Present without leave

Cresswell, Walter D'Arcy, Cassell, London, England, 1939

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PDF ISBN: 978-0-908332-06-9

The original publication details are as follows:

Title: Present without leave

Author: Cresswell, Walter D'Arcy

Published: Cassell, London, England, 1939

STORM JAMESON CIVIL JOURNEY

There is no keener critic than Storm Jameson of books, of people, of—herself. The vigour of her novels and the deep insight she has into human character and motives have constituted her an undisputed arbiter in literary and social questions. It is therefore an event of importance when she gives us, as in Civil Journey, some account of the intellectual and mental progress of her life.

In a series of essays written at different times she deals with literature in ‘The Decline of Fiction’, ‘Novels and Novelists’, ‘The Craft of the Novelist’, ‘The Novel in Contemporary Life’ and treats of social questions in essays ‘ On Patriotism’, ‘Culture and Environment’, ‘The Defence of Freedom’, ‘The Twilight of Reason’ and ‘Technique for Living’. Other essays are on more general lines, and the book concludes with a most interesting ‘Fragment of an (Unwritten) Autobiography’.

Is. 6 d. net

PRESENT WITHOUT LEAVE

By the same Author

The Poet’s Progress, I

Poems (1921-27)

Poems (1924- 1931)

Lyttelton Harbour

PRESENT WITHOUT LEAVE

by D’ARCY CRESSWELL

CASSELL and Company Limited London Toronto Melbourne and Sydney

First published igjg

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

BY EBENEZER BAYLIS AND SON, LTD., 1 HR

TRINITY PRESS, WORCESTER, AND LONDON

F.fejq

For Ormond Wilson

Dear Ormie,

No need to say why I do my book this honour, and all that. But it can do you no honour, as the youngest Member of our first Labour Parliament, and a keen Socialist, to be associated with a work that so belittles our country and its prospects.

All those beginning chapters were written before your Party took control of New Zealand, and before my arrival in England again showed me, by comparison, how honest and determined your Party’s efforts for the people of New Z ea l an d ore. Here in England one finds again the same two million unemployed, the same rent strikes in Stepney, the same puppet Government and facade of good works, the same buffer Departments between rich and poor, the same charming sympathetic people who want nothing changed, the same polish and cleverness and fun on the face of things, the same fake poets, kind critics and funk-hole publicists; all that one found so agreeable or annoying seven years before. Allowing for their far greater problems, I don’t believe the people in control here mean business; while your Party does. Here they mean business only when their safety’s at slake. Now they’re getting to work. But it’s not for the poor and despairing, it’s for themselves.

It’s to you I owe this comparison, and the new self-esteem it gives me to be a New Z ea l an dor, although I don’t believe in your Socialism, your machines, science and Copernican universe in the least. But I see you are honest within that framework in which you believe; and while it endures I wish you well although it's my job to smash it to bits if I can.

Yours ever.

D’A

London, 1939.

I. In New Zealand a great many natural fires and volcanoes exist, whereby much of the country is hot; and many rivers and lakes are heated and give off a great steam. Beside these are others which issue from snow and ice, being mortally cold, and proceeding through forests of exceeding darkness and depth from the mountains whence they descend. Likewise by now many things are extinct; while others, whether beasts or insects or plants, have scarcely begun there. So that all there is by contrast. The people themselves are of two kinds, brown and white. The former are dying away and losing what they possessed, while the latter have taken all and are greatly increased. Among these are many but lately arrived, while others have known and heard tell of no other place. Moreover, with them the Feast of the Resurrection takes place in autumn; and this is the strangest confusion they have, a proceeding from which their sombre and savage landscape holds darkly aloof. However, there is no public, and almost no ‘private’, religion among them, so what otherwise would be an absurdity is of no account.

11. Their chief industry is farming, which they pursue with attention, and send their produce so far, a great many are needed to deal with shipping, accounting, land-dealing and legal and money matters to handle so vast an outpouring of goods. From this necessity their

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cities arose, which are mainly governed by clerks, who so throve on this trade they soon had the whole country under their control, and administered everything, and multiplied every office, until now nothing and no one is free from their interference. There is no other land in the World, it is said, so burdened and plagued, nor clerks and officials so overbearing and saucy.

111. They have everywhere great natural qualities, such as honesty, courage, endurance, and an exquisite simplicity; for in business they cheat and defraud one another quite openly, and as it were honestly; wherefore their men are distinguished, but not their women, who lack art and complexity the more they assume them. In whatever they do they are quick, but rarely efficient; for they like less to be doing than to have done. Above all things they have the habit of seriousness and belief in themselves, and prefer to be wrong than to change their beliefs. In political and social affairs this often results in a foolish exaggeration, as many intemperate laws and their savage administration attest. Towards vagrancy and any sexual and, as they think, inept versatility they are narrow and jealous and unspeakably cruel in their laws, like their race everywhere; neither relaxing those laws which torment a minority nor (and this is peculiar to themselves) minding the imposition of those which the majority disobey as they please. So that their notion of what is wrong and what is merely unlawful is determined by the numbers of those who may be concerned, and whether they break the law openly, as the many may safely do, or secretly, as the few are compelled. In this their feeble condition is made plain, that in appearing to love freedom they love only

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lawlessness, and have no objection to laws being passed which they don’t mean to keep. No doubt their manner of settlement first divided the theory from the practice of law, and allowed both the few to make laws and the many to break them. For in the backwoods a law indicated a state of emergency, and so was agreed on; of which the officials and cranks took every advantage; and in this way laws are passed which men agree to in theory but not at first in practice, as touching themselves. So a law that was passed in an emergency, or unnoticed, becomes in the end a fixed item of government, to be disregarded and laughed at if against the many, but held to be binding if against the few. And of this favourable state of affairs those take advantage who are forever scheming to introduce their peculiar views. For it is characteristic of prudish and sectarian law-givers that they had rather their laws were passed than obeyed, dreaded than revered. Yet the making of true laws belongs alone to the highest statesmanship; as consider the great regard posterity has for Lycurgus and Solon, who gave Sparta and Athens their laws; while lately Napoleon drew up theirs for the French. And in each case these were a system of laws. Yet a new system of laws were less cause of suspicion than a single new law, and the passing of even one law, as something touching the stature and features of a people themselves, adding to or taking therefrom, were a matter of which it merits a people be vain. Yet do we remember the authors of laws and hold them accountable, to reward them or punish? And having a certain number of laws, if any are found of no use we replace them, as if these were commodities, and a man might die of one law the less. Yet this should be equally worthy: to repeal bad laws, to pass no laws, and to pass good laws.

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IV. So much for laws in general. I have already said how the New Zealanders in particular suffer from theirs. There are almost no beggars nor fortune-tellers nor mysterious persons among them, but almost all are alike in their habits and views (in respect of those matters which are made open, that is) and they persecute fiercely those who are different. For notwithstanding that about vagrancy, they are even more rank in their hunt after disloyalty, as they term any chafing against the general opinion; and as if their state of being were perfect, they throw into gaol any who urge their fellows to alter this state for another; not to break laws, but to preach or write or boycott, to declare, define or denounce, in short to strongly object, or however to go against the many. There is no regard for free-speech among them, nor have they any talent for justice; yet they pride themselves on being British in all they do and uphold, while those two matters which mainly distinguish the British from all other peoples they neglect and forget. To disagree or to challenge, whether directly or indirectly, they regard as a sign of moral evil in whomsoever shall venture to do so, and the writing or speaking upon it merely a symptom and aggravation thereof; so the main vice and rottenness is entirely hid. Here may be seen on what they rely, for here come their clerks and officials and their clergy to be a necessity, to smell it and root it out from the land. So now, what they had no answer to at the first, it needs no answer from decent men. Truly a man needs be dainty to do well amongst them. You might suppose the sea never cast up a stink on their coasts.

V. They do everything by cheapness, and rejoice in what they obtain for nothing. In their common or, as

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they term them, their public schools their teachers are mainly women, since these are cheap to employ. Or else they think that women are more apt to teach since these are more apt to be taught. These teachers themselves attend classes wherein they are taught how to teach, and those who teach them must themselves at some time have been taught how to teach those how to teach; but where I know not. For no more is known of where this matter begins than of where it shall end. But this teaching by rote they reverence above all else.

VI. They have no political talent, but a great desire to be governed, lest they be thought savages. Even so they desire to be artists and poets; yet there are almost none among them; while such as they have they entirely neglect. Their statues and monuments are among the worst to be found; yet so unenlightened they are they have no means of knowing this; while for the most part even those who know better prefer a bad taste shall flourish than none. All they do is savage and violent, in accordance with Nature around them; and this exercise of their passions they mistake for progress. In all things they exhibit immense energy, and herein alone they show they are subject to the titanic and terrible presence around them. In the face of disaster they act with discretion, at once, and together; whereby they show themselves the remnant of a truly great people. In short, their failings are such as enlightenment may remove, while their virtues another people might long in vain to acquire.

VII. They defer in all things to their women, who requite this attention by debauching their stomachs with sickly and fictitious foods. So their teeth are the

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worst in the world, and aural, nasal, and respiratory diseases are rife among them. Nevertheless, on account of their great activeness they are strong in physique and handsomely formed, having features that tend to get dark and more aquiline. The air of their islands is mainly fresh from the sea, and the rainfall abundant from the mountains whereon it condenses, from which, in some places, a violent sirocco results. Their present condition depends on the state of peoples a great distance off, and their communications with these. As yet they have no future of their own; and when at length one confronts them, they shall awake to find where they lie, and what realm it was they so rudely and rashly disturbed.

VIII. Their history begins with no certain aim, but haphazard. The first there of whom there is any record were Maori, who lived in tribes and were gifted with great eloquence and daring and prowess in war, but of whom no convincing account exists. In time navigation was so increased, ships began to arrive there from every part, some sent by states, some to trade, some to implant the Christian religion; in which even to this day they have not been successful, either among the natives or among themselves; and they greatly presumed on the natives’ good nature to preach on their shores. For this people, when at peace, paid much honour and kindness to strangers; but chiefly they had no law against hearing sedition, and this was their downfall. After this, great numbers of traders and settlers arrived there, and bargained with muskets; and having got land for so little, they claimed to own what none had a right to confer upon them, since the land of each tribe was owned jointly, and there was no

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portion thereof but contained many sacred and inviolable objects and places in no way distinguishable from the rest; on which account its free occupation was a constant risk to our men and a source of annoyance and shame to the natives. Yet these were so eager to trade, they parted with more and more, and on terms so doubtful, that at length war was the only way to settle the matter.

IX. By now some tribes were well armed with muskets, which at first they turned on their neighbours, and next, as these also acquired fire-arms, on more distant peoples, exterminating whole tribes in their forays; so that when at length they fought against us, the numbers we met with were far less than formerly; nor did they cease fighting each other while fighting against us. Moreover they expected of us the same method of warfare as that they practised themselves, such as to inform their opponents where, and how soon, they expected to have the pleasure of fighting them, to offer them food if besieged, and to cease hostilities during their rites and devotions; matters of which our soldiers never scrupled to take every advantage they could; so that the only advantage the Maori had, of occupying a centre, and mountainous country and impenetrable forests unknown to our troops, they disdained or else had no idea to make use of. Moreover we brought up cannon, without which we had been unable to take their strongholds; for these were so placed and contrived, they amazed and baffled our men. But at length, after several wars and uprisings, we wrested the North Island from them. The South Island, being colder, was barely inhabited.

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X. Now even before this much was accomplished and the country pacified, several expeditions, promoted in England, arrived at both islands and settled mainly at two points in each. And at each place they laid out a city, and built on a part, and sold the remainder in lots : while those in England who controlled these affairs, in which the Churches were foremost (for like the temple at Delphi, these prophesied for a price) continued to furnish more and more settlers for this, to whom they sold all the land their charters entitled them to. And in regard to the South Island, there was never before, to my knowledge, so large and so fair a land to be had for the taking; but in regard to the north, and their title to what they took there from the natives, and how they increased it, it differs but little from many examples, which the Spaniards began.

XL These settlements flourished, and so far out-grew their beginnings, they were soon after formed into Provinces to manage their own affairs, a Governor as well having been appointed from England, with a central Assembly, to supervize the whole country. And thereby it happened that the affairs of each Province were administered by those who were known in each place to be the most able and wise, who had done the most hitherto for their district; and this made an example to all. But such an arrangement, of separate Assemblies that is, while it favoured each district (since each, being small, yet made a political system entire, in which all had a share, and manifest in the sight of all, as larger systems are not) yet it stood in the way of those whose ambitions were boundless, who aimed to control the whole country, to settle it closely, to exploit its resources, and so to increase their own prestige and

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power. These now had control of the central government, and when the Provinces hampered their aims they swept them away. So that which began so well came to no result, although experience and time were like to have justified what was well founded and done for the best. For these Provincials had aims other than acquisition and the destruction of all that stood in the way of the most rapid settlement for the sake of what could be gained. But their intendons took longer to plant and to foster than did the aims of those who were now in control; which last had a rapid result, and greatly increased the population and wealth. Nevertheless much that the Provinces did remains, as the founding of schools, the planning of the city, the erection of public buildings, and the remembrance of manners, both light and devout, all after the fashion of whatever body in England promoted their Province. And if this country had any feasible aims (as now it has none) they were these.

XII. But now a great shout of progress arose; the forests were everywhere set alight, and the ground sown and fenced and stocked while the stumps of the trees were yet smoking. Shiploads of settlers poured into the country, and soon the steamship and railway came to assist and enrich them. So careless were they of all they destroyed, and such havoc they made, some parts where the climate was pleasant and equable hitherto are now subject to extremes, and landslides and floods are now frequent in many parts where formerly the forests kept the rainfall within bounds. For not content with settling the flat lands and accessible ranges, in their frenzy they laid bare even the steepest and most inaccessible mountains, whose

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PWL 2

gullies are now either arid and dry or else channels of raging and unexpected torrents, whereby the top-soil is eroded, roads and settlements inundated, and bridges and dwellings carried away to the sea. On this account many parts of their islands are now barely inhabited deserts, their streams barren shingle, their birds no more, their waterfalls mute. Thus that mirror of Nature was cracked, the most flawless and heavenly the eyes of men ever beheld on earth. The great bulk of men are monsters, whom freedom makes drunken, whom profit alone attracts. For the profit that came of all this was immense. This, then, was when they learnt to be wise and just and to make laws. This was when the clerks and officials took control of the country. This was democracy!

XIII. There was one Province wherein Nature had little to lose by all this. Here they continued to do as before, to plough up their narrow plain, which extends for two hundred miles between the sea and the Southern Alps, to build their homesteads thereon, and to graze their flocks in its foot-hills. Their city was founded, their temple built, their rites not neglected. There was nothing they had to regret but the loss of self-govern-ment ; and soon, in their great love of gain, they forgot even that. This Province was Canterbury, its founder the Anglican Church, its situation the east coast of the South Island.

XIV. There is one part of that coast mountainous, a projection the sea once surrounded but which the soil from the rivers has reclaimed. To the north of this insular mass a colossal volcano was active once; now the sea fills its crater, and ships tie up like toys under

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its crags. An immense and deep silence broods over this desolate scene, the torn twisted heights, the still sheet of turquoise water, the mean little town. Here I landed that morning.

XV. One segment of the crater divides the port from its plain, which, when viewed from the heights, appears in its length as if boundless; while opposite, to the west, and bounding the plain on that side, are the Alps. Behind one is the crater, at a great depth below; while on the plain at one’s feet is the city of Christchurch with its gardens and suburbs, which extend both to the hillside underneath and to the sea-coast nearby, where it sweeps in a great curve to the north. On these hills overlooking the city the air is the dryest and sweetest in the World, from the gorse and broom and dry grass of the crater, from the plain with its gardens beneath, and that wall of snow. These hills abound in skylarks. They rise a great height in their songs; and if one falls, another ascends in its place, so their singing continues. Whoever rests in that air so far up, with that view before and that music above, is well-nigh bewitched.

XVI. A tunnel now pierces those hills (the Port Hills, they call them) and conducts very soon from the Port on one side to the city on the other. As we emerged that autumn morning, a dazzling sunlight, bright but not hot, was dispersing a mist that hung over the whole plain. The scene at first is somewhat barren and immature; but approaching the suburbs we were soon among many small gardens, where late roses and lilies were in bloom, disrobed of the mist but still wet with dew. These things were familiar; but the city itself, where my parents met me, appeared strange. It is not,

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as they think it, an English city, although not wanting in graces, well-laid and well-watered, and of a marvellous freshness from the combined airs of the sea and those far-away Alps, in whose pureness the scent of exotic shrubs is lavished about. Being asked what I thought by newspaper-reporters (who interview everyone from abroad) I said it reminded me of the Wild West of America; which opinion gave great offence and occasioned a controversy that raged in the city for some days. They had chalked on my luggage, when later it reached me, New Zealand forever! —the men of the railway, that is; such is their hatred and astonishment at having their opinions even questioned, let alone opposed. But what surprised me most was how faint and remote my memories were of this place, after seven years abroad, notwithstanding I was born and brought up here. Which was no doubt because my thoughts and ambitions still dwelt on London, where nevertheless I had as yet done nothing and was still unknown; and I made up my mind to return there as soon as I could.

XVII. Their city at first consists in a square, which is bounded by four avenues, or belts, as they term them. The region herein, perhaps a mile square, is divided by streets at right angles; except that their river, the Avon, by its winding course, somewhat frustrates this pattern and relieves it of straightness, as by its banks it relieves the whole region of flatness. Indeed they owe much to this brook and revere it. It lacks enough water to command, as it were, its course; but they raised it by dams, so that in places it flows at a scarcely perceptible pace, while elsewhere it makes rapids a man might walk over. They have debated whether, by

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sinking wells at its source or in some other way, to increase it, as they easily might; but in these matters their public bodies obstruct each other so jealously that little is done; while what they do by collusion is rather done to apportion the blame in the eyes of the rest. And this is the way of democracy everywhere. The banks of their river, which were formerly covered in rough grass and scrub and partly in forest, are now, being well drained, dressed in lawns and gardens throughout, and everywhere overhung by vast weepingwillows that trail their fronds in its waters beneath. So that any plan to deepen the river must consider their loss. In parts they have planted poplars beside it, which likewise grow to a great height and above any buildings they have. A number of bridges connect its banks, whereof the most recent, of white stone, was built to replace an older structure of wood over which their soldiers marched from their barracks to the last war; and the war being over, they removed that, and built this other of stone to commemorate those who had fallen in battle. And so devout their idea was, and so well imagined, they had done better (considering what, alas! they have done, after long thought and dispute and comparing all the designs) to have left the earlier bridge, with an inscription that this should remain until one was designed which should be worthy of those they remembered. In this they had done themselves and their soldiers the greatest honour, and shown an example of pride and patriotism to all living peoples. But instead they erected a bridge with an arch at one end, as high as the bridge is long; which is so plain an error that there were no need to say more, except that the arch in itself is far worse a blunder.

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XVIII. Now an arch exists for no other purpose but to support a great weight, whereby the strength of its sides and subtle force of its curve are seen, as it were, in action and use, wherein alone its grace is displayed, and the mind that rejoices in feats and sickens at follies and what is capricious and needless is satisfied to behold it. And so, to commemorate what shall endure, as the memory of courage and sacrifice, an arch, of whatever size, shall resemble Atlas upholding the earth, like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris or that of Titus in Rome. But this they have built carries no weight, nor could do, nor exhibits tension nor strength nor that grace in which strength is arrayed by art, wherein taste so delights; but being flimsy and idle throughout and in every proportion too weak for its width and height, it exhibits no more than the lightness of those that designed it. It was caught from festivity, not from anything solemn; from that style of arch that commemorates no more than a day, or a few minutes even, as when famous persons arrive and pass under. These are made from sticks and plaster, and covered with bunting or boughs, and by their oddness and wanton yet frail appearance they excite a passing emotion. They are called triumphal, and are like those flowers we fling at the feet of a hero, but quite unlike those lasting stones we should place on his grave. These arches, I think, were the only model they had for the one they have built.

XIX. Those streets at right-angles within the four belts were in each case named after an Anglican bishopric, as Tuam, Lincoln, Colombo, in the midst whereof is a large open space called Cathedral Square. There are smaller squares as well between this and the

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belts, named after English martyrs who were either burnt or beheaded, as Cranmer and Latimer; but as to the first, this is the heart of the city. Here they built their cathedral; and after doing so much, and building their senate, a beautiful block, and endowing and founding their school, the Christ’s College, these founders and colonists faded away, or took to the foothills to rear sheep, only coming to town for the races twice a year. The Province was lost, and all memory of everything but amusement and making money vanished from among them. Then began the time of expansion and a rapid increase in the population and wealth of the city, which is now perhaps four times the size they meant it to be, having spread far beyond its belts, to the sea and the hills. It was then the fine taste they began with was lost (as is shown by their bridge). It was then that those that knew least but talked most took charge of the city, and matched themselves without shame with those much above them.

XX. The city’s charm consists in its gardens, both public and private, which rely on a well-nigh inexhaustible supply of pure water. For the plain, being porous, abounds in wells; and many gardens have their own wells (wind-mills they call them, although not mills) as well as that water they have from the city. In some parts of the city, in my youth, so many wheels going round in the air on a windy day, and the sobbing of pumps on all sides, made a curious matter. Another strange thing they have is the channels of water that run by the pavements, over which, wherever there are shops, they build verandas. For the sun here is searching and bright, the rainfall considerable, and

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were it not that the air is never at rest the heat would be as great as in Italy, to which, and to Spain, New Zealand lies in antipodes. That is, by latitude, by which heat is mainly reckoned; but because by longitude it lies somewhat in antipodes to the British Isles, which in size it resembles, it has rather been compared to these to this day, as if these were its true antipodes; although, as I say, its true antipodes is to Italy and Spain. But on account of the vast space of sea that surrounds this country, and the constant coolness and flowing of air over all, even far to the north, unlike Italy and Spain it suffers from no great extremes of either heat or cold, nor is ever becalmed. But if shelter be found, the sun then has an instant heat like the centre of Spain. On this account, then, they build verandas. Another effect of their weather is the great dust. For the plain around being mainly bare, and the city exposed, in summer great clouds of dust are blown into the city along the roads that converge there from every part. This is worst when the sirocco is blowing, a noisy hot gale that may last for some weeks, which blinds their eyes and parches their taste, in their minds as well as their mouths, and accounts for a good deal they do. They should counteract this by an easy conviviality in their living, by growing the grape and the olive and commonly using both wine and oil, by attending less to education and business, by more liberal and fewer laws, by resting at midday in summer, and by more enjoying those hours out of doors around sunrise and after sunset. So respiratory, digestive and nervous diseases would be less rife among them, and a true acclimatization enlighten and soften their resolute natures.

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XXI. To the west of the city, almost the whole region consists in a large open park and public garden, very handsomely planted. In the midst of these, in the most sheltered and favoured locality, are the buildings and grounds of Christ’s College, the main retreat and preserve of the Province’s oldest fashion. Here they endeavour to guard that light of good breeding, that loathing of commonness and, as far as they may, the pure sound of our tongue that was left among them. For in the main none are admitted to teach here unless they come from the chief English Public Schools. They are richly endowed and possess a good Classical library. Of a different quality is the University nearby, but a useful place. The buildings of both institutions are of stone, the surroundings well planted and kept, with quadrangles and lawns, and further off in the park their cricket and football fields, wherein the commoner schools and clubs have their grounds as well; so that sometimes the whole park is alive with these contests as far as the eye can see. Throughout the suburbs their houses are mainly of wood, as in all New Zealand towns, which give a flimsy and unfounded air to their tenure of any place, and denote that haste with which, as I said, they felled the forests, occupied the country, and speculated in industry, produce and land (for land is a means of exchange and usury among them, like money elsewhere.) I have said enough now about this city.

XXII. I had no sooner returned here than I began writing an account of my doings abroad for the last seven years, which a Christchurch newspaper, The Press, issued week by week. At the same time I went about as much as I could, often going to the hills above the city for exercise. And I swam a good deal

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(as my habit had been in London) in the sea and the Christ’s College baths, to which I had access from being at school there as a boy. This exercise agrees well with a man of letters. Like that of arms, which is no longer in fashion, it flatters his independence and affords him to shine in himself, if he can. So tennis and cricket are much to his taste, or even to box. Cricket I was driven to at school, as to swimming; but of both these I learnt nothing except to dislike them, on account of the folly they practise there of allowing the stronger and coarser boys to make sport of those who are more shrinking and delicate. Boxing I once tried, but am still ignorant of, and think it best left to the coarser sort; for now to fight, not to box, is the fashion; and persons of taste must object to be battered. Football, like fighting, is more suited to others; but more for that reason I spoke of at first, that we artists like to shine by ourselves, to have all in our undertaking, and not wait on others. In any enlightened system of upbringing no doubt we should lead in all things, even in games, if kindly encouraged, or at least be the natural companions and rivals of those who do, as our teachers should know. But as it is, not only is the natural ascendency of fine natures blighted, but that unnatural ascendancy of the coarser over the finer sorts confirms the former in their hardness and brutality all their lives, as we see, and prevents them from practising sympathy and the learning of delicacy that opens all arts, and closes their understanding and fondness of others. So that not their victims but they themselves suffer the most by this folly. And if men in the main are merely brutes, yet it might be denied them to have their most wanton vices countenanced in their schools, as by allowance they are. There is no

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other cure for this coarseness but to admonish those boys who are biggest and most forward at games and the most admired by their fellows to befriend and encourage those who are shrinking and smaller. Only in this way, by a tender association with more fearful natures that are yet finer than theirs, can that brutal coarseness be checked which men learn at school, and thereafter exalt and take pride in all their lives. Only this is a source of the finest manners in all civilized countries. By this means the Greeks arose to their greatness. To this I commend you.

XXIII. My account of my former doings abroad attracted much notice. Although I lived with my parents, I relied on this writing for what little means I had here; yet notwithstanding I had this interest in seeing it punctually done, I found it no easy matter to write as much as I needed each week, not being used to write for the need of money as so many now do. In regard to some parts of this work I had no power, I knew, to do better, and had hastened to write it in any case. But if ever I felt unequal to writing to time I would retire to the balcony of a neighbour’s house overlooking her beautiful garden, with a view of the park and the river between and the white mountains beyond. The magnolias were in bloom, and the rosy camelias; and here, in the sunshine and sweet atmosphere, I wrote a good deal of this work.

XXIV. I was presently asked to Christ’s College, to dine at Flower’s house, an occasion that gave me much pleasure. I was lately visiting a young friend at Harrow; and when I compare that school with this offspring of its stock there is about this colonial branch

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a lack of solemnity in its secular functions. They have here nothing like evening Bill, which I watched in the dusk as my friend went to answer his name, nor so many scholars who, being indeed young men, bear themselves with such beauty and grace. But their new hall at Christ’s is finer than any I saw at Harrow, and when hallowed with age will solemnify all. Moreover their chapel, although much smaller, is finer by far than the school-church at Harrow, and older, I think. It is low and narrow, of perfect proportion, much covered in ivy; and expressing in stone both age and demureness it is charming to see.

XXV. In the public gardens nearby. I used, when a boy, to hide myself with a book when I ought to have been at games with the rest, which I loathed to take part in as much as I loved this reading. There was a large fir-tree near the path to the cricket-field, whose lowest boughs came so near to the ground they hid all beneath them; and under these I would dart unobserved on our way to cricket, and remain there until I heard the others returning. By some oversight I was never missed from roll-call at games. Here I read Hypatia and The Last of the Mohicans, and Abbott’s Life of Napoleon, I remember; but the rest I forget. This noble provident tree gave me not only a safe hiding and shade from the heat, and a soft bed of needles to lie on, but often a haunting far-away music in its branches above that seemed not to belong to this world but to the climate and atmosphere of those regions whereof I read. What deception and art I practised not to be torn from this pleasure and punished! This is that time in boyhood when the spirit takes flight from its narrow surroundings and

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surveys its future. Thereafter there is nothing unknown ; but our earthly nature must next be up, with its burden of passions and fears, to find the way thither if it can; not by leaving that great burden of heavy cares and chafing worries behind, for a profidess skipping ahead for idle fancy and lightness of mind, but taking all its possessions along, even those whose great weight makes us hate and complain of this world and our way out of it; for these are just the most precious. Which is wherein so few artists nowadays know, or dare to follow, their right path. The tree is still there, although they have cleared the ground and made gardens about it. I think I read nothing of grave meaning at that age, but only such works as indulged my boyish feelings the most. Of the Classics I knew almost nothing then except Pope’s Homer and Lempriere’s Dictionary, until I came to Euripides ten years later. Nevertheless I excelled at English in class, and did well only at this and at drawing, to my father’s dismay; as if these were not all in themselves! There was a special prize for English and History called the Tancred Prize, and this I won, I think, whenever I tried; that is, three or four times. Nor was my father appeased by this ominous feat. For they hold here that a life is well spent which is lived in conflict, not in accordance, with Nature. In which they are right; for spent indeed is the state they are in.

XXVI. I went abroad on the plains as well, and into the mountains. To the south the city is no sooner left than a great bareness begins, a region like Portugal and some parts of Spain, except that the road is wide and a straight stretch of gravel, not a narrow arid dusty track winding about. Yet this highway Iras a lightness

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and beauty from the groves of aromatics, wattles, firs, gorse and gums, through which it proceeds a great way, which screen the view on both sides. Moreover in summer the heat makes everywhere phantom mirages of trees and water and clear-looking distant rivers into which the roadway appears to dissolve. The cars here travel very fast, in a great cloud of dust, and with no need for caution; which causes a constant rattle and uproar as the stones, being hurled in the air, strike on their windows and sides. With that travelling dust, those deceitful visions and glittering groves, and the heat and dryness in summer, the scene is Arabian almost, I should say, or that land where the fatal fiery Phoenix abides. The plain has everywhere wonderful hues and a pallor and brightness of flame. The gumtrees, being ragged and close and mixed of all kinds, with the sunlight weakly diffused in their midst, gleam and shine like the opal of many tints, as their bark and leaves are dyed every colour. As these disappear, then all at once the mountains are seen, near at hand. For now the plain begins to be narrow, not more than twenty miles wide from the sea to the foothills.

XXVII. These are not the true Alps, but in outline they ebb and flow from huge purple masses of six or seven thousand feet above to less grassy saddles between. Sometimes above them, for all their length, a constant mighty battle is waged between contrary weathers, whereby the whole firmament is divided between darkness and light, that casts down on their sombre piles and most lurid and awful reflections as of slaughters and agonies. You may see far above them and either way out of sight a clear frontier or line of conflict, as between close-grappled oncoming hosts, the

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clear steadfast heat at bay and the hovering deadly cold belched forth from the oceans about. There is constant attempt and retirement between them and fierce single feats between contrary currents and detached single wisps of cloud that whirl round and grapple and overcome one the other, while the sky glows with every hue of admiration and anger. Now the mountains beneath are clear and sharp and the atmosphere hot, as conquered by one; and now the whole range disappears in a mighty dust wherein nothing but victory remains to the other. I have no knowledge if the like is to be seen elsewhere on earth. In this land, as I said to begin with, those fierce contraries are chiefly begotten which we behold everywhere in Nature; as in men everywhere the same opposites perplex and weary our lives.

XXVIII. The mountains now for the most part appear all the way, and the plain in between is seen to be bare, except for the belts of fir-trees that shelter their farms, some near, some far off, on every side. These plantations, in their constant shining, make everywhere a wonderful colour, from a delicate greenness to a dark sapphire. As to the plain, there is no other feature thereon but shallow and brief torrents by which the mountains are drained. The beds of these rivers are broad, sometimes a mile wide, and the waters forever changing their course, that where they formerly were being left a prey of gorse and broom and all weeds brought hither, that rage throughout all waste places, amazing to see, and in time of blossom a sight like as if the earth was on fire, and yielding a sweet heavy scent. These rivers enter the plain through severe and deep gorges, which clefts are as much an

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outlet for the westerly winds as a channel for waters; on which account Butler marks the boundary of Ercwhon by certain stone images above the gorge on the pass, which the wind makes to exclaim with their hollow mouths. This was the Rangitata river and gorge, near to which my father and brothers have their estates.

XXIX. Their townships hereabouts are but few and scant, and mainly of wood as their farmhouses are. Here also they like to have gardens, and in some towns, as Ashburton, there is more attention paid to this amenity than to any other. For a small town may occupy several square miles of ground in this country, only to make room for their gardens; which means that the public income is low, and the roads on the outskirts often indistinguishable from the plain. Notwithstanding the soil is poor and much of the plain hereabouts stony, yet the sun has such power and the air such a virtue, and the seasons so work with variety and constant coolness and change, all they plant, more especially roses and creepers, flourish immensely. All tilings introduced here, whether plants or beasts, thrive and multiply thus, as also their stature is greatly increased; while by contrast the native herbage is sickly and sparse; or else, like the forest, although strong and abundant it shrinks when beset, wanting wildness and shade and abundance of moisture. There are few trees on the plains, as I said, save the pines and what else are planted for shelter, and the willows that thrive along the rivers; but in the foothills some tracts of native forest remain, which in parts they reserve.

XXX. On this plain are millions of sheep, and other stock, confined by fences of wire in vast rectangular

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fields, having litde or no shelter. These fields, or paddocks as they call them, are in almost every case traversed by one of a system of channels or waterraces, a foot or more wide, which they let from the rivers. In charge of these flocks are thousands of men of all educations and kinds, and many more dogs; for each man employed with sheep has a number of dogs with which to move them from place to place, when the dogs drive them hither and thither, but in one general direction, like ships at sea when they tack. These men expect of their dogs the same understanding as they themselves have (which in many cases they exhibit) yet many half-starve their dogs, and in the face of their blunders (the better to cover their own) give way in their language and actions to the foulest passions. When loose, these desperate unhappy creatures devour what they may, and often have languors and fits from digesting leather and skulls and bits of fleece, or from gorging on putrid carcasses which the farmers leave lying about. Many tie their dogs up to damp wretched holes and abandon them thus for days and even weeks in all weathers. Indeed, in neglect and cruelty to animals and birds, particularly to domestic fowls, which they often keep confined in hot weather without either shade or water, the New Zealanders resemble the Latin races rather than their own; and perhaps this is an indication of what way they are going. When at work with the sheep, which they deal with in great mobs of hundreds and even thousands together, often, from lack of patience, men, sheep and dogs all lose their reasons together, and scream and dance and altogether behave as if beyond hope of recovery. Nevertheless they quickly recover.

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XXXI. Now the plain, being flat, appears like the base or bottom part of the whole firmament in its vastness and mystery, more especially at night, when the plants and stars in their brilliance and body of light obliterate all other matters and draw all regard and attention upwards towards them; in whose movement and sparkling we see, so far as we may, the dark divine thoughts and divested mind of that Being our Maker. And the plain being so close neighbour and parcel of that, and day and night the mind so drawn out of its chafing confinement and upwards into that vastness, so all sudden sounds of speaking and calling of beasts and singing of birds take the ear with surprise and seem both more near the attention and more remote and immeasurable to the understanding. So the sense here is forever stretched to its limit, the sight most acute and the hearing subtle beyond belief, as if these faculties were a bridge between one immortality and another. Most of all the wind, when it meets with the thick belts of pine-trees, which with their myriad separate needles make ready fine instruments, gives a music so subtle and soft the ear is charmed beyond measure, and the hearer soothed and assuaged like he heard of eternity.

XXXII. My elder brother being absent just now in England, and his farmhouse vacant, I thought much when in town of spending some part of the winter alone there, where firing is plentiful from the plantations surrounding the houses and buildings, and food might be had from my two younger brothers whose places adjoin at no great distance away. But all this time I was so drawn in my thoughts to London and all I had left there, and so much at a loss here, and thinking of

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little but when I should finish my Progress I was writing and hasten back with it overseas (as I saw in this work a means of raising my fortunes and making a name) I was meanwhile in doubt what remedy to seek, whether to withdraw so far off or to stay near my parents and what distractions the city affords and what few friends I had there. I was in that state of doubt and uneasy suspense and expectancy when I like to look for direction in omens and dreams; and when at length I went out on the plains, I went because of a dream which I thought directed me thither.

XXXIII. I dreamt what I thought was a favourable dream; as whenever I dream of a dazzling whiteness I think this propitious and towards undertaking and fame. My dream was of a lonely and rocky valley, and one I was with there not met for years, nor even in dreams without despair. At one end of this valley a surprising white lion appeared running towards us, before which I fled in terror, leaving whom I was’with; and finding an old ruined building as I ran, I hid there, and presently heard him searching for me without, and saw his white body through many holes and chinks of its walls. Through one of these he looked in and discovered me there, when at once I awoke, and heard a strange wild music and a noise like the wind when it sighs. And my blind being drawn and the sun risen and beaming, I beheld a white swan pass my window with powerful strides of its wings, and singing loudly. Its flight was due westward, as I found on considering the matter, in which direction my brothers live from the city. Whereupon I went alone to Barnswood, my eldest brother’s place, soon after. Swans, black and white, abound in these parts, having haunts in low-

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lying waters and mouths of rivers where the sea makes lagoons.

XXXIV. At Barns wood I did some drawing, but mainly I was occupied with writing the first part of The Poet’s Progress for publication each week in the Christchurch Press. However I wasn’t long alone, as my parents soon joined me, when one day my father brought me a paper to sign as a witness, and my occupation being needed as well as my name, I wrote ‘poet’. My father took this as if I had trifled with an important document, which my foolishness might even have rendered invalid, and he asked me to change it; but I refused. Some time later he showed me some lands he owned near the city; and the place looking well, and he being a man most ambitious and careful after his sons and family, and on this alone of his several properties there being no son of his settled, he asked me, was I not tempted after all to follow this life? At which it was my turn to be shocked; and thinking of London and other things I very quickly said ‘no’. Another matter I remember at Bamswood was one which had unfortunate consequences for us all, I believe, although I alone foresaw them. There was a small empty barrel near the house in which some bees had built their nest, and one day I found my father and my brother Geoffrey, who had some use for the barrel, preparing to smoke out the bees. I warned them that these creatures and their treasure, ‘the heavendropped honey’, as Virgil calls it, were under divine protection, and of good omen wherever they dwelt, and to destroy them thus wantonly, for a mere barrel, was assuredly to bring disaster on all our house. They paid no attention, but killed all the bees and took the

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barrel away; and in the following year all their troubles began.

XXXV. After I had been some time at Barnswood my parents provided me with a week’s holiday at the Government Hermitage in the Alps, which I was glad to accept since I had never yet been so far south where the largest and most famous peaks and glaciers are to be found. On their opposite or western side near the sea (opposite, that is, to the side I was on) these mountains are everywhere covered in dense forests; but on our side, to the east, their foot-hills are mainly clothed in a dry brown grass like the plain itself, as I said, and divided by valleys that give access to the main range within. On the way to the Hermitage, for many miles there is nothing to be seen but these desolate hills of one colour and smoothness and height, with here and there a small lake, the haunt of herons, swans and wild duck. It is otherwise deserted by Nature and barely settled by man. But as with the mightiest kings, who are never approached in their dwellings but through many bare chambers and courts that fill all who approach them with an awe of what is beyond, so by degrees the foot-hills unfold and reveal the white thrones and cloudy canopies of the highest summits behind. Every hill now is deeply marked and terraced with the ancient workings of either water or ice, which I observed as we passed with deep interest, and soon after wrote that passage on convulsions in Nature which appears in Part One.* At length a broad valley is reached, the sides crumbling and steep, of loose shingle and rock, which gives access to the whole alpine chain where the peaks reach their greatest

* THE POET’S PROGRESS, I, XXV'ii.

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height. The head of this valley and the stream it contains are lost somewhere in the forks and ice-falls of these, whence a rapid torrent proceeds. The whole scene on that day when I saw it was gloomy and grand, the foreground rocky and barren, the background a lofty wall overlooked with snow. Of the peaks here Mt. Cook is the chief, and the highest in New Zealand, being over twelve thousand feet high. Indeed it is one of the tallest mountains on earth, I should say. Butler thought this peak more impressive than any in Switzerland, and for my part I think it is taller than Everest. For its base being barely above sea-level, its whole height, therefore, is from sea-level to summit; whereas the base of Everest is already fifteen to twenty thousand feet above sea-level before the mountain itself begins. How tall is a man? Is he six feet? And if he stands on a house-top is he then fifty feet? (I could burst out here, and say something fatal to many other fine names and great reputations abroad, in a manner unbecoming a mere New Zealander. This needs a mountain to be indignant upon and a whole country to marshal a reproof. But let it be. So are reputations made in this world. Let me keep to my subject, if I can!)

XXXVI. A warm sun, they say, mainly shines in this region, and moves the snow on the alps to descend in vast masses which, gathering speed, are dispersed at length in a dense white smoke very wonderful to behold; or else they are poured over ledges and rocks with a noise like distant thunder. These are avalanches, of which I saw many. Likewise the ice, by its weight, is forever moved downwards; and being compressed into valleys too small, as it were, to contain it, the whole mass is upheaved like the waves of a sea, but frozen and

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still. Yet it never ceases to move, as my guide showed me by marks he had made, nor to groan and creak so disturbed, until at length it reaches a level whence it runs freely away. These are glaciers.

XXXVII. Later I made another brief expedition from the home of a friend, Lance Lewin, near the foot-hills on our side of the alps, which thereabouts are clothed in beech-forest. This forest is remarkable for the abundance of bell-birds that live therein, which utter a clear detached note like various tuneful bells, very sweet. Near the house was a stream with a rocky bed, which gave access to the mountains behind; and one bright afternoon that winter I began to ascend it, leaving my clothes behind and wearing only my shoes to protect my feet. Thus I went a long way, unravelling the torrent like reading a marvellous book, and keeping warm with exertion, although the water was icy cold and sometimes, where the increasing steepness and narrowness of the gorge obliged me to cross it, up to my waist. At length the gorge grew so narrow that the sun was extinguished, and the torrent, now fierce and strewn with great boulders, forced me to make way above, where the forest everywhere overhung the ravine. Some distance further, when this way as well had become impassible, I was once more forced on to the river-bed where, looking round me, I beheld a strange and forbidding sight. All the trees hereabouts and beyond, where the gorge was gloomy and dark, were stunted and black as if burnt with fire, and instead of leaves were hung with pendants of long green moss. The air was unearthly cold, and the gorge with its luminous growths looked like the entrance to some dreadful underworld beyond which I dared not pro-

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ceed. The torrent as well now had a savage and dreadful sound, as if warning me back; and after beholding the scene for a few moments I made haste to return.

XXXVIII. Such growths are usual in the higher parts of these mountains, but were none the less fearful to encounter thus. There are many other strange things to be found in this land, and many more birds like the bell-bird, that sing as sweetly. The Australian magpie has a harsh sound when disturbed, but for pleasure it warbles over and over like various strings being tuned; and for calling from one to another it has yet another strident clear note. The riro-riro, a small wren that keeps to thick bowers and bushes, has a small wistful song which it leaves unfinished, very far-fetched and soft. For the birds here, like all wild things on this side of the globe, seem of another world, as if enchanted. And this latitude being as near as many things introduced here may approach to the sun, some trees and flowers, and the people besides, often look like the Golden Age for brightness and beauty. But nothing is stranger than those webs which some kind of spider makes in forks and spikes of low bushes of broom and gorse, covering their stalks in a dense white substance like linen or silk, and thus building a chamber wherein it lays its millions of eggs. It is common to come on a white encampment of these nests on the tops of bushes in summer. But it’s time I returned to my own affairs.

XXXIX. I had now been in New Zealand for five months. And my Progress being finished so far as I intended to take it, I began to think of returning to London. My idea was to go back in the crew of a ship,

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although my father was willing to pay for my passage; but I was unwilling he should, as recently he had paid back a hundred pounds that was lent me in London. Moreover I had long wanted a closer acquaintance with seafaring life, although I well knew I was unsuited for the work. So I looked round for a chance to work my passage; and not at first finding a ship, I was later on given an introduction which resulted in a telegram reaching me soon after, with instructions to apply to a certain ship for a position such as I sought. I made haste from Barnswood to rejoin my parents in town, who were surprised to hear what I intended and how soon I would be leaving them altogether. Next I went to the ship, a large cargo-steamer, where I applied as instructed to the Chief Engineer for employment as a greaser. Finding I had no experience he looked grave and took me to the Captain, who said he couldn’t accept me. But perhaps recollecting on whose instructions I had come, and seeing a way to be rid of me with no annoyance to himself, he next told the Chief Engineer that if he cared to accept me he might. But this gentleman still disliking to engage me, I was told to call again the next morning. The next day was a Saturday, and a fine day, so my father motored my friend Ronald Cuthbert and myself over the hills to the port, and while they waited nearby I returned to the ship. It is easy to tell of it now, but what anxiety and suspense I was in at the time! Once more the Chief Engineer objected to having me, and avoiding the matter by again consulting the Captain, after an absence he brought me word that I was to see the Captain at the shipping office in town on Monday morning. So I rejoined the others and we returned the way we had come.

