Delphi Complete Works of Walter Pater

by Walter Pater

  He was very loath to express his own personal view of a matter, especially if it involved taking any credit to himself. But a friend remembers that he was once talking of the artistic perceptions of Ruskin, and said suddenly with a show of impatience, “I cannot believe that Buskin saw more in the church of St. Mark than I do.”

  His courteous deference, to both old and young alike, was very remarkable. He would agree gently with the crudest expressions of opinion, “No doubt! I had never thought of it in that light!” But he could occasionally fire up when some deeply felt opinion of his own was challenged. Mr. Ainslie remembers being in his company when some one spoke disparagingly of Flaubert. He came suddenly out of his shell, and spoke with great emotion and much wealth of illustration.

  Though Pater was never unkind, he could give a pungent judgment on occasions. The conversation, in his presence, had once turned upon H. A. J. Munro, and a man was mentioned with whom Munro was intimate, and with whom he often associated, who was distinguished rather for a mundane interest in affairs and for a devotion to sociable and convivial enjoyment than for any interest in literature or scholarship.

  Surprise was expressed at this friendship. “I should not have thought they had anything in common,” said one of those present. “Do you think that is so?” said Pater. “I always felt that there was a good deal of the mahogany table element in Munro.” This is a just judgment which, though ironically expressed, exhibits a considerable penetration on the part of Pater, in the case of a man of whom he knew but little.

  He was extraordinarily loyal to his friends. He spoke once with great gravity and seriousness of one whom he had known, whom he thought to be drifting into dangerous courses, and expressed a deep desire to help or warn him, or, at all events, to get a warning conveyed to him. His confidant tells me that he never saw him so deeply moved and distressed as on this occasion, as he tried to devise some way of bringing conviction home to the unhappy object of his anxiety.

  His tendency indeed was always to mitigate harsh judgments, to appreciate the good points of those with whom he was brought into contact. He had indeed a great eye for little individualities and peculiarities, with a gentle enjoyment of the manifestation of foibles; but it was always an indulgent and a tender attitude. And it may be said that it is rare to find one so perceptive of the most delicate and subtle shades of temperament, who was yet so uniformly charitable and kind, so determined to see the best side of every one.

  Pater kept himself severely aloof from the current thought of the day, but with characteristic reticence never adopted the position of an opponent. He took no interest in scientific movements or discoveries, and merely left such questions alone.

  In politics he was what may be called an old-fashioned Liberal. His view of the scheme of Government, the movement of political forces and economical problems, was dim. He took no real interest in such matters, as lying outside of his circle. He rarely committed himself to any statements on political matters; but he had a dislike to Napoleon III., and once said with some animus, “I hope we shall soon arrive at a time when no one will be so vulgar as to want to go and live at the Tuileries.” His interest was all in detail and external values. “I am quite tired,” he said once, “of hearing people for ever talking of the causes which led to the French Revolution; I don’t want to know. I am all for details. I want to know how people lived, what they wore, what they looked like.”

  He had no personal ambition, no desire for recognition. He never paid visits, and took no trouble to make the acquaintance of literary men, even at a time when his reputation would have secured him warm welcome and distinguished respect. He stayed at Oxford because he thought that the life there gave him the best opportunity of doing the quiet, thorough work which he felt himself most capable of performing. He had a deep sense of responsibility, though he did not willingly assume it, and felt bound to exercise his special faculties to the uttermost, and to give liberally of his sympathy.

