Robert Elsmere
eighteenth centuries, the literary cream, in fact, of all the vast
collection which filled the muniment room upstairs; books which had
belonged to Addison, to Sir William Temple, to Swift, to Horace Walpole;
the first four folios of Shakespeare, all perfect, and most of the
quartos--everything that the heart of the English collector could most
desire was there. And the charm of it was that only a small proportion
of these precious things represented conscious and deliberate
acquisition. The great majority of them had, as it were, drifted thither
one by one, carried there by the tide of English letters as to a warm
and natural resting-place.
But Robert grew impatient, and hurried on his guest to other things--to
the shelves of French rarities, ranging from Du Bellay's _Visions_, with
his autograph, down to the copy of _Les Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_
presented by Chateaubriand to Madame Recamier, or to a dainty manuscript
volume in the fine writing of Lamartine.
'These,' Robert explained, 'were collected, I believe, by the squire's
father. He was not in the least literary, so they say, but it had always
been a point of honour to carry on the library, and as he had learnt
French well in his youth he bought French things, taking advice, but
without knowing much about them, I imagine. It was in the room
overhead,' said Robert, laying down the book he held, and speaking in a
lower key, 'so the old doctor of the house told me a few weeks ago, that
the same poor soul put an end to himself twenty years ago.'
'What in the name of fortune did he do that for?'
'Mania,' said Robert quietly.
'Whew!' said the other, lifting his eyebrows. 'Is that the skeleton in
this very magnificent cupboard?'
'It has been the Wendover scourge from the beginning, so I hear. Every
one about here of course explains this man's eccentricities by the
family history. But I don't know,' said Robert, his lip hardening, 'it
may be extremely convenient sometimes to have a tradition of the kind. A
man who knew how to work it might very well enjoy all the advantages of
sanity and the privileges of insanity at the same time. The poor old
doctor I was telling you of--old Meyrick--who has known the squire since
his boyhood, and has a dog-like attachment to him, is always hinting at
mysterious excuses. Whenever I let out to him, as I do sometimes, as to
the state of the property, he talks of "inherited melancholy," "rash
judgments," and so forth. I like the good old soul, but I don't believe
much of it. A man who is sane enough to make a great name for himself in
letters is sane enough to provide his estate with a decent agent.'
'It doesn't follow,' said Langham, who was, however, so deep in a
collection of Spanish romances and chronicles that the squire's mental
history did not seem to make much impression upon him. 'Most men of
letters are mad and I should be inclined,' he added, with a sudden and
fretful emphasis, 'to argue much worse things for the sanity of your
squire, Elsmere, from the fact that this room is undoubtedly allowed to
get damp sometimes, than from any of those absurd parochial tests of
yours.'
And he held up a couple of priceless books, of which the Spanish
sheepskin bindings showed traces here and there of moisture.
'It is no use, I know, expecting you to preserve a moral sense when you
get among books,' said Robert with a shrug. 'I will reserve my remarks
on that subject. But you must really tear yourself away from this room,
Langham, if you want to see the rest of the squire's quarters. Here you
have what we may call the ornamental sensational part of the library,
that part of it which would make a stir at Sotheby's; the working parts
are all to come.'
Langham reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged away. Robert held back
the hangings over the doorway leading into the rest of the wing, and,
passing through, they found themselves in a continuation of the library
totally different in character from the magnificent room they had just
left. The walls were no longer latticed and carved; they were closely
packed, in the most business-like way, with books which represented the
squire's own collection, and were in fact a chart of his own
intellectual history.
'This is how I interpret this room,' said Robert, looking round it.
'Here are the books he collected at Oxford in the Tractarian Movement
and afterwards. Look here,' and he pulled out a volume of St. Basil.
Langham looked, and saw on the title-page a note in faded characters:
'_Given to me by Newman at Oxford, in 1845_.'
'Ah, of course, he was one of them in '45; he must have left them very
soon after,' said Langham reflectively.
Robert nodded. 'But look at them! There are the Tracts, all the Fathers,
all the Councils, and masses, as you see, of Anglican theology. Now look
at the next case, nothing but eighteenth century!'
'I see,--from the Fathers to the Philosophers, from Hooker to Hume. How
history repeats itself in the individual!'
'And there again,' said Robert, pointing to the other side of the room,
'are the results of his life as a German student.'
'Germany--ah, I remember! How long was he there?'
'Ten years, at Berlin and Heidelberg. According to old Meyrick, he
buried his last chance of living like other men at Berlin. His years of
extravagant labour there have left marks upon him physically that can
never be effaced. But that bookcase fascinates me. Half the great names
of modern thought are in those books.'