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XL. The beautiful day, the many views of the hills and the harbour as we travelled along, and when we reached the summit where we had lunch, that mighty view of mountain and plain on the other side, all these played on my memories and feelings and aroused a strong presentiment of my future, as natural scenes and occurrences always do in times of great expectancy and suspense such as now I was in. My friend and I preferred to walk home, so my father left us, when I sat for some time in an absent unfathomable mood, until suddenly a strong gale of wind struck the hill-top, the sky grew dark, and we hurried down in fear of a storm. By the time we reached the city all was calm and serene there, no sudden change had been felt, and the pass we had left was rosy with the rays of a peaceful sunset. I then felt it had been signified by Providence in that wind that I should sail on that ship, in the same manner David was warned of a going in the tops of the mulberry bushes, and I communicated my assurance to Ronald.

XLI. High introductions, I think, often bring about that famous absurdity of an immovable object being struck by an irresistible force, whereby (as in theory of science I think they must) on the impact these exchange their conditions, the irresistible applicant being left for dead with his recommendation, while the stony immovable one takes flight at a terrible rate. But in this case a quite unexpected reversal of Nature took place in the Captain when we met in the shipping office on the Monday. Regarding me sternly, he said he would take me on his ship for a trial round the coast, after which, if I proved useful, and the Chief Engineer gave a good report of me, he would take me to England. (You Potentates, take notice, when you vainly think

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to oppose Providence!) I was to be on board in the morning at nine o’clock.

XLII. That evening I packed, and was ready next morning with all my belongings to catch a train to the port. My father, too, had to leave early that morning for the country, and my mother remained, as she afterwards wrote me, in an utter desolation and loss, with the remains of my hurried leaving all over their flat. (Here I might well pause and offer a prayer and our loving thanks to mothers the World over, since sons first took to wandering and time began.) Cuthbert saw me off at the station, two other friends gave me a beautiful tobacco-pipe, and my editor wrote me a moving letter of trust and encouragement. The Captain was staring over the bridge of his ship as my taxi drew up, and my large cabin-trunk, two suitcases, heavy box of books, case, typewriter, tennis racket and travelling-rug were carried aboard, all of which, greaser or not, I had somehow to take with me. Once aboard, I inquired for the Chief Engineer, who took me to D , the engineer in charge of refrigeration, a lean and tall Scotsman of middle age, with thin red hair going bald, under whom I was to work. The refrigeration-room was a little below the main deck, and here D said I might store my luggage; and this being done, he took me for’ard to the firemen’s and greasers’ quarters to find my mate, as he called the person with whom I was to share the work. On the way he warned me what to expect of my new quarters, but of the men I must live with he said nothing, except he gave me to understand I might refer all things to him. I was pleased with his way of speaking and liked him at once. Presently we entered a passage under the

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deck, on both sides of which were various chambers with bunks. At the end, on the port side, where he left me, was mine and that of Mick Silver, my mate. Silver was in, and soon we were drinking two bottles of beer I had carried under my coat, my companion taking his share almost in silence and eyeing me with dislike. He was young, and a Londoner, as I knew when he spoke, of medium height, fair and handsomely formed, with blue eyes, and a most resdess, wavering, doubtful expression. The cabin was neat and ddy, but by its many ornaments and personal amenities and the way it was rigged to his liking, with all its space already appropriated to his use, I realized how far I intruded. I relied on his kindness, however; but to no use; he would scarcely answer my questions as to the life I must lead, beyond to tell me that the watches were twelve hours on and twelve off, which would be changed to eight hour watches when we left the coast. And finishing his drink, he left me to find my way aft.

XLIII. I was shown my duties that morning, which consisted in keeping the engine-room clean and in oiling and minding machines and pumps, chiefly the pumps, which must never be allowed to stop working, since on these depended the temperature of the holds. Two million pounds’ worth of chilled cargo, said the boss, depended on these foolish and decrepit-looking things, like oozing slot-machines, and on my keeping them going; and as if they had overheard him, no sooner was his back turned than these unprincipled inventions, which had been clanking wildly, began to slow down until they had almost stopped. Then, as I rushed up to see, they started off again, spitting oil and hot water at me as if they defied me to touch them.

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There were also two large engines, one of which was always in use, when it had to be oiled in the hub at regular intervals. As this hub or crank plunged round with speed and great force, it required a nice skill and some nerve, at first, to insert and withdraw the oil-can with each revolution; but after practising with a piece of stick I was soon able to do it. Although the hottest part of the ship, as I found later, our engine-room had several port-holes which allowed us a little air, and a view of the sea, for which last I was grateful.

XLIV. We sailed south to Port Chalmers that morning, keeping in sight of the coast. I came up many times, as my duties allowed, to look at the mountains, which I was not to see again for some years. While at this port I paid a visit to Dunedin nearby, the largest town in these parts, and the most southerly city in the World. Here the Scots founded their Province and settlement, like the Anglicans further north; but how they conduct it, or what manner of people they are, I have never heard. Much of their country is good land, the rest mountainous, with many large lakes and moist impenetrable forests. This region is one of the remotest in the World, and few visit their city, it seems, or venture therefrom. I thought it beautiful, and more like a civilized city than any other in New Zealand. It occupies several spurs of a range of hills at the head of a broad tidal harbour, with some woodland surrounding. On what flat land there is, near the water, are the principle buildings, and one long handsome street remarkable for the number of churches with good spires.

XLV. We were here a few days, and afterwards went north by the same coast to New Plymouth, passing

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close by the seaward Kaikouras, a stirring sight in their winter snows, and so into Cook’s Strait, the weather being sunny and calm. As a boy I was at a private school for three years on a wild lonely part of this strait; so now I came above often to see in what neighbourhood we might be, and how much I remembered. Although I couldn’t be certain in what part of that distant coastline I had lived before, I had no cause to be sorry, as my memory needs no reminder of what has remained with me ever since. It was a fitting nursery for a poet, a little bay by the sea, and so much of flat land as the enclosing mountains allowed, a world of forest and streams and sea-shore where we roamed at will, and not another person to be met with in months but our little community, wherein I had already discovered myself to be something singular, although I was only ten years old. I had never seen Nature before, in all her wildness, being reared in the city; but I knew her, and what she intended for me, at first sight. Here those ambitions were formed in my infancy to which I have been faithful (and to nothing else) ever since. This is what I referred to not long ago in Lyttelton Harbour when I wrote,

Where first thy forests were endear’d to me

In regions of my childhood, long before,

I stood, my Country, on a promont’ry

Beside Cook’s stormy strait, whose current tore

Thy wilds in two. And in the ocean’s roar

And bright’ning sun I only thought of ye.

Ye works of Nature! whose command I bore.

Even as a child, your messenger to be.

And if I have done very little as yet, it’s no matter. A man might do in a few days what will live forever,

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when the time is ripe; and not being ripe, we only labour in vain. I must make these things plain whatever else I forget.

XLVI. We reached New Plymouth by night, a small town to the north of the famous mountain. Being awakened for duty at daybreak that morning, and not knowing where we might be, I came on deck to find the mountain towering before me, the sunrise tinting its snows, its great forests in gloom, and the harbour and shipping around just appearing in sight. This country, called Taranaki, is likewise but little known, being hitherto encompassed by dense forests and its people much in conflict and danger with the native tribes, which now are dispersed or at peace. This was one of those English plantations I spoke of; but, as I have read, it was burnt and abandoned, but later rebuilt. It is now a peaceful and pleasant town. Its people are said by those who have seen them to be agreeable and gentle, much given to music, and to raising cows on the rich land that was formerly forest. Numbers of strangers visit their mountain, to see it or climb it, of which its possessors are justly proud. Here I spent one night ashore with some cousins I have there, after which we sailed southward to Wellington by the way we had come.

XLVI I. This city is the busiest and, at its centre, by far the largest, in New Zealand. It occupies the head and adjacent bays of a deep mountainous harbour to the east of Cook’s Strait. Being entered, this haven is found to turn nearly about, so the city confronting its waters has the open sea-coast at its back, and extends from one to the other. Its chief streets and buildings are

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compressed between the quays and the hills that enclose the whole harbour, its suburbs being spread over the surrounding heights which are so steep that one house appears to stand on another. For the most part these are not houses but merely dwellings, being mostly of wood and not built to endure, after the manner of all their cities and indeed their whole country, as I said. The people here are irrascible, greedy, sharp and suspicious, being tormented by winds and exposure; and having their dwellings not back to back but for the most part all facing one way, they appear as if they pressed for advantage and looked on all incoming vessels and trade as their prey; as indeed they do. In fact this has been their nature from the first, since their city and province were founded. They were from the first involved in wrangling and doubt and rapacious tricks with the natives; and all which has injured and corrupted the country since has passed, and still passes, through their hands. Their country surrounding is rugged and wild and but little known. Here the New Zealanders have their Parliament, a solid but sickly edifice, on the British model, and call this city their capital. It is altogether a doubtful, puffed-up, delightful place to this day. They call the surrounding country Wellington, as well as the city; like Carthage and Thebes, which were districts as well as towns.

XLVIII. I was now getting on very foul terms with Mick Silver, my mate; for however I laboured to please him, he had a flair for misunderstanding, a most powerful distorting vanity that caused trouble whatever I did. As his neat and florid and flaunting appearance declared, he laboured to love himself as well as to wash his neck. This last he might, but to love himself was

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beyond him, so he prowled and pined at the loss of himself, and suspected his betters of theft. He made a great grievance of the old trousers I had got from one of my brothers, by which he said he could see I had been a seaman before; but I was one of those who pretended to know nothing in order to dodge my share of the work. And when I had satisfied him on this point, he next said I had lice in my hair, as he knew by a pomade I was using just then for dandruff, an actionable matter, he hinted. Seeing how it was between us, D threatened to have us both up before the Captain if we couldn’t agree. I was doubtless too upset by this nonsense; but I was much pressed and fatigued by keeping on duty for twelve hours every day, notwithstanding my labours were light, oiling and minding engines and pumps. Yet the constant attendance and heat and the disagreeable food, with the small time allowed to fetch and eat it, increased my discomfort; and all this was enough to bear, without Silver making things worse.

XLIX. I had some time ashore here, being released from my dudes every afternoon about four o’clock. It was early in summer, and flowers of all kinds were in bloom in the parks and gardens of the city and suburbs, which delighted me after the sordid mechanics of the ship, and gave a kindness and relief to my leisure merely to see them. I had written home for five pounds, to be sent to my aunt, which now I went for. She lived on the outskirts of the city overlooking the harbour, where the gorse and sweet-scented broom and wild growth of the mountains begins. I had scarcely strength to climb to her dwelling, being come straight from work and overpowered with my labours and lack

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of sleep. She was out, and had left my letter under the mat; so I took tea in some gardens nearby overlooking the whole city and harbour, including the waterfront where I could see our ship. With this immense scene before me, I thought of all I was undertaking, and the discomfort through which I must pass to reach England again, to do which I would have undergone any hardship I think, so much is that country’s approval still the only aim and reward of any achievement in this World. So I thought. Although I had friends there for whom I was lonely, and could find none like them here; and that was reason enough. Above all I was taking my Progress to London, which, as I had no doubt, was to make me famous; and for this I had shrunk from no ship’s crew of devils and engineers I do believe; although, once among them, to endure it patiently was another matter.

L. We were in Wellington a few days, after which we sailed north once more by the east coast. All this coast is wild and deserted, much exposed to the ocean and scarcely inhabited. It was formerly well peopled and wooded in parts, but its tribes being driven off or deluded by new ideas, it was seized-on to make pasture for sheep, which the people of Britain required more and more from their settlements overseas, as the Romans required grain from Sicily and Africa. The first place we stopped at was Napier, which was since shaken down and rebuilt. Its streets were formerly named after the minor poets and writers of verse, such as Browning and Emerson, although this may have had nothing to do with their downfall, as the country is subject to tremors. But such names are a temptation to Nemesis I think, who is likely to be the presiding

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deity of these settlements I fear, as of all the New World to which Galileo’s compass first pointed the way. We next anchored further north off a desolate bay which the natives call Tokomaru, whence mutton is shipped overseas. Here the crew caught a shark, which they hung in our freezer, and skinned by degrees to make belts and sheaths. Soon after we reached Auckland, where we stayed several days.

LI. This city is the most populous (in its suburbs) and the most northerly in New Zealand. It lies on a narrow isthmus, and is so surrounded by inlets and islands it is rather part of an archipelago, with an ocean climate, than part of the mainland. Its situation is remarkable from the craters of many small extinct volcanoes which project above parts of the city like grassy acropoli. Its people are grasping in business, destructive and wanton in Nature, dishonest in dealing, and dissolute in their lives, but delightful to know, lavish and open with strangers, loving indulgence and pleasure, and more acclimatized than the New Zealanders elsewhere, with whom they have little in common except a long line of railway and a wrangling assembly. But who they are or what they intend they have never made known. In some parts of their country the Polynesians outnumber the rest; but in their city the British are foremost. Their foundation was fortuitous rather than planned, and their past, like their future, mainly unauthorized. The country they seized on is the most strange and various there is on Earth, and much of it is still undiscovered. It contains forests and hot and cold lakes, and mountains and cataracts and caves, and every fiery and fulminous marvel there is, and many strange and awful wonders and sounds. It lacks only any snow-

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covered peaks, although these overlook its borders to the south. It contains also the place whence the souls of the Polynesians are said to plunge into their Hades or Heaven, which is their manner of dying (and no wonder) to plunge head-foremost from this World to the next. In this Province the onslaught of the settlers on their surroundings was more furious and destructive than elsewhere in New Zealand, and much more land has been cleared and made desolate than their laziness and love of pleasure and drinking and the loose and provoking übiquity of their women can allow them to make use of. Here we see most clearly the effects of those tendencies and inventions which now pervert and unsettle men everywhere, and increase the cities at the expense of the land. And here, too, we may see most clearly the wasteful and unstable disparity in this country between the amount of land cleared and the distribution of settlement, vast tracts, which were wantonly cleared, being now under the protection of neither native nor imported growths, but left at the mercy of erosion and floods which, as I said, crumble and dissolve the top-soil and carry it out to sea, wrecking roads and settlements on their way. To sum up this matter, there is not in the whole of New Zealand a larger population than could comfortably and stably settle any one of their Provinces and leave enough room therein for twice or three times as many more. But instead, the people being destructively scattered over the whole country, they can neither leave it without injury to the land nor retain it without exasperation and poverty to themselves. While by their avarice and madness for experiment and contempt for Nature (to which their urgent need of money compels them more and more) those parts they have settled are becoming

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more and more a prey to strange and unexpected pests and diseases, which they counter by flying to more experiments and introducing new pests the effects of which they cannot foresee. So their country is at the mercy of every quackery there is, no less in farming and industry than in their social affairs. I have said enough now of this country.

LIT. I went ashore here more than once, first to visit an old aunt, my Aunt Patty, who was for some time in charge of my brothers and sisters and me during one of our parents’ long visits to Europe. We recalled those old times, which I never think of unless, not being affected by any details of what is past in the least. I have no sense of time whatever, except the present and what is to come; but the past, even last week, I forget, and have no idea how long ago anything was, and am amazed, and often delighted, to find that my friends keep account of what now has no meaning to me, except as a story of someone else. Only persons and places I never forget, and that presentiment of my future which is with me always. We said the Twenty-third Psalm together, which she taught us as children; and I was surprised that I could remember it nearly all, although I have never repeated it since. Then she spoke of her private sorrows and wept a little, perhaps at the awful thought of my going; and I wept a little, I think, at the thought that she wept without knowing how awful it was. William Goodfellow next had me to dinner, and afterwards sent me a case of cheese and butter and tinned milk to the ship, in which things he deals, in a vast and mythological way. Other friends, the Mulgans, invited me next, when they gave me the Laureate’s Dauber to read on the voyage. These verses

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are founded on the pretention that sailors pay no respect to peculiar talents, when in fact they do, and are flattered by the least evidence of artistry in any one of their number, even playing a mouth-organ. It was so inappropriate to the crew of a ship, I fear I had the ingratitude to drop it out of the port-hole beside my bunk. I hope my kind friends will forgive me. But that being the character which Mr. Masefield allows to sailors, I suppose they must.

LIII. On the last day, being ashore just before we sailed, I was motored by old Mrs. Goodfellow and her daughter, Elaine, to the top of Mt. Eden, one of those extinct volcanoes I spoke of, where we had tea with a view of the whole city and its intricate environs around us. I was uneasy all the while lest I should miss the ship, and yet reluctant to go, to exchange such enjoyable surroundings and kind friends for the discomforts and coarse relationships of life at sea. I sat as long as I dared, composing and fortifying myself in surveying that tranquil and graceful scene for the last time; after which my friends motored me with all speed to the water-front. I was the last aboard, and was already thought by all to have run away, as no doubt Silver hoped 1 had done. In this manner I left New Zealand for the third time, which was the second time with this aim of becoming a poet.

LIV. We were barely well under way when I went below to my duties, and by daylight next morning we were out of sight of the land. Many things combined to make me feel miserable. I was a stranger to conditions which are odious enough even to those who are used to them. With the harsh food and long hours and too

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little sleep, which I had now endured for over a month, I felt my health and strength to be failing; while at the end of the voyage my future in England with only ten pounds a month now allowed me by my father, looked uncertain and dark. And although no hardship I undertake for myself and my aims can depress me, provided I have freedom to come and go, to eat what and when I like, and to rest when I choose, yet now I was everyway hampered and commanded by others, and only to end my voyage, and not where I was bound, seemed the most important matter. Nevertheless, whenever I had leisure and enough relief from these discomforts to consider my private affairs, I felt confident I was taking that with me which would soon make my talents and prospects known to the World; to do which I meant this time to use every advantage I could, and not merely to battle obscurely for my aims as before. I had lived long enough in my own private regard, and in that of a few friends, and had proved I could endure any hardship to keep on my course. This time, I thought, I was taking what would admit me to that company whose station and influence, like the seasons, are public, of another order than private men, and provisioned sublimely. (I shall have more to say, on this matter of public and private, before I have done.)

LV. We made a calm voyage across the Pacific, spending Christmas at sea, which was in no way distinguished from other days except that we did no work. And for sailors this is considered refreshment enough, by those who employ them. I think I myself provided the most seasonable enjoyment aboard, not with the hamper and bottle of port from my mother, nor the

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cake Grannie Goodfellow gave me, which made no more than a mouthful each among so many; but being alone on watch on Christmas Eve, with nothing to do but to chip paint off the large fly-wheel of the stationary engine (which the boss gave me to do only to keep me employed) I so worked as to leave A MERRY XMAS outstanding in large and well-finished capitals round the circumference of the wheel, with the date, 1928, below. This miracle excited the admiration and wonder of all who saw it (may the Laureate take notice) and during Christmas Day visits were paid to it from all parts of the ship. D dined so well, and was so drunk by night time, in vomiting over the side he lost his false teeth, and for the rest of the voyage he grew remarkably thin. His temper as well deteriorated, although I continued to like him. I had sometimes to go below to the main engine-room to see to some pumps that belonged to us, and one day I dropped a hammer into the bilge through a crack in the flooring. When I told D he said I must go down into the bilge and fetch it. Not knowing how far to take him seriously, I was not a little dismayed at this order, which I had no intention of obeying; and yet I could see no other way of recovering the hammer. However, one of the stokers who sometimes helped me with the pumps fished it up very quickly, using an electric torch and a longhandled rake; which was no doubt what D meant me to do, since he smiled when I told him.

LVI. By now Silver was so unfriendly we hardly spoke in our cabin when we met at meals. He annoyed me in many trifling ways which only life at sea makes important, at the same time giving me a bad name with the rest of the crew and with D . He was un-

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reasonable, too, in respect of our drawing rations each day, which we did turn-about. Notwithstanding we already had more than enough of what tea, butter, jam, bread, sugar, and condensed milk was allowed us, he would insist on our allowance being drawn each day, although this required a punctual attendance at a certain part of the ship, and our cabin was already overcrowded with these things. If ever I failed in this way to increase what we had too much of already, he would speak as if I intended to rob him, and had hidden it somewhere. Soon I found he had parcels of unused provisions planted among his gear, which I think he either sold in England or took home. By having me with him, what he could save in this way was increased, supposing I didn’t want what was mine and would collaborate with him; and doubtless he took my backwardness in the matter to mean that I was in business for myself. He had better have been frank with me from the start; because how could I know of this traffic ? By having been a seaman all my life, I suppose. To draw rations without eating them is only one of many curious habits that seamen have, for some of which they can give reason, others not. They are very jealous of what regulations are made by law for their comfort and sustenance, and had rather throw overboard any food they don’t need than seem indifferent to a law that protects them from distant and disinterested owners. And they act as if a law for supplying them with so much provisions is complied with only when they have eaten or otherwise disposed of that much. Just as though for a man not to pay taxes makes the State guilty of not spending them. In this they are most unlike Australasians and all other Colonials and Americans, who rarely act in concert, except in emer-

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gencies; but while living together, yet each acts for himself. So that, while less able to combine, except under great pressure (when their adhesion is nearly unshakable) yet neither has a petty unreasonableness a united front among them, even when ordered by law (as I said to begin with) as among older peoples it has. Which adherence in small matters and seeming conglomerate insensibility and manner of knowing the answer to what they only half-ask is what most strikes a New Zealander when he first comes to England and meets with its people; as their want of support and unhappy singularity and indirect manner of speaking is what first strikes him about them in the Dominions overseas; where to be self-reliant and alone, for want of the civility to combine, is the chief characteristic of everyone. So that while the English are more apt to be greatly led, yet the Colonials are more apt to produce great leaders; which will soon have to be taken note of in our counsels; if our Empire is to stand against singly-led peoples, and mere custom and fashion are not to remain in control at its centre. But whether loose or combined, a nice unreasonableness seems to be the rule everywhere nowadays, which I think comes of our reliance on machines, which are only mechanical reasoners, having the same answer to every question, that leave us unable to do or say anything reasonable for ourselves.

EVIL Silver now began to complain of my work, and to give me instructions on leaving his watch. And certainly, what with not sleeping nor eating as much as I ought, my attention was less than at first; although in one matter I outclassed him, by a dodge that eased my labours and deceived him till the end. We had to

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leave our deck scrubbed after each watch, and had only a poor kind of soap for the purpose. I discovered they had some sand down below, so I brought some up to our place and used it to scrub with, making the deck so white he couldn’t conceive how I did it. But at last I could endure his hostility no longer, and I resolved to make a stand for myself and settle everything to my liking, even although it might mean having to fight him; and I had no chance, I knew, with a man of his build. But I suspected he was a coward; although I must confess I was thereby none the less fearful for myself. But when, early one morning, I took over the watch, and he began to tell me what work I must do, I replied that I would take my orders only from Mr. D . ‘l’ll make the rest of the voyage hell for you,’ he muttered, ‘if you don’t do what I want you to.’ As I made no reply, but regarded him calmly, he went up the companion-way to the outside deck and began to draw water from a tap nearby to wash in. I was only waiting for such an occasion, and I followed him up. It was four after midnight, a clear starry night with no moon, and we had all the deck to ourselves. I think the time and the occasion favoured my courage, and as he bent over his bucket I told him very quietly but distinctly that if he annoyed me any longer I should ask him out on the deck in front of the whole ship; this being the most serious and deliberate challenge known at sea. To my surprise and relief he picked up his bucket and went for’ard without saying a word, and I knew I had won. The next morning as we sat over our breakfast; ‘What did you mean by saying you’d ask me out on the deck last night?’ he asked. T meant it,’ I said. T’m not a fighting man,’ he continued, T don’t want to have rows with anyone.’

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‘Nor do I,’ I said; ‘but if you try to make things unpleasant for me aboard that’s what it’ll come to.’ And for the rest of the voyage he left me in peace.

LVIII. With the rest of the crew I was on very good terms, except once when I emptied a dixie of stew to windward of the bo’sun; and again in respect of a trifling matter I had to settle with the stewards, who had quarters in the same alley as ours. These sickly surreptitious youths had seen fit to christen me Dora, or Flossie, or some such feminine name; and one evening as I came for’ard to our cabin, hearing myself so addressed, I crossed over to their quarters and inquired if that name was intended for me. All looked at me sheepishly and no one answered; upon which I said that my name was D’Arcy Cresswell, and none other, and that I would be glad if they would remember it. Still no one spoke, and I never heard myself so addressed again. I knew little then, although I am well-informed now, of the homosexual humours of seafaring men, or I had not thought myself invidiously marked.

LIX. Meanwhile, when alone, I pursued my own aims, and reflected much during this voyage on the nature and meaning of machines. Being ignorant of their parts, I was the more careful to understand them in principle, wherein engineers and mechanics who are supposed to know everything are mainly ignorant I find, with no more knowledge of what brought engines about than of what shall bring them to an end. Very like physicians and surgeons in respect of our bodies, who are so engrossed in the symptoms of disease and their workings in our daily lives (like the fever and tumult of machines in man’s social body) they have lost

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all knowledge of their causes and relevancy, which lead us back to first principles and so on the only certain and safe conclusions. In this, as in all things, such ignorance of our health is to forget our only true masters, artists and poets, and all who draw their superiority from within themselves and from things unseen. Now in most things the tendency to truth or error is by inclination, an open ground of debate, and not always a matter of positive proof. But since machines demonstrate what they are, then, if their results be evil, as I find, it must be demonstrable wherein their evil consists. And I used to wonder what this could be, and when first discovered. Using this word ‘machines’ to distinguish these modern inventions from all mechanics before, I asked myself wherein these differ from those, as they must do, considering that by their use Man is at length unable to recognize what was formerly held to be virtue, Providence, wisdom, prudence, health, necessity, and all settled order of Nature and supervision of Spirit before, but all things are now reversed. In this inquiry I had nothing but that poetic instruction I first derived from Nature to assist me, which is harmony, or oneness, or the attraction of the beautiful in all things that, being once seen, governs us according as we are not in awe of mere legality and obturative and repressive morals. Starting from this, I satisfied myself that the original vice and mischief that first generated, and still generates, modern machinery is explosion, or burning of robust inflammable substances, such as water and oil, in a way which provokes them to violence, by preventing their free dispersal. Which is to thwart natural disintegration when in process of becoming integration or harmony and oneness again, and is therefore to dabble

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5n what is evil and devilish. (Here my ignorance of physics makes me at a loss for true terms and the invigoration of thinking they give; but repentant scientists with a glimpse of true spirit to guide them can pursue this.) And this provoking to explosion, or hampering of natural combustion (if I use the right terms) being the opposite of oneness or harmony, is therefore that fatal forbidden mischief we are warned of in all scriptures and oldest traditions, which men stumbled on in their reasons when Christendom fell. No former mechanics made use of this mischief; but all former inventions, even engines of war, were healthy and permissible to men’s use according as they were used; whereas these recent inventions that draw their vitality from explosion, being evil in themselves, may not be used except to Man’s downfall. For being evil in themselves they can work only evil, in their final results, however palliative in their passing effects; and they carry with them an increasing fatal infection of our minds and debauchery of our bodies and dereliction of spirit which prevents us to manage them wisely; or rather which blinds us from seeing that there is no such thing as to manage them wisely, being evil by nature, ungodly and so devilish by all estimation of concord and harmony, and by all past authority stricdy forbidden us. But instead they everyway manage us by their tempting and discordant cunning. And although the Chinese knew and used gunpowder, this was idly, and for amusement; and yet look where this frivolous and foppish ingenuity has brought this people to now. But they never looked into it, to see where it might lead, being content with the noise and outside of all things, even in their art; wherein they best portray beasts and flowers and all things less than Man. But in our hands,

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who are deep and determined, even in evil, reaching back to those subtle and deep roots the Greeks (not only to Mongols and Tartars) this novelty is searched out and probed to its centre, with every enticement to go on to our ruin. However, I got no further just now with these inquiries, so far as to see that machines are merely the embodiment of mutinous or disharmonized reason, the Copernican Universe, that was framed to make room for machines, being itself an illusion of reason and entirely evil; nor so far as to see how the correction of all this and regeneration of Mankind lies in coming dire events and the circumspection of artists and poets. But I came to this after a time, as you shall hear.

LX. A slight scratch on my right elbow now began troubling me, and very soon became so inflamed and enlarged 1 had to go to the Mate, as the Chief Officer is called, to have it treated. There was no doctor aboard, and when this is the case the Mate is in charge of all casualties. With this gentleman I was not on good terms, on account of an unlucky incident when I first joined the ship; which I was sorry for now, when I saw his box of sharp instruments. But he cut the place open and doctored me well, although without any good result, as my whole arm began to swell, and next my hand, so that I was soon unable to hold the oil-can properly during my watch. I expected to be put off duty, but nothing was said; and some of the crew advised me to report myself sick, as nothing would be said so long as I continued on duty. But this I objected to do, as I felt under an obligation to the Captain and Chief Engineer to continue on duty as long as I could, leaving it to them to determine if I was able or not.

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To my surprise the crew showed some annoyance at this, saying that there was a custom in these matters affecting them all, and that I must report myself sick (which was another instance, I think, of their addiction to formality in all things, from which Colonials are free.) They added that we wouldn’t be at Balboa for some days, and that I was meanwhile in danger of losing my arm, which had been a deadly blow at them all, no doubt. So I reported sick, and was taken off duty, and a man from the main engine-room was put in my place.

LXI. I had nothing to do now but to nurse my arm, which gave me no pain, and to read my books. I had some of my books on a shelf I had made above my bunk, which I had put there for company; the rest I had in a strong wooden box I got made in England for the purpose of taking them on my travels. I rarely read them, but I never go anywhere without them, as it happens from time to time that I have no other resource but to turn to them. Then I read them much as a man swimming under water comes up to take air. This box holds about a hundred books, mainly Greek and Roman translations, and some modern poets and historians, that is, down to the eighteenth century, after which they more and more require too much room with every decade. A few other books I pick up and leave again by the way, but I read very few, and these few very seldom, and nothing consistently but the newspapers. However I found I had no inclination for my library just now.

LXII. We were now near the Galapagos Islands and only a few days from Balboa, where it was certain I

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would be put ashore. This prospect alarmed me, as it was uncertain whether I would be shipped on to England after, or back to New Zealand; and I had no money but what I had earned on the ship, which wouldn’t be paid me until I reached either one destination or the other. Although I was now in very low health, I had no anxiety about my arm. I had good omens. The weather was misty, and one evening I saw the new moon ahead of us, lying evenly on her back like a little skiff that was going alone on some heavenly journey; and a moment later a land-bird flew by us. When at length we reached Balboa, I was taken by the Captain to the shipping office, where I received my discharge, and was told to get my gear from the ship and report back at the office.

LXIII. Before leaving the ship I desired the Purser to transfer five pounds of my wages to Mick Silver, my mate, in payment for any extra work which I might have caused him, after which I went to tell him what I had done. I then went to say good-bye to the Mate, and to D , and next I climbed up to the bridge to the Captain’s cabin and said good-bye and thanked him for having me. He looked somewhat astonished where he lay on a sofa, and mumbled something I couldn’t catch, and I returned for’ard to collect my gear. Silver was so thankful for the money I left him he carried all my gear on to the wharf, and politely wished me good-bye. I had said good-bye to most of the crew, and now I waited beside my luggage, as the ship was just putting off. Most of the firemen and greasers lined up at the rail above me, and waved and wished me good luck; and soon I was standing alone in the Canal Zone of the United States, with a pile of possessions

[s7]

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around me and no money, but only a perfect confidence in all things to come.

LXIV. Leaving most of my gear, I returned to the office, where I was told I would be sent to the United States Hospital so soon as a conveyance arrived, as it did soon after with a negro driver and orderly, who took me with all my belongings to the Naval and Military Hospital on the outskirts of Balboa. Here a place was found for my gear; and next I was bathed and put to bed in a large airy ward, like a veranda, but enclosed on the outside in fine wire-netting. Behind this was the jungle, which surrounded us in a green semi-darkness, very agreeable to my eyes after so long at sea. Through the netting behind my bed I could distinguish bougainvillias and giant bananapalms, and nearer still, huge coloured spiders only an inch or two from my head, at which we sometimes blew smoke from our cigarettes. The whole naval fleet was somewhere off the coast, and combined manoeuvres with the army were in progress; so there were not a few sailors and soldiers in hospital with various complaints, whose easy and graceful manners as they visited each other’s beds and smoked or played cards were delightful to watch. There were negroes to wait on us, and white nurses in charge.

LXV. Soon the doctors appeared and looked at my arm, which was afterwards wrapped in white gauze and laid outside the bed-clothes in an enamel trough, to allow of the wrappings being wetted from time to time. After some days these were removed, when the arm appeared white and shrivelled but perfectly healed. This being done, they next showed some concern for

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my health, and that of my family. I had nothing to tell them, except that I had been shot through one lung and the bullet was still in my back; and I begged them not to waste their deep science since I was only tired and dispirited from contact with machines. Nevertheless my lungs were X-rayed and my blood drawn to be looked at; and all being well, I was allowed up soon after. In a little while I was permitted to go out, when I called on the British Consul, and was told I would have to wait in Balboa until the arrival of the next British ship on which I could be sent as a distressed British seaman to England. I was not distressed, I told them, not since I ceased work. I was either distressed, they replied, or else liable to pay my own passage; so we said no more on the matter. There was no danger of my being returned to New Zealand, I heard.

LXVI. I was now at large all day, although still living in hospital; and roaming one morning through the jungle I came on a very high peak for those parts, up which the road appeared to lead to the top. I felt certain that this was the peak on which stout Cortez stands in Keats’ sonnet, ‘Silent upon a peak in Darien’; so I started to climb it with as much awe and delight as if it had been Parnassus itself. About half-way up I came on a notice which said that the hill was a military reserve on which trespassers were strictly forbidden. I thought this an altogether new-fangled and trumped-up prevention, considering my purpose. But as I could now see a military barracks nearby, I went down and asked the Commandant for permission to climb the hill. But manoeuvres were in progress, he said, and he couldn’t give me a pass, although otherwise he had gladly done so. Nevertheless I was still

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determined to climb it; and returning the same way, I saw a small track which seemed to lead to the top out of sight of the barracks, up which I went. I had not gone far when it led me on to the former road, somewhere above the notice; but by now I was so near the top I went on, and had not gone many yards further when a small detachment of soldiers came round a corner above me, with a little man in their midst who wore green spectacles and carried a butterfly-net. There was nothing to do but stand where I was until, finding I had no authority to be there, they made a second arrest, and soon we were both locked in a cell at the barracks. I was told I would be charged with trespassing on a military reservation during secret manoeuvres, after being expressly forbidden, and might later be charged with being a spy, as they plainly suspected I was.

LXVII. After some hours in our cell, we were taken into Balboa, the Commandant and an escort accompanying us. Here we were brought before a magistrate, who had evidently been summoned to deal with an emergency, since there were no other cases. The Commandant told him with what we were charged; and the butter-fly-man, being charged first, said he was a student from California on holiday, collecting insects. He had climbed up through the jungle and not known where he was. The Military thereupon withdrew their charge against him (as if I were the real matter in hand) and he was let go. Then I was called; and hearing I was British, the magistrate regarded me gravely and asked me what I had to say. So I told him who I was, and said I was out for a walk and wanted the view. ‘View of what?’ he asked terribly, no doubt thinking of the

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Pacific Ocean darkened with battleships. So I told him, a view of the sea from the hill-top. ‘Are you a seaman by trade?’ asked the magistrate, and with some subtlety, since seamen don’t look at the sea for nothing. ‘No, sir,’ I answered, ‘l’m a poet.’ ‘What, a pirate!’ he exclaimed; and everyone shuddered, I thought. ‘No, a poet,’ I repeated. ‘l’m an author, and write books.’ ‘We take a serious view of this case, sir,’ said the Commandant; who then told the magistrate how I had called at the barracks and been forbidden to go up the hill. ‘Why did you go up after being forbidden?’ asked the magistrate. ‘I took another road, sir,’ I said, ‘without knowing where it led, and not knowing that the notice on the former road applied also to this.’ ‘And then you found yourself on the other road without knowing where you were,’ said the magistrate helpfully. ‘That is so, sir,’ I replied. T see. So you got the two roads mixed up,’ he said kindly. ‘On the contrary,’ I replied, T found them mixed up, and I endeavoured to separate them’; at which everyone laughed, and I knew I was admired for this sally. Indeed I was pleased with it, and wondered at my coolness, which I had never felt in a British court I’m sure. But I believe I well knew on which side of the World I was. ‘You conduct your case ably,’ said the magistrate. And he asked me why I had wanted the view from that particular hill. So I told him of Keats’ sonnet. ‘But I’m afraid you must be fined five dollars for trespassing,’ he said. And when the court was over, and while I was waiting for someone from the British Consulate to pay my fine, he approached me again and asked me some trifling questions, as if I were indeed a most curious being, which is what I was thinking of him.

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LXVIII. Soon after this happening I was discharged from the hospital and confined in a large compound near the harbour, for derelict seamen of all races. Our quarters were clean and the food good, but there were so few of us, one or two British and a few Scandinavians who did nothing but play cards, I was glad to leave there after a few days, during which I made some drawings of my companions at play, or else walked about on the water-front. But I soon tire of tropical countries and their inhabitants. Under about twenty degrees latitude I think the Almighty exhibits some decadent tendencies in the colouring and design. This is a great change from my youth, when I loved the tropics extremely. What with so many changes since first coming abroad, I begin to think the soul pursues the same cycles of history as the embryo is said to do before birth, passing through many stages of growth in this womb of our bodies until its delivery at our deaths. Of the tropics, I now think them outside what is actively virtuous in Nature, like the neighbourhood of some dominion where its ruler’s authority wanes. The two poles, I should say, are the pure and ineffable seats of spirit in Nature, as those who travel there seem by their lofty tempers and unselfish courage to show, as if influenced to goodness by some virtue they breathe there, and its radiant substantiations of ice and snow. Women could never live there, I should say, without their lightness and costly dependency being exposed; and our little poets would soon be dumb on a fish diet. All was up with us when the Spaniards and Portuguese discovered the tropics and released a flood of sickly and exciting food-stuffs on the world, mainly sugar, which by pandering to the sensational in respect of one of our senses must have greatly assisted in the

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debauchery of the others, paving the way for the cinema, for popular music, and for the picturization of sexual enormity in females. But another reindeer-age might save us yet.

LXIX. We Britishers had word in a few days that a passenger-ship from Peru would soon be passing which would take us to England; and since she was stopping at both entrances to the Canal, I went by train with my baggage to the Atlantic side and boarded her there, when I found we had very poor quarters close to a cargo of brown sugar, which gave off such a sickly warm stench, like a savour of all this damned and degenerate World, I was unable to stay below for more than a few minutes at a time, until driven to do so by want of sleep. However, we were soon out at sea with only two weeks before us until we reached England. The only port we called at was Havana. The coast of Cuba here is so low, when first sighted the city appears to be floating on the very waves. But at length a narrow opening between two headlands is found, which leads into a great basin behind the city. Here we anchored, but were not, in our class, allowed off.

LXX. Once out of the Indies we soon ran into miserable cold weather, with strong wind and rain and high seas. I tried to read Dante and Demosthenes on deck, but was unable; but I did better with Scott’s Heart of Midlothian. When I was not reading I amused myself sadly writing one or two sonnets, finishing one I began after leaving New Zealand (‘Now I, in fear of going forth once more’) which was published at the end of Part I of this Progress, and another (‘Three months

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the sea hath held me in its arms’). They were little more than poetic exercises, but useful in confirming and strengthening my course. However little inspired, they spoke straight from my poor situation and uncertain prospects in England. I think it better to write somewhat lamely thus than to be fluent in what can’t be recognized for an experience a week after it’s written, but only the itching of some little idea. And when I come to write better (if only the World lasts for so long!) these pieces will be found to have meaning enough.

LXXI. The weather improved as we neared Vigo in Spain, where we anchored, and then went on to Santander. I was delighted with the size and grandeur of the Pyrenees at this end, after being so disappointed with them from the Mediterranean end six years before, and was glad to see Europe again. But for the rest of the voyage the weather grew cold, the air damp and lifeless, and at nights, when I sat alone in the bows of the vessel, the moon looked eerily down at the sea through a thin mist. My spirits sank lower than I ever remembered, notwithstanding I came near to relieving my misery in a passable sonnet, that called The Bay of Biscay in my next book of verse. But how tempting it is to play with sonnet-making, many once flourishing ruins and masses of fallen rhetoric attest, mine now among them. There is nothing easier to contrive in all poetry than a passable sonnet, and nothing so unprocurable as a good one. The form is so knit, and the progression so satisfying to the ear, and such an echo of memories from our earlier poets, there is plenty, both of matter and form (not forgetting the prestige they carry to dull ears) wherewith to concoct

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a like imitation. Unlike our blank verse, which is forever out of reach of all but real poets. But rhymed couplets come next, and then octosyllabic quatrains, for an easy and taking disguise of mere verse-making. But to run away from these forms out of weariness at their misuse, as so many poets do nowadays, is like refusing to drink water because somebody once was drowned. At this adult age of our language there can be no new forms, but only those which time has left us as the most useful, which our duty still is to use well, and without fear of staleness. For what was done the most often before is only thereby the more different from being done again. Plus (a change. But to undo what was well done before is to begin the tyranny of all sameness. Nevertheless I begin to see there is a thread of meaning leading somewhere in these innovations, but only privately (as with D. H. Lawrence) and not whither their authors suppose, who now think to relate these novelties to machinery and science and the material state, as if these were not the most deadly misfortunes from which only poetry and art will deliver us. We shall see. I think what those Florentines said about freedom to one of their tyrants applies to us about poetry. ‘Even when (they said) their fathers could not remember it, the public buildings, the halls of the magistracy, the insignia of free institutions, remind them of it; and these things cannot fail to be known and greatly desired by every class of citizens.’ So I think poetry and the poetic state, being kept in remembrance by the works of great artists and poets before, and the few who struggle to follow them, will come to be desired by all peoples, whatever kind of low scribblings be made much of meanwhile. The fog increased in the Bristol Channel, through which we

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crept into the Mersey, and so to Liverpool, where we disembarked. And thus I reached England once more.

LXXII. It was night time when I reached London from Liverpool. Having drawn my wages in Liverpool, I went to a cheap hotel near the station, intending to go on to my old lodging the next day. I had several times written to the old woman in whose top-story flat it was, and had heard in reply that she was expecting me back. So the next morning I went to Stourcliffe Street, a little old mews between the Edgware Road and Upper George Street, where I climbed the narrow dark staircase with its dustbins and bad smells, and found my room, off her sitting-room, empty and waiting for me, and everything as before. I was glad to be here. I had before chosen this lodging because it was well in the centre of London and was yet enough stories high to give me some air. It was near a low eating-house called The Shakespeare Cafe, whose title had first attracted me to this quarter, although I hardly ever went in there on account of the quarrels and fights that frequently arose there and enlivened our mews. But I thought its name a good omen towards setding in the same street; and so it has proved.

LXXIII. It was now the beginning of February, and bitterly cold. But I was warm in my room, and had a few pounds, and set about getting in coal and food and seeking my friends. After my ambitions, this, above all things, was what drew me back, to seek out my friends and those men I loved most, among whom I had already suffered and enjoyed so much in my former seven years in England and abroad. I knew almost

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no women in England except the two who had launched my first book of verse a year before, and those I knew I never admitted into my most private affairs. But for men I had more and more the utmost liking and intimacy, even for those illiterate and rough kinds I had formerly been thrown amongst, some of whom I loved dearly; and I constantly replenished these from the many of all kinds I met with in the public-houses and cafes around, labourers, soldiers, artisans, and loafers and idlers of all kinds. Nevertheless the temper and attributes most favourable to this passion are to be found where men are segregated to themselves and pursue one calling in common, as soldiers, sailors and students, particularly soldiers and sailors; notwithstanding that its higher attributes are often at the mercy of an intractable coarseness in most of these men. I still had some friends, though, of my own upbringing and middle-class. I met Otto Gugenheim once more, and Dick Davie and George (who was off to the States in the crew of a ship). And one day Frank, a transportdriver in a London barracks, drove his wagon and horses up to my door and ran up to my room to welcome me home. I had no better welcome than his honest and shining face. We had been great friends in London before, and he was one of those I most wanted to meet. With such men as he I am the more familiar from having served in the ranks of an English regiment myself. I soon wrote two more sonnets after settling into my room, that beginning ‘Dear books, be all the nourishment I need,’ and its sequel, ‘What bliss it is such company to keep’ (meaning my books this time, not my friends!) These also I attached to the end of my Progress when it came to be published, but much out of place, since this first part of my Progress ended

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with my reaching New Zealand before, and these verses were on recent matters.

