CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DA 664.E12L92 
 
 Earlham, 
 
 3 1924 028 012 676 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028012676 
 
EARLHAM 
 
Earlham 
 
 Percy Lubbock 
 
 Author of The Craft of Fiction 
 
 New York 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 I.:, 
 
Earlham 
 
 Percy Lubbock 
 
 Author of The Craft of Fiction 
 
 New York 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
Made and printed in Great Britain by Charles Whittingham 
 and Griggs {Printers), Ltd., London. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Indoors i 
 
 II. In the Garden 99 
 
 III. Outside and Beyond .... 179 
 
EARLHAM 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 I: INDOORS 
 
 I 
 THE slightest turn of memory takes me back at 
 any time to Earlham, to the big sunny hall where 
 we used to assemble for morning prayers. The 
 shallow staircase descended on one side, by the 
 great front-door. Opposite to it another door 
 opened to the garden, and through two wide 
 windows, tangled with roses and vines, the sun- 
 shine welled into the house. The hall was broad 
 and square, rather bare of furniture; against the 
 walls there were seats, velveted and fringed, once 
 of a strong old crimson, but now faded away into 
 soft rose-leaf colours under the suns of many 
 summers; there was a round table, where our 
 grandfather sat with his large Bible. At prayer- 
 time there were also benches, set out in rows, for 
 the servants who came fihng in through a swing- 
 door in one corner. First the stout little bright- 
 eyed cook, whose place was next to the garden-door 
 — she carefully shut it against the dewy morning 
 air if it happened to stand open ; then the rest of 
 the household in due order. It struck us as an 
 imposing procession ; from our red seats under the 
 windows we looked across and watched it streaming 
 and streaming through the swing-door, from the 
 back-region of the house. 
 
 I B 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 Prayers began with an unaccompanied hymn. 
 Our grandmother, standing before the wide chim- 
 ney, struck into the first notes, with a Httle toss 
 of her lace-capped head — ^hfted up her singularly 
 sweet and resonant voice, and the rest of us followed 
 in unison. She sang, in her old age, with a voice as 
 fresh as a girl's, soaring and pealing with perfect 
 ease ; and her voice had a quality that I never seem 
 to have heard in another, clear and vivid and 
 plangent, hke some kind of silver-wired harp. She 
 soared into the melody quite at random, with no 
 thought of the pitch ; and sometimes it was a trying 
 one for the congregation, and after the first verse 
 she would cry " A little lower," and start the second 
 verse in a more tenable key. She sang from the 
 heart, and the words of the hymn (soundly evan- 
 gelical) floated upon the melody, dominating it, 
 using it, so that the tune became a real accompani- 
 ment to the words. Our repertory was not greatly 
 varied; but often and often as the same familiar 
 song was repeated — " Hark my soul," perhaps, or 
 " Jesu stand among us " — she would utter the 
 words of praise and thanksgiving with a thrill, a 
 radiant conviction, as though she made them her 
 own for the first time. 
 
 Meanwhile our grandfather sat at his round table, 
 one hand propping the bald dome of his forehead, 
 the other arm embracing the big Bible that lay 
 before him. He took no part in the hymn, he 
 waited; and when we were seated he read the 
 chapter over which he had been brooding. And 
 then there was a pause, and we settled ourselves 
 anew, and a tract of time opened before us that 
 
INDOORS 
 
 seemed very long indeed; it had no measurable 
 length, like a hymn or a chapter, for it depended 
 on our grandfather alone. There was first a com- 
 mentary upon the passage he had read ; he talked 
 of it, I suppose he would explain and expound it ; 
 but what do I know? — ^it was a time that passed 
 for me in a methodical scrutiny of the assembly, our 
 dear and well-known friends of the household, 
 ranged on their benches, our uncles and cousins on 
 the red settees. Presently the arm that embraced 
 the Bible began slowly, slowly to close it, and the 
 exposition was at an end, and we knelt ; and then 
 there was nothing to do but to wait, helping oneself 
 out with a little rhythmical fidgeting. 
 
 Our grandfather, fervently, appealingly, lyrically, 
 delivered a long improvisation of prayer. AU of 
 it is lost to me, save for an occasional landmark 
 that I could recognize and appreciate as it passed ; 
 such were topical points, special invocations on 
 behalf of members of the family, often ourselves, 
 who had just arrived or were about to depart. 
 Otherwise it is aU vague ; but I can hear the warm, 
 mild old voice rising and falling with intonations 
 like an autumn wind — or like the chant, as it 
 strikes me now, of a minstrel of the family roof -tree, 
 a voice soaring and sinking in slightly melancholy 
 cadences, while it lingers over a half-extemporized, 
 half-traditional lay. It was always a wonder to us 
 — ^we had no other reflection upon the matter — that 
 our grandfather could uplift his eloquence afresh 
 on every morning of the year, with never a lapse 
 or a hesitation ; but it ran on lines long established, 
 I imagine, as the eloquence of a bard over the glories 
 
 3 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 of the past. It was certainly in its manner the voice 
 of poetry. The minutes lengthened; and at last 
 the voice rose in a famihar chmax and fell on the 
 words (always the same) " We ask it— in the name 
 of_" and presently we were all joining m the 
 Lord's Prayer, a goodly volume of sound, with the 
 fervour of tension reheved. A last blessing, a pause, 
 and the stir of life began again. 
 
 2 
 
 In due course the genial red-bearded butler 
 pounded the gong, and breakfast was ready in the 
 big outlying dining-room. That was a room that 
 had been added some generations before, when the 
 house was already venerable ; it was built out at an 
 angle to the old body of the house, and it had a 
 bow-window at one end, facing into the flower-beds 
 on the edge of the great lawn, and other windows 
 looking over the side-lawn, to the west, and down 
 the slope of the park to the river. Mirth-making, 
 free-tongued parties were constantly seen round the 
 long table ; a child, squeezing and craning between 
 two elders after grapes and peaches, would be 
 amazed and enchanted by the hght jesting brilliance 
 that played round the company. Indeed the family 
 of our grandparents was rich in its vein of jovial 
 comedy Our uncles were terribly amusing, so free 
 with each other, so wicked with their parents. One 
 could stare and Hsten ; and I remember the heady 
 feeling of importance when one was personally ad- 
 dressed, andfperhaps the hot confusion when the 
 laugh turned upon oneself. 
 
 They were mornings of perfect and lovely 
 
 4 
 
INDOORS 
 
 romance, and well we knew it at the time. Earlham 
 days were holidays, Earlham was the wonder of the 
 world. And indeed it was a beautiful old house, 
 red and mellow, spacious, sun-bathed. There were 
 gables of flint and brick with a date on them, 1642, 
 which I suppose marked the earliest core of the 
 building. But later on, perhaps in the reign of 
 Queen Anne, the older building had been all but 
 swallowed up in a house with a big garden-front, 
 to the south, and rows of high sash-windows, and 
 two projecting wings to the north that reached out 
 and enclosed you as you arrived, as you drove up in 
 the family carriage, palpitating with excitement, to 
 the semi-circle of steps before the front-door. The 
 carriage made a sweep and a curve, and the coach- 
 man on the box seized the handle of a bell that 
 hung on the wall of the house, at the right height 
 for his hand — seized it as the carriage swept round, 
 pealed it, and the big door was already opening as 
 we drew up at the steps. Our grandfather would 
 be standing there, tall and gaunt and benevolent ; 
 that was how the visit to Earlham began. 
 
 The north front had been plastered and painted 
 a buff-white, long ago ; but elsewhere the red brick 
 was untouched, only the vines and roses and jessa- 
 mine clung and scrambled where they would. Late 
 in the eighteenth century there had been more 
 building, and the dining-room stood out into the 
 garden, as I have said ; and also to the west, where 
 there was the view down to the river, another wing 
 was thrown forward, with a drawing-room that 
 faced away to the sunset, and to the glint of water, 
 and to the round tower of Colney church on the 
 
 5 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 rising ground beyond, a mile away. So the house 
 had gradually elbowed itself into convenient roomi- 
 ness. The back-regions, too, through the swing- 
 door, were extremely interesting. A flagged passage 
 led away to the back-door, and there before it was a 
 large green of rough grass, and round it all the 
 outlying buildings that in old days had been part 
 of the needful economy of the place, the store- 
 houses, the bakery, the brew-house. In one corner, 
 under a sort of brick cloister, was the pump — a 
 great beam that revolved, and that for half an hour 
 every morning was dragged round and round by a 
 white horse, with a measured thumping and thud- 
 ding. By the back-door was the sitchen-window, 
 and the kitchen was a noble room. From within 
 the house you approached it by another flagged 
 passage, out of which a side-door opened — or rather 
 it was always locked, tfll the rosy cook drew a key 
 from her pocket, opened the door, and there was a 
 waft of sweet dry spiciness from her stores, while 
 she searched among them for something to content 
 us. 
 
 The house was various, endless, inexhaustible. 
 Mounting the stairs again (after how many years ?), 
 the shallow stairs that rose from the haU, I hardly 
 know which way to turn — ^here, perhaps, on the 
 first landing, at a door which takes me into the 
 " ante-room," I suppose originally the chief parlour. 
 It was high, clear, formal, with the air of a room 
 little used; there was not an object on a table, not 
 a blue china cup on a cabinet, that had shifted its 
 place in fifty years. But at the end of the long room 
 was a small extension, a projection in a bow- window 
 
 6 
 
INDOORS 
 
 that was in familiar use. A cool green light fell 
 through the windows, which looked northward into 
 an avenue of great limes, murmurous and odorous 
 in summer noondays ; and our grandmother would 
 gather us to this end of the room, the coolest 
 retreat in the house, in the heat of the long brilliant 
 day. The space in the bow- window was raised Hke a 
 dais above the level of the room ; there was a green 
 velvet window-seat, and a huge old Chinese jar, 
 standing on the floor, holding relics of ancestral 
 lavender and rose-leaves. There on the window- 
 seat our grandmother drew us round her and read 
 to us, sweetly and playfully, ancient moral anec- 
 dotes, stories out of tiny little volumes that she 
 cherished — or Bible-stories, if it were Sunday. She 
 read with a charming, trilling liveliness, dropping 
 into soft mysterious undertones, breaking out again 
 with silvery merriment — she had her own way in 
 everything she did. 
 
 She loved the green window-seat and the rustling 
 shadow of the limes. As she grew old and older, 
 she used to sit there in the window for long hours, 
 alone in the summer evening, till the light faded 
 away. She sat without book or work, drinking in 
 the twilit fragrance, communing in her mind — ^with 
 what? — ^with the thought of many beloved dead, 
 whom she had lost and mourned, and with the joy 
 of reunion with them that she saw near at hand now, 
 in a very few years. Her mind was there, more and 
 more. As the evening darkened she seemed, sitting 
 in the window, to have all but passed already into 
 the light she awaited ; it shone in her face, I remem- 
 ber, as she spoke of it ; I remember vividly her look 
 
 7 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 as she once exclaimed, in sudden uncontrollable 
 wonder, " What will it be ?— what wiU it be hke ? 
 So close to it she felt herself to be, so near the incon- 
 ceivable and ineffable ; the wonder of anticipation 
 held and filled her. 
 
 She hked us to love the old house, as we did ; she 
 was very tender and affectionate with it, as though 
 the house were a kind old nurse, faithful and worn, 
 with whom we must be gentle. She would lay her 
 hand on a wall, a panel, a window-sill, with a touch 
 that seemed to stroke it softly; "the poor old 
 place," she said, with a kind of bantering tenderness. 
 She lived there for nearly fifty years, and her many 
 children grew up there. Nothing was ever changed. 
 The house had been all new-furnished when she 
 went to live there, a few years after her first 
 marriage, and so it remained. Wandering through 
 the rooms again, at this late day, I suppose I can 
 note how inharmoniously, unsuitably, the house had 
 been treated; there was little or nothing in the 
 dressing and fitting of the rooms that might seem 
 to accord with the grace of age, to suggest a memory 
 akin to the house. The house had the memory of a 
 high style, there was none in its furnishing. But 
 crimson had faded to rose, green to the colour of 
 autumn grasses and moss, and in the drawing-room 
 (through the mahogany door from the ante-room) 
 the yellow satin of the window-hangings had a 
 faint gleam of old amber. Three windows there 
 were, slightly bowed out to the west ; and we are 
 now, you understand, on the first floor of the house. 
 
 8 
 
INDOORS 
 
 Through one of the three drawing-room windows, 
 that to the right hand, there was an unexpected 
 ghmpse. A rather dense shrubbery or small wood 
 of oaks stood in that quarter, flanking close against 
 the house ; but a clearance was tunnelled through it 
 and kept open, aligned with this window; and a 
 view appeared there, framed in greenery, of a bridge, 
 a round brick arch, that spanned the river down by 
 the village. It made a neat little picture, hke an old 
 drawing-master's copy. And if you remember a 
 page near the beginning of Lavengro, where Borrow 
 goes fishing in a river-pool, by a bridge, and falls 
 in with a handsome Quaker gentleman in a broad 
 beaver hat, who mildly rebukes him for his occupa- 
 tion and talks to him of the Scriptures — this is that 
 same bridge, the good Quaker was our great-grand- 
 father's brother, Joseph John Gurney, who lived 
 at Earlham before our grandmother's day. Borrow 
 wandered out to the Earlham river, after his fishing, 
 from Norwich, and Joseph John, strolling down 
 through the park, found him and gently catechized 
 him, and invited him to come up to the house and 
 see his books — where Borrow went, however, only 
 in after years, and was then entertained by the good 
 man in a " low quiet chamber, whose one window, 
 shaded by a gigantic elm, looks down the slope 
 towards the pleasant stream " ; and it must be 
 admitted that there was no such room in the house, 
 nor any " gigantic elm " in the garden at aU. But 
 Borrow fished in the pool and talked to Joseph John 
 and visited the house, no doubt — the " Earl's 
 Home," as he calls it ; and this was his bridge that 
 appeared in its round frame of leafy foreground. 
 
 9 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 Joseph John was a handsome old scholar and 
 philanthropist and man of business, mildly hterary. 
 His portrait remained at Earlham, a head of dis- 
 tinction, with kind lucid eyes. More interesting 
 was a picture that hung in the drawing-room, a 
 large water-colour, in a frame with folding doors 
 to it— a portrait by Richmond of a Quaker lady, 
 old and portly and immensely majestic, in mob-cap 
 and flowing robe of soft brown and grey. This was 
 Aunt Fry, sister of Joseph John — Ehzabeth Fry, 
 missionary of the prison-house, recalled and com- 
 memorated still for her fruitful works. She was 
 much more commanding, much more resolute, I 
 judge, than her brother ; she looked as though she 
 had accompHshed her good works with a high hand ; 
 and mixed with legitimate pride in her fame, there 
 survived in the family some tradition that she was 
 more interested in her grand European activities 
 than in her nearest and homeUest duties. She had 
 lived at Earlham in her youth, with her many 
 brothers and sisters; and she became a character 
 that perhaps, to her family circle, seemed strangely 
 pubUc; and in our grandmother's voice, as she 
 spoke to us of Aunt Fry, there might be a hint of 
 such an idea, quickly covered with admiring venera- 
 tion. 
 
 Aunt Fry hung in a corner of the room, looking 
 very stately. But I cannot think of her just yet, 
 for my eye has been caught elsewhere. Near the 
 windows stood the " instrument," a grand piano in 
 golden satin-wood, and there the assault of memory 
 is strong and manifold. It was a ghostly piano; 
 the music came softly tinkling out of it with a 
 
 10 
 
INDOORS 
 
 muffled sound, as though it were swathed in veils of 
 time. You could not stir it up or rouse it to more 
 than a far-away hum and murmur; thumping 
 and strumming had no effect, it only responded with 
 the same low shadowy voice. Our grandmother, 
 we believed, used to play it and sing songs when she 
 was young ; in our day she never touched it, and 
 her voice was only heard in hymn-singing at prayers 
 and in church. But yes, once I heard her sing out 
 to the sound of the piano, as with an echo of her 
 youth. Somebody was touching the keys and 
 turning over a book of old songs, sentimental old 
 baUads mostly, but he found some music there of 
 Handel and Arne. Presently, turning another page, 
 he played a few notes of a song, and named it, and 
 asked our grandmother if she had ever sung it; 
 and as she moved about the room she turned and 
 shook out the first phrase of the song, suddenly, 
 with her bright harp-tones — " Nita, Juanita! " 
 The phrase rang across the room, it is still in my 
 ears; it was a flash of old times, when the voice 
 of the piano was young and clear too, perhaps. 
 The piano had aged and lost its voice ; but to those 
 ringing notes of " Nita, Juanita " it might have 
 responded, finding the tone of its youth again. 
 
 It couldn't do that ; but stUl it tinkled industri- 
 ously, and the children gazed into its gaping jaws 
 to watch the dance of the httle black hammers. We 
 sang all the sentimental ballads, The Captive 
 Knight, The Hebrew Maiden to her Christian Lover, 
 Oh Pilot 'tis a Fearful Night, many more. Our 
 grandmother, hearing us, woxild come in and stand 
 listening for a moment, nodding and smiling to us. 
 
 II 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 " Ah, those droll old songs! " she would say. But 
 she was not sentimental herself; she looked back 
 hghtly and gaily to the far past, I think. She Hved 
 vividly in the present, full of quick impulses and 
 melting sympathies. I have spoken of her as I saw 
 her just now, sitting in the twihght ; but that is a 
 picture which only belongs to the last years, the 
 very last. Till then did we ever see her sitting still, 
 resting, waiting ? She was always in movement, she 
 had remembered someone she wished to see, some- 
 thing she had forgotten, something she had lost. 
 She smiled and waved to us, seeing us happily 
 occupied, and was gone. 
 
 Nobody ever " sat " in the drawing-room by day, 
 there was no company there till the evening. And 
 while the company was at dinner, one of the children 
 would follow our well-beloved Rose, the house-maid, 
 as she went her round — first to the bed-rooms, to 
 fold away the counterpanes and turn down the 
 sheets of the huge four-posters, then to the drawing- 
 room, to set the chairs and brighten the lamps, and 
 if there was a dinner-party to open the " instru- 
 ment " and hght the candles. " There's company 
 to-night, they'll be having some music." We pre- 
 pared the room for them and whisked out of the 
 way ; Rose somehow made a drama of the proceed- 
 ing. Bright and merry and handsome she was, 
 carrying her head high — a charming figure, as we 
 slipped round the turn of the stairs, hearing the 
 voices of the company as they issued confusedly 
 from the dining-room, away in the distance. 
 
 12 
 
INDOORS 
 
 4 
 Lingering still by the drawing-room window, I 
 
 come on another picture. It is of a child, who sits 
 there in the window-seat, gazing, gaping, while 
 someone — a kind lady, unknown — tells him a story. 
 There was some kind of tea-party proceeding in the 
 room, apparently — which was very unusual, and I 
 guess it may have been a missionary meeting, with 
 an address and a collection, and tea to foUow. Any- 
 how there were people crowding and talking around ; 
 but the child was hardly aware of them, he was aU 
 eyes and open mouth at the kind lady's story. Not 
 a word of it do I remember, save only that the 
 climax was a house on fire, I suppose with a gallant 
 rescue of the inmates. The story-teUersat beside me 
 in the window-seat, her friendly eyes in mine ; and 
 she must have felt pleased at the success of her tale. 
 It was surely suitable and interesting, the very story 
 for a child — ^no doubt she had told it to scores. I 
 wonder who she was ; she Httle suspected how I was 
 to pay for that story. The fiery house, the flames 
 shooting from the windows, must have happened to 
 press upon some sensitive spot in a small imagina- 
 tion, straining or wounding it. The memory became 
 a dread, a monstrosity, that haunted me for long — 
 for years, as it seems to me now. It began with that 
 session in the window-seat, in the greyish evening 
 Hght, when a kind stranger took the trouble to 
 entertain a chUd. 
 
 It began there, and it returned, night after night, 
 in the room where the children slept. That indeed 
 was an odd and disconcerting room for the calmest 
 
 13 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 imagination. The Eleven-sided Room— so it was 
 called, and there was no doubt about its eleven 
 distinct walls and angles ; we often counted them. 
 It might have represented the space which the 
 builder happened to find upon his hands, when he 
 had provided the other rooms in their order. It was 
 full of slopes and projections, recesses, yawning 
 cupboards hke caves. An extemporized wooden 
 staircase had been pierced to the nursery below; 
 and there was another door that opened on to a 
 deserted and resonant upper landing, and there were 
 more doors that concealed strange alcoves; and 
 between them you felt utterly exposed and power- 
 less. You could not watch them all, you could not 
 be on your guard in all directions at once. A candle 
 on the mantel-piece gave just enough light to show 
 how dark the corners were. The long hours were 
 urgent with horror — surely half the night had gone, 
 surely it must be near the dawn ; yet stiU there was 
 the sound of plates and forks and voices in the 
 nursery below — ^far away, in the world of company 
 and hght, at the foot of the wooden staircase — and 
 our nurse was stiU at her supper, gossiping with 
 our grandmother's dear affectionate maid. Down 
 there was security and peace, and tender hearts, 
 moreover, that would have been lavished to protect 
 and comfort a frightened child, if only — if only they 
 could be made to understand. But alone up there 
 among the shadows, how could you make them 
 understand? Where could you begin with any 
 explanation ? It was hopeless ; but perhaps there 
 were feints and ruses that might bring one of them 
 up the wooden stairs, and a few minutes of safe 
 
 14 
 
INDOORS 
 
 company might be secured in that way. Sometimes 
 it could be managed, but not often, and not for 
 long. Silence, solitude must be faced, and the blaze 
 of that horrible house, with the flames leaping 
 from its window-sockets as soon as one's eyes were 
 shut. Hours and hours dragged on, the dawn de- 
 layed. 
 
 The soft roo-hooing of pigeons on the roof, a great 
 splash of sun slanting through the window, life and 
 freedom and dayUght were aU around one in a 
 moment. It was another room, another world in 
 the morning. The caverns and recesses were stimu- 
 lating and amusing; the Eleven-sided Room was 
 unique, entirely delicious. The clean old smell of 
 sun-baked woodwork met one at the windows, 
 which were fringed with green leaves. Bumping 
 presently down the stairs, to breakfast in the 
 nursery below, one set forth upon the illimitable day. 
 The nursery was high and bare, but the sun filled it. 
 Only a four-sided room it was, like any other, but 
 it had five doors, five separate entrances. Through 
 one of them we clattered off along the passage, when 
 the gong boomed for prayers. 
 
 5 
 Our grandfather, infinitely kind and mild, was 
 yet not easily approachable. He was very tall and 
 lean ; he towered above you, he looked down from 
 his height benignantly, but with nothing in particu- 
 lar to say. Under his high forehead his eyes were 
 remote and cavernous ; his thin cheeks were drawn 
 together to the point of his chin. He twinkled in 
 silent approval and passed on like a shadow; he 
 
 15 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 seemed to walk in twilight. He did not join the 
 talkative, sociable party; he glanced in upon it, 
 gleaming for a moment with appreciation, answering 
 a gay challenge with a chuckle and a word, and 
 stalked away. We saw him, tall and black, walking 
 across the great lawn, not loitering or pausing, but 
 Hke a practised walker (as he was), with a measured 
 and regular pace that was neither a stride nor a 
 stroll; his big substantial boots rose and fell 
 steadily, and he covered the ground in surprising 
 time, without appearing to hurry himself. Or on 
 the lawn, perhaps, he would sometimes pause, to 
 drive the point of his umbrella under a plantain or a 
 dandehon. And then he was off on his three-mile 
 trudge along the high-road to Norwich, where in old 
 days (before my memory) he had been rector of a 
 city parish, and where many missions of charity or 
 clerical business always called him. 
 
 He had been rector of St. Giles's, in Norwich, for 
 many years, tramping in perpetually from Earlham 
 and out again. But I scarcely look back further 
 than the time when he resigned his populous cure in 
 the city, having accompUshed a great work there, 
 and took instead the diminutive living of Earlham 
 itself, with the village of Colney that adjoined it. 
 At Earlham HaU he had lived since his marriage (he 
 was really our s^e^-grandfather), and now he 
 ministered in the two tiny churches, Earlham and 
 Colney, turn and turn about. Living at the HaU 
 himself, he used to lend his rectory-house to stray 
 and stranded missionaries — I think they were 
 generally missionaries. From China, from Uganda 
 they came and were harboured in the pretty old 
 
 i6 
 
INDOORS 
 
 rectory of Colney, with their wives and children, for 
 the term of their hohday. Many threads of friend- 
 ship radiated from Earlham into the mission-field, 
 all round the world. 
 
 But I cannot write of our grandfather as though 
 I were teUing his story; I can only watch for 
 glimpses of him, seizing them where I can, and our 
 glimpses of him in those days appear like the 
 passing of a benevolent shadow, always excepting 
 the sight of him at prayers and in church. There 
 only, I now see, we could look into his real life; 
 he opened his mind in prayer and revealed the 
 ardent emotion upon which his life was fed; at 
 other times it was veiled and withdrawn, unsus- 
 pected by a chUd. We did not approach him 
 familiarly; though nothing could seem more 
 familiar to me now than the sight of him, as we 
 loiter and cluster about the garden-door after 
 prayers — the sight of him passing through the 
 chatter and laughter with a demure, roguish smile, 
 walking off in the sunshine among the briUiant 
 flower-beds that skirted the lawn, returning 
 presently with a single flower, a rose, for the tiny 
 glass upon his writing-table. His study was by the 
 garden-door; loitering outside, we could see him 
 moving within among the high book-shelves. He 
 was, or he had been, a student and a scholar, and his 
 room had a refined, faded, scrupulous look, like the 
 college-rooms of an old-fashioned don. Nothing 
 unkempt, nothing haphazard; there was an air, 
 rather, of remote traditional elegance, a kind of 
 far-away nattiness; in coUege rooms of the old 
 style, reaching back beyond the days of tobacco- 
 
 17 c 
 
E A R L H A M 
 
 smoke, beyond the days of lounging and sprawling, 
 I have found something of that atmosphere. A 
 room had naturally, like its owner, to be well- 
 mannered and trimly appointed ; it was impossible 
 to imagine our grandfather in any but seemly, 
 orderly surroundings. 
 
 He had not, however, what are called the " man- 
 ners of the old school " ; he was not courtly, not 
 ceremonious ; he was simple and kind and grave, as 
 he talked to the stranger at his table — or talked 
 not much, or not at all, if the conversation flowed 
 freely around him. And indeed it flowed freely at 
 that table — can I recall the bountiful board in the 
 long dining-room without the crackle of our uncles' 
 humour, genially unafraid and unashamed ? Smil- 
 ing discreetly over his carving at the head of the 
 table, our grandfather withdrew from the talk, but 
 missed none of it. 
 
 Mr. Jones, perhaps, or Mr. Smith, reverend 
 gentlemen, bearded and hearty, would surely be 
 seated at that table, as I think of it. There were 
 plenty of reverend gentlemen there, doubtless of all 
 complexions — ^but the beards predominated, the 
 jovial wagging beards of evangelical country clergy. 
 I wonder whether the children at the table, staring 
 and listening, absorbing so much more than they 
 knew, may not have acquired from these gentry 
 their earliest notion of clerical institutions and 
 categories — simple enough, in Mr. Jones's view. In 
 our family we heard nothing of the " church " ; our 
 grandparents never used the word, as it seems to 
 me; " church " only meant Earlham church next 
 Sunday, Colney the Sunday after; prayer and 
 
 i8 
 
INDOORS 
 
 thanksgiving, love and praise were all the words 
 we heard. But for Mr. Jones and his like there was 
 more ; there was something in the air of their talk 
 that was quite unlike the air of Earlham. Surely we 
 were conscious of that ; for from nothing in our own 
 circle could we have derived a knowledge of bad 
 people, wrong and perverted and dangerous — 
 rituahsts, they were called. Our grandfather, 
 indeed, could speak sharply about them ; but these 
 bad people would never have been spoken of or 
 heard of, I think, but for Mr. Jones and his friends. 
 They spoke of them, quite readily. 
 
 We knew all about the rituahsts and their bad 
 ways, and the " High Church Party," and so forth ; 
 but these matters could not be taken over-seriously, 
 where our uncles made free with the talk. I quite 
 understood the delicious impudence of one of them 
 (the youngest, the most shameless, the one of all 
 that company who was to vanish first, mourned 
 untimely), when he called out his ribaldry at Mr. 
 Jones across the table. I can clearly see that 
 particular greybeard — ^large, jocose, loudly enjoying 
 his good meal ; from a neighbouring country parish 
 he had lately moved to some living at Cromer or 
 Lowestoft. " Mr. Jones," cried our uncle, dimphng 
 with effrontery, " I suppose, now that you've gone 
 to a fashionable church at the sea-side, you've 
 become terribly ritualistic! " Oh the gay pug- 
 nacious whoop of Mr. Jones — can you hear it ? 
 " What, what, what ? What's this ? " "Oh yes, 
 Mr. Jones, I expect you've become a sad Roman." 
 Bursting and bubbling with rich indignant playful- 
 ness, Mr. Jones snorted and trumpeted; and our 
 
 19 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 grandfather's smile would broaden as he carved the 
 
 ioint. 
 
 6 
 
 From the dining-room, from the company and 
 the quality, the children would go bounding into 
 the other world, the domestic household. Racing 
 along the flagged passage to the kitchen, perhaps— 
 or up the echoing backstairs to the top of the house, 
 the spacious attics and landings, store-rooms and 
 linen-presses — wherever they went they found 
 deUght. All over the house there was the same free 
 wash of light and air, and a fragrance of clean wood, 
 homely soap, fresh linen ; the upper passages were 
 bare and carpetless, full of echoes in the long 
 stretches of scrubbed boards. The children had the 
 right that only children possess — the freedom of 
 both worlds, upstairs and downstairs, the attic and 
 the parlour ; at home with the merry servants as 
 liberally as with the life below. Only children quite 
 bridge that interval; they alone live naturally in 
 both communities. 
 
 The household community at Earlham was 
 briUiant and irresistible. It was all bright faces, 
 good talk, interesting employment; year by year 
 we were gathered in afresh and welcomed back to a 
 world that seemed never to know change. We 
 dropped into it, we made free of it to the point of 
 being an embarrassment at times, I surely think. 
 If we were we never suspected it, nor had reason to 
 do so. But is it pleasant, when you are marshalling 
 your forces for the dishing of a dinner — ^when you 
 are sweeping, dusting, washing, mending — ^is it 
 pleasant, when you are busy and responsible, to be 
 
 20 
 
INDOORS 
 
 beset by young idleness in knickerbockers, appealed 
 to, clung to, danced with by irresponsibility in a 
 pinafore, at any time, aU times? Always busy, 
 always patient, always gay and brilliant with a 
 sparkling of humour and originality, that household 
 lives in memory. Let affection, gratitude, admira- 
 tion, be joined in a greeting to them. 
 
 The hall {the hall, as distinguished from the 
 " front hall ") was a fine place, almost collegiate, 
 with its long table, its high ceiling, its trophies on 
 the waU. Into the pantry that opened from it a 
 child would hardly venture; not that welcome 
 would faU, but because the world of the pantry is 
 excessively distinguished and experienced; and in 
 our attachment to our admirable friend, the red- 
 bearded butler, there is always mingled a touch of 
 dread. Of dread, do I really mean ? — dread of our 
 genial friend ? Well, there was a crisp ironic edge 
 to his words and looks, and such a free and master- 
 ful style about him as he strode through the hall 
 (the " front haU ") with the plates and the great 
 silver dish-covers to the dining-room, and as he 
 drummed on the gong at arm's length, with a 
 military action, and as he fired out of the pantry 
 window a brisk remark (with just that delightful 
 suspicion of the Norfolk drawl) to the coachman or 
 the gardener at the back-door. He was a man of the 
 world, that was it ; no doubt one felt very young 
 w:ith him. One grew a little older, perhaps, in the 
 course of years, and in unofficial hours he could be a 
 companion, immensely resourceful, on the river, on 
 a birds'-nesting excursion — such days I recall, when 
 we seemed to move upon the same level. But his 
 
 21 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 level in general was far above one's own ; he was 
 a man of mark. See him especially on days when 
 he was in his element, when our grandmother was 
 entertaining a few of her friends — a couple of 
 hundred old souls from the work-house, say, or an 
 army of school-children, swarming over the garden ; 
 he was in command and control of the situation. 
 He did not particularly stoop, indeed, to their 
 gossip or sport ; I fancy him always surveying our 
 grandmother's poor things with that amused, 
 sardonic light in his eye ; friendly, but briskly so, 
 without effusion of sentiment. But the success of 
 the occasion was in his hands, and it was safe ; he 
 organized and directed, and nothing that he handled 
 went amiss. Every one who knew Earlham knew 
 that man, and honoured him. He was the very 
 faithful friend of our grandparents. 
 
 Round about the pantry window and the back- 
 door there was a stir of life, in the morning hours, of 
 which I always recapture the sense in reading of 
 country-houses in the eighteenth century, and the 
 routine of the old isolated, largely self-supporting 
 village-mansion. Of course in our day there were 
 punctual carts of tradesmen from Norwich, and 
 the butler no longer brewed in the brew-house, and 
 the rambhng offices and dependencies of the old 
 mansion were mostly deserted. But there they 
 still were, and about the back-door and the flagged 
 lobby with its benches within, there seemed to 
 linger a tradition of another century. You found 
 something hke the sociable centre of a community 
 there, you saw the substructure of an ancient estab- 
 lishment ; the tradesman's cart had not completely 
 
 22 
 
INDOORS 
 
 replaced it with our more hand-to-mouth, more 
 improvised manner of existence. A stable-boy 
 brought the white horse to turn the pump; the 
 gardener, the coachman, the keeper tramped in and 
 out. Can I ever have seen a pedlar undoing a bale 
 of finery and gimcrackery at that door, with the 
 maids clustering round him ? I have seen such an 
 incident, or heard of it — and the difference between 
 seeing and hearing is so slight to a child. 
 
 There certainly was one clear note of the ancien 
 regime never wanting by the back-door. The halt, 
 the maimed, the needy were invariably there; no 
 modern rule that you must not " give to beggars " 
 was ever recognized at Earlham. As I pass along 
 the fresh-smelling dark passage to the flagged entry, 
 I seem to know of two figures that I shall assuredly 
 find there. One is the gardener, who stands before 
 a table on which are arranged all the vases and jars 
 and flower-stands from all the sitting-rooms ; from 
 a basket beside him he fiUs them with an incredible 
 mixture of purple dahlias, red geraniums, orange 
 marigolds, plumes of asparagus. And inevitably 
 behind him, on the bench against the wall, ignored 
 by the gardener (a grim man) but undiscouraged, 
 sits the " poor man " — who has walked from Nor- 
 wich to the fountain of charity, ever unsealed, that 
 flows for all the needy at Earlham. 
 
 I believe the good butler, no sentimentalist, used 
 to intercept the most shameless, protecting our 
 grandmother from the continual assault upon her 
 benevolence, so far as he could. It was a poor 
 chance for a professional cadger when Sidell was 
 first upon the scene; he would come marching 
 
 23 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 down the passage with a bland business-Hke air, 
 entirely proof against mere spectacular woes. But 
 how often our grandmother was successfully 
 engaged by the tale of misfortune, of honest merit 
 in distress — ^it was always new to her, an appeahng 
 and personal concern. Tears were in her eyes, 
 a beautiful lament in her voice, as she listened to 
 the tale, and exclaimed, and spoke fervent words of 
 sympathy and comfort. Her heart was reached, 
 her faith never knew misgiving. Something could 
 be done on the spot, food and clothing and money 
 at least were at hand ; it was utterly beyond her to 
 weigh and calculate, to defer, to take an impersonal 
 view. I easily see her as she moves to the kitchen 
 window, just outside the door, and calls to the cook 
 within; and Mrs. Chapman appears, small and 
 stout and rosy, not without a look of guarded 
 disapproval in her black eyes — for she too is ready 
 with her resentment at the way our grandmother's 
 charity is " took advantage of." But there it is — 
 it cannot be helped; the stranger is fed, tended, 
 comforted, and departs with something solid in his 
 pocket. Our grandmother had nothing in hers, 
 perhaps ; but she dipped into that of Mrs. Chapman 
 — ^whose weekly " book," it used to be said, was 
 largely filled with these irregular entries. " Poor 
 man (one eye), two-and-six; poor man (wooden 
 leg), five shillings; poor woman (two babies), ten 
 shillings " — such would be the record of very much 
 of the housekeeping at Earlham. 
 
 Let us beheve that there were many more grate- 
 ful and encouraged spirits, at the end of it all, than 
 there were confirmed impostors and wastrels. The 
 
 24 
 
M 
 
 INDOORS 
 
 ^eat glow of devoted affection that our grand- 
 mother created around her, during half a century at 
 Eajrlham, was a gift to Hfe that cannot be measured. 
 Bull there were impostors in plenty; they readily 
 trod the road to Earlham ; and if ever one of them 
 was detected and unmasked, our grandmother's 
 sorrowful surprise and consternation were intense. 
 The poor man with the wooden leg, out of work 
 through no favdt of his own, with his children half- 
 starving, had turned out to be — to be naughty, she 
 would say; " that naughty man " was her severest 
 phrase; her heaviest condemnation was her 
 wounded tenderness and disappointment. I 
 suppose she was often disappointed ; but each time 
 seemed a strange lamentable exception, something 
 that could not happen again. It was forgotten in 
 what was surely much commoner, a friendship in 
 which her pure and tender faith was the most help- 
 ful part of her charitable gift. 
 
 There were nooks and corners in the house where 
 she loved to secrete small stores of good food, 
 gathered from the dinner-table — grapes, a jeUy, a 
 dumpling, saved for a particular destination. 
 There was a cupboard of her own, in the haU, with 
 baskets on a shelf, and in the baskets a basin of 
 soup or a peach. No one ever saw her drive out 
 in the afternoon without watching the bestowal 
 of these under the seats of the carriage, before she 
 was ready to start ; the butler, following her down 
 the steps with the rug over his arm, had always a 
 covered basket in his hand. And night after night, 
 towards bed-time, she was to be seen busy about 
 her cupboard, with a half-surreptitious air — but 
 
 25 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 every one knew that she was preparing the meal slie 
 always left in the porch for the poHceman, for him 
 to find when he made his round at dead of night ; 
 and in the silence of the small hours you might lear 
 a window thrown open, and her clear voice calling 
 to him, and an exchange of cheerful christian 
 words. 
 
 7 
 
 But I forgot — the children were racing to the 
 top of the house, I think, bent on a certain errand. 
 At the very top of the house is a short passage, 
 approached (in the lavish old way) by a staircase 
 at either end, where you reach the attics in the 
 roof. One of these rooms it is that we make for, 
 at any hour of the day; and with my hand once 
 more upon the latch I could hesitate and draw 
 back, before opening the door to such a surge of 
 associations. But who ever hesitated at that door ? 
 We tumble in, at aU hours ; and I believe there is 
 not an inch of it, walls and floor, that I could not 
 exactly describe at this moment. 
 
 It is a very bright and pleasant room, with two 
 southern dormer-windows that command the great 
 lawn. A bed is immediately in front of you, as you 
 enter ; at the foot of it a narrow sofa ; between one 
 of the windows and the fire-place a high-backed 
 arm-chair, with a small round table before it. And 
 in the chair there sits, waiting for you, always 
 quietly ready and pleased at your approach, an 
 old lady, a charmingly dressed and capped and 
 shawled old lady, with soft cheeks, bright eyes, and 
 smooth creamy-white hair under her cap — the old 
 
 26 
 
INDOORS 
 
 friend, the old nurse, of all our grandmother's many 
 chUdren. 
 
 Within our memory, that of the children of the 
 children, she had always sat up there in her room ; 
 infirmity held her fast. Her eyes met us with a 
 welcome as we entered, with soft clear looks of 
 pleasure, and we huddled round her with the news 
 of the day. Gentle and motherly she was, comfort- 
 able to a child; that is the impression that comes 
 back to me from the beginning. It was happy and 
 satisfjdng to be with her; things went well, the 
 world was secure and friendly in her room. The 
 hours we spent there were hours that could be 
 relied on, unfaUingly good and right. How was 
 that ? We clustered about her, settled upon her, 
 installed ourselves at her table with our books or 
 paint-boxes ; we examined her possessions, we felt 
 at home. And yet, as I look into her soft dimpled 
 face and hear her kind voice, she seems to be using 
 no arts, to be doing nothing to keep the children 
 amused and happy; she simply sits with a light 
 of pleasure on her face, and the children are always 
 good and occupied and entertained in her pres- 
 ence. 
 
 And certainly it was not only the children — 
 she was sought out by everybody in the house ; her 
 room was a gathering-place for aU. Old and young 
 needed her ahke; they brought her their news, 
 their troubles, hopes, interests, confiding everything 
 to her deep heart. She sat there aU day long in her 
 corner, never leaving her room, and the life around 
 her, age or youth, came to her perpetually for help. 
 She had a gift for all ; and though I speak with not 
 
 27 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 much more than the remembrance of her gift for 
 a child, I can easily see that at any age, in all 
 circumstances, one would inevitably turn to her. 
 And still I wonder what it was, the secret she 
 possessed ; for even while it is plain that one would 
 go straight to her with the burden of the moment, 
 whatever it might be, her loving wisdom seems to 
 ease it with scarcely a word, with no very vocal 
 sympathy or counsel. But so it was; quietly 
 listening and watching, with just her affection and 
 her simple time-mellowed sagacity, she entered the 
 lives about her, and helped them. 
 
 To the children, as I say, it was a sense of well- 
 being, of general rightness, that encompassed them 
 as they sat by her, poring over old treasures and 
 relics that she would produce — or as they wandered 
 and tacked about the room, fingering the hundred 
 small objects with which it was strewn. Every one 
 who came to see her, the children not least, con- 
 tributed to the thick orderly sprinkling of picture- 
 frames, china ornaments, candlesticks, odds and 
 ends, that covered the walls and shelves — a queer 
 museum, with a personal history to every object. 
 To this day the children could give a fair account 
 of that collection; piece by piece they turned it 
 over, as it steadily grew and grew; there was a 
 name and an occasion attached to everything, 
 perhaps an anecdote. But there was not much 
 story-teUing — I am surprised to notice how little. 
 I should have expected to find that we were always 
 clamouring for tales of the past and hanging upon 
 her reminiscences. But that was not her way ; she 
 seemed to look on and smile her benediction while 
 
 28 
 
INDOORS 
 
 we amused ourselves, and the hour prospered under 
 her mere look. 
 
 She saw from her window the smooth expanse of 
 the lawn — the lawn that was so great a part of the 
 character of the garden. It was very large, wider 
 than the whole southern front of the house ; and 
 some twenty or thirty yards from the garden-door it 
 suddenly shelved up in a steep bank, and the main 
 expanse was on the higher level. It was thus Uke 
 a raised plain, outspread before the upper windows 
 of the house; to right and left were shrubberies 
 of oak, larch, flowering trees, and beyond it was 
 the sunk fence and the oaks of the park. There was 
 room for widely scattered groups of people, intent 
 here and there on their different games, croquet- 
 hoops on one side, a lawn-tennis net on the other. 
 Shadows lay across it in lengthening jags and 
 promontories through the afternoon ; and our old 
 friend, at her high window, watched the Hght 
 dresses and flannels that twinkled in the distance, 
 in the light and shade. Serenely patient, expecting 
 nothing, demanding nothing, she lived up there, 
 with not a thought or an interest in the world, I 
 suppose, outside the hves of all of us. And pre- 
 sently she heard our feet on the stairs — the children, 
 it might be, or our uncles from their game, or a 
 visiting cousin, or our grandmother, mounting to 
 that high room for brief repose in the midst of her 
 incessant movement and occupation ; and the gentle 
 old face by the window lit up for us all, and wrought 
 its speU of harmony and comfort. 
 
 Her room was really, I think, the centre of the 
 house, while she lived. There, in all the coming 
 
 29 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 and going, in the middle of changing life, the 
 children growing up, the young people marrying, 
 the new children appearing— in the midst of the 
 continual stir of hospitahty with which Earlham 
 never ceased to echo, gathering in one generation 
 after another— there, for so many years, she re- 
 mained immobile, always the same, always to be 
 found in her corner. Through the adventures and 
 possibilities of the day, innumerable they seemed 
 to us, the thought of cUmbing her stairs and paying 
 her a visit ran as an unbroken thread; there was 
 never an hour when that plan was doubtful or 
 impossible. And for every one else it was the same ; 
 there was one certainty of daily life, to sit by her 
 side in the window-nook and to tell her what had 
 happened since yesterday, since this morning. 
 
 Far back, in an earlier generation, it was a 
 tradition of the place, we used to be told, that the 
 family circle should be drawn together at certain 
 hours of the day — gathered round a table under a 
 lamp, perhaps, with books and appropriate occupa- 
 tions, or for talk, seriously directed and regulated — 
 f or a " settlement," anyhow, that being the family 
 word for it ; but it was a tradition that was not at 
 all in the line of our grandmother's restless active 
 original genius. She was incapable of living by 
 fixed plans, stated hours, humdrum habits; and 
 it comes back to me that the Earlham day reflected 
 her free spirit. It is impossible to imagine her 
 leading a settlement. In the whole house she had 
 not a place of her own, not a sitting-room for her 
 private use (at least she never used it), not a chair 
 or a corner sacred to her ; she ranged freely, sat for 
 
 30 
 
INDOORS 
 
 a moment to scribble a note, threw open a window 
 (that, always), and passed on. It meant that at 
 any time there was no saying where she might be 
 or might not; and the manner of her genius per- 
 vaded the house. I remember how a child would 
 feel that there might be important events proceed- 
 ing and companies assembled somewhere in the 
 house, but that you could not tell where; to fix 
 yourself in one room might always entail your 
 missing an interesting occasion in another. There 
 was very httle routine, no centre of gravity in the 
 place — none, that is to say, except in that upper 
 chamber where time stood still. You might find 
 every other room in the house deserted (with all 
 the windows open), no nucleus of life an3Avhere; 
 but up there was fixity, security, a settlement 
 indeed. And so there was a constant tendency in 
 that direction, and life of aU ages set habitually 
 towards our beloved old friend. 
 