  It is clear that Pater changed very much as the years went on; after his silent and reserved boyhood and youth, he had a period of épanouissement, when the ideas that began to crowd thickly into his mind produced a certain want of balance, a paradoxical daring of speech, a certain recklessness of statement; this was no doubt enhanced by the discovery that he could hold his own in a brilliant society, that he had quick perceptions and conversational gifts; and at this period he tasted the pleasures of effective talk, the intellectual delight of the process which is best described by the old homely proverb of saying be! to geese. In these days he desired to be impressive rather than to be sympathetic; but as his character deepened and widened, through perception and insight, through friendship and misunderstanding alike, he reverted more to what was really the basis of his character, the desire for simple and affectionate companionship. He was condemned by temperament to a certain isolation; he was outside the world and not of it. A happy marriage might have brought him more into line with humanity; but his genius was for friendship rather than for love, and his circumstances and environment were favourable to celibacy; and thus he passed through life in a certain mystery, though the secret is told for those who can read it in his writings. Art demands certain sacrifices, and the price that an artist pays for the sorrowful great gift is apt to be a heavy one. Pater paid it to the full, and paid it ungrudgingly; he found, he followed his true life, through dark and lonely windings; he emerged into the free air and the sun, though he bore upon him the marks of the conflict; and his place is with the sons of art who have used faithfully and joyfully the gift committed to their keeping.

  That the inner and deeper current of Pater’s thought was profoundly serious is only too plain from his books; such humour as is here not infrequently introduced is of a delicate kind, often almost mournfully disguised; the same kind of humour that one may sometimes discern in the glance of a sympathetic friend when some mirth-provoking incident occurs at a solemn ceremony at which it is essential to preserve a dignity of deportment. At such moments a look of silent and rapturous appreciation may pass between two kindred spirits; such, in its fineness and secrecy, is the humour of Pater’s writings, and presupposes a sympathetic understanding between writer and reader.

  Dr. Bussell, writing of the apparent contrast between the solemnity of his writings and his demeanour to his closest friends, writes: —

  “To a certain extent, but to a certain extent only, these (writings) may be taken as an index to his character, as unveiling the true man. But to those who knew him as he lived among us here, they seemed a sort of disguise. There was the same tenderness, the same tranquillising repose, about his conversation that we find in his writings; the same carefulness in trifles, and exactness of expression. But his written works betray little trace of that childlike simplicity, that naive joyousness, that never-wearying pleasure in animals and their ways, — that grave yet half-amused seriousness, also childlike, in which he met the events of the daily routine.”

  Those who did not know him personally have supposed him to be a man of a strained and affected solemnity. The exact opposite was the truth. Pater did not despise the day of small things. He loved easy talk and simple laughter. He had a relish for small jokes. He loved plays that made him laugh. Such performances as Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas were his delight, and a friend who accompanied him to Ruddigore said that it was delightful to see the whole-hearted and childlike enjoyment to which he surrendered himself. Mr. Gosse went with him to Mr. Pinero’s Magistrate, and remembers him convulsed with overwhelming laughter. In his own home he used to discourse with intense gravity, mingled with great bursts of laughter, of the adventures of a set of entirely fictitious relatives. Again, he took a delighted pleasure in the ways and mannerisms of his acquaintances. Mr. Gosse remembers how admirably he used to imitate Mark Pattison’s speech and peevish intonation. This was best exemplified in the imaginary dialogue which Pater used to render, supposed to take place between the Rector of Lincoln and a burglar who had invaded his hou
se: “I am a poor old man. Look at me, you can see that I am a very poor man. Go across to Fowler — he is rich, and all his plate is real. He is a very snug fellow, Fowler!” This was a really admirably dramatic performance, so dramatic that Pater appeared to be quite convinced of its truth.

  Pater had an unceasing delight in watching the ways and habits of pet animals. His own domestic cats, indeed, were kept and lovingly tended, till from age and disease they had nearly lost all semblance to the feline form. He was deeply conscious of the charm of seeing these bright creatures so close at hand, with the extraordinary relation that may exist, such perfect confidence, such unrestrained affection, while yet there is no communication of thought, and so little comprehension on either side of what is really passing in the mind. He was strangely attracted by the mysterious tie, so close and, in a way, so intimate, and yet with so little mutual understanding, and accompanied by such isolation. He was particularly fond of cats, their dainty ways, their graceful attitudes; and aware too of the refined selfishness, so different from the eager desire to please of the dog; the cat, intent on its own business, using human beings to minister to its needs, making its own arrangements, giving or withholding its company, with no idea of obedience or subservience or dependence; but just living gracefully and indolently in the houses of men, because it suits its convenience to do so. All this, together with its dramatic mystery, its intent secretiveness, its whimsical mirth, its charming solemnity, had an unfailing pleasure for Pater. He was always strangely drawn too, with a mixture of curiosity and indignation, by the sight of those collections of incongruous animals known as Happy Families that are to be seen in gregarious resorts; he would linger about them, expressing his indignation, yet always ending by contributing liberally to their maintenance.

