Delphi Complete Works of Walter Pater

by Walter Pater

  “Then, I suppose about May 1867, came his first lectures. Only six or eight Brasenose men were then reading for classical Greats; the system of ‘combined’ college lectures, to which afterwards Pater owed the large audiences that came to hear him on Plato, was not yet invented. We were six men, some novices, some dull, all quite unprepared for Pater. He sat down and began — it was the ‘History of Philosophy,’ We expected the old formulae about Thales, and some references to Aristotle that we could take down in our books and use for the Schools. It was nothing of the kind. It was a quickly delivered discourse, rather Comtian, on the Dogmatic and Historical methods: quite new to me, and worse than new to some others. I remember, as we went out, a senior man, F — , who used to amaze us by his ready translations of Thucydides in ‘Mods’ lectures, and who passed as extremely clever — as he was in that line — F. threw down his note-book with the cry, ‘No more of that for me: if Greats mean that, I’ll cut ’em!’ (as he wisely did).”

  Among Pater’s chief friends were, in early days, Professor Ingram Bywater, his contemporary at Queen’s, Dr. Edward Caird, now Master of Balliol, Professor Nettleship, Mr. W. W. Capes, tutor of Queen’s; but his closest friend and lifelong companion was Mr. C. L. Shadwell, then of Christ Church, now Provost of Oriel, who had been for a short time his private pupil. Pater often travelled in his company, and on Pater’s death he undertook to act as his literary executor, a task which he has fulfilled with a rare loyalty and discretion.

  The friends of a somewhat later date were Mark Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln; Bishop Creighton, then a Fellow of Merton; the present Provost of Worcester, Dr. Daniel, and Mrs. Daniel; Mr. Humphry Ward, a Fellow of Brasenose, and his future wife, Miss Mary Arnold; Mr. Warren, now President of Magdalen; of the larger world, Mr. Swinburne, who often visited Oxford, Dr. Appleton, then editor of the Academy, Mr. Basil Champneys and Mr. Edmund Gosse; in more recent days Mr. Douglas Ainslie, Mr. Arthur Symons, and Mr. Lionel Johnson; but in later years Pater was perhaps more often cheered and encouraged by the devoted companionship of Dr. F. W. Bussell, now Vice-Principal of Brasenose, than by any other of his friendships.

  But, though one may enumerate his closer friends, Pater did not make friends easily, unless he was met with a certain simple candour and ready sympathy; what he valued was a quiet domestic companionship, in which he could talk easily of what was in his mind. To those that were without he showed a certain suave and amiable deference; and even to his intimates he was often reserved, baffling, and mysterious, from a deep-seated reticence and reserve.

  When Pater was settled at Brasenose, he took a house, No. 2 Bradmore Road, in Norham Gardens, which gave him opportunities for simple hospitality and the easy domestic background that he loved.

  He liked to have friends to stay quietly with him, and always manifested an extreme solicitude about the comfort of his guests down to the smallest details, planning the days that they spent with him so that they should be entertained and amused. “Are you comfortable?” was a question, uttered with the delicate and deliberate precision of pronunciation, that was constantly on his lips. But the entertaining of guests tired him, partly because it interfered with the simple and leisurely routine of the day, and partly because, with his scrupulous considerateness, it put a great strain on his sympathy. He could not pursue his usual habits and leave his guests to amuse themselves; he was always conscious that they were in the house, and felt the responsibility for their comfort and amusement very deeply.

  To give an impression of him in those early days, I will quote Mr. Ward’s words: —

  “When I entered Brasenose as a freshman-scholar in October, 1864, W. H. Pater was junior Fellow. I did not make his acquaintance till long afterwards, but from the first I was struck with his appearance, his high, rather receding forehead; his bright eyes, placed near together, his face cleanshaven except for a short moustache (this was rare in those days), his slight stoop, and his quick walk with a curious swing of the shoulders. As I got to know senior men, especially of other colleges, I gradually became conscious that Pater was already vaguely celebrated in the University. He was supposed to have a new and daring philosophy of his own, and a wonderful gift of style, owing his Fellowship to these two, for he was no scholar, as the Universities understand the word.”

  That Pater was no scholar, in the technical sense of the word, is true enough; but he answered rather to Lord Macaulay’s definition of a scholar, as one who read Plato with his feet on the fender. He was not at any time a great reader or a profound student; he was on the look-out for quality rather than for definite facts. He was very fastidious about the style even of authors whose matter and treatment he admired. “I admire Poe’s originality and imagination,” he once said, “but I cannot read him in the original. He is so rough; I read him in Baudelaire’s translation.” Indeed he read less and less as time went on; in later years, apart from reading undertaken for definite purposes, he concentrated himself more and more upon a few great books, such as Plato and the Bible, which he often read in the Vulgate; he made no attempt at any time to keep abreast of the literature of the day.

