Things near & far
without any distinct consciousness of the impact of your flesh on
these exterior objects: unless, that is, your hand encounter some
unexpected object which insists on notice, such as a pin point or a
rusty nail. But in these strange days of which I am speaking touch
became an exquisite and conscious pleasure; I could not so much as
place my hand on the table before me without experiencing a thrill
of delight which was not merely sensuous, but carried with it,
mysteriously and wonderfully, the message of a secret and interior
joy.
And one more instance. I had always been subject to headaches which
visited me at intervals of five, six or seven weeks, and invariably
lasted for twenty-four hours. The pain was distressing, and any
movement of the head raised it into a racking, throbbing agony; I
should imagine that I suffered from a kind of migraine or megrims.
Late one night during the time of which I am speaking I felt the
first approaches of one of these tiresome attacks. I said to myself:
“I wonder whether I can stop it,” and I placed the tip of the
forefinger of the left hand upon my forehead. I felt the sense as of
a dull shock: and the pain was gone. And though I have had my share
of pains and aches since then, I have never been revisited by that
particular kind of headache from that day to this.
And there was yet another matter. In a little book of mine called
“The Great Return,” which nobody has heard of, I have told how the
Holy Grail came back for a brief while to Britain after long years.
And describing some of the things that were seen and known during
that happy visitation, I have written:
“The ‘glow’ as they call it seems more difficult to explain (than
certain other matters duly related). For they say that all through
the nine days, and indeed after the time had ended, there never was
a man weary or sick at heart in Llantrisant, or in the country round
it. For if a man felt that his work of the body or the mind was going
to be too much for his strength, then there would come to him of a
sudden a warm glow and a thrilling all over him and he felt as strong
as a giant, and happier than he had ever been in his life before, so
that lawyer and hedger each rejoiced in the task that was before him,
as if it were sport and play.”
Thus in the story, and thus it was with me in fact, in that autumn
and winter of 1899–1900. It was with a singular surprise that I
read, in St. Adamnan, many years afterwards, how St. Columba’s
monks, toiling in the fields, experienced now and again the very
sensation--if it be just to speak of it as a sensation--that I have
described. They, too, weary with their work of reclaiming the barren
land of their isle, would know that sudden glow of joy and strength
and courage; and they believed that it was the prayer of their Father
in God, Columba, strengthening them and inspiring them, as he knelt
before the altar of the Perpetual Choir. And lest it be said that
I had read Adamnan when I was a boy and had forgotten all about it
consciously though I had retained it subconsciously, I must solemnly
declare that this was not the case; and that when this strange
experience first befell me, I was overwhelmed with astonishment,
and could scarcely credit that which was actually happening. I
have hesitated as to whether it should be, in strictness, called a
sensation, and I still hesitate. It seems to me, and I think that I
can trust my recollection, that the two worlds of sense and spirit
were admirably and wonderfully mingled, so that it was difficult, or
rather impossible, to distinguish the outward and sensible glow from
the inward and spiritual grace. _Magnum vere sacramentum._ And all
this, be it remembered, would fall out in dim Bloomsbury squares, in
noisy, clattering Gray’s Inn Road, in a train on the Underground,
amongst hustling crowds in common streets. I mention this, not
forgetful of a pretty severe rebuke which I received from a very high
literary quarter on account of that little book, “The Great Return,”
which I have just cited. The critic noted the fact that in my book
the Holy Grail was manifested to the common people, to common modern
people, to Welsh tradesmen and farmers. He seemed to think this very
low. It may be low, but perhaps things happen in this way sometimes;
and so with me: I, by no manner of means a knight, received joys and
knew wonders while the trams clanged along the Clerkenwell Road in
the grey winter afternoon. So it was, and it appears to me necessary
to tell the truth. As Coventry Patmore says, quoting from an earlier
writer: “Let us not deny in the darkness that which we have known in
the light.”
And beyond all this, beyond these experiences in which things of the
body and things of the spirit were mingled, there was a better world
of which I saw the verges. There was no more grief; there was no more
resentment, there was no more anger. The griefs that flood the heart
with agony, the great sorrows of life, these were seen to be but
passing trifles of no moment, like the sorrow of a little child which
is past and forgotten before its tears are dry. I remember tearing up
an old diary which I had kept in the bitter days of Clarendon Road,
a record of struggles and starvings and desolations; I tore it up
because it no longer signified anything to me. The words, I daresay,
were strong enough, but the tale had become of no meaning at all. I
glanced at one page and another of the tattered old notebook before I
rent it, with a kind of mild curiosity as to the state of mind of the
silly stranger who had written all this, and had whined so dismally.
At all events, it had nothing to do with me, and so it went into
fragments and into the fire. If it could be restored to me now, I
should read it all with interest and whine again and foam again _sæva
indignatione_; but then I have long returned into that darkness in
which, I suppose, most of our lives are spent.