LXXIV. But I must say, what with spending money with and upon my friends, my small income of ten pounds a month wasn’t nearly enough for my barest needs (for there is no waste in these matters, not for a poet). I had two alternatives, either to deny myself all but a mere existence, or else to spend my ten pounds when I got it and for the rest of the month live from some other source. As to the first, to practise meanness or any restriction upon myself is a mistrusting of Providence I have always abhorred; so I decided to spend my ten pounds when it came, and then, for the rest of the month, to sell my poems from door to door again, as I did in England before (having still a good store of the leaflets Bartons printed for me) a tiresome and thankless undertaking I thought I had done with. However, I had much still to do on Part I of The Poet's Progress (the work I had written in New Zealand and brought with me) and this course would allow me the most freedom to work on it as I chose, or to read or do as I liked; as on the other hand to get any regular employment (could I have found any) would not. As it was, on a wet day, or whenever I had made enough from my leaflets, I could retire to my room, to my own affairs, and manage my concerns without interference from anyone.

LXXV. But my first task was to finish my book, since so much depended thereon. I was already so confident where it must lead me, I felt my former hazardous existence to be near an end; and with this in view I considered a plan from which I expected a great deal,

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as I saw it lay in my course. This was to seek out a new sort of acquaintance and some preferment for myself among influential and famous persons, that temporal governing body and aristocracy of the arts which all great cities possess. I had been given in London before, and carried with me to New Zealand, an introduction to just such a quarter; which letter, the time not seeming ready, I had never presented; but now I resolved to do so before my book should be finished, not to leave it only to the cold mercy of strangers, but to launch it among friends and admirers if I could. And with what good results I did so you shall hear. So you see I knew my way, notwithstanding that my doings meanwhile seem improvident and reckless and a strange way to further one’s ambitions, quite unlike all we are taught. But artists and men of high and audacious spirit who are not prepared, as their feelings and devotions compel them, to leave go of all prudence and forethought and cast all on Providence are mistaken in what they intend and had better look at once for an opening in business. I am not urging any to pay no regard to either prudence or forethought save, as I said, as their feelings and devotions compel them. Let them beware how they belittle these. And this, I take it, is what Goethe means by ‘living dangerously’, as artists must at all times be prepared to do, if their circumstances require it, as more and more in these times, when two systems, a falling and a rising, are in deadly mistrust of each other, they must. But many are spared, as to means of a livelihood; yet even these still have their emotions and feelings and love of their fellows to squander and not hoard.

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LXXVI. But I had hardly begun selling my leaflets once more when a friend from New Zealand arrived (Tommy Tothill, who was with me at school) with ample means and a motor-car, and took me away to Devon and Cornwall and other parts. It was now early spring. We went through Salisbury, Dorchester and Exeter, beyond which I had never been, as far west as we might. It was at Bodmin, I think, where we heard of the tarn into which Sir Bedevere threw Excalibur. I wanted to see it, although it was out of our way, and a fearful and forbidding place when we found it. I ran on in front, out of sight of my friend, and knelt down and crossed myself in its waters. All this country moved me in this way, on account of its past and the echo it sounds in all our tongues, even after so long. Unlike my own country, whose wonders move and command one for the future alone.

LXXVII. We came back by the north coast, through Tintagel and Glastonbury to Oxford, meeting two New Zealanders there, John Harris and Ormond Wilson, with whom we stayed a few days. I had not been to Oxford for some years, since I sat on the hill there all night, too abashed by its spires and great reputation for taste to begin selling my poems*. I envied my friends their surroundings. Both knew of my first book of verse; indeed the reason we called there was because of a letter from John Harris which Tommy had shown me, in which John had written with so much enthusiasm of my first book of verse that I was eager to meet him, and we straightway became friends. Ormond Wilson’s chief interest was then in philanthropy and the Church; but we corresponded from then on,

•TheP.P., I. Ivii.

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and became intimate in New Zealand after. All these young men were descended from good families in England and New Zealand, and their friendship had much material advantage for me. I own to as good an eye to this side of friendship as anyone, which I think no sensible person ever lacked, unless he was neither needy nor ambitious; as many excellent persons are neither. But I threw away all I might have possessed on account of my aims, and I find it civil and encumbent on me to help myself where I can.

LXXVIII. In London again I was once more in no need of selling my leaflets, since a cable I had sent to my brother Charlie was now answered by a remittance of twenty-five pounds, which amount he had promised to send me any time I should ask. So I continued as before, revising my book, and now and then attempting some verse, and seeing my friends. But this sum I soon spent, and so had to resume selling my leaflets at last, and not without many solemn and silly adventures such as I speak of in Part I. I sold my poems in the furthest suburbs, as far as might be from where I lived; which is how mendicants, beggars, and all of a like calling to mine usually do, from a delicate scrupulousness not to meet with their customers any more; and mainly for the same reason, that these often show a resentment and dislike at meeting again with them. But indeed, in my case, the suburbs had the more accessible customers, and were therefore better for selling my poems than the town; while the town, for good reasons, was where I must live.

LXXIX. I now felt the time had come to do what I planned with my introduction (to William Rothen-

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stein, the painter, it was) so I forwarded it with a letter, and soon had a reply inviting me to visit him at his house on the following Sunday. He was so well-known that, notwithstanding my little acquaintance with such quarters in London, I well knew where I was going. So on Sunday evening I called at Airlie Gardens in Kensington, at one of a number of large houses, wearing my school-tie (as I like a foundation, and I had no other) and was introduced to a hall and staircase hung with many fine drawings and paintings, and next to a doorway whence, on the maid opening it, a great noise of talking could be heard. She intended to have done with me, I could see; but I told her my name and obliged her to announce me; which she thereupon did with such an indignant great bellow, I found myself the next moment facing the interested gaze of a large roomful of people (it was this domestic, I think, who launched my London career) and Rothenstein greeting me quietly with that discerning reserve I came so much to like. He introduced me to his youngest son, Bill, who, hearing I was a poet, very soon had me out of my depth about poetry. But I had no interest in poetry that night, nor in anything but where, and among whom, I was; and I soon had a lively presentiment of being on the fringe of that region I believed I had a right to inhabit, and swim there like the rest. I met Thomas Hardy’s widow there that evening, and the rest of the Rothenstein family; and although no one was more than politely distant to me, I liked all I met. But feeling I had made no impression with Bill, I came again the next Sunday, and the next, and continued to come every Sunday, until I found my liking returned and felt I was looked on as one of their circle. I told them how I was selling my poems from door to door,

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PWL 6

and this only made them the more glad to receive me, it seemed.

LXXX. By now it was summer, and after some more week-ends in Oxford with my new friends, and some visits they paid me in London, I made my way into the country and to Bournemouth once more, to stay with my friend Jim, the musician and painter. As I said in Part I, I greatly enjoyed these visits, on account of my fondness for Jim and the many discussions we would have about art, as well as the weekly concerts in the Pavilion, and swimming and idling in the sea, of which I am fond, and addicted since infancy, as all New Zealanders are. While I was away in New Zealand I had sent Jim copies of the New Zealand newspaper wherein my Progress had first appeared, in the belief that he would think well of it. But I found he greatly disliked that passage about ants and eagles which referred to him*, and indeed all the rest. He was most scornful as well of that passage on numbers |, which he said was nonsense, and engaged me in long arguments to prove it so. And as to the whole, he said he could write better himself; meaning that since he was a musician and a painter and not a writer of books what hope could there be for me? And he pushed his objections so far that this soon put a distance between us. But I left after a long stay much indebted to his hospitality, going to Rye, where a young man I had met in Bournemouth had invited me to spend a weekend with him. But neither was this visit agreeable to this youth, who had booked an expensive suite for us both in the best hotel. I preferred wandering on the

• The P.P, I, xxxiii.

t The P.Pi, I, Ixv.

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sea-shore to being indoors. A great storm had cast up an amount of debris, many beautiful shells and weeds, and still kept the whole sea-coast in an uproar and the sky darkened with clouds. This so engrossed me, I fear I was moody and aloof and averse to my friend’s inclinations. Seeing him miserable, I advised him to let me drink (as I had no money) and then all would be well. But instead, he packed his things hurriedly and went off by train, leaving me alone in our rooms for another night.

LXXXI. I had now to find my way back to London, and began walking northward through Kent, selling my poems as I went. Being told where Paul Nash, the painter, lived, I called to make his acquaintance and to sell him a poem; but he was busy I think. So I pushed on to Tenterden, where I remembered that Ticehurst had lived, with whom I had been in the army. I called at his home, a large house with fine grounds, where I heard he was married and living in Surrey, and would like to see me. I stayed an hour with his mother and sister (without mentioning my poems) and promising to visit my friend sometime, I went off towards Tunbridge Wells, where I stayed that night; and so on to London the next day, without any adventures that I can remember.

LXXXII. Being now well launched at the Rothensteins, I might have broken with those low surroundings I spoke of, and did so very soon; but first I was involved in a shocking and dangerous affair which cost me some time and money and no little anxiety before it was settled. I had a young friend, B , who had been in the army (I think Frank introduced us) a

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pleasant, good-looking fellow for whom I soon came to feel more than an ordinary liking. B - - was unemployed, and often visited my lodging for a meal, when sometimes I would give him a few shillings as well, as my habit is with any persons in need; although, perhaps because I was poor, he never asked me for any money, except once for a few pence to go some distance in search of a job, when I lent him an overcoat as well. But I soon saw he was mixing with low and dangerous associates, with whom, at the same time, he was careful I should have nothing to do. And once, on his way somewhere, seeing me with some men he knew who were strangers to me, and knowing I had a few pounds with me, he called me aside and earnestly charged me not to stay in their company or I might soon be in trouble. Poor fellow! he thought me unsuited to such company, when in fact he was much more unsuited than I, since they made him one of themselves, on their own terms, whilst I mixed with such persons only on mine. But his warning me was nothing but friendly and unselfish. Men of his kind are often given to such little goodness; which in no way excuses their crimes; yet I must confess myself fonder of these small sparks of virtue in base natures than of all the justice and charity of those who make virtue a calling, whose property in goodness is unending. Perhaps because it is easier to know and to love what has limits. And surely it is more heartening to know that vice has its limits in all men than that virtue is unending in some; which last shows us only that evil may not be in some, whereas the former shows us that goodness must be in all. The former leads us to love and to follow some men, but the latter compels us to love everyone, although we may not follow. And to love and to follow select persons belongs

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to religion and philosophy, which are yet subject to decay and to every abuse of abstractness, hollowness and hypocrisy, that promotes a reaction to a violent and unprincipled realism around it (as we see in these times). But to love all men and all things is poetic and the base of everything else. It is steadfast and incorruptible and always there to be found and built on when we need it, being Nature herself, or that compound of rare and gross, of abstract and concrete, whose harmony is the delight of poets. So that, when a too far-abstracted system decays, as with Christianity nowadays, not that opposite and utter materialism we see everywhere nowadays is the remedy, nor to mend what is past; but only poets have the remedy, by repairing our fallen parts, bringing those contrary and hateful opposites of our being together (as in Nature they are) when once the way is prepared for them.

LXXXIII. I soon saw the fruits of B——-’s fellowship with these men, when, the day after he warned me, the newspapers announced the discovery of a brutal crime in the West End of London, for which B—— was soon wanted by the police on a charge of robbery and attempted murder. Little was known, but enough to acquaint me perfectly with every circumstance of the affair. I was certain that B , who was very powerful, was drunk; and that his victim was little and weak; and that B hadn’t attempted to murder him I was sure. Indeed the same night he reappeared in his haunts, as I soon heard, very drunk, and with money and jewellery which he gave away freely, as his manner was. I had no doubt he had been incited to commit this horrible crime by those same friends of his he had warned me against, who had hoped for most of the

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spoils, but finding how far the matter had gone they had kept out of sight. From that night B had vanished, until his arrest a week later; during which time, since he was certain to be in want very soon, I expected he would come secretly to my lodging for shelter or food. Moreover, he still had my overcoat, with perhaps a letter of mine in the pocket; so that, one way or another, it looked as if I might be involved in the affair any minute. But he never came, nor the police; although, had he done so, I was prepared to hide him and give him what means I had to escape. For although I was shocked by his crime and would never associate with him again, in his downfall and misfortune I found I loved him all the more. However, he was arrested after a week, being betrayed by some female who knew where he was; and the same evening I went to Vine Street police-station to see what I could do. The Inspector there received me politely, saying they were always glad to see the friends of arrested persons. I was well-dressed, and knew in what light I appeared there; so we well understood each other. An immense tact envelops the underworld on the fringe of its meeting with the upper, and a perfect openness and disingenuity is the best passport to this region. B was glad to be arrested, I could see, and wanted nothing but a hot meal, which I got from outside; but the chief matter, I thought, was to have the charge of attempted murder reduced, and I next engaged a solicitor for this purpose, although I had no means to pay him; but it cost me ten guineas a year later; at least it cost one of my friends that amount, from whom I borrowed it. B was soon tried, and sentenced to three years imprisonment, and I never saw him again, although we wrote to each other. But when he came

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out of gaol I was once more in New Zealand. I lost another friend through this matter, as well as B——; for when O’M heard I knew B , and was helping him all I could, he expressed the most emphatic disgust at my manner of life and declined to meet me again.

LXXXIV. About now I met Nobby again, a young boxer I knew in London before, to whom, on account of his gentle and faithful nature, I was attached, as he was to me. He was a Cockney from Clerkenwell, and being possessed of an ardent wish to better his humble station in life, and to cease boxing, which he thought brutal, he vowed that some day, when I should have bettered my own station, he would be my servant, a position he had already held with one or two gentlemen. To this I agreed, as being something worthy to be aimed at and hoped for by both of us. At this time he had no means of livelihood but an occasional fight as an extra or understudy to third-rate promoters, for which he was never paid more than a few shillings; and I could see nothing better nor more suitable for him than to be my servant, nor for myself than to be able to keep and employ him. Indeed I straightway employed him for a mere pittance a week, although there was nothing for him to do but sometimes to sweep out my room or to press my trousers; but he wouldn’t accept anything from me unless he did something to earn it. In this way we pretended that our day of prosperity had already arrived, although I was still only peddling poems and Nobby was still only a boxer. He had a mistress who was housekeeper to wealthy foreigners nearby, in whose absence abroad the servants were giving their annual dinner and ball. To this I accepted an invitation; and after some little trouble about

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precedence, between our party and the butler, had been settled with dignity on both sides, we sat down with about twenty-five others to roast turkey and beer and trifle in the basement. I sat with Nobby and his friend near the top of the table, and below us were maids and men-servants from the surrounding basements of Mayfair. More guests arrived after dinner, when we danced upstairs in the drawing-room to a band. I had not expected anything so fine, and felt shy and unable, for want of adroitness and wit, to connect myself with the company. So after watching for a time, I left. Nobby was overflowing with great emotion that night, and embraced me near the dustbins as I went.

LXXXV. One day I showed my picture to Rothenstein, I mean the one reputed to be a portrait of James I, of which I speak in Part I.* But while he agreed it was a genuine work of that period, he said it was of little value so long as the subject was unknown; as on the other hand, if the subject could be discovered, it might be of immense value, he agreed; and he undertook to have it cleaned and repaired for me at South Kensington. And this being done, at no expense to myself, I had great hopes of finding a purchaser, or better still of finding the subject, ditat 32, 1600, this being but two years less than the age of James I at that date, of whom my picture was said to be a likeness by the old cottagers in Coventry who gave it to me. And there being but one other portrait of that king in the National Gallery, to which moreover mine bears a resemblance, I had the same hopes as at first of suddenly making my fortune with it. Certainly many surprising discoveries of the sort have been founded on

• The P.P., I, lx

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less, if they have come to mean more. And how account for the name of this king missing the mark by two years, in the mouths of two simple peasants with no knowledge of history nor thought of enriching themselves? This matter reminds me of how deserving I believed myself of some stroke of good fortune; although now I think it unworthy of an artist to hope for any such intervention, more like common luck, such as men are everywhere mad on, than any high providence. Rather we should remember the words of that rasping philosopher Epictetus, ‘that things which are not in my own power are nothing to me.’

LXXXVI. I had not yet spoken of my book at the Rothensteins, and before doing so I made two attempts to launch it myself. There was then in London a small group of Australians who had made a name for themselves as publishers, mainly of reprints and translations, one of whom was now in business on his own account. And since he published uncommon books, I sent him my Poet’s Progress, which however he returned with a courteous letter, saying he found it too personal for his market, and he advised me to change it into a novel. (By which, no doubt, its strict censure on present affairs would sound more idle and fanciful, and be the more easily discounted, in the mouths of fictitious characters; which is the very proceeding I am most against, so much book-making and fancy-work on all sides.) I thought his proposal so far beneath us both, I replied that his duty was to publish whatever I sent him, if he was really a publisher, dealing with real authors, and not merely looking for what he could sell; which was none of his business either, since booksellers were for selling books, who must take what the

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publishers supply them with, as the publishers must take what the authors supply them with, such authors as myself. And as for what books shall be or ought to be, published, that is only an author’s business; for who else can presume to know? And thus all things would be on a sound footing, if only he, and everyone else would attend to their rightful business. To which he replied that he didn’t want my book, wouldn’t have it at any price, and wished me well with it elsewhere.

LXXXVII. Next, seeing a tribute he paid to Sir Edward Elgar in the press, I wrote to Bernard Shaw, who seemed to have more fame than he knows properly what to do with, and might well be willing to share a portion of it with me. I told him I had arrived from New Zealand with a work which he ought to see, and might see if he cared to send for it. There was no reply, and no doubt I should have known better. Doubtless the same impediment, of too much and too many, was against me here as before. Indeed in these things there is something wrong with us all. But I think the continual need of selling my leaflets was provoking my patience.

LXXXVIII. I was often in want, but had good friends, writers and enthusiasts for the arts like myself, with whom I might have a meal sometimes or a lodging for the night. Philip Owens and Dick Davie were now married and living near to each other in North London, where they often provided me with a refuge when I was selling my poems in those parts. Likewise Otto Gugenheim now had a flat in Kensington where I was welcome any time; and Jack McLaren and his wife (more Australians) were in Clerkenwell; and the Lee-

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Coopers (more New Zealanders) were good for a luncheon or tea now and then; as likewise Miss Watson at the New Zealand Press Agency had a good eye for derelict New Zealanders; so those hazardous weeks of each month, when I must somehow earn a living, were not so painful as in London before, when I lived in a doss-house and away from everyone of my own kind. Moreover I had now enough from my father to keep a lodging of my own, humble though it was; yet it suited my life, and kept me on the more safe and familiar terms with many questionable characters I met, whom I couldn’t have mixed with so easily had I seemed a person of means, with a more respectable lodging. Persons without means should plunge boldly into such society at once, where they may easily maintain themselves and emerge the wiser and more refreshed, not waiting until they are driven thither against their will, and have no standing either in the world they have kept to too long or in that they now enter too late. Nevertheless I was beginning to feel an impatience with this kind of life, considering what better fortunes, I was sure, were before me; but after my recent experience, I was averse to hawking my book, as I hated the thought of its being refused.

LXXXIX. About now, the time being late in summer, I was selling my poems in Hampstead when I met Helen Ede at her husband’s door, who regretted she knew little about poetry and wished her husband had been at home to see them. But she bought a number, and next asked me, did I know a New Zealand pianist, Vera Moore, who lived nearby? I replied that we hadn’t met since we were children, when we once travelled to Europe with our parents in the same ship;

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but if she was nearby I should like to see her. So she took me to Vera Moore’s flat, a visit I much enjoyed, and from which much was to come for me. It was a perfect morning, and the trees of the Heath, turning golden with autumn, the well-shaped and painted houses, and a few leaves on the footpaths and lawns, delighted me, I remember, in a way these happy appearances always did when I was poor and selling my leaflets. To be inside or out in such weather, where the windows were open and the gardens with their trees and grass-lawns merged one into another, was equally pleasant. And although I didn’t think of it then, in my feelings I must have known I was drawing nearer that more fortunate world I had already entered at the Rothensteins. It soon began unfolding before me now wherever I went; however that by importuning obstinate and refractory publishers and playwrights I might not move an inch towards it of my own accord. Vera Moore invited me to a recital she gave in town soon after, where I first met Jim Ede.

XC. I was now going more to the Rothensteins, and in consequence saw less of my former friends, except Otto, whom I took with me to Airlie Gardens. I was finding even more there to encourage my aims and to foster my leanings than I had hoped. Many well-known and distinguished persons came there, to whom I had the best introduction in the friendship and liking of all this family. Nevertheless Rothenstein, as if my intentions deserved it, was always attentive to introduce me to any persons of note, of which any number came there from many countries, poets, artists, diplomats, writers critics, and students without number; but of mere riches and inheritance hardly a trace, any more than

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Communists would be looked for at Buckingham Palace; although by now, so well I was liking it all, I had been more than well pleased to have seen all the World. His eldest son John was married, and lived in a flat in the top story of the house; and one evening when I was dining with John and Elizabeth (for I was now a frequent visitor at all hours, as well as on Sundays) I mentioned the autobiography I had written, and was at once requested to bring it the next time I came and to read it aloud. I was happy to do so; but on the evening appointed I was not a little embarrassed to find I was to have the whole Rothenstein family for an audience. But when I had finished a reading that lasted some hours, I found I had interested and delighted them all; and it was straightway decided, as a matter of course, that a publisher must be found at once. Now it was my turn to be impressed and delighted ; and I returned to my lodging with a foretaste of being already successful and famous.

XCI. Soon after this Otto and Dick motored me down to visit Ticehurst in Surrey, with whom they left me for the week-end. It was late autumn, and the woods that surrounded the house were damp and sunless and wet underfoot. I was all the time restless to be in London again, but enjoyed my visit and the strange smell and moistness of the woods and hearing my friend and his wife play on the spinet and viol in the evenings. Here it was arranged that we would both attend the annual meeting of our war-time battalion, which we did in London soon after, drinking much beer and meeting many not seen for years. Which I mention chiefly for its strangeness, since the war and those who took part in it have seemed of another world to me since. I was

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so little formed for it, and so confirmed in my duties since then. And yet, how I loved you then, Burkett! I was eighteen and you perhaps twenty; and how beautiful and how friendly you were! Do you remember how we made one bed for ourselves when it was cold and we hadn’t enough blankets, and the scandal the other fellows pretended to raise in the hut? And now, how you had changed! and how much older you looked! Is it marriage, and having a family to keep?

XCII. Being at the Rothensteins one evening, I heard that Arnold Bennett, the novelist, was expected at supper the following Sunday, on which day I was asked to be there; which express invitation made me wonder if his coming might not have something to do with my reading my Progress a short while before. Bennett was then literary critic of The Evening Standard , in which appointment was joined the authority of a great novelist with the large circulation of a leading newspaper. So that, if this newspaper provided him with an immense vulgar audience, so likewise his eminence as a writer added the few who judge for themselves to the many who do not, but gladly follow where they think the judicious are before them. On which account his recommendation of any book was of great moment to publishers and booksellers alike, since it was shown in the most acceptable view to the greatest number. And this being well known to me, there was no one I was more eager to meet than this man; indeed I foresaw clearly that the moment I had been hoping for was at hand. And when, supper being over, he entered the room where some of us had already gathered, and his deliberate and exacting gaze fell on me, as it seemed, with a particular meaning, where I stood furthest from the

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door, I returned it as one who has been waiting all his life for that moment, and was ready for all that must follow. I don’t think I puff-up nor falsify how I felt for this man, who was to read and admire and next recommend my first book to the World; and I had scarcely patience to listen to those who were about me. Nor could I cease to look at him where he sat near the door, nor to feel that he must be looking at me. Such a crisis is a culmination of youth and beginning of manhood with our spirits, such as ardent and sprightly young men once found, and embraced, in the health and hey-day of warfare (alas! now on its death-bed, and ours). But now it belongs, I think, only to artists and such as live near the hazards and dark side of their destinies, to know in a moment this summons to the long undertaking and whole bent of their lives. This is that tide in the affairs of all of a seaward and perilous liking, that either carries us off or leaves us stranded forever.

XCIII. At length Mrs. Rothenstein approached me. ‘Arnold Bennett would like to meet you, D’Arcy,’ she said, and took me towards him. ‘What do you write?’ he asked coldly, hearing what I did. ‘Poetry,’ I said, coldly too. ‘Sit down,’ he said; and just then Rothenstein came up and said: ‘Cresswell sells his poems from door to door. Rather courageous of him, don’t you think?’ ‘Have you any of them with you?’ asked Bennett; at which I drew one of each sort I sold from my pocket, having brought them for this purpose. He read them carefully, but said he wasn’t competent to criticise verse, but they seemed good, except for some faults of grammar, he went on, which I heard with amazement. ‘ “Between us and thou”,’ he said,

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quoting, ‘should be “Between us and thee” ’; and again, ‘ “Though the mowers’ knives Must lay thee low” ’ (meaning the many stalks of the oats) ‘this should be “Must lay ye low” ’; both of which blunders I saw at once and said I would change them. I was delighted with his careful attention. How many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of persons had read these verses without noticing either of these blunders, I thought, or at any rate without reproving me for them, as they certainly ought, seeing they were for sale. It makes me doubt if it was not on account of some other marvel, and not my verses at all, that they paid me. For my part, I have never understood the cases of pronouns, any more than to spell; and even lately I composed a whole sonnet, in Lyttelton Harbour, wherein not one pronoun was in its proper case, an appalling mischance, for which Eddie Marsh repudiated the whole poem, and could find no merit in many good stanzas because there was so much nonsense in one.

XCIV. I took care to tell Bennett that these were only my earliest verses, which I continued to sell for want of having any more recent ones printed. And next I asked him why he didn’t deal sometimes with books of verse in his weekly articles for The Standard, since he had dealt so ably with my leaflets. At which he again said he wasn’t competent, but appeared to consider the matter; and soon after he did so, I noticed. He now asked me, had I written anything else? Upon which I told him of Part I of my Progress (as I had reason to think that Rothenstein had already done). He next asked me, had I offered it to a publisher? No, I said, not remembering that Australian matter. Why not?

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he continued. To which I replied that I didn’t think any publisher would take it, and I disliked to invoke that disorder which everywhere existed between merit and publicity, in the midst of which I feared I might be able neither to relish nor pursue my aims (not that I expressed myself so clearly as this, as I write much better than I can talk; but this was my meaning). ‘Will you let me see it?’ he asked. ‘With pleasure, sir,’ I replied. ‘Then send it to me. You will find my address in the telephone-book,’ he said. ‘But if I send it, will you read it?’ I foolishly asked (as this seeming uncertainty was the reverse of the confidence I was feeling; and what I was thinking was, now he will read it, and admire it, and my future is assured!) ‘Certainly,’ he replied, ‘and let you know my opinion of it.’ And he rose to go.

XCV. So I sent him my Poet's Progress, and my first book of verse (the one Beatrice Lyall had printed) and after a week, during which I had gone among my friends to tell them what was afoot for us, he returned the Progress with a brief letter in which he said he had read it with keen interest and pleasure, and had never read anything like it before. (He has never read Plato, then, I thought with amazement, nor Plutarch, nor Montaigne!) But the book of verses he kept, and said he hoped I intended he should. As to the Progress, he offered either to introduce me to one or two of the best publishing houses, or else to send it himself; and of such actions, rather than the most telling advice and opinions, the strongest and ablest men are made. To say nothing, when we can do nothing, is best; and where actions are called for, what needs to be said?

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PWL 7

XCVI. I was for some days wondering with which of the several publishers Bennett had mentioned I should do best; but I had no time to decide before a letter came from Faber & Faber to say they had heard of a manuscript which Bennett had read and admired, and they hoped it might first be offered to them. Since theirs was one of the firms which Bennett had recommended, I sent it at once; and almost as promptly they wrote again to say they would publish it. I went straightway to Russell Square and obtained a small advance on my royalties; and as it was now December, and the book was to appear in the spring, I soon had the proofs. So now, all was coming to pass for me as I had hoped.

XCVI I. I had chosen my title, The Poet’s Progress, since returning to London, in place of the mere newspaper heading I had published it under in New Zealand before. By this new tide I intended a warning of what earnest and austere view of poetry was within; and I meant also to say in advance that my standpoint and my style were not of these times. But now Fabers wished me to change it to A Poet’s Progress, for what reason I had no idea. But my ear told me that, compared with the definite article, the indefinite was foppish and weak; and I refused to change it. Nor would I change it to Poet’s Progress, as Dick de la Mere next suggested. It was The Progress I meant to emphasize, not The Poet', for wasn’t my whole progress only to show that I wasn’t yet even A poet, and only by this very progress I should be one in due course? Indeed I was pleased with my title, with its fond emphasis. And now my book, I had no doubt, would sell in such thousands, and be so admired, I should be not only

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rich but influential and famous. This worldly sensation, like all others well-founded in human nature, was one I coveted; not an aim, in my case, but an inevitable accretion thereto; and well deserved, I thought, having kept on my course faithfully, in spite of every difficulty and discouragement, for eight years. And if riches and fame were before me, I was resolved to enjoy them to the full, as I had hitherto enjoyed poverty and obscurity to the full. Both kinds were such as faithfulness and not an artful conformity had brought me, and were honestly got. But wasn’t my book itself worthy of the most splendid result? And when the proofs came I worked over every page tirelessly to make it perfect, costing my publishers a large sum for corrections. The best passages I couldn’t make better than as they had sprung from my pen; but neither could I improve on the rest by this method, any more than my inexperienced ear would allow; and the best were so good that the labour of matching them often only made matters worse. However, I gave a pattern to the whole, and a clean-shaven cheek to the countenance of a thoughtful style.

XCVIII. William Rothenstein offered to do my portrait for the book, a valuable embellishment, which I gladly accepted, and sat to him several times at South Kensington. Or rather I stood, very stiffly and coldly, in the manner in which I faced the public in their doorways, with my bag hung over one shoulder. I was again selling my poems, and came from this labour to be drawn. The drawing gave force to my book, and I think a direction to public opinion, as Rothenstein caught my disposition with great skill. Young Bill Rothenstein designed the jacket, from my idea. I

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wanted, I said, a desolate landscape in which there was a ruin, maybe an arch, representing Antiquity; and perhaps the sun rising, as its habit is; or setting perhaps (all according, as Nobby said). We laughed over it, especially on account of the sun-rays, which we had no sooner got right than Barnett Freedman came along in my absence and made Bill redraw them. When I protested, Bill got up in the night, I believe, and drew them in the dark, and sent the drawing to Fabers. But it was right, after all.

XCIX. All things being finished, as we thought, I was sent a last lot of page-proofs, roughly bound, on reading which I began to make alterations again, and many additions, obliging Fabers to have much of the work set up afresh. Surely so small a book, by so small an author, was never so costly and troublesome to a publisher before. But I had founded my return to England on this work, and had built such hopes on it, I couldn’t bear to have it imperfect. Indeed, such is my hunger for perfection in all I do, during my adolescence as a writer, a difficulty which I couldn’t surmount has many times led me to sit for five or six hours before a single sentence, or part of a sentence: and I have worked through as many as a dozen versions at once towards a final version, when by my feelings I have known the truth of some matter which nevertheless it seemed beyond me to make clear. Yet I don’t work to no definite end, at an infinite cost and deceiving myself as to what I can do; and although I will never leave go of what I see is imperfect, I know what can’t be bettered, at least by me. I am now more able to see what is proper to my subject, and can pick my way with more ease, and so save myself much

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rewriting. Moreover, in Part I, I laid certain foundations into very infirm ground until, to my thinking, I found rock; of which I have the use and benefit now. Fabers took my behaviour in this matter with few complaints; and indeed all this was as nothing to how I treated my next publisher, and my friends and patrons as well, as you shall hear; which either the future will justify or else nothing will. So I make no excuse for myself, either now or hereafter.

C. But this altering of the page-proofs brought a vexing matter to light, when I was told, as an argument against my altering this version, that it had already been sent to several influential reviewers in advance of publication, as was commonly done. I was amazed to hear this, and I protested that what wasn’t finally passed by me shouldn’t have been shown to anyone. In distress that so many evils were now at large I called to see J. C. Squire, whom I had met before; and over some beer in a tavern near his office I asked him, had he received page-proofs of my book? And hearing he had, I told him that what he had got wasn’t my book at all, which was something much better; and further, wasn’t it monstrous that a book not yet finished by its author should be sent round to reviewers ? He replied that this was frequently done with page-proofs, at which stage a book had usually been written. Here was a man of letters! I thought, a very cold pinnacle of Parnassus! a most unfeeling parent! And I began to wonder what link of Nature was missing in many fine offspring said to have been begotten of Hippocrene and the Inkpot. I begged him, at any rate, not to review my book until he had the last version. It won’t make any difference, he said; but I think in the end he obliged

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me. I was so put out by all this, I had no way to console myself but by remembering how much Bennett had admired my book even while it was so imperfect. Now he would like it still more and would have a whole page of The Evening Standard, I reflected, wherein to say what he thought. My anxiety on this account may look like a want of confidence in myself; but doubdess, in respect of his first book, an author so ambitious as I was must depend a good deal on what the newspapers will say; although this is an apprehension we ought to grow out of, as a good actor, with experience, thinks less of his audience and more of his part. Certainly, in my case, I was in a state of apprehension about it bordering on the occult; and walking with Otto in the Chilterns about now, at night, when suddenly a comet swept over the sky I bade him remark it. This was the sort of admonition I liked.

CL I think that not to believe in such things is absurd. For how else did the Ancients become what they were, and all for us, who now reap what they sowed. And pretending that these things were ill done, yet we live on their fruits. Doubtless Dr. Johnson held a belief in omens to be nonsense, and worthy of Barbarians, as he held the Greeks and Romans to have been. But wild Nature discomfited him; and that Providence should, in any age, prefer to speak from a thunderbolt, a falling star, or other such matter, rather than from a newspaper in the Strand, was not to be thought of. A man’s religion is too often only a better name for his place of business. Moreover he was so satisfied with things as they were, he desired everything to remain; meditation on stability was his great wisdom, and the vanity of historical institutions lay in their having

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perished. It never occurred to him that not-to-have-been-before is as striking an instance of mutability as not-to-be-now. That the Prayer Book was not to be found among the tables of Solon was only a further proof of the barbarity of the Athenians. But now the Church and the Enlightenment are among the things that have perished, and we no longer look to the newspapers, the pulpit, and the coffee-house for an immutable Providence; nor indeed, in most cases, any further than the self-starter and the electric switch. Nevertheless, there are still persons for whom Providence is something deeper than this; and these may be forgiven, I think, if they look once more to Nature and to those older testimonies that did likewise; which is only to look to that lasting original source whence all subsequent authorities derived all they have lost. The Consul Valerius was prevented from attacking the by a thunderstorm. And when bright weather instantly followed his withdrawal, he refused to renew the attack lest the Tiqui were defended by some divine power. A modern general might have won the battle on the second assault, deeming such scruples to be nonsense. But how much more than a battle may the State have lost in the long run by the want of piety? A wise man may prefer to lose what a fool can win easily. And Rome wasn’t founded by fools.

Cl I. Johnson.- —Then the less need of its being defended by one, sir. Cress well.—Sir, mine was a public contention, and yours is a private rebuke, a distinction of which, in its larger issues, you have always been ignorant. Sir, a knowledge of this, although it would have silenced your tongue, would have immortalized your pen, being the one thing of which Humanity

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stood, and still stands, in need. Sir, the Reformation didn’t succeed, as there is no patching up a decayed system in public, however you may endeavour to do so in private, and groan and sweat on your knees in terror of a future state. Consequendy your tremendous Enlightenment is without public faith. Although the land resound with preaching and declamation as never before, this is no more than private scruple proclaimed with immense scholarship. Sir, your Church and State, whose conjunction you now think assured, are already inexorably divided, until a new public revelation be found. Your Church, sir, will soon be of no account in public intention, and your State find its true allies in the chemist, the banker and the mechanic, and stand revealed as a profane and material ordination whose leading Divines are the night-editors and the newsboys. You had best hold your tongue, sir. If you are really an earnest man, go and listen to the tree-tops and the waterfalls until you hear something, as I prefer doing. You shan’t bully me, sir, for a belief in omens.

GUI. At last my book was published; and the same week, on Thursday, and for some weeks after, I eagerly looked at Bennett’s page in The Evening Standard to read his great announcement of my book, which would send all England running to buy it. After two or three weeks, during which I could hardly bear the suspense of waiting until each Thursday arrived, and then on each Thursday was almost aghast at not finding it in the newspaper, after so long, at last I knew it must certainly appear on the next Thursday. And on that day, when the first afternoon-posters appeared on the streets, it seemed ominous that my name wasn’t in the

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forefront of the news. Nevertheless I opened the paper hopefully, and there indeed was Rothenstein’s portrait. It was here! But where? I looked all over the page and could see nothing about it. It was surely all about other books. Then I caught sight of my name in a corner, and a small paragraph, something about Cresswell and oysters. Alas! I had read it all in less than a minute. It seemed nothing. It seemed almost absurd. I felt dazed and bewildered. This certainly would leave the world where it was. After all, I was still in a top room in Stourdiffe Street, selling my leaflets each day, and like to do so for a long time to come. I looked at the newspaper again, and there, certainly, was my portrait in the middle, very large; and then there was that trifling paragraph in a corner; and all the rest just books, other books! As I went home on the top of a bus, for the first time in my life my confidence in myself almost failed me, and I went to bed and remained there for two days in a kind of darkness. John Rothenstein came, and went. Then at length some bright spots appeared in my mind, and I began to think of a great and wonderful poem, as it seemed. For some days I delighted myself with fragments of something I couldn’t grasp. I forgot everything else. And then, feeling happy and indifferent to everything but what I was doing, I went out.

CIV. I went to The Times Book Club to exchange a book; and there, to my astonishment, was a whole shelf of my Progress, perhaps thirty-five copies; but some were already missing. So many copies! But what for? When I gave my name at the desk the female attendant seemed moved, and said ‘O yes!’ Then I went out, and there it was in the window. So I went

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for a walk; and there it was in Bumpus’s window! I went next to Airlie Gardens, where Rothenstein congratulated me warmly on Bennett’s review. Never were friends more happy at another’s success than the Rothenstein’s were at mine. But what success I wasn’t yet sure. Then The Times Literary Supplement reviewed it and said I might yet prove a beacon to a bewildered generation. So I went again to the Rothensteins. John had seen it, and was delighted. Next Jim Ede came, and told me of persons he knew who were wanting to meet me, on account of my book. As a result of this news I went with Jim to one or two parties, where I found myself possessed of that larger significance than belongs only to private life, which lies, for an individual, in his being public news, and for any body of persons, as an army or a department, on how far it is acting for the State. I was famous, perhaps! I was at least no longer merely a private person; I was public.

CV. Public, you say? You mean like one who wins a battle, or blows up a train?—ln a measure, yes.—Or discovers a new star, or a mountain, or has something named after him? —Like that, I suppose; although mine was only a very small book.—You mean, the smaller the less public?— Well, not as to size. I’m not certain about it. —Is it the book, then, that’s public, or you, or both?— Both, I presume.—ls a good poem public?—lf it’s published.—But even if it’s not published?—ln that case, how could it be public?— Can a bad poem be public?—Of course, if it’s published.— You know of no difference, then, between public and published?—No.—lf a bad work be praised, what is that?—Disgraceful.—Who or what is disgraced?— Public opinion.—And if a good work be praised, is that

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public opinion?—Of course.—And is the general opinion public in each case?—Yes.—Then wherein different?—l don’t follow.—And yet, as you told the Doctor just now, the difference between public and private is what now matters most to the World. But it seems that you don’t know the difference.—To reason isn’t my business.—Then I advise you to leave the Doctor alone. But come, now, ought not this to be settled if, as you seemed to infer, all is at sea until a new public revelation be found? Oughtn’t we to make certain what these things, public and private, are?— You mean you want me to reason on these things?— Why not?— Because, as I said, to reason isn’t my business; and because I wish to get on with this narrative, having better things to attempt. —You mean poetry, of course, and all those things in connection therewith which you discovered on returning to New Zealand again, as you mean to relate in the course of this work. Well, let us make this inquiry now, after which you will be better able to relate how you came to make these discoveries.—ls it a long inquiry?—We’ll make it a brief one, and then, with these things in hand for future reference, you may be off to your parties and being famous, if that’s what you’re dying to relate (as I know it is). —Very well. But for the last time, then.— Undoubtedly; for after this there will be almost nothing further to reason about!

CVI. Agreed that all matters are of two kinds, public and private. Public matters are naturally those which further what is public, and private matters those which further what is private.—What, then, is public and what private?— Public is whatever is of greatest moment to the greatest number, and private whatever

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is of greatest moment only to one.—Agreed. But what else, then, needs to be known? —Why, what these things are which are of greatest moment, either to the many, or only to one. Now I don’t ask what is thought to be of greatest moment to the greatest number now, or at any time; nor what is sometimes of greatest moment to the greatest number, but not always. But I ask, what is that which is such in its nature, and always?— Plainly, that which is common.—And what is common? —That which unites, or makes one. —And what does this ?—Any part that desires the whole, which is greater. —And what are parts called in respect of any number of persons?— The self.—And in respect of Nature, or things?— Just parts. —And what is that whole or oneness called which is such of any and all parts, whether natural or personal?—God.—And by what faculty desired in Man? —By the soul. —So the soul is that which unites, or makes one? —Yes. —So the soul is that which is common?— Yes we said that that which is common is that which is of greatest moment to the greatest number. And we said that that which is of greatest moment to the greatest number is that which is public. Therefore the soul is public, and whereby we apprehend what is public; and of the two kinds of all matters, public and private, those are public which, of their nature and always, are in accordance with the soul; and conversely those are private which, of their nature and always, are contrary to the soul. Nevertheless many matters are not always clearly distinguishable, whether they be one or the other; so these contraries aren’t to be thought of absolutely in all instances, nor easily known what they are. For, as we said just now, some things are only thought to be common, while others are common sometimes but not

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always. And again, there are other matters which appertain not to the self as parts but to Nature as parts, which are unable to be apprehended as either public or private, although apprehended as common. But to return to things manifestly public and private.

CVII. Now since public matters are simply those which appertain to the soul, and the soul is both common to all and personal to each, therefore public matters can be done and known secretly and obscurely, as well as openly and in common? —It appears to be so. —And obscure in this case means obscure to all but the doer, or else obscure to the many?—Yes.—And obscure in this case also means not known to the many as public, even if otherwise known to the many?—Yes.—And likewise private matters may be either open or obscure? Yes. —And public matters when obscure are not thereby private?—No.—And private matters made open are not thereby public?—No.—And in each case is either public or private the same, whether open or obscure?—ln its nature, yes. For public is still public in each case, and private still private, as we saw. —Is each the same in all other respects, in each case?— No. —Wherein is each different, in each case of being either open or obscure?—ln its consequence.—From which state of either public or private does a consequence follow, from the open or the obscure?— From both, since all things have consequence; but in respect of certain and predicable consequence, from the open. —ln both public and private from the open?—ln both. —And from both public and private the same certain and predicable consequence;—No.—Then from each what certain and predicable consequence?— From the public, credit or belief; from the private,

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discredit or doubt.—Very well. Now we have shown that public matters are always and only of the soul, and that private matters are always and only contrary to the soul. Next we have shown that such matters are either open or obscure, and stated that, being open, they have certain and predicable consequences. It has been stated that public matters, being open, invariably evoke credit or belief; while private matters, being open, invariably evoke discredit or doubt. But this must be proved.