 8 
 The Green Room, the Chintz Room, the North 
 Room, the Great Room — ^but there I pause; the 
 Great Room is too strange and singular to pass by. 
 It was enormous; that is to say, it was no bigger 
 than the drawing-room beneath, but it was exactly 
 as big (extending all over it), and for a bed-room, 
 low-ceilinged, with only two or three far-scattered 
 small windows, it made a broad acre of floor. It 
 was undeniably sinister ; with the thin light of its 
 small windows and its huge spread, it was like a 
 prison-cell designed for a giant. Sometimes, waking 
 in the darkness, safely in your own bed elsewhere, 
 
 31 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 you might be visited by the thought of the Great 
 Room— how the moonhght would be trickhng over 
 the floor there at that moment, how the deathly 
 silence might be broken by a strange low muttering, 
 then a dull thud, and suddenly a scream rang out — 
 but enough ; even to one penetrating there in full 
 daylight, hanging upon the housemaids at their 
 work, the Great Room was sufficiently disquieting. 
 
 I believe there was indeed some legend of horror 
 told of that room, but I never knew of it till after- 
 times. To our grandmother fear and its fascina- 
 tions were unknown ; she thought such stories silly 
 and ugly, and altogether discountenanced them. 
 She would not have the sweet old place profaned by 
 ugliness, by idle fancies that are worse than idle, 
 that are false and wrong. If Earlham was haunted, 
 it could only be by spirits of the blest — ^by Aunt 
 Catherine, perhaps, or Uncle Joseph John, revisiting 
 the old rooms with a soft Quakerly benediction. 
 She was pleased with the thought that some touch 
 of a kindly hand unseen might stir the curtain, 
 some mild and gracious sigh of vanished life, 
 affectionately hovering near, be uttered upon the 
 midnight ; it was seemly and right, in a place whose 
 children had loved it so tenderly of old. Perhaps 
 such sweet wistful roaming and wandering might be 
 permitted to a loving spirit— who can say? But 
 terrifying and ugly things of the past are mercifully 
 buried and forgotten; no power can live in them 
 to disturb a place like Earlham, glowing in the love 
 of its children. 
 
 The Blue Room, the East Room — as I make the 
 round of the house, images start up, not at all terri- 
 
 32 
 
INDOORS 
 
 fying, from every corner. Each of the rooms at 
 Earlham had its Uttle powder-closet, sliced out of 
 itself or scooped in the wall or pushed forward in an 
 excrescence without ; and in the closet of the East 
 Room there was a wondrous bath, more like a tank 
 or cistern, inserted there by Uncle Joseph John, it 
 may be, Borrow's old gentleman in the broad hat. 
 He or one of the others of his day must have had 
 the fantastic notion of bathing in water every 
 morning, from head to foot; and so the powder- 
 closet had been fitted with a great black awful 
 leaden tank, under a wooden Ud ; I would as soon 
 have taken my bath in the well by the back-door, 
 I remember thinking, as have entrusted myself to 
 that black pit. In the ceiling above it there were 
 perforated holes, for a shower-bath; so that our 
 ancestor was not only immersed, but rained upon 
 from overhead — evidently a man of nerve, and of 
 ideas beyond his age. I picture him bringing his 
 friends to view the curiosity. But after him no one 
 apparently, any more than I myself, had the nerve 
 to plunge into his pit. It was never used ; only a 
 child would sometimes climb on to the wooden lid 
 and thump out its hoUow echo, or tug it open a 
 few inches and peer into the empty black depth 
 with a shudder. 
 
 The East Room, with its broad windows looking 
 to the green back-yard, brings me to the end of the 
 chief passage, near our nursery; the East Room 
 door and the nursery door (one of the five) are left 
 and right towards the end of the passage. One 
 drifts back into the bright bare nursery. From 
 thence you can pass from room to room, the whole 
 
 33 D 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 length of the house, without touching the passage 
 at all. Every room opens into the next; there is 
 our grandmother's charming panelled bed-room, 
 with the old portrait of the unknown lady in blue, 
 framed in the woodwork of the chimney-piece ; there 
 is another room and another (our grandmother's 
 sitting-room, where she seldom happens to sit) ; 
 there is a scrap of a dressing-room, and then there 
 is the Ante-room Chamber, the nicest room in the 
 house, assigned to the principal guest of the moment. 
 That was a delightful room — ^with windows on two 
 sides, a vast four-poster, and a door in one corner 
 where you fell down a Uttle private stair-case in the 
 wall, and were shed into the great dim ante-room, 
 of which I have spoken already. And this was the 
 corner of the house where Aunt Catherine, if any- 
 where, should come straying out of the past, roam- 
 ing among her memories in the silence of the night, 
 and just betraying herself sometimes, perhaps, by a 
 light sigh or murmur of full-hearted tenderness, as 
 she treads the well-known stairs again. The Ante- 
 room Chamber was her room, during the long hfe- 
 time that she spent at Earlham. 
 
 She was our great-grandfather's sister, and 
 Ehzabeth Fry's and Uncle Joseph John's; there 
 were many more of them too, a large gay party, 
 and Catherine was the eldest. Their father brought 
 them to make their home at Earlham, long ago; 
 and their beautiful mother (exquisite she is, in a 
 picture by Gainsborough) died when the eldest was 
 still very young. There were eleven of them, a 
 blooming brood, and Catherine ruled the house. 
 She lived on and on, continually at Earlham wheii 
 
 34 
 
INDOORS 
 
 the rest of them scattered off into the world; she 
 lived with her brother and his wife. Our grand- 
 mother, as a girl and in the time of her first marriage 
 (to a nephew of Aunt Catherine's), had known and 
 gratefully loved her. When she spoke of " dear 
 Aunt Catherine," it gave us a sense of reaching 
 back into the dawn of time. That our grandmother, 
 a girl, had known such antiquities, called them 
 Uncles and Aunts — nothing could be more legendary 
 than that. 
 
 9 
 These old Gumeys were people of note, in their 
 
 degree; together they made a group that is still 
 expressive and marked with character. They were 
 handsome, gifted, humane ; and as they grew and 
 reached their moral stature they might fairly be 
 called very good. Their saintliness bequeathed a 
 savour to the place; but their lighter youth left 
 a ringing echo that had never died out. Is it 
 supposed that a family of young Friends, four or 
 five generations ago, were of necessity bred and 
 trained in puritanical strictness, their merry-making 
 frowned upon, their chatter silenced with pious 
 admonition? Look, then, at the seven Miss 
 Gurneys, all blooming and sparkling, well known 
 over the country-side in their scarlet cloaks or 
 habits; there was no unnatural solemnity in that 
 bright chorus. Once, we were told, they all joined 
 hands across the Norwich road and stopped the 
 mail-coach — a gay-coloured picture, under a frosty 
 winter sky. 
 
 Their father. I should think, was a worthy and 
 
 35 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 not an interesting man. All his history is that he 
 married the charming Gainsborough lady, Catherine 
 Bell was her name, and that his affairs prospered 
 far enough to enable him to plant his family at 
 Earlham in 1786 — two good achievements in a life 
 not otherwise notable. No legend ever grew about 
 his name ; he seems to have sat in the background 
 placidly till he died. His children were of a very 
 different stamp. Even when they left off their 
 scarlet cloaks and purple boots and took to stricter 
 ways, clothing themselves in drab and dun, their 
 originality was never quenched. They had the 
 secret of giving a kind of lilt or fling to their pious 
 exercises, or some of them had at any rate, and in 
 their saintly old age they were never quite cut off 
 from their merry youth. They created legend 
 wherever they went ; bits of it that clung to various 
 corners of the house and garden at Earlham were 
 familiar to the children in a later day. Here, in the 
 Ante-room Chamber, was where good Catherine 
 used to collect her small sisters round her (the very 
 type and pattern of a settlement) and encourage 
 their young ideas, sympathetically eliciting and 
 directing them. She managed her big family 
 (beginning to do so when she was herself about 
 seventeen) with tender tact and judgment; and 
 she had the satisfaction of sitting nearly all her life 
 long at Earlham to watch their virtue and felicity 
 in their different careers. 
 
 Often I have tried to picture that party ; and I 
 get flashes of sight of them that are strangely 
 familiar. But that is in the garden, mostly, where 
 I have not yet arrived ; and the vision that faces 
 
 36 
 
INDOORS 
 
 me now, in the doorway of Aunt Catherine's room, 
 belongs to our own day, when all those old Friends, 
 though they hved long, were many years dead and 
 gone. But in truth the figure that I see stepping 
 iorth with splendid dignity and grace, with a grand 
 air, sweeping her skirt regaUy about her, might 
 seem to have emerged from old Catherine's time, 
 though from a greater world than hers ever was. 
 This striking and wonderful lady — ^whom it so 
 happens that I catch sight of, framed in the doorway 
 that leads to our grandmother's sitting-room — 
 treads the homely floor as though it were the gallery 
 of a palace, with a shining parquet stretching a 
 hundred yards before her. She advances like an 
 ambassadress, hke a Grand Duchess — she moves 
 historically, bringing something august into the 
 place and the occasion. Her head should have been 
 tired and plumed; but she needed no plumes — 
 they seemed to sweep the lintel, whatever she wore. 
 She was old, as I remember her, grey-haired, her 
 face nobly marked with age; but her figure was 
 slender and upright, there was youth in her flowing 
 movement. 1 have seen no one to match her, to 
 approach her, for perfect and natural grandeur — ^it 
 is the only word. 
 
 She was the daughter of one of the old Friends of 
 whom I have been speaking, Samuel by name, and 
 she inherited all the free originality and charm 
 which they had to bequeath. But she had added 
 much more that was entirely her own; and what 
 it was that she had added I measure by looking at 
 the home of her birth — very vividly known to me 
 by legend, though it had long vanished at the time 
 
 37 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 of our appearance. In one of those plain and 
 opulent suburban mansions, round which and over 
 which the tide of East London has flowed in the 
 last half-century — one of those sound big Georgian 
 villas, with plenty of well-kept flower-beds and 
 shrubberies and hot-houses, where solid and expen- 
 sive comfort was joined with a dread of worldly 
 show, where the spirit of an early Christian was 
 engaged in large financial interests and operations — 
 that was where she had been bred, with her brothers 
 and sisters. It was a closely compacted world; 
 and as it exists, or something Uke it, in certain well- 
 known pages — Sophia Alethea Newcome lived in 
 such a house, and so did the parents of Ruskin — ^it 
 strikes the imagination oppressively, no doubt. 
 But I like to think that in this world the Society of 
 Friends brought a brisker infusion; they were 
 lighter, they were less solemn than Sophia Alethea, 
 with her tracts and her droning preachers; they 
 wore their piety more easily, more geniaUy, less as a 
 burden and a bondage. Did they not ? At any rate 
 our good great-grandfather, Samuel Gurney, was a 
 man of wise and sunny humour. He carried up to 
 London, from Earlham, some strain of whimsical 
 humanity that he never lost, a shrewd appreciative 
 chuckle ; I speak as though I had seen and heard it, 
 for I did see and hear it, transmitted to certain of his 
 family. And so his household, solid as it was, could 
 never be heavy ; there could be nothing like a drone 
 or a dull sing-song in his piety. 
 
 But that Quaker-world, nevertheless, was aloof 
 and aloft and detached from the general structure 
 of life ; it strikes one as held in suspense, with space 
 
 38 
 
INDOORS 
 
 all round it, nowhere rooted in the soil. Consider, 
 for instance, the old family-circle at Earlham. If 
 you had fallen in upon them on a summer afternoon, 
 a century ago and more, when they were chattering 
 and roaming about the place, or grouped about the 
 garden, reading, drawing, stitching, it would have 
 seemed aperfect pictureof anEngUsh country-home, 
 the beautiful old house and park with its bevy of 
 fresh young daughters among the ancestral oaks; 
 nothing could look more natural, traditional, after 
 the home-grown fashion, in the line of English 
 ways. But it was not so, really. I don't only mean 
 that these people were new-comers, the daughters of 
 a prosperous merchant who had worked his way up 
 to the ripe style and dignity of Earlham — ^who had 
 not ripened with it. They were new-comers ; but 
 there would be nothing against the EngUsh tradition 
 in that, after aU; not once or twice in our story 
 have new men rooted themselves upon old acres. 
 That, however, was exactly what these people did 
 not do; they came, they brought a blessing, but 
 they never — how shall I put it? — ^they never 
 involved or imphcated themselves with the earth 
 they trod. In aU their long tenure of Earlham, 
 extending over three generations, they never owned 
 the soil upon which it stood ; and though the fact 
 may have meant nothing, or nothing more than a 
 chapter of accidents, stiU it seems in a way symboli- 
 cal. The Quaker-circle was a law to itself ; it had 
 its own idiom, not of language only. 
 
 They did not belong to the country-side, they did 
 not belong to the world. Their Christian piety took 
 them on Sundays, not to the ivy-tangled flint 
 
 39 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 church at their gates, where the ancient threads of 
 village hfe were gathered up, but to some blank 
 meeting-house in a chance back-street of Norwich. 
 Their faith, their fervour, their charitable hearts 
 were wide and deep ; but around them was the void, 
 isolating them in a world of their own. I am evi- 
 dently trying to say that they were primitive Chris- 
 tians. And when they went out and became 
 missionaries and reformers, hke Aunt Fry among 
 the prisoners, touring the capitals of Europe, 
 reasoning graciously with kings and statesmen — 
 then more than ever they were distinguished from 
 the world, they were unlike other people, they were 
 Friends. When they went out and became bankers 
 and merchants, and prospered exceedingly, it was 
 doubtless the same — at least I hope it was; their 
 prosperity, we always understood and believed, was 
 founded upon the rigidest Friendly principles. 
 
 I conclude, then, that Samuel Gurney's solid 
 establishment to the east of London — the place still 
 exists as an open playground, somewhere in the 
 brick waste of the Stratford region — was deUghtful, 
 cheerful, hospitable, generous; but unrelated, un- 
 conditioned, in the widest sense unworldly. I see 
 no background to it, nothing to link it with history. 
 And yet there steps out this daughter of the house, 
 this noble great lady with her imperial tread, who 
 crosses the room as though it were the galerie des 
 glaces, and she herself serenely, unconsciously at 
 home there. 
 
 She indeed had issued forth from the close circle 
 and had joined the march of the world ; and when I 
 recall her bountiful and vivacious kindness to the 
 
 40 
 
INDOORS 
 
 children of our generation, to us, an air of the grand 
 Steele seems to breathe through it, an initiation for 
 the children into the meaning of style. But to 
 foUow my memories of this wondrous great-aunt 
 would take me too far ; this is only a glimpse that I 
 chance to get of her at Earlham. And there is 
 another fleeting picture — in the same room, our 
 grandmother's sitting-room — that I may place 
 beside it, for it is a picture of another member of old 
 Samuel's large family. One of our great-uncles, 
 this, and a very fine old gentleman, though not 
 magnificent and European, hke his sister; he was 
 British and joUy, with a lovely wink of sljrness and 
 mystery when he drew his hand from his pocket and 
 held it out, the broad palm studded with shillings 
 and half-crowns, for us to choose the coin we 
 preferred. He was stone-deaf, and it needed a great 
 deal of resolution to pipe one's thanks into the 
 gaping mouth of his bright trumpet. But at this 
 moment, in the sitting-room, what was it that had 
 gone wrong ? Nothing serious, nothing to matter, 
 only enough to ruffle his genial face with just a 
 passing, pouting breeze of displeasure — enough to 
 make him present his trumpet at his daughter, 
 bending over him, with an indignant and question- 
 ing flourish. What had she to say about it ? Nothing 
 except that she was so sorry, so very sorry — but 
 her pretty voice rose higher and higher, wailing into 
 the trumpet-mouth. "I'm so-o-o-o sorry"; and 
 the breeze passed, geniahty shone back — and it is aU 
 vanished and gone, leaving only the Httle unefface- 
 able memory of the fresh-coloured old gentleman, 
 with pursed mouth and inquiring eye, his daughter 
 
 41 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 stooping over his chair, and the clear soaring wail of 
 her distress. Who shall say what a child viU 
 remember and what forget ? 
 
 10 
 
 The sitting-room gave you an impression of big 
 high windows, a matted floor, some rather spindly 
 gilt furniture — but especially, perhaps, of a quantity 
 of water-colour pictures, evidently aU by one hand, 
 with which the walls were covered. They were all 
 pictures of Earlham, the house, the park, the village ; 
 there may have been twenty or thirty of them, 
 rhey were lightly tinted old things, done with a 
 good deal of accompUshment ; and resolutely pic- 
 turesque, as though the drawing-master had stood 
 looking over the shoulder of the artist, pointing out 
 that the bough of a tree should always chance to 
 arch over the foreground, and a figure in a red cloak 
 pass across the middle distance in a woodland scene. 
 The facts of the landscape gave way if they con- 
 flicted with the rules of the game, which the artist 
 played conscientiously; but they were pretty pic- 
 tures, not without an elegant distinction, and on the 
 whole they were faithful portraits of the place. 
 
 The artist was Richenda Gurney, sister of old 
 Samuel, and one of the blooming seven in red coats 
 who stopped the coach. She was very fluent with 
 brush and pencil, covered many walls with her 
 framed pictures, and fiUed a pile of sketch-books 
 with drawings of mossy cottages and ivied ruins 
 wherever she went. She married a clergyman, a 
 real Estabhshed rector, Mr. Cunningham of Lowes- 
 
 42 
 
INDOORS 
 
 toft church; and then she left being a Quakeress, 
 and " went over " — I dare say it was not far to go. 
 Mr. Cunningham's church services, I have heard, 
 were very comfortable and homely. On Sunday 
 evenings especially, when the lamps burnt bright 
 and warm in the church, and the parishioners came 
 trooping into their seats, and the sea-wind moaned 
 without — then was the time for Aunt Cunningham 
 to enjoy herself among her flock. Evening church 
 was infinitely grateful and satisfying to them aU — 
 a cheerfxil, sociable scene, with the bright lamp-light 
 falling on aU the weU-known faces, rosy in the 
 pleasant warmth after a cold walk. They rise from 
 their knees. Aunt Cunningham and her friends, and 
 settle themselves in their places with beaming looks, 
 disposing their preparations about them, their wraps 
 and Bibles and hymn-books, for an hour that is the 
 treat of the whole week. " Here we aU are again," 
 they seem to say, radiantly glancing. " Now! " — 
 and off they go in a fine florid hymn-tune, " Helms- 
 ley " I hope, with plenty of trailing sweeps up to 
 high notes, in which enjoyment can really give 
 tongue. 
 
 It is seventy, eighty, ninety years ago; but I 
 could imagine I had seen it. Uncle and Aunt 
 Cunningham were greatly honoured and cherished 
 in the legend as it reached us ; and the legend had a 
 particular association with Earlham in the coming 
 time, the time that eventually brought the children 
 thither of whom I speak. There was a curate at 
 Lowestoft, fresh from Cambridge — a taU, lean 
 young man, with a large brow and a narrow pointed 
 chin, looking like a scholar and a student. Before 
 
 43 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 long he married and came to live at EarUiam ; he 
 was our grandfather— to be accurate, our step- 
 grandfather, as I have said. 
 
 Earlham, it will be understood, had first been the 
 home of the big Quaker family, the eleven brothers 
 and sisters ; and then, when they scattered, of one 
 of the brothers, Joseph John. He died in the forties ; 
 and what was then to become of Earlham, which 
 had made itself so beloved to half a century of 
 Gurneys ? The question was asked by a Gurney of 
 the next generation, John by name, who was living 
 with his young wife in a house down by the church, 
 in Earlham village. They walked up to the Hall, 
 the day after old Joseph John had been buried, 
 walked round the garden and on to the great lawn, 
 and looked up at the empty windows of the house. 
 Who will hve here now ? — is there nobody to carry 
 on the good tradition ? They asked and wondered, 
 and they might have wished to do so themselves ; 
 it seemed beyond them at the time. The house 
 stood empty for a few years, but only for a few; 
 then this John Gurney of the new generation, son 
 of old Samuel, brought his young wife and their 
 small children to live there after all. For himself 
 it was not a long sojourn; he died very soon. But 
 his young widow, stiU very young, lived there for 
 nearly fifty years, till the end of her days, and she 
 was our grandmother. 
 
 So young, so pretty, so good, with her famUy of 
 small children, she was much befriended in her 
 widowhood by the surviving old Gurneys — who in- 
 deed had known and loved her, I suppose, from the 
 beginning, for the home of her parents was near by, 
 
 44 
 
INDOORS 
 
 in the Cathedral Close of Norwich, and from there 
 she had been married. And now she was alone a.C 
 Earlham, and many of the old Gurneys were dead 
 and gone by this time, but there were still 3 few of 
 them left. Catherine was gone, the eldest of the 
 eleven ; she had been the best friend of all, and she 
 had lived just long enough to give her blessing to a 
 new Catherine Gurney, our grandmother's one 
 daughter. Of those that remained of the old 
 generation, the kindest and best-beloved, no doubt, 
 was Aunt Cunningham at Lowestoft. The cheerful 
 rectory by the sea was well-known to our grand- 
 mother's children, and she herself would be made 
 thrice-welcome there. 
 
 And so in process of time she married again, and 
 Earlham received the tall thin benevolent stranger, 
 and a new tradition was begun there that was no 
 break with the old. The new master of the house 
 was now the rector of St. Giles's, the big church with 
 the fine old tower and belfry on the outskirt (then 
 and long after the outskirt) of Norwich, as you leave 
 the city by the Earlham road. He was rector there 
 for thirty years, and I know something of the many 
 great works that he achieved in the place, he and 
 our grandmother together. But I speak only of 
 what I can see, by my own memory or that of others, 
 and here sight fails me ; for in our day, as I have 
 mentioned, his cure was that of the red-tiled 
 cottages at Earlham and Colney. I only see exactly 
 how his tail black figure would disappear across the 
 lawn, trudging steadily, as he set off by the fields for 
 the Norwich road ; and I guess that his name is not 
 forgotten in the parish of St. Giles — William 
 
 45 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 Nottidge Ripley, a memorable rector there for 
 tliirty years. 
 
 II 
 
 The new tradition at Earlham was very like the 
 old ; but in certain ways it was a much better one. 
 Our grandparents struck deeply into the soil of the 
 life around them; that sense of a space-encircled, 
 insulated household, which I got from the older 
 story of the place, could not survive for a day in the 
 new condition of things which they created. Earl- 
 ham was no longer only a family affair, the centre 
 of a close circle ; it was diffused, spreading year by 
 year in widest commonalty. Our grandfather, thougla 
 he believed that he believed in a doctrine both narrow 
 and harsh — ^how narrow, how blackly intolerant was 
 revealed when it appeared in others of a different 
 clay — ^lived upon free spiritual emotions that broad- 
 ened continually, I judge, as he advanced to old 
 age. And as for our grandmother, her unfettered, 
 untutored, impulsive heart made nothing of any 
 barriers ; it ignored distinctions and conventions, it 
 ranged where it would, swiftly responding to any 
 human call. 
 
 She was one who acted always on impulse, on 
 the beat of the moment ; and since she never knew 
 a thought that was in sight of being a selfish one, 
 the whole surface of her hfe was sensitive and quick 
 to the world about her. A heart like hers can live 
 without scheme or plan, and yet hve in perfect 
 and consistent harmony with itself ; for behind all 
 its wayward expression there can never be but a 
 single motive. Whatever she said or did was 
 
 46 
 
INDOORS 
 
 whatever seemed desirable and inevitable then and 
 there, on the instant ; but it was only the form, the 
 manner, that was unexpected, surprising, sometimes 
 even disconcerting. It was prompted by the pure 
 flame of rapture, I can call it nothing else, which 
 was her constant inspiration — an ardour of faith 
 and love that was both serenely deep, and also to 
 the end, for all her many sorrows, inextinguishably 
 gay. 
 
 She had great dignity, the kind of native dignity 
 and distinction that never needs to take or dreams 
 of taking a single thought for itself. Matronly and 
 motherly, with a fine bearing and sweep of soft 
 raiment, she met the guest and presided over the 
 lavish hospitality of Earlham. And yet it seems 
 to me, looking back, that she was never quite in the 
 place or sustaining the position that you would 
 expect. She has just for the moment slipped out of 
 her place — ^has given up her seat in the carriage, say, 
 to some tired woman she has sighted on the road, 
 while she herself walks home — or she has disap- 
 peared up into the gallery in church to direct the 
 organist (it was really a harmonium) or help a 
 mother embarrassed with a restless child — or she is 
 missed at the head of the table and found at her 
 cupboard in the hall, secreting something that she 
 has filched from one of the dishes for a sick friend ; 
 and always with an air of explaining that she is 
 really not doing what she clearly is, that she has not 
 left her place, that she will be back there so soon 
 that it doesn't count. Then she would join thtf 
 laugh against herself, but never quite admit that it 
 was justified; there was always a special reason 
 
 47 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 for the aberration of the moment that explained it 
 quite away. In her last years, when she was 
 supposed to rest late and not to appear at morning 
 prayers, there would be heard a light rustle on the 
 staircase, while our grandfather was reading and 
 expounding — a rustle, a faint sigh, as she sat by the 
 banisters, beheving herself out of sight ; and weU 
 I see her afterwards when she protests, still seated 
 on the stairs, that indeed she has practically stayed 
 in bed. 
 
 Best of all, perhaps, I see her as she was so often 
 to be seen, in the garden of an early summer morn- 
 ing — very early, before the white dew on the lawn 
 has been touched by any footstep and while every- 
 thing still sparkles and twinkles, " herrlich wie am 
 erst en Tag." To the garden in the freshness of its 
 magic she would often be drawn ; at any hour she 
 might be descried, lightly, informally gowned and 
 wrapped, pacing the gravel-paths with her easy 
 gracious upright movement. One may have seen 
 many people enjo57ing the charm and benediction 
 of nature and drinking in the purity of the morning 
 with delight ; but I am sure I never saw any one who 
 rejoiced in the hour like our grandmother. She 
 moved through the garden, she trod the walks, 
 uplifted and transfigured, as though with triumph 
 and exultation in the loveliness that surrounded her. 
 When the first sunshine shot across the blue- 
 shadowed grass you might discern her, looking from 
 your window, as she strayed along the path that 
 bounded the lawn, on the further side of it from the 
 house, separated only by the sunk fence from the 
 great old oaks of the park. Slowly she moved, her 
 
 48 
 
INDOORS 
 
 white and trailing garments gathered round her, her 
 eyes gazing widely, her face alight with praise and 
 joy. New every morning was her rapture in the 
 gift of the world's beauty ; the wonder never grew 
 less, no sorrow dimmed or defeated it. And mixed 
 with her joy in the moment there was always the 
 inner thought of the celestial beauty, unimaginably 
 beyond this earthly, rarer even than this which 
 seemed already beautiful beyond conception. And 
 so as she passed and re-passed she carried with her a 
 very radiance of adoration, magnifying the work 
 of her maker and giving thanks for ever. 
 
 12 
 
 The traditions of her birth and training were very 
 inconsistent in one respect. The natural beauty of the 
 world might belong to the kingdom of heaven, for 
 it was the work of the great artificer and glorified 
 his power; the spirit of religion breathed in the 
 divine freshness of the morning, green and blue and 
 gold ; hoHness was there manifest, and to lose your- 
 self in contemplation of the marvel could only lead 
 you higher. But beauty of man's creation, the 
 work of the created, lay under a suspicion ; it must 
 justify itself, the presumption was against its purity 
 and sanctity unless it was expUcit in its lofty pur- 
 pose. It is an old story ; I cannot but think that 
 the monkish distrust of beauty in any form, the 
 beauty of field and wood like any other, not ex- 
 pressly dedicated to the service of the most high, is 
 a more reasonable perversity. Let it aU be disgrace- 
 ful together, everything that enchants the eye or 
 the ear or the imagination — why not? But still, 
 
 49 E 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 if you are very certain of the badness and blackness 
 of man's heart, I suppose you must assume that the 
 work of his hands is tainted, unless it bears a recog- 
 nized phylactery; and you may believe in the 
 innocence of a bird or a flower, that no man made, 
 even though it is beautiful. Only man is vile — 
 that is your logic. 
 
 But if you intensely and affectionately believe 
 in the goodness of man's heart, in the rightness of 
 his intention — and yet the old mistrustful tradition 
 holds you, bidding you beware, setting you on your 
 guard in the presence of the unsanctioned fervour of 
 an artist : is not this a perverse confusion to have 
 drifted into ? I return again and again to a sense 
 of resentment, not indeed personal, that people hke 
 our grandparents should have been impelled to 
 assure themselves, or to feel that they ought to be 
 assured, of something dubious, deceitful, not to be 
 trusted, lurking generally within the soul of art. 
 No false doctrine, it is true, can greatly matter in 
 the lives of such people; tsecause their own true 
 nature, so much larger than the teaching imposed 
 upon it, has its way of flouting perversity in any 
 form. But something remains, something that 
 checks and crosses the natural impulse of a spirit 
 ardently eager and awake. The imagination, crying 
 out for nourishment, is neglected, discouraged; 
 one's private world does not get its due enlargement. 
 
 Our grandmother's quick and sympathetic fancy, 
 I see, was never finally disheartened by such treat- 
 ment. It was always ready to seize a chance and to 
 carry her beyond the circle of ideas and emotions of 
 which she traditionally approved. Remembering 
 
 50 
 
INDOORS 
 
 the recurring scene that took place when she found 
 herself drawn into the reading of a book, a secular 
 story-book, I understand how her genius must have 
 been straining towards its own. Small its chances 
 were, but it clutched them. Secular books were 
 never conspicuous at Earlham ; they tended to hide 
 in our uncles' rooms, to turn their faces to the wall, 
 to be wrapped in non-committal covers of paper; 
 it was not at all a house where the " last novel " 
 would lightly lie on the table. But now and then, 
 perhaps, one of them would happen to fall in the 
 way of the mistress of the house ; she might take it 
 up to glance at a page, half -protesting ; and then 
 the sequel was certain and well-known. She was 
 absorbed, she was lost ; late as it might be, she 
 would run through the story and finish it to the end 
 before she slept. She was an active, swift-glancing 
 reader, when she read ; she had a hand and eye that 
 seemed pre-disposed to a book, like the skill of a 
 craftsman born. She turned the page with none of 
 the cautious or painful circumspection of those who 
 do not habitually live with books, who read as 
 though they were conscientiously verifying a doubt- 
 ful statement. She was lost until she had finished 
 the book ; and her children knew well the gush of 
 indignation in her voice, next morning, when her 
 self-reproach, the thought of precious wasted hours, 
 turned to rend the poor book and its author — such 
 a silly, foohsh book, worse than foolish, snaring one 
 to waste time upon idle trifles. Small indications — 
 but they showed how an imagination, diligently dis- 
 countenanced, would stni live on and watch for its 
 opportunity and make the most of it; with that 
 
 51 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 old tradition, the invention of sotils successfully 
 chilled and dulled, always at hand to afflict a tender 
 conscience and extort its payment. 
 
 It is a familiar story indeed ; no doubt there have 
 always been opulent natures misfitted by the beliefs 
 and opinions of smaller folk. Beliefs that had 
 arisen in hearts that to hers were as the crab-apple 
 to the golden apricot — ideas that could no more 
 have sprung in the climate of her life than dead-sea 
 fruit in a green pasture — these were somehow to be 
 kept and held as though they were prompted by 
 inner voices, as though they expressed one's deepest 
 need. Somehow the adjustment was to be made, and 
 so made that one should never even notice the dis- 
 crepancy oneself ; the submissive heart must accept 
 these unlikely intruders and be convinced that they 
 are its very offspring. And as for being so convinced, 
 it would seem that there is no difficulty in that ; never 
 for a moment could such a spirit as this of which I 
 am thinking be inclined to contradict, to question, 
 to disown the notions so foisted upon it. Theoretic- 
 ally you are limited to a very narrow path, and it 
 is woe to those without ; theoretically your scheme 
 of faith is closely bound about, and its edges are 
 terribly decided. But after all it is to be seen that 
 nothing on earth will reaUy constrain you, will be 
 allowed to dictate to such a spirit as this ; charity, 
 warm and ripe, instantly oblivious of the precepts 
 it has accepted, soars above them and escapes. 
 Anima naturaliter Christiana — it is not to hold or to 
 bind by jealous and timorous devices. The most 
 that these can effect is now and then to distress the 
 Christian conscience with a needless, unmerited 
 
 52 
 
INDOORS 
 
 pang. It is the triumph of the meaner souls — not a 
 great one, when aU is said. 
 
 13 
 
 Her name before she married was Laura Pearse. 
 She was one of several sisters, and they were the 
 daughters of an old gentleman whose legend had 
 long fallen dim in our time ; he must have been dead 
 for many years. Some hint in an anecdote or two, 
 some glimpse of a mild old clergyman sitting 
 drowsily acquiescent, in the simplicity of extreme 
 age, is connected with the impression of the drawing- 
 room at Earlham on a summer afternoon — it was 
 great-grandfather Pearse who sat there, and I 
 vaguely see him, though I can never have seen him 
 with my own eyes. In his last years, it may be, his 
 mind and memory gently failed him a little; I 
 think he had already lost his remarkable wife, and 
 he might come to Earlham on a long visit to his 
 daughter. Nodding in his chair in the drawing- 
 room, through a hot afternoon, he would forget the 
 hours, and might almost, one would suppose, be 
 himself forgotten. But there was some young 
 member of the family told off, I gather, to keep him 
 company ; he wants no talk or entertainment, but 
 a young granddaughter can sit with her sewing in 
 the window-seat, as quiet as a mouse, and be ready 
 to read to him, to run errands for him, if he should 
 rouse himself to need her. So there she sits, and I 
 well understand that as the sun blazes outside and 
 the wood-pigeons croon in the oaks by the west 
 lawn, and in the room the hush grows deeper, the 
 old man placidly reposing, the hours are long and 
 
 53 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 restless for the girl over her petticoat-hem in the 
 window. She would have an inkling that our 
 beloved grandmother, in her fihal piety, would 
 welcome her aged father, tend him and care for 
 him, be the truest of daughters — ^but would not, 
 could not possibly, sit serenely stitching in a corner 
 through an endless afternoon, while her father 
 dreamed and drowsed in the stillness. So much as 
 that her activity could not endure ; the young girl 
 must charge herself with that particular duty; 
 and I think the young girl, the picture of obedience, 
 wUl be clear in her own mind that her elders have 
 shifted a task upon her that none of them are eager 
 to undertake. 
 
 Well, it so happened that outside the window 
 where she sat there grew an old greengage-tree, 
 trained against the wall ; and on one of these long 
 afternoons she discovered that there were green- 
 gages, bursting ripe, within her reach. She solaced 
 her vigU — and so, as you easily see, the hour took 
 its little niche in her memory and was there, years 
 afterwards, to be brought out and told as a story, 
 in thrilling detail, to a child. By means of those 
 juicy sun-cracked greengages a vision of great- 
 grandfather Pearse was transmitted ; and of all that 
 he said and did and was in the world, for the better 
 part of a century, perhaps that single somnolent 
 hour of his life will be the last to perish entirely. 
 
 He had had a very remarkable wife ; and as for 
 his daughters, the picture that they make, issuing 
 in their girlhood from their modest and secluded 
 corner of the world, is one that always strikes me 
 with new surprise. A plain Httle estabhshment in 
 
 54 
 
INDOORS 
 
 the Cathedral Close of Norwich, afterwards trans- 
 ferred to a village-rectory far out in the country, 
 an inaccessible mud-bound village near the Norfolk 
 coast — and a simple old rector, with a wife and a 
 family of daughters : you see the picture at once, it 
 is as familiar as daisies on the green. The good 
 father of the flock, the mother bustling about 
 among the cottage-wives, the rosy-cheeked daugh- 
 ters trudging the lanes in their stout boots — all 
 these you know by heart, you cannot mistake them. 
 And scarcely a point in this picture, as it instantly 
 forms itself, is correct; the household of great- 
 grandfather Pearse, at Martham Rectory three 
 generations ago, was different and odd and rare — 
 and I wonder whether it seemed as inexplicable in 
 its time as it does to me now, in the light of these 
 days. 
 
 Pretty, fantastic, paradoxical, it seems to me 
 now ; but perhaps it did not then affect a beholder 
 as unlikely. It was not so very strange, perhaps, 
 that the parson's wife in a lonely inaccessible village 
 — most inaccessible, even now — should be the kind 
 of person our great-grandmother was. She might 
 have been a stirring woman in the parish, one who 
 directed her household with energy, active in 
 kitchen and dairy, setting her maids to the spinning- 
 wheel, gossiping with a crony or so in the village, 
 perhaps at feud with the farmer's wife, perhaps 
 nourishing ambitions for her daughters and culti- 
 vating relations with the local gentry. It would 
 have been a thankless field, I must think, for energy 
 and ambition; and I should imagine her a little 
 toughened and roughened by the struggle, a little 
 
 55 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 chafed by the inevitable limitations of her scope. 
 What could she do in such a desert ? How could she 
 bend the age-long immobihty of her surroundings 
 to her busy will ? Above all, what could she do in 
 her small circumstances with a troop of daughters, 
 however blooming? A losing, losing struggle, 
 surely, in which her defeated spirit would be worn 
 down, keeping only enough of its sharpness to be 
 irritated by her husband's contented acquiescence 
 in obscurity and poverty and monotony. On these 
 lines the picture fills itself with abundance of detail. 
 She sat, as a matter of fact, in her small drawing- 
 room, exquisite and elegant, daintily toying with 
 some scrap of cobweb needlework — she reclined 
 upon a spindle-legged couch, far aloof from the stir 
 and gossip of the vulgar. She smiled very kindly 
 upon her parish, but graciously, distantly; when 
 she stepped forth, on occasion, passed down the 
 lane and entered some humble village-parlour — 
 swept and prepared for her visit, be very sure — 
 she was hke one who confers a charming favour, and 
 so she was received. Her demeanour, no doubt, 
 represented the natural tribute to her position and 
 to that of her rustic friends ; on both sides it was 
 understood, I take it. Such was the right mutual 
 attitude of refinement and rusticity, each good of its 
 kind, each injured by any attempt to interfere with 
 the appointed order of things. Respect on both 
 sides, familiarity on neither, was her rule ; and it is 
 not so much the validity of the rule that one may 
 question — ^it may be a very good one — as the mere 
 fact that in that far seclusion it should be possible 
 to hold to it so consistently. There is a magnificence 
 
 56 
 
INDOORS 
 
 beyond all probability — ^here is my paradox — ^in 
 that power to shoulder the responsibUity of high 
 manners all alone and unaided, with nobody to see 
 the effect, nobody to join you in keeping the stand- 
 ard at that high level, nobody to notice if you let it 
 sink. This httle great-grandmother carried out the 
 tradition she knew as easily, to all appearance, in 
 her lonely parsonage as she might have maintained 
 it before the eyes and with the support of the world. 
 Perhaps I exaggerate the difficulty; but when I 
 think of her rising, day after day, to the sight of the 
 same old church-tower and the sound of the same 
 farm-waggon upon the road, with nothing else (one 
 may say) to think of till next morning, I can only 
 wonder at the untouched perfection of her elegant 
 style. 
 
 So she reclined, toying with her scrap of embroid- 
 ery and adorned with scrupulous nicety of lace and 
 lawn — a rare Httle image of the old world. She 
 breathed the air of refinement, perfumed by rose- 
 leaves in blue-and- white jars on a lacquered cabinet. 
 Perhaps after breakfast, dehcately equipping herself 
 for the task, she would coUect the Chinese tea-cups 
 with fastidious finger-tips and wash them ; to that 
 extent a gentlewoman will properly take a share 
 in the work of the house. Otherwise — ^what 
 does she do ? Her social resources are few indeed in 
 those wilds. Her pride, as fine as her porcelain, 
 discriminates sharply, and I dare say her manner 
 towards the doctor's wife, and the farmer's and the 
 schoolmaster's (if there was one), has more than a 
 shade of condescension. On the other hand, 
 imagine her horror at the notion of pursuing a social 
 
 57 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 ambition in higher spheres — of vulgarly pushing 
 one's way with a worldly motive. Besides she is not 
 rich, her movements are strictly hmited. On the 
 whole she sits at home ; and surely there must be a 
 great deal of unoccupied time upon her hands. 
 
 Yes, no doubt ; but then she has other resources. 
 She lived in a world of her own, a world of roseate 
 and romantic fancy, a kind of egg-shell fairyland 
 never penetrated by the common prose of things. 
 And moreover she had her talents, and she could use 
 them for an admirable purpose. In her dainty, 
 orderly life she could see from afar the dangers of 
 the outer world and its dread temptations ; it was 
 laid upon her to shield and to warn the exposed. A 
 worthy work, she might well think it, to devote her 
 gift to such a cause. And a gift she had ; she could 
 write a long and fairly coherent and expressive 
 romance, full of lamentable incident that illustrated 
 the deceitfulness of riches and the doom of frivolity. 
 I think she did not write more than one ; but one 
 novel makes a novelist, after all, and a novelist she 
 became, she was, she remained. Earthly Idols, 
 two volumes in pink cloth — ^it was the story of a 
 dreadfully (but justly) afflicted heroine, who set her 
 heart upon idols of clay, who saw them torn from 
 her one by one, and who perished at last, she 
 herself — ^with a heart, I hope and think, finally 
 chastened and purified — in a storm at sea. Such 
 at least would seem to have been the motive in the 
 author's imagination, though she undermined it a 
 little by failing to impute, from the beginning, any 
 touch of earthliness to her Rosalie. That heroine 
 had always a spirit so pure that the logic of her 
 
 58 
 
INDOORS 
 
 inexorable punishment is not clear; the novelist, 
 I suppose, could not bring herself to disparage her 
 lovely Rosalie, and the moral had to suffer. The 
 high purpose is plain, nevertheless ; the very profits 
 of the sale (but there may have been none) were 
 dedicated in advance to the enlightenment of the 
 heathen. 
 
 I hke to think of the authoress, bending gracefully 
 over her manuscript in her tiny drawing-room, her 
 neat little hand moving smoothly over the pages. 
 It is a perfectly urbane and civihzed picture, but 
 quite out of place in that rather forlorn setting of 
 Martham village. The outer edges of Norfolk can 
 be dreary, in the barer regions towards the sea. 
 You reach Martham after leaving everything else 
 behind, and only then; it is a cluster of cottages 
 round a straggling green, and the diminutive 
 parsonage stands under the morning shadow of a 
 great square church- tower. A gaunt and dilapi- 
 dated old pile the church must have been, when 
 Earthly Idols was composed in its shadow; and 
 the village had no picturesque attraction. The sea- 
 wind whines, though the sea is not in sight. As 
 autumn darkened and the mist rose and the mud 
 deepened, it must have seemed a place of far exile, 
 one would say, for a creature so delicately formed 
 and finished. Did she never, on mornings of steely 
 east wind, in long wailing nights of storm, feel a 
 pang of rebeUion, reaching out in spirit to the 
 humaner world for which she was so suitably gifted ? 
 Instead, she had only her stumping, drawling con- 
 gregation, immitigably bucolic. Who was there to 
 recognize and appreciate her style ? 
 
 59 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 There were at least her children and her grand- 
 children, and she deeply touched their imagination. 
 She lived on and on in their memory, long after she 
 was under the turf of the churchyard, as a little fine 
 model of bearing and adornment, never to be sur- 
 passed in its kind. Elegance is very attractive to 
 the young, and they take it most seriously; the 
 sight of it works powerfully in the stirring and 
 forming of a small fancy. Our great-grandmother of 
 the trim thatched parsonage is still the impersona- 
 tion of gentility for her descendants. Always 
 perfect in her ways and habits, she looks watchfully, 
 critically, upon the behaviour of the children round 
 her and instils her principles of gracious deportment. 
 They are scarcely those, perhaps, of the thatched 
 parsonage of to-day; not there would a young 
 granddaughter now sit over her darning or her 
 hemming, intent upon dealing with it in business- 
 like style, and hear the voice of her grandmother in 
 expostulation, silvery-tinkling — " Not like that, 
 dear, not so earnestly; you should play with it, 
 dear, play with it! " — while she illustrates the right 
 style of negligent grace with httle easy flourishes of 
 her own needle, lightly hovering over her ornamen- 
 tal scrap of white gossamer. 
 
 14 
 But that was long ago ; it is all legend and tradi- 
 tion. I come back to our own day and to the 
 hushed and darkened drawing-room at Earlham, 
 where the blinds are pulled down against the after- 
 noon blaze. There is a light bitter-sweet fragrance 
 from the phloxes in the strangely mixed bouquet, 
 
 60 
 
INDOORS 
 
 feathered with asparagus, which stands in the middle 
 of the round table — ^where the lamp stands in the 
 evening. Long ago the old man of whom I have 
 spoken sat and slumbered here, while the girl hung 
 out of window to reach the greengages on the wall. 
 But the old man is dead, he is a story of the past ; 
 and his granddaughter now teUs it to a pair of 
 children, small cousins of hers, who beset her with 
 their demands. Tales of her childhood — ^we wanted 
 more and more of them ; but chiefly we wanted the 
 same anecdotes, two or three, over and over again — 
 and in the exact original form, which we could 
 always supply (and still could, I should think, to- 
 day) if our cousin's memory faltered. Our demands 
 followed her ever5rwhere, at aU times of day; and 
 when she was " dressing for dinner " it was the best 
 chance of aU. Then we were free from interruption. 
 I discern a child who stands by the dressing-table in 
 the tiny Chintz Room, fingering the pin-cushion and 
 the brushes, listening enthralled. 
 