  Pater regarded his Oxford life primarily as a life of quiet literary study; this was his chief object; he had a strong natural dislike of responsibility; he did not consider himself a professional educator, though he thought it a plain duty to give encouragement and sympathy in intellectual things to any students who desired or needed direction. But he did not conceive that there ought to be any question of disciplinary training or coercion in the matter; to those who required help, he gave it eagerly, patiently, generously; but he never thought of himself as a species of schoolmaster, whose business it was to make men work; on the other hand he realised his personal responsibility to the full. He was always ready to give advice about work, about the choice of a profession, and above all laboured to clear away the scruples of men who had intended to enter the ministry of the church, and found themselves doubtful of their vocation. He had a special sympathy for the ecclesiastical life, and was anxious to remove any obstacles, to resolve any doubts, which young men are so liable to encounter in their undergraduate days.

  As Dr. Bussell, in a Memorial Sermon preached in Brasenose Chapel after Pater’s death, finely said, we may see in Pater “a pattern of the student life, an example of the mind which feels its own responsibilities, which holds and will use the key of knowledge; severely critical of itself and its own performances; genially tolerant of others; keenly appreciating their merit; a modest and indulgent censor; a sympathetic adviser.”

  His attitude towards younger men was always serious and kindly, but he never tried to exert influence, or to seek the society of those whose views he felt to be antipathetic. That a man should be ardently disposed to athletic pursuits was no obstacle to Pater’s friendship, though he was himself entirely averse to games; it rather constituted an additional reason for admiring one with whom he felt otherwise in sympathy, though it was no passport to his favour. He took no part in questions of discipline, which at Brasenose are entirely in the hands of a single officer; indeed it is recorded that on the only occasion when he was called upon to assist in quelling an outbreak of rowdyism, he contrived to turn a hose, intended to quench a bonfire, into the window of an undergraduate’s bedroom, to whom he had afterwards to give leave to sleep out of college in consequence of the condition of his rooms.

  Besides delivering lectures, it was a chief part of Pater’s work to look over and criticise the essays of his pupils. He spent a great deal of pains on the essays submitted to him; he seldom set subjects, but required that a man should choose a subject in which he was interested. It is usual for a lecturer to have an essay read aloud to him, and to make what criticisms he can, as they arise in his mind, without previous preparation. But Pater had the essays shown up to him, scrutinised them carefully, even pencilling comments upon the page; and then, in an interview, he gave careful verdicts as to style and arrangement, and made many effective and practical suggestions. M
r. Humphry Ward says, “He was severe on confusions of thought, and still more so on any kind of rhetoric. An emphatic word or epithet was sure to be underscored, and the absolutely right phrase suggested.” Pater always followed a precise ritual on these occasions. He always appeared, whatever he might be doing, to be entirely unoccupied; he would vacate his only armchair and instal the pupil in it; and then going to the window, he would take his place on the window seat and say, “Well, let us see what this is all about.”

  Though his own literary bent was so clearly defined, he never had the least idea of forming a school of writers on the model of his own style; all such direct influences were distasteful to him; he merely aimed at giving advice which should result in the attainment of the most lucid and individual statement possible. He had no sort of desire to be a master or a leader, or to direct disciples on any but the old and traditional lines. His principle indeed was the Socratic ideal— “to encourage young men to take an interest in themselves.”

  He would sometimes ask a student to join him in the vacation, which must have been a severe tax on one so independent and fond of seclusion as Pater, when he would coach him and walk with him. At the same time, says one of those who came within his circle in later days, it was felt that his relations with younger men were guided more by a sense of duty than by instinct. He was like Telemachus, “decent not to fail in offices of tenderness.” He was careful, says the same friend, to write and inquire about one’s interests and one’s progress. But it was clear that he was in a way self-centred, that he depended on no one, but lived in a world of his own, working out his own thoughts with a firm concentration, and that though he was endlessly kind and absolutely faithful, yet that few made any vital difference to him. He was a steady friend, and always responsive to the charm of youth, of sympathy, of intellectual interest. But even those who were brought into close contact with him were apt to feel that far down in his nature lurked a certain untamed scepticism, a suspension of mind, that lay deeper than his hopes and even than his beliefs. But it was impossible to doubt his real tenderness of heart, his fellow-feeling, his goodness.

  Mr. Ward, who spent part of a summer vacation at this time in Pater’s company, writes: —

  “The month at Sidmouth made us rather intimate, and afterwards I often walked and lunched with Pater at Oxford. He had begun to publish then: the articles on i Coleridge’ and ‘Winckelmann’ in the Westminster Review had appeared, and had made a great sensation in the University. Unfamiliar with Goethe at first-hand, and with the French romantics such as Théophile Gautier, the men of about my standing had their first revelation of the neo-Cyrenaic philosophy and of the theory of Art for Art, in these papers. None the less, even those of us who were most attracted by them, and men like myself to whom Pater was personally very kind, found intimacy with him very difficult. He could be tremendously interesting in talk; his phrases, his point of view, were original and always stimulating; but you never felt that he was quite at one with you in habits, feelings, preferences. His inner world was not that of any one else at Oxford.”

