CHAPTER XVI.
A LONDON LIFE.
The poet's lovely faith creates
The beauty he believes;
The light which on his footsteps waits,
He from himself receives.
His lot may be a weary lot;
His thrall a heavy thrall;
And cares and griefs the crowd know not,
His heart may know them all:
But still he hath a mighty dower,
The loveliness that throws
Over the common thought and hour
The beauty of the rose.
Existence is full of strange contrasts. The wheel of life whirls round, and leaves us scarcely time to know where we are before we find ourselves in a totally different position. The material is always much the same,—pride, vanity, deceit, and selfishness; but it is worked up into very different shapes.
A few weeks ago, Walter Maynard was pensively dreaming away existence to the music of a woodland brook, or in the soft shadows of the falling leaves. He was enjoying the most delicious hour of a poet's life—that consciousness of power which indicates its possession; but a consciousness unembittered by the harsh realities of its after-struggles into actual life. In this one charmed hour is all that afterwards constitutes poetry: at once poetry and its prophecy, it is the Aurora of the mind,
"Fille de la jour,
Qui naquit avant son père."
But he had left the green wood, and the thousand inspirations of the wild flowers, and the shadows that flit athwart the drooping boughs, for scenes whose inspirations were thought, toil, and suffering. The clock of St Mary had just tolled one, and the neighbourhood around was hushed in profound repose. Every window was darkened excepting one; and there a faint light burned steadily. Night after night it burned till it mingled with the chill white light of morning.
There has always been to me something inexpressibly touching in the single taper burning through the long and lonely hours of silence and sleep. It must mark some weary vigil; one, perhaps, by the sick couch, where rests the pale face on which we dread every moment to look our last. How the very heart suspends its beating in the hushed stillness of the sick chamber! what a history of hopes fears, and cares, are in its hours! How does love then feel its utter fondness and its helplessness! How is the more active business of the outward world forgotten in the deep interest of the hushed world in those darkened walls!—a look, a tone, a breath, is there of vital importance. With what tender care the cup is raised to the feverish lip; with what intense anxiety the colour is watched on the wasted cheek! How are the pulses counted on the thin hand, and sometimes in vain!
Again, that lonely taper, how often is it the companion and sign of studies for which the day is too short—studies that steal the gloss from the sunny hair, and the light from the over-taxed eye!
Walter Maynard is bending over a little table, while the rapid pen is slow in putting down the thoughts that crowd upon him. His cheek is flushed with eagerness, and the red lip is curved with triumph. It does not suit the scene around; but from that the mind of the young poet is far, far away. There was that desolate air about the chamber which is peculiar to an ill-furnished London room: cities need luxuries, were it only to conceal the actual. In the country, an open window lets in at once the fair face of heaven: the sunshine has its own cheerfulness; the green bough flings on the floor its pleasant shade; and the spirit sees, at a glance, the field and the hedge where the hawthorn is in bloom. Not so in a town: there smoke enters at the casement; and we look out upon the darkened wall, and the narrow street, where the very atmosphere is dull and coarse. Its gloomy influence is on all.
The room where Walter was seated writing was one that any, who had looked inside for a moment, must have known could only have belonged to a town. The floor was blackened, as were the unpapered walls. The curtains, thin and scanty, had long merged their original red into a dusky brown. Ornaments there were none, for the crooked mirror could scarcely be called such: you started back at your own face, so grim was the shadow thrown over it, so rough was the complexion reflected. The dust had lain on its surface so long that it had become part even of the glass. A fire burned in the grate; but it rather indicated its presence by smoke, which stole forth in occasional puffs, than by its warmth.
The air which the young student breathed was bitter with the vapour that had gradually gathered around him. His hands, small and delicate as a woman's, had long since assumed that dead white which marks extreme cold. Still he wrote on. He was too much engrossed in his own charmed employ not to be insensible for a time to all external influences: he might suffer afterwards, but now his mind was his kingdom. Ever and anon the cheek wore a deeper crimson, and the dark eyes filled with sudden fire, as he felt the idea clothe itself in words tangible to the many, as its bodiless presence had previously been to himself. Solitary, chilled, and weary, yet the young poet hung over his page, on which was life, energy, and beauty; and under such, or similar circumstances, have been written those pages to which the world owes so much. A history of how and where works of imagination have been produced, would be more extraordinary than even the works themselves. Walter Maynard is but a type of his class.
The life of the most successful writer has rarely been other than of toil and privation; and here I cannot but notice a singularly absurd "popular fancy," that genius and industry are incompatible. The one is inherent in the other. A mind so constituted has a restlessness in its powers, which forces them into activity. Take our most emident writers, and how much actual labour must have been bestowed on their glorious offerings at the altar of their country, and their fame! What a godlike thing that fame is! Think what it is to be the solace of a thousand lonely hours—to cheer the weary moments of sickness, to fling a charm around even nature. How many are there to whom, in long after years, your name will come like a note of music, who will love and honour you, because you have awakened within them thoughts and feelings which stir the loftiest dreams and the sweetest pulses of their nature! The poet's life is one of want and suffering, and often of mortification—mortification, too, that comes terribly home; but far be it from me to say, that it has not its own exceeding great reward. It may be late in coming, but the claim on universal sympathy is at last allowed. The future, glorious and calm, brightens over the grave; and then, for the present, the golden world of imagination is around it. Not an emotion of your own beating heart, but it is recorded in music.
Walter Maynard felt neither his poverty nor his seclusion. He was living in the old heroic time; the brave and the beautiful were at his side, while he gave them high words, fitting their high converse. On the heroine of his play he dwelt with the passionate fondness of a lover: there the real mingled with the ideal: could he write of love, and not think of Ethel Churchill? She was the Egeria of his heart, who taught him all the truth of tenderness. If there be poetry in this world, it is in the depths of an unrequited and an imaginative passion—pure, dreaming, sacred from all meaner cares and lower wishes; asking no return, but feeling that life were little to lavish on the beloved one. Often and often did Walter's dark eyes glisten as he poured his whole soul in some strain of tender eloquence, which he knew must touch the heart of woman. "She will read it;" that little phrase—what hope, what happiness, has it not given!
Walter had been spared some of the difficulties attendant on a young writer's first efforts in London, by the kindness of Sir Jasper Meredith, whose letter of introduction to his bookseller had been more efficacious than such things usually are. The fact was, he had written another, repeating his commendations, and saying that he would be responsible for any expenses incurred in bringing any early productions before the public. Of this fact Walter was in complete ignorance, and himself was astonished at his own good fortune, in having his pamphlet and poems so readily received. In the meantime, he shut himself in obscure lodgings, and pursued his labours with the industry that hope gives to a pursuit.