 These stories became dramas, brilliantly visual, 
 as our cousin told them. Brushing and plaiting her 
 long rich hair, she picked up the details of the scene, 
 found nobly descriptive words for them, hung 
 thriUingly upon her climax ; and when she reached 
 it, with a gesture of her brush or her handful of 
 hair-pins she would act it to the life — the listener 
 throbbed with satisfaction. They were beautiful 
 stories, not so much for their stirring incident as for 
 the sharp actuality of their setting. An incident has 
 no yalue in itself, it is exactly as interesting as the 
 artist can make it; and this cousin was an artist 
 indeed. Ah, that strange wild comedy of the 
 
 6i 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 tapioca pudding — the plate-full of loathsome jellied 
 lumps that had been placed before her, a well- 
 behaved child, and that suddenly, swiftly, she had 
 tilted with one turn of her hand into the napkin 
 upon her lap ; she was lunching out, you see, and it 
 was a critical occasion, and she was on her best 
 behaviour; but the strange deed was done in a 
 flash, and nobody noticed — ^it is a fact. She was able 
 to conceal the warm sagging mass, carry it out and 
 bury it in the garden afterwards ; and by the time 
 when she reached the burial in the shrubbery 
 emotion had risen and surged and toppled over in a 
 gurgle of the listener's approval — she had told the 
 story just as she had told it before, in its classical 
 form, and on the whole, among many good, it was 
 surely her very best. 
 
 The Chintz Room was minute ; it just fitted into 
 one of the gables in the oldest part of the house — 
 the gable, curved and scrolled, which carried the 
 date of the battle of Edgehill. It was a tiny room 
 without a fire-place, and the small-paned casement 
 window almost filled one side of it. You craned up 
 and stood on tiptoe to search the cracks and 
 crevices of the window-sill ; for there was always a 
 rumour that a beast, a centipede, had once walked 
 out of one of them, straggling on all its feet, to the 
 proper horror of our cousin who occupied the room. 
 It would be a triumph to entice it forth again ; but 
 that was not necessary — you had only to cry that 
 you had caught sight of it, just for a moment, and 
 our dear cousin was ready with brilliant shrieks of 
 dismay. It was well worth while to repeat the scare, 
 several times. Or again you could stand by the 
 
 62 
 
INDOORS 
 
 table, mounted upon a stool, and turn the pages of 
 the little fat leather volume, her hymn-book ; and 
 let me state the fact plainly, it was in that volume 
 that this present author first found a page, a printed 
 page, turn intelligible to the eye; it seemed to 
 happen in a minute, after all that useless grind over 
 spelling-books and such-hke at home. I could 
 read, it appeared ; some magic had operated. But 
 what a beautiful picture of the child, balanced upon 
 the footstool by the dressing-table, reading " Once in 
 royal David's city " out aloud, so confidently, so 
 piously — ^if it fails to strike another as charming, I 
 assure you it struck the child. A warm and satis- 
 factory sense of hohness, the kind of solemn aura 
 that hangs about the children in a Sunday-book — 
 could one pretend to be unconscious of this, for all 
 one's proper meekness ? One could only hope that 
 it was not unobserved ; and I dare say indeed that 
 the brightly glancing young lady, brushing out the 
 long golden coUs of her hair, observed and smiled. 
 The window of the Chintz Room looked away to 
 the last of the sunset, and in the long twUight, 
 fading at last, the tiny chamber grew grey and dim. 
 It had earned its name, I suppose, in ancestral days ; 
 there was no shine or crackle of chintz there in our 
 time, only some discoloured shabbiness of limp 
 damask. The Green Room, next door, had equally 
 outlived its name; but the Green Room, at this 
 uncertain hour, was full of dark shadow, and its 
 colour was quenched in ominous depths. It seemed 
 as mysterious as a cavern, rather long and low ; the 
 oblong of the triple window, at the further end, was 
 wreathed about with heavy leafage, black by this 
 
 63 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 time in the solemn evening. Out there the night 
 was gathering quickly. The Green Room, like most 
 of the rooms at Earlham, was full of troubhng doors, 
 concealing cupboards and recesses like vaults. On 
 no account open that one, to the left; something 
 might easily steal behind you as you did so, thrust 
 you into the blackness and bolt the door upon you ; 
 reason is shaken at the thought. But this one to 
 the right — fling it open and see. It might lead into 
 just another dark pit ; but you get a pleasing sur- 
 prise. The western twilight meets you; the door 
 leads into a little dressing-room, a powder-closet, 
 that fills the second of the two ancient gables ; here 
 there is stiU a remnant of day, sinking beyond the 
 distant river, down there in the park, and the low 
 swell of the trees on the sky-line. The mist creeps 
 and crawls in streamers up the slope from the river. 
 Night is upon us, and very soon there resounds 
 through the house the booming crescendo of the 
 dinner-gong. 
 
 So the company and the quality drew together 
 and departed to their meal, their " late dinner " ; 
 and the tone of the upper regions of the house was 
 changed. It must have been nearly bed-time, but 
 there seem to have been delays and interludes. A 
 spirit of merry informality ranged about the pas- 
 sages, and I catch sight of the bright faces of the 
 ministering maids at their work, passing from room 
 to room. The passages were dimly lighted with a 
 very small oil-lamp in a corner, here and there ; the 
 maids had their fiat brass candle-sticks, with snuffers 
 and flaring tapers of tallow. One follows them 
 about, hilariously helping and hindering, and of 
 
 64 
 
INDOORS 
 
 course it is an interlude to be protracted by all 
 possible arts. To the nursery, however, one must 
 presently gravitate ; and there, perhaps, our grand- 
 mother's body-maid sits by this time with her work- 
 basket under the lamp. More talk, more human 
 gaiety — but it cannot last much longer; and then 
 one is shelved out of sight once more, put away in 
 the blank silence of the Eleven-sided Room. 
 
 15 
 How the days revolve — they are always ending in 
 
 painful shadow, always beginhing in a dance and 
 flutter of sunshine; and yet they are endless too, 
 with vast unbroken tracts of occupation between 
 waking and sleeping. There was a rhythm of life 
 that oscillated from the nursery, the upper rooms 
 and our dear friends at work there — from these to 
 the other world, the world of our grandparents and 
 uncles and cousins, and back again. The swing of 
 the day was now in this direction, now in that — 
 with the bright attic-room in the top passage, and 
 the welcome of the loving old nurse with her soft 
 eyes and cheeks, as the centre where everything 
 converged and met. That was a spot by itself, 
 where aU movement flowed and was stilled, all 
 interests were mingled. But elsewhere a child, free, 
 and so very free, of both worlds, distinguished 
 clearly between the two ; each had its own fine zest 
 and savour. Nobody could say that one was better 
 or less good than another, where both were so richly 
 endowed ; and nobody could think of them save as 
 utterly distinct and diverse. 
 
 Could I not mark the very point of transition ? 
 
 65 F 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 I can easily do so by beginning from the moment 
 when we shp out of the big dining-room, leaving our 
 elders still over their breakfast. The heavy door 
 swings in my hand, while the mild voice of our 
 grandfather is heard calling down the table to ask 
 whether any one is " going in " this morning (to 
 Norwich, that is) ; and then the door shuts behind 
 me, as that door always would, with its pecuHar soft 
 thunder, echoing along the bit of curved passage 
 that leads to the haU. Full of light, hung with 
 engravings of clerical portraits and an old print of 
 Norwich city with its church-towers, this short 
 corridor bends into the hall, deserted for the 
 moment; and quickly we are upon the shallow 
 stair-case and sidling up its low wooden balustrade. 
 One flight, another, and then there is a landing, and 
 a vista before you of a long dim passage, with a 
 window at the far-away end of it. But here on the 
 open landing I can linger, I can loiter and stare into 
 the glass cases of stuffed birds, several of them, tier 
 upon tier — ^young owls crowding and peering out 
 of a hole in a mossy tree-trunk, a colony of ruffs and 
 reeves, a pair of great herons, best of all, arching 
 their necks over a family of alert-eyed nestlings. 
 Can I ever pass these striking creatures without 
 stopping to examine them one by one, deepening the 
 pleasant impression of their looks and attitudes, 
 though I have long known them all by heart ? And 
 then in a trice — here is a friend with her brooms and 
 dusters, appearing out of the dim passage and 
 turning into one of the bed-rooms with the mirthful 
 flash of a smile at us ; and the oddest change takes 
 place in the mood of life. Down in the dining-room 
 
 66 
 
INDOORS 
 
 it was all very gay and interesting — but even peril- 
 ously interesting, one might feel ; there is always an 
 element of the unaccountable in one's elders, so 
 it would seem, and something fearful in the confi- 
 dence and readiness of their jesting talk; it is 
 great, but there is a touch, a tang, as Browning says, 
 of something that is not wholly ease. Above-stairs, 
 on the other hand, hanging upon our friend's skirt 
 while she sprinkles the passage-floor with damp tea- 
 leaves and brooms them before her like sea-weed on 
 a beach — ^who can deny that there is here a strain of 
 freedom to which one returns with relief ? Above- 
 stairs, after aU, there is a Bohemian fling of joUity 
 and levity which nobody can fail to appreciate; 
 this is no mere brilliant spectacle, it is life itself. 
 
 In a society so humane as that of the household 
 at Earlham a child could expand, unfold, find free 
 and independent expression. It is part of a Uberal 
 education, and the company in the drawing-room 
 and the dining-room can never quite supply it. The 
 life of our elders is reaUy a performance, a show for 
 our benefit ; we look on with dehght, and yet there 
 seems to be a need of self -protection. You cannot 
 give yourself entirely away; for even to the most 
 benevolent of uncles and cousins you are a chUd, a 
 member of the class of children. Perfect freedom 
 begins when you stand completely on your own feet, 
 an individual being. And that is what you become, 
 once among these friends upstairs ; the change is un- 
 mistakable. You take your own line, you crack your 
 own jokes, you say what you think ; and the only 
 drawback is that now and then you are tempted 
 above yourself, you try to be funnier still, and 
 
 67 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 then everything goes strangely wrong. A moment 
 ago it was all brave and splendid with adventurous 
 humour ; and now a chill strikes in, a kind of forlorn- 
 ness, against which you struggle reckless and loud. 
 But it is vain ; the humour of the scene is scraped 
 and rasped, it ends in exasperation. That happens 
 occasionally, and then, no doubt, you feel the 
 attraction of order and style, in scenes where the art 
 of living is thoroughly mastered and controlled. It 
 is social training, however, all of it together, and 
 you cannot afford to miss the experience of either 
 world. 
 
 i6 
 The art of living, I always felt, was magnificently 
 practised by our uncles. There were not a few of 
 them, and the house would have been incomplete 
 indeed without the sound of their striding steps 
 about the passages. They came and went, some or 
 others of them were always at Earlham as I think 
 of the place. In later years I discovered that they 
 were young, but in those early days they were 
 tremendously mature and manly, and it was clear 
 to us that their youth was far behind them. They 
 were twenty, five-and-twenty, thirty years old 
 perhaps; but there is no count of ages upon the 
 plane of maturity, none is older or younger than 
 another. Above them, in quite a different category, 
 is the plane of extreme old age, where our grand- 
 parents were; they, I suppose, might be on the 
 further side of sixty. On the ordinary, intervening 
 levels of grown-up life the question does not arise ; 
 every one has ceased to be young, no one can 
 imaginably grow old. 
 
 68 
 
INDOORS 
 
 I do not wish to deny that I was airaid of our 
 uncles; I would not assertively have crossed their 
 paths, not for a large reward. When one of them 
 came tramping mightily down the passage, with a 
 round Shakespearian trolling of song and laughter, 
 I should wish to make myself very small indeed, to 
 slip round a corner, out of sight, with a casual air. 
 There is no need to be ashamed of the impulse ; it is 
 not a weakly, unimaginative fear. It is rather the 
 sense of a great deficiency, a want of presence and 
 weight and stature, moral rather than physical. 
 If the Great Mogul came suddenly swinging into the 
 room, with kindly careless patronage and a gleam 
 of ironic mockery, should you feel entirely at ease, 
 ready to answer back with freedom ? Not so — ^you 
 would find yourself embarrassed, thinly giggling 
 and tittering, and it would be a relief when the 
 splendid visitor lounged away and left you to 
 yourself. 
 
 But if it should be possible to watch the play of 
 so much humour and experience from some safe 
 entrenchment, to look on unseen, at any rate un- 
 remarked — ^then indeed the opportunity would be 
 seized and enjoyed. There must always, as I said, 
 be some shght thrill of risk in the exposure to such 
 a spectacle, for these elemental forces are incal- 
 culable. It is weU worth an occasional discomfiture, 
 however, to have the sight of our uncles in their 
 leisure, when the hail of their wit is falling upon 
 each other, or when they are brUUantly attacking 
 and rallying their parents. It is beyond belief how 
 entertaining they can be. At luncheon, especially 
 — for of course we lunch with our elders in the 
 
 69 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 dining-room — ^there are times when the amusement 
 is an ecstasy ; nobody would guess how deeply the 
 rapture of appreciation is flooding the listener's 
 soul, screened behind a pair of staring eyes that 
 travel intently from speaker to speaker. Perhaps 
 it is betrayed now and then by an uncontrollable 
 escape of laughter, but generally it is too full for 
 sound; laughter is distracting, and the whole of 
 one's attention is swallowed by the scene. Years 
 and years afterwards it is as new in the memory as 
 ever ; the light words that were thrown to and fro 
 by a party of genial young men in holiday mood, 
 carelessly thrown and forgotten — not one of them 
 is lost ; they were engraved for good and aU upon 
 adamantine tables, the mind of a child. 
 
 As I slipped out of the dining-room just now, 
 along the short curve of the passage where the 
 clerical portraits clattered on the wall in the summer 
 breeze, I passed the door of the school-room, so 
 called, the room where in these days our uncles 
 smoked and congregated and trailed their long legs 
 over the chairs. If the door is open I catch the 
 pleasant old staleness of tobacco which always 
 lingered there — there, and nowhere else in the 
 house — and a glimpse of the negligent masculine 
 litter of books, papers, pipes, upon the square table 
 and the window-seats. You drop down a step as 
 you enter ; it is a small wainscoted parlour, with 
 its woodwork glazed and grained in the perverse 
 manner that ruled throughout the house. This, 
 I see, was the room in which the author of Lavengro 
 was entertained, long ago, by old Joseph John ; it 
 must have been this room, though in fact it has two 
 
 70 
 
INDOORS 
 
 windows, and no old elm can ever have shaded 
 them from without. They open on to a sUp of 
 flower-garden, enclosed between the two wings of 
 the dining-room and the drawing-room; and in 
 morning hours, before the sun is on this side of the 
 house, a fresh fragrance of dewiness and earthiness 
 floats into the room, mingUng with the tobacco- 
 smoke. 
 
 But I am far, I need not say, from making free 
 with this sanctum of our uncles ; not without special 
 encouragement should I go plumping down that 
 step from the passage into the school-room. I waver 
 about in the ofiing when our grandmother looks in 
 upon them with an affectionate glance and word, 
 takes the opportunity of opening a window (shut 
 again, no doubt, when her back is turned), and 
 protests, in answer to an enquiry, that she is really 
 resting in her room. " What was that we heard 
 about your resting after lunch ? " She would smile 
 back upon the demand with a tender admiring look 
 at the large soldier-son, severely confronting her. 
 "Yes, dear, I am resting! " — ^but her eye would 
 be caught by a table to be tidied, a chair to be 
 shifted, and she would pause and begin to occupy 
 herself. Doing other people's work for them, as 
 usual, when she ought to be resting — that was a 
 frequent charge; her sons would not be slow to 
 intercept her. If the books were aU on the floor 
 and a pair of coffee-cups in an arm-chair, it was 
 where they were meant to be; she was on no 
 account to move them. Foiled, amused, tenderly 
 smihng, she would pass out ; and nobody supposed 
 that she would reach her room without bethinking 
 
 71 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 herself of this or that undone, to be attended to on 
 the spot. She would next be discovered, it was 
 likely, in the " poor people's cupboard " — a scrap 
 of a room, upstairs, given over to a store of blankets 
 and shawls and petticoats — ^rummaging out a gift 
 for the bed-ridden old friend she would be visiting 
 that afternoon. 
 
 She was incorrigible, she always escaped the 
 vigilance of her sons; but they were unremitting. 
 On Sundays in particular, in the long hot summer 
 evening, the question of church-going was acute. 
 The family party, as I happen to see it, is scattered 
 about in the coolness of the haU, watchful to see 
 that our grandmother, if she will go journeying off 
 through the level blaze to Colney church, shall at 
 least take the carriage and drive thither. ' ' Too hot, 
 too hot for you to walk," they say ; " and why not 
 stay at home under the trees ? " That couldn't be ; 
 but she made the concession of taking the carriage, 
 promising herself to justify it by stopping on the 
 way to pick up infirm old Mrs. Brown or weak-kneed 
 old Mrs. Giles, for the treat of evening service. So 
 she drove away, and the family loitered in idleness ; 
 and presently, of all surprising sights, there was 
 the carriage returning, just when service would be 
 beginning, with our grandmother still in it. I hear 
 the note of triumph from her sons as she re-joined 
 the party — she had thought better of it, then ! It 
 was quite a httle gay scene while she explained; 
 poor old Mrs. Giles had said No, she didn't want to 
 go to church, not at all — and that good EUza Cope- 
 man, a reliable vocahst, had been found already 
 there in her place, prepared to lead the hymns — 
 
 72 
 
INDOORS 
 
 " and so I came back," said our grandmother, and 
 the moment is fixed in my mind by the Ught pretty 
 chime of self-satisfaction in her voice, conscious as 
 she is that she has obeyed her children's wish, and 
 yet obeyed it in her own way, by a free decision. 
 So everybody is pleased, and one of our uncles 
 sends her into a ripple of mirth by his rich enact- 
 ment of old Mrs. Giles — ^but indeed I must let the 
 momentary jest lie quiet, after the third part of a 
 century. It is too small to bring from so far, though 
 I possess it intact. 
 
 17 
 I seem to have wandered over most of the house, 
 
 but I have rather carefully kept away from a part 
 of it. I never knew such a house for refusing to fit 
 compactly into the space between its walls and the 
 roof and the ground ; the inhabited rooms appear to 
 overflow it in some quarters, and to fall strangely 
 short in others. How was it, for example, that the 
 pleasant scullery, which lay far away in the out- 
 buildings of the back-yard, had doubled and screwed 
 itself round so sharply that its window looked full 
 into the flower-beds by the garden-door? It was 
 impossible to make the building, as you explored it 
 within, square with its aspect from without; and 
 while at one end the scuUery behaved like a house 
 through the looking-glass, at the other there were 
 whole regions that were lost, that bulked largely in 
 the outer structure and disappeared when you 
 sought them indoors. 
 
 I happen to know, however, where a part of them 
 are to be found. There would be many a morning 
 
 73 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 when I chance to be hovering betimes about the 
 hall, while the butler and his underling are setting 
 out the benches for prayers ; and then I get a sight 
 of the great grey Bluebeard chamber from which 
 they are brought forth. Stone steps, behind a door 
 in the corner by the wide fire-place, lead downward 
 into this lost abode. It cannot be called a cellar, 
 for it has a window above the level of the geranium 
 border outside ; but the light that trickles in there 
 is spare and sour with dust, and whenever you 
 venture down the stone steps you feel as though 
 you were the first to stumble upon a forgotten 
 apartment, sealed and abandoned long ago for a 
 sufficient reason. It would not surprise me to find 
 it hung with threadbare finery, and a table covered 
 with the mouldering remains of a wedding-feast, 
 and even a gaunt old figure in a bridal veil and 
 yellowing satin at the head of it ; not for nothing 
 have I read of Miss Havisham, in that first thrill of 
 a plunge into the world of Dickens, and she readily 
 takes her place in the lathe-room. It was called 
 the lathe-room ; one of our uncles or great-uncles, 
 I suppose, had once fitted it as a work-shop. But 
 now it was only a store-room, a wilderness of old 
 lumber, made sinister by the grey twihght and the 
 silent chiU that reigned there even at highest noon ; 
 and the very thought of the dim unexplained 
 objects, piled up, standing there in that fallen day, 
 has an influence that strikes me solemn. 
 
 Moreover it could not escape me that this tomb- 
 like space was only the beginning of a whole range 
 of such apartments. There was still a large quarter 
 of the house, the big panelled ante-room and the 
 
 74 
 
INDOORS 
 
 arm of the drawing-room beyond it, which actually 
 had no inhabited ground-floor at aU; and fancy 
 runs riot in picturing the derehct saloons and 
 galleries that may yawn beneath the floor we tread. 
 There is room for I know not how many secret 
 chambers, hidden away in echoing blackness; 
 nothing betrays them outside, for in this quarter 
 a couple of apparent windows, facing upon the 
 gravel-sweep of the front door, prove to be blank 
 and bHnd, glass panes with only the darkened waU 
 behind them. I can imagine what I please, there- 
 fore — I could then and I still can, for I find that 
 to the last I never penetrated the mystery of those 
 forgotten spaces. 
 
 But rather let me turn to more comfortable 
 associations — to the sun-bright scullery, perhaps, 
 where such remarkable operations were conducted, 
 the groundwork of Mrs. Chapman's beautiful art. 
 The children looked on, no doubt, with clear-eyed 
 interest while her hand-maids set her palette, as you 
 may say, prepared the raw material for her creative 
 touch. They plucked and chopped, they hacked 
 and scraped — so it comes back to me; the lovely 
 dish on the table in the dining-room has a strange 
 past behind it, if you knew, full of bald and uncom- 
 promising detail. I could mention a few facts in the 
 history of the roast chicken off which we lunch — 
 but it is odd how people prefer to blink these things. 
 Surely it is interesting to know that when Maggie 
 is going to cook a chicken she first plucks it, then 
 
 she scoops out its and that is as far as I get 
 
 in the story, when I produce it at the luncheon- 
 table, for my squeamish elders set up a hoot that 
 
 75 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 cuts me short. She does, anyhow ; and I can watch 
 her with absorption while she makes an excellent job 
 of it. Nearly always there is something queer and 
 notable ^oing forward in the scullery, and Maggie 
 faces the facts of the case like a sensible realist. 
 
 But Mrs. Chapman's art is naturally upon a 
 higher plane. There is a rare charm in the look of 
 the kitchen, her studio — bright and lofty, with two 
 large windows on one side of it, another at the end. 
 The flags of the floor are crisp to the tread, the 
 dressers shine with their pots and pans, the huge 
 table is scrubbed to the whiteness of paper. The 
 racks and gratings and oven-doors of the range, 
 with the little furnace roaring in the midst of them, 
 are infinitely suggestive; before every meal the 
 artist is engaged in an enchanting game with this 
 magnificent toy. Imagine the delight — ^but her 
 rare skill does not reveal itself in broad touches, 
 emphatic manipulations, such as are to be observed 
 in the scullery ; these higher refinements are proved 
 but in the eating. There indeed they were recog- 
 nized, they were acclaimed; upon many of them 
 I should like to dwell minutely. All the meUow 
 ripeness of a bountiful harvest, aU the light wild 
 savours of spring, were caught and mingled in the 
 artistry of this remarkable woman — I feel sure of it. 
 There was a heart of noble staunchness in her 
 masterpieces, and a soul of unnameable fragrance. 
 But the genius of a cook is fugitive as that of an 
 actor, a dancer. What do we know of the grace of 
 Taglioni ? We have only another's word for it, and 
 for the perfection of Mrs. Chapman's accomplish- 
 ment I can only offer mine. 
 
 76 
 
INDOORS 
 
 Now and then she would invite us to tea, a grand 
 tea in The Room. In The Room, her private and 
 anonymous parlour, a wondrous table would be 
 spread; I remember the dazed impression, as one 
 entered, of dishes and dishes high-piled, profusion 
 and variety in which the mind was lost. The Room, 
 like the scuUery, had the odd property of wriggling 
 itself into an unexplained position, revealed when 
 you looked from the window. It was approached 
 from the kitchen-passage, which lay far off and 
 away from the garden-door and the lawn ; yet there 
 was the lawn, full in front of the window, and it 
 never seemed clear how it had arrived in that 
 quarter. Earlham always remained an experience, 
 the house was a condition of things through which 
 one moved, inhaUng enchantment ; it did not exist, 
 it hardly does so now, as an object detached, 
 imagined, ensphered in thought. I chance upon 
 The Room in the course of my wanderings, and the 
 smaU surprise of seeing the familiar flower-beds just 
 there, under the window, is punctually renewed. 
 
 But enough, the table is dazzUng in its abundance, 
 for our good friend's notion of a fit repast is indeed 
 superb. ShaU I describe it in detail? — ^is it not a 
 pity that the memory should perish, when it might 
 be chronicled to the last minuteness ? At any rate 
 I must say that the freshness and firmness, the 
 cool succulence and the sherry-coloured gleam of 
 these — these here, stacked upon their dish, arresting 
 the vagrant eye — wiU represent the cynosure of the 
 feast; and to these at least you must do justice, 
 where it is impossible to do justice impartially over 
 all the table. In an hour's time — be certain that 
 
 77 
 
E A R L H A M 
 
 we are not to be hurried — we shall look round us 
 with regret, I dare say, at chances wasted and lost ; 
 for even the greediest have never kept pace with 
 Mrs. Chapman's inspiration. But of these in their 
 builded pile, a hollow and four-square tower of 
 them, I well engage that no trace will be left when 
 at last the company disperses. 
 
 i8 
 Suddenly, as it seems, I find myself alone, quite 
 alone in the house, in the deep of the soundless 
 afternoon. An extraordinary stillness fills the hall, 
 where I pause almost in awe; the garden-door 
 stands open, and nothing is heard but the light flap 
 of the awning which hangs in the doorway. Why or 
 where all the family has scattered I could not say, 
 or how it is that I am loitering solitary at this hour, 
 half-shy of the silence; but I guess that I have 
 strayed in from the garden — and yes, I see how 
 it would happen. Ranging along the gravel walk 
 outside, one would drift towards the door and the 
 porch, because the cream-coloured plaster and paint 
 of the porch has an attraction. By this time of 
 day the surface is hot, really scorching hot in the 
 sun, and it is pleasant to lay a hand upon the 
 plaster and to feel how it burns ; it positively burns 
 your palm. And then I might hitch aside the 
 striped awning and meet the sudden stillness and 
 dimness of the house within, the cool quietude 
 secretly stored away there while the full-throated 
 blaze of August beats on it from without. It would 
 be enough to give me pause ; the house, so entered, 
 is like a great cave, on the narrow mouth of which 
 
 78 
 
INDOORS 
 
 one has stumbled by chance, unexpectedly. I 
 should certainly be drawn in ; and there I am in the 
 middle of the bare floor, wondering at the solitude. 
 I hear how my footsteps sounded as I crossed to 
 the flight of the stairs. Just there stood the great 
 dinner-gong, and with the touch of a knuckle I 
 might wake a low reverberation — a light touch, 
 only enough to start the hoUow murmur very gently. 
 It said plainly that I had the house to myself; a 
 small echo hke this, of a powerful voice barely 
 breathing into sound, seems to steal away into all 
 the deserted rooms and to reveal their emptiness. 
 I could be entirely conscious of the speU of the house 
 at such a moment ; it was romance — romance that 
 I just can, just cannot, define in words. I can 
 detect the mingling of many influences ; but each of 
 them shifts out of the line of sight as I turn to fix it. 
 They could flutter and charm the mind of a child — 
 no doubt of that ; a surge of excitement would 
 carry the child up the shallow stairs, treading on air. 
 It seemed like an immense expansion of one's power, 
 an annihilation of limits, with a warm gush of new 
 freedom that might easily set the heart thumping 
 unawares. That house, those rooms, Earlham the 
 well-beloved, a place all steeped in its beautiful 
 golden past — such images advance hke an invasion 
 into a mind too small to hold them — too small, 
 but that it suddenly opens wide, arches out, ready, 
 one would say, to contain a world. It is a great 
 experience, flashing into a life that is always so busy 
 with small immediate tangible things ; at Earlham, 
 especially, there was seldom a moment unclaimed 
 by the sight and sound, the smell and touch and 
 
 79 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 taste of the eventful surface. Year by year as we 
 returned thither for the perfect weeks of summer, 
 there was an ever-increasing hoard of famihar detail 
 to be re-discovered and examined and brooded 
 upon; many long days could be spent, I almost 
 think, in simply travelling over the textme of the 
 place, inch by inch, to make sure that it was aU as 
 one very well knew it to be. But then came a 
 moment, like this in which I find myself alone, 
 when the imagination seemed to shoot up all- 
 powerful, masterfully enlarging the capacity of one's 
 thought and reaching out to invisible wonders. 
 
 Forgetting my occupation in the garden, what- 
 ever it was, I reach the top of the first short flight 
 of stairs, where I face the open doorway of the ante- 
 room. Not a sound, not a soul ; and in the northern 
 greyness of the ante-room the soUtude is intensely 
 solemn. I have mentioned the dais and the bow- 
 window, the great china jar and the green window- 
 seat ; but let me try to describe more closely what 
 I see. I stand on the threshold, and I look across 
 the width of the room ; its length lies to my right, 
 with the bow-window at the end of it, and the 
 greenery of the Ume-avenue outside. Exactly 
 opposite to me there is another window, facing 
 west; so that at this end of the room a mellower 
 light is shed upon the green carpet — not enough, 
 however, to scatter widely, or to tinge the pallor 
 of the northern day which mainly occupies the 
 space. But is that clear ? There is some kind of a 
 picture in your mind, as I place the words ; and it 
 is utterly unlike the picture that T possess, and the 
 finest art in the world could not set yours right in 
 
 8q 
 
INDOORS 
 
 every detail. I wish I could see at least your 
 mistakes, to correct them; it is disheartening, no 
 less, to stand here on the threshold of the ante-room 
 with everything so plainly before me, and to know 
 that the accuracy of my vision is of no avail. I 
 might just as well have forgotten, just as well not 
 know the look and colour and feel of every object 
 in the room almost, for aU the power my knowledge 
 gives me to make a complete and faithful report. 
 Something is sure to go wrong in the impression 
 I give; and it wUl be sketchy, cloudy, vague, 
 compared with the impression I retain. 
 
 In teUing an imaginary story a writer is content 
 to leave the reader in his error. The reader imagines 
 the house, the room, the garden, as he pleases; 
 what matter if it is all distorted, re-arranged, so long 
 as certain few details are correctly placed? An 
 old-fashioned room, a window-seat, some high- 
 backed chairs, some portraits on the panelled waUs 
 — enough, there is a setting for the blush-tinted 
 maiden who gazes from the window, a letter just 
 falling from her hand. So the story might begin, 
 and the author would contentedly leave you to fill 
 in the picture of the room as you choose — ^with a 
 thousand points of unhkeness to the room as he 
 thought of it. But in a true story, like mine, every- 
 thing seems to be spoilt if you deviate from my 
 memory at any point — if you place, for example, 
 the wrong kind of Chinese cups and beakers on the 
 cabinet, if you omit the little cluster of humming- 
 birds under their glass dome on the table, if you are 
 confused on the subject of the green roses in the 
 carpet ; and even now you do not know where the 
 
 8i G 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 cabinet stood, or how the humming-birds were 
 flanked by the other objects on that table. Not one 
 of them strikes me as unessential to the effect that 
 I should wish to evoke. 
 
 It cannot be helped, I must leave it imperfect 
 and uncertain. Myself, as I write the words, I pass 
 up the length of the room and silently note what I 
 see, exalted by my sense of power and illumination. 
 Alone with the house, alone with its watchful spirit, 
 one is stirred with vast, delicious apprehension; 
 the stretch of a pair of arms seems to grow tiU one 
 might touch the ceiling, the trees, the sky with a 
 lifted hand. Indeed I feel like a ghost — I mean that 
 the child so felt. I speak of the spirit of the house, 
 not knowing what words to use; but to the child 
 who wanders up the room, who mounts the step of 
 the dais (slipping on the treacherous rug that is 
 spread there), who stops to peer into the great jar 
 and smell the rose-leaves, who lingers handling and 
 caressing the pointed knob of the lid — to the child 
 it is no matter for such a simple phrase. It is far 
 profounder, more complicated. It is I, it is the 
 child who is in the spirit, miraculously pervading 
 the good old earthly presence of the place, the 
 house ; I am weU away and apart from that figure 
 by the china jar. The figure turns and moves; 
 mechanically it plunges its fingers into the fragrant 
 dust of roses and spices ; but I must have strayed 
 very far from it, have lost sight of it entirely, for I 
 have the oddest difficulty in getting back again 
 when I must. 
 
 Some one comes into the room, the solitude is 
 broken ; and my wandering fancy is recalled to the 
 
 82 
 
INDOORS 
 
 body it had forgotten. But there is a strange 
 interval in which the creature, the empty body, 
 actually speaks and answers of its own accord, 
 looking and sounding as though I were there to 
 direct it. I see it and hear it, all helplessly ; it is 
 surprising that the new-comer notices nothing, takes 
 the mechanical image for myself. It is uncomfort- 
 able, it is awkward; and the disconcerted spirit 
 makes an effort, quite painful, to wrench itself back 
 into its rightful place. You know the sensation, 
 I don't doubt; the child I speak of was often 
 plagued by it, and the memory chances to be linked 
 with the thought of that slippery step of the dais 
 in the ante-room, the green-grey light, the surge of 
 the humming of bees in the limes. It passes, it 
 passes ; the spirit is suddenly restored to the body, 
 and I pick up the thread of the casual talk as though 
 nothing had happened. But would it not be in such 
 minutes as these, now and then renewed, that the 
 child could learn the meaning of a romantic passion ? 
 Earlham was the centre of many loves, much 
 tender and grateful loyalty ; from far back its sons 
 and daughters had given it of their best. They 
 grew up there and went their ways, they came back 
 with children of their own, they were drawn always 
 nearer to the place by their memories of youth and 
 age. The bond was strengthened by j oy , by sorrow ; 
 so much they had seen there, birthdays and merry- 
 making, high hopes, the tracks of time, the appari- 
 tion of easeful death, that the house became hke a 
 part of themselves, they might feel that their 
 experience was embodied in its walls and timbers. 
 Yes, but Earlham was as much and as dear, it seems 
 
 83 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 to me, even to a child who looked back over a 
 hand's-breadth, a little patch of summertime that it 
 amazes me now to measure from a distance. How 
 many times, returning to Earlham, had I rushed to 
 the window-seat of faded velvet, clambered to the 
 ledge of the window, hung there to survey the 
 weeping ash in the grassy enclosure beneath? — 
 punctually one greets the dome of the weeping ash 
 again, that so habitable tree, as shapely as a bell- 
 tent. Already the vista of an age was behind me, 
 I should have said ; and if I could remember three 
 years or four — four wonderful August evenings on 
 which we returned to Earlham again as of old — that 
 would then be the utmost, I suppose, the fuU stretch 
 of my conscious knowledge of the place. Back there 
 as I now am, in that particular hour of thrilled 
 solitude, I taste a passion that I cannot recognize 
 as the bright holiday romance of a child; it has 
 solemn depths, as though it could already be 
 charged with a richly mingled experience. 
 
 Indeed there is no count of time in the life of an 
 imagination ; from the moment it is touched you are 
 freed from the necessity of earning your experience 
 grain by grain, in the common fashion. For days 
 and days you may work patiently forward, appro- 
 priating the spoil of the moment, adding it to your 
 store ; if you are exceedingly careful and attentive 
 your pile may be always increasing, a day's work 
 may respectably heighten it. But it only grows 
 with the measure of time, a few shining specks to 
 the hour perhaps ; there is no hastening or rushing 
 the process so long as it is left in your hands. And 
 then in a flash it is out of your hands, and every- 
 
 84 
 
INDOORS 
 
 thing happens in new ways. Sight becomes more 
 than seeing, becomes a faculty that enfolds and 
 embraces, in one stroke possessing itself of the 
 scene that till now you have plodded over with thin 
 senses unaided. To see, to touch, by ordinary laws, 
 is to retain but a point at a time — just the point 
 where you glanced or where your finger fell ; weeks 
 of toil it might easily take to acquire and assimilate 
 a scene in that manner. But the imagination, 
 unaccountably stirred, sweeps forward with a 
 sudden billowy swing, gathers an armful in the tick 
 of a moment — and there, before you can wink an 
 eye, is your small laborious treasure increased a 
 hundredfold. If the work of days, of weeks, is 
 achieved while a dew-drop runs over a leaf (like 
 Meredith's " bloom of dawn "), do not doubt that 
 there is room for a life-time in the memory of a 
 child — a child for whom the flash of illumination 
 has fallen now and then in the hush of an August 
 afternoon. 
 
 " Of thee to say Behold, has said Adieu " : it is 
 true of the rose-glimmer of dawn, it is truer still, 
 I am sorry to find, of these beautiful visitations. 
 Somebody came into the room, common life shut 
 down upon the child again — so it happened; but 
 so it always happens, I have never discovered the 
 secret of prolonging the few rare moments. Enough 
 that in passing they bestow their imperishable gift ; 
 the time, the place, are marked for ever afterwards, 
 plainly to be seen over lengthening years. I am sure 
 it is impossible to forget them — even when at last 
 there are some that shine at a very far distance, 
 like this of the great cool ante-room at Earlham. 
 
 85 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 The remembrance hangs there, beaconing clearly, a 
 long way off by this time ; it is safe from all chances, 
 it will only quaver and sink when the child is 
 extinguished too. 
 
 19 
 I cannot tear myself away ; I loiter interminably 
 across the green roses of that carpet, always trpng 
 to utter the sweet old memories that go rippling, 
 and beating in my brain. It is hard enough to 
 describe what is before my eyes — the queer broad 
 sofa or couch, for instance, covered with floriferous 
 wool-work, so broad that you roll and roll I know 
 not how many times, over and over, to get from 
 one side to the other; but how much harder to 
 catch these wafts and puffs of sensation that beset 
 me while I veer to and fro, gradually making my 
 way down the length of the room. There is a dis- 
 tinction, you see, between remembering, recalling 
 things in detachment, recounting the tale of them 
 — between this and recovering how it felt, how it 
 was, when the things themselves were all about you, 
 tacitly assumed and taken for granted. I might 
 make a fair picture of the great angular couch (can 
 I indeed omit it?), and I might shew how our 
 bright-haired cousin, she of the lovely stories, 
 joined us gaily and riotously in a game that 
 sprawled over the expanse of it ; but I am tormented 
 by the sidelong influences of the scene, welling into 
 it from right and left, which are not to be caught in 
 a description of the scene itself. I forget them, 
 perhaps, when I begin to make my picture ; I think 
 only of the absurd piece of furniture, hard and 
 
 86 
 
INDOORS 
 
 comfortless, suitable for nothing but to roll upon, 
 and I recall its carved wooden frame and the 
 bunched flowers of the wool-work; — and there, 
 suddenly the air of the old day comes surging round 
 me, and yes, I say to myself, that is how it was, how 
 it felt. 
 
 How can one talk about Earlham to any purpose, 
 unless to the picture of things seen and done it is 
 possible to add this aura of sweet sensation ? Even 
 as I hang on the sharp edge of the couch, where it is 
 framed in the band of wooden carving, I am aware 
 of the savours, echoes, rhythms of Earlham all 
 about me — I don't know which is the word for them. 
 Evidently the air must be fuU of them; and they 
 vary, what is more, from room to room, for nobody 
 could mistake the mood, the tone of the ante-room 
 or confuse it with any other. What is it, then? 
 How ridiculous to perceive it so acutely, and yet 
 to be quite unable to name it — a matter of such 
 definite quahties too, nothing uncertain or dim. 
 AU I can say is that as soon as I enter this room 
 there is something in my hoUow footfall (it sounded 
 hollow and muffled, just across the threshold), in 
 the soft smell of the velvet curtains, in the pecuUar 
 rake of the two lights, the northern and the western, 
 in the clean brownness of the high panels (stained 
 and grained, you remember) — some influence in aU 
 these which affects and qualifies anything I may 
 say or do, see or hear, between these four walls. 
 Cross over to the other door, enter the drawing- 
 room beyond, and behold what a change in the 
 spirit and the climate. It is another world, with 
 another fine rain of deUcate emanations — I feel 
 
 87 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 them intensely, as soon as ever I turn the corner 
 of the leather screen by the door. Here, for instance, 
 I pause for a moment by the round table, the table 
 with its black and yeUow cover, on which there 
 stood (shadowed by the bowery bouquet of dahlia^ 
 and asparagus) a sort of dish or tray of clouded 
 marble, supported on metal feet and garnished with 
 little chains and danghng baUs — perhaps it had 
 been bought at the Great Exhibition. Now mark, 
 I swing one of the Httle chains so that its marble 
 ball strikes the dish — clinkl And if that is not 
 enough, I turn to one of the candlesticks on the — 
 the chiffonier, would it be called ? — and set thp. glass 
 lustres gently clanking ; and this at any rate gives 
 me the note of the drawing-room in a trice. Clink, 
 clank; the soft voices ring out; and listening to 
 them now, with eyes shut, I know beyon^d doubt 
 that I am in the drawing-room at EarlhaDi. 
 
 So it goes, from room to room; rouM every 
 corner there is a change of atmosphere, instant and 
 complete, each with its penetrating appeal. Never 
 for a moment have I confused them; and I test 
 my clear knowledge by brushing swiftly back 
 through the ante-room, up the next flight of stairs, 
 along the passage, and opening a door or two at 
 random, left and right. This is the door that leads 
 to the back-stairs, where the boards are bare and 
 resonant; or this again is the dark entry through 
 which one fumbles into the Blue Room, where the 
 low window-seats command a view of the front 
 door, and you hear the crisp crackle of the gravel 
 under the carriage-wheels ; and here is the nursery 
 once more, where each of the five doors shuts on a 
 
 88 
 
INDOORS 
 
 different note, a click or a thud, sharply dis- 
 tinguished; and in fine there is no possibility of 
 mistaking the changes of pitch (that is the word, 
 I think, after all) to which the regions of the house 
 are variously attuned. No account of Earlham 
 could satisfy me which failed to mark these deep 
 distinctions, failed to make them heard and felt 
 in every scene ; and it means that I can be satisfied 
 by no account whatever, or by none but that which 
 memory is always at hand to compose, speaking to 
 every sense at once. When we have learned to 
 create pictures of music, symphonies of fragrance, 
 honey-draughts of colour and form, and all in a 
 single achievement of art, then we may hope for an 
 artist with the genius of memory — not till then. 
 
 20 
 
 But come, after long rambling and roaming I 
 must plant myself firmly on the spot where I began. 
 I was on one of the red seats in the hall, watching 
 the household file into their places for prayers; 
 and then came the hymn, the chapter, the exposi- 
 tion of the chapter, and the appealing cadences of 
 our grandfather's voice while he prayed. As we 
 rose to our feet after the final moments of silence, 
 the stirring and shuffling and bustling of life went 
 forward again; the benches were swept off into 
 their dim hiding-place, an uncle or two went 
 bounding upstairs, I dare say, to revise a vamped 
 toilet, the rest of the company strayed to the garden- 
 door and the twinkling flower-beds that flanked it 
 outside. I myself had been out there already, 
 before prayers ; for I remember that as I sat in one 
 
 89 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 of the side-arches of the shallow porch, dangling 
 my legs, a packet of letters had fallen with a plop 
 on the gravel from an upper window. It always 
 happened so, in the half -hour before prayer-time; 
 grandmother's window was just overhead, and 
 when she had read her letters she bunched them 
 together and dropped them on to the gravel by the 
 porch, for grandfather to pick up and read as he 
 returned from an early stroll. He greeted us, where 
 we sat and drummed our heels, with a kindly 
 quizzical gleam. " Good-morning, sir ; good-morn- 
 ing, miss ; how do you do, this bow-tiful morning " 
 — ^he had a pleasant way of so sounding the first 
 syllable of the word, like beau in French. He picked 
 up the packet of letters and passed into the study, 
 and then it was soon time for his congregation to 
 assemble. 
 
 The children had breakfasted earlier, in the bright 
 nursery, but they were quite ready to follow their 
 elders to the dining-room, on the signal of the gong. 
 There were peaches, there were grapes, pears, plums ; 
 and if our elders were busy with their own meal at 
 first, we could hover and range around till our turn 
 came. At the further end of the room there stood 
 a miniature bilhard-table, which kept us occupied ; 
 the balls spun and flew on the green cloth till they 
 crashed — crashed on the polished boards of the 
 floor, and warning voices called us to order. Or we 
 might linger expectant by our grandmother — and 
 her manner of treating a meal was always interest- 
 ing. In front of her was the great pot-bellied silver 
 kettle on its foliated stand; it was a kettle that 
 sat down comfortably, with the figure of an Indian 
 
 90 
 
INDOORS 
 
 god. She began to fill a tea-cup — ^but stay, she saw 
 our grandfather busy with the dishes that were 
 ranged before him at his end of the table ; he was 
 serving the company with his neat precision ; and 
 " Will you have some of this, dear? " he called 
 to her, spoon in hand. " Not so much — half tha.t " 
 — ^her protest flew back before his spoon could 
 touch the dish ; vivid in her mind was the horror of 
 a " great helping." " Such a great slice," she 
 declared, as the meal of a wren was placed before 
 her ; and the tea-cup was filled, but not before she 
 had swiftly divided her scrap of bacon and deposited 
 most of it on the plate of her neighbour. It was 
 all very agreeable to watch, so instinct with hfe; 
 I could stare most contentedly, and it was splendid 
 when she roused one of her sons, stirring him to 
 rich rejoinder, by some infringement on his rights 
 and liberties. Did he appear to be wastefully, 
 recklessly shovelling the jam or the butter on his 
 plate ? Well, she couldn't help it, the word es- 
 caped her; and then you should have seen the 
 grand humour of his remonstrance. They dehghted 
 to challenge her precious minute economies, to tell 
 how she would travel from the furthest end of the 
 house to hght her candle at the kitchen fire, sooner 
 than strike a valuable match; she denied it, but 
 she could not quite positively deny it, and her 
 pretty smile, at once submitting, protesting, appeal- 
 ing, beamed gently as she turned again to her 
 tea-making. What a dear little drama of character 
 — ^just the kind of scene that would hold us 
 entranced, while the biggest peach was being peeled 
 for us. 
 