  CHAPTER II. EARLY WRITINGS

  I HAVE thought it best in this study of a life marked by so few external events, to follow as far as possible the chronological order of Pater’s writings, for this reason; that though he revealed in conversation and social intercourse scarcely anything of the workings and the progress of his mind, yet his writings constitute a remarkable self-revelation of a character of curious intensity and depth, within certain defined limits.

  After disentangling himself from metaphysical speculations, after what may be called his artistic conversion, which dates from his first journey to Italy, he threw himself with intense concentration into the task of developing his power of expression. Thus his first deliberate work is a species of manifesto, an enunciation of the principles with which he began his artistic pilgrimage.

  The interest of the study “Winckelmann” is very great. It has been made the subject of a myth, the legend being that it was written while Pater was a boy at school. This statement, which is wholly without foundation, is only worth mentioning in order that it may be contradicted. The origin of the story is probably to be found in the desire to make Pater’s boyhood prophetic of his later interests; but the study was as a matter of fact written in 1866. It appeared in January 1867, in the Westminster Review.

  There is a charm about the early work of writers whose style is strongly individual. Sometimes these early attempts are tentative and unequal, as if the writer had not yet settled down to a deliberate style; they bear traces of the effect of other favourite styles. The curtain seems to rise, so to speak, jerkily, and to reveal the performer by glimpses; but in the case of the “Winckelmann” the curtain goes up tranquilly and evenly, and the real Pater steps quietly upon the stage.

  The style in which “Winckelmann” is written is a formed style; it contains all the characteristics which give Pater his unique distinction. It is closely and elaborately packed; the sentences have the long stately cadences; the epithets have the soigneux flavour; and it is full, too, of those delicate and suggestive passages, where a beautiful image is hinted, with a severe economy of art, rather than worked out in the Ruskinian fashion. There is, too, a rigid suppression of the ornamental; it is like gold from which the encompassing gravel has been washed. But it has also a passion, a glow, which is somewhat in contrast to a certain sense of weariness that creeps into some of the later work. It is youthful, ardent, indiscreet. But for all that it is accurately proportioned and mature. It shows the power, which is very characteristic of Pater, of condensing an exact knowledge of detail into a few paragraphs, retaining what is salient and illuminating, and giving the effect of careful selection.

  It is plain, in the “Winckelmann,” that the writer had been hitherto occupied in somewhat experimental researches; but here he seems to have found his own point of view in a moment, and to have suddenly apprehended his attitude to the world. It is as when a carrier-pigeon released from its prison beats round and round, determining by some mysterious instinct the direction of its home; and at last sweeps off, without doubt or hesitation, with steady strokes on the chosen path.

  Winckelmann was one who, after a dark and poverty-stricken youth, of mental and indeed physical starvation, became aware of the perfect beauty of Greek art, and renounced all study but that of the literature of the arts, till he became “consummate, tranquil, withdrawn into the region of ideals, yet retaining colour from the incidents of a passionate intellectual life.” He renounced his metaphysical and legal studies, in which he had made progress. He joined the Church of Rome, to gain the patronage of the Saxon Court; and finally transferred himself to Rome, where he wrote his History of Ancient Art. He lived a life of severe simplicity, absorbed entirely in intellectual and artistic study, his only connection with the world in which he lived being a series of romantic and almost passionate friendships. His end was tragic; for he was murdered by a fellow-traveller at Trieste for the sake of some gold medals which he had received at Vienna. Goethe, whose intellectual ideal had been deeply affected by Winckelmann’s writings, was awaiting his arrival at Leipsic with intense enthusiasm, but was not destined ever to see him.

  Such was the figure that appealed so strongly to Pater’s mind; and perhaps the chief interest of the essay is the strong autobiographical element that appears in it. Pater saw in Winckelmann a type of himself, of his own intellectual struggles, of his own conversion to the influence of art. After a confused and blinded youth, self-contained and meagrely nourished, Winckelmann had struck out, without hesitation or uneasy lingering, on his path among the stars. It is impossible not to feel in many passages that Pater is reading his own soul-history into that of his hero.

  “It is easy,” he writes, “to indulge the commonplace metaphysical instinct. But a taste for metaphysics may be one of those things which we must renounce, if we mean to mould our lives to artistic perfection. Philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied gift of absolu
te or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic contrasts of life.”

  And again: —

  “Certainly, for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with ourselves, in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the Greek within the simple terms of antique life.... The pure instinct of self-culture cares not so much to reap all that these forms of culture can give, as to find in them its own strength. The demand of the intellect is to feel itself alive. It must see into the laws, the operation, the intellectual reward of every divided form of culture; but only that it may measure the relation between itself and them. It struggles with those forms till its secret is won from each, and then lets each fall back into its place, in the supreme, artistic view of life. With a kind of passionate coldness, such natures rejoice to be away from and past their former selves.”

  And once again: —

  “On a sudden the imagination feels itself free. How facile and direct, it seems to say, is this life of the senses and the understanding, when once we have apprehended it! Here, surely, is the more liberal life we have been seeking so long, so near to us all the while. How mistaken and roundabout have been our efforts to reach it by mystic passion, and monastic reverie; how they have deflowered the flesh; how little they have emancipated us!”