CVIII. You say that public matters, being open, evoke credit or belief; while private matters, being open, evoke discredit or doubt.—That is so. —And why are these consequences certain and predicable in each case? —From the nature of public and private in each case, and from like things producing like.—You mean that public, or the soul, is like or produces belief; while private, or what is contrary to the soul, is like or produces doubt? —Yes, being open.—But wherein is this likeness or reproduction?—ln the first case, that public is like or produces belief, it is in this, that belief is whereby we accept what is common to be such. For instance, sight is sometimes common (although not public) and all who have sight sometimes see for each other as well as for themselves; which they do by belief in those to whom they relate what they see. Which belief is like sight in those who believe. But since sight isn’t always common, but is prone to both error and deceit, it sometimes evokes not belief but unbelief. For sight is one of those matters which aren’t public but only common, and not always common, as we saw, but sometimes an exception. But the soul, being public, is always common, and so subject to no

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such exception. And as sight, being sometimes common, evokes belief sometimes, so the soul, being always common, evokes belief always (being open, that is) and never unbelief. Which belief is like public in those who believe. Which is like things producing like. And in the second case, that private is like or produces doubt; this follows conversely from the former case, and is also like producing like. Therefore the consequence of public and private being made open are certain and predicable in each case. Likewise of matters not certainly either public or private: being made open, these have consequences which are confused, and are neither wholly true in belief nor wholly in doubt.—But let us keep to things certainly public or private. And now we know that, not only is public wholly of the soul, and private wholly contrary thereto, but also that public matters, being open, evoke only and always credit and belief; while private matters, being open, evoke only and always discredit and doubt. Such are the certain consequences of public and private being open. But as all things have consequences, we must next consider what are the consequences of public and private when obscure.

CIX. Now a public matter may be obscure, or not known as public; and yet known; when it follows that it must be known as the contrary of public, or as private. Or since these things are often involved, and not clear, shall we say it may sometimes be regarded, if not as private, then as partly private and less than public?— Yes.—But let us keep to the clear instance nevertheless. For instance, a good statue is public; that is, of the soul. But a good statue may not be open as good (or as public, that is) but obscure, and so known as a bad

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statue. And conversely, a bad statue is private; that is, contrary to the soul. But a bad statue may not be open as bad (or as private) but obscure, and so known as a good statue. So we see that, if known as obscure, then public and private have certain and predicable consequences which are the opposite of those they evoke when known as open. That is, public, when obscure, now evokes discredit; and private, when obscure, now evokes credit. And since these consequences are evoked not by true public and private in each case, but by public when mistaken for private and private when mistaken for public, it follows that these are not true credit and discredit, but false. But since they are now of far more persuasion among us than the true, what shall they be called?— Why, in both cases, publicity.— And then many things, as we saw, are not certainly either public or private; and the knowing of these, whether open or obscure, is likewise uncertain, whether it be properly credit or discredit or merely publicity. So what shall this uncertain knowing be called? — Why, opinion.—So now we know, what public and private are; what credit, discredit and publicity; while what is uncertainly known we do well to call opinion, since we can’t do without a term for those many things. Many things are uncertain, we saw, from the uncertainty as to whether they are properly public or private; and even of things certainly public and private, there is sometimes a doubt as to how far they are open or obscure, arising from the nature of things themselves, over which men have no control. For instance, actions tend to be open since they are done by means with which all are, or may be, perfectly acquainted, that is, by deeds; but actions tend to be obscure with the many since deeds are often known to only

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one or a few. Which last is just wherein art and science tend to be open, that their existence is easily known to the many, if not to all; but they tend to be obscure from being done by means which are known only to the few; as only painters know the means of painting, sculptors of carving, philosophers of reasoning, poets of rhapsodizing, and so on. But let others pursue these details, and leave us to apply these discoveries broadly; for now we have come so far, no doubt you will want to apply these discoveries to society as a whole and to states, good and bad?—We may as well do this here, and be done with the matter.—Very well. And then you can get on with your business of being ‘public’ and famous.

CX. I think we have said enough to make it plain on what base of either public or private all human systems, good or bad, are founded; well-organized and civilized systems being those most founded on what is public and common, wherein all things, being openly known, evoke either true credit or discredit; and ill-organized or uncivilized systems being those most founded on what is private and selfish, wherein all things, being known only obscurely, evoke only publicity and opinion. While undoubtedly there are backward and primitive systems which are founded on nothing clearly distinguishable as either public or private, wherein all things are mysterious and confused. These occur among savages and half-savages, and are based rather on nature as parts than on the self as parts; while the civilized systems and their contraries, the uncivilized, are based rather on the self as parts than on nature as parts.

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CXI. In a civilized system then (to which the nearest among our own race are those of Christendom and Classical Paganism in its prime) things would have credit only as they referred to the soul and the revelation of things divine; all else would, being published or made open, have instant discredit. All material and profane speculation, being only private, would be pursued at its author’s own selfish risk, and evoke no discredit unless made open and published. So were many things pursued among the Ancients, without perpetrating publicity; and the Mysteries hid many such things, as well as many mere physical privacies not proper to be openly known. These things were never discreditable therefore; and rightiy not, being kept within bounds. And of things creditable and made open, religion, or the things of the gods, would be foremost ; since this is that form of public most easy to keep open at all times; although, in the end (as all things have an end) this is the first to falter and pull down the rest. The State itself would be only the most general worship, and things done in its worship would be second only to things done in worship of the gods. And next to these, the arts and sciences, even war, would echo the harmony of those greater; and as far as men can, nothing public would be lost, down to the least particular of their lives.

CXII. But with uncivilized systems (of which we have no greater examples in our race than the Roman Empire in decay, and now ourselves) in the general prospect all things are reversed; and to say simply how they are almost infects the horrified reason with a hatred of itself. Things only private are credited as things public, and things public discredited as if

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private. Thus nothing is credited but things only profane and material, to credit which is to know them obscurely. While nothing is so much discredited by the many at large as all things of the soul, to discredit which is likewise to know them obscurely. Thus true credit and discredit give place everywhere to the false, which we found was publicity; and this double-tongued advocate now speaks for everything. Every material and profane speculation, that formerly was guarded as private, is now given the utmost publicity and licence of report, and all the honour of things public; while the soul itself lurks obscurely in each like a thing suspect and private, and with no countenance from its neighbour (although the Churches still have publicity and a mighty income!) The Mysteries now are not things darkly private and near to Nature; the mysteries now are the most open gods themselves, the source of all publicness. Half dumb and hopeless assemblies with strange names meet in secret to consider if indeed there is a god or not. These are the only mysteries now; all else is a blaze of light! (No wonder that one of our big bookstall scientists was bawling lately: ‘Let there be no Mystics!’) And in the midst of all this, what of the State? Happy, by comparison with others, are those peoples who looked to their liberties while some vestige of what is public and common was still open among them. Such have some core of soundness, some deep notion of publicness, which no amount and madness of publicity can wholly corrode, whereby they hand on something for the future. Of such Rome was foremost, as England, however fallen, however forgetful of its danger, however misguided by the degeneracy of its ruling classes, is foremost among peoples to-day. But with this allowed for, all else is dark, and darkest

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where power and wealth are foremost. The State (even England) is no longer God’s, nor even the people’s, but pledged to the owners of power and wealth for a dole of comfort and material gain. And art and science, those once most worshipful ornaments of the public life, are so sunk in obscurity as almost to be no more. In their once public place are the false arts and sciences, the outcome of private speculation and appetites, given publicity. These have credit, as if public; and if true art and science be allowed an existence anywhere, they are so small by comparison with the rest and so discredited with the many as to appear only private. For instance, of false science, the Copernican Universe has credit, although no more than private and profane speculation known obscurely, and in this condition given publicity. But to uphold any contrary and public Universe would now be looked on as private madness. Nevertheless, as the false arose so consummately only in private reason, be assured it shall fall as consummately, and only in public reason. Indeed it trembles already as I touch it (run to its rescue, Professor Jeans!) and has passed away utterly in at least one regard. So much for false science in its whole firmament and palladium, and in every creeping and burrowing dependency the same. The whole is a fantastic futility burrowed from the privacy of our reasons, not allowed us by Heaven but seized on for ourselves. Already the signs of its downfall appear; already destruction is raised by the same far-reaching arm that overwhelmed the Roman Empire before. The Goths are over the Alps, and must soon reach the Po. The World trembles in its capitals, and the great arteries of its travel and news retract their base and enervating employments too late. And again, as with

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false science, so with false art. Here the private appetites and desires have their outlet in many new forms and wonders and many agonized presentations of nature as parts. But here we must be more sparing. With false science we can be sweeping; it must go. Let the Earth be square, round or flat; let the Sun be a god or only a great light; let the heavenly bodies move how they may —so long as what we believe arises from a public regard of these matters. But a private regard of the Universe given publicity is not to be thought of. It must go. Indeed it has gone already. Together we have destroyed it, you and I. But false art, on the other hand, has never supplanted the true nor discredited the past. Its firmament is the same, now as of old. Its great stars still give the same light from the same station of greatness, and for the same public reasons. We have nothing to do but to rescue true art, wherever we find it, from its obscurity, still having a certain fondness for the false, since it keeps so much in remembrance. And moreover the true is no sooner made open than the false is heard of no more. But to bring true science to light (to make it open, that is) we must first destroy the false at its roots, or the true will still be obscure to the many, and so have discredit; since the false has reversed and discredited all things that went before.

CXIII. Now let others pursue this, as you have no time to do, being, if I heard you aright, on your way to ‘higher things’. Let us hope you arrive there. But if others meanwhile will take these matters up, they must bear in mind what has herein been laid down as to public and private and their outcome, correcting what is faulty therein (as no doubt much is faulty; but

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the way is plain) and confirming what is not, the better to understand the condition we are in and the great and unescapable dangers that are upon us. For nowhere else in modem or ancient writings will the same viewpoint be found, so far as I know; since never before have the same or like evils made this standpoint of exposition necessary; doubtless had it been necessary it had been far better done long before. For with the Ancients public and private were each what they are, and no doubt of it; and to have expounded these terms would have been so much labour to show them nothing new. And the same with the Moderns, until Christendom fell with the Reformation, when everything rotted. And after that the matter was hidden from many great minds, who couldn’t do other than look on false science as true for that time; since all things can be true negatively, when at first they clear away and abolish what has decayed past cure, and only when this great negative work has been done can their positive untruth be seen, when the time comes to build anew. Thus Bacon was greatly, and by all timely valuation rightly, deluded, as it were, and many more. And yet ‘deluded’ is untrue of great men. It is only for us to be deluded or not, whom time calls to a different outlook on these awful affairs. So why blame the New Zealanders? Well now, run along to your parties where, remember, you don’t know of these things as yet, nor until you return to the Antipodes again, whence you fetch up this news. So enjoy yourself in London while you can, where nothing exceeds like success.

CXIV. After this it must seem I have a great enmity against society, as indeed I have; but against individuals

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none, as what follows will show. By what I am now to relate it must seem I indulged myself for a time in an inordinate craving for position and wealth, in a manner injurious to my aims and out of keeping with my small and uncertain resources. But nothing is fatal to those aims we are born with, while the new company I was soon meeting readily took shares, of a limited liability, in my prospects (as with all poets and artists Society ought) and financed my way. But indeed it was perhaps my fantastic unequalness to this company that licensed me there, to see and know all I could, and indulge all my worldliness, which had had little enough airing. It was all in my journey. And I think the more curious and out of mind is any discovery which a traveller comes upon, and the less like that place whither he is bound, the more prone he is to stop and consider it with delight, as something to be regarded this once or never at all, and thereafter met with no more. His very interest and delight in it shows it is no part of the business on which he is bound. But let it be but the first taste of that very goal he is bent on reaching, the first signs of habitation, say, on the outskirts of some desired city, and he remarks it briefly in passing only to press on with more speed to the whole matter at hand, deigning no more than a glance when he meets with it next, and at length, when it comes crowding upon him, almost unconscious of all but the final goal round the comer. Such a man, rather than he who stands admiringly before what is surprising and strange, shows his dependence and servility in respect of the scene that surrounds him; and such are your social climbers, moving through their newly metwith surroundings without either admiration or delight, aloof to all but what begins to be seen ahead, and for-

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ever considering the distance to be done. Such I was not, and no poet or artist would ever be, having his own honours and dignities loftier than any of this World, and ambitions and thoughts of glory greater than any, which make even great kings uneasy to think how mean, by comparison, are all their power and possessions; and only their nobles that fall short of possession by a head, and are still by that much dependent on what is above them, think an artist something beneath. Whereby we see that, where worldly and spiritual honours are in comparison, only your greatest leaders and emperors, your Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons, are lofty enough to see both the limits of this World and what manner of men, in their kind, are far greater. Not your Elizabeths, your Louis, Lorenzos and Francises, with their players and painters and court employments, however poetry and painting flourished under their favours. And to come down to ourselves, what reckoning can now be made of this matter, by any adjustment between inherited honours and riches and the treasure of artists and poets we can now see around us? None, I think; unless, in my own mean experience, that excellent recompense which was now about to befall me among my new friends. But to return to where I began: my delight in the company and appointments of that society among which I was soon to find myself have that excuse (if it needs excusing) I figured just now, as with one on a journey whose aim they were not, although they lay in his way, and were turned to, therefore, in passing with the more proper relish and admiration for a little space. My destiny, as I believe it, wouldn’t allow me to linger there if I would. But so small an instance I am of this case, and so little spoiling and attention I had

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when we think of the great ones like Byron and Mozart and Pushkin (although striking enough when you consider how small was my book and from how far I had come) I only wish I could tell of a more brilliant and titled company on the one hand and a humbler upbringing and temperament on the other (which in truth I can’t) and a distance between merit and patronage, in my case, more like David’s to Jonathan’s or Nell Gwyn’s to the King’s, the better to illustrate what I say. But such as it was shall be told, and how well I liked it; although it must seem as if my aims were lost sight of meanwhile. But only wait till the end.

CXV. Soon after those matters I spoke of, I received a letter from a man who had read my book, he said, and admired it, and wrote to ask, would I come to lunch? Wondering at this, I took it to Rothenstein, who exclaimed at my good fortune. If he liked my book, said Rothenstein, then indeed I began my career with the happiest prospects; and if he liked me, he was a friend who could do more than perhaps anyone else in London could for my future. And he told me how the public’s interest in new poetry during and just after the war was largely owing to this man, the E.M. of the Georgian prefaces, as I now remembered. I didn’t pause to reflect at what opposite poles of poetic valuation we stood, according to the opinions expressed in my book, and in his. I was too gratified to imagine that here was a man, by what I heard, who could show me more of that influential and fashionable world I saw appearing around me, and I accepted his invitation with delight.

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CXVI. In this way I met Edward Marsh, when I soon found my good fortune was something more than his interest in current authorship might have entitled me to. For not only did he repay me for my book in that pleasurable coin he saw I most coveted, but he allowed me my singular freedom as well, and only restrained this when he saw I was in danger of overdrawing my account with society. He saw I had no other interest in society than to make my own terms therewith, which was to give what I had, and to receive in return what most pleased me; and herein lies all that freedom he granted me. But he showed me as well that there is a limit set to the current sociable credit that goes with a good book, exactly in proportion as it is recognized to be good and as the bargain therefore is sound; since it is talent that secures the investment, and the more credit is allowed him, the more an artist is bound to repay both credit and interest by a still better successor to that work which he draws on. He is overdrawn with society when, in that practical view wherein all commerce is founded, liberality begins to lose sight of any future repayment. Nevertheless an artist may be overdrawn with society and yet still solvent in himself; but when that point is reached, he must return to those staple resources which are providential and natural to all who trust in themselves, by means of which he first came into notice. No one taught me to know this so carefully and so justly as Marsh, whereby a natural liking between us was, in the end, guarded against any foolishness on my part or any over indulgence on his, as the sequel will show. So that, if the Rothensteins first introduced me to the World, and I myself settled before hand on what terms I went there, it was Marsh who showed me how to remain there on those terms, or else to retire.

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CXVII. We were friends almost at once, and after our first meeting I dined with him many times, when we nearly always went on to a theatre; whereby I encountered something of that fashionable half-public World I so coveted. I now had a guide who could inform me where and in what company I was, whereby I liked to measure my own public property with its appearance and circumference in others. I had no idea then how spurious this fashionable ‘publicness’ was, according to that dialogue with myself I have just concluded above. I looked with interest on that modern and inverted exclusiveness which says to the multitude ‘keep out’, without which all would be lost, never contrasting it with that true and older humanity which invites all to partake. Most of all I liked the direct and strong stamp of a public identity (as we use the term ‘public’) even when not in great coin; as I saw once in Melba, whom Eddie pointed out to me at the theatre, in a box above us. I looked up, and beheld a face like marble, wherein all personal expression had given place to an immense public fame. A pale chaplet of leaves surrounded her dark hair, and the lighted stage at which she was gazing illuminated her face as if she confronted a sunset from the gloomy ledge of her box. Even so, and even such a sunset! I was deeply struck with the illusion of greatness, and amazed that mere flesh could so resemble its great protagonist; and for the rest of the evening I was too absorbed in that profound image above us to attend to the performance in front. On another occasion when we sat in the theatre with Lord Lloyd, I was all the time wondering if it wasn’t better to write a good book than to govern all Egypt. And so lost I became in this brilliant speculation, I had almost no knowledge of where I was.

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CXVIII. Dining with Eddie at Gray’s Inn of a summer evening, with the sunlight illuminating the elm trees outside the fine old eighteenth century windows, with Mrs. Elgy bringing in strange and delectable dishes, and good Graves with Chartreuse to follow, was a happy reward, I felt, after so many years of plain dinners, and sometimes none. We were soon on such good terms, I felt Raymond Buildings to be another home where, having a key to the house, I could come and go as I liked. While its owner was daily at Whitehall, I would spend many hours there, reading and writing letters; and if ever I felt hungry, or cold, I might light the fire, or visit Mrs. Elgy in the kitchen for something to eat. Most of all I enjoyed dipping into a fine classical library, in which I found some remarkable books, as well as many fine editions of modem works. Among these were D. H. Lawrence’s paintings in the Fanfrolico reproductions, which I carelessly singed on one page with a cigarette. When I showed this to Eddie he was distressed that so expensive a work should be damaged, and I realized that there is a superficial value in some books apart from their real value, or notwithstanding they have no real value; although this wasn’t an instance of that frequent absurdity. But he didn’t reproach me; and afterwards I was careful not to smoke when handling expensive editions.

CXIX. I was convinced, by these paintings, that Lawrence was an original artist, with every faculty necessary to a great artist except an instinct of continuity ; which is like marks we leave after us with every step of our terror and wretchedness, to lead us out of the wood. And wanting this, he was unduly oppressed

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by his own times, having no way of escape but only to wander further and further into the darkness of privacy, whither only a few who love and understand him can follow. A great artist must find, and keep to, that public path that leads up to and away from any thicket and wilderness of this world, blazing his own way when there is none other, by an instinct of direction derived from the past. Without this, the confusion around us only increases our own; and the common people, who will follow a leader, avoid a madman who seems more lost than themselves. Yet Lawrence well knew the fatal darkness we are in, and was more sensative to error and blindness than any artist of his time. Moreover he knew what faculties we must trust in to get out of this wilderness, but not knowing on what things behind us we must take our bearings, he was unable to make any public use of these faculties; but, as I say, he used them for private enablement only.

CXX. One night, after seeing John Gielgud as Hamlet, Marsh took me behind-stage to Gielgud’s dressing-room, a helpful experience, like that of knowing the properties of any art, which I repeated several times. I was eager to talk to Gielgud about the speaking of blank verse, concerning which I hold that the line should never be lost, but the five feet should be heard, even when the action is most rapid and tense. I hold, too, that while speaking and acting are as one, yet the speaking is the superior matter, and the action only a comment on what is already perfect in the ear, and not, as is usually the case nowadays, of foremost importance, leaving the verse to be only a comment on what we see. Which comes of plays being written in ordinary

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speech, that points only at the outside and fashion of things in the most familiar terms, and accustoms the ear to an easy and familiar following of the case; whereby, when verse is attempted, such a strangeness is felt that the action perforce must be heightened to repay us for what we fail to hear, or hearing, to enjoy. In this way the acting is put first, and the speaking becomes a mere accompaniment to what we see; so that, with fine scenery and dresses and furnishings, and good-looking persons who swoon and stab and make love and scale battlements to the life, we begin to mistake our eyes for our ears. In all this, not only is the speaking of poetry not foremost, but the line and its structure are lost, and the voice beggared of the five strings of its music. And the line being lost, then the words come in heaps and driblets having less relation to verse than to plain speaking, which the actor prefers as giving a more familiar and taking air to his art, as he calls this mischief. Thus the verse is used only to illustrate the acting, instead of the acting only to illustrate the verse, which came first, and can still convey its whole meaning to us without acting or anything more.

CXXI. So much, then, for real or poetic drama, which is the only true theatre. And of those garrulous activities that usurp its place there are three kinds, all injurious to true drama: the spectacle or circus, the action-play, and the argument-play; although these are sometimes mixed in one entertainment, in proportion as it is intended to appeal mainly to children, to lusty adults, or to intellectual adults. The first, or spectacle, with its frolics, must remain, as we are all children at times, and some of us always; but the other

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two, being incompatible with true poetic drama, must disappear; since only poetry and a poetic system is the cure of all our disorders, and there can be no poetry on the stage where either action or conversational argument are foremost. To which end we must encourage the writing of new plays in verse, that blank verse which the great architects of our drama have left us, wherein properties are of no account, and the actors are merely an audible mouthpiece. In this way we may train the public to hear the line and its music, and a real drama may arise.

CXXII. I by no means at any time ventured to say all this to Gielgud; but one night, after seeing his Lear, I went behind to his dressing-room to say how much I enjoyed it. Finding him alone, I hinted that I had strict ideas on the speaking of verse. To my surprise he was interested, and he eagerly asked me to criticise his performance; so I told him I wanted every line to be sounded; and a much slower production, perhaps lasting four or five hours. He agreed as to the verse (which he did nobly, to my mind, except where here and there the production entangled it) but said that a slower production presented difficulties. I then said that I thought that the gap between Shakespeare and the current theatre was too severe, and that the minor Elizabethan dramatists, such as Dekker and Ben Jonson, would be a more attractive beginning whereby to accustom the public to the speaking of verse; and if the most lively works of those playwrights were produced, a taste for great drama among the mass of the people would follow. While he dressed we talked on the perils an actor ran who must now and then fill his purse by appearing in current conversational plays,

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and I saw he was awake to all I was thinking. I never met him again, except once at the Morrells at tea, when there was no occasion to talk; but I talked with Gordon Craig on the matter, at the Rothensteins, when I found that, so far as keeping the line, and the harm done by a conversational delivery, he agreed with me.

CXXIII. I was seeing more and more of Jim Ede; and with him, and with Eddie Marsh and others, as with the Rothensteins to begin with, I felt I was not only being indemnified for a good book, but was making real friends as well, as the future proved. Besides parties, Jim sometimes took me to uplifting places, such as Eumorphopolus’s collection of Chinese antiques. But I dislike museums; and no matter where we went, I looked on all places with the same worldly eye, and was more interested in whom we were with than in anything that was shown us, notwithstanding that Mr. Eumorphopolus unlocked his cabinets himself. I was more happy when we went in to tea, and I could look at the company. I met Arnold Bennett again at dinner at the Edes, when the Countess of asked him many difficult questions about poetry, and each time he referred her to me. Which comes of writing a deep book, concerning which people think you must have the matter always in mind; or, if not, then at least you can call it up in a moment on their account. I was far more interested in hearing how thick the walls of her casde were, and I promised to pay her a visit when I was next in that neighbourhood, which is a good field for leaflets, I remembered.

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CXXIV. Little notice was being taken of the three sonnets with which I had so hopefully ended my book, the one written at sea on my way from New Zealand, and the two others soon after I reached London. A few critics spoke well of them, but others said nothing, and some dismissed them as being beneath my prose, and only poor stuff. I was little moved by this indifference, although all my hopes were in these pieces. I well knew I had done better by these trifles than by all my prose. Beyond my prose there was nothing, but these sonnets, I knew, would lead further; and to know this is a happiness that no amount of public notice can increase, nor neglect take away, being of a different tide of honourableness altogether. How absurd, then, to speak of Keats being killed by his critics! Bodily sickness lays us open to every other inclemency. The butcher’s boy comes coadess and hatless through the cold wind, and the feeble old body dies of opening the door to him. Was she to starve by the fire? Keats died of consumption, and that’s an end to it; and might well be an end to all this morbid investigating of great men and battening on big reputations, all of which is illjudged in respect of their vices and virtues. Men who are public are entitled to a public valuation, and not such as belongs only to private peerings and scruples. Which is one reason why, in the hope of being a poet, I write of my own progress, when so few seem to know what is fit to be published and what is not. I hope I know what is beneath public notice, even in respect of myself. If I prove worth it, let others rake after me for my leavings; and write better with those if they can.

CXXV. But I meant to say of my sonnets, although not yet so finished and mature as my prose, they are of one

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purport therewith, and of far greater merit considering what they attempt, which is a proper harmony between concrete and abstract in that world of sensation and feeling wherein these qualities and quantities are found in their purest condition. To achieve this harmony is to exhibit each in terms of the other, as only the soul, whose whole bent is harmony, can do; not to affect only an intimacy with the abstract, as our language more and more muddles and cross-mates the meanings of words and weakens the action of verbs (on which all lively and strong portrayal depends) to this end, nor yet to show only a gross and unenlightened familiarity with the concrete, as our scrap-iron artists and songster-cum-scientist versifiers like to do. Nor yet to attempt harsh and violent and far-fetched affinities between them, as one of our poets lately did when he likened the Crucifixion to the downfall of a Matador, thereby disgusting our reverence for the one with too great a bloodiness, and our admiration for the other with a preposterous pretention of holiness. But poetry is a perfect harmony of these two extremes of our nature, abstract and concrete; and good prose a parting and analysing again of what poetry had joined, with a careful regard of which extreme is which and wherein and how they relate. Nor is that poetry which only stands concrete and abstract in apposition, or else deals in one and the other by turns, and into the dizzy machinery of its thinking throws handfuls of hard matter and sand. Nor is that prose which analyses false art and science without knowing the true (and what false science is we have seen). So now, having this aim in view, which is much above anything that my prose could attempt, I say these sonnets at the end of my book merited a closer attention, imperfect as they

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are. For instance, in the sestet of that sonnet beginning,

‘Dear books, be all the nourishment I need’:

Be you my lamps. From every region shine

Of that clear firmament whereto this age

Stands but as stony earth, whilst you, afar,

From darkest night speak deathless things divine.

Lean is his fare, and bitter is his wage

On Earth, whose nightly visitors you are!

These lines have at least something of that harmony between concrete and abstract I spoke of, and a merit because of those prevalent disharmonies they avoid. And the sestet of the next sonnet,

The Immortals with their mighty arts surround

This sleeping World. Their love-directed spells

Call to our spirits, as the sea in shells

Exceeds its shore, that far inland are found.

Of late Cellini shouts into my ear,

And half asleep, and half awake, I hear!

This attempts more, but its weakness is thereby the more apparent. ‘Love-directed spells’ is too abstract, after the general debility that is debasing our language nowadays; whereof there isn’t a trace in that other sestet. It attempts a recovery in the concrete of ‘sea’; but this is what I mean by concrete and abstract being in apposition rather than in harmony. They must be imperceptibly knit into one music, and not calling apart, in want of each other. But this needs that we must concert all our faculties in our lives, to discover their perfect affection in our art, which the times are greatly against. But soon dire and dreadful events will

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assist us, when those who have laboured for a refuge from all disorders won’t lack their reward. As to the other of these three sonnets, who could be insensible to its strong if rough grasp of these practical canons, once these are taken for truth:

Now I, in fear of going forth once more

After seven homeless years so sore maintain’d

Take heart to hear how Dante was sustain’d

By counsels made in Heaven, which to him bore

The upright shade of Virgil, leading forth

His earthly peer from that full-evil wood

Wherein the sharp-fang’d she-wolf, Avarice, stood

To stay him, and the lion, Lust and Wrath.

Not Pegasus, certainly, but a well-laden mountain mule, labouring upwards. However, these are but notes and exercises on what I intend. I hope I don’t show an immodesty in speaking thus of my own works, to do which is sometimes part of my purpose. I shall have to say more of this homely subject in the course of this story.

CXXVI. I hardly remember what means I had at this time, nor how I managed in this respect. I must have relied on my father’s allowance, with what Fabers advanced me. But after paying my rent I certainly had nothing over, and recall following my new friends into places where the want of anything in my pocket was often a hindrance to this new worldly progress I was embarked on. I felt this acutely, I remember, when one afternoon Eddie Marsh took me to a concert at the Grosvenor Hotel, where Ethel Smythe was conducting one of her outbursts; and the first half of

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this being over, we took tea round a table with Dame Ethel and several well-known writers and painters, by whose company I should have felt more gratified than I did. But I was so bent on knowing the World and who runs it, I was more pleased with Ronald Storrs being among us, on leave from Cyprus, whom I knew to be a great man in the East and a friend and colleague of T. E. Lawrence, whose name was then at its brightest. Such a man would know concrete from abstract if anyone did, and is the best confident and ally of a poet, I thought; and I was gratified that during the next half of the programme we sat together (Eddie Marsh having left us) and again when, the concert being over, Storrs asked me to come and see him at his club during the few days that remained of his leave. But much as I desired to see him again, I had no money whatever (I remember fingering a penny and a ha’penny in my pocket as he spoke to me) and not knowing where another meeting with him might lead to, I didn’t g°-

CXXVII. Rothenstein began writing his memoirs about now; and having an immense amount of material to deal with, and no skill, as he said, in putting things together, he asked me to help him; although I suspected he did it as much to help me (for he paid me well) as to help himself. I relished this work, which brought me into intimate contact with the private and personal aspects of a familiar art, and gave me to handle letters and drawings of famous artists like Rodin, Whistler, Conder, Lautrec and others, with which the cupboards and drawers at Airlie Gardens were full. Rothenstein had a queer way of working at first (I think I am not betraying my employment) which both pleased and

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bewildered me. He would get a vast array of letters and drawings and diaries around him, like so many colours on a palette, which he would then try to convey in great masses on to his page as if he were covering a canvas. I knew that, as painting deals with only one moment of time, or indeed is without time, whereas all narration in writing portrays time, it was this factor he took no account of. But he very soon became sensible of it, and wrote well, with more sense of concreteness than most writers have nowadays. He had a quick apprehension, and acquired a good style more rapidly than I could have learnt how to paint. We were engaged on this work during most of the autumn and well into the winter, and what he paid me was a great help to my pocket.

CXXVHI. About now my Aunt Bertha arrived on a cautious visit to London, never having been away from New Zealand before. I had always been fond of her, so I fetched her from Tilbury and found her a decent apartment in a respectable street not far from my mews. Then I taught her how to ride in the Tubes, and to get on and off the moving stairway; and when she could go about by herself, I next thought she must see some of my friends; so I told her to make ready to go with me to the Rothensteins and up to the Edes, and to mix with the World; at which she showed great alarm and said she had nothing to wear. But I told her it was not that kind of World; and when she insisted she had no clothes for any kind of World and much preferred to go her own way, I took her to one of the Stores and desired her to try on one or two frocks, for which she fell in a moment; and finding one she liked, she next tried on some hats, at the same time that

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another woman was doing likewise. Whereby it seemed that there might be a difficulty, since my aunt was by now in a heated and grasping humour, and they both took to liking whichever hat the one saw was being tried on by the other. And many hats being in this way handed between them, and my aunt at length finding one she thought she looked well in, Excuse me, said the other woman, but that’s my own hat you’ve got on, the one I came in. But at length the hat and everything else being bought, when Sunday evening arrived we went off to the Rothensteins, where I was delighted to see how well she liked it, and how calmly she possessed herself among such a crowd of people, answering to everything with such sincerity and good sense, and quite getting the better of an elderly gentleman with whom she got talking about finance and Dominionquotas. I inquired who he was, and was told he was the financial editor of a great London newspaper; whereupon I drew near them where they sat on a couch, and was just in time to hear my aunt tell him he was quite in the wrong. She was much amazed at herself when afterwards I told her with whom she had been disputing, and said she must have looked foolish. But I told her, by no means; we hadn’t the same ancestors for nothing.

CXXIX. About now Jim Ede took me to the Morrells in Gower Street, a very fastness of fashion and fine taste. I was shy there, as with most places at first, and had little to say, being at first discomforted by what seemed a too astonishing strangeness in that house and its hostess. But however unusual I thought it (and the commonplace had been my main study for years) I soon found myself in a world of delicate

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insight and lovely perception and feeling whence, looking back, it rather appeared the world I had come from was abnormal and strange. Nevertheless I was often backward and uncouth there, and made many blunders, being unused to that atmosphere. But however I did Philip Morrell and Lady Ottoline only continued their hospitality to me, although the latter sometimes admonished me, but in half-quizzical terms and with so great forbearance I couldn’t always grasp in what I was wrong, until I thought of it afterwards. This lady, during a friendship of some years, sharpened my perception of personality more than anyone has ever done. She took a delight, I think, in deceiving the eye, the better to enlighten the mind, which faculty was the only sure road to her friendship. Thus in her love of truth and honesty she gave up nothing that was naturally feminine, nor anything that was gorgeous and liberal in her birth and upbringing; but she joined a richness of feeling and all outward faculties to a deep insight and zest for all things of the mind; and seeking all things that were most praiseworthy and admirable, yet she remained fully herself and her sex. In this way she much raised my estimation of all women (notwithstanding there remained many differences of opinion between us) by so lessening and making light of that gap between their higher natures and ours, of which I had always made most; although this discovery, as in the case of others of my new friends, only came with time. But at first the Morrells’ hospitality was only another doorway into that fashionable and famous World whose acquaintance I had promised myself before I sailed from New Zealand, since plainly it lay in my course.

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CXXX. I was now very satisfied and reassured in my purpose, to see how well I was succeeding in all I had hoped for myself since I landed in England again, and all on account of my first book; although I had fears that this agreeable change in my circumstances was as yet too slightly founded to last. Nevertheless I took no steps to secure it, as I easily might, nor in any way meddled with nor overdrew on what I knew were my deep reserves. I took no thought of involving my pen in the weakness of my pocket, but I relied on my belief in myself to make all things right in the end, no matter where it might lead me meanwhile. But now, with the Morrells and people I met there, and the Edes and Eddie Marsh and the Rothensteins, and Vera Moore’s musical parties, and many more engagements and outings that all these gave rise to (not to speak of my former friends in the old haunts, who must hear of my doings and know if I had another Countess or so to tell them about) I began to be over-busy with so many amusements; for often, as yet, I couldn’t tell what was only amusement and what was lasting for me. My book was still being reviewed, and I think was neglected in no influential quarter; but since nothing as yet came from my publishers I was soon getting into debt and borrowing money where I could.

CXXXI. I had scarcely met the Morrells when three events occurred which promised to give a direction to my outlook and to ease my circumstances for a time. Firstly, I was approached by some publishers who sought to discover if I had written, or would write, anything else they might publish. I answered, no; nor would do for some years. But one well-known firm was so eager, I paid more attention to the proposal, and at

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length offered to make an Anthology of the best poetry since Byron, with perhaps a thesis preceding it wherein I might throw more light on that view of poetry outlined in my Progress. To this they agreed, and a contract was drawn up under which I was advanced a substantial sum, with a further sum to be paid me on delivery of the work. The time agreed for was six months. I might have made it six years (I did in the end make it six years) but I had no doubt I could do it in six months; although I have no sense of time, and had never engaged myself in this way before. Marsh was very pleased to hear of this matter, the more so as he was lately becoming a little anxious on my account, seeing me so relishing any contact with fashionable life and bent on going to theatres and parties and enjoying myself however I could; as if I had no other use for my aims but to sell them outright to the World and forget them. Finding I was musical and liked concerts, he had not long before given me a fine wireless-thing; in doing which either he was just thoughtlessly generous, as so often he was, or else, as I think, he thought to keep me more contentedly at home, where I might hear a symphony or an opera sometimes without the risk of meeting more people. But there was no stopping me now; nor would I stop, I knew, until circumstances compelled me. Later on I felt sorry for the concern I was causing some of my friends; but I had no alarm on my own account, knowing my own nature and how much is hidden therein from all but myself. But with this new work, as I say, I at least appeared to my friends to have some immediate aim in view in the midst of so many amusements.

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CXXXII. Secondly, about now Jim Ede took me to dinner and a recital of music in Park Lane, given by a friend of his, whom he desired me to meet, and who, he told me, desired to meet me. I enjoyed it, and liked Helen Sutherland; who was shy and quiet, of an eager and searching intelligence, and an exquisite hostess, and it seemed she liked me, for later on she invited me to visit her in Northumberland for two weeks in August. And moreover, having read my Progress, and regretting in what poverty my aims had placed me for so long, at Jim Ede’s suggestion she offered me a small monthly allowance for the next eighteen months, which, together with what my father allowed me, would provide me with an income by means of which I might pursue my own aims in peace. We talked of the matter, and Jim advising me to accept, as indeed I was strongly inclined, I did so. And a great blessing it proved, and most timely; for very soon after, my father’s affairs, or rather our country’s affairs, becoming gravely unsettled, on account of its overseas markets falling greatly in price (on which, as I said, everything there depends) I had my small income reduced; and things rapidly going from bad to worse (as all the World knows) in a very short time it was of necessity stopped altogether. In which state of affairs, what Helen Sutherland allowed me stood me in good stead.

CXXXHI, Thirdly, very soon after this, Vera Moore offered me the use of her apartments in Horbury Crescent for the rest of the year, while she was fulfilling engagements on the Continent. This, too, I gladly accepted, and looked forward to pursuing my new task in these better surroundings. But before moving to Horbury Crescent I went for a week-end to Selbourne

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with Vernon Knowles; and again the next week-end for a walk through the Chilterns with Jim Ede, who much whetted my fancy by talking of Paris and Diaghileff and the Ballet, of which he knew a good deal at first hand; nor would I allow him to talk of anything but of such matters, and of those who controlled them, which he suffered with a good humour; for I had but one foot on the threshold of that world of which I suspected he was already a little tired. But with Jim, as with others, of books and ideas of which they preferred to talk I was never able to say much, and now less than ever. I read War and Peace about now, which I enjoyed. I think the Russians are the only genuine realists. But Tolstoy’s disgust with Napoleon wrecks the end, I thought. Although he professes such a horror of war, yet his battle scenes are the brightest; and I accounted for his hatred of Napoleon by his being in love with the young Czar Alexander, as it appeared to me that Nicolay was. I had no reason to think that Tolstoy himself must be too, until I had somehow to account for the manner in which his hatred for Napoleon, by its personal bitterness, its doctrinal emphasis, and its historical untruth, is allowed in the end to ruin his book. I reflected much on this matter while I was reading it, and I had a sharp clash with Ottoline Morrell, I remember, on account of my great admiration for Napoleon. This lady hated that immensely great man, and all that appears to be based on mere force; although nothing, and especially not political and military leadership, is based on mere force, except machinery, I find. I read Bourrienne’s Memoirs of Napoleon soon after, in which I was absorbed a long while; and next Fortescue’s History of the British Army, which I took with me to Northumberland.

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CXXXIV. For this journey I went by sea from the Thames to the Tyne, in which part of England I had never been. Helen Sutherland was F. Bosanquet’s tenant at Rock Hall, near Alnwick; and here I found Helen Ede, Laurence Binyon, Humphrey Paul, and David Jones, the painter; and Cooie Lane, a woman whose eerie detachment and unerring and pouncing candour suggested some rare background of experience I wished to know more of; and I was fortunate, as we quickly became friends. Ben Nicholson came over from Cumberland, breathing defiance but abounding in joy; and we made a well-composed party, with Helen Sutherland to plan all our movements and the roomy car to take us out on the Moors, where we walked, or to the sea coast where we paid visits to Bamborough and Lindisfarne. The Hodgkins were at Bamborough Castle, where we visited them. This enormous pile, perched on the rim of a level and dissolving coast, looked like another planet standing in space. After dinner at Rock, we usually finished a brief evening in the library, talking with considerable attention to one subject, as I like to do, being distressed by those fashionable wits who veer about as their humour inclines. Here I was conscious of being checked in those worldly interests after which I was bound, and directed again to things of the mind. But I was on the rebound from the ship’s engineroom and the Edgware Road, on the wings of extremes, whereby I believe the largest outlook is got; and although I took note, in passing, of what in the end would be best, for the time being I looked on this comfortable home as a lovely vacation from outside labours, rather than a sufficient end in itself. Whereby in time I think I added Helen Sutherland, my new

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friend and benefactress, to the number of those who feared for my safety. But Cooie Lane straightway divined and approved my purpose, and we made arrangements to meet in London, after a brief visit I was now engaged for to Cumberland, whither Ben Nicholson had invited me next.

CXXXV. It was while I was at Rock that I first heard from T. E. Lawrence, with whom Jim Ede put me in touch. I had several letters from him about my Progress, by no means uncritical. But neither was I uncritical about his book, although I had then read only the abridged version, which I thought too long and too encumbered with names and over-laden with ornament for such great exploits. For the more things have public weight, the more simply they should be dealt with; whereas things of only private importance may be allowed some elaboration, to induce the same mood for the trivial and amusing in the reader as that which still overflows in the writer. On his part, Lawrence objected somewhat to the archaisms in my style, and he asked me, what was the reason? I told him my style came from the sources I endeavoured to follow, which is only to say from my beliefs; and I tried to defend at some length what I had done better to have asked him to depreciate further, as I myself have since had to do. For in much of my book I was endeavouring to follow the Ancients without following them, as a result of which my style was not always the outcome of my thinking, but too often only an imitation of itself. Of this own work, I told him I thought more of his exploits than of his book; which was unwise, as I hoped to meet him, and his exploits were what he most wanted to forget. Nevertheless this, I think, is what

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somewhat mars his book, that he wished rather to make his book live by his exploits than, like Caesar, his exploits live by his book. Which doubtless arose from some deep disharmony in himself. But that I never met him, and now never may, I shall always regret, as I was gready encouraged by the interest he took in my book, and I hoped much, for the future, from his friendship and support. But before I forget these matters I must say something more about style, in doing which I may perhaps best answer what Lawrence asked me, as I was then unable to do.

CXXXVI. I think style is the outcome of some reverent belief, or worshipful state of soul (in writing or any art) upon which the knowledge it treats of is based; and is never the outcome of knowledge alone, or our modem scientists would write better. And bad writing, or want of style, is that which is based on knowledge alone, or the pretention thereof. Nor is this reverence enough in an artist, but this must be related to all things around him wherein he deals, or given concreteness, and therein be made open as common and public. Not to do which shows that either we are not artists or else our beliefs are not sound. For myself I derive my beliefs, as I said, mainly from the Ancients and their translators; not by imitation, as I hope, but by emulation of what they were, and obedience to their authority. And if my style be poor, this may arise from a want of artistry and not from any unsoundness in my beliefs, which I hold are true and now most necessary to all. For surely in art, as in all things, we must remember our ancestors, and in what things they believed, looking over the heads of our own times to theirs, harking over to those whom we hope someday to be with, and not leaving

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ourselves to the mercy of any doctrine that promises both to allow us all our vices and to cure us of their effects, as modem materialism offers to do. For my part, in the midst of so much abstractness and loose reasoning (which is our main weakness) I cling to concreteness, to redress the balance; and more devoutly than materialists do, who are the most arrant mystics and mystifiers there are. For to grapple rightly with concreteness is the proof of a true abstractness, or insight of belief; as to grapple rightly with abstractness is proof of a true and healthy concreteness. I aim to do both (with leanings, as I say, to concreteness, to redress the balance, since the abstract is now the more overweighted extreme) and my style follows therefrom of itself, or should do, unless I am forcing a point. But with your mystifiers and impressionists no forcing is apparent, as all is in such a looseness of speculation that neither can the shock of error be felt nor a course of certainty be found. In their vanity of knowing where they are bound, they want even the means of discovering where they are, which is to feel the shock of an error and to shore off, or the falseness of a calculation and to keep in, which for want of equal soundings in both extremes they are unable to do. But having no compass of belief, so they have no course of style, and get nowhere. The Seven Pillars is a good honest book on these grounds; and George Moore knew his bearings (for what little journeys he took) but even The Golden Bough leans to abstractness. And being sure in our beliefs, and careful after our bearings in those two great extremes of abstract and concrete (which are the same as public and private, in a different standpoint of inquiry) we may leave the mind to itself and the occasion of writing to its own course; however our

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friends may think us idle a long while and indifferent to their help and advice. And those present scribblers we can’t compete with in fastness and frivolity we must let run by us unheeded, grappling on to those great and hardy reputations that endure. By this means we may show a course, and by ridding ourselves of irrelevancies and a tendency to sail too much outwards or inwards, avoid both those hard rocks of matter without and those dizzy whirlpools of aimless thinking within us, on which nearly all now are wrecked. And if we must go to Spain, let us pass through in a few words. There were enough careless boys did it before. And Spain is well known; but a grain of constancy is great news.