 91 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 Our grandfather had finished his breakfast, had 
 announced that he should be " going in " that 
 morning, had disappeared from the room ; and our 
 grandmother was busy in the background, unob- 
 trusively — she was clearly making up a parcel 
 (goodness knows what went into it) for grandfather 
 to leave at some humble door in Norwich, but she 
 didn't wish to call ribald attention to it. The rest 
 of the party lounged about the long table, expan- 
 sively jesting and talking ; and it was a moment of 
 the day that concerned us, for plans might be 
 broached, there might be talk of an excursion on 
 the river, a picnic. And anyhow it was the moment 
 when the possibiHties of the day began to open and 
 extend before us ; and when I think of the incalcul- 
 able spaciousness of the day, a prospect that dis- 
 appeared over the horizon without a hint of a night 
 or another day beyond it, I cannot wonder that I 
 seemed to have just as much life behind me at that 
 hour as ever in later years. Such immensities of 
 time in a single day — even if there were only a few 
 hundreds of days bestowed away in my memory, 
 they stretched the count of my years to a high 
 figure. Did you ever feel young, at least tiU there 
 began to be those who thought you old ? Awkward, 
 shapeless, inexpert I might feel, sometimes light and 
 flimsy as fluff, sometimes ponderous as lead, but 
 never in those days young ; and evidently it is not 
 surprising. This, however, was not the point at the 
 moment; I was entirely engaged in considering 
 whether it would be more perfect bliss to plunge into 
 a morning in the garden, without our elders, or to 
 learn that some of them were prepared to take us 
 
 92 
 
INDOORS 
 
 on the river, rowing down to Cringleford mill. 
 Which should I choose to-day, if choose I might ? 
 Indeed I must have both, and I will very shortly 
 — but not for a few minutes yet. 
 
 For look, I unexpectedly chance upon another 
 small scene that detains me. I had quite forgotten 
 it, but when we left the dining-room, the morning 
 plan having been settled, and dashed away through 
 the haU, we found our grandmother sitting on the 
 red sofa by the staircase, talking to a young clerical 
 gentleman, a curate, who was seated beside her. 
 How should I know the subject of their talk? I 
 couldn't say, but I was perfectly aware that the 
 young curate was being " spoken to " about some- 
 thing — I don't know what, perhaps about his 
 preaching, perhaps about his manner of drawling 
 and droning through the service ; anyhow our 
 grandmother had been impelled, in her quick warm 
 way, to speak a gentle word of warning and advice. 
 Of course it was for grandfather to do this, really, 
 if it had to be done, but he was so patient, so mild ; 
 he would have put up with the long-winded drawl, 
 would never have noticed it perhaps; whereas to 
 grandmother it was a vivid irritation from the first, 
 and she was bound to take some step. I wish I 
 might have heard what she actually said to the 
 rather unkempt young man, when she drew him 
 apart to speak her mind. Nobody could guess 
 how she began — that was certain; probably there 
 was a bewildered moment for the young man, a 
 moment when there was a doubt, a wan light, a 
 scare in his eye ; how the first word of admonition 
 would spring from her was never to be foretold, as 
 
 93 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 we well knew. A little later, as I see them talking 
 together upon the broad sofa, things are very 
 different, the poor man's passing air of discomfiture 
 has vanished entirely. By this time they are deep 
 in converse, and the curate has revived and ex- 
 panded; I catch the tones of our grandmother's 
 voice, warm and fervent, with a little break in it 
 that is eloquent of christian sympathy and feeling. 
 They are far beyond the small matter of reproof, 
 whatever it was, and the young man responds to 
 her lead with eagerness ; when she was moved (and 
 so easily she was moved) to the expression of her 
 heart of piety, there was a soaring lift in her voice 
 that inspired a listener, that caught him up to the 
 mood of her ardent self-forgetful sincerity. So by 
 this time their converse has winged away from 
 petty things, and the young man's confidence is 
 renewed, and he follows her with admiring enthusi- 
 asm. His look of veneration, her rapt uplifted eyes, 
 give me an abiding impression in the five seconds 
 that it takes to cross the hall and gain the staircase. 
 We were " getting ready to go out," and surely 
 it is odd that the process should take so long. You 
 would think that to seize a hat (if so much as a hat) 
 and fly to the garden-door could be done in a stroke ; 
 what more was there to do ? But somehow there 
 were delays and impediments. Between the foot 
 of the stairs and the first landing, for instance, one 
 might drop into a chasm of forgetfulness ; one's 
 purpose would suddenly vanish, melting away at 
 the sight of those splendid stuffed herons, for the 
 thousandth time, where they stood throwing out 
 their great beaks so nobly over their nest. There 
 
 94 
 
INDOORS 
 
 were four or five young ones in the nest, and there 
 was a sea-green egg unhatched — not very true to 
 nature perhaps, on the whole, for the nest lay upon 
 the bare ground, and there was no attempt at 
 scenery save for the sky and white clouds that were 
 painted on the back of the case. They had been 
 stuffed, those herons, in an uncriticjd age; but I 
 could easily supply the rocking tree-top, the whist- 
 ling wind. I knew where they came from, nest and 
 aU — ^from no further off than the heronry in the 
 park at EarUiam ; we were immensely proud of the 
 heronry, which of course I shall visit before long. 
 I could not be sorry that one of the nests had once 
 been sacrificed, brought to ground, brought down 
 to my very feet ; not otherwise is it given to one to 
 look down upon a sea-green heron's egg in its great 
 bowl of twigs; moreover I think there had been 
 some good reason for the extinction of this young 
 family — an accident to their parents, to their tree- 
 top, I forget what it was. And then the next case 
 above them, the strutting egregious ruffs, and the 
 owls in their hollow trunk — and I have tumbled 
 off into space and am lost, contemplating the owls, 
 when a voice, caUing, reminds me of my purpose 
 and projects me forward on my way to the nursery. 
 It does take a long time to get ready. Half way 
 down the passage there is a step, edged with shining 
 brass; one takes a run at it, one jumps, crashing 
 upon the lower level ; the impetus carries one past 
 the nursery door, to the window at the end of the 
 passage. Here there stood a species of fire-ex- 
 tinguisher, a thing of knobs and tubes and pump- 
 handles, which luckily served out its time without 
 
 95 
 
E A R L H A M 
 
 ever being called into play ; it stood idly upon the 
 window-seat, well placed for observation. But no 
 loitering now; back to the nursery — and I believe 
 I have not happened to mention the peculiarity of 
 the nursery door, this one of its five. It was double, 
 a door within a door, and between the two there 
 was a narrow dark space, just big enough to contain 
 me when both were shut. Stand in the space and 
 shut both the doors, and you are immured in a 
 black cell; for any one entering or leaving the 
 nursery unsuspectingly it is a fearful shock to 
 come upon you there, crouching for a spring. It 
 might be worth while to wait there for a minute, 
 very quietly, in case the nursery-maid should come 
 blundering in with a tray of crockery ; she gives a 
 yelp and all but drops the tray, as you spring up 
 in her path. But forward, forward. 
 
 " Must I change my shoes ? why need I ? why ? " 
 It appears that I am not rightly shod for messing 
 about in the garden. Isn't it unbelievable how the 
 superstition of changing, of substituting something 
 else for what you have on at the moment, clings to 
 the people about you? They cannot leave well 
 alone ; and now it means having to thump my way 
 up the steep wooden stairs to the Eleven-sided 
 Room, after these shoes. But in the happy light of 
 morning the Eleven-sided Room, as I have said, is 
 a place of devious charm and interest. The strange 
 recesses and cupboards may be safely explored; 
 and as for the wall-paper of nursery rhymes. Mistress 
 Mary and Little Bo-peep and the rest of them in 
 endless repetition, reaUy I think I could follow them 
 all round the eleven walls, reading each of the 
 
 96 
 
INDOORS 
 
 legends a hundred times over. " With cockle-shells 
 and silver bells " — start from the corner where the 
 big card hangs (a card headed " Morning Hymn, by 
 John Keble " — which was faintly remarkable to me, 
 for Keble was a neighbouring farmer, and it was 
 difficult to think of him as the author of " New 
 every morning ") — start from this corner, I say, 
 and count how many times you can find the rhyme 
 of Mistress Mary repeated in the pattern of the 
 paper. You will lose count before long, I assure 
 you; but no matter, here is the door of the odd 
 alcove above the wooden stairs, a door with a 
 square pane of glass in it, through which you may 
 boldly peer at this time of day. But really, these 
 intolerable shoes — drearily one faces the question 
 at last. 
 
 I should not Uke to say that I got ready without 
 further hitch. You never know where you may not 
 be tripped into that chasm of oblivious rumination, 
 contemplation, speculation; it may yawn for you 
 at any point, at any time, along the passage and 
 down the stairs. But have I really dawdled for 
 long, after aU ? I seem to be ready in a flash, to be 
 shooting across the hall to the garden-door. It 
 stands open as usual, and the awning lazily flaps 
 and bellies in the morning breeze. 
 
 97 H 
 
II: IN THE GARDEN 
 
 I 
 IT was superb, the great lawn at Earlham — it 
 really was. I have described how it was lifted up, 
 almost to the level, I should think, of the first-floor 
 windows, by a steep bank of shaven grass; but 
 there was a considerable expanse on the lower level 
 too, before you reached the bank. On this lower 
 lawn, to right and left, there was a fantastic medley 
 of flower-beds, cut in queer shapes, coils and 
 lozenges and loops; and the gardener's fancy ran 
 strangely riot, year by year, in selecting and dis- 
 posing the flowers that filled them. Geraniums 
 roasting-red, French marigolds orange and mahog- 
 any-coloured, the tomato-note of waxen begonias, 
 exotic herbage aU speckled and pied and ring- 
 straked, dahlias, calceolarias — they were mar- 
 shalled and massed together, they fought it out 
 as they would. But indeed they were mastered by 
 the sunshine, by the blaze of light in which they 
 flashed and twinkled ; and they fell back, right and 
 left, leaving a wide space of clear clean grass 
 unbroken. And then there rose before you the 
 green bank, so steep that I wonder how the mowing- 
 machine contrived to sidle along it and keep it thus 
 smoothly shaven. 
 
 To me, as I gained the crest of the bank, it seemed 
 as though the huge flat of the lawn stretched away 
 and ahead for a mile; so serene, so steady and 
 
 99 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 peaceful it was, with nothing to break its even 
 greenness till the eye, sweeping far, reached the 
 shrubberies and trees that bordered it about. The 
 broad silence made nothing of such trivialities as a 
 lawn-tennis net, a few croquet hoops; they were 
 lost in the quiet plain. Beyond it the horizon was 
 bounded by clumped oaks, by dim woods more 
 distant; out there was the park, and you could 
 catch sight of the cows swinging their tails in the 
 deep pasture. On either hand was a dense thicket, 
 with an edging of bright flowers — a straight edge, 
 on this side and that, so that the lawn was a great 
 square. From the further side of it the view of the 
 house was beautifully mellow and kindly, with its 
 long rows of old windows and its high chimney- 
 stacks. But that comes later ; at this hour of the 
 morning I should not set out on the journey across 
 the lawn ; I should turn aside to the thickets and 
 shrubberies, to the shadowy corners and recesses 
 of which there were so many to choose from. 
 
 Turn, therefore, at the top of the bank, turn to 
 the left and foUow the edge of the slope till it brings 
 you to this angle of the lawn; it is an excellent 
 spot for the beginning of a morning's exploration. 
 Many possibilities here converged; and here, to 
 begin with, stood a wonderful white seat, semi- 
 circular, triply divided, high in the middle and 
 quite low at the sides — an ancient, a historic seat, 
 on which I might well subside for a minute or so, 
 while I try to explain the complication of interest 
 that gathered in this corner. It is not easy at aU ; 
 so much seems to happen at once, what with the 
 geranium-blaze that here comes shelving up from 
 
 100 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 the lower level, and the red wall, with its cascade 
 of wistaria and clematis, that branches away from 
 a corner of the house and curves like an arm in this 
 direction, and the cool shrubbery rustling behind 
 me, and the glimpse, if I look round, of a sun-bright 
 enclosure, formally laid out, the approach to which 
 is just here, close at hand. It is difficult indeed to 
 make my way methodically; I should remain on 
 the white seat till nightfall, shifting from one to 
 another of its three divisions and back again, if 
 I had to describe how all these diversities fitted 
 together, conjoining at this point. 
 
 But there is no hurry, after aU; and as I sit 
 there, under the tasseUed branch of a larch that 
 leans out from the edge of the shrubbery, I take in 
 afresh the deUghtful sense of easy abundance, the 
 loose comfort, the soft-bosomed maturity of the 
 garden. Those lobeUa-stripes, those marigold- 
 patches might look harsh and hard, you would 
 think; one knows how smartly odious they can 
 appear in a weU-kept garden, so called, where the 
 flowers seem to have been — what shall I say ? — to 
 have been stuffed and mounted, lest they should 
 take their ease as living creatures. Not a flower 
 could look constrained, unnaturally smartened, in 
 the garden at Earlham ; even if they sat up in rows 
 and stripes, they did so with enjoyment uncon- 
 cerned. They glowed, they revelled; and more- 
 over it was not, in any vulgar sense, a well-kept 
 garden. It was profusely inconsistent; if one 
 flower-bed was stuck aU over with geraniums like a 
 pin-cushion and rimmed with horrible little mon- 
 sters of fretted, empurpled foliage, the next might 
 
 lOI 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 be a bower, a boscage, a ramp of sweet peas, a 
 bushy luxuriance of phlox and rosemary. And 
 especially the border against the slow curve of the 
 wall which I mentioned just now — this was a mazy 
 confusion of everything that gleams and glows and 
 exhales a spicery of humming fragrance. Peacock 
 butterflies, brilliant red admirals, fluttered over the 
 blue mist of sea-lavender; a tree of verbena, the 
 lemon-scented herb of which you pull a leaf when- 
 ever you pass, branched out close to the immense 
 old trunk of the wistaria; salvia blue and red, 
 bitter-sweet phloxes white and crimson-eyed, the 
 russet and purple trumpets of the lovely creature 
 afflicted with the name of salpiglossis, they aU 
 rejoiced together, rambhng and crowding in liberal 
 exuberance. The gardener might wreak his worst 
 will, scheming for a smart patchwork ; but the free 
 soul of the garden escaped him and bloomed 
 tumultuously. Or rather, perhaps, there were 
 two souls in the gardener himself ; one, a cramped 
 and professional soul, disliked and mistrusted a high- 
 spirited flower ; but the other, more indulgent, had 
 the best of it in the garden. 
 
 By this time these southern flower-beds were 
 dry and warm; but in the shrubbery behind the 
 white seat the dew-fresh airs of early morning still 
 lingered. A path wandered off into the thicket, a 
 path with a smooth floor of beaten earth ; and if 
 I should follow its twisting, in among the bushes of 
 laurel and snowberry, I should come upon a chiU 
 little climate that stands like a wall, resisting the 
 shafts of warmth that steal in from outside. It is 
 amusing to feel the sharp, distinct edge of the 
 
 102 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 dankness which the sun has not reached as yet, and 
 I might possibly spend some agreeable minutes in 
 repeating the sensation ; at one moment you are in 
 southern softness, at the next you have pierced the 
 invisible wall with a pleasing thrill. But this 
 shrubbery was not really one of the great places of 
 the garden; it was rather unresponsive and dull. 
 I prefer, on leaving the white seat, to turn the 
 corner of the curving wistaria-wall, which comes to 
 an end just here, and pass into the formal enclosure 
 behind it. The sun is quite high enough to beat 
 freely into this sheltered retreat. 
 
 Face round, then, and turn the corner — but you 
 see at once that the wall, which has come wandering 
 up here from the wing of the house, does not reaUy 
 end at this point ; it doubles sharply back on itself, 
 enfolding a narrow space which entices my thought. 
 The sprawling branches of a quince- tree appear over 
 the waU, from within ; but leave that for the present, 
 remembering that the secret garden of the quince 
 must be visited in due course. It is now the " Dutch 
 garden " that calls — not very Dutch, in truth, but 
 that was how we knew it. A broad oblong with a 
 geometrical parterre, gravelled paths, box edgings, 
 waUed on three sides — it was Dutch enough for our 
 fancy. The fourth side was shadowed by the cool 
 shrubbery. And so I guide you to another white 
 seat, tucked under the honeysuckle of one of the 
 walls and overlooking the parterre; and this is a 
 very celebrated corner, one of the most rewarding 
 in aU the garden. In these morning hours the 
 children are constantly ranging in this neighbour- 
 hood, with the seat for their headquarters, em- 
 
 103 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 bowered in honeysuckle and overhanging ivy- 
 bunches. 
 
 It was celebrated ; there was an old story of one 
 of the Gurneys, of Aunt Fry in her maiden youth, 
 which centred about this seat. Our grandfather 
 liked to teU the story, pacing the gravelled path in 
 his long-skirted black coat and pointing out the 
 seat with his umbrella ; he; told the legend in a sly 
 voice, with a chuckle, dramatically pausing. It is 
 not much of a story, and I never really believed it ; 
 but it was supposed that Aunt Fry, then Elizabeth 
 Gurney, had been wavering, delaying, demurring 
 under the discreet attentions of her suitor — he could 
 get no decided answer from her at aU. So the 
 matter stood when he determined at length to offer 
 her a present, a valuable gift of a fine gold watch 
 and chain ; and of course if she accepted it she 
 committed herself— a true young Quakeress does 
 not accept a gold watch from a man whom she 
 proposes to keep at a distance. But this was a very 
 discreet young man ; he would not thrust the watch 
 in her face and confuse her bashfulness. Unob- 
 trusively he laid it in her path — ^laid it on this very 
 seat under the wall, at which our grandfather points 
 with his baggy umbrella; for this way she would 
 pass, she would see the token, she would under- 
 stand. So the young man steals to the seat, 
 deposits his offering and effaces himself. But what 
 happens when a man is courting one of seven 
 sisters ? Of course the other six are on the tiptoe of 
 curiosity and their pr3dng eyes are everywhere. 
 The six other Miss Gurneys, I teU you, were all on 
 the spot, hidden among the bushes, when Betsy 
 
 104 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 (they called her Betsy) came strolling past the seat, 
 eyed the fatal gift and stood hesitating. She 
 paused, she mused, she turned away. But her 
 sisters knew their Betsy, you may be sure; they 
 waited and watched ; and I need scarcely say that 
 the ridiculous girl was presently seen edging back 
 towards the seat again, and she picked up the watch, 
 and she took the young man Fry, and by every 
 account she was a good wife to him — a good wife, 
 but perhaps, if I may hint as much, a little less 
 interested in her own hearth than in her prisoners 
 and her admirable activities on their behalf. Well, 
 it is long ago; and I never much beheved in the 
 story of the watch, as I said, though it was enter- 
 taining to hsten to grandfather as he told it with 
 twinkles and chuckles. Such was the fame of the 
 seat, however, and I would not decry it. 
 
 2 
 Enough of that ; for us this region of the garden 
 had better titles. Close against the seat was a small 
 ivy-mantled tool-house; and further along, in an 
 angle of the wail, there was a tiny round pond, with 
 a fountain, where the motionless noses of frogs 
 protruded among the draggle of slimy green weed ; 
 and beside it there was a green-house, full of damp 
 and luscious fragrance ; and then again there was a 
 door that led to the secret close of the quince-tree, 
 and aU the mazes of attraction that lay in that 
 quarter. How easy to be led on and on — ^but I tend 
 to return to the legendary seat, partly because I 
 should have collected a treasury there of odds and 
 ends (you know how one accumulates a heap of 
 
 105 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 things which it seems necessary to preserve, in the 
 course of a morning), partly because I must take 
 proper stock of this neighbourhood before wander- 
 ing further. From the Dutch garden there was a 
 charming view of the rambhng roofs and chimneys 
 of the house. You saw them sliced off, so to speak, 
 by the line of the garden-wall, with its spray and 
 foam of white clematis. The gables, the tiled slopes 
 at odd angles, the beautiful chimneys in their 
 ruffles of greenery, made a bewildering mass, a view 
 Hke that of a little old red-roofed town, weather- 
 stained to a soft richness of rose-red and tawny- 
 brown. The outbuildings, the brew-house and the 
 stables, ranged away to the right, with a yellower 
 rust of lichen dappled over their ash-grey tiles; 
 the great heads of the limes and chestnuts rose 
 sumptuously behind them. 
 
 As for the queer collection of objects that by now 
 I may have amassed in my corner, I could tell a 
 story about each of them if I had the face to do so. 
 But it is difficult to share with another the peculiar 
 sense of their value — how it is that a mossed stone, 
 one of a hundred, or a handful of duckweed squeezed 
 out like a sponge, or a bunch of crisp and crackling 
 " everlastings," may have appealed to one as 
 striking and desirable, apt for possession. They are 
 collected and bestowed with care — but not of these 
 will I speak. There was a small covered basket, 
 however, about three inches deep, of which some- 
 thing may be said, though it has been kept a secret 
 hitherto. We had brought that basket from home, 
 from far away, on the journey to Earlham, and 
 nobody but the children knew what it contained. 
 
 io6 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 A beetle, very large, black as ebony, with a little 
 earth for it to burrow in on the way — it was a beetle 
 that we had brought hither, intending to set it free 
 in the garden at Earlham. And now was the 
 moment; the beetle stepped forth upon alien 
 ground, doubtfully paced and paused ; and I cannot 
 forget the incident, now that the crunch of the 
 gravel and the dry smell of the box-borders is 
 about me again, at ten o'clock of a fine summer 
 morning. The t)eetle may finally have advanced 
 along Wilberforce's Walk, which ran in a straight 
 vista down the edge of the shrubbery in this quarter. 
 Wilberforce perhaps, on just such a morning, once 
 stroUed there with Uncle Joseph John, plotting the 
 holy war upon the slave-driver; the path was 
 named after him. It was long and straight and 
 shady ; the two friends in their broad-brimmed hats 
 could just have walked abreast; and you would 
 have seen them pass out into sunshine at the far end, 
 as they turned to foUow the path which made the 
 circuit of the lawn. 
 
 The day grew much hotter very soon ; even the 
 green pool in the corner of the Dutch garden had 
 lost its chni, when I hung over the raihng that 
 surrounded its stone Up and plunged a hand into 
 the clammy duckweed. Against the wall in that 
 corner there was a splendid fig-tree ; but we could 
 afford to neglect the figs. There was better to come, 
 and the way to it, if I choose to take the way, is 
 immediately here. Hard by the pool there is a door 
 in the brick wall ; and dropping my lump of green 
 ooze, which keeps the stamp of the fingers that 
 squeezed it, I turn to grasp the smooth handle of the 
 
 107 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 door. Here, as ever, I am delayed by the pleasant 
 feel of the fluted and egg-shaped knob — the more so 
 that it works very stiffly, needing a powerful wrench. 
 Outside lay the paddock, and then the kitchen- 
 garden; and no doubt there comes a time, under 
 the towering noon-day, when there is an imperious 
 call in that direction. I don't know that the moment 
 has arrived just yet ; but meanwhile it would be as 
 well to give a glance round the paddock. So the 
 door swings open, and shuts behind me with its 
 familiar thump. 
 
 3 
 Here was a change of scene. A rough track ran 
 along this outer face of the wall, heading for the 
 park, and the paddock was just over the way. It 
 was a small stretch of open grass, and principally 
 it was interesting on account of the ice-house, which 
 stood at one end of it. Stood ? — it lay buried rather, 
 with the turf rolling over it in a hump, like a gigantic 
 grave. It was entered, or had been of old, by a low 
 door with wooden bars ; but I suppose it had long 
 fallen out of use. I think we used to hear that it had 
 been the habit to hack great blocks of ice in winter 
 out of the frozen pond, down in the park, and store 
 them away in this kingly tomb ; but somehow that 
 information never explained the place for me. An 
 ice-house, silent, glittering, steel-blue — a dazzling 
 thought ! And nothing was to be seen but a grassy 
 mound and a low doorway, hinting at a vault full 
 of mouldering bones. Where, then, was the house 
 of ice ? I never got that question straight in my 
 
 io8 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 mind, and the note of perplexity still pervades this 
 end of the paddock. 
 
 I do not follow the rough cart-road into the park ; 
 I face in the other direction, edging along in the 
 shadow of the garden-wall. Further and further it 
 ran, and at one point it bore on its breast a battered 
 target, dimly painted with the form of an antlered 
 stag. At times our uncles used to bang and blaze 
 at the runnable stag from the paddock; but aU is 
 peaceful at this hour, and I can narrowly inspect the 
 riddled form of the great beast. Still clinging to the 
 wall I pass the entrance to the back-yard — that 
 green common which I looked out upon, you may 
 remember, while the gardener was arranging the 
 flowers and the poor man from Norwich sat patient 
 in his corner. I pass on, and now I am very near 
 the gate of the kitchen-garden; but the cart-road 
 avoids it, and presently plunges into the shadow of a 
 grove of horse-chestnuts, to join the drive, the main 
 approach to the front-door of the house. So I have 
 skirted round the group of outbuildings, the suburbs 
 of the house ; and having once arrived among the 
 horse-chestnuts I might not find it easy to get 
 further for the moment. For if pebbles and chunks 
 of moss and seed-pods and such things seem to cry 
 out to be " collected," what about the delicious 
 objects, brown and satin-smooth, that strew the 
 ground under these trees? A chestnut, breaking 
 out of its thorny husk in beautifully fitted segments 
 — and best of all when it is unripe, creamily piebald 
 — has a charm irresistible, no doubt ; the trouble is 
 only that they are too plentiful, scattered by the 
 thousand, so that they want the lasting appeal of 
 
 109 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 rarity. Let them lie, after all ; the stables are near 
 by, and there is an audible hissing and stamping 
 and clanking that entices me thither. 
 
 The coachman was a very handsome man, fresh- 
 coloured, curly-headed ; I can describe him exactly 
 by saying that he looked like one of those fine racy 
 gentlemen, half squires, half farmers, who figure in 
 the novels of George Eliot, of Mrs. Gaskell ; there is 
 more than one of them, I think, in Cranford alone. 
 He bloomed and beamed upon the carriage-box; 
 but properly he should always have driven a high 
 dog-cart, spanking cheerily off to market and 
 exchanging a seasonable pleasantry with every one 
 on the road. That was his look, his type; but 
 perhaps there was an indolent ease in his gesture 
 which belied it, and I dare say Mrs. Gaskell's brisk 
 north-country eye would have rejected him from her 
 gallery. He and his underling seemed busy and 
 active enough, however, as we drifted into the stable- 
 yard to watch the grooming of the horses — that 
 quaint old operation, unknown, I suppose, to many 
 young observers to-day. It is not at all like the 
 oleaginous smearing and dabbing of a motor-car, 
 which turns the stable-hand into a grimy hybrid of 
 a stoker and a rag-picker. Our friend and his under- 
 ling were not dingily messing with oil-cans and dirty 
 rags ; they were stamping about in their thick clog- 
 boots and sluicing their horses' legs with clean 
 buckets of water, they were rubbing and hissing in 
 an atmosphere of pungent freshness and coolness — 
 how different from the " savour of poisonous brass 
 and metal sick " that to-day hangs heavy and 
 sluggish in the stable-yard! The coach-house, too, 
 
 lie 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 was a rare place, and the thin staleness of the air 
 inside a shut carriage was not less agreeable in its 
 way than the rich tang of the stalls and the loose- 
 boxes. 
 
 The venerable pile of the stables included lofts, 
 raftered spaces aromatic with apples, with hay, 
 roof-cavities where shafts of powdered Ught fell 
 slanting on the planked floors. It reminds one of a 
 ship — ^would not a steep ladder, suddenly opening 
 at your feet through a square hole in the boards, 
 be what they caU a " companion-way? " There is 
 deck upon deck; — ^but on the whole I prefer the 
 open air, and the green back-court, of which the 
 stable-building forms one side. There the pump, 
 the great pump under its cloister in the corner, 
 would attract me first. Surely it was remarkable ; 
 under the cloister-roof a beam revolved upon a 
 central piUar, and there dangled from the beam a 
 kind of collar, through which the horse's head was 
 thrust. The coUar was made fast; and the horse 
 tramped round and round the piUar, carrying the 
 beam, you see, along with him. So the water was 
 pumped into the house ; the mouth of the well was 
 close by, under the kitchen window, and while the 
 horse was at work you could hear that horrible 
 noise of pulsing jangling water, far down in the 
 blackness, which to some of us is so singularly 
 unnerving. I disquiet myself without need, how- 
 ever; for at this hour the three slender rods that 
 dive into the depth are stUl and sUent ; it was long 
 ago, in the very early morning, when I heard the 
 measured thud of the pump in action. I have now 
 no hesitation in screwing past the weU-head to grasp 
 
 III 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 the bars of the kitchen window. The head of Mrs. 
 Chapman's handmaid appeared within, and I told 
 her of the projected plan of a picnic on the river. 
 " I 'ope you won't get drownded and all," she said 
 pleasantly. 
 
 The rough grass of the court lifted gently away 
 from the back-door. The stable-buUding to the 
 left, of worn old flint and brick, was largely covered 
 by an ancient pear-tree, trained against the wall; 
 and under the rim of the eaves there was a sun-dial, 
 on which I always tried to read the hour and never 
 succeeded. That was one side of the court ; on the 
 other, to the right, there was a low line of red brick- 
 work — and I am greatly surprised to find that I 
 cannot account for the whole of it. The little 
 chamber with the brick oven, where Mrs. Chapman 
 baked the bread — that was there ; but what else ? 
 It is the first blind spot that I have discovered in the 
 insatiable eye of remembrance. I scan that low 
 wall, which certainly had doors and windows in it — 
 first a door that led to the enclosure of the quince, 
 and then the bake-house. But there was more ; and 
 by some chance the blur of a mist descends in that 
 quarter — odd and bitter it is to feel so helpless to 
 dispel it. All is clear again, however, at the upper 
 end of the green patch, and I march thither in full 
 confidence. 
 
 There was here a curiosity. Against the bounding 
 waU stood an aviary, a space of wirework with a 
 small wooden hut on either side ; and within this 
 cage were two great glowering birds — eagles. A 
 pair of golden eagles had been acquired, I don't 
 know where or how, by one of our uncles ; and here 
 
 112 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 in our time they were living out their old age. 
 Charles and Maria — they stared mutely, with fixed 
 and sinister eyes. Their look was hostile and 
 revengeful ; it was our theory that to venture into 
 their cage would mean instant death — to any one, 
 that is, but our remarkable friend the butler, who 
 flung open the cage-door, strode in and patted them 
 familiarly on their humped backs. I don't think 
 they soared and chafed in spirit, I think their 
 minds were set on the lumps and gobbets of name- 
 less flesh that were brought them by our friend ; but 
 when one of them, after fixing us with a yeUow 
 unwinking gaze, suddenly lurched and shouldered 
 off his perch and flopped towards the side of the 
 cage, it was always an effort to hold firm and affront 
 him without giving way, even with the wire between 
 us. There came at length a day when we found, 
 returning to Earlham, that the aviary had vanished. 
 Charles and Maria were dead and stuffed ; they had 
 gone indoors to join the fascinating company upon 
 the landing of the staircase, with the herons and 
 the ruffs. I should like to watch them humping 
 their backs for Sidell to scratch them again. 
 
 And next to the cage of the eagles, against the 
 same wall, was the fives'-court, and the patter of the 
 balls was to be heard there at times. It was a court 
 of archaic design, and the grass grew freely between 
 the flags ; but I certainly hear the noise of the balls 
 and the scuffling of feet, while I stray in this region. 
 You could not very weU look on at the game, 
 however, for it was a court enclosed upon all four 
 sides, with a small entrance-gate at one corner; 
 there was no proper view to be had of the young men 
 
 113 I 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 at their game, as they leaped and scuffled, calling 
 the score in sharp monosyllables. I should pass on, 
 therefore, and issue out once more into the quarter 
 of the paddock, plainly veering this time towards 
 the gate of the kitchen-garden. 
 
 4 
 A high wooden gate, painted white — my hand is 
 on the latch, and it sticks and jams for a moment. 
 Once within the gate I should turn, beyond question, 
 to the right. A few yards of cindery path, and then 
 the floor is firm and smooth under my feet, and I am 
 in the shade of a wonderful old tree. It is a tree 
 of great limbs, heavy with age ; its failing arms are 
 propped here and there upon stout crutches. But 
 its leafage is thick and abundant; and lurking 
 among the leaves, or better stiU, strewing the bare 
 floor, here are the mulberries in their hundreds. 
 To a few of us it is revealed that the mulberry is 
 paragon and nonsuch among the fruits of the 
 garden ; it is what aU the rest of them would be if 
 they could. And surely the path that advances 
 towards a mulberry-tree on a morning of late 
 summer, that lingers about the ample trunk and 
 spreads a clean cool surface beneath its shade — 
 that is the path to foUow, now and ever. There is 
 this about mulberries, that you can only attain to 
 them on their own ground ; you must go to them, 
 search them out where they he; they are too 
 precious and tender, with their bursting purple 
 juices, to be handled and transported to meet you. 
 A ripe black mulberry is a gift to you direct from 
 the opulent tree ; and I cannot help it if I pass on 
 
 114 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 my way, after an interval, plentifully stained with 
 noble dyes. 
 
 Just beyond the mulberry-tree you come to the 
 region of the hot-houses. And beware ! — for peering 
 in at the door of the earth-cool potting-shed, I 
 caught sight of the gardener, and I own I was 
 chilled by his eye. He was a hard man, I always 
 thought — angular, light-eyed, with a wisp of fox- 
 red beard; his glance was quelling, it was like a 
 thin whistle of wind in the golden calm of the 
 kitchen garden. We could not feel at ease in this 
 saturnine presence, not though now and again, as 
 I remember, he would silently lead us to the peach- 
 house or the vinery and offer us each a selected 
 portion. I expect we did him an injustice, and T 
 perfectly see that he had good reason to lock those 
 hot-houses and pocket the key ; but the sun shone 
 warmer when he turned, still without a word, and 
 marched away to the white gate. The other good 
 souls, who were digging among the cabbages or 
 skUfuUy tapping the plants out of their pots in the 
 cool shed — they were aU friendliness ; and especially 
 I am glad to loiter and stare where old Gayford 
 bends over his spade. For how many years, I 
 wonder, had he been digging the borders and 
 banking the celery-beds at Earlham? The sing- 
 song drawl of his Norfolk speech echoes tunefuUy 
 from a far distance. 
 
 And now for the orchid-houses, here at hand, of 
 which I seem able to number several. Our grand- 
 father was a studious collector and cultivator of 
 orchids ; and surely that was an exotic amusement 
 which fitted oddly with his home-grown piety and 
 
 115 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 simplicity. Some queer monstrosity of a cattleya or 
 an odontoglossum always stood in a tiny glass on his 
 writing-table, cheek by jowl with a Gloire de Dijon 
 or a Marechal Niel ; it did not strike him that the 
 orchid had an impious look beside the rose. These 
 houses in the kitchen-garden were full of fantastic 
 outlandish creatures, dangling and writhing in 
 vaporous heat ; and his black coat, his clerical white 
 tie, his stout umbrella, appear incongruously to me 
 now, among that luxuriance of streaked and slashed 
 and maculated colour, more flesh than flower. It 
 was suitable that he should fondle his roses in the 
 open air; but indeed his love of flowers was not 
 sentimental, not that of the mild old clergyman 
 indulging a hobby — it was grave and scholarly. 
 I think of him aS glancing at the rose with secret 
 warmth, but as speaking of it only to name the 
 species with a quiet interest; and the same tone 
 would serve in the orchid-house, when he guided 
 us among the steaming tiers of the stove-plants. 
 He was scientific, he was slightly distant with his 
 flowers of whatever complexion ; so that his associa- 
 tion with these shameless languorous aliens was not 
 compromising. They were certainly magnificent; 
 we gaped in wonder, and enjoyed the stifling 
 vapour-bath of the tropical forest. 
 
 But that is an interlude ; I am soon out of doors 
 and at home again, where the bordered walk runs 
 down the middle of the kitchen-garden. Such a tall 
 pale hollyhock (with its " talking eyes," as Brown- 
 ing said of another who was tall and pale) stands 
 at my right hand — ^tall and gracious, lemon-pale, 
 towering^up to the laden apple-bough that leans 
 
 ii6 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 over the path. Apples of gold, a kind of cowshp 
 gold, clear and unflushed, were heaped in great 
 drifts upon the trees which shadowed that walk; 
 rose-red apples too, well burnished, shone in their 
 darker and crisper leafage. The path ran straight 
 ahead, dappled and barred with sunhght, to the 
 southern fruit-wall at the end. There I see a 
 covered seat against the wall, a recess enarched with 
 clematis and honeysuckle ; and the seat is occupied 
 by the bee-hive, to which the bees come swinging 
 down from their voyages in aU quarters. Now turn 
 to the right, along the face of the wall, and stop 
 just where I tell you, after twenty yards or so. 
 These are plums indeed — there are none better in 
 the garden. They grow on the waU at this point 
 and nowhere else, these particular plums; the 
 round sort, almost as big as peaches, with that 
 wonderful blue powder-bloom. And then to the 
 right again ; and there is the vast netted enclosure 
 of the currants and the gooseberries. It is easy to 
 filch open the door of that great cage; but reaUy 
 I think I could pass it by just now, after aU that 
 has happened already. In the height of the noonday 
 the kitchen-garden seems suddenly to become one 
 broad blaze, and I could wish to find myself picked 
 up in a moment and carried elsewhere. It is an 
 endless journey back to the white gate in the corner. 
 
 5 
 
 It was pleasant to reach the thick shade of the 
 
 chestnuts in the drive again, where it sidled towards 
 
 the north front of the house. I think I have said 
 
 that the house on this side was bare and buff-white 
 
 117 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 with plaster, a great contrast to the vines and roses 
 and red brick of the face towards the garden. Here, 
 to the north, two wings of the house reached out, 
 enfolding a sweep of loose gravel; so that the 
 carriage, as it wheeled round to the steps of the 
 front-door, entered a small echoing court-yard — you 
 might call it a court-yard, though the fourth side 
 was open. If I should take my stand on the semi- 
 circle of the steps I should look straight down the 
 lime-avenue and the drive that runs out there to 
 the church and the village ; the other approach, by 
 way of the chestnuts, turns in from the right, and 
 that is the direction of Norwich, the Norwich road 
 of arrival and departure. 
 
 These steps of the front-door delay me unex- 
 pectedly; they are more interesting than I had 
 remembered. The door itself, in the first place, 
 and the big knocker, and the pediment over the 
 door — and then on either side, under the wall of the 
 house, iron-barred gratings in the gravelled floor, 
 and brick cavities beneath them, fringed w^ith ferns 
 — and what is more, all the windows of the wing to 
 the left are sham and blank, a peculiarity that takes 
 my fancy; and a good many minutes have flown 
 while I review these points in order, not forgetting 
 to count the sham windows with care, six in all, 
 two in each storey. On that waU, moreover, is the 
 bell-handle which the coachman seizes as we drive 
 up to the door. How long, how long could I be 
 occupied in these blest meditations? I have 
 nothing to show for them but a collection of facts, 
 tiny facts of a knocker and a grating, a cornice, 
 the wire of a bell, amassed and assorted and 
 
 ii8 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 arranged till they lie in their receptacle like the bits 
 of a puzzle. Only when each is neatly in its place, 
 only when I am secure in possession of them all, 
 am I ready to leave them and pass on. No scholar, 
 no laborious and disinterested pedant, hangs more 
 lovingly than a child over a fact, a mere fact as such. 
 I neither criticize nor reflect; from the creamy 
 texture of the plaster to the toad among the ferns, 
 everything that I add to my collection has an equal 
 value, is inserted in its place with the same intent 
 concentration of care. I could really feel impatient 
 at the thought of that unremitting gaze, bovine 
 positively, which refuses to be crossed or disturbed. 
 What could the child be about, loitering there upon 
 the door-steps in a vacant dream? But that is 
 unreasonable; I enjoy my hoard of facts at this 
 late hour, and I owe them all to the slow stare of the 
 child. 
 
 So much for that. Now I should wish to turn the 
 corner of the blind-eyed wing, and pass through the 
 small iron gate in the railing there. This is a side- 
 way into the garden, and first I find myself in the 
 narrow grassy dell of the weeping ash. It is clear, 
 therefore, that the bow-window of the ante-room, 
 with its view of the ash, projects at this end of this 
 wing of the house. It does ; and the mossy green 
 deU runs away alongside of the hme avenue. A 
 narrow strip of mown grass, spongy with moss, set 
 with a few flower-beds — I think of it as a deU 
 because it lies hke a trough between the great 
 breezy limes on this side and a shrubbery of oaks 
 on that. The grass is hke the deepest plush to 
 walk on, for it is a very shady recess, and the roots 
 
 119 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 of the moss are always damp. The weeping boughs 
 of the ash drop almost to the ground; you may 
 push them aside like a curtain, letting them fall 
 behind you; and so thickly they are woven, it is 
 certainly as good as a bell-tent. This oak-shrubbery 
 here, I may say, is perhaps the best in the garden ; 
 it lies on uneven ground, and under the trees is a 
 scrub of bushes, with here and there a gravelly 
 break or clearing, and there is a bank which is 
 covered with those strange paper seed-heads of the 
 plant called honesty ; and it is a wood that is always, 
 always tuneful with the crooning of pigeons, so 
 much so that never once have I heard the coo of a 
 wood-pigeon in a tree without instantly flashing 
 away to the oaks at Earlham, to tread the spongy 
 grass again and thrust in among the rustling stalks 
 of the honesty. And then a step or two takes me 
 out of the wood and on to the west lawn. 
 
 Yes, I reach the west lawn, where the view opens 
 out over the park and down to the river. This lawn 
 is not a great plain, like the other. It is small; 
 half a minute will bring me to the drop of the sunk 
 fence on the further side. That is our way to the 
 river and the boat-house; the heronry is down 
 there, and the rookery and the water-meadows 
 beyond it. But all that is not for this morning, and 
 there is still plenty of ruminant adventure laid up 
 in the precinct of the garden, without going further 
 afield. I have reached the west lawn, and still I 
 have not touched the wilderness of long grass where 
 the rain-gauge is, and the mossy path that encircles 
 it, and the laurels and the " sulky- walk " (why 
 sulky? — ^you would never guess; but wait). A 
 
 120 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 mazy paradise still lies ahead, before I shall have 
 completed the circuit of the garden. And even as I 
 stand wavering, doubtful which delight to follow 
 next, the bell rings out from the distant belfry of 
 the kitchen, and the endless morning has come to 
 an end. Luncheon! — the bell was a signal that it 
 was time to go in and get your face washed. Our 
 grandmother, perhaps, was strolling in the sulky- 
 walk, enjoying the shadow. " Well, dear children, 
 have you had a nice long morning in the garden ? " 
 A timeless morning it had seemed, tiU this moment ; 
 and now it was suddenly finished, caught in the 
 flying hours. As I entered the garden-door my 
 mulberry-dyes did not escape the notice of an 
 uncle, who was lounging loosely and mightily in 
 the porch. 
 
 6 
 An hour later the whole company was gathered in 
 a shady spot, somewhere on the edge of the great 
 lawn, sociably relaxed. And here is a historic note. 
 One of the young men was describing, I remember, 
 a new-fashioned game, introduced from elsewhere, 
 that he had lately seen played, had played himself ; 
 and I Ustened to his account with curiosity. The 
 game was played over wide spaces of country, with 
 a smiting of balls that had to be driven from point 
 to point. There were marked stages in the course 
 to be followed, and you had to drive your own little 
 ball through each of them, your object being to 
 outdo your opponent — in speed, as I understood, 
 not very clearly following the explanation in this 
 matter. A vision of two men racing over bare hills, 
 
 121 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 brandishing some form of croquet-mallet against 
 the sky as they sped — a vision all mingled with the 
 dapple of sunlight under the oak-tree, and the 
 softness of the brown rug on which I lay stretched, 
 and the green purity of the acorns with which I was 
 playing — this picture, this complexity of sensation, 
 assumed a name, as our uncle developed his tale, 
 which had the sound of " goff." Historic indeed; 
 not one of the party had ever seen the game, except 
 this uncle, and there was something wUd and grand 
 about my picture that later history has signally 
 failed to fulfil. 
 
 The question of the " goff " was debated lan- 
 guidly ; it was a prime hot afternoon. Grandfather 
 had changed his long black coat for a long grey 
 one, thin like paper ; and over my acorns I had an 
 ear for his story of its purchase. He had seen it 
 in a shop-window on his travels, had asked the 
 price. Fifteen shillings — " Then done widge you! " 
 cried grandfather; I delighted in the humorous 
 bucolic turns (if that is what they were) of his talk. 
 But as usual he was only beaming and pausing on 
 the edge of the group. He soon tramped off to his 
 study ; and I suppose the rest of the party drifted 
 and scattered, for certainly before long the children 
 were being " read to," while they were held to 
 their repose on the brown rug. I forget the reading 
 — or rather I could easily remember it if I chose, 
 but I prefer to let it sing in my ears as a tune 
 without words, drowsily lulling. Perhaps it was 
 a chapter of our peerless Dickens — or was it only 
 an artless anecdote of a pair of children who roamed 
 and played in a beautiful old garden? I must 
 
 122 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 think that our taste was readily satisfied. A story 
 is a story, and if it has plenty of detail, the minuter 
 the better, so that you can see for yourself what is 
 happening in it, I confess it matters little to me 
 whether it is a story of Dickens or a story of Louisa 
 Alcott. It is definition, precision that we want, no 
 cloudy fancies. Whether it is Great Expectations or 
 Harry and Laura, The Rose and the Ring or Little 
 Men, our cry is equally punctual when the last 
 page is turned. " Now begin it again " — after 
 living so deeply into the company of a book one 
 does not easily forsake it for another, to make the 
 acquaintance of a set of strangers. Yet there are 
 chords, too, in the soul which sometimes thrill with 
 a different rapture, different in kind. The delight 
 of a story is one thing, and I love it well ; I transfer 
 the story into my life, and live on it, feed on it, in 
 pleasant tracts of rumination. But there is also 
 the thrill of the sound of words, so piercing, so 
 rending that it is hardly to be called a pleasure, 
 though for the moment aU the world is worthless 
 in comparison with it. I might hear the sound, 
 perhaps, in this drowsy hour under the oak-tree — 
 you never know. 
 
