I suppose, he was full of ; but was gravitating towards London. Yet, on the whole, on the surface of him, you saw no uncertainties; far from that: it seemed always rather with resolutions, and swift express businesses, that he was charged. Sickly in body, the said: but here always was a mind that gave you the impression of peremptory alertness, cheery swift decision,—of a health which you might have called . I remember dialogues with him, of that year; one pleasant dialogue under the trees of the Park (where now, in 1851, is the thing called "Crystal Palace"), with the June sunset flinging long shadows for us; the last of the Quality just vanishing for dinner, and the great night beginning to of itself. Our talk (like that of the foregoing Letter) was of the faults of my style, of my way of thinking, of my &c. &c.; all which admonitions and , so friendly and innocent, from this young junior-senior, I was willing to listen to, though unable, as usual, to get almost any practical hold of them. As usual, the garments do not fit you, you are lost in the garments, or you cannot get into them at all; this is not your suit of clothes, it must be another's:—, these are not your dimensions, these are only the optical angles you subtend; on the whole, you will never get measured in that way!—
Another time, of date probably very contiguous, I remember hearing Sterling preach. It was in some new college- in Somerset-house (I suppose, what is now called King's College); a very quiet small place, the audience student-looking youths, with a few elder people, perhaps mostly friends of the preacher's. The , delivered with a grave composure, and far surpassing in talent the usual run of sermons, had withal an air of human as I still , and dignity and of mind: but gave me the impression rather of than of unction or inspiration in that kind. Sterling returned with us to Chelsea that day;—and in the afternoon we went on the Thames Putney-ward together, we two with my Wife; under the sunny skies, on the quiet water, and with cheery talk, the remembrance of which is still present enough to me.
This was properly my only of Sterling's preaching. Another time, late in the same autumn, I did indeed attend him one evening to some Church in the City,—a big Church behind Cheapside, "built by " as he carefully informed me;—but there, in my wearied mood, the chief subject of reflection was the almost total of the place, and how an soul was preaching to lamps and prayer-books; and of the sermon I retain no image. It came up in the way of , if he ever urged the duty of "Church extension," which already he very seldom did and at length never, what a specimen we once had of bright lamps, prayer-books, baize-lined pews, Wren-built architecture; and how, in almost all directions, you might have fired a through the church, and hit no life. A terrible outlook indeed for the Apostolic in the brick-and-mortar line!—
In the Autumn of this same 1835, he removed to London, whither all summer he had been evidently tending; took a house in Bayswater, an airy suburb, half town, half country, near his Father's, and within fair distance of his other friends and objects; and to await there what the ultimate developments of his course might be. His house was in Orme Square, close by the corner of that little place (which has only three sides of houses); its windows looking to the east: the Number was, and I believe still is, No. 5. A , by no means , small ; where, with the means sure to him, he could calculate on finding adequate shelter for his family, his books and himself, and live in a decent manner, in no terror of debt, for one thing. His income, I suppose, was not large; but he lived generally a safe distance within it; and showed himself always as a man bountiful in money matters, and taking no thought that way.
His study-room in this house was perhaps mainly the drawing-room; looking out safe, over the little grassplot in front, and the quiet little row of houses opposite, with the huge dust-whirl of Street and London far enough ahead of you as background,—as back-curtain, out only half your blue hemisphere with dust and smoke. On the right, you had the continuous of the Uxbridge Road and its wheels, coming as lullaby not interruption. Leftward and rearward, after some thin belt of houses, lay mere country; bright green expanses, crowned by pleasant Hampstead, pleasant Harrow, with their steeples rising against the sky. Here on winter evenings, the of removal being all well ended, and family and books got planted in their new places, friends could find Sterling, as they often did, who was delighted to be found by them, and would give and take, as few others, an hour's good talk at any time.
His outlooks, it must be admitted, were sufficiently vague and overshadowed; neither the past nor the future of a too kind. Public life, in any professional form, is quite forbidden; to work with his fellows anywhere appears to be forbidden: nor can the humblest endeavor to work as yet find an . How unfold one's little bit of talent; and live, and not lie sleeping, while it is called To-day? As , as Reforming Politician in any public or private form,—not only has this, in Sterling's case, received sentence and execution; but the opposite extreme, the Church whither he had fled, likewise proves : the Church also is not the for him at all. What is to be done? Something must be done, and soon,—under penalties. Whoever has received, on him there is an inexorable behest to give. "Fais ton fait, Do thy little stroke of work:" this is Nature's voice, and the sum of all the commandments, to each man!