  In conversation, especially in earlier days, Pater adopted a consistent and deliberate irony of speech which was such as often to baffle even his intimate friends. He delighted in paradox, and in a kind of whimsical perversity. He would dwell upon the unessential attributes of a scene, a personality, a book, when a serious judgment was desired. And this, combined as it was with a serious, grave, and almost gloomy manner, completed the mystification.

  He was fond, as I have said, of insisting upon some altogether unimportant detail on these occasions; he used to pretend that he shut his eyes in crossing Switzerland, on his journeys to and from Italy, so as not to see the “horrid pots of blue paint,” as he called the Swiss lakes. He would profess himself unable to read the books of a person whose name or personal appearance distressed him. The celebrated story, which is widely current about him as to the examination in which he took a part, is characteristic of the same mood. He was supposed to have looked over a paper, but when the examiners met he seemed to have kept no record of his impressions; to assist his recollection the names of the candidates were read over, but he seemed to be unable to connect any ideas with any of them until the name Sanctuary appeared, at which he visibly brightened, and said that he was now sure he had looked over the papers because he remembered that he liked the name.

  Probably the habit arose from the fact that he was of a shy and sensitive temperament, and that to give a real and serious opinion was a trial to him. He disliked the possibility of dissent or disapproval, and took refuge in this habit of irony, so as to baffle his hearers and erect a sort of fence between them and his own personality.

  But partly too he was undoubtedly aware, in his earlier days, that the expectation of conversational friandises amused and delighted his hearers. He was rather the spoilt child of the intellectual circle in which he lived, and it is held by some that he rather presumed on the indulgence of his friends in this respect.

  Mr. Basil Champneys, for instance, recollects how he was dining in company with Pater at Professor By water’s, about the year 1875, with a small party. The conversation turned on George Eliot, and Pater announced that he did not think much of George Eliot as a writer. “It is impossible,” he said, “to value a writer all of whose characters are practically identical. What,” he said, “is Maggie Tulliver but Tito in petticoats?” Such a criticism is of course purely perverse, and contains no germ of critical seriousness.

  The same tendency is reflected in the peevish monologue, attributed by tradition to Mark Pattison, and often delightedly repeated by Pater himself. The question of possible travelling-companions was being discussed, when the Rector broke out with: “I would not travel with Pater for anything! He would say the steamboat was not a steamboat, and that Calais was not Calais!”

  The example that he set was somewhat contagious. Those affected by it became the most subjective of critics, and acquired the superficial conversational method, which consisted in speaking of serious things on social occasions as if they had no seriousness, and of diligently searching for the ridiculous aspect that they could be found to bear. There came a certain reaction at a later date against this style of conversation, until the flippant treatment of topics, however superficially amusing, came to be regarded with perhaps undue impatience. But the fact remains that Pater was in ordinary talk, through early years, un vrai moqueur, while the seriousness of his demeanour lent a certain piquancy to his paradoxical talk which had a distinct charm. In this respect, indeed, the caricature of Pater in the pages of the New Republic gives an entirely wrong impression. In the New Republic Mr. Bose is made to talk as though he were uttering his secret thoughts, dicenda tacenda locutus, with entire indifference to the tone of the audience that surrounded him. This is a hopeless misconception of Pater’s ordinary ways.