 From our corner of the lawn, as I lay in the shade, 
 I could look aslant at the many- windowed breadth 
 of the house, over a foreground of marigolds and 
 verbenas. The sun was slanting too, by this time ; 
 it no longer stared fuU in the face of the house, it 
 was creeping towards the west, throwing the angle 
 of the dining-room into shadow and revealing the 
 depths of its green mantling, blue-green streamers 
 and plumes of jessamine starred with white. The 
 
 123 
 
E A R L H A;^M 
 
 wing of the dining-room flanked the deep border 
 that stretched before the house, interrupted only 
 by the porch of the central door — a loosely crowded 
 border in which heliotrope, moss-roses, great bushes 
 of geranium, were massed to the window-sills of the 
 ground-floor. At the further end another low wing 
 stood forward ; and here the sun was now beginning 
 to strike the ample spread of an apricot-tree on the 
 wall, a tree that was placed to receive the steady 
 goodness of the afternoon blaze. I could count the 
 apricots that were mellowing there in the distance, 
 for they were aU tied up in their little white hoods 
 of muslin, to guard them from the wasps. Rich 
 and deep was the day, gathering its power, bending 
 its great energy to ripen the teeming garden. And 
 then, I dare say, across the dreamy contentment 
 of the hour, there might suddenly reach me the 
 sound of the words — the words that have been 
 nothing hitherto but the telling of a story, the 
 unregarded instrument which a story has used. 
 
 A handful of them escape from the rest, darting 
 up like living creatures. I scarcely consider their 
 sense ; it is their life, their wheeling curve and cut 
 through the air, their poise, their fall — it is their 
 bird-free movement that is entrancing. They were 
 simply a phrase in a book — a poetry-book, as it 
 chanced; but they soared out of the book in an 
 instant and caught me after them. They wheel and 
 sing, and I have no attention for anything else, 
 not even for the story or the poem out of which 
 they have shot. Well, I forget the rest ; it matters 
 little what it was aU about. The living words, in 
 their magic of freedom and beauty, have nothing 
 
 124 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 to do with the interest and the charm of a story; 
 they are as a flash from another world, pure and 
 absolute, a stroke of art. And what were they? 
 I shall keep them to myself, for in fact they were 
 poor poetry. But they were words, and they cast 
 the enchantment of words into the mind of one 
 listener at any rate, while the sun rounded the 
 corner of the house and blazed upon the hooded 
 apricots. 
 
 7 
 
 A taU figure came tip-toeing with elaborate pre- 
 cautions, with warning gestures, towards our settle- 
 ment under the oak-tree. This was the tallest and 
 mightiest of our uncles, the soldier-uncle; he 
 advanced with signals of dismay, beckoning to the 
 elders of our party and trumpeting a deep stage- 
 whisper through his hands. " CaUers! " He 
 seemed shocked by the news he brought. He strode 
 up to our cousin, who was sitting near at hand, and 
 clutched her wildly. "Callers!" It was very 
 dramatic, as though some blow unforeseen had 
 suddenly fallen upon a peaceful family, shattering 
 their security. A carriage of callers had been 
 sighted, strangers were at the gate — what was to be 
 done about it? Flight was the word; and the 
 garden, so much of it as could be seen from the 
 house, was quickly depopulated. Whoever had 
 been enjoying the deepening shade, on our side of 
 the lawn, melted and was gone. With the zest of 
 conspirators we retreated stealthily down the green 
 alley of the sulky-walk. 
 
 The sulkies stood at the far end of it. They were 
 
 125 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 a pair of white seats, one on either side of the walk — 
 covered seats, like rounded sentry-boxes, with 
 shallow conical roofs to them; at a distance they 
 looked like great white barrels with peaked lids. 
 They swung round upon pivots, facing to the sun 
 or the shade as you might choose. Both occupants 
 wordd presumably wish for the same aspect; and 
 so, if you think it out, you wiU see that they would 
 never face towards each other — and hence the name. 
 The sulkies were very old; they had stood at the 
 end of that green walk in the time of the seven Miss 
 Gurneys, and a hundred years later they turned 
 stiffly and shakily upon their pivots. The narrow 
 bench inside the round barrel made a comfortless 
 perch, and nobody sat in them but the children, 
 who were drawn to the sulkies by their unlikeliness, 
 their singularity. I should naturally pause to seat 
 myself in one of them, and to note how the sides 
 of the barrel enclosed me, shutting off the world 
 except in one quarter. It made a little house, a 
 little fortress ; I sat there for ten seconds perhaps, 
 just long enough to taste the sensation. Then I 
 slid off the bench, and followed the gravel path 
 which crossed this end of the green aUey. 
 
 The gravel path ran round the whole outer circuit 
 of the garden, with the sunk fence and the park 
 immediately beyond it. But it was a very eventful 
 path, changing its character many times in its 
 course, disappearing from view behind the deep 
 shrubberies, re-emerging on the confines of the 
 open lawns. In the neighbourhood of the sulkies 
 it was secluded and bowery; trees over-arched it, 
 and in this region the sunk fence became a tangle, 
 
 126 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 a loose thicket of holly and oak. The gravel itself 
 was greened over with slippery films of mossiness ; 
 and I particularly Uke the thought of a remarkable 
 tree, I think an ash, which I come upon almost 
 at once. It grew at the edge of the path, and it 
 had a twisted old trunk that sloped and lurched and 
 divided, and you could walk up it as by a flight 
 of steps. I have spent a whole afternoon between 
 the sulkies and this ash-trunk, amassing a new 
 collection of objects that invited the hand and the 
 eye — storing them away in the fortress of one of the 
 white seats, transferring them to the cool lichen 
 in the steps of the tree. Surely these children are 
 clever at devising their own amusements, or they 
 are easily amused. Some of our elders, strolling 
 by, might glance indrdgently at our occupation; 
 it seemed to consist in shovelling together a litter 
 of pebbles and mosses, and ramming them into the 
 chinks of the tree. Is that a game to absorb a pair 
 of intelligent children and keep them busy as 
 beavers for a whole afternoon ? AU I can say is 
 that to me it appeared to call for both thought and 
 skiU; but it was difficult to explain. 
 
 I prefer just now, however, to push ahead and to 
 follow the path in its circuit. Presently it left the 
 rusthng shadows and came out into the great even 
 light of the big lawn; and there, away in the 
 distance, were the many windows of the house, the 
 long red roofs, the chimneys that were beginning to 
 catch a deeper gold from the westering sun — and 
 behind and above them the huge quiet domes of 
 lime and chestnut. The path marches forward 
 in a straight reach, always in view of the far-away 
 
 127 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 windows across the lawn; it marches along the 
 edge of the dry ditch, now broad and open, where 
 the fence of the park is concealed. And remark 
 that the slope of the ditch, next to the path, has 
 become an enormous flower-bed, tilted to the south 
 across the whole breadth of the lawn ; a flower-bed 
 entirely given up to those beautiful old anemones, 
 purple and white and scarlet, with their crimped 
 ruffs of greenery on their clean stalks; and even 
 in this late summer there are always a few to be 
 seen, gleaming and flaming here and there upon the 
 brown earth and the faded leafage. I follow the 
 straight path, flooded with the sense of the lawn 
 and the open light and the benevolent gaze of the 
 house with its wide arms in the distance ; I follow 
 the path — and once more it passes into shadow, 
 and the view of the hbuse is cut off by a thicket 
 of trees and bushes. And very soon comes a sharp 
 turn ; there is a gate into the park at the corner, 
 and with your back to the gate you look down the 
 narrow vista of a walk, densely shaded, screened on 
 either hand. It is Wilberforce's Walk, along which 
 I looked from the other end this morning. 
 
 Let me make the return journey, therefore, with 
 Wilberforce and Uncle Joseph John, while they still 
 wag their fine old heads together over their high 
 designs. But to tell the truth I did not give them 
 a thought, though I Uked the notion that the walk 
 had a name, a title for its clear identity. There is 
 great virtue in a name, and it was a pity that the 
 garden on the whole was poor in this matter. The 
 alleys and dells and enclosures were aU very personal 
 to us, very distinct in their tone and temper ; and 
 
 128 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 to leave them nameless, as most of them were left, 
 was a slight from which they suffered. The thicket 
 of the oaks and the honesty and the wood-pigeons, 
 for example, was an intimate companion whose 
 engaging moods I knew by heart ; but his want 
 of a proper name, in which they would all be 
 summed up, made it impossible to aUude to him 
 familiarly, to circulate him in talk, to caU to him in 
 absence with an easy quick nod of recognition. 
 Our fancy, I note with surprise, did not soar to the 
 creation of new names; but new names, I think, 
 would have seemed artificial, unnatural. I felt 
 the difference when I came to Wilberforce's Walk ; 
 there was somebody one could mention at any time, 
 and aU would understand the allusion. 
 
 Here I am, then, once more in the waUed garden 
 of Betsy's seat, the box-edged parterre and the 
 frog-pond. But it is a scene completely changed 
 from this morning. Where there was winking 
 stirring sunshine, where there was shadow cold and 
 crisp from the touch of night, there is now a grey 
 softness in the shadow, and the sunshine is a flood 
 of gold as still as glass. Especially under the wall 
 where the clematis foams in its white cascade there 
 is shadow that has already the purity of twiUght, 
 though there are hours and hours of full daytime 
 still to come. I always Uke the nasturtiums that 
 riot along the foot of this waU, bright yellow, bright 
 red; very few plants of the earth are as clean in 
 negligent ease as a yellow nasturtium. And then 
 there are the great stalks of the giant balsam, hold- 
 ing out the ripe pods, fuU charged, that explode 
 with a snap and a splutter as I touch them off. But 
 
 129 K 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 it is a doorway in the wall, at the further end of it, 
 that I aim for at present — the door of the quince- 
 tree close, where I have not penetrated yet. That 
 would be the right retreat for whatever may be left 
 of the afternoon. 
 
 It was a narrow strip, or rather a long and 
 tapering angle, between two high walls. At the 
 broader end there was an approach from the 
 kitchen ; it must have been the herb-garden in old 
 days. The quince- tree was very ancient and fruit- 
 ful, but I am not deceived by the luminous beauty 
 of the quinces ; they look so mild, so mellow, and 
 in point of fact you might as well try to gnaw a 
 stone off the road. As for the kitchen-herbs, I 
 think there was stiU some growth of sage and mint 
 and such things in this quarter ; but the place had 
 been dedicated, long before our time, to the children 
 of the house, for their own private planting and 
 gardening. Their traces had vanished, the secluded 
 corner was untended; yet the later children felt 
 they possessed a lien, a claim that might be asserted, 
 perhaps, on some spare afternoon when it seemed 
 convenient to plant and dig, and particularly to 
 water. These operations are interesting, and best 
 of aU is the care of reviving the new plants, limp 
 and gasping from the trowel, with copious showers ; 
 the process is apt to end in a tropical deluge, the 
 garden lapses into a slobbering mud-pie. And 
 indeed I know very well where the trowel and 
 watering-pot are to be found. There is a tool-house 
 not far off, full of seductive implements ; seedlings 
 of marigold and stock are soon lifted from a neigh- 
 bouring border; and I dare say there is plenty of 
 
 130 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 time to reach the period of the mud-pie before we 
 are called indoors. Clean crumbling earth is good, 
 but juicy and all-pervading slime is better; it 
 spreads with wonderful rapidity, from the skirts of 
 the clothing to the very roots of the hair. And 
 when somebody arrives to hale us indoors at tea- 
 time, somebody throws up her hands with shrill 
 cries at our bedabblement. 
 
 8 
 That scare of callers had long since blown over ; 
 but when we emerged again on to the lawn after 
 tea, cleaned and refreshed, it was hkely that we 
 might find the family party augmented. In these 
 summer weeks the arms of Earlham were very wide, 
 and there was much coming and going of its large 
 and faithful flock. Moreover for many mUes around 
 the land was colonized by the children and grand- 
 children, the cousins in every degree, of the sons of 
 Earlham; in many and many villages of the 
 country-side its kinsmen dwelt and increased. A 
 stranger would be bewildered by the intricate 
 system of relationship that spread over half the 
 county and knitted it with Earlham; cross-ties, 
 intermarriages, confused the web beyond unravel- 
 ling by any but those who were born to it. I could 
 almost say that if, starting from Earlham, you 
 should tack to and fro in a certain line from village 
 to village, you might travel for a week and never 
 pass a square flint church-tower that does not 
 shadow some kindred settlement, some shoot from 
 the stock of the old Norwich Friends. Norfolk is 
 a land of " halls " ; wherever you go you find that 
 
 131 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 the main house of the village, modest or grandiose, 
 is still as it was in the beginning, the hall; and 
 sometimes the " old hall," a rambling group of 
 gables and chimneys down by the river, has sur- 
 vived when the " new hall," in the modern taste, 
 has arisen hard by on higher ground. I could not 
 count all the Norfolk halls, new and old, that were 
 of the kith of Earlham; but their village-names 
 were very familiar to us, and they were united by a 
 notable bond. The tie of blood was greatly re- 
 spected, always in that English manner that mixes 
 so much independence with its fealty. We were 
 clansmen — that we distinctly felt ; but the pieties 
 and loyalties of an English family are mercifully 
 un theoretic, and I suppose they were never yet 
 allowed to become an inconvenience. Of a tough 
 old " family-feeling," however, fast and loose, 
 scrupulous and casual, let those speak who may 
 view it from without — sometimes with impatience, 
 I quite believe. 
 
 " Dear So-and-so is very faithful," our grand- 
 mother would say, and there was much meaning in 
 the word. Dear So-and-so, perhaps, may have 
 driven over this afternoon, bringing a gift of fidelity 
 to the associations of Earlham which grandmother 
 appreciated keenly, not less so than the tribute of 
 personal affection to herself. When we reached the 
 lawn after our nursery-tea, we should find the 
 party of our elders gathered once more in the 
 spreading shade ; and I see that we approach rather 
 shyly and doubtfully, on discovering the presence 
 of a new-comer. What a curse that shyness can be, 
 that well-known effluence that suddenly descends 
 
 132 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 to tie the tongue and to cramp every joint of the 
 body. Yet it does not stifle a movement of pleased 
 curiosity, for otherwise I should turn at the garden- 
 door and escape in another direction. That would 
 be simple ; but if there is company on the lawn I 
 definitely wish to be there, I would not miss the 
 entertainment of a new face, a new voice, an un- 
 famihar representation of some sort. And accord- 
 ingly the approach must be faced — jauntily, shall 
 it be, with an assumption of ease, or very cautiously, 
 with as much self-effacement as possible ? Either 
 way I shall have chosen wrong, you will note; 
 the demon of awkwardness sees to that. Jauntiness 
 makes one flush to remember afterwards, self- 
 effacement is even more conspicuous. But once 
 among the party, when I hang upon the chair of a 
 trusted ally, then I must say that I find the show 
 rewarding. Dear So-and-so would hardly suspect 
 what devouring eyes, what attentive ears, are 
 following the details of her little performance. 
 
 Do not imagine, however, that it is a pair of iU- 
 mannered children, or precociously critical, who 
 have joined the circle on the lawn. Our kindly 
 relatives, from those whom we knew well to the 
 dim outlying ranges of the cousinhood where dis- 
 crimination failed — they were watched, I wiU say, 
 with discretion and in all simplicity. The faithful 
 So-and-so was not one, but many, and each received 
 the meed of our tongue-tied attention. The talk 
 might be supposed to have no interest for the chil- 
 dren; but nothing came amiss to them, I think, 
 and I have listened with satisfaction, often enough, 
 while two of our elders made talk with each other 
 
 ^33 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 that had certainly no interest for themselves. And 
 then, too, an arrival of some of the cousinhood 
 brought an infusion into the air of intercourse that 
 I recognized, though I could not have said what 
 it was. A waft of life as it is lived in a country- 
 province, something that set the imagination 
 vaguely circulating among bowery lanes and blue 
 turnip-fields and sluggish waters, where small 
 shabby villages straggle about the ornate grey 
 churches of more spacious days — something from 
 the very heart of that East Anghan ancientry came 
 poetically stirring and breathing into our midst. 
 These children were used to another landscape, one 
 that spoke poetically too, but in quite a different 
 idiom. At Earlham a world was revealed that lay 
 apart, sufficient to itself, following its own ways and 
 talking its own language — or no, not revealed 
 indeed, but hinted at, implied and assumed, in the 
 friendly incursions of the neighbourhood. I remem- 
 ber the obscure impression of distances that opened, 
 with momentary glimpses of a life where the round 
 of the year revolved and revolved in an unknown 
 system, out there among the beautiful old village- 
 names of the east country. 
 
 So Earlham was a liberal education, it is evident, 
 at all hours of the day; here am I receiving after 
 tea, most unconsciously, a lesson in the moral and 
 social geography of our packed little island. And 
 I don't know that anything counted for more in it 
 than the appeahng romance of the Norfolk names, 
 which stole into the mind and coiled about the fancy 
 with their clear and liquid syllables. Words like 
 Hindringham, Walsingham, Burlingham, fell with a 
 
 134 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 strain of rippling melody that echoed out of serene 
 sky-spaces, shining reedy meres — if only it were 
 possible to waylay these haunting intimations in 
 plain prose. I never forget the httle shock of 
 delight with which I once heard our grandmother 
 casually mention a name in which this clean 
 euphony is roused to positive excitement. Here it 
 is — ^WrampHngham ! — and to say all, I think it a 
 name that should be set to music by Schubert. 
 And then in another vein there is the erratic host of 
 names that in speech have slipped the anchorage of 
 their spelling — Wymondham, Happisburgh, Cos- 
 tessey, Poringland — names that we utter with a 
 bland indifference (full of distinction, I felt) to the 
 laws of the alphabet. If you pronounce them as 
 they are spelt, I regard you with a glance of superi- 
 ority, infinitely provoking. Merely to say " Haze- 
 borough," to say " Cossey " — ^let these suffice — 
 gives me a fine sense of community with an ancient 
 province, the kingdom of the easterlings. 
 
 9 
 Or it may be that the accession to our party was 
 
 of another sort entirely. Some time ago I dropped 
 
 a word of the missionary to whom our grandfather 
 
 had lent his disused rectory-house at Colney — a 
 
 charming old house, with a magnolia among its 
 
 sunny windows. It was constantly lent to some 
 
 missionary or other, for his hohday-weeks in 
 
 England; he brought his wife there, and his little 
 
 daughter from school, and they dropped into an 
 
 interlude of parochial home-life that was all ready 
 
 made for them, you may say, by our grandparents' 
 
 135 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 care. The good man, for a few weeks he could think 
 he was a village-parson at home, with his roses and 
 his fat old pony and his Httle babbhng daughter 
 whom he had not seen for so long. He had to leave 
 her behind at school, when he and his wife returned 
 to Uganda; but meanwhile they could imagine 
 that they were a home-keeping family in a parson- 
 age of their own, except that at Colney there was 
 no responsibility, no need to be busier about the 
 parish than they chose. But to be sure they were 
 not idle ; the good man deUghted to join our grand- 
 father in his pastoral round, to lend a hand in the 
 service on Sunday, and I dare say his wife might 
 volunteer at the harmonium, if the regular per- 
 former was on his holiday. They came from 
 Uganda, from India, from China ; they came again, 
 and not a few of them grew to be familiar friends of 
 Earlham in course of years. It is quite likely that 
 the missionary of the moment and his wife may have 
 dropped in to tea this evening. 
 
 Our grandfather was profoundly learned in the 
 lore of the mission-field ; nothing was deeper in his 
 mind than the thought of the many faithful sickles 
 that were putting in at all times to that harvest. 
 The good reaper who was among us this evening 
 had faced I know not what— hardship, disappoint- 
 ment, danger in the heart of darkness ; but he did 
 not dwell on these, he told us of his encouragement 
 and reward, the friends and brothers whom he had 
 found among the uttermost tribes. I have a vision 
 of Sunday morning in Uganda, the log-hut of a 
 church, the rows of strange dark faces fervently 
 upturned, our friend in his white English surpUce, 
 
 136 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 his wife at her harmonium. It was she who accom- 
 panied the rolling hymns ; I know it, because it so 
 happened that the children had visited her at 
 Colney rectory one morning, and had seen the very 
 instrument that was to travel with her into the 
 wild. A little portable thing, scarcely more than 
 a pair of bellows and a key-board — she showed it to 
 us with pride. Her husband had gone up to London 
 the day before, and her last direction to him had 
 been to bring her some " violet-powder " that she 
 needed ; and he had returned with an odd-shaped 
 case, about twice the size of a coal-scuttle. " Your 
 violet-powder, my dear," said he; and behold it 
 was a new harmonium, just what they wanted in 
 Uganda, which he had brought her as a surprise. 
 Is that a story worth telling, after thirty years and 
 more? It seemed to me an excellent one; and 
 indeed it seems so stUl, at this moment when it 
 re-emerges after very many years of oblivion. 
 
 I think it a good story, because it strikes a par- 
 ticular note so firmly. Draw from it my sense of the 
 unvarying humour of the Enghsh parsonage, the 
 happy faculty of bright simplicity and domesticity 
 that will never have been blighted, I take it, by all 
 the hosts of heathendom upon the globe. Our 
 friends had seen a great deal of a barbaric and I 
 dare say a formidable world; they had gone out 
 into the wilderness, they had striven with the dark 
 unknown, they had raised their prayer and hymn 
 under alien skies ; and they came back to the rose- 
 hung porch and the buttercup meadow, the trim 
 lawn and the thrush in the lilac, with exactly the 
 gush of cheerfvil piety, the native wood-note of 
 
 137 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 clerical mirth, which they had carried with them 
 upon their far adventure. That jest of the violet- 
 powder and the harmonium has been heard, do not 
 doubt it, on coral strands and in equatorial jungles. 
 Immutable, invincible, the genius of the sunny 
 parsonage makes its way to the ends of aU the 
 earth. Wherever it touches, there it brings the 
 echoes and the savours of a Sunday evening at 
 home; shut your eyes when you hear the tinkle 
 of the church-bell in Borrioboola, and your feet 
 wiU carry you along the winding hedge-row, over 
 the stile and across the viUage-green. And now 
 that our friends are at Earlham again, seated about 
 the tea-table on the lawn, I look in vain for a trace 
 of the Borrioboolan climate upon the homely bloom 
 of their imagination. The honest lady, shining 
 with motherly kindness, tells the children a story 
 of black babies, green parrots, droll monkeys — I 
 forget how it ran; her husband, lean and strong, 
 speaks enthusiastically of his coloured flock, point- 
 ing his account with anecdotes of their zeal and 
 faith. But it is only their matter that is exotic; 
 their spirit is domestic as the buttercups of the 
 glebe. 
 
 Beyond these friendly folk, therefore, I had no 
 impression of a new world disclosed. I felt I had 
 nothing to learn about Sunday evening and the 
 church-bell and the singing of hymns; there were 
 no strange horizons to open in that quarter. And 
 somehow the tale of the babies and the monkeys 
 (if I have the theme aright — ^it is all a blur) failed 
 to strike home; the tale of the violet-powder and 
 the odd packing-case was apparently more sug- 
 
 138 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 gestive. But the fact of the missionary and his 
 wife, their presence, their recurrence, is distinctly 
 to be recognized in the memory of Earlham, and 
 I could not wander there for long without coming 
 upon their trace. I see our grandmother constantly 
 devising some plan to help or solace or nourish 
 them ; I hear our grandfather quietly and proudly 
 enumerating the details of their success in the field ; 
 the " Church Missionary Society," its fame, its 
 history, its literature, is never very far from the 
 scene. And I remember an incident that much 
 impressed me with the depth and seriousness of our 
 grandparents' interest in these questions. It was in 
 Earlham church, one evening, and the twUit service 
 was just over, and I was following our grandmother 
 down the aisle; it was a day when there was a 
 collection for foreign missions, and somebody stood 
 by the door with a plate. Grandmother held her 
 contribution in readiness, and I saw it. There 
 were several of them in her hand, several indeed, 
 and as we approached the door she suddenly passed 
 one of them to me, that I might make an offering 
 of my own. For a moment it lay in my hand, the 
 first I ever felt there — a golden sovereign. I 
 dropped it into the plate, awed by the greatness of 
 the issue, the outpouring of treasure, the prodigal 
 magnificence of the transaction. 
 
 10 
 
 ^At this hour the party will tend to scatter freely 
 over the lawn, for now the sun is well in the west, 
 and almost the whole of the great plain is grey and 
 pale in shadow ; only here and there, through a rift 
 
 139 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 in the trees, a rich bar of gold still kindles the grass. 
 To the furthest verge of the clear expanse I can 
 stray reflectively, and never take a step without 
 waking some keen small memory, some tiny glimpse 
 of life that opens like a picture in its place. In 
 many of them there is nothing, one would say, to 
 make a picture at all, nothing to distinguish the 
 particular moment from a thousand others; but 
 when a chance attitude, a group, a lightly thrown 
 word or two, has endured indestructibly for so long, 
 I cannot help prizing it and lingering over it as 
 though it were a marvel. Two young men in white 
 flannels who are bracing and tightening a lawn- 
 tennis net; a middle-aged lady who advances 
 graciously, arching her long neck, her hands folded 
 upon her stomacher ; a languid gentleman, strolling- 
 and smiling, who has come with a party of neigh- 
 bours and whom I somehow understand to be a bad 
 character : such are my pictures, there are scores of 
 them about as remarkable as these. And by virtue, 
 I suppose, of that troublesome duality of which I 
 have spoken, in some of them I see myself, a figure 
 among the rest, taking the light like an object; 
 as here by a border of flowers, close to the dining- 
 room windows, where I shuffle and blink in the 
 sun beside our cousin — and I look on at that striking 
 episode from an independent point of view, per- 
 fectly detached. 
 
 Well, I cannot pass over the scene that springs 
 into existence by a certain bench on the lawn, a 
 white seat protected by a folding lid — thrown back 
 at this moment, for the seat is occupied by two 
 figures in converse. One of them is our grand- 
 
 140 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 mother, the other a rather unyielding and estranging 
 old lady, an aged relative upon a visit to Earlham. 
 In point of fact she was indulgently inclined to the 
 children; and the dear solicitude of our cousin, 
 who happens to be in charge of us, is exercised to 
 make us behave to her becomingly. Aunt Ellen 
 should have no reason to think us unpleasing, 
 unmannerly; it was a task that Mary had set 
 herself, she intended to see it through. But what a 
 task — you would understand her difficvilty if you 
 saw the hunched shoulders, the obstinate backs of 
 the children, whenever she tries to steer them 
 surreptitiously in the direction of Aunt Ellen ; for 
 indeed the old lady was forbidding in her style, and 
 I cannot pretend that there was a high polish upon 
 that of the children. Mary, however, was ingenious ; 
 she laid her plan, she invented a game ; and as we 
 skirmished round her on the lawn, at a good dis- 
 tance from Aunt EUen, she swiftly delivered her 
 stroke. " Run, run to that seat over there! " — 
 it was the climax of the game, and the game would 
 be won by the first to reach the seat. It was 
 decidedly thin ; but Mary was so quick and brilliant 
 that she could always tonvince you, always impose 
 a dramatic artifice of that kind. Aunt Ellen had 
 the moving spectacle of a pair of children who 
 rushed across the lawn to her with cries and bleats, 
 overpowered (she thought) by the desire to greet 
 and welcome her. We had a great success. 
 
 So the next day she travelled off to Norwich, 
 announcing to Mary her intention to buy us each 
 a little present. And we were not to be trusted; 
 Mary knew these children, and knew that it was not 
 
 141 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 safe to leave their pretty start of delight and grati- 
 tude to chance, when Aunt Ellen should produce her 
 fairing. It would be a sad business if the poor old 
 lady's surprise-packet fell flat after all; and you 
 could not be sure, the children were capable of being 
 very blunt. But if their curiosity was delicately 
 touched and titillated, if the crisis was lightly 
 prepared in advance, if the occasion for a pretty 
 piece of manners could be a little foreseen — then 
 Mary counted confidently on aU being well. Such 
 arts she had, such beautiful thought she was 
 capable of taking. Is a child aware of the fine 
 diplomacy of a loving elder, bent on securing a 
 creditable show from her charge ? I don't believe 
 it escaped us — ^but Mary could not fail. The 
 children came down after tea with a look of inno- 
 cence, an air of decorous affability that was indeed 
 for her a triumph. I forget all about it, save for a 
 single glimpse as clear as a miniature — a glimpse 
 of a very small girl with short hair, who steals 
 quietly into the circle of our elders, takes a seat 
 close to Aunt Ellen, disposes herself in readiness for 
 the surprise, with a mouse-like demeanour carefully 
 designed to show how little she suspects what is 
 to come. Disengaged, elaborately nonchalant, she 
 sits there as good as gold, waiting to be surprised 
 — a most artistic performance; and I hope and 
 believe that Aunt Ellen was gratified. 
 
 II 
 She was not reaUy an aunt, she was a remoter 
 connexion, and no habitual figure at Earlham. I 
 soon forget her when I discover members of the 
 
 142 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 true flock, the community of Earlham, gathered in 
 the evening hght upon the lawn. Face after face 
 appears in memory, and I should like to pause 
 before each. And particularly of our uncles there 
 is more to be said, for certain of them I have not 
 yet encountered. I have seen the younger of them, 
 the richly humoured young Olympians whom I 
 admired and feared; but there were others, sons 
 of our grandmother's first marriage, who in our 
 time had their homes and households elsewhere, and 
 who seemed to us venerable indeed. And of these 
 not one was ever to grow old; I now know that 
 they died in the full middle of life, in what has 
 become their youth— it is many years ago. They 
 lived away from Earlham, but not very far away ; 
 they often came and went, and nothing is more 
 natural than to see one or other of them stroUing 
 across the lawn in the cool of the evening. 
 
 A small compact figure, a clean-shaven face, grey 
 hair very smoothly brushed back from an open 
 forehead — this is one of them, strolling with a slow 
 and deliberate swing, his hands clasped behind 
 his back. He came from near by, from Norwich, 
 where he was rector of a city parish; and I wish 
 I could make the full portrait of a very original 
 man, gravely and humorously singular. He had 
 a great air — a child was quickly conscious of it, 
 as he stopped in his walk and looked down at one 
 with composure, detached and aloof. His dignity 
 seemed to be that of a very stately old man, and 
 yet it was also the dignity of a humorous and ironic 
 schoolboy, enjojdng an impersonation of dry full- 
 flavoured style. A large eye rested on one without 
 
 143 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 expression, there was a rather awful silence; I 
 might begin to think him severe and formidable. 
 Blandness was in his manner, however ; there was 
 even a touch of something suave and priestly in his 
 appearance, in the smoothness of his grey hair, 
 accurately parted and flattened; and then again, 
 immediately contradicting this impression, his 
 boyishness became the key, the clue to everything 
 about him. Of course I interpret my vision as I 
 did not dream of interpreting it then, long ago ; but 
 the focus of a child's eye is so precise that the 
 image retained will always give out more and more, 
 as one brings to it a fuller comprehension. And I 
 now see the humour of an odd quaint boy, solemnity 
 and irony mixed, lying close behind the slow look 
 that was bent on us by this uncle. I have been 
 faintly reminded of him, sometimes, when I have 
 seen an undergraduate acting an old man's part 
 in a play, with a meUow gravity only betrayed by 
 the young gust and relish with which it is worn. 
 
 I cannot pretend, unfortunately, to describe what 
 he was ; he was like nobody else, and the range of 
 his wajAvard unconventional mind lay far beyond 
 the ken of a child. But at one point we could 
 catch a hint of it, perhaps; and I find something 
 so expressive in this single intimation that I cannot 
 forbear to follow it for a moment. I have said 
 already how the repute of a " ritualist " was 
 regarded at Earlham — ^how the name was even 
 capable of provoking a really sharp word from our 
 grandfather, most benign of men. To decorate 
 one's devotions, to clothe them in symbolic splen- 
 dours, seemed to become an act that belonged to a 
 
 144 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 strange inhuman world, infinitely remote from the 
 circle of an honest home. " Incense " — and " vest- 
 ments " — and " vain repetitions " — to this day I 
 hear a certain wild unsettUng strangeness in the 
 words ; I see beyond them a race of alien folk, from' 
 whom we at Earlham are safely and sharply 
 divided. And with aU this, the smoothly brushed, 
 solemn-eyed uncle, now pacing to and fro upon the 
 lawn with our grandfather, discussing (I think) the 
 cricketing news — was one of them, and even 
 excessively and luxuriantly one of them; he was 
 indeed. There was a flight in his imagination which 
 carried him away and away, I know not where, 
 much beyond the conventional symbols and orna- 
 ments of the " high church " — carried him into a 
 region where his deep originahty expressed itself 
 in forms untrammelled. He was himself alone, he 
 could be no one else ; and the fervour of his worship 
 broke out and blossomed as it listed. And I dwell 
 upon the memory, ghostly in the past as it may 
 seem, because it gives me such a perfect illustration 
 of the tone and ring of that old hfe at Earlham. 
 
 For a theory at Earlham, however implicitly 
 accepted, never had the faintest chance from the 
 moment it crossed the instinct of heavenly charity. 
 I have seen this already, and I see it again, more 
 clearly than ever, remembering how easily a differ- 
 ence, wide as the horizon, disappeared when affec- 
 tion willed it out of the way. Was it hard for a 
 good " evangelical " at Earlham to understand 
 how anybody could truly and reverently commune 
 with the great unseen, save with a mind entirely 
 blank and blind to the seduction of sense ? — and was 
 
 145 L 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 it hard to believe that holy and humble men of 
 heart could set a value upon forms and shows that 
 appeared so patently vain? It was very hard, 
 sometimes it seemed impossible; and then the 
 difficulty had vanished, had utterly ceased to be, 
 because a heart of perfect love had suddenly passed 
 beyond it. I wish I could say how keen and touch- 
 ing is the charm of a picture that I have in mind — 
 deeply appealing to any one who knew our grand- 
 mother and the traditions in which she walked. 
 It is a picture of her at prayer and worship in her 
 son's church — among swinging censers and tinkling 
 bells and processional candles, I suppose — and she 
 herself serenely transcending her mere ideas and 
 persuasions, lifted away from the world of the 
 material into spaces where it no more has any 
 meaning, into the infinite of her love and faith. 
 She and her son were there together, and that was 
 enough. 
 
 It is an impression that is scarcely communicable, 
 perhaps, though I try to suggest it. But the sight 
 of our grandfather and this uncle on the evening 
 lawn, strolUng and discoursing together, is more 
 readily seized. It is the county cricket that they 
 discuss, sinking enormous differences of tempera- 
 ment beneath their mutual respect and trust. And 
 still there is the quaint suspicion of something so 
 very youthful and fresh in the step-son, masked by 
 his grave composure, something that blurts out 
 unexpectedly at moments in his talk. He uttered 
 his phrase with deliberate emphasis; the forcible 
 word seemed to be held back by the slightest of 
 stammers, and then to be rapped out with decision. 
 
 146 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 There was a feminine group, I remember, chattering 
 freely in the offing, with an outbreak of hght 
 shrieks and exclamations round a baby's perambu- 
 lator, may be; I remember it by reason of this 
 uncle's expression, as he was momentarily caught 
 in the shrill tornado and detached himself resolutely, 
 turning away to quieter companionship. " Enough 
 of that clackl " — I hear the word fall with great 
 distinctness; "enough of all that — clackl" It 
 seems to me that only a schoolboy could throw quite 
 such an old and seasoned scorn of feminine trifles 
 into the intonation of a word. 
 
 There was an elder brother, but he was already 
 gone ; he died in the midst of a full life, and for the 
 child at Earlham there remained only the far-away 
 vision of a moment — a vision of a kind bearded 
 face, dimmed with bUndness (his sight had failed), 
 a quiet presence that appeared and passed with a 
 friendly motion. And there was a younger brother, 
 who also was soon to vanish, but of whom my 
 memory is plentiful — a younger brother who seemed 
 to be always escaping, hurrying away, he too, from 
 the buzz and clack of the company, throwing back 
 a stammering word of apology as he fled. It was 
 well known to me that he had a horror of small 
 boys — which I suppose I must take to account for 
 his attitude of flight, wherever I see him. But I 
 didn't resent it, indeed I found it an interesting 
 mark ; very pleasing and peculiar was the manner 
 of his hasty retreat. The company tried to tempt 
 him back; he could perhaps be prevailed on to 
 stay, in spite of the presence of the children, and 
 he sat silent and flushed, with a look of uneasiness, 
 
 147 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 but humorously ready to meet any challenge from 
 the rest of the party. He was short and rubicund, 
 and he stuttered with inarticulate noises, till a 
 remark came jerking out that had a shrewd and 
 racy turn. And then he sat silent again, dis- 
 regarding the deUghtful effect of his gruff retort — 
 with just a chuckle of interior joUity when it roused 
 somebody to a further flight. And no doubt he 
 would soon slip away again, but he left a very 
 clear and a very attaching and engaging imprint 
 of himself on the mind of the child — whom I dare 
 say he did not find so objectionable, after all. 
 
 12 
 
 The summer light of evening was perfect for 
 Earlham. The whole radiance of the sinking sun 
 was flung over the western lawn, blazing upon the 
 closed blinds of the drawing-room, striking the 
 dark ivy of the old gables, kindling the wistaria 
 round a chimney-stack here and there to trans- 
 parent green and gold. The recessed little flower- 
 garden by the school-room windows, which had 
 waited all day in cool retirement for its share of the 
 sunshine, now received it straight into its lap. 
 Golden silence, angelic peace descended upon the 
 trees, a hush that the eternal croon of the wood- 
 pigeons in the oakwood only deepened. Whoever 
 thinks of Earlham thinks first of the place at this 
 hour and no other; Earlham is never so perfectly 
 itself as it is at the full close of its wondrous day. 
 If you cross the west lawn and look away to the 
 river there, down the park, you see the tall trees 
 of the heronry beginning to darken against the 
 
 148 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 light ; while the willows by the water, and the oaks 
 and chestnuts higher up, are luminous with the 
 powder-gold still caught in their branches. In this 
 fullness of late summer the sun does not fall slant- 
 ing far into the north. It sets with its face turned 
 straight upon the gables of the house, and the 
 shadows of the trees come creeping up the slope 
 of the park towards you, as you gaze away to the 
 clear gleam of the water. But there is a long hour 
 yet before sunset. 
 
 I could wander aside into the rough wild of long 
 grass that borders upon one side of this lawn. I 
 think I have spoken of the rain-gauge that stood 
 there, opening a funnel-shaped mouth to the cloud- 
 less sky. I hked the rain-gauge, so idle as it gaped 
 in the grass through our blue days of August ; and 
 I wondered, I wonder stiU, in what manner it would 
 mete out the change when the weather broke. The 
 rough ground tumbled and rose, deep in grass, 
 never far from the shade of scattered trees, and 
 as you make your way across the patch of wilder- 
 ness, towards the deeper shadow, you find yourself 
 approaching those old sulky-seats again, and the 
 smooth green alley which they command. And if 
 it only so happened that this serene and radiant 
 evening had fallen a hundred years ago, as it so 
 easily might, there would have been a pretty 
 picture of life to be seen here, hkely enough. It 
 comes into my mind through the suggestion of the 
 shapely tree-trunks, edged with gold, and the fine 
 architecture of their spreading boughs, and the 
 glimpses between and beneath them of the sun- 
 smitten gables and windows of the house. Just 
 
 149 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 here it might naturally chance that the artist of the 
 family, so cunning with her pencil, would be seated 
 over her sketch-book to seize the most pictorial of 
 golden hours. 
 
 A century ago, then, I should certainly have come 
 upon Aunt Richenda at this spot, plying her pencil 
 at a great pace. She was marvellously industrious ; 
 she poured out her finished and elegant versions of 
 the landscape with masterly fluency, never pausing 
 or fumbling. The free lines flew over the paper, 
 lightly sweeping the softer distance, coiling and 
 zigzagging into the nearer foliage, digging blackly 
 and with firm decision in the nooks of the darkest 
 shadow. Almost while you wait the page of the 
 sketch-book is covered ; and the human interest of 
 the scene is not forgotten either, for in the vista 
 of the smooth alley she has placed the graceful 
 figure of a young woman in a poke-bonnet, with a 
 droll little skipping child by her side. And there 
 is your sketch — " the sulky-walk at Earlham," she 
 writes beneath it, with her initials and the date. It 
 is the fourth or fifth, perhaps, that she has finished 
 and signed this very day. There is not a corner, 
 not an angle or aspect, of the house and the garden, 
 the park and the village, that she has not recorded 
 again and again with her sweeps and flourishes and 
 sharp black touches — those artful twists and digs 
 of the pencil that light up a scene and make it look 
 like the work of the drawing-master himself. All 
 her brothers and sisters, when they go out into the 
 world, carry with them a collection of these delight- 
 ful mementoes of the old home^ — an album, it may 
 be, stamped " Earlham ' ' on the outside, filled from 
 
 150 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 end to end by the indefatigable Richenda. They 
 are trophies that are valued, carefuUy preserved 
 and bequeathed to the next generation; and to 
 this day we may know how Richenda was occupied 
 on the evening of August 24, 1815. I wish we 
 could be quite as certain of the look of the garden 
 and the sulky-walk, as it lay before her in the calm 
 light; sometimes she strains our faith, I must 
 admit, with her winding paths and broken gates 
 and ivied walls in unlikely places; and the tree 
 that coils, and the tree beside it that zigzags, and 
 the third, just beyond, that is evenly scored with 
 flowing curves, are trees that I scarcely recognize 
 about the place as constantly as she did. But I am 
 gratef al indeed to Aunt Richenda, and with reason ; 
 for if doubt may be cast upon her portraits of 
 Earlham, the portrait of herself that is implied in 
 them has unmistakable truth. 
 
 She would make a very pleasing picture herself, it 
 is clear, as she sat over her drawing-board, critically 
 squaring and sizing the landscape between her two 
 hands, measuring it with a pencil at arm's length, 
 preparing to help it out handsomely with her gates 
 and crumbling arches if it failed to satisfy the eye 
 of art. What hours and hours she must have spent 
 in the garden on her camp-stool, with her imple- 
 ments disposed about her — a famUiar sight to aU 
 the friends of the household, as they stroUed to and 
 fro with her bright-coloured, bright-haired sisters. 
 On a fine evening there would always be a settle- 
 ment of them somewhere on the lawn, and a young 
 gentleman or so in attendance who had walked out 
 from Norwich for their society. One of these swains, 
 
 151 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 let me tell you, had arrived in his impatience at 
 six o'clock in the morning ; it had been agreed that 
 he should spend a long summer's day with the 
 maidens of Earlham, and he might come as early 
 as he Hked. They were ready for him, they waved 
 from a window and came out to him — at six in the 
 morning; and till nightfall they stroUed and gat, 
 talked and read, with breakfast, dinner, supjper 
 occurring punctually and sumptuously from fime 
 to time. It was a great day; and the young man 
 had slipped into his pocket, before he started, a,little 
 manuscript volume, his diary, and as they sat in 
 the shade he read extracts aloud to them, the 
 sparkling maidens gathering eagerly round him. 
 That was his chance; for to his diary, you under- 
 stand, he had confided his heart, had avowed the 
 secret of his warm preference for one of the maidens 
 above the rest — and he had to read warily, to avoid 
 stumbling on a tell-tale passage, and more warily 
 still, no doubt, to make sure that the stumble, the 
 blush of confusion, should be noted and rightly 
 interpreted by one of his audience. Alas, it served 
 him not at all; " es ist eine alte Geschichte" — 
 she gave her heart elsewhere, without return, and 
 she died unwedded ; so did the young man of the 
 diary — " doch bleibt es immer neu." 
 
 It aU composes into an attractive scene, I think. 
 In stricter Quakerly circles, among the " plain " 
 Friends of Norwich, the sociability and the bright 
 complexion of life at Earlham could scarcely find 
 approval. The seven Miss Gurneys were much 
 addicted to the dance ; and I believe it was Betsy 
 herself, great and venerable Aunt Fry, who once 
 
 152 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 in her youth appeared at meeting on Sunday in 
 purple boots laced with scarlet. Kitty, Betsy, 
 Rachel, they were the three eldest; it was at 
 Rachel, with her peculiar rare charm, that the 
 young man was careful not to glance when he broke 
 off in his reading, flushed and gulped and hastily 
 turned the page. There was a gap between the three 
 elder and the four younger of the sisters ; but these 
 high-spirited children, Richenda, Hannah, Louisa, 
 Priscilla, easily held their own, had their share in the 
 dance, in the budding romances — ^and also in the 
 compimction of next day, agreeable too in its way, 
 when they properly searched their hearts and con- 
 victed themselves of vain frivolity. Kitty, the 
 mothering eldest, encouraged them to pause and 
 ponder, to turn their thoughts within; and each 
 of them duly kept her little journal, with its recur- 
 ring burden of gay and grave. But Kitty was a 
 young woman of excellent sense ; she on no account 
 permitted indulgence in the pleasures of remorse. 
 " Not more than four lines a day in thy journal " 
 was a rule she laid down at one time, finding, I 
 suppose, that a journal may become an excessively 
 sympathetic companion to a yearning penitent of 
 twelve. In four lines Louisa or Priscilla may dive 
 quite as deeply into her soul as need be. 
 
 So they all grew up under Kitty's admirable eye 
 to do her credit; and Richenda in particular 
 developed this charming talent with her pencil. 
 That was a gift, by aU means, which should be 
 cultivated seriously; Richenda should have the 
 best of tuition. And it may easily chance that her 
 drawing of the sulky-walk is accomplished in the 
 
 153 
 
E A R L H A M 
 
 very sight of the master; he may bend over her 
 shoulder and criticize her foreground, her human 
 interest, her " side-screens " and the rest of it. Mr. 
 Crome was her master, the old original Crome of 
 Norwich — no less. He came out to Earlham to give 
 her lessons, he sketched with her in the park ; and 
 still in our day the house held a relic or two of his 
 visits, apart from the imprint of his teaching that 
 was discernible, no doubt, in Aunt Richenda's 
 proliferation of master-pieces. The name of the 
 distinguished old painter was always mentioned 
 at Earlham with great respect; and everybody 
 was pleased that Aunt Richenda's drawing-master 
 should have been discovered by the world. She 
 herself may surely be considered to belong to the 
 " Norwich school." Earlham, at any rate, had 
 warmly supported and welcomed old Crome ; when 
 the whole family-party travelled away to the north, 
 for a holiday among the lakes and the mountains, 
 they carried the master with them, so that the 
 holiday was no break in the pursuit of art. Rich- 
 enda, I judge, missed not a single toppling crag or 
 mouldering ruin on their journey; she brought 
 them all home again, duly named and signed and 
 dated, in a trunk-load of bursting sketch-books. 
 