CXXXVII. We made a party for Cumberland, going by motor-car. Cooie Lane was to visit the Roberts at Boothby, while I was due at the Nicholsons nearby. Here, on the height of the moor, in an old stone cottage by the Roman wall, Ben and Winifred Nicholson withstood the wind and the weather, and every annoyance and staleness of this world. On fine days we bathed in a pool in the river Irthing in the valley below, or went over to mix with the company at Boothby, or to visit Naworth Castle nearby. Or else we walked on the Roman wall, which was once the world’s limit. I was never tired of wandering alone beside this high-tide mark of antiquity, imagining the Barbarians prowling in the valley below, and the cohort beside me on the parapet, joking in Thracian, Illyrian or Pathan. O.d parchments and relics, whose surroundings now nearly obliterate what they were, never so greatly impress me; but large ruins in Nature, in the same solitude and sunlight, the same shapes of hill and valley, the same

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distant horizon and shadows of clouds, now as before, seem more than half as they were; and be they a nearly invisible mound and a ditch, how little is wanting to restore an earthworks, a populous city, a whole people with its customs and language, indeed a whole empire to the mind, if only Nature still be as near to us as before to them, if only we have loved and remembered their story enough. In such a mood I should like to travel the Earth; not that empty New World and new-fangled America and howsoever much magical tropics I know too well, but that still upright and unshakable Forum of all Mankind between Ireland and the Caucasus, whose plebs and patricians alike, in all their dissensions, still look to only one seat of justice and wisdom. In this mood, even now as I write these words, rocked on the Pacific within a few hours of the equator, with our bows to the better hemisphere and all my fortunes once more to hazard, in this mood I cry England, nearer, my God, to thee!

CXXXVIII. Thus I spent my time in the north, between things near and remote; and not in idleness; or if so, then idleness is the nurse of poets, as I said in Part I. We went often to visit the Roberts at Boothby nearby, when I became acquainted with a large houseparty there, and received an invitation from Lady Cecilia to be her guest in the following summer, a visit which all I saw and heard there led me eagerly to expect. And my time in the north being now at an end, I took a conveyance to Newcastle, and so back to London by ship.

CXXXIX. Here I began to work a little on my anthology, reading through every poet of the period

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in my new home at Horbury Crescent, and going frequently to the British Museum for books of verse now out of print. I took much care with Wells and Beddoes, who better illustrate my view of poetry than the more famous Victorians, I think; and I even read the Australian poets and the whole of Emerson and Whitman in my desire to miss nothing useful. Gerard Manley Hopkins was now talked of at all parties, where I now heard of this eccentric and diverting jongleur for the first time, whose fashionable laurels were daily growing greener than even those of A Shropshire Lad, with the very elect. Nevertheless Housman will outlast Hopkins, whose heart had taken the veil. So, it may be objected, had Herbert’s, and Dante’s, and many more. But with these the whole man was under vows, and the result was a talent, whatever its size, as whole as Homer’s or Shakespeare’s. But with Hopkins the senses were outside the cloister, while the soul was within, and the result in his case is an extravagant mode of admiration by the one faculty before the gateway of the other, like the juggling and tumbling of a medieval mountebank before some shrine of Our Lady, or David dancing before the Lord; something striking and wonderful of its kind, but only a mockery of the true worship. But the whole man is in Housman, at his best; and that’s how it should be. I think Ruth Fitter the best poet we have after Housman, not in her first book, but in her second, with the later Yeats coming next. And if Roy Campbell could learn to balance his faculties he might make a third. But I didn’t know of Ruth Fitter then, nor much of those others; and Housman not being available, I continued to seek what I needed in the Nineteenth Century. Most of my friends were out of town at this time; but the

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Morrells were at home, and I continued to go there with more and more confidence, as I thought, on both sides, and with increasing enjoyment and profit to myself. On Bank Holiday Jim Ede had a luncheon party in Hampstead, after which Philip and Ottoline Morrell and Jim and myself went to the fair on the Heath, riding on the merry-go-round and visiting all the booths, where I won a large painted vase for shooting which I gave to Lady Ottoline. She had been watching my endeavours and I think directing my aim, as in other matters she came later to do.

CXL. Of such visits and pleasant idleness, and change from obscurity to a small but choice recognition, was composed the new situation in which I now found myself in England by the success of my book; only a small success, with a few, but enough to alter my life and prospects in England meanwhile. And how different from selling my leaflets and living in dosshouses, from being hungry and friendless, as I had been so often in London before! And in such an increasing round of enjoyments I might have continued for the rest of my life, had my means allowed; and here, perhaps, were an end of this book; but a very different sequel was soon to befall me. For the rest of the summer I continued working a little and going to what parties I could find, and into the country whenever I could. I went to Oxford one weekend to stay with Tommy Hodgkin, whom I met in Northumberland, when Tommy proposed to hire horses. I love riding, and we did so. But I soon found I had a flighty headstrong beast that was desperate to bolt, and to whom I was communicating all my

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uneasiness, as nervous riders always do. In addition I had a bridle of a type I had never used; for although we had horses as children, I hadn’t ridden much since, except on farm hacks in New Zealand, that need thrashing along. We were soon in the country, on a narrow track between hedges; and my nag being in front, this alarmed me all the more, as I didn’t know where we were going nor what was behind every corner. When at length we turned back for home, the beast quite took charge, as by now I had the reins in a mess and wasn’t sure what I was doing; and although I’m told I have a good seat, between the reins and the road I had all I could do to stay mounted. Nevertheless we reached Oxford together, where we charged into a funeral that was blocking the road, and out again, and so on to the stables, which was where, I was hoping, the creature was bound. By now Tommy had come up, and I had my horse almost back on its hind legs, and as wildly excited as I was with the way I was mishandling it. So when at length we entered the stables the ostler viewed my mount and myself with remorse. ‘That yer ’orse is too ’ighly strung to be ’eld like that, sir,’ he said. ‘Yer driving ’im mad, sir!’ ‘l’m highly strung too,’ I said, rolling off with relief, and hardly able to speak or stand. But this outing only made me eager to ride again as soon as I could, and to learn something of good horses, as I was able to do the next year.

CXLI. Bill Rothenstein now had a studio in Netting Hill Gate; and as Nobby was now attending to me in Horbury Crescent nearby, we started a boxing class in Bill’s studio, for Bill and Otto and the Payne boys, who were friends of Bill. Nobby liked this as much as he

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liked being with me; but most of all he enjoyed the reviews of my Poet's Progress, which he pasted neatly into a book, always including two or more cuttings of any review. There was said to be a tax on menservants, but we took no account of that, being friends; and by ignoring it I was able to pay him the more. Nor was I less happy than Nobby in our new home, with its fine rooms, a grand piano, and large old windows that looked on some elm-trees at the back. There was a kitchen above which I shared with Miss Fletcher (as well as many good dinners in her dining-room) whither Nobby went every morning to fetch me my breakfast on a tray. After this I might read a little for my Anthology, then go out for a drink, and thence in any direction my desires or engagements might lead me; a programme which shocked Eddie Marsh, when he inquired how I spent my time. Selling leaflets was now done with, as I hoped, forever. Indeed I could hardly remember that I had ever done such a singular thing; or if I recalled it, it seemed a strange story of somebody else. I met the Meynells about now, who lived near; and Teddy Wolfe, the painter, who was likewise a neighbour, and a lively collaborator in any passing amusements. He was designing masks for a Camargo ballet on the Creation, to which I went with him and some others, and in the interval was talking with Harriet Cohen, Lady Oxford and a young Runciman about Karsavina’s dancing, which Lady Oxford greatly admired, when I turned to find Eddie, a few paces away, regarding me coldly, as if to say, I must know I ought rather to be at home writing ray Thesis. From the first he took an interest in the Anthology, not unmixed with apprehension that it wouldn’t be finished in time; and he did all he could

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to keep me at work, sometimes reading Arnold or Browning with me of an evening. And in keeping with this he now took me out less. Helen Sutherland likewise, to whom and to Vera Moore I owed my easier circumstances at this time, took a deep interest in all I was doing, or ought to be doing, and wrote me many eager and encouraging letters. Likewise the Morrells and some I met there took an interest in my next book, and often inquired if I had, with great perseverance, found any poetry since Byron? Which inquiries I would answer darkly, that I believed I had found a poem. Aldous Huxley warned me to beware of ‘the pale mauve mud of Victorian verse’, which was what I was doing; but unwholesome as much of Tennyson, Swinburne and Browning is, we have since had much worse. On account of our greater rage for publicity and immense and instant means of making anything known, innovation itself has now become a more rigid and oppressive custom than ever any fashion formerly was. Which is what I meant when I said that ‘to undo what was well done before is to begin the tyranny of all sameness.’ But this Anthology seemed a long way from my course, and scarcely to be thought of as a book, and of far less moment to me than my new and lofty surroundings.

CXLII. As Christmas drew near I wrote a sonnet (‘Time Lags Abed’) which should have been warning enough to my friends, at least in such particulars as ‘The engendering hour Breeds on its opposite’; but although they liked it better than any verse I had yet done, it seemed that to admire it and to believe it are two different things. I had it prettily printed as a New Year gift for Helen Sutherland, and sent it to all my

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friends, and thought far more of this than of doing the Anthology. To me it brought the same tidings as the dove brought to Noah, of a firm landing to come in the midst of the waters.

CXLIII. I now saw Arnold Bennett for the last time, taking tea with him in his new flat in Baker Street; when we fell into a disagreement as to the art politic, not as to its aims, but as to its means; of which I maintained that warfare was at all times (although not for all purposes) an indispensible part. At this he was shocked, and objected that modern science made warfare a disastrous and unthinkable expedient. To which I replied that so was modem science a disastrous and unthinkable expedient, even in peace; and as in the case of all systems and states whose manner of making war, as of all other arts, was only worthy thereof, so in our case our manner of making war was only worthy of us, even although it must destroy our system and all our new-fangled and mutinous knowledge entirely. This reasoning appeared to him monstrous (as no doubt it wasn’t so well put) and he asked me doubtfully, could I be serious in saying this? But finding I was, he encouraged me to talk, and he listened with patience, saying to conclude with that I must meet H. G. Wells, who lived in the same building, but was now abroad. I said that nothing would please me more. But when, soon after, I met Wells at the Morrells, we only did somersaults on the lawn. I was at Gower Street with some others when, not long after, Bennett lay dying. All were silent and oppressed, and I saw the gap which the passing of a great reputation leaves in the ranks of those who aspire to speak for their fellows, the more so when such a talent as this is

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joined to great kindness and modesty. But I must say I wondered at his launching a book wherein opinions were well expressed at which he was afterwards so surprised; and I began to see that to take the ear of the public with a good style was a danger from which only a long absence from England might free me; since a taste that mainly feeds for enjoyment soon demands more, with no regard for how much time and labour and deep and bitter experience go to make a good book. So I turned the more eagerly to what was around me, well knowing that at this stage of my progress these worldly surroundings were only such as one meets with in passing on to more difficulties. There was no ground of permanence in them, for me; and while I enjoyed them to the full, and had no intention of leaving them till I must, I left the time and circumstance of my going to the same Providence which had brought me hither, as I had known on my journey to England it would.

CXLIV. In the New Year, Vera Moore having returned from abroad, I went back to Stourcliffe Street. I had hopes of furnishing a small flat, but as I was already living beyond my means, and much in debt, I had still to content myself with my room. I had lately met Angus McDougall (a son of the psychologist) at the Rothensteins, with whom I was soon on such intimate terms I often went in the spring to his cottage at Speen, in the Chilterns; whereby I felt the less discomfort from living in only one room in town. I had now no use for Nobby again, but I found him employment not far from Stourcliffe Street.

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CXLV. My book was still being reviewed; but it still brought me no money; and my publisher’s efforts to launch it in America met with no success. On the contrary, the book-shops were more than ever preoccupied with modern science, and this year, I think, saw the first of the many books that elucidate modern science for the people; which is a sure symptom (if other creeds be remembered) that its downfall is at hand. Everywhere there was Jeans and his fanciful Universe, as now there is Hogben and his popular science, selling in vast quantities; although neither of these circumstantial experts can either reason or write, being deadly examples of those persons in whom, as I said, concrete and abstract are divided, neither knowing the meaning of words and their purport to Mankind, nor caring nor needing to know. For it seems as if this most useful art of speech folds its once hallowed pinions and restrains its once golden tongue in the presence of these infallible scientific persons, as if in deference to the dawn of a new age when, everything being known, nothing need be said. Or can it be that there is something inimical to clear speech (and not only to a good style) in some kinds of knowledge? And yet there have ever been other kinds of knowledge that were friendly to eloquence. How is this? But notwithstanding our scientific scribes lack the true use and import of speech, they have more than enough of its mere substance, as one would expect of materialists. Like to like, there is no lack of mere words. They never use one where they see an opening to misuse a million. Doubtless it’s the very number that pays. Distance, quantities, and all miraculous prodigies of the great mental darkness have a peculiar affinity with mere innumerableness, whether of words or their great

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audience, the awe-struck public. Mere number was surely predestined to be the sublime absolute of the great hungry people. Like to like again. And shall such a mystery want its scribes and its prophets, its Einsteins, Eddingtons, Hogbens and Jeanses? Or shall these lack their fifty-fifth thousand apiece, and many millions of mere words, and the people not know their leaders? It would seem not.

CXLVI. O glorious fabric of knowledge! O happy Mankind! O you now inverted and forever invulnerable Paradise! What, then, are we artists and poets? For a fearful warning falls lately from the lips of Professor Hogben, lest a thing called mysticism be tasted of in the Garden of Science, and a new Downfall be at hand. For how runs the edict of the All-Monstrous? ‘Of chemistry and physics and all calculation and conceit of knowledge ye may eat; of speed and luxury and air-things ye may eat (and if peradventure it taste somewhat of bombs and big guns and all violence ye may spit it out) but of the Tree of Mystical Revelation which stands in the midst thereof ye may not eat, for in that day ye shall surely die!’ But a rumour goes round of a great enemy to be feared, one lately escaped from the firmament of all-light wherein the All-Monstrous had thought to confine him and his legions for ever, and finding a way into the Material Paradise, despite the vigilance of its Archangels St. Eddington, St. Hogben and St. Jeans, is reported entered into the mouth of that lowest of all crawling nonentities (not upright as we engineers and scientists and materialists are) that thing of one little book (and no second edition) a poet! Which creature having himself already eaten of the Tree of Mystical Revela-

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tion forbidden is reported inflamed and of strange utterance and damnable ecstacy inducing others to do likewise. O lovely electrical and most mechanical Paradise! O blissful gift of the All-Monstrous to men! What peril is this? Take care! Go your rounds, Mr. Hogben! Gather your royalties about you and redouble the watch! See that the populace fills its belly with nothing but facts!

CXLVII. In the New Year, the allowance I had from my father being perforce stopped altogether, I was reduced to much the same means as I had at first, and without Helen Sutherland’s assistance I had once more been destitute altogether. But I met Maurice Baring about now, who recommended my book to the notice of the Royal Literary Fund, as a result of which I had a substantial grant from that quarter soon after, which put me in easier circumstances for some months. Although I must say that, after paying my debts, what I had altogether was little enough. But I think it couldn’t have been until about June that I had this assistance, as I remember I first heard of it on the evening when Otto Gugenheim and I returned from the Derby (where I won twenty-five shillings on Sandwich.) And having dined on our winnings in town, we went afterwards to a party at the Longmans, which was where I first heard of this grant. But until that time, that is, from the New Year until then, I think I mainly relied on an addition that Baring gave me from his own pocket. It was during this time that I went to hear Father Vincent McNabb at Chesham Place (of whom Maurice Baring had told me) liking his manner of speaking and very touching simplicity, in keeping with the quiet room and small candle-light; as if the truth

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itself lay rather in silence, and the less we disturbed our own meditations the better. He seemed rather communing with truth in himself than with us, while we listened. I was very happy just then, and would listen to no one; yet I listened to him. I was so happy all this time, I grew an inch taller after my book appeared. But I see I mustn’t leave such a tag as that for the critics to take hold of; so I hasten to add that, say what they will, for the future I am more likely to shrink. Indeed I am long since down to a mouse.

CXLVIII. Going to Speen in Buckinghamshire, to the McDougalTs, I soon met Eric Gill at Piggotts nearby, where Angus McDougall was working as a sculptor with Gill. Gill had read my book, and said he might print something of mine in the same style. Whereupon I proposed we should do a new translation of Caesar, a work I greatly admired; to which he agreed. But not being a scholar myself, and having no Latin (when Squire called my book ‘picaresque’ for a long time I thought this was the French for picturesque, and was very incensed) I suggested we should get Eddie Marsh to collaborate with me in this, to which Gill also agreed, and Eddie too, when I asked him. But nothing was done, I think on account of my Anthology, which was now much overdue and far from finished; indeed the Thesis wasn’t even attempted, being quite unformed in my mind. However, I was obligingly granted any reasonable extension by the publishers, who continued to hope I would do it that year, as my friends also continued to hope so, especially those who had helped, and who continued to help, me.

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CXLIX. I liked Speen so much, I looked round for a cottage there, and soon found one, with two rooms, one above the other, which I furnished with a stool I bought from the Inn there and a tin bath, sleeping on the floor. Most of all I liked the beech-woods, and the villagers, with one of whom, Ralph , I sometimes went poaching at night. After riding, this is perhaps the finest sport to be had. Being done at night, and with great stealth, it is nearer to nature than merely to sit on a stool; and more just, and altogether more gamesome, being done for a dinner. We had some fine dinners of poached pheasant in my friend’s cottage, which has a better flavour than the legal bird. I was now more often at Piggott’s, which might have recalled me to my duties, to see so many things going on there, printing, drawing, sculpture and writing, like a factory of all the arts. There was no one there but was a craftsman of some kind; and even their little closet outside there had many pensive masterpieces and moving portraits on its walls.

CL. Having my cottage at Speen, I wasn’t so much in London as formerly (although I still kept my room there) until Cooie Lane arrived back in Chelsea and we met again as we had arranged. And now began a summer of great interest to me, from the people I met and the many places we looked into, mainly under Cooie’s guidance; to whom I had only to express a wish to meet some person, or go somewhere, and she arranged it; even to having Byron’s great-grand-daughter to lunch for me, and then taking me to meet Miss Edith Sitwell straight after, which was seeing this World if ever any one did. I often went to see Edith Sitwell after, who wore a hair-net like the Red Queen

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in Alice Through the Looking-glass, and took you over the tree-tops almost as fast. In spite of the little house she lived in and the hard stairs, you could tell she was famous. And I soon paid a visit to Nettleden, where I helped in the harvest-field, and stayed out most of one night bathing with the villagers in a gravel-pit on the edge of a wood. But mainly our inspections were conducted in town, among Buchans, Gladstones, Talbots, Lytteltons, Grosvenors, Tennysons and Sitwells, at dances or at exhibitions of pictures, at Lords or at Eton or the Chelsea Flower-show; or if not going about, then having parties at Chelsea which were wholly to my taste. Also this summer Lady Ottoline Morrell took me to visit Walter de la Mare at Maidenhead when we went by train a part of the distance and then walked the rest through fields of corn near the Thames. There were poppies in the corn, where we sat resting and talking, and cuckoos calling from one wood to another; while the Thames nearby looked so inviting I proposed swimming across it. But we could find no good approach to its banks, nor any hiding where I could safely undress; so we continued on our way, taking tea with the poet, who showed us his fine garden, and returning to town in high spirits.

CLI. In this way my grant from the Royal Literary Fund was soon gone, when I was once more in difficulties; and the time being come when I was invited to the Roberts’ at Boothby, and to stay for a second time with Helen Sutherland at Rock, I travelled from London to Liverpool with the driver of a large transport truck, and staying the night there, with Trevor Apsimon, boarded another truck for Carlisle, gready admiring our ascent of the Westmorland mountains

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towards nightfall, and all that day’s journey. I stayed a few days at Boothby and then walked on to Rock, until I was tired, when I stopped a lorry. Cooie Lane was at Rock, and a number of others; and after some days there, Cooie and I went on to stay with the Sitwells at Barmoor Castle further north. (This was the General, and Conti Sitwell who wrote Flowers and Elephants, not the looking-glass Sitwells.) Others were here, and this huge old place with its spirited household, and its orchard and wild moorland and rough shooting around provided great plenty and entertainment; and I left there with plans for returning the following summer. It was Bill Sitwell whom I visited soon after at Harrow.

CLII. From Barmoor I went back to Boothby, where I spent some pleasant days riding and walking in the woods and meadows around, never far from the river, which haunts all this neighbourhood. Sometimes Lady Cecilia accompanied me, telling me stories of these parts (which were the scene of Coleridge’s Christabel) and memories of Browning and Tennyson in London. Sir Roland de Veaux was one of the Carlisles’ ancestors, and Tryermaine, which we visited, was nearby. It was like hearing the Border Muse, to have these things from her lips as we walked through the woods around Naworth Castle, or paid visits to old places. I read them poetry once or twice of an evening, and every way did all things that were active and pleasant; meeting as well many new people, who came and went in that house, which was never empty. And my time there being over, I would have walked back to London, but Lady Cecilia paid my fare. So returning to town, I went next to visit the Peter Woods at Chesham, and

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Cooie coming over from Nettleden, we had more riding here, the year being now come to autumn and the fields very fine. I had my new riding breeches now, which cost me a lot, although I hadn’t paid for them yet.

CLIII. About now, Lady Ottoline, seeing I had been somewhere with Lord , and to several parties with Cooie Lane I had told her of, examined me closely as to what I intended by this course, assuring me that such very considerable persons as we were speaking of would never look on me as one of themselves; which I could see she only did in my interest lest, imagining I had now left one state of being for another, I should expose my feelings and self-respect to some injury. I replied that neither was I free, in that case, from the same exclusiveness as that she warned me against, and could allow only those to be equal with any artist who as well understood what was reciprocal between things worldly and things unwordly, not to know which was to show great unworthiness of any honours they had, since on this all social obligation was based. And to poets and artists those of high worldly station owe all they possess, since without their aid they were merely more vehement and redoubtable savages than the rest of Mankind, had not poets and artists raised them and taught them to take a pride in themselves and to learn civility from beautiful things. Whereby they ever owed the use and enjoyment of all their possessions and the help of their standing in the World to any poets and artists who condescended to require them, now as at any time; which no doubt those who are merely ennobled in their names and not in their natures know nothing about. As likewise poets and artists owed

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their gift of unworldliness to all men whatsoever, and if need be for nothing. Not that I said this much to my friend, who well understood this matter, better no doubt than anyone of her time; and with the little I said she seemed well content. Nevertheless there was some point in her warning I soon found, and she showed an astute care of me in examining me on this matter, considering how I was living and the gross indifference and deceit of these times. For soon after, being taken by Cooie to a large afternoon party given by some haughty kinsmen of hers, I was hoarsely bidden by Lady L to keep my eyes on the Vandykes; an admonition which Cooie at once disregarded by introducing me to all whom she knew there. And all went well until I met Lady T , a smart but uncouth woman, who said to me: ‘You’re much too well dressed for a poet!’ Which is worthy to be remembered, in the light of what I have said. On the Continent I think they know better. But then Bonaparte had a talk to them there.

CLIV. I met Lowes Dickinson about now, at the Morrells, and was invited to spend a week-end with him at Cambridge, where we dined at the top table in Kings with the Vice-Provost. I must say I felt baffled by so much wit and learning on all sides, but was pleased to be told my book had been heard of. We also lunched privately with the Vice-Provost, in company with Lytton Strachey and some others, when I amused them by asking why Oxford was thought better than Cambridge? (This snobbish preference dates, no doubt, from the Royalist occupation of Oxford during the Civil Wars.) It turned out there was an Oxford man present, and Sheppard was greatly diverted, saying

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that of course that was the reason, referring to him. Not knowing who he might be, I wasn’t sure why they laughed. Then Sheppard asked me, had I enjoyed the play we went to the previous evening? I replied that I hadn’t enjoyed it until one of the characters happened to pick up a copy of Tacitus and read a few lines to himself, when at last I found something worth listening to, and had felt like asking him to go on. At this they all laughed so much, it rather embarrassed me (as that fashionable malady, to laugh at ideas, and not only at actions, always does) and I found myself unequal to saying much more; that is, until later they began a discussion about warfare, when in the best way I could I stated my view that war was necessary to Mankind, and the only cure of its most hopeless diseases. In this I had all the company against me, but only, I think, because I spoke so badly; whereby it must have appeared that a greater disease was in hopes of reforming a less. Sheppard gave me some Greek translations of his to add to my library, which very much pleased me; as likewise Lowes Dickinson gave me his Modern Symposium, which was also to my taste.

CLV. In town once more, Charles Tennyson invited me to hear some early phonograph records of Tennyson reciting some of his poems, which we heard alone after dinner one evening at Charles Tennyson’s house. I never experienced any revival that has moved me so much, unless it was meeting Anne Milbanke, Byron’s great-granddaughter. In return I took Tennyson to a music-hall in the Edgware Road. I sometimes took my friends to the Edgware Road, to an eating-house where they fried onions very well. I brought Eddie Marsh here one evening, who delighted the company

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and indeed the whole neighbourhood by being in a frock coat and top hat, having come from some political wedding. He was now getting gravely concerned at my idleness, as I shall soon have to relate. E. M. Forster, whom I met at Cambridge, was another I took to these parts, when we had a merry night at the Met. with George Robey. Likewise I went about sometimes to feed and see fights with William Nicholson, the painter. He was painting windows just then for a church, showing St. Francis and the beasts, and was teeming with life. When I asked him to paint me a fish on a piece of glass, you might have thought it had been up his sleeve, so quickly he did it and had it baked for me. I think I was now getting jaded with going about so much. But I can’t remember where it was that Cooie Lane took me to have tea, when I was given an introduction to the Governor General of New Zealand. It was to someone in the Agricultural part of the Government, where I must have been getting out of my depth, as the sequel will show. I read The Charterhouse of Parma just now, with which at first I was very pleased; but half-way through it I lost interest, and was unable to finish it. I thought it neither realism nor romance, but a confusion of both. I also read Herodotus about now for the first time, and was delighted to be shown the boundaries of Antiquity, where I had never been, and to wander along the World’s limit (which I love) in sight of its wild and half-human peoples. I stayed up all night until I had finished him.

CLVI. As the summer drew to a close, I began to have thoughts of visiting New Zealand again, in a happier manner than I had left there two years before, and of resuming my course in respect of my real and deepest

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ambitions. To this end lam sometimes required to descend to that Antipodean Hades of darkness where I was born, to hear the commands of its exiled deities. My last visit had been brief, and I now began thinking of another visit of the same length, with a view to laying what little success I had gained in England at the feet of my savage and approving nurse, little suspecting how long an absence would be required of me. I had nearly begun thinking my time was my own (so great I had grown by my book!) and my ambitions of that order a man can direct as he will, expecting to have my offering kindly received by those deities and to be sent quickly back to the World about their affairs. I had no idea what hard and deep training I still lacked for this embassy, only taught in that close school of our souls whereto the gods keep the key; although I might have been warned by a dream I had at this time, on which I pondered and sought an interpretation thereof for some days. Its wild and forceful terms were beyond any literal belief, although of no dream nor presentiment had I ever felt so certain that it arose from my very nature and depicted some awful and latent vitality of our lives.

CLVII. It seemed that I was in the midst of a mountainous country entirely covered in forest, not the more open and lucid English woodland, but our own dense and gloomy jungle which I had lived in and loved as a boy. I came in my dream to a native village, where I heard there was war between their tribe and the next, and travelling was dangerous. And being on my way somewhere, I was guided by a native through the depths of the forest, with great stealth and secrecy, to the brink of a nearly waterless torrent, having a bed

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which sloped steeply down the side of the mountain, of smooth and intensely black rock. Here my guide showed me a wooden sledge, and the manner of using it, by lying along it and letting it slide over the rock. By this means I flew with great speed and a fearful enjoyment wherever I wished, and with safety and secrecy, since these rocky channels radiated in every direction all over the country and always in the depth of the forest; and if ever I had to go uphill, the speed of my last coming down easily carried me up. In this way I had both freedom of movement and purpose and immunity from all surrounding dangers, which was so deeply satisfying that when I awoke I felt as if something of great and deep import had been revealed to me; and for some days I set myself not so much to interpret as to accept and assimilate my dream.

CLVIII. I somehow knew that this simple and serene means of conveyance was nothing else but my own vital arteries and channel of all my desires, as that primitive surrounding which they served was not only my native country but also myself, and both of these in their most natural state; since plainly the country I was in was still in its natural state (as I knew by the wildness of the natives) before ever we discovered or settled it. And although I wouldn’t be thought to hale any dark and primordial matters into public attention, as many writers now do, yet this is no speculation and delving aimlessly in the unseen, but an occurrence, a dream, the meaning of which I needed to know, so revealing it was to me then and for a long time after. I believed it the more readily since its eloquence lay in no conclusion or climax absurd or unlikely to reason, nor in those associations which

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make most dreams memorable and striking, as with persons and recent scenes and events, nor in anything heard or spoken, as of some message or address; but the potency of this lay in one striking and singular action, in a manner suitable to the surroundings in which it took place, and not unconforming to my thoughts of myself, in the sense of power and safety it gave me while I experienced it, and for long afterwards. I told it to no one, but kept it in that privacy where it belonged, and went on my course; although I often recalled it, and interpreted it more clearly in the light of that entire change in my fortunes which was once more at hand.

CLIX. I was now nearly at the end of my resources once more, although I continued to go about as much as before and to see and meet all I could, leaving the issue and end of these things to that Providence which I believed had designed them for me; since, despite the interest it appeared to arouse, still nothing accrued from my book. In this difficulty I talked over all my affairs with Eddie Marsh, who was now seriously concerned at the situation I was in, and as a means of reviving my fortunes suggested I might resume my Poet’s Progress at the point where I left off. This, however, I had doubts of attempting, knowing how long a time and what aloofness from all such matters as I was now engrossed in had been required of me before writing even so small a portion thereof as Part I; and I told him that at any rate I couldn’t attempt to resume it without some resolute change in my surroundings; and even then I had scruples concerning myself (such as my dream) of which I could have said nothing. Nevertheless, seeing that Eddie thought it best I should

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go on with my Progress, I said that if I could return to New Zealand for some time, and look at these things from that distance, I believed I could make a beginning, putting Part II through the press there as I had done with Part I. To this he at once assented, and as to my means of getting there, he undertook to make this possible (so much I owed, and still owe, to this man) provided I would go by the end of the year. Meanwhile I was to finish the Anthology and see to a new edition of my verse which Otto Gugenheim was designing for The Bodley Head. I had most of the poetry chosen for the Anthology (which was very little) and only the Thesis to do; on which, however, I was so far from making a beginning I had no idea, even, what I wanted to say. It was as if the whole framework of this modern Universe, as we know it, stood in my way, and I could find no crack nor opening whereby to get through it, into the real or poetic Universe which I knew was beyond. But Eddie now invited me to breakfast with him each week, in order to talk over what poetry I needed for this work, during which time I made an effort to write the Thesis as well. And no wonder I could not, seeing how great a labour, and how unforeseen, this work was to be, not to be thought of nor attempted until I was once more turned from every interest of this World.

CLX. These matters having been decided, very soon a substantial provision was found for me, which Marsh was to administer, allowing me meanwhile so much a week, and so much for my debts, and the rest later for my passage. But no sooner was my position eased than I became more aware of my immediate needs, which were boundless, than of what lay ahead; and I was

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continually asking Eddie for more money than had been arranged for, thus putting my passage in doubt; as he, for his part, found it hard to refuse me. And next I thought of altering my plans, and remaining in England another year, which distressed Eddie deeply when I told him, although he said little; but the next day he wrote me a letter in which he gave so clear and exact an account of my public assets and liabilities, I saw I must lose his confidence by remaining, which separation might spread and undo all those influential and firm relations I believed I had now established in London by my book.

CLXI. While he had great admiration for my gifts (so he wrote) and was most anxious I should fulfil the promise shown in Part I of my Progress, he was beginning to doubt if I ever would. For I was now in the prime of life, when by all precedents my talents should be flowering; and yet what was the case? My new book of verse contained much that was promising, but in respect of its being all I had done in the two years since The Poet’s Progress was published it was disappointing. And as to the Anthology, even if I ever finished it, it was now to be quite different from what was intended at first. The Poet’s Progress had voiced a challenging view of the art of poetry, which wasn’t substantiated in any detail, but seemed to be based on an original and striking conception; and my Anthology, it had been understood, was to expand and justify this conception in an elaborate and considered Thesis, which the selection of poems was to illustrate. As a mere Anthology, not much was to be expected of it; my reading was not wide enough; but its interest would have lain in the use to which the selection was

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put. But what had happened? I had spent many months in reading the poets; the time at my command was running out; and in consequence it seemed that the Thesis was now to degenerate into a mere preface or introduction to the poems, which were now to be the main purpose of the book, instead of being subsidiary to that exposition of my ideas about poetry wherein the importance of the book was to have lain. And now even the continuation of The Poet's Progress just decided upon, which he had looked forward to being my next stride towards eminence, seemed to be receding more and more into the future. Which brought him to consider the general management of my life. Although I might very well think it an impertinence in him to meddle therein, yet he hoped I would not. For while it was right and natural, after all I had been through, that I should give myself up for a while to a first taste of the good things of this world which followed on the success of my book, yet he respected me too much to make allowances beyond a certain point for those former times, which had neither defeated me nor reduced me to any weakness; rather had I emerged therefrom full of spirit and ambition. This was why he was so much discouraged by the account I had given him of my manner of life at Horbury Crescent, when I arose in the morning and went out for a shave, read the papers and went out again for a drink, and then perhaps to a party, by which time most of the day had gone. That I should be incapable of laziness and self-indulgence was not to be wished, but doubtless I gave way too much to these amiable qualities. And finally, in respect of my returning to New Zealand to continue The Poet’s Progress, I well knew how much he approved of this plan; but now came my proposal to remain in

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England instead of using the money provided for my journey. In the light of these things he had the gravest anxiety for my future. And while he admired what I called my ‘scorn of consequence’, he could only ‘believe and tremble’. Doubtless his letter sprang from an order of ideas which was irrelevant to my thoughts of myself; but that I wouldn’t question the sincerity and friendliness with which it was written he had no doubt.

CLXII. Such was his letter, which spoke not only as coming from him, but in the plainer voice of my own affairs. It was indeed that dismissal to new worlds and endeavours I looked for and intended to heed when it came, which my dream had warned me was at hand; and having read it I gathered my depleted resources together, gave Nobby what I could spare (which was very little) saw my publishers, said good-bye to those friends I could find, and to Eddie, who gave me a new leather trunk for the journey, and left England within a week. And thus ended that change in my fortunes I looked for in England and grasped when it came, which was to make all the more bitter the neglect and obscurity that was now at hand. For the first time since childhood I was to live in my native country for a number of years, to taste to the full that wildness and savagery in ourselves (as my dream foretold) which its natural scenery expresses, as I have said, and in the end have revealed to me what lies behind these common appearances, awaiting our knowledge.

CLXIII. I was no sooner aboard than I fell ill, and was so weak when we reached the Indies once more I could scarcely get myself ashore to post my letters. For some

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days after leaving England I lay in my cabin, almost lifeless, so much, and so suddenly, I had relinquished, in the country I was leaving. I had gone to so great an extreme, I now felt a descent from which nothing was at hand to uplift me; while happily for my courage the opposite extreme which lay before me was hidden from my sight. In this interval my hopes for the future were almost too heavy a weight to be borne, and my health and vitality sank. Nevertheless my plans were well made, and my intentions seemed certain of being fulfilled. I would be back in six months with the second part of my Progress, I had told all my friends; so certain I was, and so little I foresaw how severe a testing and how long a reproof my ambitions must still undergo in my own country. I had now only ten pounds with which to land in New Zealand, but I relied on selling the second part of my Progress to the same newspaper which had published the original draft of Part I. Some news of the success of this first part in London would have reached them, I knew; and I had no doubt that the country which fostered and first produced it would be eager to see it continued.

CLXIV. After we left Panama, the ship’s doctor cut open my back and took out the bullet, which had moved from where it had lodged and could now be got at. And thereafter I settled down to my work, but had no sooner begun it than my copy of Tennyson containing all the notes for my Thesis was stolen from my cabin; so I had perforce to give up the Anthology meanwhile, and began writing the second part of The Poet's Progress from the point where my book had left off, which was in sight of my native mountains once more, after an absence of seven years. My resources were so

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slight I saw I should need to start publishing Part II soon after I landed; nevertheless I had no intention of making sure of my public in New Zealand by the easiest means; which would have been to deal mainly with active and adventurous matters, such as my last voyage to England, and only briefly with opinion and ideas concerning themselves and what I thought of my country after so long an absence; which was dangerous matter to be uttered among them, I knew. Nevertheless I had a strong desire to undo all their settlement and reinhabit the country by myself. And with this aim in view I began where I left off, and continued as a good beginning compelled me, without any regard to whether it would please them or not. If I wrote with any precaution, it was rather with a view to returning to England once more than to where I was bound. I relied on a sound style, to which the New Zealanders are not inattentive, being great readers, and to the prestige I had got lately abroad (which was considerable for one of themselves) to carry me through. And when I began the first sentence, ‘ln New Zealand a great many natural fires and volcanoes exist’ (wherewith this present book opens), I was delighted to find my feet there, and so firmly, and forgot all my pleasures in England, and threw off my weakness, in the happiness of once more writing so well. Near the end of the voyage, I sent a message by wireless-thing to the newspaper that had first published Part I, and heard in reply that they would be glad to receive Part 11. This was the first certain news I had sent of my coming.

CLXV. On arriving in Christchurch, my native city, I had several newspaper-men to see me, one of whom|

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although he carefully reported all my answers to his quesdons, as to the success of my book, and my doings in England and whom I had met there, and whether I still thought there were no poets nowadays, yet he so carelessly changed their order as to give an air of conceit to some of my news, as if I put myself first; as even an ‘and’ or a ‘but’ out of place can do. And this is a negligence that needs to be closely watched in these men, as I find; the more so in the case of one, like myself, who is happy to answer what he is asked. This interview gave some offence, I was told; although I had thought (if I gave it a thought) that any consideration shown one of their number abroad was therein only shown to them all. But doubtless they hadn’t forgotten my likening their city, on my former visit, to the wild-west of America rather than to anything English, as they believe its resemblance to be, and were on the look-out to let me feel their resentment if they could. Moreover, when asked my opinion of the depression (as they called the state they were in) I replied that I thought farmers were the better for being poor, theirs being a calling that resembled the priesthood in that respect; which was tactless, no doubt, and leaving their old landholders out of account, rather injured them further than found them a remedy.

CLXVI. I had not then perceived, as I do now, that a newspaper is merely a vehicle bringing a public man and his public face to face, under circumstances wherein a public man can lose much, unless he speaks with discretion. But I thought there were chiefly two parties to these interviews, the newspaper and myself, and imagined the newspaper was responsible for anything the people objected to, forgetting that a newspaper is

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the most irresponsible activity there is, except in one editorial column, wherein it pretends to urge wisdom, temperance, decency and firmness, in small and unattractive print, in the midst of ten or twelve pages of folly, intemperance, indecency and looseness, displayed in large headings and attractive advertisements. Whereby we see that, while the newspaper is only a mirror wherein the people beholds its own ugly reflection and private features, yet there is a minute survival of something public to be reflected there too. And many, taking an interest in this little decency and the bare news, forget that through their wages and bank-books they have a continual interest in that vaster indecency. But having a solid stake in the fact, they are able to ignore or condone the reflection, which is attractive mainly to the many in want. But the free man, the man who knows public from private, with no stake in anything but public decency, such a man knows that publicity for the private appetites (if it be only on behalf of a new-flavoured biscuit, let alone a whole travestied sex) can be indulged in only at the expense, and finally to the utter extinction, of matters properly public. Such a man, then, with things only public at heart, may be forgiven if he forgets his own interest in dealing with such a ready instrument and unthinking automaton as the press. For such is a newspaper, for good or ill, a thing no more loathsome than the life it reflects; and even when it practises distortion and provocation, still it only reflects; since distortion is whereon the modern Universe is based, and provocation is the mainstay of all privacy, which must excite to exist, and cannot be stable. A newspaper is no more an incitement to the vicious than to the wise, who there see before them, in the clearest minuteness

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and most innocent candour, those fatal popular tendencies which the intellectual essayist too often shrouds in abstractions and so makes obscure, but which all reformers alike long to abolish. The classics and the newspapers make the most liberal reading; at any rate they are mine. But as I was saying, a public man needs to be warned of this medium, the press, which merely reflects all that comes before it, clean and foul, but with an intensity which comes of its impartial focus and its unfailing and punctual recurrence, unlike any appearance he makes in a book of his own. These were things I was ignorant of; and when my Progress appeared, although at first there was no objection made to it, it soon touched a place I had already made sore, when my strictures upon them came to light. So that, far from finding a welcome among them, even those few friends I had in Christchurch received me with reserve; and after a few days in town I went out to Barnswood, where I found their affairs very unsetded, and one of my brothers already gone bankrupt. Which was nothing usual for those times; and other young men, of even better posidon, were worse off than he; while thousands were without either employment or money; so weakly founded their prosperity was, and so overwhelming and sudden the fall in the overseas price of all they produced on the land. Finding things uncertain at home, I took lodgings in town, where I continued writing this second part of my Progress, which appeared each week in the Christchurch Press.

CLXVII. This daily newspaper, like all their chief newspapers, had a page devoted once a week wholly to literature, theirs being by far the best and most in-

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fluential in New Zealand at that time, in this one department, as there was then no weekly or monthly magazine in the country with any pretention to criticism. This literary page of the Press had therefore an importance unusual in a mere newspaper, both on this account, and on account of the great abilities of John Schroder, its editor, who rejected every inducement to prefer what was local but bad to what was good but imported, and often only reprinted. It was on this page that my Progress was appearing on Saturdays. Nevertheless there were signs that neither publishing nor cridcism would be left only to the newspapers much longer. Denis Glover had started the Caxton printing-press in Christchurch, and soon after, in the same city, a new fortnightly called To-morrow was launched. At the same time James Bertram and Bob Lowry and others began the Phoenix in Auckland. These movements showed a knowledge of new ideas overseas, but nothing like an indigenous growth with its roots in the country. Nevertheless Evelyn Hayes had already published From A Garden In The Antipodes in London, wherein the first symptoms of a native poetry are to be found; and this was followed at length by Time and Place, which was published, not in London, but by Glover in Christchurch.

CLXVIII. After three or four instalments of my Progress had appeared, I heard from Oliver Duff, the editor of The Press, that great annoyance was being expressed on all sides concerning my version of New Zealand and its people, on which account, in my own interest, Duff advised me to have done as quickly as possible with this country, and hasten in my narrative to less immaculate scenes overseas. Doubtless, I thought,

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the New Zealanders are glad to hear of the imperfections of other countries overseas, but of their own country, which is an annex of the Neo-christian deity himself (God’s Own Country, they call it, like ‘The Queen’s Own Rifles’) it was unheard of that such strictures should be printed in one of their papers, and written merely by one of themselves. It was even suggested that my style of writing had fallen, and that the public was being imposed on, and the newspaper made unpopular; which no doubt comes of having a weekly paper, with a high literary standard, attached to a daily newspaper with none. But except for some amendments which I knew would have to be made in the final version (since the need of writing exactly as to time and amount each week isn’t favourable to the most finished work) I knew I was writing well, and in some passages had never written better, as I think the opening chapters of this work show; and being engrossed in my subject, I refused to pay any heed to these warnings, never doubting that Duff would stand by me, as Keane, the former editor, had done in respect of Part I (which had likewise aroused both enthusiasm and dislike) and keep the peace a few weeks longer with one or two school-teachers and a meddling newspaper director. For I had now nearly finished with the matter in hand, and was about to get on with my story. But when the fifth instalment appeared, with my job as a seaman in sight, and the engineer and the captain come to terms, Duff wrote me to say that such an outcry had been provoked by my former instalments he must decline to print any more. Nor could Schroder, who watched my dismissal with a large and aloof circumspection, do anything on my behalf; and I now found myself without a market in my own

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country, without any means, and almost without a friend. It was about now I first met Jake Jacobs, a handsome young sailor in the New Zealand Navy, with whom I spent several days and nights in and around the city. On one occasion we hired a tandem bicycle and went out to the Waimakariri river, where we bathed, and I made a drawing of Jake while he slept in the sun. I was to meet him again in Auckland, and saw much of him after.

