I mUST close this book. Printers are calling for its last pages. It is like seeing an old friend go forth into a new world, and wondering if those who inhabit it will understand him and treat him well. Perhaps no one will read it except the intimate circle—a large one certainly—who have loved Hurstmonceaux, Stoke, and little Holmhurst at different times. But I can never regret having written it, and it has been so great an enjoyment to me, that perhaps others may like it; for I have concealed nothing, and Coleridge says, “I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book. Let him relate the events of his own life with honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.”[597]

Most people will say two volumes would have been enough, but the fact is I have written chiefly for myself and my relations, and not for the general public at all. They may read the book if they like, but it was not intended for them, and, as Walter Scott describes it—

Except that I have seen more varieties of people than some do, I believe there has been nothing unusual in my life. All lives are made up of joys and sorrows with a little calm, neutral ground connecting them; though, from physical reasons perhaps, I think I have enjoyed the pleasures and suffered in the troubles more than most. But from the calm backwater of my present life at Holmhurst, as I overlook the past, the pleasures seem to predominate, and I could cordially answer to any one who asked me “Is life worth living?”—“Yes, to the very dregs.”

Sainte-Beuve says, “Il est donnÉ, de nos jours, À un bien petit nombre, mÊme parmi les plus dÉlicats et ceux qui les apprÉcient le mieux, de recueillir, d’ordonner sa vie selon ses admirations et selon ses goÛts, avec suite, avec noblesse.” And latterly my days have been “avec suite;” “avec noblesse” is what they ought to have been. In my quiet home, of which little has been said in these volumes, days succeed each other unmarked, but on the whole happy, though sometimes very lonely. The whole time passes very quickly, yet it is, as I remember the Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden wrote to my aunt Mrs. Stanley—“In youth the years are long, the moments short, but in age the moments are long, the years short.” Really I have been alone here for thirty years, twelve in which my dearest Lea was still presiding over the lower regions of the house, and eighteen in absolute solitude. It is the winter evenings, after the early twilight has set in, which are the longest. Then there are often no voices but those of the past:—

People say, “It is all your own fault that you are solitary; you ought to have married long ago.” But they know nothing about it; for as long as my mother lived, and for some time after, I had nothing whatever to marry upon, and after that I had very little, and I have been constantly reminded that people of the class in which I have always lived do not like to marry paupers. Besides, the fact is, that except in one impossible case perhaps, very long ago, “I have never loved any one well enough to put myself in a noose for them: it is a noose, you know.”[599] What I have to regret is that I have no very near relations who have in the least my own interests and sympathies, though they are all very kind to me. I have far more in common with many of my younger friends, “the boys,” who cease to be boys after a few years, and many of whom, I am sure, turn to Holmhurst as the haven of their lives. But one feels that there would be this difference between any very congenial near relations and even the kindest friends: the latter are very glad to see one, but would be very sorry to see more of one; whilst the former, if they existed, would take it as a matter of course.

By friends I often feel that I am greatly over-estimated, so many ask my advice, and act upon what I tell them. It is a responsibility, but I feel that I am right in urging what I have always found answer in my own case, and what has greatly added to my happiness. When a wrong, sometimes a very cruel wrong, is done to one, one must not try at once to do some good to those who have done it, because that would be to mortify them; but if one immediately, at once, sets to think of what one can do for somebody else, it takes out the taste. Then one can very soon paste down that unpleasant page of life, as if it had never existed, and all will be as before.

Also, always believe the best of people till the worst is proved, and meditate not on your miseries, but your blessings.

The greatest of all the blessings I have to be grateful for is, that though, since my serious illness six years ago, I have never been entirely without pain, I have, notwithstanding this, good health and a feeling of youth—just the same feeling I had forty years ago. I suppose there will be many who will be surprised to see in these pages how old I am; I am unspeakably surprised at it myself. I have to be perpetually reminding myself of my years, that I am so much nearer the close than the outset of life. I feel so young still, that I can hardly help making plans for quite the far-distant future, schemes of work and of travel, and I hope sometimes of usefulness, which of course can never be realised. I have very good spirits, and I feel that I should be inexcusable if I were not happy when I remember the contrast of my present life to my oppressed boyhood, or to the terrible trial of the time when every thought was occupied by such tangled perplexities as those of the Roman Catholic conspiracy.

My next greatest blessing is my home, so infinitely, so exquisitely suited to my needs, and indeed to all my wishes. As I write this, and look from my window across the tiny terrace with its brilliant flowers to the oakwoods, golden in the autumn sunset, and the blue sea beyond, with the craggy mass of Hastings Castle rising up against it, I feel that there are few places more lovely than Holmhurst. Then the walks in the grounds offer a constant variety of wood and rock, flowers and water, and the distant view changes constantly, and composes into a hundred pictures. And in the little circle of this pleasant home love assuredly reigns supreme. I look upon my servants as my best and truest friends; their rooms, in their way, are as pretty and comfortable as my own, and I believe that they have a real pleasure in serving me. We unite together in looking after our less fortunate friends, who come in batches, for a month each set, to the little Hospice in the grounds. I could not ask my servants to do this, but they are delighted to help me thus, as in everything. When one of our little household community, as has happened four times now, passes, in an honoured and cherished old age, from amongst us, we all mourn together, watch by the deathbed, and follow the flower-laden coffin to the grave.