 13 
 They grew more serious, as the years of the young 
 century increased, but not less cheerful. The purple 
 boots were laid aside, Betsy became very " plain " 
 indeed; all the sisters settled down to lives of 
 exemplary purpose. But there was a fine spirit, 
 a free humour in the family, which saved them from 
 
 154 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 any blight of dull precision in their middle age; 
 they really succeeded in gracing virtue and solid 
 worth with a lively charm. The richest nature of 
 them all was the young brother Samuel, soon to 
 become a true Brother Cheeryble of the city, at 
 whose substantial settlement to the east of London, 
 somewhere near Stratford, I glanced a while ago. 
 Large-hearted, large-handed, merry and shrewd and 
 sage, he was a very worthy figure of a christian 
 merchant. In him the genius of his family, crisply 
 stirring and gleaming, was liberally represented. 
 Joseph John, the brother who remained at Earlham, 
 was of a milder habit, more subdued in pensive 
 gravity ; he was much occupied with his Quakerly 
 " concern " (mark well the word), a call that 
 sometimes led him far afield — to America even, 
 more than once. Betsy found her concern in the 
 pestiferous prison-houses which she helped to 
 purge, Richenda (with her husband) administered 
 and enlivened her sea-side parish. And so on with 
 them aU; and Earlham was ever in the midst of 
 them, ready with a welcome, gathering them in 
 again from time to time, till at last the big party 
 diminished and there were fewer and fewer of them 
 to meet on the great lawn. 
 
 And the mothering Kitty, meanwhile, who might 
 well be proud of her brood — she lived always in 
 their concerns and achievements, her brothers and 
 sisters were her career. Rightly, I think, Joseph 
 John should never have married, and Kitty (now 
 ripening into " dear Aunt Catherine ") should have 
 kept house for him at Earlham to the end. But he 
 did marry, he even married three times ; and some 
 
 155 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 of his wives (not all, certainly not the last, good 
 Eliza from America, who survived him) — the 
 presence of some of his wives, I say, made it per- 
 haps advisable for Aunt Catherine to have a nice 
 little home of her own, independent of Earlham. 
 She had one eventually; but through long years 
 she had grown so deeply identified with Earlham 
 that we can hardly think of her anywhere else, 
 and in memory she is always here, the presiding 
 genius, the gracious and dignified old lady of the 
 Ante-room Chamber. As time went by, her 
 motherly care extended to a growing army of young 
 nephews and nieces; she watched them, you may 
 suppose with what tender interest, when Earlham 
 began to be haunted and cherished by a new 
 generation. Brother Samuel, especially, had a 
 large and most promising family; and he brought 
 them often to Earlham, rumbling splendidly up to 
 the front-door in his great barouche. They drove 
 from London, with a night on the way at the 
 familiar inn of Thetford ; and the carriage was hke 
 a nice little home in itself for the couple of days, 
 " lined with fawn-coloured silk," very big and 
 comfortable with its cushions and its deep pockets 
 and its flight of folding-steps. 
 
 Aunt Catherine was delighted to see them; 
 Samuel's children were a beautiful party, nearly a 
 dozen of them, I should think, in course of time. 
 Before Aunt Catherine could turn round they were 
 grown up, the daughters were marrying, brother 
 Samuel was a grandfather. But the eldest son was 
 still unmarried ; and he might well be at Earlham 
 a good deal, for he was delicate, not strong enough 
 
 156 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 for the routine of his father's counting-house in 
 London. And now I must say that Aunt Catherine 
 had made the acquaintance of an interesting family 
 who hved in Norwich, in the Cathedral Close — a 
 respected clergyman, with an extremely pretty and 
 talented wife and several young daughters; and 
 particularly for one of the daughters Aunt Catherine 
 had the warmest affection, gratefuUy returned and 
 reciprocated by the girl herself. And that was how 
 it came about that John Gurney, son of Samuel, 
 married Laura Pearse and went to live at the Lodge, 
 the old white house that abuts on the church-yard 
 in Earlham village. John and Laura — they were 
 living there, you remember, at the time of the 
 death of Uncle Joseph John, when Earlham Hall 
 stood empty after so many fruitful years. They 
 walked round the deserted garden, looked up at the 
 closed windows; and the young wife could not 
 foresee that for nearly fifty years it would be she, 
 she and none other, who to the far-scattered 
 kindred of Earlham, young and old, would represent 
 the spirit and the benediction of the place. 
 
 I have come round to this point again, a second 
 time, for the pleasure of seeing how rightly and 
 beautifully it happened that our grandmother was 
 drawn towards the Ufe of Earlham. They were 
 made for each other, Earlham and she ; grace and 
 charity met together, goodness and gaiety kissed, 
 when she came under its roof and renewed the 
 felicity of its old story. She was a girl of seventeen 
 when she married, and the Cathedral Close was her 
 world ; but she stepped from the household of her 
 family with the air and mien of ripe dignity, just as 
 
 157 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 at Earlham, fifty years later, her laughter chimed 
 out with the freshness of seventeen. She married, 
 and within a very few years, as I have told, her 
 husband died, leaving her with her young children 
 at Earlham; she was hardly more than a girl 
 herself, even then. Alone with her babies in that 
 wide serenity of lawn and garden, she took up her 
 responsibility with a natural grace that sets a 
 spectator, at the distance of to-day, admiring and 
 wondering anew. From somewhere, I don't know 
 how, I receive a glimpse of her in the time of her 
 youthful widowhood — ^it is in Earlham church 
 again, on a summer morning, when the congregation 
 stand ready to disperse at the end of the service. 
 The big Gurney hatchment was hanging then, as it 
 hung ever after, in the tiny transept; and our 
 grandmother would occupy the seat within the 
 carved oak chancel-screen where I see her so well 
 in her age. There she would be seated, long ago, 
 with her small brood about her ; and it is so long 
 ago, in that simple old mid-century England, that 
 the rustic gathering of the villagers stand still in 
 their places, yes indeed, while the young mistress 
 of the HaU passes down the aisle, her pretty children 
 in her hand. Serenely natural, gracefully upright 
 and composed, she would pass down the little nave, 
 followed by friendly eyes — any of us can clearly 
 see that picture. Aunt Catherine, by this time at 
 rest in her honoured grave, might weU salute her 
 as the true inheritress of the genius of Earlham. 
 
 158 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 14 
 That family in the Close, the daughters of the 
 
 respected clergyman (not yet removed to Martham, 
 away in the wilds) — they were indeed a rare house- 
 hold. There were five of them, and before they 
 married (but they all married very soon) they were 
 an attraction to many eyes, as they issued from the 
 fine old gate of the cathedral precincts and crossed 
 the open space of Tombland. Heads might be seen 
 appearing at the windows of the bank-parlour and 
 the solicitor's office, I have heard, when the five 
 Miss Pearses went down the street in a posse. But 
 on one point let there be no mistake ; they were the 
 daughters of the exquisite authoress of Earthly 
 Idols, and I need not say whether or no the standard 
 of her gentility was strict ; and it follows that the 
 society of the Close was exclusive. I don't know 
 precisely where the rector's lady ruled her lines, but 
 you may be sure there was no mistaking them ; the 
 bank-clerks and the scriveners might press to the 
 window for a sight of the blooming posse, but they 
 looked from afar. What was the society of the 
 Close ? — ^it is what I have often wondered at, think- 
 ing of our grandmother and her sisters, how from 
 their secluded school-room they stepped into the 
 world with their perfect bearing of composed 
 maturity. There was the palace, the deanery, the 
 houses of the canons — all very polite, no doubt, 
 but you cannot say that they represented a varied 
 range; and the education of these young ladies 
 seemed to have been conducted under far ampler 
 
 159 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 skies. They had Uttle but the example of their 
 wondrous mother — apparently it was enough. 
 
 Great-grandmother Pearse, with her rare manner 
 and her porcelain complexion and her romantic 
 heart, must have looked with satisfaction upon her 
 daughters. What would she have done if she had 
 found herself the mother of commonplace awkward 
 young women, destitute of charm ? — she would have 
 been deeply mortified. As it was, she might be 
 reminded of her own blush of youth, to look at 
 them, recognizing at the same time (as her daughters 
 did too, perfectly) that none of them was as pretty 
 as she. The sight of them might set her thought 
 ranging back to the past, to the rose-leaf maiden of 
 other days; though I suspect that she scarcely 
 needed an impulse from without to turn her mind 
 upon that sweet vision. It was all true — she had 
 been, she was, a lovely creature; and I think her 
 fancy might carry her at times, and naturally 
 enough, far above and beyond the respected roof in 
 Norwich Close. There was once a girl who sat by 
 her chamber window, late at night, leaning out into 
 the chilly darkness — ^looking for whom, do you 
 suppose? Not for her lover, fleeting and false, 
 but for death — it was for death that she waited and 
 longed; and in her scanty white night-dress she 
 hung out in the chill air, praying that she might 
 catch cold and die and end her pain. The girl was 
 she, the pretty old great-grandmother in her youth, 
 and there was no roseate romance in her heart at 
 that moment ; but long years afterwards she might 
 look back at the far-away vision with a stirring of 
 emotion in which there was no more pain, in which 
 
 160 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 there was even a little warmth of pride at the 
 thought of that sweet sad picture of the past. She 
 was the rector's lady, living in the sedate and 
 respectable Close — she was the mother of these 
 eager happy clear-eyed daughters; but she had 
 known, she had known what it is to love and suffer, 
 and under her seemly old lace and lavender silk 
 she was still the heroine of romance. The pleasure 
 of that knowledge remained with her undimmed, 
 to the end of her days. 
 
 Much of her spirit survived in her daughters, I 
 think, though in them it was changed and strength- 
 ened ; they lived among clearer reaUties, on deeper 
 emotions. But evidently it was to their mother 
 that they owed the light breeze of freedom, that 
 ripple of silver gaiety, which seems to have set 
 through their lives and to have lasted through 
 all the chances of their lot. It is only of one of 
 them indeed, of our grandmother, that I can speak 
 with a fuU memory ; it must be chiefly of her that 
 I think. Yet there were many echoes of them all 
 that might easily reach us, in the air of old days at 
 Earlham, and I weU know the fresh note of origin- 
 ahty that is ever to be recognized. There was 
 always a difference in them, something of their own, 
 freely irregular and conforming to no rule ; I have 
 tried to seize a glance of it here and there, in our 
 grandmother, and I wish I could follow it further 
 among her sisters. It would be before the image of 
 one of them in particular, whom I have not yet 
 encountered, that I should be tempted to linger. 
 That one, no doubt, with her pretty graces and airs 
 and winning ways, was the nearest in likeness to 
 
 i6i M 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 their mother ; and when I recall what I can of her 
 undying unfading charm, as fresh as ever at the 
 end of her long life, I see a peculiar kind of dis- 
 tinction at its very best. A beautiful pose, a finished 
 manner, a grace of bearing civilized and humanized 
 in the art of life — certainly these make a dis- 
 tinguished impression, they may seem to represent 
 the perfection of style. But style of that order falls 
 short after all, as anybody can perceive when the 
 completing touch is added to it. Perfection is 
 reached when the finished impression is ever so 
 lightly disturbed, deranged — ^when the breeze of 
 freedom, as I call it, flutters over the worked 
 surface, waking a movement, a shifting flaw that 
 defeats the eye of the onlooker. That is the final 
 flower of style, and I recognize it in my remem- 
 brance of this sister of our grandmother's. There 
 ran through her charm a sort of tinkle and trill of 
 natural lawlessness — it was irresistible. She easily 
 evaded the law of time ; she died full of years, but 
 she never grew old. 
 
 15 
 So much it had taken, such people, such talk, 
 such golden hours, to make our beautiful Earlham. 
 And daily it was enriched, its tone was deepened 
 by the deposit of new memories ; no day could set 
 without adding the full bounty of its delight to the 
 ancient store. As the dusk thickened and the 
 slashes of rich sunhght faded off the grass, the 
 western gables, the topmost chimneys — even a 
 child could be dimly aware that Earlham was more, 
 was richer and lovelier, than it had been only 
 
 162 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 yesterday. There could be no dead or dull or vacant 
 times in such a place; every turn of the hour 
 brought its worthy contribution, and none more 
 lavishly than the hour of sunset, when it would seem 
 as though the senses are quicker than ever to catch 
 the last admonitions of the day. Certainly I find 
 it impossible, more so than at any other time, to 
 gather and reckon the hoard of associations that 
 live again in the twilight, round the house and 
 across the lawn and among the darkened shrub- 
 beries. They are everywhere at once, softly shining 
 and caUing — and I can only answer a very few. 
 
 But first there is a chatter and a crowd about the 
 front-door, where a carriage waits for the departure 
 of the visitors. We aU coUect for a friendly fareweU, 
 and there is kissing and waving, stamping and 
 jinghng, and the carriage bowls away under the 
 blackness of the chestnut-grove. The children go 
 scampering after it — ^but indeed the shadows, once 
 you are round the corner and out of sight of the 
 house, are lonely and solemn by now; I prefer to 
 slip away into the open, over the short roU of the 
 park that descends towards the church and the 
 village. There the light comes raking across from 
 the west, warm with the faint rose-flush of an after- 
 glow ; very still and warm and grass-scented is the 
 air in the open, away from the trees. If you wander 
 off in that direction you come upon the other drive, 
 the one that marches straight from the steps of the 
 front-door, under the towering limes, to the white 
 gate by the church; it passes through the short 
 tunnel of the limes, and then over the open park to 
 the gate and the road. I find myself veering down 
 
 163 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 towards that gate — though really it is impossible 
 to suppose that I could travel so far at this hour of 
 the dusk; but in fancy, at any rate, I reach the 
 further end of the straight drive, for you get a 
 glimpse of the house from there which besets my 
 thought. 
 
 Suppose you were passing along the highway at 
 that point, coming from Norwich and knowing 
 nothing of Earlham, and you happened to pause 
 at the gate and glance up the straight cart-road 
 (I ought not to call it a drive) — ^here would be your 
 first sight of the house, so thickly the trees are 
 massed about it to the east ; and knowing nothing 
 of Earlham, you divine little or nothing of what it 
 really is. Your eye follows the line of the cart-road, 
 across the open park, till it disappears in the 
 shadow of the lime-avenue, and between the trees 
 you catch this single glimpse of the house — ^the 
 front-door only, with its low pediment, and a 
 window or two beside and above it. It is a sight 
 that tells you nothing of the place ; you might think 
 it rather formal and forbidding. The house on this 
 side, you remember, had been plastered over and 
 painted — by one of Joseph John's puritanical wives, 
 so we understood, who was aU for keeping a house 
 (like herself) as plain and drab as possible. So she 
 had plastered the old brickwork of the house-front 
 and painted it a pinkish, huffish white; and the 
 glimpse that you had from the road gave you 
 nothing but the impression of an ordinary respect- 
 able mansion, a " hall " like any other, withdrawn 
 in gentlemanly discretion among the trees of its 
 park. With a considerable effort of imagination I 
 
 164 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 picture the sight as it would be seen by a stranger. 
 If I were the stranger I should not look twice at 
 the house, I should pass on down the road to the 
 bridge and the river. 
 
 But to us that peep of a plain bare house among 
 the trees had pecuhar intimations of poetry. Its 
 aspect of solemn gentility was always connected, 
 you see, with the thought of arriving at Earlham. 
 We approached it on this side, and with that prim- 
 mouthed look, so untrue to itself, our Earlham 
 received its children. Did the house seem stiff and 
 ungenial in its manner of welcome? We knew 
 better — knew what a different expression it showed 
 as soon as you were fairly in its arms. There was 
 charm in the thought that it turned a dumb mask 
 to the world, revealing nothing to the casual 
 stranger on the highway ; and the friendly freedom 
 and sweetness of its intimacy were enhanced by the 
 contrast. So to me as I stand at the gate of the 
 church-drive, Hke any chance passer-by, this appeal 
 of the prospect is renewed, the waft of sensation 
 returns — and I could revolve the thought, caress- 
 ingly, of all that is screened from unknowing eyes. 
 It is an ordinary-looking mansion, oh yes, and a few 
 yards down the road you come to the bridge, and 
 to Borrow's fishing-pool, and to a stretch of water- 
 meadows that are very pretty with their buttercups 
 and loosestrife — ^pass on and admire them, for you 
 may. But if you knew, if you knew the heart of 
 beauty and life and romance that lies up there 
 among the trees, quietly waiting, you would stay 
 by the gate and tenderly fondle the thought. Half 
 way up to the house, in the open of the park, stood 
 
 165 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 a genteel wellingtonia, and to a stranger that too, 
 I suppose, would wear a formal look — ^but if you 
 knew! 
 
 So it returns to me ; and with this I get another 
 hint, expressive in its way, from the view of the 
 house in the distance. It suddenly looks remote 
 and historical — not historical in any grand sense 
 of the word, but with a suggestion of its placid old 
 durability, its power to stand on there behind its 
 limes, as it has stood for so long, whether we go or 
 come and whatever we think of it. I see how much 
 more history it has had than I can share, than I 
 can embrace with the utmost reach of my 
 sympathy ; and I am far from resenting the touch 
 of aloofness which it cannot always conceal. Its 
 blank face does hide something, even from me; I 
 don't know who built the house, I don't know who 
 lived there for a hundred years and more ; but the 
 blind background of its past may seem to make its 
 present familiarity the more gracious and touching 
 in its freedom. It had had its youth, its early 
 changes and chances, many of them ; and all these 
 were forgotten and buried when the later cycle of its 
 romance was inaugurated. Who lived at Earlham 
 before the incursion of our old Gurneys in their 
 eighteenth-century youth ? An ancient family lived 
 there, I just know so much as their name ; but not a 
 whisper of a tradition ever reached us from their 
 time, and for us they were not. We conceived 
 ourselves to have appropriated Earlham so in- 
 tensely that not even a ghost from its earlier past 
 could hold its own there. A fine pretension on our 
 part — and the placid face of the house might very 
 
 i66 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 well send a glance of irony through the twilight, as 
 I say the words. 
 
 No matter, I like the sense that Earlham pos- 
 sessed a forgotten past, buried away in the distance. 
 I could rake up some of it even now, no doubt; 
 and it comes back to me that the blue lady, framed 
 in the wainscot of our grandmother's bedroom, was 
 held to be a daughter of the earlier dynasty, so that 
 one reHc of them at any rate had survived. But it is 
 part of the thought of Earlham, for me, that 
 mystery and silence should obscure its origins, and 
 I have no wish to change and re-model the thought 
 at this late day. And when I speak of the ancient 
 family who had inhabited the place of yore, I am 
 reminded of the rather odd fact (I have mentioned 
 it already) that our good Gurneys never HteraUy 
 and legaUy owned it — they never owned the house 
 and the park, only some contiguous lands. It was 
 a long-drawn-out tenancy, protracted over genera- 
 tions ; and the fact was not at aU Mdthout meaning 
 for the children at our end of the chain. We were 
 clearly aware that the house did not " belong," we 
 believed that an alien hand might imaginably 
 descend to clutch it away from our grandparents. 
 I dare say there was no danger of that; but our 
 belief assuredly gave a spice of seasoning to the 
 mellowness of Earlham days — ^we felt we were 
 leagued against the unknown. Mystery and un- 
 certainty were thus perceptible in the air, if you 
 cared to think of it ; and you might care at times, 
 just for the sake of the romantic effect ; there was 
 no fear of finding too much of it for comfort. If you 
 begin to be harassed by uneasy speculations, look 
 
 167 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 again — the house stands there serenely, always 
 ready to soothe and to re-assure. And it is certainly 
 strange that the chill plainness of its front should 
 have set me thinking of its ancient detachnaent; 
 for the plaster and white paint were comparatively 
 a modern mischance in its history, due to that drab- 
 minded great-great-aunt of our own. 
 
 i6 
 
 With the shutting down of night upon the park 
 and the trees I part company for a time with the 
 child I have been following. The darkness sends 
 the child packing indoors ; and it is a heavier spirit, 
 to tell the truth, that still haunts the deserted, 
 mist- wreathed pastures. To remember how much 
 had gone to the making of Earlham is to remember, 
 not less, how much there was to lose ; a single day 
 in the life of the child is enough to give me the full 
 measure. It is aU dead and gone, the place as we 
 knew it is buried many years deep in memory. 
 For us its daily enrichment, its hourly increase, 
 came long ago to an end ; our experience of Earlham 
 was laid away in the past, in the form that it hap- 
 pened to have on a certain day, and there it has 
 remained. There was to be no more of Earlham for 
 us, from that day — no more than we already pos- 
 sessed. Our grandmother died, tranquilly breathing 
 out her beautiful life under its roof, and for us too 
 her death was good-bye to the place. 
 
 But good-bye? — when we can and do re- visit 
 the place so often and so confidently, it is not yet 
 time to say good-bye to Earlham. And whenever 
 we turn back to that memory and spend a summer's 
 
 i68 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 day there again, no doubt but the hours will have 
 added their store, will have deepened the enchant- 
 ment of Earlham by nightfall; so that there is 
 always more to possess than there seemed to be 
 yesterday. It is so, I am well aware ; and none the 
 less among the shadows of fancy, among the wreaths 
 of mist that creep from the river and lie in the 
 hoUows of the pasture, the mind hankers after the 
 substance of the days dead and gone. They were 
 no brighter, no clearer than this day of memory 
 which I have spent among the sights and scents 
 and voices of the garden — ^it is true. Yet the 
 adventure, the uncertainty, the hmitless possibility 
 is no longer there; and I see how it is that even 
 while I tread the grass and breathe the warm night 
 air under the limes, there is something that I miss 
 from of old. One's memory is safe — that, with all 
 its richness, is still its incurable poverty. When I 
 now return to Earlham and wander through my 
 thought of the house and garden, it is always to-day 
 and to-day only; there is no budding morrow, 
 bringing on the unknown. This is not the Earlham 
 that I knew, after all; the place that I knew was 
 open to the future, one could look forward there 
 with hope as weU as backward with fond regret. 
 Here it is that the ghmpses of memory inevitably 
 fail ; they show me a closed garden, bounded on all 
 sides, with no way open for the promise of the 
 morrow. It is very unlike the garden that was — 
 how unlike I well understand, when the night falls 
 which should be bringing an unknown day. I know 
 aU the days of this Earlham of remembrance, I 
 know them by heart. 
 
 169 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 If I could forget the morrow in the fragrant 
 darkness, if I could go forward under the limes in a 
 new and strange uncertainty — that indeed would 
 be the last triumph of a faithful memory. However 
 dark it might be I should be sure enough of my 
 way; I should have no need of eyes to guide me 
 through the lime-avenue to the garden-gate, the 
 little iron gate which leads to the dell of the weeping 
 ash. But suppose for a moment that I could pass 
 through the gate, hearing the well-known slam as it 
 swings shut behind me, and wander off into the 
 blackness of the oakwood, over the pebbly floor of 
 its clearings and among the paper-rustle of the 
 honesty — and aU this in ignorance, in doubt of the 
 future, such ignorance and doubt as I have not 
 known at Earlham for so many years. It is nothing 
 to remember all the paths and alleys and cleared 
 spaces as exactly as I do, even though it is now 
 pitch-dark in these recesses; I want rather to 
 forget, to forget what the next day will bring with 
 it, so that as I stray through the night I may be 
 able to wonder and hope, perhaps even to fear. If 
 that were possible, how the sense of Earlham would 
 live again! — I should be quick to note the change 
 from an Earlham immortal, exempt, safe out of the 
 way of the chances of to-morrow, to the Earlham 
 that I knew once, exposed to the future Hke the 
 rest of us, living a mortal life. So only, I see, could 
 I reaUy re- visit the place; and this lingering and 
 brooding over a memory that is timeless, scatheless, 
 cannot satisfy me in the soft night-silence. 
 
 Here then is something that I have missed 
 hitherto and that I might set myself to discover 
 
 170 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 in the darkness. To forget that the story is closed, 
 its promise fulfilled, its uncertainty at rest — to 
 re-capture a doubt, the presence of a question 
 unanswered — I could imagine that even this might 
 be attainable at such an hour, in such a place. 
 Well as I know my way through the wood, where 
 every tree-stem meets my hand with a companion- 
 able touch, there might surely come the moment 
 when I find myself at a loss, pausing in wonder — 
 and at least for the moment there would be a break, 
 no matter how trifling, in the security of the past. 
 Yet indeed it is not conceivable that I should 
 hesitate anywhere among these trees, and still less 
 when I regain the open of the clear night, on the 
 verge of the small west lawn. The glimmer of the 
 white sulky-seats is plainly discernible, further on ; 
 the path leaves them to one side and heads forward, 
 through more black pools and caves of shadow, to 
 the next open space — the great lawn itself, on which 
 so many hours of the long day have already been 
 spent. 
 
 WeU, it is not to be looked for that I should find 
 uncertainty here, with every footstep sinking 
 without a sound into the peace and friendliness of 
 the grassy floor. The lawn is the very place where 
 the past, dead and gone, seems most aloof in its 
 immunity from time and chance. Not in musing 
 memory, not in reflection and rumination, is it 
 ever given us to return to the past, the real past 
 that was a story unfinished. I cannot get there 
 except in dreams — ^in dreams it is easy enough; 
 I need the help of the dream-maker in the brain, 
 who shuts off my knowledge of the end of the story 
 
 171 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 when he begins to unroll the scene. Returning to 
 Earlham by that swift flight, I recover the real true 
 thing indeed; I may then go and come in the 
 garden at nightfall without a suspicion of what the 
 morning is to bring. It is the only way — fortunate 
 that it may still be open now and then. In the 
 mere day-dream of memory one must be content 
 with the vividness of the image that can charm and 
 ravish and absorb as of old, but that has no longer 
 any power to stir with hopes and fears, disquieting 
 and appealing. There is no help for it ; memory is 
 unassailable, a garden enclosed. 
 
 Let me then once more, before leaving the 
 solitude of the lawn, take in the impression of its 
 wide serenity. From the further edge of it nothing 
 could be seen of the house, in the moonless night, 
 but a black mass that was partly the house, partly 
 the great tree-tops behind it; they were indis- 
 tinguishably merged. House and trees together, 
 they showed impenetrably black against the sky — 
 a sky that was almost as dark, but of darkness open 
 and free and distant. The spangle of stars looked 
 faint and blurred in the mildness of the night; 
 it was not a domed firmament that hung over- 
 head, but the soft and yielding dimness of space. 
 Very slowly advancing over the grass, I should 
 gradually make out the build and form of the house, 
 with its wings thrown forward, the deeper velvet 
 of night between them, the pale shine of the cream- 
 white porch in the middle. And the lights, the 
 lights in some of the open windows — not brilliant 
 at aU in those old candle-lit days, not striking out 
 into the darkness, but lurking shyly within, gently 
 
 172 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 and secretly glowing in a few of the rooms. Quietly 
 guarded, mysteriously withdrawn they seem, these 
 signs of life; they reveal nothing, they only hint 
 and lurk and suggest, holding the gaze of an on- 
 looker. A shadow passes, a light is quenched — to 
 steal forth again in a moment elsewhere, in the 
 next room — and still it moves on, the shadow 
 follows, intensely silent and strange. 
 
 What lights, what windows ? Suddenly into the 
 watchful thought of the onlooker, with a long thrill, 
 fell the conviction of newness, of strangeness. It 
 was a house unknown, never seen before — very 
 dimly to be guessed at, against the massing of huge 
 trees in which there was not a tremor of sound or 
 movement. Darkened rooms, and then a window- 
 space that glowed again, an obscure stirring of 
 somebody, light in hand, along the passages of the 
 house — it was a portent of unexplained life that 
 was suddenly floated into the night, isolated from 
 the known familiar world. There had been some 
 queer disconnection, the onlooker had been dropped 
 without warning at a particular spot, his eyes fell 
 searchingly upon a scene entirely new to him — so it 
 appeared. And yet not quite; for I am conscious 
 of the voice at the back of the mind which says 
 " Stand perfectly stiU, don't stir, don't shift your 
 eyes — or you snap the spell " ; and why that check, 
 if the conviction of strangeness were really com- 
 plete ? Stand stiU, however, look straight, and let 
 the scene have its way, the miraculous dark house 
 where unknown lives are moving about their 
 business, stealthily flitting from room to room. Let 
 it be, let it remain so as long as it can ; drink deep 
 
 173 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 of the sensation, wondering, watching, questioning 
 the mystery. Only keep as still as the dead, and 
 the moment will lengthen and lengthen in the alien 
 night. 
 
 From very far away or from close at hand, I 
 couldn't tell which, comes a breathing fragrance — 
 or indeed it was round me aU the time perhaps, it 
 was there before I could say it had reached me. The 
 night was full of it, a fragrance very Ught and pure 
 and cool, and yet penetrating with a southern 
 sweetness and richness. I remember well how it 
 rests upon the windless night-air in long quiet 
 waves ; you never find it stealing round you by day, 
 but it wakes at dusk and lingers upon the edges of 
 the lawn, beside the flower-beds, till it vanishes 
 again with the morning. I know it so well, I should 
 so certainly expect it to be there, that I might 
 easily fail to regard it for a while ; but once I had 
 caught — caught sight of it, I was going to say, for 
 to my fancy it has a luminous satin-sheen, then it 
 would draw me away to foUow it, wherever I might 
 be. It is the scent of a flower that opens at night- 
 fall; and wherever I may be, that rare fragrance 
 will always carry me straight and sure to the garden 
 in the starshine, the garden at Earlham. Yes, the 
 moment of strangeness, when the house and its 
 secret glow of life within became suddenly alien and 
 unknown, must pass with the breaking of the spell, 
 and the spell cannot last when the night-flower 
 opens and pours out its silvery sweetness. All the 
 memory of Earlham comes welling back into my 
 thought again ; the strange house in the night is so 
 little strange that I seem from all time to have 
 
 174 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 known every corner of it. Earlham it is, with a light 
 glowing here and there behind the familiar windows 
 — there the nursery, that one our grandmother's 
 room, here the Ante-room Chamber among the 
 dark leafage of climbing vines and roses. Could I 
 ever have the sense of a mystery, an unknown 
 secret lurking there among the moving shadows? 
 I know them by heart, I have known them from all 
 time. 
 
 Ah but none the less I have found what I was 
 looking for ; it can be found after all, and not only 
 in dreams. It was just a flash of sensation, not 
 more, but I recognized it at once. Wait however — 
 wait and look nearer at the flower-beds, which he 
 in a rambUng cluster, you remember, under the 
 lip of the steep bank of grass. Their coiling ser- 
 pentine forms are all confused in the darkness, 
 but I can easily thread the narrow grassy paths 
 that separate each from each. The bright colours 
 of the geraniums and the salvias are veiled by night ; 
 the brightest red and blue, even the flaring orange 
 of the marigolds, are softened and obscured so that 
 you hardly notice them among the deep grey of the 
 tufts and bushes. But wait — the scent of the night- 
 flower leads me on, where the narrow way between 
 the beds goes turning and twisting. And there — 
 where this morning you saw nothing but tall stalks, 
 broad leaves, drooping and discoloured flower- 
 trumpets, look now ! Pure and cool and snow-white 
 the clear stars have opened with the fall of the dusk, 
 and whiter and whiter they grow as the night 
 deepens. This is the flower which sends that wave 
 of fragrance into the stillness, the flower that shines 
 
 175 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 in the garden at Earlham from dusk to dawn. Far 
 into an August night, till the first quiver of day- 
 break stirs the hush of the darkness, the white stars 
 hang motionless on their tall stalks, facing to the 
 sky. With the daylight they droop and fall ; but in 
 August the morning already delays, there are long 
 hours after midnight before the polar clouds begin 
 to catch the advancing light. Till then the night- 
 flower blooms in its white splendour, awake and 
 alone. 
 
 And I found what I was looking for, most 
 strangely, in the moment of recall to Earlham by 
 the scent of the flower. " I have never been here 
 before," I had said to myself out there on the lawn 
 — as one does, for no reason at all, on the spot 
 where one has stood a thousand times. " What 
 shadows are those behind the windows? " And 
 then, as the presence of Earlham returned with that 
 fragrance, I had forgotten — quite forgotten that the 
 place was dead and gone, that I shall never see it 
 again, that no day ever breaks there with new 
 promise, new hopes and fears. The small sweet 
 shock of finding the house so famiUar again was 
 enough ; it banished everything from my thought 
 but the fresh and sharp delight of recognition. Just 
 for the flash of a moment I felt that it was the old 
 Earlham, as it used to be, with still undiscovered 
 experience before it — not this safe, secluded, im- 
 mortalized Earlham that I possess in memory. 
 And it was all the stuff of a day-dream — strange 
 that it should so be possible to pile life upon life, 
 each with its distinct and clear-cut illusion. The 
 day-dream of memory took me to the lawn, in a 
 
 176 
 
IN THE GARDEN 
 
 night of summer long years ago ; and once there, 
 I could be visited by the illusion of strangeness — 
 just as it might have befallen me of old, on such a 
 night; and into that illusion there broke the 
 immediate sense of a living Earlham, where any- 
 thing yet may happen — Earlham as it reaUy was. 
 It shows how memory is to be trusted; memory 
 will give one everything, wiU even give one, at the 
 right hour, the chance to forget the unnatural 
 security in which it guards the past. An August 
 night, the scent of a flower — I remember these, and 
 for a moment they enable me to look forward to a 
 morrow, big with uncertainty as of old, that begins 
 to dawn upon the garden at Earlham, already 
 whitening the highest of the high-towering clouds. 
 
 177 N 
 
Ill: OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 I 
 THE river at Earlham was simply the river; I 
 never thought of its possessing a name upon the 
 county-map. It does possess one, however, and a 
 name not undistinguished among the waters of 
 East AngUa — the river Yare. Early in its course it 
 reaches Earlham; it twinkles over gravel and 
 water-cress to the brick archway of the bridge, turns 
 suddenly black and silent in the fishing-pool, and 
 winds idly away through the Earlham meadows, a 
 full-fed stream, deep enough to carry us in our 
 broad-beamed old boat. Upstream we could not 
 penetrate far ; we should soon hear the floor of the 
 river grinding upon our keel. But downstream the 
 waterway is open to us as far as Cringleford miU — 
 quite as much of a voyage as we shall wish to cover 
 and re-trace on a fine hot morning. 
 
 So at last we may dip down to the sunk fence 
 beyond the west lawn and journey away towards the 
 water-meadows. The park, gently falling to the 
 valley, had the dignity of its fine trees, scattered 
 and grouped here and there; but when you are 
 fairly out on the slope you can hardly call it a real 
 park; it is quite small, it quickly lapses into flat 
 green meadow-land — and here is the pond. Rust- 
 ling with rushes, starred with water-lilies in the 
 open, the pond would be sure to delay me ; it had 
 many attractions, the best of them perhaps the 
 ancient willow-trunk, rooted in the soft bank, 
 
 179 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 which had sunk and sunk as it leaned over the 
 water, till at last it lay at full length upon the 
 surface, with the lily-leaves floating against its 
 bark. A large and beautiful pond it certainly was ; 
 it spread out quite near the river, but there was a 
 stretch of thick grass between the two ; and so we 
 should skirt round the pond, to reach the boat-house 
 by the thorn on the river-bank. But you cannot 
 neglect the wiUow-trunk on the way ; there seemed 
 always a chance that if you scrambled and sprawled 
 to the end of it you might find that a white water- 
 lily had unfolded within reach of a grabbing hand. 
 It never had; it was so near that you could see 
 the little black-beetles among its golden spikes, 
 but there was no getting possession of it. What 
 should I do with a water-hly, if I did succeed in 
 clutching the stalk ? I couldn't say ; yet it would 
 be a valuable prize, the thought of it snapping 
 juicUy between my fingers is somehow alluring. 
 And then there are the steel-blue dragon-flies, dart- 
 ing and glancing, and there is the yellow fleabane — 
 and then there is the deep shade of the wood that 
 marches to the very verge of the pond, at the 
 further end of it. Remember this wood of great 
 trees ; I say no more of it for the moment, for the 
 boat-house on the river is close at hand, and we all 
 crowd thither and cluster about the low doorway. 
 
 Within there was thudding and bumping and 
 lurching, splashes of echoing water, shafts of green 
 twilight; the boat swayed and smacked its lips 
 (so you might say) as we bundled in and disposed 
 ourselves. Somebody stood in the bows to unlock 
 the gate ; and it burst open, caught by the stream 
 
 i8o 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 outside, and the boat pushed forth into the blaze of 
 hght, the water-cool breezes, the clean smell of the 
 draggled weeds. Light and air, the silent movement, 
 the wild and nameless fragrances — they make a pene- 
 trating experience. The water talked beneath us as 
 the boat swung round into the stream ; and immedi- 
 ately the familiar landscape was changed before our 
 eyes, the fields and woods beyond the low banks 
 seemed to have drawn apart with a new character. 
 Committed to the flow of the stream, one looks 
 back on the green world as though one had left it ; 
 to float upon water is as detaching, as Uberating as 
 to soar in air. Those woods, that flat marshland, 
 now belong to another sphere; I survey it with 
 curiosity, almost wishing to return to it already, so 
 inviting it seems to enterprise and discovery. But 
 here meanwhile is the sphere of the water-world, 
 with its strange and lovely treasures ; trailing my 
 hands in its dehcious chiU, I can soon be lost in the 
 landscape of the river-floor. 
 
 Shallow and pool, pool and shallow, the river 
 coiled its way through the hollow land. Outside 
 the boat-house the gravelly bottom was full in view, 
 only blurred a little by the twist and swirl in the 
 clear glass of the water. Do you know that broad- 
 leaved plant, bright green, translucent, that grows 
 in thick drifts along the bed of the stream, never 
 touching the surface ? — and the fine feathery thing, 
 a darker green, eternally pulled by the current, like 
 a thicket through which a wind never ceases to 
 blow? — and the stalks of the arrowhead, that 
 chmb to the upper air and are shaken there by a 
 constant httle breeze, it would seem, which is not 
 
 i8i 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 really a breeze but the same secret tug of the stream 
 below ? — and the perpetual flitting of tiny shadows 
 over the gravel and sand, as the minnows dart from 
 under our monstrous hull, the leviathan that pushes 
 among their cressy islets ? The only sound in the 
 quiet valley was the measured cluck of our clumsy 
 old rowlocks; the reedy pastures were deserted, 
 there wasn't a house or a cottage in sight; the 
 tawny cows stood stock-still, solemnly eyeing us as 
 we passed. And then, as we steered round a swing- 
 ing bend of the river, the sunlit floor had 
 disappeared and there was nothing but blackness 
 beneath us, thick darkness of water unbroken by 
 reed or rush — a deep pool, and you could plunge 
 the oar down and down, further and further into 
 the bottomless mud; and the next moment, per- 
 haps, the boat was almost scraping the clean gravel 
 again, and the smooth bottle-green reed-stems stood 
 out into the water away from the bank ; and so the 
 river went winding on its leisurely way, and after 
 ever so long you still saw the boat-house within easy 
 hail, just across the breadth of a single meadow. 
 
 There was a reed-bed that appeared very soon 
 on the right, a patch of swamp covered densely with 
 those great reeds like gigantic blades of grass, each 
 with its mop of pinkish plume streaming in the 
 wind. A small jungle of undrained swamp, tangled 
 with thorn-bushes — I take a deep interest in it by 
 reason of an unforgettable passage in the past. 
 Mark the great flattened platform of dead rushes, 
 close to the water's edge, almost hidden by the 
 plumy reed-forest. It is the nest of a swan — empty 
 now and abandoned, to be sure; but if you had 
 
 182 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 come here earlier in the year you would have been 
 niet in mid-stream by the master of the place, the 
 hissing and ruffling swan, and you might well have 
 thought twice before you faced his challenge. I, 
 let me tell you, had faced it; but I admit that I 
 had had powerful support. We were not often at 
 Earlham in birds'-nesting time ; and the thrill was 
 the keener when I did get the chance, twice or 
 thrice, of an adventure among the birds of the 
 swamp and the water-meadow. For the quest of 
 the swan I had the company of friend SideU the 
 butler — the man of nerve, of cool and masterful 
 decision. He met and confronted the passionate 
 fowl with a composure that disconcerted it entirely, 
 and I followed him in easy confidence. 
 
 The swan breathed fury, puffing out his magnifi- 
 cent wings ; and then he was quite taken aback by 
 SideU's assurance, and could only sail helplessly to 
 and fro, pouting and hissing, while we landed at the 
 nest ; and somehow we must have dislodged his 
 mate, for I remember the sight of the great dis- 
 coloured eggs, three or four, that lay in the high- 
 piled nest. If it should appear that one of the eggs 
 was addled I had leave to take it ; but how are you 
 to know whether an egg is addled while the bird is 
 stUl sitting hopefully on them aU ? It is possible, 
 I held, to make certain by shaking the eggs sharply, 
 one by one; the good egg gives no sound, the 
 ripening chick is firmly embedded within; but in 
 the bad you can hear the slop and jumble of the 
 rotting contents, from which no offspring is to be 
 expected. I applied the test accordingly, and one 
 of the eggs was at any rate addled by the time I had 
 
 183 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 done with it. I bore it off, and I have not forgotten 
 the afternoon that was spent in draining the huge 
 malodorous shell. So to you I have discovered 
 (you recognize the quotation) that swan's nest 
 among the reeds. 
 
 Mrs. Browning's poem is nearly all about knights 
 and pages and prancing horses ; I doubt if she had 
 ever reaUy seen the nest of a swan. But I can tell 
 of yet rarer things, once I am with Sidell among the 
 birds. We made a marvellous excursion one April 
 day to a certain mere, a lake fuU of swampy islets, 
 to which the black-headed guUs return every year 
 in their thousands, never learning better than to lay 
 their eggs at the very feet of the depredator. You 
 approach the lake by winding bowery lanes ; it is 
 quite in the manner of Norfolk to mask its waters 
 about with great trees, with long turnip-slopes, so 
 that you may follow the shady lane from village 
 to village without detecting the hollow of secluded 
 marshland that you skirt and pass by. The mere 
 of the guUs, I seem to remember, thus lurks in the 
 midst of an ambling tree-scattered country-side; 
 and we stopped at a gate in the lane and turned 
 aside by a woodland path like any other, which 
 gave no hint of what we should see in a moment. 
 So it comes back to me ; and presently a sheet of 
 water opened before us, at the edge of the wood, 
 and there was the hidden haunt of the swarming, 
 screaming birds. 
 
 Their eggs are taken, and they lay more; and 
 
 184 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 these are taken, and they lay more again; and I 
 forget how often the robbery is repeated, but it 
 stops just in time to avoid discouraging them 
 altogether. They think it a fatahty that must be 
 borne; with the third or fourth nest-full of eggs 
 they cheat their destiny, they rear a family, but 
 the earlier attempts are foredoomed. Year after 
 year they brave the curse that lies upon the mere ; 
 they scream and splutter over the punctual strokes 
 of fate; and yet they persevere, and they take 
 credit, I dare say, for their cleverness in evading the 
 fourth or fifth. The keeper of the mere and his 
 minions pack the eggs into boxes and despatch them 
 to those who know what is good to eat in April. 
 When we reached the lake-side the gulls were crying 
 out for the ten-millionth time that such things 
 ought not to be allowed. We found a boat, and we 
 rowed across the open water to an island trodden 
 and littered by many generations of the long- 
 suffering birds ; they were aU about us, with their 
 bright eyes and their flashing wings and their decent 
 little brown spring-hoods. The day's robbery had 
 been achieved; but here and there a spotted egg, 
 green and brown and black, might be found on the 
 bare spongy floor; and perhaps it was the first 
 time I had ever known the joy of a bird-haunted 
 marsh in breeding- time. With the birds that flutter 
 and chirp, that hop on lawns and whisk among the 
 bushes and patter through the dead leaves — with 
 these I was familiar, but not with the birds that 
 flap and scream, that paddle jerkily into the cover 
 of the reeds and stamp the mud-bank with their 
 neat triangular footprints. So this was always a 
 
 185 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 famous day, the first day among the gulls and the 
 dabchicks and the coots of the mere. 
 
 And as soon as I speak of it I am caught by the 
 memory of another and later day, and another 
 blue-green forest of rustling reeds ; and I remember 
 how, in a very small fiat-bottomed boat, one might 
 cautiously push along the narrow water-way that 
 twisted and turned, deep among the great feathery 
 stalks — cautiously, silently, with ear and eye 
 strained and alert. These other solitudes, more 
 remote than the mere of the gulls, were haunted by 
 certain charming and distinguished little creatures, 
 for whom I was ready to wait and watch by the 
 hour. It was late in the summer, and there was 
 very little stirring of life around the boat — scarcely 
 more than the shuffle and flap, here and there, of a 
 startled moor-hen; nesting- time was over, the 
 population of the reeds had fallen shy and silent. 
 But not entirely silent, it seemed — for I heard a 
 note, near and far, that was like the striking of a 
 very small silver gong, a note I had never heard 
 before. It was enough to set one's eye travelling 
 keenly among the forest of the stalks; the clear 
 note was uttered on this side, near at hand, and 
 then it seemed to be far ahead of me, close behind 
 me; and again and again I. had surely been just 
 too slow, had barely missed the flit of a wing across 
 the open water-way. And then at last, quietly 
 rounding a corner, I saw them full, a pair of them — 
 they gleamed and passed and disappeared among 
 the rushes. Shining, straw-golden little birds they 
 were, carrying long wedge-shaped tails behind them ; 
 they were bearded-tits, and through the hours of the 
 
 i86 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 afternoon I saw not a few of them, and the tiny 
 clang of their call-note was constantly about me. 
 The flight of time is forgotten when I have seen 
 and heard the bearded- tit ; I can attend to nothing 
 else, I follow the gleaming bird further and further 
 into the midst of the mere. 
 