  There are two or three anecdotes which survive which aptly illustrate the same tendency. I do not know to what extent these reminiscences are coloured by the legendary element, but they are contemporary stories which have survived, and are therefore worth repeating. He was asked, for instance, whether he did not find his College work a great burden to him. He replied with inimitable gravity, “Well, not so much as you might think. The fact is that most of our men are fairly well-to-do, and it is not necessary that they should learn very much. At some Colleges I am told that certain of the young men have a genuine love for learning; if that were so here, it would be quite o too dreadful.” He sighed, and looked sadly at his auditor.

  On another occasion it is said that, when advising a man what to read for Greats, Pater said: “I cannot advise you to read any special books; the great thing is to read authors whole; read Plato whole; read Kant whole; read Mill whole.”

  Again, though the following is probably to be regarded as legendary, it is said that he once, in a lecture, announced that in certain aspects we might be justified in regarding religion as a beautiful disease. This remark was quoted by an undergraduate to his parent with the substitution of the word “loathsome” for “beautiful.” The parent wrote indignantly to Pater to ask if it was right that such opinions should be expressed by a tutor to undergraduates. Pater, according to his own account, replied that he did not think he could have used the word “loathsome.” He might, he said, have used the word “beautiful”—” a beautiful disease.”

  “The parent,” he added, “expressed himself entirely reassured and satisfied by the explanation.”

  He went to see a rather elderly game of hockey played by middle-aged performers, and, after a moment of silence, said softly to his companion: “Come away; I think we ought to go on; it seems hardly fair to look at them.”

  But the habit of indulging in ironical or reckless paradox had its dangerous side. There was at Oxford in the days of Pater’s early residence a certain aesthetic movement, a species of renaissance, in which the creed of beauty was strongly insisted upon. In some members of the circle that was thus affected, this resulted in much extravagance of thought; and in some it had even worse results in loosening the principles of morality, and judging action by the canons of what was held to be beautiful. It is a difficult subject to treat discreetly, because the epigoni of the school, in certain notorious instances, ended in complete moral and social sh
ipwreck. With the extravagances and excesses of the school it is needless to say that Pater, a man of scrupulous conscience and a high standard of moral delicacy, had not the slightest sympathy; but his love of paradox, his recklessness of irony, unquestionably led him to say things which could be unhappily distorted and misapplied, and which, not in his own case, but in the case of those who heard and exaggerated them, were capable of being construed in a serious light, and the utterance of which may be said to have justified both anxiety and distress. Here, as elsewhere, the true Pater is to be seen in his writings, and not in his ironical dicta. And any careful student of his deliberate thoughts finds no difficulty in discerning the delicacy and the loftiness of his view. He refused, it is true, to take a conventional view of the principles of art; but though the essential purity of art can be distorted into a wild appetite for beautiful impressions and sensual experience, it can yet be safeguarded and kept in a high and austere region, in which the lower impulse is entirely inconsistent with the grave appreciation of beauty.

  In the aesthetic movement, Pater concerned himself solely with the doctrine; but at the same time it is undeniably true that the leaders of a movement are always judged by the extravagances of their followers; and the anxiety and even suspicion with which Pater’s views were at one time regarded in Oxford, were due to the fact that those with whom he was in a certain sense in sympathy on the higher aesthetic grounds, applied the doctrine of beauty to a recklessness of practice which Pater not only condemned, but the contemplation of which both disgusted and appalled him. It is better to have no misconception on this point. It is as unfair to think of Pater as in sympathy with the decadent school, as it is to attribute to the original teachers of Predestination the immoral distortion of the doctrines which disgraced some of their fanatical sectaries. When the whole movement has, so to speak, shaken down; when we can look dispassionately at the part which the aesthetic school has played in the mental development of the age, we shall be able, while we condemn whole-heartedly the excesses of the advanced disciples, to discern the part that Pater and the other leaders of the movement played in setting the deliberate appreciation of beauty, the sedulous training of the perceptions in the discrimination of the subtle effects of impassioned art, in its right place among the forces which tend to the ennobling of human character and temperament.