i
the materials for the history of an odd episode in ambrose meyrick’s life are to be found in a sort of collection he made under the title “concerning gaiety.” the episode in question dates from about the middle of his eighteenth year.
“i do not know”— he says —“how it all happened. i had been leading two eager lives. on the outside i was playing games and going up in the school with a rush, and in the inside i was being gathered more and more into the sanctuaries of immortal things. all life was transfigured for me into a radiant glory, into a quickening and catholic sacrament; and, the fooleries of the school apart, i had more and more the sense that i was a participant in a splendid and significant ritual. i think i was beginning to be a little impatient with the outward signs: i think i had a feeling that it was a pity that one had to drink wine out of a cup, a pity that kernels seemed to imply shells. i wanted, in my heart, to know nothing but the wine itself flowing gloriously from vague, invisible fountains, to know the things ‘that really are’ in their naked beauty, without their various and elaborate draperies. i doubt whether ruskin understood the motive of the monk who walked amidst the mountains with his eyes cast down lest he might see the depths and heights about him. ruskin calls this a narrow asceticism; perhaps it was rather the result of a very subtle aestheticism. the monk’s inner vision might be fixed with such rapture on certain invisible heights and depths, that he feared lest the sight of their visible counterparts might disturb his ecstasy. it is probable, i think, that there is a point where the ascetic principle and the aesthetic become one and the same. the indian fakir who distorts his limbs and lies on spikes is at the one extreme, the men of the italian renaissance were at the other. in each case the true line is distorted and awry, for neither system attains either sanctity or beauty in the highest. the fakir dwells in surfaces, and the renaissance artist dwelt in surfaces; in neither case is there the inexpressible radiance of the invisible world shining through the surfaces. a cup of cellini’s work is no doubt very lovely; but it is not beautiful in the same way as the old celtic cups are beautiful.
“i think i was in some danger of going wrong at the time i am talking about. i was altogether too impatient of surfaces. heaven forbid the notion that i was ever in danger of being in any sense of the word a protestant; but perhaps i was rather inclined to the fundamental heresy on which protestantism builds its objection to what is called ritual. i suppose this heresy is really manichee; it is a charge of corruption and evil made against the visible universe, which is affirmed to be not ‘very good,’ but ‘very bad’— or, at all events, too bad to be used as the vehicle of spiritual truth. it is extraordinary by the way, that the thinking protestant does not perceive that this principle damns all creeds and all bibles and all teaching quite as effectually as it damns candles and chasubles — unless, indeed, the protestant thinks that the logical understanding is a competent vehicle of eternal truth, and that god can be properly and adequately defined and explained in human speech. if he thinks that, he is an ass. incense, vestments, candles, all ceremonies, processions, rites — all these things are miserably inadequate; but they do not abound in the horrible pitfalls, misapprehensions, errors which are inseparable from speech of men used as an expression of the church. in a savage dance there may be a vast deal more of the truth than in many of the hymns in our hymn-books.
“after all, as martinez said, we must even be content with what we have, whether it be censers or syllogisms, or both. the way of the censer is certainly the safer, as i have said; i suppose because the ruin of the external universe is not nearly so deep nor so virulent as the ruin of men. a flower, a piece of gold, no doubt approach their archetypes — what they were meant to be — much more nearly than man does; hence their appeal is purer than the speech or the reasoning of men.
“but in those days at lupton my head was full of certain sentences which i had lit upon somewhere or other — i believe they must have been translations from some eastern book. i knew about a dozen of these maxims; all i can remember now are:
“if you desire to be inebriated: abstain from wine.”
“if you desire beauty: look not on beautiful things.”
“if you desire to see: let your eyes be blindfolded.”
“if you desire love: refrain from the beloved.”
“i expect the paradox of these sayings pleased me. one must allow that if one has the inborn appetite of the somewhat subtle, of the truth not too crudely and barely expressed, there is no such atmosphere as that of a public school for sharpening this appetite to an edge of ravening, indiscriminate hunger. think of our friend the colonel, who is by way of being a fin gourmet; imagine him fixed in a boarding-house where the meals are a repeating cycle of irish stew, boiled rabbit, cold mutton and salt cod (without oyster or any other sause)! then let him out and place him in the café anglais. with what a fierce relish would he set tooth into curious and sought-out dishes! it must be remembered that i listened every sunday in every term to one of the doctor’s sermons, and it is really not strange that i gave an eager ear to the voice of persian wisdom— as i think the book was called. at any rate, i kept nelly foran at a distance for nine or ten months, and when i saw a splendid sunset i averted my eyes. i longed for a love purely spiritual, for a sunset of vision.
