I BROUGHT myself up on Carlyle and found him the dearest, gentlest, bravest, noblest man. The Life by Froude was dearer to me than the Gospel of St Matthew, or Hamlet, or Macbeth, and that is saying much if the reader only knew me. Carlyle was so near that I saw him in dreams and spoke with him in words that were true, unquestionably. In the vision world of my dream he behaved exactly as he would have done in real life, I am sure of it. He was flesh and blood to me. Yet he died and was buried before I was born. How strange! This man who died three years before I was born was a friend closer to me than a lover, one to whom I longed to say caressing words, one whom I longed to embrace and fondle—to kiss even.
He made me work, the dear, irascible, eloquent old 4sage. I worked at his bidding and set myself impossible tasks—impossible! I became a puritan, serious, intolerant and heroic; and in moments of rapture, conscious of the silence of the stars and the graves, I would sing to the night the marching song:
“Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity’s stillness,
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you,
Work and despair not.”
Carlyle was a true friend to me, he was not content that he only should be my friend, I had to become the friend of his friends. Now, I am one of the Great Society of his friends. I belong to the fellowship of those that have seen The City. The Great Society has among its members many children and many jolly tramps. Has the reader ever been introduced personally to the Great Ones long since dead? I think these literary men the great Friends of Mankind. They allow themselves to be known and cherished—different from military heroes or scientists or explorers. One would as soon love a waxwork as Napoleon. Yet even the despised and rejected of the literary world are warm and smiling friends to their readers. I, for my part, adored Ruskin and Browning as a young girl in love with a new history mistress. I obeyed Ruskin, bought his works in purple calf and looked up the long words in the dictionary. Then Rabbi Ben Ezra entered into 5me so that I spoke with tongues. I learned the poem by heart and recited it to sunsets. I ask myself now how I reconciled “Work and despair not” with
“Not on the vulgar mass,
Called work must sentence pass.”
But of course both sentences are true; one is for one nature, the other for another; I think I must have really belonged to the second category, for have I not become a tramp!
I never felt so humanly close to Ruskin as to Carlyle. He had a way of stating the truth. He liked to perch on his truths and crow. No, I revered him, but decidedly didn’t like him. Browning made friends with me. Then came Ibsen; and both Browning and Ibsen confirmed me in the heroism of achieving impossible tasks. Has the reader seen the “Master Builder,” the man who did the impossible twice? “It’s—fearfully thrilling.” In these days I spouted: “Life is like the compound eye of the fly. It is full of lives. Momentarily we died, momentarily are born again. The old self dies, the new is born; the old life gives way to the new. The selfish man wishes to remain as he is; in his life are fewer lives, fewer changes. But the hero wishes to fulfil every promise written in his being. He dies gladly in each moment to arise the next moment more glorious, nearer to perfection. Oh, my friend, pay for the new life with all the old. The life that thou 6hast, was given thee for paying away so that thou mightest obtain something better.”
In myself I believed these words. I worked and read. I worked and threw myself at the impossible. What Swinburne wrote is true:
“A joy to the heart of a man
Is a goal that he may not reach.”
I wrote lectures in which my style was so infected by the rhetoric of the sage that listeners grumbled that they could not tell when I was quoting and when I was using my own language. That was their defect; they should have known Carlyle better! One lecture I specially remember. It was given to some Essex folk. It related to Hero-worship. All the artillery of Carlyle was in play. It was a subject supremely Carlylean. Work, I praised, and heroic valour. But my message was: “In each of you there is a Hero, let him out; in each man there is a Hero, see one there,” which is not what Carlyle meant when he said: “Recognise the Hero when you see him and obey.” This was, perhaps, a first divergency. Carlyle was looking for a means to govern a nation wisely. I was moving towards my tramp destiny.
That was in the year of the Russian Revolution and I had been learning Russian very sedulously for some time. A literary ambition had possession of me. I had said to myself—one must specialise to get on in the 7world of literature. Carlyle specialised German. German things did not interest me. I had long since learned to enjoy Turgeniev and Gorky and Gogol in English translations, and Russia had become to me the most interesting country in Europe. I determined to specialise on Russia.
Yes, and when, according to the newspapers, the bombs were flying thick and fast, I took a return ticket for Moscow and went out. For luggage I took a camera and a small hand-bag. The tramp has the soberest conscience about luggage. He feels he can always do without. But, of course, I wasn’t a tramp then. I may remark in passing that I lost none of that luggage and had no trouble whatever with it. Few travellers manage their first trip to Russia without vexatious misadventures. On one occasion, however, when I was taking a snap-shot of a prison, a soldier rushed up to me in terror and rage. He thought my Kodak was a bomb.
What an excitement this journey was! I had never even been abroad before. Now I went through Holland and across the whole of Germany and into Poland. Two days after I had left England I was in Russia. I arrived at Warsaw on the day the Governor was shot. I saw at once there were more soldiers than people in the streets. I took a droshky to a hotel, put down my things and strolled out to see the city. I was arrested at once. Fifty yards down Marzalkovsky, the Piccadilly of Warsaw, a soldier stopped me, searched me and 8handed me over to an officer and six armed guards. I was put in the middle and marched off; on each side of me a soldier held a drawn sword and was ready to slash at me if I should attempt to bolt. I am sure the angels wept. Internally I collapsed with laughter and at the same time I felt very rich. I was having an experience.