GLXIX. I had meanwhile been sending the instalments of my Progress to Eddie Marsh and to Maurice Baring and others in England, and had heard in reply that they thought them an excellent beginning; so the pain and amazement I felt, at being so dismissed and belittled in the very city that reared me, wasn’t founded on my own judgment alone, although I alone bore the result. I soon had to leave my lodging, staying with Tommy Tothill at Christ’s College for a time, who continued to befriend me; as likewise Ursula Bethell did at her house on the Port Hills, where I somewhat composed my wounded feelings whenever I went there, such a sublime aspect of mountains and plain

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and sea shore, and such a healing air, is to be found on those heights. Very soon I retired to Bamswood, where I thought of proceeding for damages against The Press, which might be held to have accepted a contract to publish the whole of my Progress by printing a part. But as Schroder darkly expressed it, there were some things above litigation (but not above confiscation, I thought) and I saw that I must only disturb my true business and unsettle those deeper relations I was now beginning to feel with Nature around me by going to law, with perhaps no success. So I turned to my Thesis again.

CLXX. While at Bamswood, I used to ride every day for the mail, which was left at a cross-roads some miles from our place. I used greatly to enjoy hacking along the sides of the roads of a hot sunny afternoon. The view made up for its bareness by its vastness, which almost exhausted the sight. On three sides the plain with its objects surrounded one like a horizon at sea; on the fourth side, near at hand, was the broken chain of the foot-hills behind which, here and there, the remote peaks of the Alps glittered like glass. Everything near at hand danced with the heat; only the mountains looked firm. My thoughts, as I rode, would be mainly on England again, and what letters there might be for me at the end of my ride; with vague thoughts that only in surroundings like these had I any fellowship with this country; although these were rather powerful feelings than vague thoughts. All my friends in England were writing to me; but for my part I had a difficulty to give any account of my situation, as except for that indescribable Providence I felt to be over me, and so near to me here, my situation was

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hopeless; and to describe it was beyond me. I have always found it hard to continue a correspondence truthfully and simply, without my hopes and feelings engulfing so small a tract of expression, and enlarging it aimlessly. I can never do justice to my friendships by this means (as I think my friends are aware, and make allowances for me in my letters) and I was feeling the difficulty now. I was not happy, but neither was I alarmed for my future, nor doubtful of reaching England again when my progress required it, notwithstanding my awkward situation at home with no money, and no prospect either of having my fare to England paid for me or of supporting myself where I was. In this predicament, to write letters was an effort and expense that only wrapped words round the real being I was. With such thoughts I was one hot afternoon on my way to the mail, walking my horse and nearly asleep in the saddle, when the animal stopped; and looking round for the reason, I saw a large hare crouching in the short dry grass at my horse’s feet. It sat sideways to our track, its ears flat, looking up at me with one large and intensely black eye. For a few moments I looked down into that eye, which appeared the most eloquent and sensitive thing I had ever looked into. Then I put my horse forward, and in a flash the creature had gone.

CLXXI. I was delighted for many days with that meeting, which was not so surprising, as hares abound on the plains; although I had never before had one lie at my feet. But a little while after, riding home from the mail, I chanced in much the same fashion on a young hawk, a glorious savage thing, that was sitting uninjured and, I supposed, able to fly, in some gorse

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on the roadside. I dismounted and went towards it, when it opened its great beak and hissed at me, showing its quivering sharp tongue and crimson throat, its eyes blazing with savage fires, but made no effort to scramble away. It had gone, however, the next day. This meeting, too, delighted me; and however abandoned by the World I felt now at Barnswood, I was strangely supported in my loneliness by these two visitations of wild nature; more than ever in my childhood indeed, from the hazardous situation I was in, and all I had relinquished in London so lately. I began to see that some message and encouragement had been sent to me by this means, more directly than those presentiments I had hitherto derived from omens and dreams.

CLXXII. As to my work, when I saw that the time wasn’t auspicious for continuing my Progress I put it aside, and out of mind, realizing that nothing was to happen as I had planned, but rather entirely unforeseen circumstances were at hand for me. Nor could I make any headway with the Thesis, since the disturbance into which my feelings had been thrown; nor indeed was I yet sure what my Thesis should be.

CLXXIII. About now John Harris, who had returned from abroad, arrived at Lyttelton (as the port of Christchurch is called) with some other Christ’s College men in their ketch, The Waterlily, to begin an adventurous voyage to the Pacific Islands. We hadn’t met since I landed, and I hastened to town to pay him a visit. He had read some of the new instalments of my Progress, and now heard of its suppression with astonish-

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ment and sympathy for myself; while I learnt of his design, and that of his six companions, to leave New Zealand where nothing, it seemed, could be hoped for, with a like sympathy and concern. So that our meetings and talks were of interest and encouragement to us both. Shortly before they departed they invited me to spend a week-end aboard their craft, which we were to beach in a small bay across the harbour in order to clean her hull. In this way I met Steve Gerard and others aboard her for the first time, and found myself as deeply concerned as they were in all their plans.

CLXXIV. On the morning we crossed the harbour, having come to an anchorage off a small sandy beach, in clear water, John Harris and I rowed ashore in the dinghy before the rest, and while John held the oars, I jumped out. I had no sooner gained the beach than I heard a slight splash behind me, and turning round I beheld a large silver herring, which seemed to have flung itself out of the water at my heels and was now leaping to get back. I caught it, and showed it to John, who was too intent on the job we had come on to take much notice. Nor was it a very big matter to anyone else, but after those two visitations a short time before I was profoundly moved by this strange happening, the more so when I saw it was a young and vigorous fish, like those other creatures appeared, that swam away in a moment when I threw it back in the water.

CLXXV. During that week-end I told John of those other two instances of this portent, and bade him remember this instance, as no one but myself had

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witnessed those other two. He was too concerned in the more material portents and risks of his own journey to give the matter a lively attention, but he accepted what I told him had happened at Bamswood as the truth, I could see. In the next few years I told two other persons in New Zealand about these occurrences, although from the manner in which the news was received I saw I should have kept it for this narrative, as something unfit to be told by one person to another in these times. For the first, from her sex, was unable to take any interest in what so belittled her calling, that of being the only worship that men now aspire to; while the second, from a tireless ingenuity and litdeness, only smiled with delight, as if at last the weakness of an inordinate ambition had been laid bare.

CLXXVI. For the rest of that week-end in Lyttelton Harbour, when I wandered over the rocks by the seashore, looking at the sea-life in their many chasms and pools, all the happiness and assurance of my childhood came back to me again. I felt the same overwhelming identity with Nature, especially in the emphasis of its features where the sea meets the land, which I used to delight in as a boy, but which now the indifference and dislike of my countrymen made the more precious to me. I resolved that now Nature should suffice me, as indeed it was only that natural country to which every artist belongs. For although we have spirits, and a lofty radiance of our understandings, of what use is this light unless it turns to Nature for utterance and an instrument, and so leaves its marks on our time, and tracks of its influence on this World? This is what I meant when I recalled this week-

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end in my poem, Lyttelton Harbour, when I wrote in that stanza:

Tis not the Moon that with her naked light

Doth leave these world-wide copies of her skill,

These carven rocks, bare sands, and treasures bright;

But in the waves how doth her pencil still

Her task perform! Even as my spirit will,

With thy near aid, O Nature, come to write

What ’tis her heavenly office to fulfil;

Else were she ever muffl’d in all night.

Even thus the black and overspreading cloud,

Of the vain World conceals her influent task;

The lampless face of Nature, wan and cow’d,

Knows not its minister.—But now that mask

Is all disolv’d, and my intent allow’d

With the wild deep in one bright fame to bask!

But indeed I somewhat forced and injured my inclinations to write that poem, as will be told; and ‘that mask’ is not even yet ‘all dissolv’d’, nor any ‘bright fame’ my award; but this was the time of a new relation with my surroundings, after those three visitations and this week-end at Lyttelton Harbour. New Zealand now became two distinct countries to me, on the one hand a social entity wherein I had no place, and on the other a wild and half-supernatural ordination whereof I seemed to myself to be the only inhabitant ; which state of things was indeed what I had intended in resuming my Progress, and in writing those chapters on New Zealand wherewith this Part II begins ; whereby I aimed, as I said, to unsettle the country and to settle it anew by myself. I had thought to do this in idea, but now it seemed I had done it somewhat

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in fact, and at far greater cost and discomfort than I thought for. For some time I meditated a satirical poem on this circumstance, but finding what I wrote had no deep energy and only encroached on that faith in misfortune from which I hoped for much in the future I put it aside. However, when The Waterlily sailed I felt my friends’ going so keenly, and thought their situation so like my own, isolated in their ocean surroundings as I was in mine, I published a sequence of four or five sonnets in The Press on this theme, which you might have thought they had hesitated to print, so roundly I upbraided them. But for the most part the public either hadn’t noticed that my Progress had been suppressed, or else they thought it of no consequence; and they minded nothing I had to say now, having other affairs. It was these sonnets I afterwards increased to thirty-nine and published privately as Lyttelton Harbour.

CLXXVII. About now I paid a visit to Randal Burdon, an old school friend, at Woodbury further south, where I first met his brother Cotsford, who next invited me for a week-end to his sheep-station at Mt. Potts. I had never been into the foot-hills at Mt. Somers before, and felt as all must feel when for the first time the main alpine chain stands revealed before them. Within the foot-hills is a world of vast rivers, high mountains, and great reaches of barren tussock-land, with a few isolated setders miles apart, and a climate of its own. It is here those great battles are waged between contrary weathers I spoke of before, the violence whereof either fills the valleys with raging waters or else leaves them a desert of glittering stones. In such a land I imagine David and his six hundred hiding from Saul and the

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Philistines of the plains. Indeed the great relief I felt here was at leaving the plain, with its Dead Sea of bad business and little Sodom of suburban short-comings by the coast; as likewise at joining my hardy new friend in his rocky home, where we lived simply, on strong tea and meat, and talked bravely of Oxford and Italy by the fire at night, with ten years’ of London Mercurys piled to the rafters beside us; and slept with our doors open to the eagles and the blast. But most of all I loved the torrent that plunged down the mountain beside his house, through its own thicket of trees and on to the river below. And one day I set out to climb it, as far as the small patch of snow from whose melting on the bare mountain above I thought it came. I had a great desire to see the birth of so much music and liveliness, but was stopped at length by the dense growths and the steepness of the ground. Here I carelessly left a precious thing Cotty had lent me (I think it was a case of binoculars) and when he drove me back for it the next day, in my anxiety and annoyance the stream sounded only like savage water and not like deities and familiar spirits any more. In this way I enjoyed all my stay here, whether indoors or without, and had liked to remain in these parts until such time as I could leave New Zealand once more. But my pressing affairs, or else the great discernment of my friends, has never allowed me to remain long near these mountains of which I am so fond. And certainly I never heard that mountains were favourable to good work, except as a distant prospect of the mind. As witness the Swiss, of whose arts (except those of hospitality and hardihood, like my friend’s) one never hears. But I think in respect of all great alpine scenery its remembrance evokes what its presence only over-

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powers. Although I tried a sonnet, in which I likened my friend’s strong and limpid speech and happy life to the torrent’s, yet I got no further. But in some halfcity dwelling, where the mountain-fern slowly withers in its pot on the window-ledge, and the tender memento of an alpine friendship, a pebble maybe, or a bit of moss, brings some wild and perilous scene to the mind, there the avalanche and the thunder will be heard in all their glory at last. I left these regions with great regret, and resolved to return there before the summer was over if I could.

CLXXVIII. But I mustn’t imply that I looked to Nature, as it were, as my chief providence and society only from choice, and without being compelled; as the sequel will show. For being once more at Barnswood where my Thesis still halted, I remembered the introduction I had to the Governor-General, which now I thought might be valuable to me in a country wherein, from my nearly continual absence since childhood, I knew almost no one. So I enclosed it in a letter to His Excellency, and said I looked forward to the pleasure of calling upon him when he should be in the south, which I thought would be soon. I was not a little surprised, therefore, to get an official reply from the permanent public secretary, telling me that His Excellency would be in Christchurch at a certain date and a further communication would be sent to me; but being unused to vice-regal procedure, I thought that no doubt this was some trappings from behind which a normal person would emerge in due course. So when a similar communication reached me later, appointing me a time to call at the Governor-General’s hotel (there is no Government House in Christchurch) I took stick

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and gloves and waited in the entrance-hall until he should return from the races, whence I was told he was due any moment. I was the only person in the lounge, and when the small vice-regal party of men entered, with His Excellency in front, I rose to my feet. I am told I sometimes look like a poet (sensitive is meant) and never more so, I suppose, than when on my mettle, as the frigid air of this potentate as he walked by me put me thereon at once. So that, as well as being reminded of this intolerable appointment on his way back from the races, he doubtless divined at once who I was. ‘You’re waiting to see me,’ he said curtly, with a mere glance at me as he passed, where I stood transfixed at the dilemma of not wanting to see such a person in the least. ‘Come along,’ he added from behind him, as he went into the lift, with his local boy in attendance; and I saw at once that he regarded me no differently than as a deputation seeking an interview. I wondered if indeed he knew who I was; but going up in the lift he remarked, ‘I presented a medal to a Colonel Cresswell to-day. Is he any relation of yours?’ ‘No, sir,’ I said, paying no deference to his status, since he paid none to mine; so small we artists are when offended, no doubt; although we speak and act for our kind, and have more to ask a respect and deference for than merely ourselves.

CLXXIX. Very soon we were alone in a small sittingroom. ‘Sit down,’ he said, taking a chair near the fireplace himself. ‘Thank you,’ I said, but remained standing by the mantel-shelf, on which presently I placed an elbow and put one foot on the fender, and looked at him carelessly; although I was far from comfortable to find myself closeted with this now

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meaningless man. ‘You’re an author I understand,’ he began; and he asked me what I had written. So I told him; and in return he told me of his great interest in New Zealand, on which account his wife and himself had lately purchased the treaty-ground of Waitangi and presented it to the people. There was a great field for literature here; why couldn’t I tackle a poem on this subject? I saw he meant to make this meeting at any rate instructive to me, which perhaps he thought was why I had come. I said that something might be made of New Zealand history, although to attempt it didn’t accord with my outlook on literature; nor did I think that the history of New Zealand offered any ground for a native poetry; and especially the Maori did not. He said he was sorry to hear me say so, and hoped I was mistaken. My background in letters was mainly classical, I said. Well then, what about Virgil? he asked promptly. But Virgil had seven hundred years of the Republic behind him, I said; he didn’t write about the colonization of Britain. I think you’re mistaken, Cresswell, he said, I hope so. Poetry is a view of divine things, I said; and at once began to be out of my depth, although I had no doubt that this country might afford such a view (but not yet in its history; but I didn’t want to talk about poetry to this man). Here he somewhat agreed with me; indeed, he went on, there was a great revival in religious matters in New Zealand; people were going back to the churches, he was told. But the young men were not, I said, much amazed. And having talked thus for a brief time, I said I feared I had an appointment and must go. At this he rose, and at last mentioned my introduction, saying it had come from a great friend with whom he had been at Eton; and if there was anything he could do for me,

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would I let him know? I had had some success with my book, he believed. I agreed; and asked him, had he read it? He was afraid not, he replied, at last offering me his hand. Then permit me to present you with a copy, I said, thinking it might be as well if he knew something about it. As Governor-General he couldn’t accept any gifts from private persons, he replied distantly. Then as Governor-General he could return it, I thought; and within a few minutes of leaving I had sent up a copy with my card. And a few days later he wrote and thanked me for it (but not officially this time) saying he thought well of my style. And thus ended a meeting which in a short time, and even more wonderfully, was to be resumed.

CLXXX. It was now midsummer, and returning home to the plains, and finding everyone absent except the servants (who had more money than we had) and not a pound to be got anywhere, I went off to Timaru, the nearest large town, where I looked up a cookery-book to find how to make scones, and the next day applied to the owner of a number of threshing-mills for a job as cook on one of his mills. The harvest was just beginning in this district and the wages were large. If I liked the work, I thought I might roll over the plains in this way, and write some masterpieces as well. The owner, a rough and bad-looking fellow, gave me a job on a mill that was to leave the next morning; and as if in keeping with my new career I had a difference with a drunk man in a public-bar the same evening, where a mixed crowd were drinking after hours (as mainly they are obliged to do in this country) and came to work with a black eye the next morning. ‘How did that happen?’ asked the first mill-hand I met, a huge

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Maori. ‘One thing leads to another,’ I answered, a remark which made him my friend.

CLXXXI. Illegal drinking is common throughout New Zealand, especially in sea-ports. Their bars, since the last war, when so much freedom was lost, are closed at six o’clock after midday, at which time they are crowded with men drinking as much as they are able while there is time. Thereafter those who wish to continue drinking in each other’s company (as they are now more inclined to do from having just drunk so much in so short a time) must sneak off and prevail as they can against locked doors and drawn blinds. Some are admitted and others refused; and corruption, favouritism and unfairness, and a wheedling hang-dog demeanour in men whose fathers were self-reliant and free, are the result. This is an example of those laws which, as I said, are passed in an emergency by those whose pockets they serve (being for the most part laws for exploiting the preferment and ostentation of females) and are afterwards tamely submitted to by all. The beer there is badly brewed, and unwholesome, having no time to mature from there being so few breweries for the great amount drunk; so it flows almost continuously from the laboratory to the glass, being doubtless assisted to get there by chemical means. A few pints of it makes them not so much merry and contented as reckless and unsatisfied; while a constant use of it diseases the frame. But anything is good enough for men who are so regardless of their liberties.

CLXXXII. I now found myself in sole charge of a small hut that travelled on wheels, wherein I was expected to

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cook dinners, bake scones, and make tea for a dozen men, whether the engine was stationary at the stack or pulling us from one farm to another. The stove smoked, but wouldn’t burn unless the door and window were shut; and while we lurched across country from one stack to another, whatever was cooking thereon was flung off, unless I stood by and held it on, braving the boiling liquids and the smoke and steam. Most of the rations I had been promised by the scoundrelly owner hadn’t come, and a vital part of the stove was missing. After two days in this fearful employment, with no sleep at nights and no certainty of anything by day, I arose before daybreak on the third morning to light the fire, if I could; although even that was uncertain with the materials I had. The evening before, a kindly Dalmatian had cut up a sheep’s carcase for me into so many chops, and these I got fried in good time. But when the boss arrived just before breakfast without the bread he had promised, and for which I was waiting, he reviled me for not having cooked potatoes instead; and I now had to put on an immense pot of these sorrowful substitutes, which couldn’t have been cooked in under an hour on the best of stoves. So that, while the men were still waiting for these to boil, it was time to begin work. The whistle was blowing; and all they had was two chops each, and nothing to put jam on nor to fill them up. When the boss returned later with a manure-sack full of bread, he told me I was fired, which led to a violent scene between us during which he said I was no cook and I said he was a rascal who starved his men. As they had all stopped work to listen, while we shouted insults at each other between the cook-house and his car, like Torquatus and his foe before battle, I thought I had got the better of him, until he drew out

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his cheque-book and asked me what he owed me, when I found I had no idea, and had to leave it to him. However he paid me a sum, and I went back to Bamswood that day with my new career at an end. New Zealand abounds in such men (but not in such cooks) as likewise in labourers who mind neither who employs them nor in what manner they live, so long as wages are high, which they save while they work, and then spend in an orgy of racing and drink. That morning, as I once more reached the world I had left, which was but a few steps away from the mill, I seemed to have been absent for years, such a state of tension and hatred I had been in for forty-eight hours, and so closely confined. I was amazed and delighted with surroundings which all the while had been distant only a few yards from where I had worked, and from which I had been absent only a few hours.

CLXXXIII. I now thought of making another expedition into the Alps, if I could get a capable person to accompany me; and finding a young and strong neighbour who liked the idea, we set off with some gear and provisions and reached Mt. Potts by car the same night, where Cotty Burdon fed us and gave us a bed, and the next day accompanied us to the last sheep-run between his place and the Alps. Here they lent us a pack-horse; and the next night we reached one of the mustering-huts near the head waters of the Rangitata, on a small point of land hemmed in between two immense shingle river-beds and the main range behind. We made expeditions up both these rivers. As their beds become narrower, so their scattered waters converge and their valleys become steeper, with the snow-peaks towering above; whereby

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the further one goes the fiercer and more insecure these torrents become, until in one place we were hanging on to the boughs of an almost precipitate forest, with the river roaring beneath. I lost my nerve and refused to move from the tree to which I had clung, so that Tasker had to leave me and find a way up above, and then almost drag me to safety. New Zealanders make the most reliable and dauntless companions there are, and in dangerous situations (such as this was not) will never leave a mate, as they call one another, for a moment. Many lives are lost and imperilled from their hardihood in plunging into unknown country without either provisions or guides. That night we couldn’t get back to our hut, so we camped in a sandy cove at the foot of the mountains, with an ocean of boulders before us, like a fossilized sea. From the lack of any human associations, the solitude here is extreme, and almost blatant in its savagery, unlike anything to be felt in Europe I should say. Except for a few parrots and keas, and some wild duck we shot, there were no living creatures but ourselves. These ducks keep in pairs, and if one be shot, the other returns and refuses to leave without its mate. I begged Tasker to respect such a touching instance of fidelity, the more striking from the loneliness of their lives; but he would not, and said it was kinder to kill the other as well, not seeing a loftier kindness for which we should all, even ducks, be willing to suffer. But indeed I am doubtful about this too. There is no other life in these mountains but that of water and rocks, and the winds, which can blow a man over, which make their coming known on the main range by blowing the snow off like a white smoke. This is followed by white formations of cloud that pour rapidly over the highest peaks, and then downwards,

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where they quickly dissolve in mid air, making a most mighty and pleasing illusion of precipitancy.

CLXXXIV. After a few days in this country we returned to the plains, where I tried to grapple with my Thesis for the Anthology. I could find no beginning nor any entrance into those views on poetry I had expressed in Part I. They were said and done with, and now belonged only to their context; while any new and deliberate view of poetry seemed so to embrace everything as to be beyond statement and out of my grasp. I was preparing for that attack on the Copernican Universe in the name of poetry which I was soon to attempt, although I had no idea of it then; nor did the steps which led up to this seem to lead anywhere at the time, although I see they led me there now. In the difficulty I was in I went to my books, and began reading the Ancients, who always move me the most from being nearest to concrete nature; not nearer than Chaucer or Wordsworth or Ruskin, or many moderns; but nearer in their public system (which is how poetry appears to me) than any society since. In this way I hit on a fine opening, on which I could build a whole thesis, as I thought; and I continued to add to this with great pains, but without knowing where I was going. Indeed this task I had undertaken required me to invent, or else to know more of my own views than I was able to know, since I was not yet able to expound these as a public and poetic system, which was the only way I could proceed. And although I nearly finished what I thought would suffice, I soon began something else; for being once embarked on philosophizing I couldn’t keep the matter under control. This second business which began with

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Emerson and Whitman, came to look like a history of America; while yet a third thesis, that began with Blake, was soon at sea with the British fleet and blockading Napoleon. I could keep nothing within bounds; and yet, when just now a good occasion of writing presented itself, in two articles in The Press by a Christchurch Professor of English, wherein prose was in all things held to be superior to poetry, and poetry wholly dependent on prose, I was at once stirred to reply to this heresey, with the utmost ease and precision, and never wrote better, being moved to my subject by the event and not by the remembrance of a duty. Then all my speculations converged to a point. However I knew that with time I should write my thesis; but how long a time? And how large a matter must it be in the end, and perhaps how unsuitable ! I was now suffering far more than even my publisher was from this impossible task; and yet it led me in the end to the greatest discoveries, from which all is to come, if I can be worthy of them. It was only for this I was sent back to New Zealand, I see.

CLXXXV. It was now the beginning of winter. I had comfortable quarters at Barnswood, thanks to my mother: a bed-sitting-room, detached from the house, with a large open fireplace wherein I burnt great logfires at nights, and as much privacy as I might require. Except for servants and wood-cutters, only my parents were at home; and this was perhaps my one inconvenience, that while my work was too ill-applied to content me, I had no company with which to amuse myself such as I was used to in London for so long. For Nature and all the deities notwithstanding, I can’t

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be happy for long without either high or low company. If it can’t be a palace then let it be a pie-cart, for all I care, provided it enjoys a poetic immunity from repression. (At least such were my humours then, after so much spoiling in London; although I am somewhat cured of them now.) Being quite without means, except what little my father could now and then spare me, in those restless moods I would take any opportunity to reach Ashburton, and begging a bed there from the Nicolls or Buchanans, would in like manner ingratiate myself with the youthful driver of the Ashburton transport lorry the next morning, and by this means arrive in Christchurch the same day, with perhaps a few shillings in my pocket. There I would beg a bed for a night or two from the Tothills or my friend Leonard Franzman, and spending what I had in any distractions, and finding what company I could in bars and at coffee-stalls, I would return to Barnswood in the same manner to make another assault on my Thesis. Such facilities were bound to wear out on both sides, and to remind me more and more bitterly of my downfall in this Province.

CLXXXVI. One night when I was alone and reading by my fire (my parents being in town) perhaps from some passage I read I felt a sudden desire to pack all my belongings and leave Barnswood and the South Island at once. I contemplated this impulse for perhaps five minutes, with my gaze on the fire, then I sprang up and began packing my books, clothing, papers, and lastly my letters, of most of which I made a great blaze, all the time feeling a happy liberation and expectancy of new fortunes. At one in the morning, with everything packed, I went out, and walked

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through the white stiffened grass to the far edge of the plantation surrounding the house. Here I stood in the freezing night air a few minutes, cooling my feverish condition, and regarding the plains in the moonlight, white with frost, and the great mountains, whiter still. Then I went to bed.

CLXXXVII. In the morning I spoke by telephone to my brother Charlie, who consented with some reluctance to take me and my belongings in his truck to Ashburton, where, for want of a train-fare, I threw myself on the kindness of the Transport Company once more, and was carried to Christchurch. Here I knocked at Schroder’s front door and desired him to harbour me for a few days until I could leave this unlucky Province and its city for ever. He received me gaily; and next I sought out my parents, and told them I was bound with all my belongings further north, on my way back to England I hoped; although I had no idea when or by what means I might get there; but so I disguised the aimlessness of my journey. They heard me with surprise and misgivings, but wished me well when I said I was throwing all on my Fortune, whatever the outcome, of which others must sometimes be the agents no doubt.

CLXXXVIII. The crew of The Waterlily had meanwhile returned to New Zealand, their vessel having been wrecked; and John Harris was with Ormond Wilson in the North Island, I knew. So I wrote to them both and told them of my situation, saying I was bound for the north, and would join them if they sent me my fare. I had been in touch with Ormond Wilson ever since my return to New Zealand. He took a delight

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in my writings, and I knew I would find a welcome at Bulls. And my fare having been sent me, and something above from them both, Schroder came with me to the station, with copies of Boswell and Don Quixote for me to read on the journey; and after a parting that much affected me, both from its hazards and from how far these showed me the kindness of my friends, I caught the night-steamer to Wellington, and so on the next morning to Bulls further north. Here I found Harris about to precede me to Auckland, at which I rejoiced, not only from my affection for him, but because I thought we might make a community there wherein our difficulties would be the less from being shared. And so, for a time, we did.

CLXXXIX. After a few happy days with Ormond Wilson at Bulls, during which time I met his family and relations nearby, and found this region as well-disposed and hospitable to me as for the most part the south had been the reverse, I made plans for continuing my journey to Auckland. For this also I had to rely on Ormond; and thus was begun an honest collaboration between us which was to last throughout all the years I was to remain in New Zealand. I had good friends in Auckland too, as I said before; and before I left Bulls I wrote letters both to William Goodfellow and to his mother and sister in their different households, asking for their hospitality until I could find means of existing for myself in their city. As Goodfellow was a man of considerable wealth, and all his family were well-to-do, I knew that at least I was making no great call on them by this request; however I was none the less grateful to hear I was welcome. What was next to be done towards settling myself among them I had no

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idea; but I hoped that some suitable employment might be found for me; although with unemployment increasing and everything getting worse I knew that casual work, let alone a position such as I hoped for, by which I could both keep myself in comfort and have time and energy for my writing, would be difficult to find. For I had been trained to no kind of employment since boyhood; not by any negligence of my parents, but on account of the war and after that on account of my own waywardness, having always kept myself from all kinds of business in order to devote myself wholly to my ambitions; and for any position I might now hope to fill there must be many idle who were well trained in the matter required. But the assurance I carried with me, almost since infancy, of at length writing what would be worthy to live and invaluable to the World (rather in poetry than in prose) now impelled me once more to risk all on this journey, as my habit has been from the first, although I could see nothing ahead. The Governor-General was now in Auckland, and remembering his offer to help me if he could, I wrote to him as well.

CXC. He had been good enough to tell me in Christchurch, I wrote, that if I needed his assistance I was to let him know. I had now left my home in South Canterbury, where things went from bad to worse, and was on my way up to Auckland, where I hoped to make myself sufficiently settled to finish the two books for which I had contracts in London. I was hopeful of getting some partial employment in Auckland, or into some situation wherein I wouldn’t be hindered in my literary activities and would have enough time to myself. To something of this sort I hoped His Excel-

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lency would be willing to recommend and advance me. Otherwise, so far as I could see, I should soon be destitute. It was perhaps extravagant to hope for some position in which my literary talents could have scope; but I would rather go into an unemployment-camp than commercialize my pen. I had intended to remain only a few months in New Zealand, but the absolute stoppage of all my means had situated me differendy. I now thought of seeking some Governmental post since, as an author, my future was rather a public than a private one. My unusual knowledge of England might be of some use to the country. I wasn’t blind to the distress of the time and the unemployment, but in such times exceptional persons have more value and scope. It shouldn’t be otherwise. In very prosperous times they were little valued (in New Zealand I meant; and I went on to mention a certain claim I might have on the care of my country, and the war, and what had been done for me in England). Yet New Zealand, I concluded, was my home, and that of my parents, and my grandparents before them; where, if they hadn’t yet learnt to appreciate their poets and authors, that was largely because hitherto they had had almost none. Such, and so private, was my letter.

CXCI Arrived in Auckland, I went first to stay with William Goodfellow, when I soon received a reply from the Governor-General, or rather from the official secretary as before, saying my letter had been received, and appointing a day and time for me to call; which so reminded me of my former experience, I thought of ignoring it, being incensed that, concerning a subject that was even more certainly a private matter between His Excellency and myself, I should hear again from

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his staff. But I think it was rather my indignation that took me, when I went, than the faintest hope of interesting this icy potentate in my fortunes, who seemed to me so basely forgetful of the immense debt that all worldly elevation owes to the arts. But I went; and ignoring a minor and altogether too insignificant path that led to a side entrance (well labelled as being for official and public callers), I continued up the main drive to the grand entrance in front. The front door, I reflected as I mounted the many wide steps of Government House, Auckland, is where I am accustomed to call when I call; and I pressed the bell. No labels here, and nothing but a tremendous silence; so I pressed again. Still no response; so I pressed it impatiently a third time, at great length, and was pleased I could hear it bellowing somewhere in the depths of that paltry palace. Then I heard footsteps and voices, and during what seemed a puzzled conversation behind it, the door was at last unlocked and opened by a butler in black, behind whom, at some distance, stood Her Excellency, with a garden-hat on and a bunch of flowers in her hand, regarding me wonderingly. I had called.

CXCH. ‘Yes?’ said the lackey. Ts His Excellency in?’ I asked. ‘Have you an appointment, sir?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You must go to the side door,’ he told me severely. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and retired. After this demonstration I didn’t mind where I went. So I returned down the main drive again, and took the little dark path to the dingy side door, where a uniformed commissionaire let me in. The staff seemed aroused by my assault on the state entrance, and soon a young naval aide-de-camp joined me in the waiting-

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room. His Excellency was engaged, he told me, but he wouldn’t be long. He must take me in. There were certain formalities. So I see, I replied. Have you done any huntin’ out here? I asked him. ‘Not yet; but I hope to,’ he said, sitting down and offering me a cigarette. ‘What is the country like?’ Mainly boulders and barbed wire, I told him. So we talked about this, until our turn was announced. ‘You must leave your cigarette I’m afraid,’ he said hurriedly, as if it had been a revolver; and he led the way along a dark passage where Her Excellency was once again wandering, like Persephone, with her flowers. For myself, I had already made and concluded my visit, and was merely enjoying a meaningless rite. But rather a rout, than a rite, was at hand. In a moment I was alone with His Excellency, who said curtly: ‘Good morning, Cresswell.’ And I answered: ‘Good morning, sir.’ And as he didn’t rise, so I didn’t bow, or say more; and for the most part my responses were wholly automatic to all that he said. My sensations and feelings were wide awake, but my ambitions were far away from that room. I noticed that his desk faced the window, and the window gave a clear view of the main drive to the front door, along which I had just passed to and fro with stick, gloves, bowler hat and my best dark suit. T got your letter,’ he said, as I sat down, and holding the offending thing in his hand, ‘and I’m going to speak very plainly to you.’ I looked at him wonderingly. ‘l’m a man of the World you know, Cresswell,’ he went on. ‘And what’s more I’ve had a good legal training. It’s not difficult for me to see through what you’ve written to me.’ I listened with amazement, wondering what was to come. ‘You want to get money from me,’ he continued, ‘although you should know

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that such a thing is out of the question.’ I was astounded at this absurd and mistaken remark. 'l’m sorry your Excellency should think so,’ I said quietly. ‘I can’t understand you,’ he went on. ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘You say here you won’t commercialize your pen. Why, Cresswell, that’s just nonsense!’ And he went on to tell me for some time of the opportunities before me in journalism, and of the high level of newspaperwriting in New Zealand, while I listened and said nothing. Every Saturday he read excellent articles on New Zealand history and scenery, he said; and surely there was a field here for my pen. Not for my pen, I said; although now I had no wish to talk to him, nor to be in his presence, and wanted to go. He knew the editor of one of the Auckland newspapers, he said, as I rose, a very able man. He was sure I could write what would be accepted. I thought of my outlandish Thesis, with its Greek background, and an idea occurred to me. ‘lf your Excellency cares to mention your interest in the matter, I’ll send him some articles,’ I said. T don’t think my opinion carries much weight; but I’ll do so if you wish,’ he said. So I thanked him, and the interview closed. I was very entertained with my idea.

CXCHI. I sent my Thesis to the newspaper he had mentioned, naming my price; and as I expected it came back. Then I went to the other daily newspaper, of which my friend Alan Mulgan was literary editor, to whom I mentioned the Governor-General’s interest in my publishing some matter in the rival newspaper, to whose editor His Excellency, I said, had spoken of the matter; but I much preferred it should appear in his own paper, I said. I then told him that the matter

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referred to was my long delayed Thesis for a London publisher; a sort of writing which Mulgan, who knew my style, would like to publish, I thought, and with any inducement would publish, I knew; but which the other newspaper would never publish on any recommendation, as I also knew. And so it turned out; for Mulgan thereupon published nearly all my first Thesis, in three instalments, to the no little amazement of his readers, no doubt. And thus, by this mild subterfuge, all concerned were able to do as most pleased them, including myself, who pocketed a few guineas. Nevertheless, I had no sooner seen the first Thesis in print than I was dissatisfied with it as a whole, and began incorporating the best of it in my second Thesis, which was almost completed.

CXCIV. I stayed for a month with William Goodfellow and his family, after which I went for a month to old Grannie Goodfellow and her daughter Elaine. When this visit should be ended, Will had offered me the use of a house situated in the midst of a large block of native forest he owned in the western ranges, near the city. There was a keeper in charge, a good road, and a telephone to the city, and Goodfellow generously offered to keep me in provisions and fuel. The silent jungle enclosed the house on three sides, but in front the steep descent provided an immense view over the tree tops to the whole isthmus and harbour and city of Auckland, with a large tract of undulating farmlands in between. The few visits we paid to that mountain solitude made me look forward to living there for the rest of the winter, where I thought I might escape from those hazards and misfortunes which now threatened to make me a prisoner in this

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country, and occupy this mountain retreat until I had written what must open a passage for me to England once more. But it wasn’t to be. What I had to write, and purchase my freedom thereby, wasn’t of a sort that thrives best in mountain solitudes, I was to find. A far different kind of surroundings awaited me, although I never suspected it then. And when my time with Grannie Goodfellow came to an end, and it chanced that the house in the mountains wasn’t available, this further reverse to my hopes filled me with dire misgivings for the future, and almost, for a few hours, with despair.

CXCV. In this mood I happened soon afterwards to be standing in William Goodfellow’s garden in the suburbs of Auckland when I had an unmistakable omen concerning my situation and its future in the flight of two birds. I was at first attracted by a large white pigeon or dove flying low down from my right hand to my left through the garden. As I watched it rise and fall in its flight I marked a most singular circumstance. A sparrow was flying close beside it, and the two kept one flight side by side for the whole time I saw them. I at once interpreted this to mean that while my spiritual affairs were making safe passage, and all was well therewith, yet they were now, or shordy, to be accompanied by fortunes of the most desperate and hazardous kind, and all sorts of lowness; for so I interpreted the common sparrow by comparison with the dove. In other words, I had nothing to fear, but much to suffer, for so long as I should be compelled to remain in New Zealand; an intimation that did much to support my faith in myself for the next five years, and relieve me of all anxiety as to the outcome; notwith-

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standing the process to that outcome was often painful and dark.

CXCVI. I was now once more in doubt what to do or where to go, in which dilemma I borrowed a sum of money from Goodfellow, which he readily lent me and later increased; and with this I took a lodging nearer to the centre of Auckland, overlooking the harbour. Here I began work on the third Thesis, which was larger and more intricate than the other two, although it by no means made plain those feelings and certainties about poetry and the poetic future of Mankind which now more than ever were haunting my thoughts, setting me, I was certain, apart from all other men, and placing a great weight upon me when, as it seemed, I was least able to bear it. I had endured hardships before this; but now not only were my social surroundings most alien to my ambitions, as in England they were not, but to material uncertainties were added intellectual ones, and I could see my way clearly in nothing. Moreover I was in a country to which I was a stranger since childhood, and in a city wherein I had almost no friends of my own age and tastes. John Harris was to begin with my only companion, and there was no literary household I knew of except the Mulgans, where I was made welcome whenever I called; and often given a bed. But very soon I began seeking entertainment in hotels and bars and drinking more than may have been good for me at a time when it appeared I could least afford it. But who shall say what is good for us, or what we can afford, when if only our aims be well founded all is for the best? In this belief I soon did everything as I felt inclined, trusting my inclinations to be the channels of

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my aims (as my dream in London had foretold me) in some way inscrutable to myself. Now I fully lived after those doctrines of poetic morals I laid down in Part I; as indeed I had always done; but to adhere to them now needed far more confidence in my future than in London before, in spite of omens and visitations on all sides. These reassured me; but in midst of what darkness and difficulties I ever kept them in mind ! More and more in this fearful material wilderness I felt, as I had always felt, that my life was neither my own nor in my own keeping. As my desires, under Providence, had led me hither, so under Providence they would deliver me hence, when my work with my surroundings here should be done. Which work is in all things to know where and what I am. And although it led me to the lowest depths of my nature and put the utmost strain on my relations with my surroundings, yet, as I trusted it would, in the end this dark inscrutable industry delivered me hence, and raised me with effortless good fortune and infallible happy omens to where I formerly was, with my prospects brighter than ever and my faith unimpaired. Such was the inward trust and faith in myself whereby I lived through these last five years in New Zealand, with no home of my own, no certain employment, and often no means. Nevertheless I was constantly active to help myself where I could, and never scrupled to make myself a charge on those of my friends who could bear it; for I soon made many friends. I met George Albright about now, a young Englishman who had been sent alone to New Zealand as a boy, and bore the stamp of his hard and self reliant existence since. Like myself he was penniless, and his knowledge of the darker side of this city and his cheerful resourcefulness in mis-

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fortune was often of use to me later. He was brought up among Theosophical bodies in England, and he used to say in his cups that he barely escaped their search for an infant Messiah.

CXCVII. When the money from Goodfellow was spent, as John Harris had lately been broadcasting an account of his travels over the air I thought I might make some money myself by this means, and John introducing me, and my voice being tried and found very suitable, I gave a number of weekly broadcasts on the English poets; one of which, Modern Poetry and the Ideal, was soon afterwards published by Ronald Holloway on his Griffin Press, with Ormond Wilson aiding the venture, and sold very well. But I could get no continuous employment at broadcasting, nor was that I did get well paid; and very soon I had to give up my lodging and seek refuge with Harris in an empty house he had taken in the city. Here I met many members of the Communist Party in Auckland, of which John was a member, and saw with surprise with what caution and secrecy this body was compelled to exist here, to avoid, if it could, the impertinent supervision of the police, with sometimes the arrest of its members and confiscation of its property. But I took no part in this movement, nor was I concerned to be told that by not being a Communist I must of necessity be among their opponents, or a Fascist that was; since I was busy in my Thesis with the principles of a poetic Universe wherein no materialist, to whichever theory of property he adhered, should be found. However they might affect me, I was certain that politics didn’t concern me; and although I was interested, I left them alone.

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CXCVIII. With the coming of spring I had written a poem which encouraged me mightily. I had been reading some early English verse of a period before Chaucer, which so haunted me by its simple concreteness, and was so near to Nature and yet so aloof from the World as we know it (as I myself was, I felt) that when the beauties of the new season caught my attention I found myself expressing them in a not unlike parody of those primitive terms. Except for some quatrains (‘Ere thy dark minister, O Earth’) which Schroder had published, these were the first verses I had written since the sonnets on The Waterlily, and I was therefore greatly heartened to write them. Nothing I have ever written was put down so readily. When I came to the lines

You daffodils, you lamps

That lighten Summer near,

You need no longer shine

For now that she is here,

I had arrived at such easy terms with the matter that I wrote the rest almost without effort. I was surprised to find that, while using this simple pastoral form and archaic conceits, I yet easily stretched it to embrace all that was under my view and without disturbing the illusion of a limited concreteness, even attacking modern science in these sly terms. As when I warned the shepherds,

But minds of little men,

Like engines of iron,

They maken no new leaves

Nor beds to rest upon,

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I was more and more in my labours becoming convinced that what afflicted this World and must overthrow it was a deep and organized cleavage between concrete and abstract in our faculties, whose harmony was poetic and the labour of poets, and the only refuge before Mankind. I was now beginning to grasp those theories of style which I have expressed earlier in this work, and was indeed on the threshold of those great discoveries concerning the untruthfulness of the Copernican Universe of which in the end I constructed my Thesis. And this little poem was like a hint of these matters, from a higher region than logical prose. I typed it and sent it round to my friends in both islands, believing that this would be the first of a sequence; but it was something eccentric, and nothing more of that kind was to follow. It did much also to lead me to early foundations in English, and not only, as hitherto, in the Greek.

CXCIX. I had scarcely joined Harris in his empty house when my brother Douglas arrived in Auckland with his wife and young family, taking a house at Milford on the outer harbour, where he invited me to join them for the coming summer. This seaside neighbourhood is reached from the city firstly by frequent ferry-boats across the inner harbour, and thereafter by concrete roads and modern conveyances which run to all the nearby bays and ocean-beaches beyond and for some distance up the northern peninsular. This outer coast faces the Pacific Ocean where the many adjacent islands shelter the waters of the Hauraki Gulf. The nearest of these islands is a bushclad extinct volcano called Rangitoto, whose broad base and low triple cone, opposite the sea-shore at

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Milford, make one side of a wide channel, some four miles across, which conducts shipping to the hairpin bend at North Head, and so to the vast inner harbour with its interminable head-waters beyond. In the reverse or out-going direction the coast-line from North Head, and northwards for many miles, consisting of sandy beaches and many small bays, becomes more wild and uninhabited as the Rangitoto channel is left and the Haurald Gulf, with its wider waters and more distant islands, takes its place.