“i caught glimpses, too, i think, of a much more profound askesis than this. i suppose you have the askesis in its simplest, most rationalised form in the case of bill the engine-driver — i forget in what great work of theologia moralis i found the instance; perhaps bill was really quidam in the original, and his occupation stated as that of nauarchus. at all events, bill is fond of four-ale; but he had perceived that two pots of this beverage consumed before a professional journey tended to make him rather sleepy, rather less alert, than he might be in the execution of his very responsible duties. hence bill, considering this, wisely contents himself with one pot before mounting on his cab. he has deprived himself of a sensible good in order that an equally sensible but greater good may be secured — in order that he and the passengers may run no risks on the journey. next to this simple asceticism comes, i suppose, the ordinary discipline of the church — the abandonment of sensible goods to secure spiritual ends, the turning away from the type to the prototype, from the sight of the eyes to the vision of the soul. for in the true asceticism, whatever its degree, there is always action to a certain end, to a perceived good. does the self-tormenting fakir act from this motive? i don’t know; but if he does not, his discipline is not asceticism at all, but folly, and impious folly, too. if he mortifies himself merely for the sake of mortifying himself; then he defiles and blasphemes the temple. this in parenthesis.
“but, as i say, i had a very dim and distant glimpse of another region of the askesis. mystics will understand me when i say that there are moments when the dark night of the soul is seen to be brighter than her brightest day; there are moments when it is necessary to drive away even the angels that there may be place for the highest. one may ascend into regions so remote from the common concerns of life that it becomes difficult to procure the help of analogy, even in the terms and processes of the arts. but suppose a painter — i need not say that i mean an artist — who is visited by an idea so wonderful, so super-exalted in its beauty that he recognises his impotence; he knows that no pigments and no technique can do anything but grossly parody his vision. well, he will show his greatness by not attempting to paint that vision: he will write on a bare canvass vidit anima sed non pinxit manus. and i am sure that there are many romances which have never been written. it was a highly paradoxical, even a dangerous philosophy that affirmed god to be rather non–ens than ens; but there are moods in which one appreciates the thought.
“i think i caught, as i say, a distant vision of that night which excels the day in its splendour. it began with the eyes turned away from the sunset, with lips that refused kisses. then there came a command to the heart to cease from longing for the dear land of gwent, to cease from that aching desire that had never died for so many years for the sight of the old land and those hills and woods of most sweet and anguished memory. i remember once, when i was a great lout of sixteen, i went to see the lupton fair. i always liked the great booths and caravans and merry-go-rounds, all a blaze of barbaric green and red and gold, flaming and glowing in the middle of the trampled, sodden field against a background of lupton and wet, grey autumn sky. there were country folk then who wore smock-frocks and looked like men in them, too. one saw scores of these brave fellows at the fair: dull, good jutes with flaxen hair that was almost white, and with broad pink faces. i liked to see them in the white robe and the curious embroidery; they were a note of wholesomeness, an embassage from the old english village life to our filthy ‘industrial centre.’ it was odd to see how they stared about them; they wondered, i think, at the beastliness of the place, and yet, poor fellows, they felt bound to admire the evidence of so much money. yes, they were of old england; they savoured of the long, bending, broad village street, the gable ends, the grave fronts of old mellow bricks, the thatched roofs here and there, the bulging window of the ‘village shop,’ the old church in decorous, somewhat dull perpendicular among the elms, and, above all, the old tavern — that excellent abode of honest mirth and honest beer, relic of the time when there were men, and men who lived. lupton is very far removed from hardy’s land, and yet as i think of these country-folk in their smock-frocks all the essence of hardy is distilled for me; i see the village street all white in snow, a light gleaming very rarely from an upper window, and presently, amid ringing bells, one hears the carol-singers begin:
‘remember adam’s fall,
o thou man.’
“and i love to look at the whirl of the merry-go-rounds, at the people sitting with grave enjoyment on those absurd horses as they circle round and round till one’s eyes were dazed. drums beat and thundered, strange horns blew raucous calls from all quarters, and the mechanical music to which those horses revolved belched and blazed and rattled out its everlasting monotony, checked now and again by the shriek of the steam whistle, groaning into silence for a while: then the tune clanged out once more, and the horses whirled round and round.