* * * * *
There is one thing that I hope I may be spared, that is the comment
of the Oriental Occult Ass. I confess that I have written all this
with difficulty, and with doubt as to the decency of writing it at
all, especially when the tale, if it is to be a true tale, makes
it necessary for me to seem to compare, for one little moment, the
saints of the company and following of St. Columba with myself. But
I do hope that nobody will say: “Why, this is only Ruja-Puja! You
get it all in the first chapter of the Anangasataga Raja! It’s all
perfectly elementary. Little Hindu children learn their A B C out of
it in the Svanka Visatvara. Why, when the Swami Vishnakanandaram Jam
Ghosh was over here last summer he mentioned all these phenomena as
things you have to forget before you set out on the Way. As he put it
so beautifully: ‘The sun arises. It gleams on the Lotus. The petals
of the _bhulji_ flower expand. The stars are no longer seen.’ Yes,
isn’t he wonderful? Fancy anybody still bothering about Keats and
those silly people!”
I hope, I say, that I shall be spared that. I can bear better I think
the (more or less) Occidental Idiot, who will speak of Shin--the
letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, not the delicate portion of our
anatomy--attribute it to the Tarot Trump called the Fool, and just
throw in a reference to Salt, Sulphur and Mercury.
As for me, I make no deductions, I infer nothing, I refrain from
saying “therefore.” Like Sancho Panza: “I come from my own vineyard;
I know nothing.” Perhaps I may venture to say that I have seen a
lousy, lazy tramp drinking from a roadside stream that drips cold and
pure from the rock in burning weather. Then the wastrel passes on his
ill way, refreshed indeed, but as lousy and lazy as ever.
_De torrente in via bibet: propterea exaltabit caput._
_Chapter X_
MR. CHARLES O’MALLEY, Castle O’Malley, Co. Galway.
That was the inscription of a card which had just been placed in my
hand, as I walked along Southampton Row--on which I found myself
stupidly gazing in real old Southampton Row, not the staring, blatant
street that bears the name now--one fine day in the summer of 1900.
Ten minutes or so before I had been taking my morning stroll in the
company of my bulldog, Juggernaut. I was accosted very politely by a
stoutish, youngish, clean-shaven gentleman, well dressed, with the
mere suspicion of an Irish accent.
He had said without preface of any kind:
“A fine dog you’ve got, sir. I should be very glad if you’d come up
with me and show it to a lady I know who lives in the flats opposite.”
I assented at once, feeling thoroughly in the scene, as they say
on the stage. I followed him and we displayed the dog Juggernaut,
certainly a noble specimen of his noble race, to the lady who, I
may say at once, was a lady, and appeared to be on terms of polite
acquaintance with the gentleman. Jug was admired, and the gentleman
and I went down into the street again. The lady had not evinced the
faintest astonishment at the introduction of a total stranger with
a bulldog into her flat. When we were both down on the pavement of
Southampton Row, the amateur of bulldogs gave me his card, and told
me that I should be welcome and more than welcome if ever I found
myself near Castle O’Malley, in County Galway. And so he vanished--if
he ever were there, as to which I held and still hold, in a fantastic
sort of way, vague doubts.
No, the flat was a perfectly quiet and unostentatious one. Nothing to
drink was produced; there were no K.O. drops. The lady did not ask me
to look in again some evening for a quiet game of cards with a few
congenial friends. Mr. O’Malley did not say that he had salvaged a
Spanish galleon wrecked beneath the rocks on which Castle O’Malley
was built, and that in consequence he had more money than he knew
what to do with. And I missed nothing from my pocket. That is one of
the reasons why I hate rationalism, since, when it is called in, in
a little difficulty or perplexity, its advices and explanations are
always so stupid, so wide of the mark, so absolutely futile. Finally,
from that day to this, I have never seen Mr. Charles O’Malley,
of Castle O’Malley, Co. Galway, nor have I heard of him. I have
forgotten to say that he did not so much as ask me my name.
I only wish that I had kept some kind of note of the very strange
period which I had entered. It came about gradually, the merging
of Syon into Bagdad; and I have a much dimmer recollection of the
latter city. For its essence, as will be seen in the anecdote of
the O’Malley, was lack of purpose, a certain fantastic confusion, a
sense that something without any ratio might happen at any moment.
Nothing began, nothing ended: strange people were apt to separate
themselves from the crowd, to engage in queer discourse without
intelligible motive or meaning, and then to sink back again, leaving
no trace behind. And when events lack logical sequence or connection,
it is difficult to retain them in the memory. But I believe that
I do remember that on this very day of the O’Malley incident ten
total strangers addressed me, without any very manifest reason and
to no discernible end. We encountered in all sorts of places, in
the street, in the restaurant, in the vanished Café de l’Europe in
Leicester Square; the strangers uttered their mysterious messages,
which to me were as incomprehensible as if they had been in cipher,
and so vanished away. Indeed, looking back, I begin to wonder whether
I were constantly being mistaken for someone else, who must have been
exactly like me; this Someone Else being evidently a prominent member
of a secret society, who would be aware of the signs and passwords of
the order. For all I know, when Mr. O’Malley praised poor old Jug--he
has long years ago gone to be a gargoyle on the parapet of some great