My local affections are centred in Holmhurst now. Rome, which I was formerly even fonder of, is so utterly changed, it has lost its enchaining power, and, with the places, the familiar faces there have all passed away. I go there every third year, but not for pleasure, only because it is necessary for “Walks in Rome,” the one of my books which pays best.

In the summer I generally have guests at Holmhurst, but even then my mornings are passed in writing, and several twilight hours besides. In the evenings there is generally reading aloud, or there are drawings to be looked at, or if “the boys” are with me there are games. Then the early months of spring are often spent abroad, and the later in London, and in the autumn I have the opportunity of far more visits than I like to pay: so that I have quite sufficient people-seeing to prevent getting rusty, or at any rate to remind me of my utter insignificance in every society except my own. However, Reviews are a perfect antidote to all follies of vainglory. I used to be pained by the most abusive ones, though I generally learnt something from them. Latterly, however, I have been more aware of the indescribable incapacity and indolence of the writers, and have not cared at all. I a little wonder, however, why I have scarcely ever had a favourable Review. My work cannot always have been so terribly bad, or it would not have had so wide a circulation—wider, I think, than has attended any other work of the kind.

How I wish one knew something, anything, of the hereafter to which the Old Testament never alludes, and of which the New Testament tells us nothing satisfactory. Can we really sleep, for millions of years perhaps, or can we live in another hemisphere, or can we linger here near people and places we love, incorporeal, invisible? I believe all the truths of revealed religion, but there is so much that is unrevealed. Oh! if the disciples, during their three years’ opportunity, had only asked our Saviour a few more questions—questions so absolutely essential, to which the answers would have been of such vital importance. For oh! how far more important what our state after death is than all our life’s work, than everything we have done or said or written, or what any one has thought of us. I can truly say with Olga de la Ferronays, “Je crois, j’aime, j’espÈre, je me repens;” but how strangely dim is the clearest sight as to the future. “The awful mysteries of life and nature,” says Whittier, “sometimes almost overwhelm me. What? Where? Whither? These questions sometimes hold me breathless. How little, after all, do we know! And the soul’s anchor of Faith can only grapple fast upon two or three things, and fast and surest of all upon the Fatherhood of God.”[600]

It is astonishing how little good can be derived from all the religious teaching which is the form and order of the day, from the endless monotony of services, from the wearisome sermons, not one of which remains with me from the thousands upon thousands I have been condemned to listen to, some few of them excellent, but most of them a farrago of stilted nonsense. I suppose that there are some types of mind which are benefited by them: I cannot believe that they were good for me. “Oh, stop, do stop; you have talked enough,” my whole heart has generally cried out when I have listened to a preacher—generally a man whom one would never dream of listening to in ordinary conversation for a quarter of an hour. It is a terrible penalty to pay for one’s religion to have weekly to hear it worried and tangled by these incapable and often arrogant beings. What does really remain with me, and raise my mind heavenwards with every thought of it, is the gentle teaching of my sweet mother in my childhood, and the practical lesson of her long life of love to God and man; the austere, unswerving uprightness and justice which was the mainspring of life’s action to the dear old nurse who was spared for forty-eight years to be the blessing of our home, ever one of those who, as Emerson says, “make the earth wholesome;” the remembrance of Hugh Pearson, Lady Waterford, and many other holy ones entered into the Perfect Life, and the certainty whence their peace in life and their calm in death was derived. Whittier again echoes my own thoughts when he says, “I regard Christianity as a life rather than a creed; and in judging my fellow-men, I can use no other standard than that which our Lord and Master has given us, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ The only orthodoxy that I am especially interested in is that of life and practice.”

I know my own great imperfection and unworthiness, and when I turn from myself to others, I cannot judge them. One cannot know all the secret guiding wires of action in them. I think perhaps the secret of any influence I have with boys is, that though I am willing to tell them what I think best as to the future, I never condemn their past; I am not called upon to do so. Southey’s lines come back to me:—

When I look at the dates of births and deaths in our family in the Family Bible, I see that I have already exceeded the age which has been usually allotted to the Hares. Can it be that, while I still feel so young, the evening of life is closing in. Perhaps it may not be so, perhaps long years may still be before me. I hope so; but the lesson should be the same, for “man can do no better than live in eternity’s sunrise.”[602]

“La figure de ce monde passe. Sans la possession de l’ÉternitÉ, sans la vue religieuse de la vie, ces journÉes fugitives ne sont qu’un sujet d’effroi, le bonheur doit Être une priÈre et le malheur aussi. Pense, aime, agis et souffris en Dieu; c’est la grande science.”[603]