“but on this fair day of which i am speaking i left the booths and the golden, gleaming merry-go-rounds for the next field, where horses were excited to brief madness and short energy. i had scarcely taken up my stand when a man close by me raised his voice to a genial shout as he saw a friend a little way off. and he spoke with the beloved accent of gwent, with those tones that come to me more ravishing, more enchanting than all the music in the world. i had not heard them for years of weary exile! just a phrase or two of common greeting in those chanting accents: the fair passed away, was whirled into nothingness, its shouting voices, the charging of horses, drum and trumpet, clanging, metallic music — it rushed down into the abyss. there was the silence that follows a great peal of thunder; it was early morning and i was standing in a well-remembered valley, beside the blossoming thorn bush, looking far away to the wooded hills that kept the east, above the course of the shining river. i was, i say, a great lout of sixteen, but the tears flooded my eyes, my heart swelled with its longing.
“now, it seemed, i was to quell such thoughts as these, to desire no more the fervent sunlight on the mountain, or the sweet scent of the dusk about the runnings of the brook. i had been very fond of ‘going for walks’— walks of the imagination. i was afraid, i suppose, that unless by constant meditation i renewed the shape of the old land in my mind, its image might become a blurred and fading picture; i should forget little by little the ways of those deep, winding lanes that took courses that were almost subterranean over hill and vale, by woodside and waterside, narrow, cavernous, leaf-vaulted; cool in the greatest heats of summer. and the wandering paths that crossed the fields, that led one down into places hidden and remote, into still depths where no one save myself ever seemed to enter, that sometimes ended with a certain solemnity at a broken stile in a hedgerow grown into a thicket — within a plum tree returning to the savage life of the wood, a forest, perhaps, of blue lupins, and a great wild rose about the ruined walls of a house — all these ways i must keep in mind as if they were mysteries and great secrets, as indeed they were. so i strolled in memory through the pageant of gwent: ‘lest i should forget the region of the flowers, lest i should become unmindful of the wells and the floods.’
“but the time came, as i say, when it was represented to me that all this was an indulgence which, for a season at least, must be pretermitted. with an effort i voided my soul of memory and desire and weeping; when the idols of doomed twyn–barlwm, and great mynydd maen, and the silver esses of the usk appeared before me, i cast them out; i would not meditate white caerleon shining across the river. i endured, i think, the severest pains. de quincey, that admirable artist, that searcher into secrets and master of mysteries, has described my pains for me under the figure of the opium eater breaking the bonds of his vice. how often, when the abominations of lupton, its sham energies, its sham morals, its sham enthusiasms, all its battalia of cant surged and beat upon me, have i been sorely tempted to yield, to suffer no more the press of folly, but to steal away by a secret path i knew, to dwell in a secure valley where the foolish could never trouble me. sometimes i ‘fell,’ as i drank deep then of the magic well-water, and went astray in the green dells and avenues of the wildwood. still i struggled to refrain my heart from these things, to keep my spirit under the severe discipline of abstention; and with a constant effort i succeeded more and more.
“but there was a yet deeper depth in this process of catharsis. i have said that sometimes one must expel the angels that god may have room; and now the strict ordinance was given that i should sever myself from that great dream of celtic sanctity that for me had always been the dream, the innermost shrine in which i could take refuge, the house of sovran medicaments where all the wounds of soul and body were healed. one does not wish to be harsh; we must admit, i suppose, that moderate, sensible anglicanism must have something in it — since the absolute sham cannot very well continue to exist. let us say, then, that it is highly favourable to a respectable and moral life, that it encourages a temperate and well-regulated spirit of devotion. it was certainly a very excellent and (according to her lights) devout woman who, in her version of the anima christi altered ‘inebriate me’ to ‘purify me,’ and it was a good cleric who hated the vulgate reading, calix meus inebrians. my father had always instructed me that we must conform outwardly, and bear with dearly beloved brethren; while we celebrated in our hearts the ancient mass of the britons, and waited for cadwaladr to return. i reverenced his teaching, i still reverence it, and agree that we must conform; but in my heart i have always doubted whether moderate anglicanism be christianity in any sense, whether it even deserves to be called a religion at all. i do not doubt, of course, that many truly religious people have professed it: i speak of the system, and of the atmosphere which emanates from it. and when the public school ethos is added to this — well, the resultant teaching comes pretty much to the dogma that heaven and the head are strict allies. one must not degenerate into ecclesiastical controversy; i merely want to say that i never dreamed of looking for religion in our chapel services. no doubt the te deum was still the te deum, but the noblest of hymns is degraded, obscured, defiled, made ridiculous, if you marry it to a tune that would disgrace a penny gaff. personally, i think that the airs on the piano-organs are much more reverend compositions than anglican chants, and i am sure that many popular hymn tunes are vastly inferior in solemnity to ’e dunno where ‘e are.