 3 
 
 But I am concerned with the river at Earlham, 
 
 where it wound through the water-meadows; and 
 after passing the thicket of the swan's nest one 
 should begin to notice carefully the long wood of 
 great trees that accompanies our j ourney . It strides 
 down the vaUey, on the left hand, a hundred yards 
 or so from the river ; it is stUl the wood I spoke of 
 just now, the wood that shadowed one end of the 
 UHed pond. It is the heronry ; and in those branch- 
 ing tree-tops you may see the dark piles of the nests 
 to which the herons return in the spring. It was a 
 dwindling colony, I fear ; we could not count more 
 than a dozen nests, perhaps; and in August of 
 course they were all deserted — we rarely had the 
 luck of surprising a heron by the water-side and of 
 watching its lordly voyage down the sky. But it 
 was truly a heronry, that wood — I hope it is stiU ; 
 and we knew no other, and we felt it to rank among 
 the proudest of the glories of Earlham. 
 
 The wood marched on down the valley, never far 
 from the river ; it was a dense and tangled forest, 
 long and narrow, and it was crossed in the middle 
 by a cart-track that went tunnelUng through the 
 leafage. The cart-track divided the kingdom of the 
 herons from that of the rooks; they scrupulously 
 
 187 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 respected each other's domain. Very soon, as our 
 boat pushed forward, the rooks were wheehng and 
 braying their loudest overhead. The sky was full 
 of flapping wings, those fooUsh up-curved, open- 
 quilled wings that seem so badly designed for riding 
 the air. The voices of the rooks awoke the valley — 
 for all this time there has been no sight of a human 
 being, there never was, in these solitary pastures ; 
 it was only our lumbering boat, so it seemed, that 
 ever disturbed their peace. We drifted down and 
 down between the low banks; and presently the 
 wood of the rooks ended abruptly, and to right and 
 left we could see the expanse of the shallow valley, 
 between the mild slopes and swellings that in 
 Norfolk are counted as hiUs. From our low level, 
 looking across the water-meadows, we could dis- 
 cover no break in the green flats of the pasture; 
 only here and there an isolated wooden gate, with 
 nothing on either side of it, stood up oddly in the 
 midst of the grass — ^betraying, you see, the lie of 
 the hidden dykes that separated field from field. 
 The gate marks the spot where the dyke is crossed 
 by a culvert or a bridge of wooden planking ; and 
 I dare say the thought of the dykes, big and little, 
 fuU of reeds and frogs and various treasure, may 
 bring our boat to a standstill, and we may dis- 
 embark for an oozy, juicy scramble among the 
 fleabane and bog-beans and forget-me-not. 
 
 But our voyage was far from its end. On and on 
 we went, past the poUard-willows, past the two 
 skeleton windmiUs that pumped the river-water, I 
 suppose, up the swelling hill towards Eaton — and 
 soon the stream became rapidly deeper, and houses 
 
 i88 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 appeared, clustered about with trees, and a bright 
 trim garden or two descended to the river-bank. 
 Cringlef ord (pleasing name) was in sight ; we floated 
 upon a deep pool that even in the blaze of noon 
 you might feel to be treacherous and sinister. For 
 look ahead, see the picturesque building that 
 straggles across the river and blocks the way, note 
 where the river disappears beneath it. That is 
 Cringlef ord mill; it opens a dark jaw and swallows 
 up the stream — quite quietly, without a sign of 
 warning ; and we are weU aware that it is a place 
 of extreme peril. I think we must have read or 
 heard of a " mill-race," how it snatches the unwary, 
 draws them in and destroys them in the darkness, 
 where the great wheel hungrily pounds and grunts. 
 And though the pool of Cringleford seemed so 
 peaceful, so innocently dreamful in the sun, we had 
 no doubt that danger lurked; we floated watch- 
 fully, with a cautious eye for that wide and evil 
 sUt of a mouth in the distance, opening with a black 
 grin upon the verge of the water. Nearer we 
 ventured, a little nearer — ^but then it was time to 
 remember our return-voyage, the long puU up- 
 stream that stiU awaited us. 
 
 The Yare seems a leisurely current till you begin 
 to breast it in a heavy old boat under a high sun. 
 It starts into activity then, I can assure you ; the 
 oar that you have gaily pUed in the descent becomes 
 hostile and hatef rd, the boat a leaden tub ; now is 
 the time for your elders to exert themselves, while 
 you recline with dignity in the stern and handle the 
 rudder-strings. I like to be free to watch the shift- 
 ing landscape, I like the responsibihty of steering 
 
 189 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 our course ; there is something noble and serene in 
 the attitude of the helmsman, surveying the effort 
 of the crew, which appeals to me more keenly than 
 I should care to admit. I cannot be surprised if my 
 manner betrays a natural authority, as I lean 
 negligently back in my place, drinking in the 
 familiar scene, and pull the alternate strings that 
 send us sweeping round the bends of the river. 
 A royal passage upstream, while the slaves bend 
 to the oars — and quicker than you could believe 
 possible the nose of the boat darts at the bank, 
 rams itself firmly into a slush of mud, and the 
 helmsman is exposed to the free-spoken jeers of the 
 crew. 
 
 The shady bank, however, of the reach just below 
 the little windmiUs has associations that make me 
 forget my discomfiture. Here were fine old willow- 
 trunks, branching thickly, and they bring a picture 
 of memory to the light. It was just the place for a 
 picnic— it had been tried and proved more than 
 once. Not at this time of day, not at high noon, 
 but towards tea-time we had more than once 
 landed by the willows with hamper and kettle; 
 those were days that stood out in remembrance for 
 many reasons. And one of the reasons seems to 
 have been that exactly on those afternoons, those 
 only, the golden weather was chilled and clouded; 
 the sun always blazed at Earlham, surely, save 
 when we landed with uncles and cousins on the 
 river-bank, far from home, and prepared to collect 
 sticks, build a fire and boil our kettle. Then the 
 clouds gathered, rain threatened, wind whistled — 
 the scene is vividly before me. People looked 
 
 190 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 doubtfully at the sky and the grass, spread mackin- 
 toshes, huddled and shivered; but the children 
 were not discouraged, for that was the way of an 
 Earlham picnic, one would not wish to improve 
 upon it. The centre of the scene is one of our 
 uncles, crouching on hands and knees over a fire 
 that he tends and coaxes, screening it from the gust 
 with a wall of tilted umbrellas round which he peers 
 with whimsical looks ; the children hover about and 
 gaze at him with sudden chuckles. 
 
 Rain and wind mattered nothing to us — ^we had 
 our picnic. The joy of it was twofold. In the first 
 place it was traditional; regularly, on our return 
 to Earlham, the question of a water-picnic appeared 
 among our schemes, fitting into its turn hke a piece 
 of ritual ; so it always was, so it ever should be — 
 these children were resolute precisians in such a 
 matter. And then there was another savour in a 
 picnic ; and I am almost shy of returning yet again 
 to the romance of an eight-year-old appetite, but 
 how can I forget the brilliance of the eating in those 
 conditions ? A bun or a sandwich on its plate at 
 nursery-tea is admirable ; but wrap it up in white 
 paper, make a neat parcel of it, carry it off with you 
 for a long afternoon, and finally consume it in a 
 boat or on a river-bank — ^poetry has passed into it 
 by that time, and to a child it is a fact that poetry 
 tastes. Transubstantiation, to a child, is no mere 
 venture of faith ; it is a matter established by the 
 senses, like any other ; and though I cannot verify 
 it now, I perfectly recall the new flavour of the 
 sandwich that has been spiced and seasoned by 
 new surroundings. And even more potent in its 
 
 191 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 influence than a boat and a river is a railway-train, 
 a crowded compartment in which a hamper is 
 unpacked and small parcels in butter-stained white 
 paper are handed round — ^lunch in the train, one of 
 the richest of aU the incidents in the long ecstasy of 
 the j ourney to Earlham. You know how it happens ; 
 one climbs into the corner by the window to watch 
 the racing trees and telegraph-poles, and the hours 
 loiter, and the elders of the party sit mutely nursing 
 their headaches (you remember their train head- 
 aches), and there is a fragrance of eau-de-cologne, of 
 morocco travelUng-bags, of begrimed upholstery; 
 and at last, at last it is time to open the hamper, to 
 unpack the sandwiches; and for my part I feel I 
 could munch my way through them for an hour, and 
 then be ready to begin all over again. I have fed 
 on poetry ; and I am glad to think I made such use 
 of the opportunity that the flavour is distinct to me 
 after many years. 
 
 As for the voyage upstream in the beating sun- 
 shine, the later stages are blurred with a luxury of 
 somnolence ; it is clear that I have relinquished the 
 rudder ; I keep no count of the twists of the river, 
 I lose myself in the rhythmical cluck and splash of 
 the oars. On and on, cluck and splash — and at 
 length we are wheeling and lurching into the cool 
 shadow of the boat-house again ; and now comes the 
 endless toil of the walk up the park, an almost 
 impossible anti-climax to our adventure. Up there 
 among the trees are the gables and chimneys of 
 home ; but the slope of the park seems to refuse to 
 grow less, as one trudges and stumbles among the 
 scorched tussocks of the grass. But suppose that 
 
 192 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 one clings to an ever-companionable arm, demand- 
 ing one of those strange and beautiful stories of 
 which I have spoken already — ^why not indeed, for 
 the thirtieth time, the story of the tapioca-pudding 
 and its burial in the shrubbery ? It is well ; time 
 and space are obhterated while the drama gathers 
 and breaks ; we find ourselves in the shade of the 
 west lawn just as the bell peals out to call us indoors 
 — five minutes before luncheon-time. 
 
 4 
 
 Except to the river we should not very often 
 travel beyond the garden — ^partly because the 
 garden was eventful enough for a life-time, partly 
 because adventure could not be improvised, ex- 
 temporized, in the outer world. To penetrate there 
 was a matter of plans and public arrangements; 
 our elders must co-operate, and they may be willing 
 and sympathetic, but their interest in a project puts 
 it at once among formal, discussible things, whereas 
 the pecuUar charm of a private enterprise is that it 
 needs no explanation. None the less we should 
 welcome the prospect of an afternoon in Norwich 
 with our grandmother; when she drives "in," 
 carrying us with her, we are very ready to bring the 
 fine old city into our game, so to speak, to include it 
 in the Hfe and legend of Earlham. 
 
 As I think of Norwich I remember first how the 
 carriage-horses seemed to fill the narrow channel of 
 London Street, how their hooves pounded and 
 echoed on the wooden pavement, how Patrick the 
 coachman, from his height, steered them with easy 
 supremacy through the jostle of smaller traffic. 
 
 193 o 
 
E A R L H A M 
 
 The shops of London Street were very brilliant, and 
 we stopped here and there, and Patrick beckoned 
 with a flourish of his whip to the salesman within, 
 who issued with friendly smiles to confer with our 
 grandmother, taking his place at once thereby, to 
 my sense, in the family party of Earlham. There 
 were friends everywhere to greet us, and the horses 
 twisted their way without hesitation round the 
 sharp turns, swept up and down the scooping slopes 
 and pitches of the old streets. The heart of Nor- 
 wich, in the region about the market-place, has a 
 very distinguished air. It impressed me with the 
 dignitjT^ and the grand style of a capital city, much 
 more of a city and a capital than London itself, 
 which was merely a chance aggregation of streets. 
 Norwich had a personal, self-conscious look, aware 
 of its own being; it was from Norwich, not from 
 London, that one could learn to think of a city as a 
 body of life and character. By the time our 
 carriage had threaded a dozen narrow ways and 
 worked up the hill to St. Stephen's, to St. Peter's, 
 I was filled with pride in the familiar and kindly 
 bond that united us to such a memorable friend. 
 
 St. Peter's Mancroft— it is a good civic church, 
 standing very stately above the market-place ; one 
 might catch sight of its dominating tower and spire 
 at many points of our course. And its odd old 
 name made one begin to peer and watch for the 
 perpetual church-towers of the Norwich street- 
 corners and to demand their names too — in half 
 an hour one may collect a curious store. Our 
 grandmother knew them all ; no tower or street of 
 Norwich, I suppose, was without its quick associa- 
 
 194 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 tions for her. She named the churches, and already 
 in very early days I had them by heart : St. Michael- 
 at-Plea, St. Michael-at-Thorn, St. Martin-at-Oak, 
 St. Miles Coslany, a lengthening catalogue of pic- 
 turesque titles that stirred the imagination with 
 many thrills. Churches, timbered houses, the 
 ancient guildhall of black flint, they all crowded 
 upon us with romance ; sitting on the small back- 
 seat of the carriage, facing our grandmother, I 
 should crane half-bewildered from side to side, 
 fearful of missing a single glimpse of these wonders. 
 If I try to discern exactly what they can have 
 meant to an excited child, with no knowledge 
 whatever of their historic life, I certainly see nothing 
 but a blank. Our dear grandmother, familiarly 
 as she moved through the city, had no improving 
 information to offer us ; she was quite as innocent 
 of facts and dates as I was myself. But that was 
 fortunate ; all we needed was the beautiful names, 
 anything more would have oppressed our fancy; 
 and really I think I principally enjoyed, not the 
 presence of the past, but the grand sense that in the 
 midst of this antiquity we were quite at home and 
 at our ease — the sense that the city with all its pride 
 was for us but an appanage of Earlham. When I 
 remembered this, I did my best to look benevolent, 
 superior, careless ; it was all a very old story to me, 
 I implied, but it was pleasant to cast a glance upon 
 it in passing, to throw a wave of the hand to the 
 well-known scene. And I was conscious indeed of 
 the difficulty of reconciling this attitude with the 
 ingenuous eagerness that set me bouncing to and 
 fro on the back-seat, as we rattled through the open 
 
 195 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 spaces of the cattle-market and beheld the immense 
 Norman keep of the Castle on its mound. 
 
 But it was when we descended to the lower parts 
 of the city, towards Tombland and the cathedral, 
 that the charm of intimacy was at its best. Oddly 
 enough — or naturally enough, I dare say — I could 
 not take the faintest interest in the cathedral for its 
 own sake ; I remember standing at the west door, 
 gaping up at the bossed tracery of the vault, with a 
 mind emptied of all activity, struck limp and lifeless 
 by a spectacle too big for it. I could do nothing 
 with the cathedral as an object of beauty and 
 interest ; it soared above me, swooped and bore me 
 down. But when I turned away and stroUed with 
 grandmother through the Close, and she pointed 
 out the home of her childhood, spoke of the bishop's 
 palace and the deanery, led me to the old ferry and 
 the grey bits of ruinous wall and archway by the 
 river — when the towering cathedral, there behind 
 us, became part of her story, part of daily life and 
 familiar habit — then indeed I took possession of it 
 with perfect assurance. I could include it, I could 
 embrace and patronize the good old cathedral, 
 when it was thus pulled into the pattern — the 
 pattern of Earlham, as I keep on discovering it. 
 I stepped out beside the daughter of the Close, to 
 whom the overwhelming great church was a fact 
 as simple and homely as Sunday morning, quite 
 prepared to master all the vastness of antiquity in 
 that fashion. And I now see that just in that way 
 and no other a child could handle and use the 
 impression of ancient beauty; our grandmother 
 glanced at it affectionately, as though at a faithful 
 
 196 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 companion, and I at her side was delighted to do 
 the same. We neither of us distracted ourselves by 
 tr5?ing to understand it. 
 
 " This is PuU Ferry," she said, when we reached 
 the river-bank at the lower end of the Close. There 
 it was, I suppose, that the barges were towed and 
 moored, laden with the stone that built the cathe- 
 dral and the monastery ; there was the quay where 
 the monks of the priory received and landed their 
 supplies. Of all that I had no notion at all, not even 
 enough to make me wonder and ask questions about 
 the grey old gateway and broken tower. We stood 
 and looked for a minute, and then we turned back 
 into the Close, and grandmother had a message to 
 leave or an enquiry to make at the house of a canon ; 
 and as if it had happened this morning I remember 
 how the charm of the place suddenly flowered out all 
 round me while I waited, moving me to unspeakable 
 tenderness. What I liked about it was not in the 
 least its beauty, but simply the fact that it was 
 mine, and had been mine for so long. I had never 
 seen it five minutes before; but grandmother's 
 tone, when she spoke of it, was full of a lifelong 
 intimacy that I could share on the spot. 
 
 5 
 There was plenty of business to transact in 
 Norwich before we were ready to return home. It 
 was necessary first to drive round by the fish- 
 market; there we seemed always to be expected, 
 and as soon as the carriage paused an aproned 
 young man darted forth with a bundle or basket, 
 discreetly packed, and bestowed it under the coach- 
 
 197 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 man's box. That was the fish for dinner; and 
 Patrick, it was probable, had many other commis- 
 sions entrusted to him by Mrs. Chapman, and 
 gradually the carriage was stored with various goods. 
 IMoreover we had started from Earlham, I need- not 
 say, with the usual assortment of packages and jars 
 and baskets under all the seats, and for anything 
 that we took in there was something no less sub- 
 stantial to give out. Our course took us hither and 
 thither among the outlying streets of the city ; we 
 learned to know a good many of the doors at which 
 we habitually stopped. Our grandmother's circle 
 of friends was very large, and there was an 
 attractive parcel, likely enough, for all the poor 
 things and the good souls in turn. 
 
 I pause in remembrance before a door that we 
 seem to have frequented regularly for many years. 
 It was in a prim street of tiny houses, not unsightly ; 
 and here we all got out of the carriage and went in 
 to call upon Mrs. Cook. We climbed to her bed- 
 room — for there she lay helpless, year by year, 
 always greeting us with the same dreadful, high- 
 piUowed, gaunt fascination. She lay there like a 
 wild old witch, beaten and brought low, but surely 
 still capable in her imprisonment of a stealthy spell 
 or so if she had the mind. That was how this 
 amiable, humble, grateful old person (as I suppose 
 she was) struck a child ; it was impossible to beheve 
 that her cries and chirrups of delight at our appear- 
 ance had no sinister meaning. So we stood by her 
 bed and stared at her, appalled and attracted, 
 while grandmother explained us to her, named and 
 placed us in a family whose ramification she followed 
 
 198 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 with faithful interest. She didn't remember us very 
 well from visit to visit ; and I never forgot that one 
 of our uncles (the wickedest) had once taken a 
 perfect stranger to see her and had introduced him 
 to her as one of ourselves — to her intense satisfac- 
 tion, for she declared she would have known the 
 gentleman anywhere for his likeness to the rest of us. 
 Was that a cruel fraud to practise on the poor soul, 
 or a kindness to offer her? — I had heard the 
 question debated, and I remembered our grand- 
 mother's " Don't, dear — don't! " — unwilling to be 
 amused, while she smiled at a story that lost 
 nothing in our uncle's telling. It added another 
 note of curiosity to the sight of Mrs. Cook. 
 
 But what I chiefly notice, as I recall how grand- 
 mother greeted and talked to her, is something 
 not at all easily to be described. It is the attitude 
 of the charming and tender and bountiful visitor 
 towards the sad old wreck who lay there on the 
 pillow and mumbled her gratitude and folded her 
 skinny iSmgers round the kind hand. A child, of 
 course, had no notion how our grandmother's genius 
 was revealed at such a moment ; but from this 
 distance of time I see it iiU the room with a wonder- 
 ful radiation. And I can't, when I try to speak of it, 
 teU where to begin ; for the whole of her nature was 
 warmth and quickness and light, and there were no 
 qualities, no virtues in it that were not aU-per- 
 vasive, liberated, transmuted into spirit and flame. 
 When they are withdrawn and defined they seem 
 no longer Uke her — ^no more than a handful of salt 
 is like the blue suffusion of the fire into which it is 
 thrown. To describe a character like this, naming 
 
 199 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 its qualities one by one, gives it far too much of an 
 air of deliberation, of formal structure, as though 
 it were composed and compacted of different 
 materials laid together. Her manner of being was 
 as little of that kind as could be; it escapes the 
 words that would close upon it. 
 
 Let me say at least that she possessed, mingled 
 with the utter simphcity of her charity, a pretty 
 strain of statehness, of worldliness — which kept Mrs. 
 Cook in her place, not a doubt of it, even while they 
 spoke together and smiled and prayed in the light 
 of a love where none was afore or after other. Our 
 grandmother, tending her suffering friends, moved 
 among them entirely as one who serves — absolutely 
 forgetful of herself, lost in the instant free flow of 
 her sympathy ; she forgot, for she had no need to 
 remember, the distinctions that here and now, in the 
 world as it is made (and providentially, unquestion- 
 ably made), have the meaning and the force that we 
 recognize, whatever we think of them. She had 
 no need to remember these things because she did 
 not question them ; it is we, the rest of us, asking 
 why Mrs. Cook should lie bed-ridden in a dull street 
 and a frowzy little room — it is we who cannot meet 
 her as an equal and a sister, cannot serve her 
 simply, cannot feel at home among her dingy relics 
 and imitations of gentility. Who are we, and what 
 is Mrs. Cook? — ^we don't know, and we know we 
 don't know, and the unanswered questions visibly 
 plague us ; Mrs. Cook herself is only too well aware 
 of the fidget of their presence, and the end of it is 
 that we go away without having been with her, 
 really and comfortably with her, for a moment of 
 
 200 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 our visit. But look at Mrs. Cook when our grand- 
 mother enters the httle room with radiance, with 
 gaiety in her voice, with that sweet trembling harp- 
 note of tenderness in her greeting — it is a christian 
 soul that meets another, without the semblance of a 
 barrier between them; no doubts or delicacies or 
 compunctions divide them, they join hands in 
 perfect understanding. And yet it is as clear and 
 natural as day to both of them that in the world 
 they are far apart ; and here, where they meet, one 
 of them brings sympathy and bounty, the other 
 gives gratitude, and the disparity of the exchange 
 never troubles them in the least. It is part of the 
 order of things, and they can disregard it as easily 
 as we allow for the daily cataclysm of sunset and 
 nightfall. Suppose that every evening, with the 
 closing-in of the dark, we should blame the mon- 
 strosity of allowing the sun to sink; that would 
 seem to Mrs. Cook quite as reasonable as to ask why 
 in the world she should lie there in her old flannel 
 bed-gown, staring at the cheap waU-paper a few 
 feet away from her, while we drive home through 
 the radiant afternoon to Earlham. 
 
 And our grandmother — she could suffer in aU her 
 vibrating heart with the sufferings of the poor and 
 the forlorn, the woes of the world in distress were 
 her own ; but it was no part of her thought that in 
 comforting and succouring the poor, who are always 
 with us, we should begin to be sceptical or ironical 
 about the distinction between Earlham and the 
 humble abode of Mrs. Cook. She believed in the 
 distinction, took it as real and lasting; no words 
 were needed, but without words she made it un- 
 
 201 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 mistakable that everybody had his due station and 
 degree. In that degree he might be miserable and 
 destitute, and then the more fortunate had the duty 
 and the joy of hastening to his rescue; still his 
 degree remained, and theirs too, and nothing in the 
 sincerity of Christian fellowship would lead to 
 obliterating the difference. See her, for example, 
 when half-way home, on the high-road, she suddenly 
 caUs to the coachman and stops the carriage — a 
 tired woman with a baby is trailing on foot in the 
 dust, and we can give her a lift on the way. " Jump 
 in," cries grandmother, smiling and beckoning ; and 
 she makes room beside her, and the woman's slight 
 surprise and confusion quickly disappear in easy 
 talk about her journey, her home, her ailing child. 
 I can clearly see her anxious, strained face as she 
 responds, more and more readily; and before we 
 reach home and it is time for her to set off on her 
 tramp again, grandmother wiU doubtless have 
 contrived some means of solidly and sympathetic- 
 ally helping her, and the woman goes on with the 
 knowledge that she has made a friend. And in the 
 whole transaction our grandmother has the fine 
 style, the serene gesture of a princess, even while 
 she enters the life of the poor pilgrim with the eager 
 simplicity and participation of a saint. At least it is 
 something like that — ^if only these definite words 
 and phrases seemed at all to suggest the living light 
 of her spirit. 
 
 6 
 We drove out of Norwich then, on our way home, 
 as the afternoon grew golden towards tea-time. 
 
 202 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 Before leaving the city we should not forget to look 
 with interest, in passing, at the big tower of St. 
 Giles's church ; for it was at St. Giles's, you remem- 
 ber, that our grandfather had formerly ministered 
 for so long. It was a church, therefore, that peculi- 
 arly belonged to Earlham, though the days of the 
 intimate association between the two were pretty 
 well beyond our memory. The legend of those 
 years still survived for us, however, and I know 
 exactly how at Earlham, on Sunday morning, the 
 household would dispose itself for the journey to 
 church. Who wants to drive in ? — ^who will walk ? 
 — the question ran round the breakfast table and 
 the parties were made up. In those days you 
 naturally wore your best on Sunday ; but your best, 
 though it was brighter and crisper and tenser than 
 week-day wear, would be " suitable," with no fly- 
 away feathers or fancies, and 1 see how the ladies of 
 the party, when they assemble in the haU, touch and 
 pat the bows of their bonnet-strings and ease the 
 set of their veils. They would gather in the haU 
 with their prayer-books and their parasols, and 
 some of them would set off on foot with our grand- 
 father and our uncles, and presently the carriage 
 would come round for the rest — and all this is only 
 what happens in the morning, and there is almost 
 as large an attendance for the journey to evening 
 service, after tea. Tea on Sunday, moreover, is 
 particularly memorable; for the party would not 
 get home again till rather late — dinner was conse- 
 quently always " supper " on Sunday, in name if not 
 in character — and this required, in Mrs. Chapman's 
 view, that they should be fortified in advance with 
 
 203 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 special precautions. Tea on Sunday was a feast, 
 magnificently spread out in the dining-room, and 
 the children " came down " ; and 1 like to remem- 
 ber that nobody could permit the good tradition to 
 drop, even when its reason came to an end. Even- 
 ing church, in our time, meant only the little walk 
 to the village ; but the grand Sunday tea remained 
 unchanged, a relic of the legend of St. Giles. 
 
 We should glance with some pride, accordingly, 
 at the handsome great tower, capped with its 
 diminutive belfry, while the carriage skirted the 
 enclosure of the graveyard. The parish of St. Giles 
 is near the edge of the city (or it was), and the streets 
 are gentlemanly and quiet and Georgian. Such is 
 my impression ; but I know there was plenty of 
 scope, around and out of sight, for our grandfather's 
 missionary zeal. He and his wife had laboured there 
 abundantly and had left durable monuments of 
 their care. The very church itself was one of these ; 
 for when they took the parish in hand, in the distant 
 past, they found that a part of it had been allowed 
 to tumble into a sad state of ruin, and the first 
 necessity was to repair it and make it seemly for 
 worship. So bad was its state that it had to be 
 closed altogether for a good many months, while 
 the work was in progress — and what was to be done 
 meanwhile ? Grandfather used to tell the story with 
 spirit ; the rector of a neighbouring parish, a small 
 parish with a big church, had come forward with 
 an offer. " See now," said the rector, " you've got 
 there a bowtiful congregation and no church " — so 
 grandfather reported the scene — " and here have I 
 got a bowtiful church and no congregation; bring 
 
 204 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 you your congregation then, and put them in my 
 church, and we shall manage very well." So it was 
 arranged ; and when St. Giles's church was at last 
 in order grandfather led his flock thither again, with 
 all thanks to the neighbouring rector for his help in 
 a difficulty. I always had a pleasant impression of 
 the incident, and I should not fail to recall it as we 
 waved our salute to St. Giles. 
 
 We should very soon reach the country and the 
 high-road to Earlham ; but the last outskirts of the 
 city give me several pictures that I must not forget. 
 It is certain, for example, that we should stop at 
 English's, the chemist, which was a kind of clearing- 
 house for goods and parcels directed to Earlham. 
 English's was about the last shop you passed on the 
 way out; hence its convenience for our purpose. 
 When you went shopping in Norwich you had only 
 to say " Send the parcel to English's " ; whoever 
 was driving out would be sure to stop there and 
 clear the daUy accumulation. At a sign from the 
 coachman, as the carriage drew up, the accommo- 
 dating Mr. Enghsh hurried out with a miscellaneous 
 armful. That accomplished, I begin to find my 
 pictures grow a little confused; for change was 
 always at work in this quarter, and from one year 
 to another buildings disappeared and sprang up in 
 puzzling succession. Quite clear, however, is the 
 vista of Chapel Field Road, striking off obliquely to 
 the left along the Mne of the old city- wall ; a solid 
 stretch of the waU itself is to be seen in the back- 
 gardens of the houses there, and grandmother used 
 to tell us how the city-fathers in their vandalism had 
 once started to pull down the " poor old wall " from 
 
 205 
 
E A R L H A M 
 
 end to end, but had been defeated at last in Chapel 
 Field Road by its ancient toughness, and had 
 desisted, leaving the relic we could still see trium- 
 phant. This was an image we enjoyed; we took 
 sides with the wall against the stupid fury of 
 modernity. I wish I could see Unthank Road as 
 clearly ; Unthank Road seems to have fallen below 
 the strong effect of its name, which is all I retain of 
 it. West Pottergate Street is another fine phrase 
 that abides with me, but hardly more than a phrase. 
 In the very early days of my memory there was a 
 building, near the limit of the city, which it was 
 hard to pass with composure. It was the prison — 
 such a terrific old place of black gates and bulging 
 towers and high blind walls. A shudder seizes me ; 
 but mercifully the prison was soon to disappear, 
 and very slowly another building arose in its place, 
 so slowly that I think we followed its growth 
 through many years. This was a large and splendid 
 church, scrupulously Gothic, with curious rungs or 
 handles attached to it — as though for the grasp of a 
 giant bending over the pile to lift it bodily in the 
 air ; " flying buttresses " they were, I was told. It 
 was not an ordinary church, it was a Roman 
 Catholic Cathedral; and I looked at it, I well 
 remember, with a shade of mute and mournful 
 regret, puzzled and interested, wondering at so 
 vast a monument of perversity and yet compelled 
 to admire its insolence. But we scarcely spoke of it, 
 the exotic upstart — we looked and passed ; it could 
 by no manner of means be regarded as part of our 
 Norwich, and on the whole we ignored its intrusion. 
 And very soon after it had been left behind we were 
 
 206 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 out in the country and were mounting the long slope 
 of Earlham Rise, past the gate and the straight 
 avenue of the city cemetery, past a house or two 
 and a farm and a few cottages ; and presently it was 
 time to be staring ahead for the first sight of home. 
 It began as a black wooden paling and a narrow 
 belt of trees that ran beside the road on the left. 
 The paling stretched far and far ahead, bordering 
 the road, and in the distance you discerned where 
 the black line was broken by a speck of white. I 
 have never thought of that white speck vsdthout a 
 quickening surge of excitement ; for it was the 
 gate, the white gate of the park, the end of our 
 journey, descried in the distance by a child to whom 
 the return to Earlham was the fulfilment of romance. 
 It never failed; as the speck grew bigger and 
 bigger I always knew that it satisfied my need, that 
 it opened the way to what I wanted. And I can 
 stiU detect a twinge of something like surprise, 
 when we reach the gate at last and the carriage 
 turns in and bowls along the drive — surprise that 
 it should be so easy, after all, to penetrate into the 
 heart of poetry. You look forward to it for ever so 
 long beforehand, you wait and wonder and watch ; 
 and when the moment arrives so much seems to 
 depend on it, the crisis has grown so big — and after 
 all the carriage sweeps round and turns in at the 
 gate quite naturally, and nobody thinks it strange, 
 and the coachman on the box is only doing what 
 he does every day of his life. I feel it distinctly as a 
 twinge or tweak of oddity ; but there is small time 
 to weigh these grains of sensation at such a clim^ax. 
 
 207 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 7 
 
 As the days slip forward I become aware that the 
 Sunday approaching has been fixed for our " har- 
 vest thanksgiving." To the children the festival 
 was always welcome ; it was celebrated in Earlham 
 church, on some Sunday morning of September; 
 and it was rather a splendid occasion in itself, but 
 it was still more notable for the preparations it 
 demanded in advance. We plunged into them at an 
 early hour, on the morning before the appointed 
 da\^; other engagements all gave place — our help 
 was required, at least it was tolerated, in the 
 business of " decorating the church." Does it 
 sound a little tame ? We certainly didn't find it so ; 
 and when I now arrive in thought at the churchyard 
 gate, and climb the steep path to the porch, and 
 note that a stack of flowers and fruits and vegetables 
 has already been piled there for our use, I am in- 
 spired again with a certain stir of importance that 
 I should be sorry to have missed. 
 
 Our grandfather, I suppose, yielded to a popular 
 demand — for he was inclined to mislike these 
 celebrations. It is undeniable, you see, that in some 
 years the harvest is poor and thin; and are you 
 prepared to weigh the heartiness of your thanks- 
 giving against the particular store of the season, 
 such as it may be? Will you presume to decide, 
 from year to year, whether the harvest has sur- 
 passed or fallen short of your just expectation, 
 whether it is richer or poorer than you deserve? 
 Not thus will a really grateful and humble soul be 
 willing to bargain and calculate. He will give 
 
 208 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 thanks at all hours and seasons for immeasurable 
 mercies, he wUl bow his head to chastisement which 
 must stiU be merciful; but to make a yearly 
 practice of jubilantly singing " We plough the fields 
 and scatter " on a particular Sundaj'^ — it is as much 
 as to assume a recurring right to a plentiful harvest. 
 So our grandfather argued — most reasonably, it 
 seems to me. But he was never one to force an 
 argument harshty; for even his strongest convic- 
 tions, reaching far down into his character, found 
 nowhere in him the strain of tyranny that is always 
 so ready to turn a strong conviction to its own 
 account. He believed, but his belief could never be 
 seized upon and-made use of by any lurking love of 
 power, for he had none in any corner of his mind. 
 He could not tyrannize, even in the smallest things ; 
 and so we had our harvest thanksgiving and made 
 the most of it. 
 
 And to begin with the church must be decorated, 
 and I perfectly understand the charm of helping 
 or hindering that amusing process. The place 
 where habitually one has to sit stiU and look on is 
 the place where one always dreams of being 
 allowed to play freely — it is natural enough. There 
 were certain horrible little viUa-gardens, -with 
 twisting walks and terrace-steps, which we could 
 see from the train on the journey to London ; and 
 even the garden of Earlham hardly seemed a more 
 alluring playground than these — to this day I look 
 out for them to see if they still exist, still tempting 
 the imagination. And the inside of a church, where 
 every inch has been explored a hundred times by 
 wandering eyes, is the place of all others in which 
 
 209 p 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 one would like to roam at ease and play the games 
 for which it is so well adapted. Pews and pulpit 
 and reading-desk, the chancel-screen, the gallery 
 under the tower, I knew them all as well as I knew 
 the nursery at home ; and I could lose myself in the 
 fancy of being given the run of the church, some 
 weeic-day, and of setting up a shop for groceries in 
 one of the pews, climbing into the pulpit for a look- 
 out or addressing a mob from the gallery. I should 
 highly value, therefore, the right of entry into a 
 church at a time when there is freedom of move- 
 ment, when I have the chance of investigating the 
 recesses that are hidden from my fixed post on 
 Sunday morning ; and under colour of helping the 
 young ladies of the parish with their garlands and 
 festoons I can make some interesting researches of 
 my own. 
 
 Not indeed that the special business of the hour 
 is without its own appeal ; I thoroughly enjoyed it, 
 1 had my own view on the way in which the apples 
 should be piled about the font, the pumpkins 
 (reUeved with asparagus-plumes) balanced on the 
 window-ledges and the bunches of scarlet dahlias 
 disposed upon the screen. The young ladies 
 worked brightly and sociably; I don't exactly 
 know who they were, but an impression of flushed 
 faces and loose hair remains with me, as well as a 
 distinct idea that one of them was the " beauty " 
 of the party — I had heard her so described, and you 
 could tell which she was by her superior manner of 
 keeping herself cool and aloof, while the others 
 grovelled among the apples and hoisted the pump- 
 kins to their appointed places. By degrees we 
 
 210 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 contrived to smother the Uttle church from end to 
 end, it seems to me, with the spoils of the year ; I 
 particularly remember the two miniature sheaves or 
 stooks of corn, tied with an artful touch of realism, 
 that we placed in the embrasure of the tiny east 
 window, over the ten commandments, with a 
 mound of tomatoes between them. And I also 
 remember very vividly indeed how the young 
 ladies, as the morning wore on, lost some of their 
 bright good- will, seemed disinclined for exertion, 
 grew a little short and sharp with each other — a 
 real bit of experience for me, I somehow felt, and a 
 glimpse of curious life. I carefully took it in, and 
 actually it represented, I believe, a discovery ; for 
 though the storms and squabbles of the nursery 
 were of course familiar, the sight of grown-up people 
 distinctly out of temper among themselves and on 
 their own ground was new to me, I really think. 
 Such an impression enlarged one's horizon, even if 
 it damped the fun of the moment; and I had 
 another revelation when our grandmother dropped 
 in upon the scene, with her happy voice of greeting 
 and congratulation, and immediately the young 
 ladies were bright and good again, dissembling their 
 breeze of iU-humour — one could easily see they were 
 a little ashamed of it and felt a trifle awkward, and 
 this too was a new light on the world. But I was 
 far from blaming the poor things for their irritation ; 
 the beauty had been quite exasperating. 
 
 8 
 The north door of the little transept, standing 
 open, would tempt one into the shadow of the 
 
 211 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 churchyard. The low side of an old plastered house 
 abuts on it in this quarter; square windows look 
 out upon the graveyard, the yellowish waU catches 
 the sunshine and lights up the northern shadow of 
 the church. The house, I suppose, had once been 
 the vicarage ; but long ago the two small parishes, 
 Earlham and Colney, had been united in one cure, 
 and the vicarage had become The Lodge. That was 
 the house in which our grandmother had lived in 
 those early years of her far-away first marriage, 
 when Uncle Joseph John, with his succession of 
 wives and his fine old sister, was stiU serenely 
 studying and meditating up at the Hall. Our 
 young grandmother, walking thither with her 
 husband to join him in a quiet stroll, may often 
 have found him at work upon his manuscript ; he 
 would sit by the window of his small study — the 
 school-room of our day — pondering his argument, 
 polishing his phrase, forgetting the flight of the 
 hours. He wrote several books, and after his 
 death they were collected in a uniform edition; 
 they stood on a shelf at Earlham, leather-bound and 
 gilt, untouched for the rest of time. To his fresh 
 young niece, when she came stroUing up through 
 the garden on the arm of her husband and looked in 
 at the study-window, he would present a picture of 
 wisdom and piety that had all her veneration ; no 
 doubt she listened with the deepest respect when 
 he spoke of his manuscript and indicated the nature 
 of the work, I dare say she even tried to read it 
 when it was published. She intensely felt the 
 privilege of associating with such a Christian and 
 such a thinker ; she would do her best to profit by 
 
 212 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 the opportunity, she would embark upon a course 
 of serious reading, she would begin to fill a copy- 
 book with notes on the history of the early church. 
 Somehow the notes gave out after a page or two, 
 and I am sure that in after years she could not 
 have told us the name of any of Uncle Joseph John's 
 collected volumes. But I hope the grave-eyed 
 author had an inkling, when he looked up from his 
 desk and met her bright admiring gaze, of the 
 freedom and the sparkle of her genius compared 
 with the dead weight of solemnity that was loading 
 his page upon the evidential value of the story of 
 Genesis regarded in the light of — enough, let the 
 page lie forgotten, embalmed in the fragrance of our 
 grandmother's respect for it. 
 
 She was a girl, stiU under twenty, and her husband 
 was a good many years older and almost an invalid ; 
 and Earlham in those years was rather an elderly 
 place for her, no doubt. The gay youth of its big 
 family was long past ; there were no more scarlet 
 habits or purple boots to be seen at Earlham in the 
 days when Joseph John was writing his books in the 
 school-room, reconciling old faiths and new sciences. 
 When his nephew brought our young grandmother 
 to live at the Lodge, she might indeed consider 
 herself privileged to join a circle that was at once 
 so good and so wise — but is it possible that she 
 ever felt a little lonely there, among these elderly 
 ensamples of worth? If she did, I could believe 
 that she never knew it herself, never doubted that 
 her youth was entirely glad and eager to admire, to 
 venerate, to follow the guidance of saintly age ; and 
 presently she had her own young children about 
 
 213 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 her, and she was a matron of twenty among the 
 responsibiUties of Hfe. She took up the tradition 
 of Earlham and renewed it, as I have described, and 
 that tradition had never become sombre or dull — 
 it could never be that, with Aunt Catherine still 
 at hand, and Aunt Cunningham descending with 
 her sketch-books on a visit from Lowestoft, and 
 old Samuel, their London brother, rumbling up from 
 time to time in his ponderous silk-Hned chariot. 
 The old people were charming, their blitheness was 
 unquenched ; but still they were old by this time — 
 for her at least they were old — and when I think 
 of the young girl in their midst I can't help feeling 
 that her opportunities of admiring and reverencing 
 her elders were even excessive. From her child- 
 hood in the Cathedral Close, from the chatter of her 
 sisters and the romantic elegance of her mother, 
 she came straight into this circle of notable and 
 substantial old people; and in her simplicity and 
 her gratitude she could only begin to look up to 
 them,, continue to watch and wait upon their 
 example — until a new generation was already about 
 her, and she was herself the vessel of the old 
 tradition. 
 
 Yet I hardly know — a nature like hers can spend 
 itself in devotion, can surrender itself uncon- 
 ditionally, and at the same time always remain more 
 independent and m.ore original and more buoyant 
 than another; our grandmother, young or old, 
 must always have been herself. If I could now 
 catch sight of her in her youth — say at such a 
 moment as I have imagined, when she walked under 
 the trees on the arm of her husband and glanced 
 
 214 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 in at the window upon the quiet old man over his 
 books — surely I should know her at once as we 
 knew her fifty years after. In her youth she would 
 sweep her voluminous skirt over the grass and hold 
 her head up like a picture, as ever in her old age ; 
 and to the end of her life her quick clear spontaneity 
 was the same as ever in her girlhood. She was grave 
 and she was gay according to her own native law ; 
 all the influences of her reverend elders could not 
 weight her youth undvily or fasten maturity upon 
 her prematurely — because from the beginning she 
 was herself, with a nature that unfolded and 
 bloomed hke a flower. In those days, therefore, 
 when she lived at the Lodge and was treated by the 
 circle of Earlham ever so affectionately, but still 
 with an implication that a married woman of 
 seventeen is well in the midst of the seriousness of 
 life — in those days her genius already played easily, 
 with its rightful freedom, and we have only to wish 
 that her elders recognized and admired it properly. 
 Most of them did for certain, especially Aunt 
 Catherine; and if I have a lingering doubt about 
 old Joseph John it probably does him injustice. 
 When, leaving his desk, he paced the lawn with 
 his nephew's young wife, I dare say his look 
 brightened and twinkled through the smooth, too 
 smoothly christian serenity that I always thought 
 it wore in his portrait. I may wrong him in 
 supposing that he held forth to her about his 
 treatise on the fall of man ; perhaps he recalled and 
 described to her his encounter with the young 
 fisherman down by the bridge, and the visit after- 
 wards paid him by I.avengro. 
 
 215 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 9 
 The Lodge, embowered in great trees, looked out 
 
 upon the churchyard with its side-windows. Behind 
 
 and below it, towards the river, was the Farm, and 
 
 we might stray out through the ducks and the 
 
 turkeys to the water-meadows, where the shallow 
 
 stream, not here navigable, tinkled and bubbled 
 
 over a gravelly bed. But no, I take the road to 
 
 Colney, the high road that has arrived at Earlham 
 
 from Norwich and now proceeds over the bridge 
 
 towards the rising ground beyond. Earlham village 
 
 was hardly a viUage at all — the church, the Lodge, 
 
 the Farm, one small row of cottages, nothing more ; 
 
 and then the road lifted itself gently over the solid 
 
 arch of the bridge and entered the parish of Colney. 
 
 It is worth while to pause upon the bridge, though, 
 
 partly to hang over the fiat-topped parapet and 
 
 stare into the blackness of the pool, partly to note 
 
 the round cutting through the trees, leading to one 
 
 of the drawing-room windows up at the hoiise — you 
 
 remember the drawing-room window-seat, where 
 
 the child sat and listened to the story of the blazing 
 
 house, and how one saw the view of the bridge from 
 
 it, neatly set in a round frame of greenery. From 
 
 the bridge one reverses the view, and I should not 
 
 pass on without dwelling upon the fact for a moment. 
 
 Then we wander on towards Colnej^ (be sure to 
 
 call it Co'ney), which is upon higher ground and 
 
 is rather more of a village than Earlham. There 
 
 were scattered old cottages, red and grey, with 
 
 vines and pear-trees trained about their windows, 
 
 and presently a big farm to the left of the road ; but 
 
 216 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 especially there was the church-tower, soon in sight, 
 which was a curiosity we were proud of. It is one 
 of those round towers of flint, smooth and bare, 
 that are not very uncommon in East Anglia, I 
 know ; but to our eyes it was rare and strange, and 
 it gave character to a village that otherwise hadn't 
 really very much. And it was not only the tower — 
 the church within had a singular interest, to my 
 mind, in the days I speak of. It was all furnished 
 with high square pews, like rows of little roofless 
 houses; I had never seen anything of the sort 
 elsewhere, and I beheved them peculiar to Colney 
 church. You enter into your queer small house and 
 shut the front-door — it is charming; the world is 
 completely cut off by the high waUs, you see 
 nothing above them but the rafters of the church- 
 roof and the top of the chancel-arch. If only I 
 could be left to myself in such a place, I could live 
 a life there that would satisfy many dreams; a 
 whole street of private houses, each with its own 
 front-door and its four solid waUs — it is almost 
 cruel how they stand there waiting to be used, to be 
 drawn into a sequence of adventure that is abso- 
 lutely denied to me. There was no chance that 
 Colney church would ever be placed at my disposal 
 for the kind of life I could see myself leading there ; 
 it was useless to think of it. 
 