CC. The outlook from Milford beach, with the resigned and graceful cone of Rangitoto across the channel, the rugged and distant outline of Coromandel Peninsular behind it, coming up from the south, and, on a clear day, the many distant peaks of Great and Little Barrier and Tiri Island towards the open sea, is what I imagine the view from the Piraeus to be like, if north and south be reversed, with Salamis and .iEgina in the foreground (‘The king sat on a rocky throne’) and behind these the Scyllaeum peninsular of Argos, and beyond this again all the Cyclades and the distant waters of the yEgean. But there the comparison fades; for instead of the whole being bounded by the limited waters of the Mediterranean, it is here a gateway to the boundless expanse of the southern Pacific, stretching across almost half of the modern globe to the shores of Chili. But this is an unapparent difference; and the resemblance of the whole of this outlook to Greece, to one untravelled but well versed, struck me at once and haunted me ever after. It might be a narrative panorama from the pages of /Eschylus or Thucydides, such as is called to mind by the Syracusan expedition of Demosthenes, or the arrival of the ships of Tigyptus

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before the seaside grove of the Danaides. Likewise the western coast here, facing the Tasman Sea and Australia, with its dangerous surf, dark rocks, and black foam-smothered sands, has been well called Homeric. Indeed the Maori called the west the man’s sea and the east, with its softer and more changeable aspect, the woman’s.

CCI. I had no sooner paid a visit to the sea-coast at Milford than I accepted my brother’s invitation with delight, and moved there with all my belongings. Here I began yet a fourth thesis wherein, as formerly, I incorporated much of what went before, and stimulated by the sea-waters and that memorable outlook I was soon ranging the globe at enmity with all modem discovery and seeking a poetic authority for a healthy ignorance and concealment, wherewith to displace the authority of modern science. Nevertheless I sometimes remembered my publisher (from whom I now and then heard wondering complaints) and those Victorian poets who were to illustrate my researches; but much as I longed to have the matter completed and to receive the remainder of the money due to me under my contract, these inducements were unable to turn me from the course my speculations were taking, which caused me more and more misgivings as they unfolded, and the vastness and aggressiveness of the inquiries I was bent on became plain. It seemed I should never have done. What was at stake, I know now, was the harmony of the poetic with the rational faculties (concrete with abstract, as I said) which modern science has so deeply divided, and which modern art professes to ignore; and had I given up the struggle then, for the sake of an easier and more rapid decision and a more successful

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and acceptable Thesis, no doubt I should never have resumed it, nor made the discoveries I made in the end. Each attempt I now made seemed at last the conclusive one, until I was halted by some difficulty, when my recent clear writings would become patched and tangled with amendments from which at length a new line of inquiry would emerge. I often put it aside from exhaustion and the want of any impulse to go on. Also I was no sooner settled at Milford than I was once more without means, and had perforce to give another series of broadcasts, this time on Shakespeare’s Histories , and this providing me with a small income each week, I gave a good deal of time to drinking and carousing with new companions I was finding in the hotels and bars in town. I never felt so strong an impulse to this distraction as now, nor ever yielded to it so recklessly. Either this was because all my faculties, high and low, were aroused to their greatest activity by my researches, or else because I was more than ever sensitive to the vulgar and virile attractions of my surroundings in a country wherein these things have more validity than its culture, or because my mind was so lonely in this work, and under so great a strain, that a reaction to a seeming looseness of principle and low company was only a natural and healthy relief. I think the last reason most likely, and allowing for the other two. For the results have been sound, and have fulfilled all my hopes; and nothing of strength and excellence ever came out of what was weak and vicious. Moreover, when this work was done, and well done to my thinking, and when to leave this country was once more in my power, these excesses diminished of themselves (mark that, Elaine, you who made me promise, on such handsome terms, to have done with

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them!) without any effort or discountenance on my part, until in the end it was as natural to do without them and to look to a new plane of experience as before to do so had been almost death.

CCII. I well knew I was now in the most favourable surroundings in New Zealand for my character and ambitions; although my situation was still very uncertain, according as my brother’s prospectsjvere so; and in the autumn I found myself once more without a home, but so in love with this coast and so deeply settled here in my feelings I was certain I was not yet intended to leave it; and in much perplexity as to what should be done I walked into the next bay above Milford one mild sunny afternoon, resolved to hire or beg any shelter I could find. I was once again penniless, but had pawned all my valuables (most of which I came to lose in this way) and had engaged for a new series of broadcasts a few months ahead. This little bay, called Castor Bay, took my fancy at once; indeed there was an inviting air about it that seemed more than was natural, as if my steps had been guided thither; and as I climbed up a pathway from the beach, where the poplars and willows strewed the ground with their yellow leaves among the unchanging dark treeferns and native shrubs, I felt that this was where I must come, and where I should find a home of some kind if I looked for it. And seeing a small hut in a back garden by the road, of the sort called a bach in this country (after bachelor and the habit of young men to keep house for themselves in surroundings where women are scarce) I inquired at the house if I might inhabit it, as I saw it had a fire-place at one end and a large window. I was told by Sam Thompson, who

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owned it, that it had formerly been a wash-house, but was dry and rain-proof, and I might have it for half-a-crown a week. So I took it that day, arranging to pay when my broadcasts began, and at once moved all my things from my brother’s in Milford. I had as well the means to furnish it with a bed and a table and other gear given me by John Harris, who was now leaving New Zealand to take up a Carnegie scholarship; and fetching these things over from town I was soon settled in and happy to feel I now had a home of my own, the more so as Sam and Meredith Thompson and two other families I soon met there at once made me welcome among them. These other families were both Stronachs from Otago; and both were related to my new friends the Thompsons.

CCIII. I saw I had found a haven at last in this country, and among people I liked. But I was still in difficulty to maintain myself here; and for some time, until my next broadcasts should begin, and while as yet my intimacy with my new friends here was only beginning, I was even at some pains to feed myself. There was a long but nearly inaccessible beach next to this bay to the north, only reached at low tide round the rocks of one point of the bay or by a steep path down the cliffs, and here I foraged both for fuel for my fire and for food, finding vegetables which had been carelessly thrown overboard with the kitchen peelings from passing ships, as I could tell from the peelings being scattered there too, with the skins of grape-fruit and other elegant leavings. A current set in here, and besides much timber brought in many whole carrots and potatoes and the like in a week, on which, with a few pence-worth of milk and tea and

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sugar, I was often able to live for some days. I was at first without enough blankets as well; and as it was now winter I told Elaine Goodfellow of this, who at once sent me two new blankets from town. By this means, and by the increasing hospitality of my new neighbours, I kept myself in a manner until my broadcasting began, working at my Thesis meanwhile.

CCIV. I longed to finish this work; but I am not trained to scholarship and seclusion; and while at one time my mind reached after remote and mighty decisions at another my feelings and appetites hankered after the seaport and its bars and pubs, its saloons and low crowds. So that no sooner was I earning again than I would take a day or a night off in the city and damage my income beyond repair, perhaps borrowing a pound or two against further earnings if I could. Nevertheless when I worked I worked tenaciously, forgetful of everything else; and I think had I not been both so poor and so ardent in my work, when this engrossed me, I had not been so reckless in my refreshments, when at length I could endure neither frugality nor constancy any longer, and the means were once more at hand to relieve me of both. And as I was passionate and tireless at my work (often sitting at my table for five or six hours over some difficulty, almost without writing a word) so I was no less immoderate in my pleasures, as my situation required.

CCV. But seeing that the conclusion of my Thesis was so far off, and feeling somewhat ashamed at my long delay, and so many inquiries from London, I now collected a quantity of both early and recent essays on a

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number of subjects, which I entitled Pantechnikon, and sent this to Otto Gugenheim, requesting him to offer it to my publishers in place of the Anthology, in the hope that this trifle would appease them for what was so long overdue. They refused it however; nor did Gugenheim have any success with it elsewhere; while both Eddie Marsh and E. M. Forster to whom I desired him to show it were against my publishing slight matters to which my name was as yet of too little moment to lend any weight. And Ronald Boswell, to whom he submitted it, replied that without either the Anthology or else Part II of The Poet’s Progress preceded it, to publish such trifles would be unwise. When it came back to me I was surprised to see I had included some matters which I had been foolish to have published in any case; and I thought that those whom their failures protect have more to thank Providence for than have those who always succeed as they wish. Which is what Cleon meant, I think, in his speech concerning the Mitylenians, when he said that in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and easier to stave off adversity (as I was doing) than to preserve prosperity, as it seemed I was failing to do.

CCVI. I was not without succors, sometimes, from friends in the south. Ursula Bethell and Jim Courage both sent me timely aid now and then, although I was in no position, and indeed in no frame of mind at that time, to repay them. But both I think wished rather to purchase the success of my labours by this means than to lend me a sum; although the goodness of my friends in this way leaves me deeply indebted until, as I hope, my fortunes will allow me to repay them. Now

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and then I stayed a night in town with the Mulgans or the Goodfellows; and Jane Mander, the novelist, who was now back from London, somedmes placed her house and her hospitality at my disposal, besides sending me sums. And as Christmas drew near (which was the second since my coming to Auckland) Ormond Wilson came up by car from the south and took me with him on a tour of the country to the north of Auckland. We reached the northern extremity of the island at Spirits’ Bay (where the souls of the Polynesians took leave of this world, as I said) going up by the west coast and the Ninety Mile Beach, which is the best route to this region, and from the great uproar of the surf on one side and the insignificance of the land on the other, like a causeway from this World to the next. All the way we discussed my newest Thesis, which Ormond, who looked philosophy in the eye at Oxford, and now had all he could do to keep his machine on the road, would by no means allow; and coming back I was by now so maddened by endless contention, which Ormond clung to at my side (he was now quoting the Germans) and by the ups and downs and sickening side-ways of this landscape, like a petrified storm at sea and dotted with what looked like green umbrellas blown inside out, that we parted in Auckland on distant terms. Nevertheless I realized the weakness of my Thesis by these discussions, and my inability to defend it; and beginning the whole once again I laboured painfully to make it perfect. The next Christmas Ormie sent me twenty-five pounds, ten pounds for a gift and fifteen in advance on my Anthology, which even now has not yet been published.

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CCVII. I now intended to show that words first arose from the concrete of Nature by the inspiration of poets and first revelation of spirit to their sensible faculties; which I did in an eloquent passage in the commencement of my new Thesis called, 3, How Poets and Artists provide us with Symbols and Words. And next I showed, as I thought, how true reason arose by the proper relating of these symbols and words; but I had next to show, as my main purpose was, in what manner and by what vain enticement of certainty reason departed from its proper relation with the poetic concrete, in men like Kepler, Galileo and Newton, to encompass a lasting relation with profane and physical matter (which knowledge is idle and mischievous to be sought for, and can never be found, leading only to inordinate impractical mathematical gossip in men like Einstein, Eddingon and Jeans, and a vast waste of time and money in experiment and paper and ink in telling about it. Not to speak of how it deranges our faculties from the proper reading of Nature and knowledge of spirit, wherein lies its most base and damnable wickedness). But how to show that reason could never, by its nature, encompass the knowledge of matter was a great difficulty, and one that cost me much anguish, as I saw that this must be shown, without which my objection to modem science and doubt of the reality of its Universe was without any foundation. But at last I was able to show the gist of this matter in a few words, how that reason, being only one of our faculties, could of itself know only itself; whereby it left our other faculties and its correspondence therewith in a fallen and derelict state, like its own (6. How his Reason leads Man Astray). And next, having shown that reason, ruminating on matter,

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can discover nothing but itself and get nowhere but where it began, I was able to show that the rational or Copernican Universe was of no more validity than any other view of Nature depending on abberant and disharmonized faculties; but by stealing words from the true or poetic Universe (whence they came) and perverting symbols and words to its use, it was able to give itself a resemblance to truth. (8. The Perversion of Words to these Errors.) Next I showed how, in a rational Universe wherein our senses take only a subordinate and degraded part, these once equal faculties must sink to be only sensation; whereby the division between reason and sense, or abstract and concrete, must perforce become deeper and more fatal still; so that when these faculties meet (as they still meet nevertheless) they meet only unconsciously, propagating together only in darkness, as it were, in an unclean and monstrous connection from which spirit or harmony, that must be looked to in all our affairs, is excluded. (13. How Machines are Begotten, and how they Further Divide our Faculties.) After which I considered by what course of history these things came to be, and to what further course of downfall and penitence they must give rise; and in what manner the harmonized or poetic Universe must be established again. (20. Only Artists and Poets can heal Mankind.) And to prepare for their coming (21). Which was my task all this year.

CCVIII. To do which is not to write poetry, I agree; and might therefore be reckoned no proper part of my progress. But I hold that to apply and correct these discoveries is the great task before us, without which no art of any public account will be done. Although

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doubtless much continues to be written, and some things that are even poetic indeed, or at least are not wholly mechanics nor politics, nor yet altogether just a mixing of words. And doubtless the works of great poets before still inclines us to do something like. But I say that until modern science is healed of its monstrous vanity and inquisitiveness and persuasion over our lives, nothing of public weight can be done; nor will anything that is done be of open and public account until every outcome and invention of false science is taken from us by coming dire events; when more pressing things will be brought to men’s notice than Jeans’ Mysterious Universe and Einstein’s Apologia Pro Bunkum. Then the very heavens themselves will be opened to men’s understanding, so appalled will their reasons be, and their spirits so freed from thenpresent bondage to break down all natural bounds for a season, and join with events to get rid of all those things they detest. But these things are none of my business, but only to write what effects these remedies for myself, and so pass them to others. And if this prevents me from writing poetry (as I know, in the end, it will only aid me to do) I have at least made a beginning therein on these grounds. This was when I first grappled with this present Universe and gave an account to myself of those things I had always known in my feelings, which I referred to earlier in this work, and promised to tell under what conditions I came to open these matters in New Zealand after. I said then that public matters made open must evoke only credit and belief. So we shall see. And as in Part lof my Progress I dealt rather with what is nowadays obscure and personal in an artist, so now, in due course, after enough time for reflection and considering how

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these matters should be dealt with, I am concerned in this present work rather with things open and public, and to give them proof, than with my private affairs.

CCIX. To this now I was come, by great labours and patience, and I must say a seeming indifference to all financial and friendly obligations (although I felt their great weight) which are only misunderstandings which a true workmanship clears away. And for the rest of this summer I devoted all my energies to this writing, when I was not at my pleasures and frequent idleness. There was a benevolence in the sea and air that promised all would be well, and indulged me to raise what succors I could to keep going. Eddie Marsh, who had some idea how I was, sent me five pounds at Christmas; as likewise Sir Walter Stringer, who was my father’s legal partner, hearing how I was placed, not only sent me five pounds but secured me a small weekly income for some months from a patriotic body over which he presided. But whether I was in funds or not, at any time that my Thesis was going well (I should now almost call it my philosophy!) or whenever some difficulty that stood in the way of its being concluded had been overcome, I was so triumphant and so confident of doing something of great importance to the World, that my little hut and its half-boarded window, its worm-eaten table and mass of covered and corrected and so old and dirtied manuscripts (and in the midst of them the last, the divine one! that now was true and perfect and led me to clean sheets and clear writing, like to new pastures, once more) these things were of more glory and gain, I thought, than a kingdom, even than all the kingdoms of Napoleon and

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Alexander the Great put together. But when it went badly, I felt as if I were dying.

CCX. How different were these hazards, these disturbed energies divided between great efforts of writing and wild pleasures in town, from that mountain solitude with all things provided which I had been so dejected at not getting to in the end! There was no compact and self-contained solitude for me here, but two worlds between which I was poised, a passionate inhabitant of both: on the one hand the ocean beside which I lived, with that aspect I spoke of, whereon all my future lay at anchor, as it were, out there with iEschylus and Thucydides, until I, too, should embark; and on the other hand the city with its pressing distractions and too present delights, wherefore the future must await my pleasure. These were greater risks and profounder issues than ever London had given me, in proportion as my apprehension was greater, being now of public rather than of personal matters, which brought me face to face with greater extremes of my nature than ever before, whereof my Thesis was in one aspect an effort to harmonize and to join them.

CCXI. But as these were not my true labours, to reason and put things to rights, it is not to be wondered at that I was no sooner sure of mastering my Thesis (well enough, that is, for better minds to perfect the matter) than I dropped it all to write poetry once more. I chanced one morning to reread the four or five sonnets I wrote in Christchurch on the departure of The Waterlily from Lyttelton Harbour, of which it now seemed that much more might be made, and others added, to express the anger I still felt at the supression

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of my Progress in that city, and at the same time to give an account of my aims and opinions, if I could, on a lofty and striking scale. Perhaps I scarcely felt all this at once; but the day being fine, I felt a flight of my mind away from reason and logic and towards a communing and confessing my desires and displeasures directly with Nature, to whose providence and authority I felt myself subject in this country and to none other. So taking pencil and paper I went off to the cliffs overlooking the sea, where I made a start on enlarging that poem as my feelings might prompt me. And the weather continuing fine for most of that winter, I went every day to the same place overlooking the sea and all that great prospect of islands and waters, writing perhaps one sonnet on each visit and correcting earlier ones. I was sure from some passages I had a vein of real eloquence to work on; but I was troubled at how much gross mental matter it was mixed with, hiding the gold.

CCXII. I think my recent researches had too much exercised my mental powers only, and now it was difficult to keep my ideas within bounds. But chiefly I wanted to be rid of my little gnawing grievances (as to express them was the only way to be rid of them I was sure) and to show where my allegiance lay here, not to society but to Nature, and in what light I regarded each. To do which had been an immense task, needing much reflection and a form of its own, never to be accomplished by resuming an earlier poem already cast in a sonnet form, the most intractable of an easy continuation. But the urgency of my grievances swept me on to the rest; while the sales of my pamphlet on modern poetry made me eager to publish again; and

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however obscure and unwieldly, my poem wasn’t without some good things. There was an eloquent and more than Byronic egotism in some parts which I am glad to have done with, and some better flashes, which were nevertheless inadequate to illuminate the whole. But as it was issued only privately, and for the most part only in New Zealand, there is still time to amend it. On the night I finished it, I remember, writing the last sonnet in my hut long after midnight, I had no sooner written the last lines,

He only is not blind

Whose conscience keeps one course, nor needs he to despair.

when the utter stillness was broken by a prolonged roll of thunder above me, which I heard with a mutual awe and congratulation in myself, being used to find portents and omens in all my surroundings here now, not as something remarkable merely, but devoutly believed.

CCXIII. On his last visit to Auckland Ormond Wilson had introduced me to Allan Bams Graham, a young artist not long back from the Slade, with whom I soon became friends; and after I had taken Lyttelton Harbour (such was my poem) to Bob Lowry, who expressed his willingness to publish it at his Unicorn Press, Barns Graham drew a pencil portrait of me for the poem. But as the whole took a long time to produce, many things happened meanwhile, among which a change in my lodgings was the chief. For no sooner was Lyttelton Harbour finished in the spring, and my Thesis resumed, than the Thompson’s property was sold, and soon after I had sudden notice to leave. I was again

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without means, with my Thesis, on which all depended, still to finish; so that the prospect of being homeless once more, on this coast where now my aims looked for their fulfilment, perplexed and dismayed me. But it turned out I only stepped from this home to a far better, being offered the use of a summer bach in the garden of one of those families of Stronach I spoke of, at a low rent only if, and when, I could pay. So I moved all my belongings again in a wheel-barrow a few yards up the hillside, when I found myself in much pleasanter quarters and delightful surroundings, near to my friends (I might almost say, to my family; so happy together we were) and yet lost in a little wilderness and shubbery of its own, with its own little paths and population of birds and snails and insects, and a sly view of the sea. I had two rooms now, and a gasstove and gaslight, pretty curtains, and other like pleasures; and from my bedroom, the upper half of its sides being of open wire-netting where the roof came to low and very large eaves, an under-view into a tangled forest of tea-tree and wattle and wild morning-glory through which my little pathway wound on its way up to the house. Here I might lie in my bed of an early morning and watch the first rays of the sun taking fiery possession of the long stalks and low undergrowth of this little forest, changing from red to a brighter gold, while the light grew in keeping, until the whole was ablaze, when I would rise and go to bathe in the sea. Or else in the great storms we began to have now for the whole time I was there, I would lie in bed of a night-time reading by lamplight (Jane Mander gave me an oil-lamp for my bedside) while the wind drove the sea into bays and cliffs of the coast and roared through the trees in the darkness around me with great

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violence, and the torrents of rain seemed about to burst through my iron roof.

CCXIV. But the most refreshing change to me here was to find myself almost part of my friends’ household, and yet with the same freedom and solitude, when I required it, as I enjoyed before. Their house was only a few yards above me, with a fine view of the sea and overlooking my roof; and often of an evening I would go up to dine with old Mrs. Stronach and her daughter Elsie (indeed this became an arrangement) or to read aloud to them from the poets or from Greek mythology, or to play chess. As the old lady soon after lost her maid, without finding another, I somewhat repaid them for my quarters by giving them what help I could, Elsie Stronach being away at business all day and the old lady now alone, which I had been happy to do as a neighbour in any event; and soon a friendly routine of light labours and pleasant evenings reading Paradise Lost or Greek Tragedy aloud to them (as I needed to do for new broadcasts) took all the time I could spare from my private affairs.

CCXV. Jane Stronach, who was well over eighty, came to New Zealand from Oxfordshire as a child soon after the Crimean War, travelling with parents and servants in the saloon of an emigrant sailing ship, an experience she perfecdy remembered, as well as the first sheepstations in Otago and Canterbury on which her early married life had been spent. Indeed so youthful she still was, and so lively, her recollections, like her actions, seemed nothing enormous but only what was natural and to be expected of a mind and spirit which time had only sufficed to make stronger. She knew and loved

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Nature, bathed in the sea, played at bridge and chess, commanded committees, painted in oils, and withal met the failings of others with so much patience and good humour, their opinions on all topics with so much discretion, and her own sorrows with such dignity and composure, that not only was life welcome and always honourable to herself but she made it so to all who knew her. Like Grannie Goodfellow, who although more reserved was none the less an example of great energy, discretion and goodness, she exhibited the virtues of an earlier generation which those methods of settlement I spoke of have tended to make obsolete. And as with Grannie Goodfellow also, I loved her at once, and all her house and large easy fireside, which her mere presence furnished so richly; and we soon became friends. Indeed I was fortunate in all my friends here. Down on the little dingy-strewn beach, between the crumbling cliffs overhung with the sea-loving pohutakawa trees (a sort of great dark-leaved olive) lived Len Quintal, a direct descendant of the Bounty mutineer of that name, a fisherman, boatman, wateracrobat (like the pet duck that used to fly after him from his garden into the sea) and handyman of all kinds in the workshop under his house. Him I loved too, on account of his love for his duck, for his workshop, and for his four happy children. But I owe so much to the kindness of Elsie Stronach and her mother, as to that of the Goodfellows and others, it were as well to say what unkindness they owed to me for my wildness and follies and many setbacks in the three years I remained there, when I often caused them much pain and unquietness I fear. But we remained friends nevertheless; and when Lyttelton Harbour was at length ready to be published I dedicated the edition to Jane

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Stronach, who had once quietly remarked, when some person asked me what poetry was and I sat abashed at so large a question, ‘Surely poetry is the spirit which is in all things,’ a perfect answer, and made for us all.

CCXVI. My Lyttelton Harbour was at length produced by Bob Lowry after a long delay, mainly on account of my finances, and notwithstanding I borrowed a sum and yet left most of my liability owing to him. He worked with an ardour and disregard of the future so like my own that in the end we got over all difficulties and the poem appeared. I had sent round a circular to what interested and literary persons in the country we could think of, offering the poem for sale privately, and a good number bought it; while others who hadn’t been notified applied to the bookshops; to whom, however, we refused to supply it, so as not to lessen the uniqueness of those copies sold privately. For some time I mainly lived on the proceeds of this poem, notwithstanding that the money that went into it wasn’t my own, and I was largely in debt on all sides. But I continued to borrow against the success of my Thesis; nor do I think my belief in my prospects was once misinformed, as to how far I could rely on my friends. About now I met Roderick Finlayson, a young artist and writer of remarkable promise, who helped me more than in prudence he ought, and on two occasions paid all my debts for me; for which, in return, I gave him all the advice and assistance I could in his work.

CCXVII. Without such friends I think my debts must have upset and harassed me beyond bearing; for the most pressing were no sooner settled than they increased again. But they fell on a few, whose assistance by no

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means concealed from me that there was no place nor employment in this country for such as myself. No employment such as might both have made use of and furthered my talents was ever offered to me during the six years I remained in New Zealand; and even for what broadcasting I did at this time, although it seemed I was one of the best they had at this work and my talks and readings aroused a wide interest, I had always to ask them, after an interval, might I not be allowed to do something more? For while in England a certain upbringing is perhaps the too exclusive highway to all preferment, in New Zealand a methodical mediocrity has control of most things, which daren’t open its doors too widely to real talent lest its own weakness be shown. Doubly fortunate are those in this country who can follow a course of their own, both by what freedom they gain and what annoyance and pettiness they avoid. Doubtless things couldn’t be otherwise in so young a country; of which the World will yet have to remark that while it maintains the most rigid and unproductive system at home it sends the most original and striking individuals abroad. Which is only the chief of those many contrasts they have. One needs only to be born in that hemisphere and to breathe that wild air, and if one has a grain of spirit it must grow to a size. I think we Australasians could conquer the world, only by leaving our deadly teachers and officials and institutions behind us! If you would see audacity, self-reliance, and a wilfulness that laughs at little institutions and laws and is altogether beyond rebuke, you should go there. No doubt this is what made us and the South Africans such reckless and intractible armies in the last war.

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CCXVIII. I read Gibbon in my new quarters, and the three volumes of Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon which Eddie Marsh gave me in London, and much else, mainly classics, except for such modem works as Ottoline Morrell, and Marsh and Otto Gugenheim sent me from time to time. By this means, in the three years I was here I had D. H. Lawrence’s Letters, Aldous Huxley’s Essays, Sutherland Bates’s new Bible, Ruth Fitter’s Trophy of Arms, Apsley Garrard’s Polar Journeys, T. E. Lawrence by his Friends, Hassall’s Devil's Dyke, E. M. Forster’s Abinger Harvest, and some few more I forget; besides a constant supply of periodicals from Lady Ottoline. For in spite of the failure of my Progress and the shocking delay over my Thesis, and the strained and improbable air of my letters (Eddie Marsh once wrote to say he feared he had no news for a ‘child of Nature’) and nothing but Lyttelton Harbour and a pamphlet on poetry to show for so long, yet my friends in England continued to help and encourage me, and to hope that all would be well.

CCXIX. In this way I kept an eye on new fashions and reputations in poetry in London, but with a fierce impatience that the corrections I was fashioning for the World were still only the unpublished prophecies and dire thunders of a son of Ephraim and a recluse (T drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.’) Nevertheless as I now brought my Thesis to an end I knew that I had gained a victory and great benefit to myself, restoring the only Universe in which I can work and expand. It was still by no means as a philosopher would have it, but clear enough to be understood, I supposed; and since it was clear and corrective to myself I considered it done. It was in three parts

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which I called, the first part the Induction, and second the Synopsis (not quite knowing what I meant thereby, but I could think of no better titles) and the third the Conclusion. In the first part, as I said, I endeavoured to show what was and is and must be, only supposing that my terms were correct; for instance, what spirit must be, supposing Man has a spirit; and what our faculties in relation thereto, supposing our faculties to be and to move as I thought. But having laboured so long to do this, I next thought I must prove these terms, that nothing I had shown in the first part should be doubted; so in the second part, the Synopsis, I laid down a number of axioms concerning our faculties and their outcome, and proved each axiom, as I thought, in a brief passage beneath it, beginning with that general axiom of all rational inquiry that, that which has neither limit nor parts includes that which has limit and parts, as the greater the less; and that next axiom its awful neighbour, Spirit is that which has neither limit nor parts. Matter is that which has limit and parts. And how far I was led, and into matters no doubt much exceeding my powers, is plain from what other axioms I evolved from those, and each with its proof, as for instance, 3. Sense is the action of parts with our senses, and is knowledge of parts, 4. Sensation is sense without mind. 5. Memory or mind is the reaction of sense on parts. 6. Abstract or Understanding is the relation of parts in Mind (showing Understanding to be other than merely Mind). 7. Concrete is the relation of parts in sense. And after grasping this much concerning those faculties that men share with women and animals, I went on to deal in the same way with those superior faculties that men have alone, beginning with, 8. Spirit in Man, or Identity, wherein I showed that those former faculties

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that men share with women and animals are merely knowing of parts by Sense, and the relation of parts which is Understanding, but is never knowing that end whereto they relate, which is wholeness or Spirit; but this knowing is only in men, and is whereby words and symbols are got, to begin with, only by artists and poets; which I showed to be due to spirit in Man, or Identity. And then, 9. Being Public and Private, which I showed was the difference between men and women in one sort, that men have what is public, or Spirit, but women have not. And, 10. Symbols and Words are parts as Public. 11. Reason is relation of Words. And then to show what manner of relation of symbols and words gives poetry and art, compared with merely a rational relation, and what order of matter Nature must be by this proof. After which I showed what mathematics and true science must be. And next, 19. Religion is the worship of Spirit. 20. Private morals are no proper concern of true law. And 21. True History cannot be only rational. And here I ended this part. All this I attempted in very few words; but it shows how long and painfully I w’orked, since I am not read in philosophy nor naturally disposed thereto, working against my true inclinations, and with nothing to guide me but what little I knew of Plato and Euclid. (When Mrs. Madan once sent me a copy of Spinoza I couldn’t understand it.) Nor was it until lately that I first looked at Aristotle’s Ethics, which I think can’t be clearly translated, since only he who had a mind like Aristotle’s could know its true equivalent in our language.

CCXX. In the Conclusion I gathered many things from the earlier rhetorical Theses which I thought worthy to

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be published; and if these were somewhat light and of little worth in themselves, yet so much laid down in those two parts before them was a broad ground on which they might show and amuse themselves, proving it to be firm. I showed how spirit in Nature first spoke to poets, whereby all things arose; and what their deities were to the Greeks and must be to men again, after modern science and all its works are no more; which was no mere idle fancy after all those labours before. And I threw some light on that affection of men for each other which so delighted the Greeks, on which Christianity, in its hatred of Paganism, cast every aspersion it could; but I showed that this was whereby the Greeks arose to their greatness, and whereby any concrete and poetic system must arise. After this I showed how the souls of such men as were fit passed out of this World to be with each other and with the Gods; while the souls of women did not, but such as were fit became men, which was the only road and passport out of this World. So that all men were women before they were fit to be men, as all women were first animals in their former lives, and all animals vegetables, and vegetables only just matter, which also before was only heat and such inscrutable energies; which is whereby spirit first enters matter in its lowest forms and at length leaves it again in its highest, to return whence it came. And how sex was only two ways of entering and leaving any one form, spirit first entering that form in its female kind and leaving it in its male which is higher. And how with such men as are fit to leave this world sex is then done with for ever; to which end they must first in their lives learn to love one another far above any love or attraction of women. Which loftier passion is doubdess susceptible of much grossness at

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first, but comes to be purified. And in this way all things may be explained. As for instance why is a bad man far below a good woman? But this is not an essential badness, as no badness is essential but is only a kind of habit or garment which those souls must wear that have lost their way, and thereafter must return to that order of being wherein they first went astray; as the higher we go the more difficult it is to find our way; and to leave this World at last, as fit men, the hardest of all, and possible only to great men, like great artists and saints and philosophers and to great leaders who know and are near to the gods. So that populations increase through the recession of souls back to the same or to lower forms in times of great abundance and plenty when souls lose their way in such an increase of substance. And many souls coalesce into one soul which is higher, as think how many sheep or such it must take to furnish the soul of one lion, or how many women to make one honest man; or when natural events or men themselves destroy species below them, or make great slaughters of each other. Think what causes of variation of sequence there are in these things, affecting this World, but not the truth of whence we have come or whither we are bound. But why should we know everything? In this way I showed what the true end of logic and reason should be (after toiling therewith in those two former parts) only to speak of our souls and the gods, and not to peer wickedly into the atom and find new dimensions of mathematics like our scientists do.

CCXXI. I had written before to my publisher outlining the great work I was engaged on, far beyond what I had ever intended; but the time taken and the

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disregard of my contract (which I hoped was still current) were hardly to be thought of, I hoped, considering the great value of this work to the World; which now restored us the former or poetic Universe, I told him (which dire events would do anyway) and did away with the merely rational Universe for all time. So I hoped I might be sure of the small sum that was still owing to me when he should at last get the manuscript. To this he replied, very properly, that in spite of the unprecedented delay he was willing the contract should still stand, and he looked forward to having the manuscript with intense interest. So now, all being finished, I sent it to London, one copy to my publisher and another to Gugenheim, who acts for me there; although I must say I nearly forgot the Anthology, which was intended to illustrate these wonders, but now looked so small and meaningless near the end, I wrote a new introduction thereto to explain what it was. I even ventured to add some new verses of my own anonymously (to give Tennyson and Arnold and Rossetti some support for the journey) after which the whole started off to London with my prodigious new engine in front, which I had named A Thesis on the Mechanism of Spirit or Poetic Intention in Man.

CCXXII. All these years I hadn’t seen anyone of the many I once knew in London, so remote is New Zealand, and so obscurely I lived, and so easily one is lost in its wilderness only a few miles from town. I saw no one but the Lee Coopers from London all those years, when Binkie found me out and took me to dinner in town, which only made my loneliness seem the more profound. Nevertheless I was happy, and had no wish to be gone, until the time should come, when I knew I

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must go. But now about those new verses I said I put in my Anthology, the Invocation to Apollo and the Hymn to Hyperion ; I must say something of these. They were matters I had meditated for some time, invocations to polytheistic deities under Greek patronyms (since I knew of no others.) Like Lyttelton Harbour , they were doubtless marred by my recent studies; but I was frequently hankering to put these matters in verse, and give a closer account and clear picture in words of the gods and their going, with the advent of Christendom, and their coming again after the downfall of modern science.

CCXXIII. In the Invocation to Apollo I had first to account for the concrete deity (however named) being so long in eclipse.

which the more

Made Him to shine who rose, as thou declin’d,

With upward ray revealing Heav’n, but here Leaving this Earth unlit.

And next to show how, under Christ, Man might either gain Heaven or fall into Hell, but was in either case the less a natural inhabitant of this Earth by having in all things to choose between those two supernatural extremes.

Wherefore to choose

Between two ways of disinheritance

By equal loss of earthly nature: one,

By attraction of that pure unearthly light,

The perfect Christ, th’ aerial sentry; the other,

By vassalage to that encroaching dark,

Devouring Chaos, who from matter robs

Th’ access of heavenly light.

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Wherein, if I called abstract Christianity ‘disinheritance’, that was only in respect of the concrete and poetic system of Paganism before. I aimed to honour Christianity herein nevertheless, as ‘the perfect Christ, Th’ aerial sentry’, without which there was now only darkness and devouring chaos. And next, as Christian monotheism waned in its turn, there was modern materialism to be accounted for, that same darkness of ‘devouring Chaos’ of course, ever attendant on the ‘aerial sentry’ as its natural opposite,

wherein

Hath artful Chaos by his engines gained

Ascendancy in Man, and built that throne

Incredible, of purpose to attain

Dominion over that remembering spark

And footstool of divinity in Man,

His spirit, now eclipsed in the cloud

And project of his reason.

Next the weight and reality of modern science (always a hard matter in these studies) had to be dealt with, as well as the rational mutiny that conceived it.

that employs

The aid of matter, wrought to many wheels

And tracks of knowledge, seeming to be truth.

To which last, or matter, I allowed a personification of evil, in the Christian manner, as the Devil, whose final snare is the machine,

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the enticing snare of him who aims, By auxiliary increase of feeble sense,

To enfeeble sense the more (as when the limb,

Relying on a crutch, wastes quite away)

Until his dark dominion be complete,

And Man, the outpost of divinity

In Nature, to the disastrous Fiend deserts.

And both the divineness and the downfall of the departing abstract system being thus accounted for, the arriving sun-god of the new concrete and poetic system is exhorted once more to reveal his presence in the revolutions of the sun, lately said to be motionless, and no god, but a lump of matter (if even that!)

holden from his course

By artful Chaos, and consenting Man

Arm’d with auxiliar sight infernally,

that is, with telescopes and all profane and merely rational apparatus. The God must hasten to resume control of the sun, lest that luminary, long insulted by Copernican speculation, drive Night and Day

in one dizzy rout

Around the amazed Tropic, and this ball

Seize between fire and ice to punish it,

that when this presumption of astronomical reason shall be corrected,

Thou mayest by degrees unto this Earth

Guide thy gold team, and to thy bounds regain.

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But the emergence of the poetic system being hailed this time in the Southern, not in the Northern, Hemisphere, some things, in this view of the matter, are reversed; the Northern is now the gloomy and unpropitious Antipodes, the traditional entrance and outlet to and from Hades, whence the god is invoked.

Thence issuing,

Thou may’st not pause till th’ injured riigean lies

Under the globe, by transference with these isles

Th’ Antipodes become and sombre side.

After so much preparation the approach to the matter in poetry was easier. Issuing from Hades in the Northern Hemisphere, the deity is invoked not to pause where it behoves not.

Linger not,

Life-giving God, where dark inclement Death

His kingdom hath and unforgiving writ

Thro’ all that land; but hasten, and be here!

In the Southern Hemisphere Nature is expectant of its new deities.

She for thy certain coming keeps a path J ' * i i r

.Nor god nor spirit nor migrating Man

Hath hither trod, but thine inaugural foot

Foreshadows to the World.

And again,

For somewhere must

Thine oracle and edict to the World

Be uttered first, displeasing to the quick

Th’ opaque pervert and all his engin’d crew

And myriads misled.

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The coming downfall of rational and mechanized society is then looked at in the light of this resurrection, with metaphorical reference to the vast wars and upheavals which alone can be the instrument of this change,

The Fiend th’ extrinsic arrow of thy strength

Shall put to flight,

and a new order of society hinted at, somewhat after

Antiquity; for which, however, Man isn’t yet ready,

But still in women’s stys in slumber warm

Addicted to the dark. One instant more

Let them enjoy, until the crested hour

That crows before thee, telling to be light

The shameful dark and all things to resume

Their injur’d shapes, shall rouse them to be men,

And run to thee rejoicing it is day

I think this was the first time I ever addressed myself to an impersonal subject in verse, which I did by ridding myself of so much egotism in Lyttelton Harbour.

CCXXIV. In the Hymn to Hyperion I did better, and kept the subject more under control. Hyperion is first discovered in Hades,

Thou and thy kin, Uranos and Saturn

And old Oceanos, the first of gods

Who from dark Chaos led the infant world

By woodland paths to knowledge of the light,

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And together with these the later Olympian dynasty is innumerated,

that thrust ye from your thrones

(To all unsure) whose influences, more bright

As midday shows to morning, overflow’d

Your cloudy seats and busied all their courts

In preparation to amaze the World.

This revolution is then considered in respect of all the new deities and their greater purport to Man.

But chiefly Phoibos, whom ambitious Change

Rais’d to the golden orb that governs the day

In thy despite, its earlier deity.

He to the zestful light did add that ray

Harmonic, drinking which drave Orpheus

To wondrous frenzy, uttering such sweet sounds

That Nature overleap’d her order’d bounds

To hear.

But this dynasty departed in turn to Hades, under Man’s later neglect; after which a better and more mysterious account of the emergence of monotheism is given than in the previous poem:

Then darkness was on Earth, and seen in Heaven

A single light, as Man’s weak vision lost

Your many presences, retir’d so far

To seem one lonely splendour, unallay’d

By aught diverse to human sense before.

The procreation of monotheism that followed is likened to a marriage between the two extremes of light

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and darkness which, the better to unite, first withdraw to themselves.

As when on earth the bridegroom with his friends

Makes merry sport, the bride of all her maids

Takes tender leave, and both are most themselves

On the nuptial eve, as makes best marriage.

So light and dark withdrew within their spheres

Impulsive to create; so Order and Chaos shore

To their last ends, indulgent of themselves.

Which done, the fond extremes together drew,

Denote in singleness, now knit as one:

Matter and Spirit, in whose best embrace

New light is got, another birth of Time,

Whose long gestation gives the World to night.

I think this was fairly well done, and not attempted elsewhere before. Meanwhile Man, during that long gestation of primitive Christendom,

Went long benighted, never without hope.

And then the change from that tortured asceticism to a happier faith, the Renaissance in fact, when

the issue in his blood

Felt as new mirth and fancy of the mind,

He, yet in the weeds of mourning dress’d, ran forth

Into the harmless fields, the nursery

Of happy youth, and childlike clapp’d the air,

And with the pranks of Nature sported him,

Whereby the summons to a new sovereignty on earth is felt among the Immortals in Hades.

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Then Chaucer spoke, by Heaven’s increase inspir’d,

That ye in Hades rais’d your heads to hear;

And Dante’s dirge, and Shakespeare’s trumpetshout,

And he who panoplied the vault of Rome

With th’ angelic troops, in likeness of the gods:

These were such news as wakes the balmy airs

That morning breathes, to blow ye from your beds

Uncovering your eclipse.

But the rise of materialism since (not here referred to) now precludes their coming without a devout and distinct solicitation from some human being,

some spirit new

On whom the unnatural shadow never fell

(Of monotheism that is.)

whereby ye know

There’s footing in this World and faith to you.

This is the only personal lapse, and may perhaps be forgiven for what devout labours are promised,

Wherein succeeding bodes some larger song.

These are serious matters no doubt, and seen only obscurely; but very needful if poetry and art and all things of the spirit are to survive the disheartening disorders which will soon be upon us, and once more be open and the only aim of our lives. Soon nothing will appear beautiful, I think, but what is grave and

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reverent and worshipful of divinity in all natural forms, whereby words will once more resume their concreteness, and thinking and feeling a true abstractness harmonizing therewith. Wherefore, poor as they were, I included those two pieces in my Anthology, rather than much modem verse, since they reach after those matters which Milton was the last to know perfectly (although his own system was falling) and even taking that great man for a model. And of great poets since, although often sublime, they are less useful to be followed than Milton (if a model be wanted) since they relate less and less to any present or future public system; and even Prometheus Bound is too uncertainly founded in this respect, and too abstract; although Hyperion perhaps is well founded and harmonized. But with Byron all is in eloquent ruins; and Tennyson either made a truce with our times or turned away with his fancy; since when any honesty in our poets, save for Whitman and Housman, and lately Yeats, has been hard to find.

CCXXV. I waited impatiently to hear what was thought of my Thesis and Anthology, and to have the money owing to me; and meanwhile I had many fine omens, as I thought, concerning the outcome, one of which promised me a relief from the poverty in which I had been for so long. We had many great storms that winter and spring, with heavy rains and high seas; and after one of these gales, coming out of my bach first thing in the morning I was astonished to discover nearly a dozen dead sparrows near my doorstep, who appeared to have perished all together from the same cause (I had poisoned them with my verses perhaps!) although there was no tree just above them from

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which they might have been blown down, nor did any sparrows nest in my roof. Without touching them, I went on my way to Milford, not taking the road, as I usually did, but going over the foot-bridge by the beach. And here, where the path goes under some pine trees, I almost walked on three more dead sparrows blown down, as it seemed, from the trees. And while returning the usual way I passed two more by the side of the road. I then remembered the pigeon and the sparrow flying together in Goodfellow’s garden, and the interpretation I had placed on this circumstance; and since all had come to pass as the presence of the sparrow on that occasion had indicated, I now inferred that this sometimes low and foraging life I was leading, in respect of my pleasures and the want of an income, was now near an end, and certain to be as greatly reversed as the deaths of so many sparrows in my path was contrary to the sinister flight of that one. I was so struck by this portent I fetched Elsie Stronach down to my bach to see them there, atter which I neglected to bury them reverently as perhaps I ought, but only threw them away; inviting Elsie Stronach to remark that now my prospects would greatly improve.

CCXXVI. The first word I had was from Otto Gugenheim who wrote to say he had received the book and sent it on to my publishers. He had tried to read my Thesis, he said, but been unable; and he wished to know was I out of my senses to send such a thing? I was shocked at his blindness and somewhat troubled; but when my publishers next wrote to say they were disappointed with my Thesis and Anthology and had decided not to publish the book, then in view of my

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confidence in the future and belief in the great value of what I had done, and its lasting worth to myself, I dismissed the matter from my mind. For such disappointments and set-backs are far more like accidents and mere chance than are portents and things unseen; and from these, rather than from what others think and do, we artists should derive all we know. I remembered that undoubtedly I ought to have buried those dead birds; and this neglect now being atoned for by this trifling reverse in my prospects, I had no doubt that all would be well. And forgetting England meanwhile, even to write to my friends, I signed an agreement for eight broadcasts on the Tragedies of and thereafter for another series on The Odyssey , and with some money from these I turned with relief and abandon to my surroundings.

