A LODGE IN THE FOREST.
" IF you can tear yourself away from town," wrote the satirist, nearly two thousand years ago, "you may get a little house and garden in the country for what a garret's rent is here. You may hoe the ground and grow a feast for a hundred vegetarians. 'Tis something, wheresoever one dwells, to be master of the run of even a single lizard." The sentiment is still applicable and is shared by many. So, too, allowing for the changes of date and clime, the remark about expense holds good. That is to say, in the country your money buys you more.
But in our days it is not usually a question of being able
"to tear oneself away." Hosts of people who would prefer a country life are kept from it by economic reasons. You may know them by the careful tending of their tiny garden, if they are lucky enough to possess one, by their gay window- box, or even by a struggling plant upon their table. Our big towns are, of course, too big. To Cobbett London was "a huge wen." What would he term it now ? Old Babylon, London's prototype, was more methodical in its provision of open spaces than ourselves. Our civilization has been at fault, as we are well aware.
Garden cities and suburbs are both excellent things in themselves, and will satisfy the aims and wants of thousands. But the real lover of country life, whose cradle, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, "Was breathed on by the rural Pan," will avoid them, because to him the loneliness of the country is one of its most compelling appeals. A common love of solitude links ancient hermits and modern recluses; but whereas the hermit cared nothing for the scenery amid which he dwelt—from which indeed, as from human intercourse, he desired to be a thing apart—the recluse, in general, cares for it a great deal. 0 strange diversity of man's thought ! That the beauty of inanimate nature should be in the eyes of one a snare of evil, in another's the raiment of Almighty Power !
Such a recluse, then, lately had his dwelling in a certain
forest in the Midlands. And yet I wrong him by the term, if it be taken to include anything cowardly or selfish—and must there not be a dash of both qualities in one who rigorously severs himself from his kind ?—for he was neither. He was a worker, and his work lay among men; it brought him, moreover, into frequent though shrinking contact with the sordid side of life, with mean motives and low aims. Circumstance and, it must be admitted, an imperfect resistance to it, had set an intellect which would have adorned the Bench to work upon the disputes of mediocre people in a manufacturing town. These he never really learnt to regard with professional indifference, or, at least, to turn the key upon them when his work was over. Instead, they fostered the tendencies to analysis and melan- choly which with mental gifts of a high order were his inheritance at birth. He found no real relief from them in general society, as many do. It was a happy thing for him when he was able to combine with private practice a post which made him free of old muniment rooms, and brought him into contact with the members of a Cathedral Chapter. But in such company, though he could enjoy it, he could not rest; probably, he thought, because it took so much for granted. His craving for solitude, when work was over, grew more imperative. His mind, constrained by long training to grapple with legal problems, reacted from them most readily to the speculative regions where it loved to dwell. He deter- mined to build himself a retreats where the hours stolen from business could be at least his own.
That was how the Lodge in the Forest came to be. Six miles separate the town from the Forest's border. How eagerly and how often did rapid wheels bear him over those miles when his house was building—how constantly and with what unfailing satisfaction when it was built ! As you ride the meadows assume more and more a woodland character. Presently, at a sharp turn, you take a rough road between stone walls, and in another hundred yards perceive that on either hand is genuine forest. Half a mile further the foliage gives place to pasture. In the background are the ruins of a Priory, with an old farmhouse in keeping ; these left behind, you reach, in a little, the philosopher's retreat.
It is remote, save for the farm's touch of pastoral, from signs of human life. It is built of the dark volcanic stone native to the district, which, indeed, rising starkly in masses from the live turf, masses that the beechen branches only half conce4 gives the Forest an air of severity, even, when the sky is dark, of gloom. You surmise that this feature, reflected somewhat in his dwelling, was not wholly out of keeping with our solitary's humour. But if the house was a little severe of aspect, not so the garden. For therein, besides in his folios and his meditations, lay its owner's chiefest pleasure. In a few years be had made a rock garden which won local fame, though more people knew it by repute than by inspection. Row memorable and longed-for was the day when, with the advancing season, he could reach it before darkness fell.
In this refuge from his careful world he passed many an hour of quiet and renewing solitude. There among his flowers he seemed to overhear the harmonies of nature, too often blurred or drowned, for him at least, amid human activities. His wistfulness was here forgotten in enjoyment, his agitation stilled. A spell of such seclusion fitted him for human intercourse once more.
His hermitage possessed what those of old lacked, a chamber for a friend; and happy he who was bidden to occupy it. For this reserved and sequestered being had yet a genius for friendship. The winning of his regard was not quick or easy ; but he who won it never lost it. Friendship, a word often, in our hurried age, too lightly used, was to him of sacred import. It carried with it responsibilities as well as pleasures. But, admitted to the Lodge in the Forest, it was of the pleasures only that one thought. For the host in him, responding to his friend's presence, bade all darker thoughts avaunt, and for that time serenity possessed his soul. While daylight lasted the garden held one ; new varieties had to be explained, new blossoms praised. Then came the meal, in the Lodge's one living-room—a long, low room, with deep-set hearth, the home of his most cherished volumes and engravings—a simple meal, but fastidiously served. Then talk of old days and of new theories, of ancient ideals and present needs, accompanied by much tobacco ; for as the smoke ascended the clearer and the rarer grew the atmosphere of his mind. Or he would take down a book and read aloud; something speculative, but, for choice, with a sting in it, provocative ; such, for instance, as Bagehot's wonderful essay on the several kinds of poetry. How that essay, with ensuing talk upon it, kept us from our beds ! Even as we, with others, came forth of old from a college sitting-room to rising sun and piping birds, in days so distant yet so vivid. That is the flower of friendship, surely, to know one's heart uplifted and one's mind clarified by such converse—and to know that one's friends, also, are in like happy case. These are the hours of which one says, in after life, would there had been more like them, or would that I had prized them even more ! At such moments the recluse's perplexities and questionings fell from him, while confidence and even joyousness, usurped their place. Gone, for the time being, was that mental poise remarked in him by one who was his intimate, the poise as of a man stretching out his arms in the void for something that lay beyond—tendentemqu,e menus ripae ulterioris amore.
One may sharpen one's wits equally well, it is possible, with a new acquaintance, and yet only chill or fatigue oneself in the process. One may prove in hearty agreement with him, may find interests, even enthusiasms in common. Is not this, we ask ourselves at such a moment, the old, the remembered fire, that warmed us through and through P Ah no, it is but the sudden blaze of thorns, which dies down as suddenly, towards which we stretch cold hands in vain. The companion. ship which such a friend as ours could give is and must be the growth of years, the outcome of common tastes, of shared griefs and pleasures. It is come by in no facile manner. Alas, that as years go on so much of the best that we have known becomes a memory ! Yet in the minds of two or three who may read this retrospect, the old, true warmth may haply be revived—even though the Lodge in the Forest has passed to alien ownership, and will never see its master more.
M.
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