“no; the religion that led me and drew me and compelled me was that wonderful and doubtful mythos of the celtic church. it was the study — nay, more than the study, the enthusiasm — of my father’s life; and as i was literally baptized with water from a holy well, so spiritually the great legend of the saints and their amazing lives had tinged all my dearest aspirations, had become to me the glowing vestment of the great mystery. one may sometimes be deeply interested in the matter of a tale while one is wearied or sickened by the manner of it; one may have to embrace the bright divinity on the horrid lips of the serpent of cos. or, on the other hand, the manner — the style — may be admirable, and the matter a mere nothing but a ground for the embroidery. but for me the celtic mythos was the perfect thing, the king’s daughter: omnis gloria ejus fili? regis ab, intus, in fimbriis aureis circumamicta varietatibus. i have learned much more of this great mystery since those days — i have seen, that is, how entirely, how absolutely my boyhood’s faith was justified; but even then with but little knowledge i was rapt at the thought of this marvellous knight-errantry, of this christianity which was not a moral code, with some sort of metaphorical heaven held out as a reward for its due observance, but a great mystical adventure into the unknown sanctity. imagine a bishop of the established church getting into a boat without oar or sails! imagine him, if you can, doing anything remotely analagous to such an action. conceive the late archbishop tait going apart into the chapel at lambeth for three days and three nights; then you may well conceive the people in the opposite bank being dazzled with the blinding supernatural light poured forth from the chapel windows. of course, the end of the celtic church was ruin and confusion — but don quixote failed and fell, while sancho panza lived a fat, prosperous peasant. he inherited, i think, a considerable sum from the knight, and was, no doubt, a good deal looked up to in the village.
“yes; the celtic church was the company of the great errantry, of the great mystery, and, though all the history of it seems but a dim and shadowy splendour, its burning rose-red lamp yet glows for a few, and from my earliest childhood i was indoctrinated in the great rite of cor-arbennic. when i was still very young i had been humoured with the sight of a wonderful relic of the saints — never shall i forget that experience of the holy magic of sanctity. every little wood, every rock and fountain, and every running stream of gwent were hallowed for me by some mystical and entrancing legend, and the thought of this high spiritual city and its blessed congregation could, in a moment, exercise and drive forth from me all the ugly and foolish and gibbering spectres that made up the life of that ugly and foolish place where i was imprisoned.
“now, with a sorrowful farewell, i bade good-bye for a brief time (as i hoped it would be) to this golden legend; my heart was emptied of its treasures and its curious shows, and the lights on the altars were put out, and the images were strictly veiled. hushed was the chanting in the sovereign and perpetual choir, hidden were the high hallows of the saints, no more did i follow them to their cells in the wild hills, no more did i look from the rocks in the west and see them set forth for avalon. alas!
“a great silence seemed to fall upon me, the silence of the depths beneath the earth. and with the silence there was darkness. only in a hidden place there was reserved the one taper — the light of conformity, of a perfect submission, that from the very excess of sorrow and deprivation drew its secret but quintessential joy. i am reminded, now that i look back upon this great purgation of the soul, of the story that i once read of the arabic alchemist. he came to the caliph haroun with a strange and extravagant proposal. haroun sat in all his splendour, his viziers, his chamberlains, his great officers about him, in his golden court which displayed all the wonders and superfluities of the east. he gave judgment; the wicked were punished, the virtuous were rewarded; god’s name was exalted, the prophet was venerated. there came before the commander of the faithful a poor old man in the poor and ragged robes of a wandering poet; he was oppressed by the weight of his years, and his entrance was like the entrance of misery. so wretched was his appearance that one of the chamberlains, who was well acquainted with the poets, could not help quoting the well-known verses:
“‘between the main and a drop of rain the difference seen is nothing great.
the sun so bright and the taper’s light are alike and one save in pomp and state.
in the grain of sand and in all the land what may ye arraign as disparate?
a crust of bread and a king’s board spread will hunger’s lust alike abate.
with the smallest blade or with host arrayed the ruler may quench his gall and hate.
a stone in a box and a quarry of rocks may be shown to be of an equal freight.
with a sentence bold or with gold untold the lover may hold or capture his mate.
the king and the bard may alike be debarred from the fold of the lord compassionate.’”