A shepherd of the people, some small Agamemnon after his sort, doing what little sovereignty and guidance he can in his day and generation: such every gifted soul longs, and should long, to be. But how, in any measure, is the small kingdom necessary for Sterling to be ? Not through newspapers and parliaments, not by rubrics and reading-desks: none of the sceptres offered in the world's market-place, nor none of the crosiers there, it seems, can be the shepherd's-crook for this man. A most cheerful, hoping man; and full of swift , though much lamed,—considerably bewildered too; and tending rather towards the wastes and solitary places for a home; the paved world not being friendly to him hitherto! The paved world, in fact, both on its practical and spiritual side, slams to its doors against him; indicates that he cannot enter, and even must not,—that it will prove a choke-vault, deadly to soul and to body, if he enter. Sceptre, crosier, sheep-crook is none there for him.
There one other , the resource of all Adam's that are otherwise foiled,—the Pen. It was evident from this point that Sterling, however otherwise beaten about, and set fluctuating, would gravitate with all his real weight towards Literature. That he would gradually try with consciousness to get into Literature; and, on the whole, never quit Literature, which was now all the world for him. Such is accordingly the sum of his history henceforth: such small sum, so terribly and diminished by circumstances, is all we have realized from him.
Sterling had by no means as yet consciously quitted the clerical profession, far less the Church as a . We have seen, he occasionally officiated still in these months, when a friend requested or an opportunity invited. it turned out afterwards, he had, unknown even to his own family, during a good many weeks in the coldest period of next spring, when it was really dangerous for his health and did prove hurtful to it,—been constantly performing the morning service in some Chapel in Bayswater for a young clerical neighbor, a slight acquaintance of his, who was sickly at the time. So far as I know, this of the Bayswater Chapel in the spring of 1836, a by his Doctor withal, was his last actual service as a churchman. But the conscious life ecclesiastical still hung visibly about his inner unconscious and real life, for years to come; and not till by slow degrees he had unwinded from him the wrappages of it, could he become clear about himself, and so much as try what his now sole course was. Alas, and he had to live all the rest of his days, as in continual flight for his very existence; "ducking under like a poor unfledged partridge-bird," as one described it, "before the ; continually from nook to nook, and there , to escape the of Death." For Literature Proper there was but little left in such a life. Only the smallest broken fractions of his last and heaviest-laden years can poor Sterling be said to have completely lived. His purpose had risen before him slowly in noble clearness; clear at last,—and even then the hour was at hand.
In those first London months, as always afterwards while it remained possible, I saw much of him; loved him, as was natural, more and more; found in him, many ways, a beautiful acquisition to my existence here. He was full of bright speech and argument; radiant with arrowy vitalities, vivacities and . Less than any man he gave you the idea of ill-health. Hopeful, ; nay he did not even seem to need definite hope, or much to form any; projecting himself in aerial pulses like an borealis, like a summer dawn, and filling all the world with present brightness for himself and others. Ill-health? Nay you found at last, it was the very excess of life in him that brought on disease. This restless play of being, fit to conquer the world, could it have been held and guided, could not be held. It had worn holes in the outer case of it, and there found for itself,—there, since not otherwise.
In our many and , which were of the freest, most copious and pleasant nature, religion often formed a topic, and perhaps towards the beginning of our was the topic. Sterling seemed much in matters theological, and led the conversation towards such; talked often about Church, Christianity Anglican and other, how essential the belief in it to man; then, on the other side, about Pantheism and such like;—all in the Coleridge dialect, and with and volubility to all lengths. I remember his insisting often and with emphasis on what he called a "personal God," and other high topics, of which it was not always pleasant to give account in the argumentative form, in a loud hurried voice, walking and arguing through the fields or streets. Though of warm quick feelings, very positive in his opinions, and eager to convince and conquer in such discussions, I seldom or never saw the least anger in him against me or any friend. When the blows of contradiction came too thick, he could with whisk aside out of their way; into his on some new quarter; or flourishing his weapon, end the
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading
(Left Keyword <-) Previous:
CHAPTER II. NOT CURATE.
Back
Next:
CHAPTER V. TO MADEIRA.
(Right Keyword:->)