And so they were. The first Langham opened had a Latin dedication in a
quavering old man's hand, 'Amico et discipulo meo,' signed 'Fredericus
Gulielmus Schelling.' The next bore the autograph of Alexander von
Humboldt, the next that of Boeckh, the famous classic, and so on. Close
by was Niebuhr's History, in the title-page of which a few lines in the
historian's handwriting bore witness to much 'pleasant discourse between
the writer and Roger Wendover, at Bonn, in the summer of 1847.' Judging
from other shelves farther down, he must also have spent some time,
perhaps an academic year, at Tuebingen, for here were most of the early
editions of the _Leben Jesu_, with some corrections from Strauss's hand,
and similar records of Baur, Ewald, and other members or opponents of
the Tuebingen school. And so on, through the whole bookcase. Something of
everything was there--Philosophy, Theology, History, Philology. The
collection was a medley, and made almost a spot of disorder in the
exquisite neatness and system of the vast gathering of which it formed
part. Its bond of union was simply that it represented the forces of an
epoch, the thoughts, the men, the occupations which had absorbed the
energies of ten golden years. Every book seemed to be full of paper
marks; almost every title-page was covered with minute writing, which,
when examined, proved to contain a record of lectures, or conversations
with the author of the volume, sometimes a string of anecdotes or a
short biography, rapidly sketched out of the fulness of personal
knowledge, and often seasoned with a subtle causticity and wit. A
history of modern thinking Germany, of that 'unextinguished hearth'
whence the mind of Europe has been kindled for three generations, might
almost have been evolved from that bookcase and its contents alone.
Langham, as he stood peering among the ugly, vilely-printed German
volumes, felt suddenly a kind of magnetic influence creeping over him.
The room seemed instinct with a harsh commanding presence. The history
of a mind and soul was written upon the face of it; every shelf, as it
were, was an autobiographical fragment, an 'Apologia pro Vita Mea.' He
drew away from the books at last with the uneasy feeling of one who
surprises a confidence, and looked for Robert. Robert was at the end of
the room, a couple of volumes under his arm, another, which he was
reading, in his hand.
'This is _my_ corner,' he said, smiling and flushing a little, as his
friend moved up to him. 'Perhaps you don't know that I too am engaged
upon a great work.'
'A great work--you?'
Langham looked at his companion as though to find out whether his remark
was meant seriously or whether he might venture to be cynical. Elsmere
writing! Why should everybody write books? It was absurd! The scholar
who knows what toll scholarship takes of life is always apt to resent
the intrusion of the man of action into his domains. It looks to him
like a kind of ridiculous assumption that any one _d'un coeur leger_
can do what has cost him his heart's blood.
Robert understood something of the meaning of his tone, and replied
almost apologetically; he was always singularly modest about himself on
the intellectual side.
'Well, Grey is responsible. He gave me such a homily before I left
Oxford on the absolute necessity of keeping up with books, that I could
do nothing less than set up a "subject" at once. "Half the day," he used
to say to me, "you will be king of your world; the other half be the
slave of something which will take you out of your world into the
general world;" and then he would quote to me that saying he was always
bringing into lectures--I forget whose it is--"_The decisive events of
the world take place in the intellect._ It is the mission of books that
they help one to remember it." Altogether it was striking, coming from
one who has always had such a tremendous respect for practical life and
work, and I was much impressed by it. So blame him!'
Langham was silent. Elsmere had noticed that any allusion to Grey found
Langham less and less responsive.
'Well, what is the "great work"?' he said at last, abruptly.
'Historical. Oh, I should have written something without Grey; I have
always had a turn for it since I was a child. But he was clear that
history was especially valuable--especially necessary to a clergyman. I
felt he was right, entirely right. So I took my Final Schools' history
for a basis, and started on the Empire, especially the decay of the
Empire. Some day I mean to take up one of the episodes in the great
birth of Europe--the makings of France, I think, most likely. It seems
to lead farthest and tell most. I have been at work now nine months.'
'And are just getting into it?'
'Just about. I have got down below the surface, and am beginning to feel
the joys of digging;' and Robert threw back his head with one of his
most brilliant enthusiastic smiles. 'I have been shy about boring you
with the thing, but the fact is, I am very keen indeed; and this library
has been a godsend!'
'So I should think.' Langham sat down on one of the carved wooden stools
placed at intervals along the bookcases and looked at his friend, his
psychological curiosity rising a little.
'Tell me,' he said presently--'tell me what interests you
specially--what seizes you--in a subject like the making of France, for
instance?'
'Do you really want to know?' said Robert, incredulously.
The other nodded. Robert left his place, and began to walk up and down,
trying to answer Langham's question, and at the same time to fix in
speech a number of sentiments and impressions bred in him by the work of
the past few months. After a while Langham began to see his way.
Evidently the forces at the bottom of this new historical interest were
precisely the same forces at work in Elsmere's parish plans, in his
sermons, in his dealings with the poor and the young--forces of
imagination and sympathy. What was enchaining him to this new study was
not, to begin with, that patient love of ingenious accumulation which is
the learned temper proper, the temper, in short, of science. It was
simply a passionate sense of the human problems which underlie all the
dry and dusty detail of history and give it tone and colour, a