Beside Still Waters

Christopher Benson Arthur

Description

The novel Beside Still Waters from British writer Arthur Christopher Benson offers an in-depth look at the life of one Hugh Neville, beginning with his earliest childhood recollections and concluding in his old age. Through spiritual crises and personal tragedies, Hugh's indefatigable spirit and unique outlook on life remain unscathed. It's an inspirational and engaging look at a life well lived.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776591398
• Langue: English

Extrait

BESIDE STILL WATERS
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ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
 
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Beside Still Waters From a 1910 edition Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-139-8 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-140-4 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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I - The Family—The Scene—The Church—Childhood—Books II - The Schoolmaster—School Life—Companions III - The Public School—Friendships—The Opening Heart—The Mould—The LastMorning IV - Undergraduate Days—Strain—Recovery—A First Book V - Practical Life—The Official World—Drudgery—Resignation—Retirement VI - His Father's Friendship—His Sister's Death—The Silent River VII - Liberty—Cambridge—Literary Work—Egotism VIII - Foundations of Faith—Duality—Christianity—The Will of God IX - Art—The End of Art X - Retrospect—Renewal of Youth—The New Energy XI - Platonism—The Pure Gospel—The Pauline Gospel—The Harmony XII - Sacrifice—The Church—Certainty XIII - Waiting for Light XIV - Dreariness—Romance—The Choice of Work—Dulness—A Creed XV - The Pilgrim's Progress—The Pilgrimage—Development—The Eternal Will XVI - Humanity—Individuality—The Average XVII - Spring—Wonder XVIII - His Father's Death—Illness—A New Home—The New Light XIX - Women—The Feminine View—Society—FrankRelations—Coldness—Sensitiveness XX - Limitations—Sympathy—A Quiet Choice—The Mind of God—Intuition XXI - A Far-Off Day—A Compact—Fragrant Memories XXII - Death—The Real and the Ideal—A Thunder Shower—Storm and Shadow XXIII - The Club—Homewards—The Garden of God XXIV - The Romance of Life—The Renewal of Youth—Youth XXV - A Narrow Path—A Letter—Asceticism—The Narrow Soul XXVI - Activity—Work—Isolation XXVII - Progress—Country Life—Sustained Happiness—The Twilight XXVIII - Democracy—Individualism—Corporateness—Materialism XXIX - Bees—A Patient Learner XXX - Flowers—The Garden XXXI - A Man of Science—Prophets—A Tranquil Faith—Trustfulness XXXII - Classical Education—Mental Discipline—MentalFertilisation—Poetry—The August Soul—The Secret of a Star—The Voiceof the Soul—Choice Studies—Alere Flammam XXXIII - Music—Church Music—Musicians—The Organ—False Asceticism XXXIV - Pictorial Art—Hand and Soul—Turner—Raphael—Secrets of Art XXXV - Artistic Susceptibility—An Apologia—Temperament—Criticism ofLife—The Tangle XXXVI - The Mill—The Stream's Pilgrimage XXXVII - A Garden Scene—The Wine of the Soul XXXVIII - The Lakes—On the Fell—Peace XXXIX - A Friend—The Gate of Life XL - A Funeral Pomp—The Daily Manna—The Lapsing Moment XLI - Following the Light—Sincerity XLII - Aconite—The Dropping Veil
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" I will run the way of Thy commandments; when Thou hast set my heart at liberty. "
I - The Family—The Scene—The Church—Childhood—Books
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Hugh Neville was fond of tender and minute retrospect, and oftenindulged himself, in lonely hours, with the meditative pleasures ofmemory. To look back into the old years was to him like gazing into amisty place, with sudden and bright glimpses, and then the cloud closedin again; but it was not only with his own life that he concernedhimself; he liked to trace in fancy his father's eager boyhood, broughtup as he had been in a great manufacturing town, by a mother ofstraitened means, who yet maintained, among all her restrictions, acareful tradition of gentle blood and honourable descent. The childrenof that household had been nurtured with no luxuries and fewenjoyments. Every pound of the small income had had its appointed use;but being, as they were, ardent, emotional natures, they had contrivedto extract the best kind of pleasure out of books, art, and music; andthe only trace that survived in Hugh's father of the old narrow days,was a deep-seated hatred of wastefulness and luxury, which, in a man ofgenerous nature, produced certain anomalies, hard for his children,living in comparative wealth and ease, to interpret. His father, theboy observed, was liberal to a fault in large matters, but scrupulouslyand needlessly particular about small expenses. He would take thechildren on a foreign tour, and then practise an elaborate species ofdiscomfort, in an earnest endeavour to save some minute disbursements.He would give his son a magnificent book, and chide him because he cutinstead of untying the string of the parcel. Long after, the boy,disentangling his father's early life in diaries and letters, wouldwish, with a