“the commander of the faithful praised god, the merciful, the compassionate, the king of the day of judgment, and caused the chamberlain to be handsomely rewarded. he then enquired of the old man for what reason he came before him, and the beggar (as, indeed, he seemed) informed the caliph that he had for many years prosecuted his studies in magic, alchemy, astrology and geomancy and all other curious and surprising arts, in spain, grand cairo, the land of the moors, india, china, in various cities of the infidels; in fact, in every quarter of the world where magicians were to be found. in proof of his proficiency he produced a little box which he carried about him for the purpose of his geomantic operations and asked anyone who was willing to stand forth, that he might hear his whole life, past, present and future. the caliph ordered one of his officers to submit himself to this ordeal, and the beggar having made the points in the sand, and having erected the figure according to the rules of the geomantic art, immediately informed the officer of all the most hidden transactions in which he had been engaged, including several matters which this officer thought had been secrets locked in his own breast. he also foretold his death in a year’s time from a certain herb, and so it fell out, for he was strangled with a hempen cord by order of the caliph. in the meantime, the commander of the faithful and all about him were astonished, and the beggar magician was ordered to proceed with his story. he spoke at great length, and everyone remarked the elegance and propriety of his diction, which was wanting in no refinement of classical eloquence. but the sum of his speech was this — that he had discovered the greatest wonder of the whole world, the name of which he declared was asrar, and by this talisman he said that the caliph might make himself more renowned than all the kings that had ever reigned on the earth, not excepting king solomon, the son of david. this was the method of the operation which the beggar proposed. the commander of the faithful was to gather together all the wealth of his entire kingdom, omitting nothing that could possibly be discovered; and while this was being done the magician said that he would construct a furnace of peculiar shape in which all these splendours and magnificences and treasures of the world must be consumed in a certain fire of art, prepared with wisdom. and at last, he continued, after the operation had endured many days, the fire being all the while most curiously governed, there would remain but one drop no larger than a pearl, but glorious as the sun to the moon and all the starry heavens and the wonders of the compassionate; and with this drop the caliph haroun might heal all the sorrows of the universe. both the commander of the faithful and all his viziers and officers were stupefied by this proposal, and most of the assemblage considered the beggar to be a madman. the caliph, however, asked him to return the next day in order that his plans might receive more mature consideration.
“the beggar prostrated himself and went forth from the hall of audience, but he returned no more, nor could it be discovered that he had been seen again by anyone.
“‘but one drop no larger than a pearl,’ and ‘where there is nothing there is all.’ i have often thought of those sentences in looking back on that time when, as chesson said, i was one of those ‘light-hearted and yet sturdy and reliable young fellows to whose hands the honour and safety of england might one day be committed.’ i cast all the treasures i possessed into the alembic; again and again they were rectified by the heat of the fire ‘most curiously governed’; i saw the ‘engendering of the crow’ black as pitch, the flight of the dove with silver wings, and at last sol rose red and glorious, and i fell down and gave thanks to heaven for this most wonderful gift, the ‘sun blessed of the fire.’ i had dispossessed myself of all, and i found that i possessed all; i had thrown away all the money in my purse, and i was richer than i had ever been; i had died, and i had found a new life in the land of the living.
“it is curious that i should now have to explain the pertinency of all that i have written to the title of this note — concerning gaiety. it should not be necessary. the chain of thought is almost painfully obvious. but i am afraid it is necessary.
“well: i once read an interesting article in the daily paper. it was written apropos of some shakespearean celebrations or other, and its purport was that modern england was ever so much happier than medi?val or elizabethian england. it is possible that an acute logician might find something to say on this thesis; but my interest lay in the following passages, which i quote:
“‘merrie england,’ with its maypoles and its whitsun ales, and its shrove-tide jousts and junketings is dead for us, from the religious point of view. the england that has survived is, after all, a greater england still. it is puritan england. . . . the spirit has gone. surely it is useless to revive the form. wherefore should the may queen be “holy, wise, and fair,” if not to symbolise the virgin mary? and as for shrove-tide, too, what point in jollity without a fast to follow?’
“the article is not over-illuminating, but i think the writer had caught a glimpse of the truth that there is a deep relation between mirth and sanctity; that no real mirth is possible without the apprehension of the mysteries as its antecedent. the fast and the feast are complementary terms. he is right; there is no point in jollity unless there is a fast or something of the nature of a fast to follow — though, of course, there is nothing to hinder the most advanced thinker from drinking as much fusel-oil and raw russian spirit as he likes. but the result of this course is not real mirth or jollity; it is perhaps more essentially dismal than a ‘tea’ amongst the protestant dissenters. and, on the other hand, true gaiety is only possible to those who have fasted; and now perhaps it will be seen that i have been describing the preparations for a light-hearted festival.
“the cloud passed away from me, the restrictions and inhibitions were suddenly removed, and i woke up one morning in dancing, bubbling spirits, every drop of blood in my body racing with new life, my nerves tingling and thrilling with energy. i laughed as i awoke; i was conscious that i was to engage in a strange and fantastic adventure, though i had not the remotest notion of what it was to be.”