CCXXVII. There was a small hotel near the waterfront, in the city, the resort of fishermen, sailors, navymen and country visitors and backwoodsmen of all kinds, to which I was greatly addicted, and went there so often I was by now one of those friends of the house who were admitted at night after hours, when its choicest company forgathered. If the sea and the bay and my bach there were to me a haunt and lodging in Nature and a window on things and powers unseen, so this hotel with its loud and vulgar night life, its many violent, pathetic, brutal, tragic, passionate and ludicrous scenes, its men of all ages and kinds, many of whom I came to know intimately, was a highway to me into the deepest recesses of my own and all human nature, to tread which I should never have the strength nor the need nor desire in this life again. Here I threw away all caution and sometimes all decency and drank

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and did all things with the rest. Nevertheless a painful reserve, that was often shaken but never demolished and was always apparent, I think, to everyone there, concealed the seemingly fatal and unfathomable abyss between my higher affections and my lower; and as my desires alternated between them, successfully or unsuccessfully, I was either in Hell or in Heaven, in Heaven if with either, in Hell if left in that gulf between them which is none. (Which was only to search out and know those extremes in myself I was endeavouring to harmonize in my work.) It was then that that speechless reserve that was agonizing to me, and I think amazing to others, would envelop me as if in a cloud, when I would be powerless to go, and only further tormented by staying. The result would be drink, which sometimes from my strange and humourless state of mind I would be left to indulge in alone, not shunned, but shut in that unhappy reserve from which nothing would rouse me. In which state I was at first perplexing and at length intolerable to my friends in that place. Bill Davies and Fred Horne and honest Dick Meigan and Rusty May, and others, as a being estranged from myself and yet affecting a licentious intimacy even with its lowest company; and at the last, from my increasing singularity and imprudence, I was denied access to its most intimate distractions after hours, but not before I had already exhausted its interest and all it could teach me. Nevertheless, notwithstanding my dissipations there, I am not over-fond of drink and have no great capacity for it, fortunately for my health. And when at length I would return to the Bay, in that physical and mental state which only too little sleep and too much to drink can induce, the attractions of the city would be as completely forgotten

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as the attractions of the Bay were forgotten in town. Whatever the weather, the season or the state of the tide, as soon as I returned to the Bay I would plunge into the sea. Once back from the city the sea would greet me, not as a thing neglected and discredited, but by my absence and dissipations the more strengthening and by so much the greater; as if by its aid and unfailing identity with my spirit all in the end would be gained. In this way I not only lived, as I said, to the full stretch of my desires and feelings in two worlds at once, but I kept my health, and from an extreme sensibility to what was vital in one world, in each case, I extracted an antidote to what was deadly in the other. But it should be plain what perils I faced in this city, and what risks I took for my aims. I met Jake again about now, who was too engrossed with a young friend whom he lived with and loved to see much of me now, although I went to their home, and meeting others there, this soon led to my seeing and hearing many strange matters.

CCXXVIII. Soon after the repudiation of my Thesis I took up my Progress again, which I hadn’t looked at since its suppression in Christchurch five years before, and began revising what I had written then with a view to completing it for publication in London. I hadn’t gone far, however, and was one morning sitting out in the sun near my bach, with the manuscript on my knee, reflecting how best to express the picture of a mountainous forest which I had in mind, when an immense and superhuman form arose therefrom and hovered above it, wholly altering the train of my thoughts. It had no connection with what I was writing, although it agreed with my thoughts, and

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seemed rather a dramatic presentiment of something else I must write; and after pondering upon it for the whole morning I decided that this was undoubtedly the nucleus of a play, concerning the supernatural in Nature, which I must now put into words. Whereupon I laid my Progress aside, as something I could resume any time, and began writing The Forest that afternoon.

CCXXIX. I straightway conceived a character whom I called Salter, possessed by a passion for Nature, but not yet by a conviction of the metamorphoses of divinities therein, similar to my own. He was a rich man of our times, who owned the forest I had seen in my mind, the apparition inhabiting which was to be a divine influence impelling the action and outcome of the play. I never thought of the difficulties confronting me, but plunged into it at once, having first of all designed a slight plot and the characters necessary thereto. I had no idea but to write it in blank verse, in a lofty style; and never having attempted anything of this kind before I was at first very satisfied to find how well I could manage it. I began it with Salter soliloquizing upon a mountain, on his love for his forest, which the sudden loss of his fortune and the entreaties of his wife had persuaded him to sell, but which the intervention of his own familiar spirit on the midnight of his negotiations, next induced him to keep. Of the scene between Salter and his spirit I was particularly fond, writing it at fair speed and with no little eloquence, in a manner both realistic and poetic and, I thought, not inappropriate to a modern and practical theme; which qualities certainly should be taken for granted in poetry, but might be thought only a hindrance to a

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modem play wherein money and business played a great part. But I thought they showed me that blank verse can deal with any present matter whatever, and in a manner far more emphatic and convincing than unmeasured and conversational speech; although, as much conversation is at any time measured, so much of my measure was only conversational no doubt. But I found there was a natural tendency in my measure to rise into poetic eloquence at need and without incongruity (indeed this was sometimes its weakness) whereby to persuade the hearer that the higher flights were of one order with what he was hearing before, as indeed they were, and so to cheat him of any doubts he might otherwise have had of their fitness. As for instance, from Salter’s beginning,

Two hundred thousand pounds in shares, and fifty

In ready cash—two hundred and fifty thousand!

Oh, what a little reason is all this

To sell my forest that I love so dearly,

Only to please my wife, and not to answer

So many honest men who urge me to it,

From such a beginning, so familiar to modern thinking,

I found it was natural to proceed further on to

So is my love for Nature, at its source,

A littie spring, whose purpose, faint and shy,

Wells up in me, but has no history more,

And knows not why it is nor where it goes,

And finds itself unwanted in the World,

Nothing but shade and silence, like this scene

Of wildness whence it comes.

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CCXXX. But having found a blank verse, as I thought, I had next to overcome a strong tendency to rhetoric and mere poeticizing, which I have at length got rid of in my prose but am still prone to in verse; and in this too I think I am succeeding (for I am still writing this work). But there was another matter with which I had much difficulty, and am not certain of yet. I had hitherto had no practice in constructing a play, and had no sooner written these scenes than I realized I had begun the play in the middle, or even perhaps near the end; and so I made another beginning, with Salter discussing the sale and other family concerns, with his wife. Moreover, I now decided to keep to the unities of time and place, after the Greek manner; but how the action was to take place in one room in the house I was unable to see, until Frank Sargeson, a most knowing and intelligent writer himself, who took a great interest in these proceedings, said that the action should take place not inside but outside the house, whereby the forest and surrounding mountains were involved as well as the house; and I was then able to grasp these matters of time and place. But after these labours, which had much checked the writing, it was again apparent that I had still to find the true beginning which was earlier yet; and once more, after eighteen months’ work, throwing the action forward by some hours I now discovered a new character, Bishop, a financier, who had come from town to negotiate the sale. And with Bishop I discovered much else that was earlier still, chiefly a secret bargain between Mrs. Salter and himself to bring Salter to terms. No doubt I was constructing my play backwards, in a way that was causing much rewriting and a loss of clearness; but I had never attempted dramatic writing

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before, and so had to learn. I had to teach myself on what frame of mind it was based, and I was thankful to find I had an instinct for this art, although often disheartened by its reproof. This was one of the two forms of poetic art (the other being epic) towards which I had long been sure my talents were moving; since my personal life was of a nature quite unsupportable without it was in the end consummated in an impersonal art. To this end I had sanctioned every licence and energy in myself for so long; so that my work on this play, which now went more slowly, but surely, gave me the greatest satisfaction and hopes for the future. And for the time being I had no wish to be in England again.

CCXXXI. Since my coming to live in my new quarters a lively circle of artists and writers, Jane Mander, Robin Hyde, Frank Sargeson, Roderick Finlayson, Linsay Fraser and Allan Barns Graham and his wife had gathered about the Stronachs, and on more than one occasion I read aloud to them round the old lady’s fireside as much as I had done of The Forest, and many times we discussed Mrs. Salter and in what manner the play must conclude. All my friends thought it by far the best of my writings, and all urged me to conclude it, and wondered why I delayed doing so as the year went by and I was still working on what I had done, and only increasing the amount very slowly. But indeed I was experiencing a very arduous apprenticeship to this art which required an attendance at many seemingly incongruous classes, not excepting some held in town such as I just now described, at which I was only too punctual whenever my pocket allowed, and even when it did not. To me these were like the many office-boy

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duties of an ambitious beginning in business over which my spirit presided, until all my desires might work their way up to take an equal share in its management. I think such are the only steps of any creative intention in these times, when there is no aid, but only much hindrance, to be had from society at large, and all is thrown on the personal enlightenment of the individual himself. In this way the shortcomings of society must be corrected by its artists, who must exhibit that relation of public and private in little which society must come to exhibit at large. I was now experiencing that conception of public and private of which I gave a careful account earlier in this work, and had first provided for in my Thesis. That active spirit, I saw, which is public, may be working to openness in only (or any) one man, and meanwhile be wholly absent from what we mistakenly call public life; in which case the entire burden of a future publicness, or spirit made common, may be cast on what we mistakenly call privateness in that any one man. Here I don’t mean to assume such a function in myself; but I say it was in accordance with this conception of an artist’s nature and duty in these times that I lived my life, and allowed all things to take their course; since a true publicness requires that all private tendencies shall be brought to a proper contrition and subjection to spirit at last. I think I only dramatized my private desires by giving them rein, with a view of making one public society thereof in myself, of low orders and high.

CCXXXII. About now Arthur Sewell, who was Professor of English at the University, asked me to address his class on some subject connected with poetry; which

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I consented to do, and read a paper on Romantic and Classical poetry from the standpoint of the discoveries I had made in my Thesis, showing these two tendencies to be due to whether spirit or public was open in any society or obscure, and under what view of the Universe spirit could be open, and under what view it must be obscure. And being soon after invited to address the Theosophical Society, I read the same paper again, with some improvements; after which Denis Glover published an improved version of both papers at his Caxton Press in Christchurch. This I called Eena Deena Dynamo, or The Downfall of Modern Science. In this way I made a clear abridgement of my discoveries, clearer than my Thesis had been; although the many things I laid down in my Thesis had to be dealt with in detail before any brief and general account of these matters could thereafter be given.

CCXXXIII. A Labour Government had now taken office in which I had several friends. Ormond Wilson was now a member of Parliament, and Jack Lee, who was well known both as an author and a socialist, was now the Under-Secretary of Housing. Moreover Alan Mulgan had now been made the supervisor of all broadcast talks, such as I had been doing; so that it might be I could look forward to more regular broadcasting, and even to some suitable employment. With this end in view I went down to Wellington, where I stayed a few days with the Mulgans, in whose house I once more enjoyed a tasteful and critical society; and calling on Jack Lee at the Ministry of Housing I told him of my situation in Auckland and suggested that some position should be found for me, without prejudice to my broadcasting and my literary work. Lee thought

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so too, and talked to Heenan at the Department of Internal Affairs by telephone; when I heard them agreeing, it seemed, that the best aid for a sad case like mine was an annuity, and regretting that there was no provision for such a thing in the country. ‘What can you do?’ asked Jack. ‘I can be a Judge,’ I said; at which he laughed, as if I could not. You had better find me something in the Forestry Department, I said, thinking of my play. To which Jack replied that he would see the Minister of Forests about it, and let me know the result. I knew he would do all he could for me, as by nature he is eager to help everyone; and soon after I heard from the Minister himself that he was considering what could be done. But nothing was settled, either about this or more broadcasting, until I had paid a second visit to Wellington some months later; when, finding the Mulgans away and their house locked up, and having nowhere to go and no money, I climbed up to the balcony windows and let myself in to the house, where I stayed a week by myself, as in the case of such liberal and kind friends I knew I might, writing to tell them I was there. But having mainly come about broadcasting, with the Mulgans away I couldn’t do much; although I called on Hands the Manager; but as Professor Shelley, the new National Director, was away, Hands couldn’t do anything for me; but he said how much he had enjoyed my talks on Shakespeare’s Histories, especially when I had said the Queen had the wind up. We want more of that, he said. For both of these visits I had to borrow my train fares, which put me further in debt for nearly ten pounds. And with little broadcasting this year, my situation was worse than it had been.

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CCXXXIV. Towards Christmas both Shelley and Mulgan came up to Auckland, where they offered me a weekly broadcast of an hour’s reading, with music at intervals, to begin shortly; which I gladly accepted, and wrote to the Minister of Forests to ask that any position found for me should be in Auckland, within reach of the city, as I should be broadcasting there on one evening a week. To this he agreed, provided an opening could be found, which now rested with the Forestry Department in Auckland. And while this was pending, being quite out of pocket, I went into the country with Roderick Finlayson in the hope of finding work in the harvest, at which we were not very successful. But having a motor-car, and able to go easily from one place to another, we at length found a farmer named Osmond who helped us to get work with his neighbours and entertained us in his house, and allowed us to sleep in his barn. But the nights being fine, with no moon, Rod and I preferred to sleep once or twice in a new haystack in the open, when I lay a long while watching Orion standing over us with his dagger, and woke up many times to see where he had gone. Here we at length got a little work; but I was now sent for by the Forestry Department in Auckland, and went back to town, where I heard that the only position they could find for me was in the forestry-camp at Riverhead, about thirty miles to the north. The work was of a common labouring kind, I was told, the conditions whereof I should find on reaching the camp. But the wages were large, and with my broadcasting as well I should now by degrees to able to pay off my most pressing debts. So making a bundle of some blankets and old clothes, and taking my Forest and a few books, I went there at once, getting a pound from Ormond

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for the journey, who happily was in Auckland, and with whom I spent my last evening there.

CCXXXV. I found the forestry-camp in desolate hilly country, most of which was thickly planted with pinetrees, whereof some large areas were fully grown and formed impenetrable forests, while elsewhere the young trees scarcely showed above the surrounding grass. And other tracts of rough country had still to be planted. The central station, which was reached by a metalled road some twelve miles from the rail-head, consisted of a small farm, with the manager’s house and large bunk-house for employees and the usual farm out-buildings. From this centre, private roads ran in two or three directions out of sight in the hills and the surrounding forests, including one which circled the boundary for some thirty miles. These roads ran to firefighting centres and lookouts on the heights, and to other small camps, one of which, Longbush, consisting of several derelict railway-carriages fitted with bunks, some miles out from the station in high desolate country, was occupied by a number of men. This was the main working-gang. In the bunk-house at the station, to which I was sent, were two other men, a lean old timer and one-time sailor called Oscar, and a younger man called Murray; while one or two married men who lived either in the nearest township or on farms near the road in from the rail-head, made the number of the station gang in all about six. This road from the railhead wasn’t the only way into the State territory. Some of our private roads through the forests made a short cut to the nearest township, and so on to Auckland ; but the private roads obliged one to take the keys to unlock the boundary gates, and being clay roads,

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although kept in a perfect condition, they were impassable for motors after even a slight shower of rain; so that the round-about public road, an unprincipled track of deep holes and loose shingle, was the only all-weather road.

CCXXXVI. I was at once pleased with this ordered and inviolable place, where the territory, as well as our occupations, was divided from all the surrounding country by Government ownership; on which account our isolation, with so much at hand that was refreshing and pleasant, was delightful to me. I liked the friendly camp-life and gangs of men, and above all the private roads, leading nowhere but only to greater solitude, into dark forests or over bare heights with a view first of all of our own immense and desolate territories, and beyond these of surrounding farmlands and setdements and distant mountains, and lake-like reaches of the upper harbour, and at night the floating lights of the far-away city, that seemed less than thirty miles away in that pure thin air. I at once loved the roads so much, that led nowhere, I knew, but to the forests and hilltops, as if in a contrite world whose aims had at last turned to sober ends, I was very happy to find I had first of all to work on the roads with Oscar and Murray and two other men with graders, levelling and cutting the batters (batture) in the clean easy clay. I had never done labouring work before, nor knew how to use the tools I was given until Oscar showed me; after which I did very well, so he said; and each was amused to find himself so liking the other, and yet so different in speech and thought; at which each of us differed as much as he could, to make fun of finding we liked each other so much. But he was a different man in the

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bunk-house (where each of us catered for himself) and fed himself horribly. And although delightful to work with, in camp he was morose and ill-natured, with nothing to do.

CCXXXVII. But we hadn’t been long on the roads when we were put to grub gorse, which I found was much harder work, the more so as it was yet barely autumn, and on the hill-sides where we worked the heat was intense. Coming from work of an evening, we had next to light the kitchen fire and cook our food (which the visiting storeman delivered twice a week) when Oscar would put his pot on the hottest part of the stove and snarl and curse if Murray or I went near it. And this much being done, as soon as the water was hot I had next to clean out the bath before I could use it each night, on account of the many strange uses to which Oscar and Murray would put it during the day. After which, having bathed and eaten my meal and got to bed almost by daylight, very tired, I would have some reading to do, both on account of the broadcasting which might begin any time now, and because I had duties of my own to attend to as well as those of the Government. So that, with so much to do in the evening, and the fleas that infested the bunk-house and plagued me all night, in the morning I wasn’t so refreshed as I needed to be for my work. Nevertheless I worked well, or at least did as much as the others, to please Oscar, who was head man of us three, and to please the Manager, who was a new comer like myself, a quiet scrupulous man whom I thought just.

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CCXXXVIII. With some money I got from my mother and a sum lent me by Bruno Brown, a young Englishman I had met in Auckland, who did navvying like myself, I now got a motor-bike, whereby to reach Auckland every Friday evening once the broadcasting should begin; and there was no other way of getting in and out of the forestry area. But there was still no date fixed on which this broadcasting would commence, and meanwhile we were taken from gorse-grubbing and put back on the roads, on an unplanted back part of the area, where the road was scarcely formed and the work harder. I took great care of my hands, and wore heavy gloves soaked in grease; at which even Oscar had nothing to say. And of my diet, too, I took great care (as each fed himself) having special wholemeal bread brought to the camp, and honey, cheese, dates and cases of fruit, while the others eat mainly white bread, meat, potatoes and tea. I knew that if I could gradually accustom myself to the work I would eventually be able to endure it as well as the rest, and without such a great strain as it put on me at first; but I also knew that to reach this condition I must begin carefully. As it was I could only just get through the day and last out from spell to spell, and this was only owing to the devices I used. Water was scarce in the area, and we carried drink with us. From this circumstance I drew all the support I could, taking with me a billy of water that contained raw oatmeal, a squeezed lemon and some honey, by drinking which I was much sustained; and so sometimes, by request, were the others. Had I eaten the common diet of the camps I could not have survived a week at such work, as I found when at sea, where my work was only engine-room housework, so to speak; but more certainly,

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had my hands split I should have been done for, as I can’t endure the least bodily discomfort in an occupation which is itself a prolonged discomfort and against my nature. There were other matters also concerning which I could neither in wisdom nor decency conform with the rest. We were all taken to our work in the morning in the station-lorry, and I had often to keep this vehicle and the Manager waiting on account of an excellent regularity of the bowels. I was no less punctual than he; and how else can a government department be run? But I think from the first he disliked my having been sent there, and would have liked to be rid of me. He once told me mournfully that I was not like the rest in my mind and manners, although he said nothing about my work; nor could he, in spite of a habit I had of sitting down for a rest whenever I felt tired; which I did not from laziness but from a superior diligence and knowing what was for the best. I never did so except in his presence, and as I explained to him I must go slowly at first so as to do better afterwards, to which he made no answer. But it made Oscar laugh whenever he saw me sit down and call out, Never mind D’Arcy, the first ten years are the worst!

CCXXXIX. But in spite of the precautions I took, I began to suffer from the work and the lack of sound sleep. My arms ached as if with neuritis, and on coming from work it was some time before I could use my hands or even grasp anything. Nevertheless I kept up with the others at work, and at night and again in the morning I soaked my hands in hot and cold water alternately, both to loosen the stiffness if I could and to prevent it recurring. But soon we were put to cutting

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lines through swampy and densely overgrown country, of which work I had heard a lot from the men, and how hard it was. This was in virgin country where the scrub had to be cleared in straight lines for planting. Each man had to hew a straight path about four feet wide, side by side with his neighbours, who could be heard slashing only a few feet to right and left, but concealed in the dense tea-tree and toi-toi scrub that sometimes towered over our heads. The best men would soon be well in advance, and at length would return down their finished lines, to begin others, while we less able workers would perhaps be hardly halfway to the tall poles which indicated the end of each man’s line. I was from the first in great difficulties with this work, which was much harder than anything I had ever attempted; nevertheless I was never the last in my line, although always among the last three; but as all the others had been on forestry work for some years I had good reason, I thought, to feel proud of not being the last. And although the Manager was very dissastified with the amount of work done as a whole, and spoke severely to some of the men for their laziness, he said nothing at first to me; and Oscar, who knew my difficulties and how lazy some of the others were, told me I was doing well. But while the boss knew the others could do better, he knew I could not, and must have wished to be rid of me. Although had I asked for easier work at the station, where there was plenty of light work to be done, such as weeding the nurseries, he could not, either in justice or discretion, have refused me, considering how short a time I had been at the work and on whose recommendation I had come. Nevertheless I think he was unaware that the Minister had obtained the work for me, and I didn’t enlighten

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him, as I was satisfied with how I was doing and I wished to remain there by my own efforts and only with his approval. However, after a week at this work I took a day off for a rest, as we were entitled to take time off at our own discretion, being paid by the hour. I now heard that Jake had deserted from the Navy, the better to be with his friend and to avoid being sent overseas; and believing, by what I heard, he was likely to want a good hide-out for a while I sought out a place and wrote to tell him I would hide and feed him in the forestry area if need be; but as he was just then on the run he never got my letter. For which I was sorry, as I liked him so well I wanted to do him this service.

CCXL. The New Zealand ‘tea’-tree, or manuka, is an affable shrub, of many varieties, maturing at any size from two or three inches high, with small star-like flowers, to twenty-five feet with the girth and gracefulness of a yew. Had it grown in Sicily or Greece it had graced the poetry of Theocritus and Anacreon no doubt; but the New Zealanders are far beneath such a beautiful plant and they exterminate it with fury. Its wood is one of the hardest there is, and a blow at even a small tree of this plant would send a shock of pain from my hands to my shoulders. But we had to cut down whatever lay in our path, and to see some large tea-tree or thick gorse, or perhaps a dense clump of flax ahead was disheartening indeed. But the vegetable world, which perhaps no human being had entered before, and weird red and whitish anatomies which my slashing revealed, filled me with wonder even while I worked. Sometimes my neighbours would be far ahead, or else finished and gone elsewhere; there would be no

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sound of anyone near where I was; and almost in darkness from the dense growths around and above me, with my narrow trail invisible for more than a few yards behind, and nothing to do but advance further into this fearful wilderness, I was sometimes afraid and affected with strange thoughts of being elsewhere and of another age than the present. Back at the bunkhouse my hands would be so swollen and paralysed I would at first be unable to use a knife or to butter my bread, or undo a button, until I had soaked them a long while, when their use would return somewhat. And on going to bed I would lie awake most of the night, too exhausted to sleep. I was still healthy and active, but suffering from prolonged and deep shock.

CCXLI. I was still by no means the last man in my work; but one morning the Manager approached me where I was cutting out of sight or sound of the others and told me I might go back and do weeding at the station for the rest of the week, after which he meant to put me off altogether, as I was unfit for the work. I said with surprise that my lines were by no means the worst, nor the amount I had done the least; and finding him unmoved, I stuck my slasher into the ground and walked off. Back at the station I called at his office for my pay, and taking my motor-bike and such things as I could carry, I left the man and his employment for good, without even telling Oscar. Doubtless had I spoken for myself I could have stayed, not for another week but for as long as I liked; but I gave no thought to what might be; I felt too keenly what was; and within an hour of his speaking to me I was gone. I always act thus on an impulse, and never regret it;

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as conversely with no impulse I do nothing, and with equal confidence in the outcome.

CCXLII. When soon after my weekly broadcasts began, I was not long in finding that I could never have done both this and that other labour as well; and so my plan of having enough money from both sources to pay off all my debts was never well founded, and was now at an end. When my readings with music began I engaged myself to this slight but expert occupation with much happiness, and had now enough money from this source to live more comfortably than I was used and to meet my debts in some measure as well. (I left some more debts behind me at the forestry place.) For the rest of the year I remained in my bach with the Stronachs, at first spending little, on account of my debts and having my motor-bike still to pay for; but I soon found my small weekly income insufficient for all purposes, besides that I had some improvements made to my quarters, and bought a wireless-thing for my work; and to be better off was only more costly, I found, so long as my desires were inordinate and my wants not at rest.

CCXLIII. For the most part I was left to read whatever I wished and to choose my own music, in which I greatly delighted; and sometimes I chose music to fit readings, and sometimes the reverse. I was not yet emancipated from that pub by the waterfront, and sometimes I perilously combined these two duties, more than once having a difficulty in reading after being too long in good company, or bad, which on occasion accompanied me with remonstrance or rejoicing to my session in Shortland Street, to the

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astonishment of the staff there I think. But let us all take a share in what is for the best. At least I brought Don Quixote, Dr. Johnson (God rest him!) Hakluyt, Morte d’Arthur, Bret Harte and Pontiac, as well as Ovid, Herodotus, Livy and Plutarch on occasion, to the masses, with many ecstacies and thunders of Sibelius, Strauss, Bach, Couperin, Haydn and the like in their suitable moments; and if there must be such makeshifts as broadcasting, by all accounts I did it well.

CCXLIV. This year went very fast; and in the end I was delivered from many follies by indulging them; which is the chief merit of money, and why the want of it is so great an evil, that without it we never learn the littleness of those things it will buy; although we may learn a hard and crass indifference and ungodly illhumour with the follies of others like Epictetus and Diogenes had, and many lesser philosophers since. I still had my motor-bike; but as Bruno Brown was now leaving New Zealand and needed what he had lent me, I had either to sell my bike or else raise the amount elsewhere. So I borrowed the amount from Archie Seaman (whose daughter Dorothy I was just then coaching in English) and in this way I balanced my accounts. But having the bike much increased my reckless and foraging bent; and I went so far I soon began to feel tired of my surroundings, and to wonder what must happen when my broadcasting came to an end, even if only for a time, as all things do. Allan and Eleanor Barns Graham were now living at Milford, and my greatest friends there, making me welcome at all times as if their house and its plentiful table had been my own; and to them I confided that I now believed I should leave for England early the next year, as I could

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feel the end was at hand for me here. I had made many discoveries and indulged myself freely, as much in hardships as in pleasures, and as it were drunk deeply of Nature both without and within myself, and sufficiently recorded these things in my few works to take them with me to London again and apply them to those larger surroundings. I knew that these growths would trim themselves sensibly in that more pressing and exacting society, which here, like all our best energies, only grew untrained and rank. Nor could I know how far I had developed until I confronted my past in London again.

CCXLV. I made a new friend about now, Gillman Stannage, whom I found one afternoon turning tremendous somersaults on the beach; and soon after, so attached we became, he sold out his business in Auckland with a view to joining me in England, whither we now both determined on returning so soon as we could. It was through Gillie that I came to meet Don Stevenson, Jack Patterson, and other unattached and adventurous spirits. Jack twice took me sailing in the Gulf, once when we anchored all night in the shelter of a narrow pine-covered island, under a bright moon, with the ocean-surf pounding on the other side only a few yards through the trees; and once towards evening when, with a stiff breeze and the water all to ourselves, we crossed the course of a large dolphin or shark, idling along in and out of the waves. I felt such an intimacy with it, on account of the distance we were from land, with the sun fallen behind the city in a wild glory of black and red clouds, it haunted my imagination, almost unbearably, for some days. I begged Jack to put about and to come up behind it and follow it; but it saw us as our courses converged, and dived. Don

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Stevenson was building a motor-car in his back garden on an old chassis, at which I helped, explaining to him meanwhile my view of the evil principle of machines and the world-wide convulsions to which their use must soon give rise. But he was too familiar with engines and too contentious by nature to allow of such fearful effects from such a secretive cause, and with better agreement we went off to the sea, where he swims as gracefully and easily as that fish, showing me how to make better use of my arms in the crawl-stroke. Alas for this World, that all such splendid young men must soon be the victims of their most cherished delusions! Gillie and these others often made lively agreeable parties in my bach, where I could feel I wasn’t to be much longer, and enjoyed myself there while I could.

CCXLVI. By the end of the year the odds were once more much against my income and on my debts, and except for Rod Finlayson I had never kept going. My family of Stronachs were away for the summer and only Frank and May Stronach remained, Frank as ailing but courageous in health as I was in pocket. I was to have made a speech in his stead at Madge Stubbs, his daughter’s wedding but unfortunately I fell in with some friends in the morning and was not to be found; an outrage they took so kindly I was very much touched. The summer was hot and the sea too inviting, and I made only a careless and uncertain progress with my Forest. I was now so bent on returning to England early the next year, I resolved to go home at Christmas to see what could be done towards raising my fare. I had not seen my parents since coming to Auckland and I owed them a visit. So raising something towards my journey to the

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south, and cancelling my next two broadcasts, I went home to Bamswood for Christmas, seeing Ormond Wilson on the way and being wafted onwards by his aid. At home I read them my Forest, which was nearly finished; and for the first time I found my parents deeply impressed with something I had written in verse; but not so impressed that they thought it essential I should go to England as I wished. For my part, not on account of my play but of what future matters this was in earnest, I thought all could be piously risked and my fare raised (as I told my brother Charlie) to get me once more abroad and on my discoveries, even to selling some sheep or consulting the bank. But I left without any assurance, or even a hope, that any help could be got, although I urged my mother and brother to take extraordinary measures, as I required only fifty pounds.

CCXLVII. Once more in Auckland, as I knew from my inward feelings I was going (as I constantly told the Barns Grahams) and very soon, although I had no idea by what means, I left my Forest for the time being and took up my Progress again, as I saw I mustn’t reach London again without this was finished and ready to be published. My broadcasts, I heard, after continuing for a year, would soon be stopped for a time, perhaps for a long time; and this news determined me to be gone on the instant my income from this source was at an end. But although I now had need to keep constantly at my Progress, it wasn’t possible for me to disentangle myself from my surroundings, nor ever to be in town without I met Harry Doyle or Bobs Tole or other friends of the bars, or was out on our motorbikes with Jim Kimber and other wild spirits of the

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naval base. I knew that the end of all this, of which now I was tiring, lay only in my going, which was not in my hands, but rested with that Providence on which I relied, that worked with my feelings and inclinations and led me thereby. And seeing that there was no end but to go, and all my aims now looking only to this, I wrote home very urgently on this matter, which moved them to do as I asked and take extraordinary measures to this end; as ordinary measures are such as an urgent providence takes no account of, but it likes to rouse us to take risks and sacrifice all our customery precautions to itself. In a beautiful letter, wherein he said he disagreed with my going but wouldn’t stand in my way, and indeed only allowed me to go at much inconvenience to my mother and himself, my father now promised me fifty pounds for my fare.

CCXLVIII. But no sooner had this been arranged than I was fined twenty-five pounds, with the loss of my motor-bike to the firm that still legally owned it, for riding it ‘while under the influence of drink’; notwithstanding that Ormond Wilson, my constant friend, did all he was able to induce the Minister of Justice in Wellington to cancel or lessen my fine, on the ground of its being vastly disproportionate to my means. But that person and his department were just now possessed of an abstract view of prevention which looks at causes and pronounces thereon as if they were effects, although no law can properly be enacted against causes, but only against their effects. For instance, no proper law can be enacted against using wood because men are sometimes killed with sticks, nor against drinking water because they are sometimes murdered by being drowned. These are only causes; but in proper law

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only effects can make an offence; and whenever in law a code of prevention is cast over causes with a view to abolishing possible effects, not only our liberties but the intelligence of our law-givers and the public that tolerates them is nearly at an end. And so, concerning the drinking of alcohol, only its effects are properly misdemeanours or crimes. To obstruct or to injure, to be abusive or violent, are the offence, and not to be drunk, which can no more be enacted against in true law than water or wood can be. And to say that a person drove dangerously ‘while under the influence of drink’ is as if we should say he struck a man while under the influence of wood, or drowned his wife while under the influence of water. To strike and to drown are properly the offence, and none other. Therefore it can’t properly be an offence to be in charge of a machine while under the influence of drink, although I don’t say that no offence is committed in this case. But the offence is quite otherwise, and in true law can consist only in being in charge of drink while under the influence of a machine; since machines can be, and certainly are, contrary to true law, while drinking, and even drunkenness we saw, is not. But our law is so biassed against all manly and undomestic indulgences, and so encouraging to all homely and domestic ones, it will soon make women and half-wits of us all. To such absurdities are we led, as in all our science, by making enactments on other than concrete and poetic grounds.

CGXLIX. But I fear the Magistrate who sentenced me to be fined twenty-five pounds for wobbling while riding my bike on an empty road, and my licence cancelled for two years, and all this not only for a

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trifling, but also for a first, offence was permanently in the same state of credulity as I was in temporarily, after a night in a stone cell without bedding, sanitation or light, and every request that my friends be communicated with, and even for the use of a closet, refused. Although indeed the friend who was in the end sent for in the morning before my appearance in court was caused so much trouble over this sordid affair, and so tried by my excited and miserable condition, it was a mercy on that account that nothing was done that night. I took my friend’s advice, however, and said nothing in court except that I was sorry (if it was true) that I was rude to the policeman (which I doubt, and he looked none the worse) and that after all it was only a very litde bike. But the inaudible automaton who sentenced me was as little moved by this regretful pathos (although it delighted one or two of the newspapers) as the Minister was, to whom, with my passage to England in jeopardy, I wrote a moving and contrite letter praying that this monstrous fine be reduced. For notwithstanding Ormie’s efforts in Wellington, and Haig’s who acted for me in Auckland, that flagrant official would do nothing, lest accidents should increase; no matter if machines should increase, nor what other enormities might increase by this tampering with our liberties, so long as accidents did not! But see what shadows we now pursue, not an accident, not any accident of my doing, but only the abstract and idea of all accidents, for which another uneventful and harmless abstraction is made answerable, that of being in charge of a motor-car while under the influence of drink. Men are not children, that harmless causes should be confused in our legislators with possible effects; as when we say to a child, it’s naughty to

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climb trees; when what we mean is, he might fall off. Shall men be governed by such neurotic and feminine logic as that? But I have said enough now about this.

CCL. Yet I think this absurdity must have been devised for my benefit. For not only in the end did Elaine Goodfellow pay my fine (and for very good reasons she gave me, and I gave her) but from several quarters by degrees this happening blew up a gentle and fair wind that was very favourable to my going. My attention as well was now turned from my surroundings by the shock of that incident, and in my spirit already I began to feel gently wafted away. At the end of the summer old lady Stronach and Elsie returned to the Bay, and I began looking for a timely and suitable ship to take me away from this country once more. There was not one from Auckland however; and so, having given my last broadcast there, I slipped away quietly without saying good-bye to any of my friends, having warned them for some months I might disappear any time.

CCLI. For the last night, but without their knowing it was so, I dined with my dear friends in the house above; after which, in my bach I so loved, beside my litde iron stove with its tall rusty chimney that went out at the roof, I read Livy and the Bible that Lady Ottoline Morrell sent me shortly before her death. After that I mused a long while in the lonely and silent night on those recent six troubled years (so thankfully done with for ever), and a less hazardous future before me, surely earned by now if a heart’s devotion earns anything in this world. My luggage had gone on before; and in the

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morning, after a last bathe in the sea, I stole under the lovely creepers and light-dripping gums and so out of the Bay and to town, without meeting anyone I knew.

CCLII. In Wellington I stayed for a few days with the Mulgans, in their new home at Yorke Bay, on the north shore of the harbour. Here, with the steep forest-clad hills behind, one looks through the jagged harbour entrance, as through a window, at the faintly visible Kaikoura mountains and the great peak of Tapuaenuku a hundred miles distant across the widest part of Cook’s Strait. Of an evening, when the harbour is already in darkness and the city and its miles of surrounding waterfront brilliant with lights, then for a moment those distant mountains are clearly visible through that dark gateway, their golden summits robed, as our spirits are, in the day we have lost. I did some climbing here on the hills, or walked towards Pencarrow Head with Margarita Mulgan, talking of the concrete foundations of Latin as we ate our lunch on the shore. Then, as Parliament was reassembling, and I had some broadcasting to do, I moved to a flat Ormond Wilson had taken in the city for both of us, and stayed with him there until I sailed from this country. I had already gone in my spirit and feelings, and could hardly be sure in other respects where I was. Here I met Jake and Sylvia once more, and many persons in and near Parliament, Ministers’ secretaries and the like, whom Ormie took me to meet. Jake was still in hiding, having a job with the Harbour Board under another name; so I introduced him to Ormie with a view to his being pardoned by the Naval authorities, as I heard soon after he was.

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CCLIII. I now repeated some of my earlier broadcasts on the English poets, and did six lectures as well on Milton and the Modem World, wherein I endeavoured to show the Heaven and Hell of Paradise Lost as the two extremes of abstract and concrete, with this Universe created for Man as a state of harmony between them; whence now he has fallen, as Milton foretells in his Epic. These were made into records, whereby I was for the first time able to hear what the experts said was my own voice, and was much amazed at its lightness and effeminacy, due to the apparatus raising the tone above what is natural I think. But as these broadcasts with the National Service brought me less money than I relied on for my voyage, I next engaged with Scrimgeour of the Commercial Service for a number of readings, first making sure that I thereby wouldn’t offend the National Service with whom I had worked so happily and so long. Grannie Goodfellow, in her great kindness and care for me had promised me a substantial sum provided I kept it to land in England with; and with this additional broadcasting, I was enabled to remit the money she gave me to London intact.

CCLIV. Almost every morning before breakfast, whatever the weather, I walked on the steep mountains nearby. In that quarter where we lived the mountains just behind were not built on, and the many narrow winding paths to their summits led one through dark forests of pines or into wild rocky gullies overlooking the buildings and smoke and rusty iron roofs of the city. In one place that strangely attracted me a small stream came down from the heights beneath overhanging rocks and on through a glade planted

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with gums and laurels in among the gorse and wild mountain broom. I was enchanted at once with this spot. No one else was to be met with at that hour, and a sense of holiness, of a haunting presence propitious to all who might bring their aims and desires to its unknown and unheard-of deity, led me there every morning at sunrise. Going in flannels and a sweater over my pyjamas, I would sometimes undress and take a shower-bath by shaking the trees, after which I would return to breakfast and to work on my Progress or the Milton until midday, when I would bath and dress. I said nothing to Ormie about these strange expeditions, who indeed scarcely remarked them, as he rarely rose until I returned.

CCLV. It was now early in winter, and the weather stormy and cold, with much wind and rain but with bright intervals. And one morning, on going up to that now sacred grove, I was standing a little way from the path, when suddenly a gust of wind passed through the gum-trees on the hillside above me, and so shook and musically rustled their bright leaves, and left such a stillness and silence thereafter, I felt overpowered with a sense of some strange and unnatural presence near me at that moment inhabiting this place. I never went there after without thinking I saw a small white temple or place near the rock (the city being now overthrown and in ruins) and one or two quiet and grave persons who came there bringing something. I was so possessed by these matters I was hardly able to work; and I resolved not to go on my voyage without making some answer to what I had seen and heard.

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CCLVI. On the day before I sailed I met Jack Lee in Parliament, in the evening, when he hired a car and took me to the top of Mt. Victoria to see the lights of the city. We stood at length on a rocky eminence looking down at a vast auditorium of lights, row upon row, one above the other, facing the dark expanse of the harbour like a black and bottomless pit. Jack was nearly in ecstacies at this meretricious and gaudy scene; and while I was grateful to be shown it and enjoyed the ride, and felt the same excitement as he, I was reminded of those words of St. Matthew’s Gospel, And the Devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the World and the glory of them, and saith unto Him, All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me. But He refused them, and went His way; being the son of God, they say, not of Man. But a few He accepted, good company and food and lodging; and surely He accepted Himself. I think a son of Man might accept no less what is usual in these things; or more, in proportion as he is born only in the flesh, and the Devil’s possessions are meanwhile greatly increased. But only if he too shall accept himself.

CCLVH. On my last day here it was cold and stormy, and going early up the mountain to that valley I there decided what I should do. And having many things to see to in town, and visits to pay to the ship, these took me all day, until I barely had time to meet Ormie and my brother Douglas and Steve Gerard towards evening as we had arranged. But making haste to that mountain once more, I bought a bottle of wine on the way (although I had almost no money to spare, with the voyage before me; but I thought of all I had spent

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on my pleasures during these years) and climbing up to that place, on a crest of ground near to a small and still spring of water, with that glade on one side and the city below on the other, I poured all the wine I had brought on to the bare ground; and after remaining a moment there in the rain and the wind I left the bottle in some bushes nearby and hurried down the mountain again to our meeting.

CCLVIII. After our meal I talked to my parents in the South Island from Ormie’s room in Parliament, hearing their voices but faintly in that house on the plains, near the mountains, from which I had fled six years before. Then it was time, and Ormie took me in his car to the waterfront, together with a great parcel of provisions he gave me for the voyage. There we parted, and I went alone to my cabin, where I found flowers and a cake from the Mulgans and cigarettes from the Goodfellows, and many letters and presents, and that volume of Epictetus, with a noble letter, from Doris Mirams in Timaru, which I began reading that night. The rest I looked at and left unread, so tired I was and so moved at this great deliverance now at hand; and all around me these memories of my friends.

CCLIX. It was midnight before the ship sailed. I felt her engines and knew we were moving and must soon be out of the harbour. I knew nothing for certain except that I was aboard her and alone in my cabin in the darkness, where I could smell the flowers that Mrs. Mulgan had brought me, the yellow gorse, and the jonquils that bloom in the autumn in our country, in their bewilderment at this strange hemisphere and its seasons. This, and how much money I had was all I

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knew for certain; excepting I knew that whatever troubles and difficulties were before me in England were not of that kind I had met and battled with there before. And with a deep sense of these being over, and no dread of what was unknown, I waited to feel that powerful but gentle movement that told me we had left the harbour and gained the ocean at last. Then I fell asleep.

CCLX. Not men know the purpose compelling their actions, however they argue.

Only the strong-will’d Fates, and the terrible Furies their agents,

Balance all things in their scales and even all things hereafter;

Only these know the design of the work and what lies before us.

Darkly we labour, as men live in dreams when asleep in the night-time,

Deeming they wake and they do this and that, but ’tis shadowy Morpheus

Fashions our dreams; on his errands we run, as we find in the morning.

So do we toil, but awake, and for masters far stronger than Morpheus,

Knowing that ours is the work, not knowing the plan is another’s.

Ah, but if men were not blind how the little they’d see would mislead them!

THE END OF PART TWO

NORVAL RICHARDS LIVING ABROAD

Living Abroad is a gay account of the adventures of an American family in Europe.

After seven years in Rome the Richardsons were intermittently smitten with the ‘moving’ itch. This led them in turn to Paris, Normandy, Florence, Hyeres on the Riviera, and thence into Switzerland. Finally, the lure of Brittany drew them back once more to France.

The book is joyous entertainment from beginning to end. Whether he tells of the Italian family which attached itself to the Richardsons for life; of the village scandal; the building of the Swiss chalet; or of the celebrities —Gertrude Stein, Eleanora Duse, Jung, among others—he met, Mr. Richardson writes in an amusing, sophisticated manner that is delightful.

Long Demy Bvo, 284 pages

B s. 6 d. net

Present Without Leave

D’Arcy Cresswell is a New Zealand poet with a passionate faith in poetry. He holds that Man first made himself articulate through poetry, and that poetry is in itself an end towards which the best in Man is striving. Nine years ago he published The Poet’s Progress , telling of his early experiments in the art of poetry and his experiences in selling his poems from door to door throughout the country; in Present Without Leave he picks up that narrative where he left off and gives some account of his life in England and New Zealand from that time to this.

It was William Rothenstein who gave Cresswell his first introduction to the literary world of London by presenting him to Arnold Bennett. Bennett, who never claimed to be a judge of verse, at once appreciated the prose style of this young New Zealander, and by introduction and encouragement made him something of a literary lion. The story of those times —of the friends he made in London, and his subsequent experiences here and in New Zealand — makes an extraordinary interesting narrative.

As a writer of prose D’Arcy Cresswell occupies a place of his own among English men of letters. The little he has written —this is but his second prose book —has a purity of style and directness of manner reminiscent of the golden age of English literature. From whatever aspect you look at it, this is a book of unusual merit.

D'Arcy Cresswell