wistful regret, that he had only had the clue to thisearlier; he would have sympathised, he thought, with the idea that laybeneath the little economies, instead of fretting over them, anddiscussing them rebelliously with his sisters. His father was a man ofalmost passionate affections; there was nothing in the world that hemore desired than the company and the sympathy of his children; but hehad, besides this, an intense and tremulous sense of responsibilitytowards them. He attached an undue importance to small indications ofcharacter; and thus the children were seldom at ease with their father,because he rebuked them constantly, and found frequent fault, doingalmost violence to his tenderness, not from any pleasure incensoriousness, but from a terror, that was almost morbid, of theconsequences of the unchecked development of minute tendencies.
Hugh's mother was of a very different disposition; she was fully asaffectionate as his father, but of a brighter, livelier, more facilenature; she came of a wealthy family, and had never known the harddiscipline from which his father had suffered. She was a good manyyears younger than her husband; they were united by the intensestaffection; but while she devoted herself to him with a perfectunderstanding of, and sympathy with, his somewhat jealous andpuritanical nature, she did not escape the severity of his sense ofresponsibility, and his natural instinct for attempting to draw thosenearest to him into the circle of his high, if rigid, standards. Longafterwards, Hugh grew to discern a greater largeness and liberality inher methods of dealing with life and other natures than his father haddisplayed; and no shadow of any kind had ever clouded his love andadmiration for his mother; his love indeed could not have deepened; buthe came gradually to discern the sweet and patient wisdom which, aftermany sorrows, nobly felt and ardently endured, filled and guided herlarge and loving heart.
His father, after a highly distinguished academical career, entered theChurch; and at the time of Hugh's birth he held an important countryliving together with one of the Archdeaconries of the diocese.
Hugh was the eldest child. Two other children, both sisters, were borninto the household. Hugh in later days loved to trace in family papersthe full and vivid life which had surrounded his unconscious self. Hismother had been married young, and was scarcely more than a girl whenhe was born; his father was already a man grave beyond his years, fullof affairs and constantly occupied. But his melancholy moods, and theywere many, had drawn him to value with a pathetic intentness the quietfamily life. Hugh could trace in old diaries the days his father andmother had spent, the walks they had taken, the books they had readtogether. There seemed for him to brood over those days, inimagination, a sort of singular brightness. He always thought of theold life as going on somewhere, behind the pine-woods, if he could onlyfind it. He could never feel of it as wholly past, but rather aspossessing the living force of some romantic book, into the atmosphereof which it was possible to plunge at will.
And then his own life; how vivid and delicate the perceptions were!Looking back, it always seemed to be summer in those days. He couldremember the grassy walks of the pleasant garden, which wound among theshrubberies; the old-fashioned flowers, sweet-williams andCanterbury-bells, that filled the deep borders; the rose-garden, withthe pointed white buds, or the big-bellied pink roses, full of scent,that would fall at a touch and leave nothing but an orange-seededstump. But there had been no thought of pathos to him in those years,as there came to be afterwards, in the fading of sweet things; it wasall curious, delightful, strange. The impressions of sense weretyrannously strong, so that there was hardly room for reflection orimagination; there was the huge chestnut covered with white spires,that sent out so heavy a fragrance in the spring that it was at lastcut down; but the felling of the tree was a mere delightful excitement,not a thing to be grieved over. The country was very wild all round,with tracts of heath and sand. The melodious buzzing of nightjars inhot mid-summer evenings, as they swept softly along the heather, livedconstantly in his memory. In the moorland, half a mile away, stoodsome brick-kilns, strange plastered cones, with blackened tops, fromwhich oozed a pungent smoke; those were too terrible to be visitedalone; but as he walked past with his nurse, it was delightful and yetappalling to look into the door of the kiln, and see its fiery, glowingheart. Two things in particular the boy grew to love; one was thesight of water in all its forms; a streamlet near the house trickledout of a bog, full of cotton-grass; there were curious plants to befound here, a low pink marsh-bugle, and the sundew, with its strange,viscid red hands extended; the stream passed by clear dark pools to alake among the pines, and fell at the further end down a steep cascade;the dark gliding water, the mysterious things that grew beneath, thefish that paused for an instant and