under the titles, notes describing the content of the books and setting that content in an alluring manner before the collector. It was as odd a library as any man could desire to see. Occultism in one sense or another was the subject of most of the books. There were the principal and the more obscure treatises on Alchemy, on Astrology, on Magic; old Latin volumes most of them. Here were books about Witchcraft, Diabolical Possession, “Fascination,” or the Evil Eye; here comments on the Kabbala. Ghosts and Apparitions were a large family, Secret Societies of all sorts hung on the skirts of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, and so found a place in the collection. Then the semi-religious, semi-occult, semi-philosophical sects and schools were represented: we dealt in Gnostics and Mithraists, we harboured the Neoplatonists, we conversed with the Quietists and the Swedenborgians. These were the ancients; and beside them were the modern throng of Diviners and Stargazers and Psychometrists and Animal Magnetists and Mesmerists and Spiritualists and Psychic Researchers. In a word, the collection in the Catherine Street garret represented thoroughly enough that inclination of the human mind which may be a survival from the rites of the black swamp and the cave--or an anticipation of a wisdom and knowledge that are to come, transcending all the science of our day. Which? It seems to me a vast question, and I am sure it is utterly insoluble. Of course, an enormous mass of occultism, ancient and modern, may be brushed aside at once without the labour of any curious investigation. Madame Blavatsky, for example, her coadjutors and assessors and successors need not detain us. I do not mean that every pronouncement of Theosophy is false or fraudulent. A liar is not to be defined as a man who never by any chance speaks the truth. A thief occasionally comes honestly by what he has. I mean that the specific doctrines and circumstances of Theosophy: the Mahatma stories, the saucers that fell from the ceiling, the vases that were found mysteriously reposing in empty cupboards, the Messiahship of a gentleman whose name I choose to forget: all this is rubbish, not worth a moment’s consideration. And so with Spiritualism; though in a less degree. For I am strongly inclined to believe that very odd things do sometimes happen amongst those who “sit,” that some queer--and probably undesirable--psychic region is entered; and all this quite beyond and beside the intention or understanding of those present at the séance. You never know what may happen when a small boy pokes his fingers carelessly among the wheels and works of a clock. But as to the profession of the Spiritualists; that they are able to communicate with ghosts, _that_ need not trouble us. Their photographs of fairies need not trouble us. Their revelations as to the life of the world to come as given through the Rev. Vale Owen need not trouble us. Though here is a “phenomenon” which seems to me of no little interest. How can a man who is confessedly perfectly honest and straightforward conjure himself into the belief that when he takes up a pencil an intelligence apart from himself guides his hand as he writes? I suppose the answer involves the doctrine of dual or multiple personality; and _that_ is mysterious enough in all conscience. Yet, apart from all the nonsense, apart from the state of mind of the average Spiritualist--one of them, a very eminent one in his day, said that the clause of the Creed: “I look for the Resurrection of the Dead” meant “I expect to see some physical manifestations of the departed”--apart from all this I still think as I have said that very strange and inexplicable things do sometimes happen. Here is nothing to do with ghosts: but the evidence that the famous medium Home rose into the air, floated out of an open window high on a Scottish castle tower and floated in again at another open window: the evidence here is good; that is, if levitation, as they call it, were a criminal offence and Home had been put on his trial he would have been convicted. It will be seen that I am not exactly a fanatical Spiritualist: but I had rather be of the straightest sect of Rappers and Banjo Wielders than of that company which understands all the whole frame and scheme of the universe so thoroughly and completely that it is absolutely certain that levitation is impossible, that a man cannot rise into the air unless he is mechanically and materially impelled and supported, that no evidence, however direct and unimpeachable, can establish this for a fact. I do not understand the universe; consequently I do not dare to advance any such proposition. And further; let me diminish a little a proposition that I have only just dared to make. I have said that all the ghost business, all the Vale Owen sort of business, is rubbish and foolery. Well, I believe most heartily and profoundly that it _is_ rubbish, nonsense, unveridical to the last degree; in fact, and in the proper sense of the word, a lie. Yet; let us beware. Not one of us understands the universe. Even in the Higher Mathematics, the Queen of profane sciences, very odd things are reported to happen. So, possibly, the following account may really correspond with the truth of things. The room is in total darkness. One of the sitters proclaims with exultation that his nose has been tweaked by _Joey_, who, on this side, was a clown. _John King_, understood to have been a master-mariner, sings “Tom Bowling” in a falsetto voice through a speaking trumpet. On this, Cardinal Newman, known to be a lover of music, is gratified and utters the word “Benedictine.” There is a sudden scream of joy in a female voice: “Oh! darling Katy, thank you, thank you, _thank you_! Oh, _please_, may we have the lights turned up