 What happened instead, though it began well, 
 turned very soon to a dreary affair. The high pew 
 was empty within, save for a few red hassocks and 
 a bench that ran round three sides of the square ; 
 and by the time the Sunday morning party has 
 entered in and shut the door and taken their seats 
 
 217 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 on the bench, you may say that the entertainment 
 of the occasion is over. It is all very well to admire 
 the privacy and seclusion of your retreat, once the 
 front-door is shut and latched ; but 1 can't tell you 
 how soon the hardness of the bench and the short- 
 ness of one's legs and the blankness of the four walls 
 — ^how soon, in fact, the case becomes intolerable. 
 The voice of the m^inister falls and rises, the clerk 
 mouths out the responses with the low buzz of the 
 congregation behind him, the harmonium, with that 
 strange mewing voice that I know so well, sets up 
 the tune of " Rockingham " — and all unseen, 
 hidden from sight behind the dull wooden walls; 
 and it really seems impossible to last out the hour 
 of the service with nothing to look at. So I should 
 say, so indeed I felt it; and yet I find that once 
 at any rate, during a session in the high pew at 
 Colney church, there fell a flash, there washed over 
 me a wave of sweetness, which was wonderful just 
 because it came so unexpectedly out of the unseen. 
 I remember perfectly how the enclosure in which 
 we sat appeared to contain and to circumscribe all 
 the resources of the hour ; the music and the voices 
 without, since I could not see what was happening, 
 were removed from my circle of experience — I 
 could do nothing with them. And as for the 
 resources at hand, the hassocks and the prayer- 
 books, the graining of the wooden walls, the features 
 and attitudes of my two or three companions, these 
 I had soon exhausted, and my world for the hour 
 before me looked empty indeed. I had no thought 
 of anything entering it, piercing a way into my life, 
 from the region without, where the buzzing and 
 
 218 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 droning of the service went forward; and then 
 suddenly a hymn was started, not Rockingham 
 this time, which for some reason or other rolled over 
 and invaded me as though it sought me out on 
 purpose. It seemed to be sung for me — I accepted 
 it at once ; I shall never forget how the first phrase 
 of the tune settled into my brain as though taking 
 possession of its own. It was nothing new, it was 
 an old tune we had heard and sung a hundred times ; 
 but it became entirely new at that moment and 
 always afterwards remained so. " Oiir blest Re- 
 deemer, ere he breathed — his Ten-der last fare- 
 well " ; it was only that — and I have never heard 
 or thought of it since then without standing on a 
 footstool in a high pew, between two grown-up com- 
 panions, with the rafters of Colney church over- 
 head. 
 
 10 
 
 Yet the viUage of Colney always seemed to me 
 slightly foreign and strange. It lay upon the very 
 limit of our ordinary beat; our straggling walks 
 took us no further out into the world in that quarter, 
 as it happened. The road ran on, but so much had 
 always delayed us by the way, in a short mile or so, 
 that it was time to turn round and go home; 
 beyond Colney was the unknown, and Colney itself, 
 I felt, was never completely mine. One's normal 
 range, in fact, is not very wide by any measure, 
 so long as a morning's v/alk is the kind of progress 
 that I closely connect with the Colney road. I 
 should set forth on that walk quite briskly, stepping 
 out by the side of our companion in charge and 
 
 219 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 easily breaking into a trot now and then to maintain 
 our pace. We should positively scud down the 
 drive and through the village and over the bridge, 
 devouring the way ; and yet we seem to have gone 
 no distance at all before I find myself adrift, 
 detached from the party, staring after them over an 
 increasing interval. It was natural to pause by the 
 bridge, as I have explained ; and from that moment 
 onwards our brisk and business-like expedition 
 begins to fall to pieces. The interval over which 
 I must overtake the party is impossible ; strive as I 
 may, it never grows less. If I stop for an instant 
 they are almost out of sight, and the hard wail of my 
 voice is still in my ears — " Wait for Meeeee! " 
 
 So it is not surprising that we never saw much of 
 the outland country beyond Colney. That was a 
 region that was lighted in my imagination by little 
 but the names, the glorious names of the villages, 
 which flashed out casually in the conversation of 
 our uncles and grandparents. I have named some 
 of them; but did I mention Bawburgh, which we 
 speak of as " Baber " ? — I particularly liked the 
 look of it on a sign-post. On days of early Sep- 
 tember, that were still like high August, we might 
 see our uncles drive forth in the dog-cart from 
 Earlham with guns, with leather patches on their 
 shoulders, with caps that were peaked both fore 
 and aft and tied up at the top — drive forth to 
 shooting-parties in that world of the unknown, from 
 which they returned with flights of jest and anec- 
 dote finer than ever. I had the strongest impression 
 of the free manly life of dog-carts and gun-cases 
 and jovial fellowship at such times — ^life that sent 
 
 220 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 out a tumultuous surge all round it, tiU even the 
 small cockle-shell of my own being, infinitely far 
 from the centre, began to jump beneath me. The 
 shooting-parties were wildly beyond our ken, and 
 the uttermost reverberation of them was quite 
 enough for me; but I know there were moments 
 when I really was a little ashamed of the mild 
 triviahty of our own occupations, and stiU more 
 ashamed of being so well content with them. 
 
 The world of men, however, which had little need 
 for me when it shot, opened to us most interestingly 
 at certain other times. They shoot a great deal in 
 September, especially in Norfolk ; but particularly 
 in Norfolk they do more — they go on the Broads. 
 They disappear for days and weeks together ; and 
 we at home, when we are asked what they are 
 doing, reply simply that they are " on the Broads." 
 What does it mean ? For a long while, though the 
 phrase was very familiar to me, I hadn't the least 
 idea what it meant ; the phrase sufficed. Earlham 
 does not lie in the region of the Broads ; but there 
 came a day when at last we made the excursion 
 thither, and saw for ourselves how life is lived on 
 them. We visited a party of young men who were 
 sketchily keeping house in a beautiful ship; we 
 spent some brilliant hours with them on the open 
 waters of Wroxham or Ranworth — and that was 
 life on the Broads. There were many such days, 
 first and last, days of dazzhng suns and flapping 
 sails and popping corks — so the impression returns 
 to me. The reed-beds and the vast pale sky and 
 the long level lines of the green shore were delicious 
 as the blaze of the waters gradually faded ; we made 
 
 221 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 our way into some staithe or winding creek; we 
 scrambled to land and found flowering bulrushes 
 and loaded ourselves with spoils for the journey 
 home. At the end of such a day, sleepily nodding 
 in the train that took us back to Norwich, I could 
 feel replete with large experience. I didn't envy 
 the young men in their ship — far from it ; the path 
 of prudence took one home in the train, at the end 
 of the day, by the time when the sense of adventure 
 began to droop, as it wUl, with the failing light. 
 But I had no reason to envy them, for I carried my 
 adventure away with me, safely stored, and could 
 always fall back on it when I would. When you 
 have once spent a day at Wroxham with a party of 
 competent and masterful young men, nothing can 
 ever remove it from your past ; you are one who 
 has " been on the Broads," and I seem to remember 
 that you allow no one to forget it. 
 
 The day when we visited the Decoy — that was 
 rather different ; for the Decoy was on an outlying 
 lake, and we were taken there by a party that was 
 neither manly nor mature. I see a boat-full of 
 friends and cousins, not at all elderly, with whom we 
 paddle out upon a long stretch of water surrounded 
 by a wooded shore. At the far end of the lake, out 
 of sight, lies the Decoy, whatever you may under- 
 stand by that. I don't know what I expected to 
 see, but I was very anxious to see it; and we 
 paddled away down the lake and sidled along the 
 shadowy bank. And very memorable it was that 
 at a certain point we ran into a small grove of 
 rushes, growing in the water, and these were scented 
 rushes, deUciously odorous and aromatic, such as I 
 
 222 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 had never met with before but once — need I say 
 where and when? It was in the Fifth Square, 
 which as you know was mostly water; Alice was 
 rowing the boat, the sheep was sitting in the stern 
 with her preposterous knitting ; and Alice plucked 
 up the rushes by handfuls, just as we did, and piled 
 them on the floor of the boat. I was disappointed 
 to find that they didn't fade any faster than you 
 would expect, but otherwise they were the true 
 scented rushes of the Looking-glass, growing in real 
 life. I have always liked to recall them, more 
 especially as the Decoy didn't reaUy satisfy me after 
 aU, when we reached it at last. It is strange and 
 mysterious indeed — the large netted archway that 
 spans the mouth of the creek, gradually narrowing 
 as the creek curves away from the entrance ; so that 
 you sail in unsuspectingly and follow the curve and 
 find yourself caught in a bag, so to speak, at the end 
 of it. It is strange — but it is empty and silent, or 
 it was on that day, and I couldn't very weU under- 
 stand the system of its working, when it is worked. 
 There is a mazy contrivance of reed-fences, along 
 the edge of the creek, among which a trained dog 
 dashes and barks to drive the ducks in to their 
 doom; it was aU explained to us, explained too 
 much, and I soon got lost. I was more at home in 
 the Fifth Square, across which we presently 
 returned. 
 
 II 
 But these excursions into the outer world were 
 special and exceptional, and I soon get back to the 
 Colney road and the long straggle of the way home. 
 
 223 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 The interest of a walk, I always find, is over when 
 it is time to turn round and retrace one's steps; 
 from that moment I am solely given up to the effort 
 of progress, trying to reduce the everlasting interval 
 between myself and the rest of the party. Nothing 
 happens, nothing relieves the mechanical plod of 
 the journey; that mile or so of plain road between 
 Colney village and Earlham bridge is like a hundred. 
 Nothing happens — but I do remember, it is true, 
 the sight of our grandfather's tall black figure issu- 
 ing from a cottage-door by the wayside, and how he 
 smiled at us with his " How do you do, sir — ^how 
 do you do, miss," humorously formal, and marched 
 away down the road with the steady rhythm of his 
 big boots. He had been making a parochial round, 
 no doubt ; and I reflect that I never happened to 
 see him, as I saw our grandmother so often, talking 
 and ministering to the old souls of the parish. He 
 had dropped in for a visit and a chat in the course 
 of his round; but I can't picture the interview — 
 evidently his way must have been quite different 
 from grandmother's lyrical, tuneful, clear-ringing 
 intimacy. When his voice was raised in prayer, as I 
 have said, all barriers seemed to be broken down, 
 his heart was laid bare. But in intercourse with 
 the world he spoke from behind a veil of reserve — 
 light and grey and soft, never hiding the shine of his 
 benevolence, only muffling and muting his tone just 
 a little ; and I wonder what he talked to Mrs. Giles 
 about, when he dropped in for a morning call. 
 
 " Master'll be home before us — he walk so fast." 
 The words, falling on my ear in a well-known voice, 
 remind me that the companions of our walk had 
 
 224 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 waited for me and that I was clinging to the kindly 
 arm of one of them when we sighted our grandfather. 
 By the household of Earlham he was always spoken 
 of as " Master," and grandmother as " Mistress " ; 
 and in the speech of all the household there were 
 agreeable touches of the Norfolk manner, native to 
 each one of them. " He walk so fast — ^he never 
 dawdle," says our dear and fond companion (she 
 was grandmother's maid in those days) ; and we 
 forgot to loiter and lag, I dare say, in the ready 
 charm of her conversation. Everybody at Earlham 
 talked well, and with this particular friend I some- 
 times thought that I too was quite at my best. We 
 chatted lightly, with swift retorts and rejoinders in 
 excellent style ; we kept up an easy give-and-take, 
 never flagging on either side. There were exquisite 
 jokes that dated from the far past and that sprang 
 up unfailingly from year to year — ^jokes that leaped 
 to life again at a word, an allusion, with the rare 
 property (since lost to such things) of growing 
 funnier by simple repetition. One or two of them 
 could beguile that endless journey home ; but what- 
 ever pace we might make we should certainly be left 
 far behind by grandfather's mile-devouring tramp. 
 I can't picture his call upon Mrs. Giles — for he 
 had no vestige of the conventional brightness and 
 heartiness of the minister among the poor of his 
 parish; he had no professional manner or trick to 
 fall back upon in the routine of his office. He never 
 looked hke a country parson walking through his 
 village; he looked like a tall grave scholar, a 
 clerical don perhaps, tramping out for his daily 
 hour of exercise and fresh air. You would expect 
 
 225 Q 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 the incumbent of a parish to seem more prepared 
 for the fray, more equipped for conquest, shining 
 with the assurance of his mission, issuing forth in 
 the morning to enter the hves of others for their 
 good ; such at least is the image that occurs to me 
 when I notice the very different style of our grand- 
 father. So far from assuming a right and a duty to 
 lay hold of the lives of his neighbours, even in the 
 name of charity, he appeared to pause diffidently 
 and civiUy, refusing to take any such liberty unin- 
 vited. Missionary zeal is a fine flame, but it does 
 not abolish the law of simple good manners; and 
 that law will make one hesitate, I should hope, 
 before encroaching as of right upon the privacy of 
 another. Our grandfather, I think, treated his 
 parishioners exactly as he would treat a guest under 
 his roof and at his table — they had a hke claim for a 
 courteous consideration of their prejudices, their 
 shortcomings. It is impossible to see him intruding 
 into the affairs of his flock with free familiarity, 
 just because he happened to be their pastor. To 
 grandmother these scruples were quite unknown; 
 but she too made nothing of any difference between 
 the guest at Earlham and Mrs. Giles in her cottage 
 at Colney. She never paused upon any threshold ; 
 she entered in, and the word of greeting, of sym- 
 pathy, of advice — and of reproof, if so it chanced — 
 sprang straight from her heart. But neither did 
 she, any more than he, set out with a mission to do 
 good ; she did what she could not help doing — good 
 everywhere. 
 
 I very much doubt, therefore, whether grand- 
 father had really taken the old woman at Colney 
 
 226 
 
OUtSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 to task' for her delinquencies — supposing she had 
 laid herself open to reproach. He had probably sat 
 with her and talked of the weather and her rheuma- 
 tism and her grandchildren, without so much as 
 touching upon the question of her obstinate refusal 
 to come to church more regularly. But then there 
 was another side to the manner of his ministration, 
 and I am sure it was not often or for long that that 
 side was ever obscured. He could not reprove or 
 find fault, and perhaps he could not mix intimately 
 with the world on any common terms; but in 
 prayer he was transformed, and when he prayed 
 there was no separation between himself and his 
 companions. He was transformed — ^but it was 
 rather as though he then came to his own, passed 
 on to his own ground, leaving behind him the region 
 where true intercourse is hampered by accident and 
 trivial difficulties. Prayer seemed his natural voice, 
 and the beautiful freedom of its tone was enhanced 
 by the contrast with its veiled and dusky shynesses 
 at other times. I have witnessed the change so 
 often ; it happened so often and so simply that in 
 some small gathering of his family, when we sat 
 sociably in the evening and he listened to the light 
 talk in kindly silence — it happened so familiarly 
 that before we dispersed he would kneel, and we 
 with him, while he spoke at last and uttered the 
 abundance of his heart. None of us, not the 
 youngest, had ever the sense that he was moved to 
 do so as our confessor, our mentor, conscious of a 
 charge and a responsibility towards us; he never 
 prayed because it was good for us to hear him. He 
 prayed because in that communion he contemplated 
 
 227 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 beauty, was in the presence of the summit of all 
 desire — and he prayed, forgetful of himself, yet 
 mindful of the companionship of all those who love 
 and believe in beauty. I so express it, recalling the 
 memory from many years ago, though of course 
 these are not the words he would have used himself ; 
 I speak of beauty and of desire, where he would have 
 spoken of God and of the soul's repose upon her 
 maker, because even the youngest of us who listened 
 to him may well have then learned, without dis- 
 covering the knowledge till long afterwards, the 
 manifest oneness of all the objects of our adoration. 
 Our grandfather, I see, lived daily and hourly with 
 the perfection of beauty in his mind and heart, 
 like a poet — and like a poet whose fire is never 
 chilled. He knew familiarly the lonely raptures of 
 an artist ; they supported him always and every- 
 where, not only in the few fortunate moments that 
 an artist has mostly to be contented with. 
 
 And they were not lonely, what is more ; his joy 
 reached outward, into the world around him, and 
 grew upon the sense of the widening commonalty 
 of the faith. It was in the trivial businesses of 
 life, and only there, that he might seem soUtary, 
 aloof from our sociable clatter; it was not so, far 
 from it, when he knelt and surrendered himself 
 to the vision of power and love. There was nothing 
 jealous, nothing secluded or remote, in the spirit 
 of his worship; it broadened out to embrace the 
 company of all the faithful, millions strong, who 
 join their voices in thanksgiving. There are many, 
 I suppose, to whom the act of adoration is always 
 a matter of the innermost chamber, sealed and 
 
 228 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 guarded, deaf and blind to the world without; 
 there are many of these, not poets only, but saints 
 in all ages. And really I could believe that this 
 is the one fundamental distinction in humanity, the 
 one irresoluble difference between soul and soul — 
 that some of us adore in solitude, some in the con- 
 gregation of our kind. To the man I speak of, at 
 any rate, the fellowship of prayer and praise was 
 intensely real, profoundly inspiring and upHfting; 
 and in a man whose outer habit was so quietly 
 toned and subdued, who moved through the world 
 with so little insistence or gesture or obtrusive 
 demand — in such a man this high and appealing 
 accent of spiritual brotherhood was memorably 
 impressive, I know weU. 
 
 12 
 
 J;Sunday morning at last — a morning not unwel- 
 come at Earlham, but a morning that always began, 
 I fear, with trouble ; for one is met, on getting out 
 of bed, with the horror of " clean things," laid out 
 for the Sunday toilet. I can't describe my hostility 
 towards the starched and crackling tissues in which 
 I must clothe myself on Sunday; and as for the 
 loathsome clinging and tickling of clean stockings, 
 clean underwear, week by week it rouses me to a 
 passion of protest that I can't even try to control. 
 It is a horrid business ; but I am bound to say the 
 worst is soon over, and it is easily forgotten before 
 it is time to set out for the walk to church. Every 
 hour at Earlham had pleasing peculiarities on Sun- 
 day; for example after prayers (which were much 
 shorter than usual) came the question of the hymns 
 
 229 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 for morning and evening service, and we could help 
 grandmother in making a note of the numbers 
 chosen and of the tunes to which they were to be 
 sung. The hymn chosen was " common measure," 
 she said, or " long measure," and this tune or that 
 (she knew them by name) would fit it rightly. At 
 Earlham they didn't use our familiar " Ancient and 
 Modern," I think because it was held to be rather 
 priestly and Roman ; they used a book which grand- 
 mother referred to as " Bickersteth," and if the 
 appointed tunes were outside our range, she knew 
 others of the due measure that met the case. So 
 that was settled, and by half past ten the children 
 were ready and waiting upon the cool north steps 
 of the front door. 
 
 Earlham in the morning, Colney in the evening, 
 and the opposite on alternate Sundays — that was 
 the rule ; and the morning of harvest thanksgiving 
 would certainly fall on the turn for Earlham. So 
 the walk is nothing, merely down the park to the 
 end of the drive ; and small parties of the household 
 gradually muster and set forth through the fresh- 
 ness of the lime-avenue. We walked decorously, 
 feeling very new and clean, hugging our prayer- 
 books ; and I remember, by the way, how amusing 
 it was to discover that the neat little volume carried 
 by one of our uncles was really a small French 
 dictionary — he couldn't find the right book, he had 
 picked another of appropriate size at random. It 
 seemed a stroke of wit, and I enjoyed it ; he gravely 
 folded the thing under his arm and marched down 
 the drive. We reached the road, we passed into 
 the churchyard and up the path to the porch ; and 
 
 230 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 here through the open door came famihar sounds 
 from within — so famihar that they bring me 
 suddenly to a pause, at this late day, as they come 
 back to me out of the long silence. I had quite 
 forgotten that grandmother was always ahead of us 
 on these occasions; she started early, she was 
 already there when we arrived — because there were 
 a few minutes of choir-practice before the service ; 
 and it was the cheerful noise of the choir-practice 
 that now pealed out to meet us. I had strangely 
 forgotten it ; but the exact ring of the voices, with 
 the breathless snatches and gusts of the harmonium 
 behind them, is restored to me again as I mount 
 the churchyard-path and turn in at the door. 
 
 Choir-practice, we called it ; but you are not to 
 picture any such scene as the word suggests to you. 
 There were no vain forms and shows in Earlham 
 church, no pomp of little boys in surplices, nothing 
 of that kind. There was only our renowned Eliza, 
 with the remarkable organ of her voice — only she 
 and two or three lesser lights who gathered about 
 her in the gallery under the tower; that was aU 
 the choir there was, and they had little enough to 
 practice, merely two or three old-estabUshed h5min- 
 tunes out of " Bickersteth." But they sang them 
 over before the service, by way of precaution, and 
 grandmother took her place in the gaUery and added 
 her clear voice to the chorus. She was supposed to 
 sit in the chancel, where she had her proper place 
 in the chief corner, just within the old wooden 
 screen; and she did sit there sometimes, when aU 
 seemed to be going weU in the gallery and the hymns 
 were well supported. But she ranged as she would, 
 
 231 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 and this morning at any rate her help would 
 decidedly be needed among the high notes of " We 
 plough the fields and scatter " ; there are passages 
 in that tune, as you remember, that go shooting up 
 to a pitch where most of our voices are strangled to a 
 very thin shriek. " He sends ther snow in Win Ter 
 ther warmth ter swell ther Grain " — our stream of 
 song was reduced to a painful thread, compassing 
 that phrase ; but grandmother soared over it like a 
 bird and dropped softly and sweetly to the lower 
 levels of " the breezes and the sunshine," where the 
 roar of the congregation swelled out again in 
 confidence. 
 
 Nor was Eliza ever known to quail before the 
 steepest ascent. I can't say that she flew like a 
 bird, but she strode onward and upward over the 
 boulders of the melody without the least discom- 
 posure, never missing her step. She was the daugh- 
 ter of the under-coachman, conspicuous in the 
 gallery with her handsome head and the far-away 
 shine of her eyes ; and her voice was a marvel that 
 impressed and affected me intensely. It was like 
 a polished rod of song, straight and smooth, which 
 she seemed to carry aloft in both hands, holding it 
 high without a tremor; and wherever we climbed 
 and panted, there was Eliza before us, full in view, 
 with the gleaming shaft of her voice to point the 
 way. She was always in her place, absolutely to be 
 relied on, and the pleasant little gentleman at the 
 harmonium had only to follow her lead. He, I 
 think, walked out from Norwich every Sunday to 
 play the harmonium at the two services — a little 
 mild-eyed, sandy-haired gentleman, gratefully un- 
 
 232 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 assuming, who seems to belong to a novel of 
 Dickens; he passed the interval between the 
 services up at the Hall, under the bountiful pro- 
 tection of Mrs. Chapman. Such, with three or four 
 vocalists of no particular note, was the company 
 that assembled in the gaUery to practise the hymns, 
 and it was their final and triumphant assault upon 
 " We plough the fields " that echoed out into the 
 churchyard as we approached. 
 
 FuU in front of us, on our entry, was the font — 
 the font with the diadem of pippins and marigolds 
 that we had designed and wrought for it the day 
 before. From thence the eye was caught to the 
 pumpkins on the window-sills, from thence again 
 to the friUs of ripe wheat and dahlias upon the 
 carving of the screen, to the enormous bunch of 
 black grapes that hung from its middle archway, 
 and so forward to the sheaves of corn above the 
 communion-table. The effect was even richer than 
 I expected ; we had laboured well, and everybody 
 was struck by the ingenuity of our art. The whole 
 church was filled with the sweetness of apples, 
 mellifiuously mingled with the cool smeU of anti- 
 quity that belonged to the building. Our pew was 
 in the chancel, to the right ; and through the arcad- 
 ing of the screen, as through a window, I could 
 survey the gathering of the congregation. Our own 
 household bulked large in it, with Mrs. Chapman 
 very tight and trim in her best; they made a 
 familiar island among the village faces. It didn't 
 take long for the seats to fill, and by this time a 
 spirited prelude or " voluntary " (whatever that 
 may be) was taxing the last breath of the 
 
 233 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 harmonium. The Major (whom I have not yet 
 introduced) took his place with dignity in the 
 chancel-pew opposite to ours, and we were ready 
 to begin. 
 
 It was like nothing else that I have ever seen or 
 heard. It was very informal, but it was utterly 
 dignified; it was very plain, but it was strangely 
 poetic ; it was very cheerful and brisk, but it had 
 none of that resolute good humour, that hand- 
 rubbing hospitality, those teeth-clenching high 
 spirits, with which some have tried to soften the 
 shock and chill of unaccustomed piety. Grand- 
 father towered in his reading-desk above the tiny 
 assembly — not screened away in the chancel, but 
 full in the midst, commanding the little toy-nave 
 of the church; he lifted up his eyes benignly and 
 mildly, with a look that seemed to draw his flock 
 after him, not magisterially directing or urging it. 
 He welcomed his people indeed, but he carried them 
 above the level of common and personal things — 
 how can I express it? — he addressed them as 
 christian souls; and he arrogated nothing to 
 himself, no priestly right of dictation, no inquisi- 
 torial claim — he simply showed the way and gazed 
 forward and spoke for the equal company that 
 followed him. And while he read and preached 
 with so little of the assumption of his office, he was 
 just as far from condescending in kindness to the 
 simplicity of his hearers ; he did not unbend, he did 
 not doff his dignity, to put us at our ease and make 
 us comfortable after the strain of getting to church. 
 
 234 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 All that rubbish was unheard-of at Earlham; 
 sincerity was simple, simplicity was sincere, in the 
 agreeable scene that I wish I could describe as 
 clearly as I now behold it. 
 
 The doors stood open, the windows were flung 
 wide — grandmother saw to that ; the southern airs 
 fluttered in over our heads, where we sat in the 
 chancel, and stirred the garlands upon the screen. 
 On the waU opposite to me was a tablet with a long 
 inscription, of the eighteenth century, which I read 
 and re-read and knew by heart from the earliest 
 days ; and close at my right was the low rail of the 
 communion-table, and the table itself, very plain 
 with its red cloth and white linen. The small two- 
 lighted east window contained the only painted 
 glass of the church; it had been set there by our 
 grandmother to the memory of her first husband, 
 dead so long and long ago; and no vain images 
 or figures appeared in it, nothing but a text or two, 
 I think, surrounded by thick-coloured foliation. 
 What next ? Oddly enough, immediately over our 
 heads, there was a big tablet on the wall with a 
 long-winded Latin dedication to a gentleman of our 
 own peculiar name ; and what is more, if you lifted 
 the mat in the aisle, just below the chancel-step, 
 you discovered a stone in the floor with the legend 
 " Entrance to the vault of Dr. Lubbock " ; and I 
 never knew anything of these old kinsmen of ours, 
 or how they had found their way to Earlham church, 
 but as kinsmen I claimed them, and it was agreeable 
 to think that they bound us to the place with yet 
 another tie. Our uncouth name is indigenous in 
 Norfolk; I believe it is to be found on village 
 
 235 
 
E ARLH AM 
 
 tomb-stones in many churchyards of the county; 
 so we could doubly feel that we were returning to 
 our own when we came again among the winding 
 waters and the turnip-slopes and the oak-shaded 
 lanes of the eastern land. And in Earlham church 
 the very bones that lay mouldering beneath our feet 
 were akin to us, we might reasonably think. ' ' • 
 
 I cannot tell the degree of our cousinship with 
 Dr. Lubbock in his vault ; but I cling to him the 
 more because our familiar old Gurneys had naturally 
 left no traces of themselves in the parish church at 
 their gates. If they died at Earlham they were 
 buried at " Goat's " — a hard price, I should call it, 
 to pay for the privilege of enrolment as a Friend. 
 How could one submit to burial at Goat's, with all 
 the poetry of Earlham church so near at hand? 
 The Norwich meeting-house of the Friends was in 
 Goat's Lane, and the young Gurneys in their purple 
 and scarlet days, dragged thither twice every 
 Sunday, had this opprobrious name for the place. 
 There they must lie at last — there or in some other 
 such crude and nude conventicle of their faith — 
 while Dr. Lubbock might rest among the fore- 
 fathers of the village, mingling his dust with the 
 ages. A few of our Gurneys did, it is true, lapse into 
 the bosom of the church as they grew older; but 
 none of them fell to be buried or commemorated 
 at Earlham — ^none of that big gay family over whom 
 Aunt Catherine had presided for so long. Only with 
 the generation that followed, when our grandmother 
 became one of them, did they begin to find their 
 rest in the churchyard of the village; and so it 
 was that their name was missing from among the 
 
 236' 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 old inscriptions that I studied upon the chancel- 
 wall and learned by heart. That one immediately 
 opposite me was very queer and involved; it 
 related to a member of the Earlham family of 
 prehistoric and pre-Gurney days, and it told a long 
 story about the burial of the gentleman elsewhere 
 and his removal when the church was demohshed — 
 such a confusing rigmarole, even to one who had 
 spelt it out again and again with eyes that peered 
 through locked fingers, his head bowed in the atti- 
 tude of prayer. 
 
 My mind has been wandering, as you see; I 
 couldn't stop the roving of my gaze, as we knelt in 
 our pew, though my face was decently buried in my 
 hands and only a chink or two left open between my 
 fingers. I had strayed far away from the open pages 
 of my prayer-book, which lay on the httle shelf 
 between my elbows; but the voice of our grand- 
 father recalls me as soon as we reach the antiphon 
 of versicle and response in which we take our part. 
 There was a curious interest in this, for grandfather 
 had an easy way of his own with the more formal 
 parts of the service. He took them at a swinging 
 and rhythmical canter that always pleased me ; he 
 caught us up, he broke into the soft rumble of our 
 responses before we had finished them, his voice was 
 soaring into the next phrase while we were still 
 busy with the last. I particularly liked this habit 
 of his when we came to the psalms ; it made them 
 fly apace, which is not what they usually do when 
 we say them verse by verse, in the form of a dia- 
 logue. In general, I think, the minister's share in the 
 antiphon is unduly drawn out, with emphatic 
 
 237 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 intonations that we cannot imitate in our many- 
 voiced response; we wait too long for our turn, 
 and the two sides of the dialogue fall away from 
 each other rather awkwardly. I found our grand- 
 father's manner much more agreeable; not a 
 moment was wasted, the psalm was reeled through 
 its course in a spirited fashion, and from a plodding 
 task it became quite an exhilarating outburst of 
 sound and movement. It seemed perfectly natural 
 that grandfather should hurry us forward and 
 anticipate us as he did; that was his manner, his 
 idiosyncrasy, whether he was reading at home or in 
 church ; he had no dressed-up, unwonted style that 
 he assumed in public. His church was a fine old 
 room, large enough for the gathering of the vUlage, 
 consecrated by its ancient associations — so he 
 seemed to regard it, and not at all as a place to be 
 essentially more reverenced, more formally 
 honoured, than any other Christian habitation. 
 Wherever we met for prayer was honourable ground, 
 and there was no difference that he cared to mark 
 between one day or one place and another. 
 
 Our Sunday assembly in church, therefore, was 
 just like our daily session for prayers at home; 
 the mood, the manner, the atmosphere were the 
 same. It was enough, so far as I was concerned, to 
 dissociate Earlham church entirely from any other 
 place of worship that we knew — and there were two 
 or three that we knew extremely well. It is remark- 
 able to find yourself sincerely interested and pleased 
 by the well-worn round of Sunday morning, to 
 walk off to church at eleven o'clock with a gay 
 hum of anticipation in your mind; I never had 
 
 238 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 such an experience anywhere else. The hour in 
 Earlham church was actually an hour of life, instead 
 of an hour in which you wait and wait for life to 
 begin again. I had no sense of being left out of the 
 proceedings, of looking on with a cold eye at an 
 affair that didn't belong to me; it was a family 
 party in which we shared alike, one and all — simply 
 because our grandfather at the reading-desk, our 
 grandmother in the gallery, were so serenely the 
 same as they were at home. Grandfather's serenity, 
 however, was tried and troubled one Sunday morn- 
 ing, I well remember ; I can't tell, I doubt if I ever 
 knew, whether I reaUy witnessed the scene, but it is 
 perfectly clear in my memory. He was in the 
 middle of his sermon, one morning, when a child 
 in the gaUery was seized with a fit of coughing and 
 choking — which it couldn't stop, so that it spluttered 
 and hawked aloud, worse and worse, till everybody's 
 attention was disturbed and grandfather was forced 
 to intervene. He beckoned from the pulpit to the 
 child's mother and called out to her to take the 
 child away. You can imagine the little scene, the 
 note of vexation in the mild voice of the preacher, 
 the small scuffle of mother and child in the gaUery. 
 But you must have heard it to hear again, as I do, 
 the clear ring of grandmother's quick exclamation, 
 her cry of reassurance to our grandfather — cheer- 
 fully pealing across the church from the gaUery 
 where she had turned to help the embarrassed 
 mother. " It's all right, dear," she cried, looking 
 round from her ministration, and her voice flew 
 brightly across the hush of the assembly ; " it's 
 all right now — I've given him a lozenge." That was 
 
 239 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 Earlham church. I don't beUeve I was there at the 
 time, after all ; but it matters Httle, I am certainly 
 there now. 
 
 14 
 The lessons were read by the Major. He sat m 
 the chancel-pew opposite ours, and when we settled 
 down after the psalms he stood in his place and 
 turned to the congregation, facing it through one 
 of the windows of the screen. He rested his book 
 upon the ledge before him and adjusted his eye- 
 glasses so that they gripped, most strangely, the tip 
 of his well-bridged nose. He was very old, I 
 supposed, but he had a stately port; he was our 
 neighbour at Earlham, Uving with his large family 
 hard by the church. He wore his glasses in that 
 interesting fashion so that he could look through 
 them downward upon the open page, without 
 bending his head ; he read the lessons in measured 
 and sonorous tones— and for me, listening to him 
 now, the lesson is always the same, a chapter 
 inseparably mingled with the sound of his voice. 
 It is the story of Ahab's end, the battle of Ramoth- 
 gilead ; and if it cannot have been this chapter that 
 fell to be read at harvest thanksgiving in September, 
 it is this and no other that the Major reads when 1 
 sit and watch him now, wondering still at the odd 
 balance of his glasses. It was their firm grip, per- 
 haps, that gave a slightly nasal tone to his reading. 
 I watched and listened with fascinated attention — 
 a tribute certainly due to the reader himself and not 
 to the far-off story of the battle, which only found 
 
 240 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 its way into my mind because I could not help 
 hanging absorbed upon the Major's utterance. 
 
 " So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king 
 of Judah went up to Ramoth-gilead." I knew the 
 story very well — at least I knew how it ran, how the 
 phrases followed upon each other, and I suppose I 
 had a pictmre of some sort in my mind. But what 
 can it have been? If it was a picture of ancient 
 kings in a strange land it must have drawn me 
 away from Earlham church on a Sunday morning 
 — away from the presence of the Major, standing 
 there erect in his corner, facing the congregation 
 with eyes downcast upon his book. " But the 
 king of Syn3. commanded his thirty and two cap- 
 tains that had rule over his chariots " — ^how can 
 a child have listened with aU ears to the words and 
 not have dropped out of time, out of the moment, 
 to foUow the story through the heat of the day of 
 battle in an unknown land? It is a battle that 
 rages interminably under a blazing sky; it sways 
 doubtfully — and everything hangs upon a chance, 
 a bow drawn at a venture, a wounded man propped 
 up in his chariot as the sun goes down ; and at last 
 the whole army knows what has happened, the 
 proclamation runs round, the king of Israel is dead. 
 He is defeated, he is dead and buried in Samaria, 
 the dogs Hck his blood when the chariot is washed 
 in the pool ; but he had been a great king, he had 
 made an ivory house and buUt cities before he slept 
 with his fathers. The story is soon told, and Ahaziah 
 his son reigns in his stead ; and yet it is as long as 
 an epic, marching slowly and spaciously to its end. 
 It drives a rift through centuries of darkness, 
 
 241 R 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 showing the blaze and the confusion and the sudden 
 hush and chill of bad news towards evening — a 
 flash of old life that abolishes time. 
 
 It is a long way from Earlham church, you might 
 think. A saga of eastern sheikhs, mustering their 
 chariots and fighting and dying beyond Jordan, a 
 tale of vaulting ambition and lying pride and 
 insolence drowned in blood — there is not much 
 here to remind me of an Enghsh summer morning, 
 a red-cushioned chancel-pew and a child in a small 
 white suit of Sunday clothes. And yet it is only 
 with an effort that I can now read that story for 
 what it is, for the merciless old saga, putting aside 
 the swarm of friendly and homely memories that 
 rise out of the page ; and I see that the child in the 
 starched white suit had never the least difficulty 
 in reconciling the story with the life of Earlham. 
 The battle of Ramoth-gUead worked in quite 
 naturally ; the tale was familiar, it belonged to the 
 hour and it came to life again in the Major's evenly 
 measured tones; Ahab and Jehoshaphat, so far 
 from carrying me into the distance and the past, 
 dropped into their places in the picture that included 
 the Major, our uncle with his little French diction- 
 ary, Eliza in the gallery, the whole of the bare- 
 headed or neatly bonneted congregation of Earlham 
 village. There they aU are together to this day — the 
 chronicles of Israel have had strange fortunes. " And 
 Ahaziah his son — ^reigned in his stead," declares 
 the Major, sinking his voice upon the words, closing 
 the Bible, removing his glasses. We aU rise, I seize 
 my open prayer-book and mount upon my footstool 
 to join in the brisk give-and-take of the Te Deum. 
 
 242 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 15 
 On our last Sunday at Earlham, however, the 
 last of the blissful summer holiday, things must fall 
 out differently; I prefer to think that it was the 
 turn of Earlham church in the evening. That is the 
 picture I should wish to be left with when it is time 
 to depart; and the time is upon us, the richest 
 of the summer is over, the twilight begins to shut 
 down with the first thin chill of autumn. We shoxild 
 certainly want to make the most of our last evening 
 at Earlham; nothing should escape us, every 
 moment should be of the best. FuU of that deter- 
 mination I can loiter once more in the lime-avenue 
 after tea, feeling the change that has come about 
 there in one short month, the last of the summer. A 
 drift of brown and yellow leaves upon the path, a 
 damp wanness in the light of evening — one hardly 
 notices the detail of such things, but they make all 
 the difference to the mood of the hour and they 
 start a new thrill in the romance of Earlham. Just 
 here and now, on the eve of departure, you can 
 see that the timeless, changeless Earlham of our 
 few summer weeks is stirring and lapsing with the 
 turn of the year ; its life is proceeding, it begins to 
 face toward the autumn days and nights — and I had 
 felt till now that its life stood still and that its 
 gorgeous dream of high summer was above the 
 chances of the season. It is oddly moving to 
 discover that the place is making its own plans 
 for the coming months, that already it is intent 
 upon things that will happen to it when we are 
 gone. We have no part in its cold pale autumn, 
 
 243 
 
E ARLHAM 
 
 and I might have forgotten what is in store for it ; 
 but on our last evening autumn is in the air, 
 change is stealing into the golden ripeness of the 
 garden. 
 
 The hours that were thus running out for us were 
 keenly savoured, I am sure. We Hngered about the 
 lime-avenue, we strayed down the path towards the 
 village, with senses alerter than ever to catch the 
 peculiar voice and look and fragrance of the place. 
 We demanded that everything should be right, 
 should be exactly what it ought to be, for our last 
 day of Earlham — the last till next time. It was 
 easy to make sure of keeping it at the proper pitch ; 
 there was nothing in house or garden or park that 
 could fail to reach the level of our supreme good wUl. 
 I never went away without feeling that on this 
 particular visit I had acquired rather more of 
 Earlham, more of its rare and special virtue, than 
 I ever had before; I could count up the new dis- 
 coveries I had made and add them securely to 
 the rest. They would be much in my mind as the 
 sun sinks on our last evening, and I almost wonder 
 that I am not more dejected by the thought of our 
 imminent departure. But the fact is that the whole 
 transaction of the visit to Earlham was exquisite 
 to the very end, the end was even as good as the 
 beginning. There was a certain form and manner of 
 going away that was always observed; we could 
 rely on it in advance, we could be confident that 
 our farewell to the place would have its own 
 accustomed interest. And I see that already the 
 thought of the morrow was agreeably exciting, not 
 depressing in the least ; so that we roiise the pensive 
 
 244 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 stillness and limpness of the September evening with 
 a heightened bustle of enjoyment. 
 
 A journey is a journey after all, even when it 
 takes you away from Earlham, and I welcomed a 
 day of travel for its own sake. Not only the hours 
 in the train, good as they were, but the flutter of 
 preparation at one end, the disorder of unpacking 
 and resettUng at the other — it was all pleasure, not 
 a minute of the day was wasted. Long before any 
 one else the children would be ready to start ; and 
 the only trouble was the slight fret of anxiety, I 
 remember it well, lest the elders of the party should 
 take things too easily and be late. They always 
 seemed to think there was more and more time for 
 last words, after-thoughts, sudden searches for 
 things overlooked — when we knew we ought to be 
 off to catch the train. But there would still be 
 plenty of time in hand when the children began to 
 hover about the front door, hatted and booted, 
 clasping some very particular object apiece that 
 was too precious to be packed. There was ample 
 time for a last dash into the garden, a visit to the 
 sulkies or the weeping ash ; yet as soon as we were 
 out of the house there seemed to be no time at all, 
 and I never was proof against the panic that sends 
 one scurr5dng indoors again at a gallop — to find 
 that the hand of the hall-clock is still almost 
 exactly where it was, half an hour to the time of 
 departure. But then came a very interesting 
 episode. As we sit in the hall, on the big red seat 
 by the gong, I see the study-door open and grand- 
 father appear on the threshold ; and with a humor- 
 ous and mysterious look he beckons to us, silently 
 
 245 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 makes a little knowing sign which brings us quickly 
 across the floor and into his room. There the sun 
 falls as usual upon the rows and rows of old books, 
 the faded tawny-brown of the chair-covers, the one 
 rose and one orchid in their shm glasses on the 
 writing-table; and we bhnk up at grandfather 
 while he twinkles from his great height and displays 
 a pinch of something held between his finger and 
 thumb. He shps it into the keeping of the children, 
 share and share alike, as though it were a great 
 secret between us all, and we babble our gratitude 
 as weU as we may. I always wished I could meet 
 that occasion, so often repeated, with less inco- 
 herence; for to have money in one's pocket is a 
 sensation that glorifies life, and it is hard to be 
 struck sheepish and awkward just as the prospect 
 opens so rosily. I bungled my thanks as usual — 
 but I dare say they showed plainly enough, while 
 I gaped at the difference that grandfather had made 
 in my outlook upon the world. 
 
 Then there was good-bye to be said to aU the 
 members of the household ; most important of all, 
 there was our last morning-visit to be paid to that 
 attic-room at the top of the house, where our perfect 
 old friend sat always patient and ready with her 
 love and welcome. We made our farewell to her 
 and she smiled tenderly — but these partings cost 
 her a few tears, and we left her sitting in her high- 
 backed arm-chair, among her innumerable rehcs and 
 keepsakes, beaming her blessing on us with speech- 
 less, shining looks. We knew that presently she 
 would insist on being helped into the passage out- 
 side her room, where there was a window that 
 
 246 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 overlooked the carriage-drive; she would be there 
 for the moment of our departure, to wave a hand- 
 kerchief as we drove away — she never failed. So 
 we dashed downstairs again, the time now growing 
 really short, and fled to the kitchen for a final gay 
 exchange of good wishes with Mrs. Chapman — and 
 up to the nursery once more, for tempestuous 
 embraces of aU our fond friends in order; and so 
 yet again to the hall and the steps of the front-door, 
 stiU with some minutes to wait, after all, till the 
 carriage came sweeping round from the stables and 
 Sidell pounded the gong and at last it was abso- 
 lutely the moment to be off. Grandmother would 
 be driving to the train with us, but grandfather 
 stood in the great doorway, benevolently watching 
 and smiling whUe Sidell packed us all into the 
 carriage; and Patrick touched up the horses and 
 the gravel crunched under our wheels and we craned 
 about to answer the farewells thrown to us from the 
 windows above — and sure enough there was a white 
 handkerchief at the window of the top passage, high 
 over aU, which was the last we saw as we turned the 
 comer and passed under the horse-chestnuts and 
 up the drive towards the Norwich road. And only 
 when we were out in the road and weU on our 
 journey came the exclamation of dismay (it always 
 came in due course) from somebody of our party, 
 
 " There now, I forgot " whatever it may have 
 
 been, something of much importance ; but it was 
 too late to turn back, Earlham was far behind us 
 already, our faces were set to the outer world. 
 
 You see, then, how all this stir and flutter of life, 
 in prospect for the morrow, might affect us on our 
 
 247 
 
EARLHAM 
 
 last evening at Earlham; it was like a freshening 
 undertow beneath the stream of the smooth sweet 
 hours. Bright as had been our weeks at Earlham, 
 there was no melancholy over their end ; there was 
 only a liveher desire to cram the hours as full as 
 they would hold, admitting nothing but the best. 
 And if it should chance that this last evening was a 
 Sunday, on the verge between summer and autumn, 
 nothing could be better than the scene and the 
 impression that I find there in the natural course, 
 full in my path. Sunday evening, the pale light of 
 the changing year, the stir of impending departure — 
 it aU brings me straight to the last of my pictures of 
 memory, and this is one that crowns our long 
 holiday to perfection. We had by now the sense 
 of having lived with Earlham in deepest intimacy 
 for an age; and yet there were always new dis- 
 coveries to make in the regular round of the day, 
 and we should prefer to keep jealously within it 
 as the end approached. Nothing far-fetched or 
 unlikely, but whatever most strictly belonged to the 
 hour and the place, charged with the character of 
 Earlham — this we desired; and my last picture is 
 exactly the right one for our need. I find it before 
 me, again in Earlham church. 
 
 i6 
 By sundown the dusk was already grey in the 
 body of the church, though up in the gallery there 
 was still a flush and haze of warmth from the small 
 west window of the tower. In the little north 
 transept, in the chancel behind the dark carved 
 screen, the shade deepened quickly ; it began to be 
 
 248 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 difficult to read one's book even before the psalms 
 were at an end. No lamps were lit — there were 
 none, I think ; and perhaps this Sunday evening was 
 reckoned as the last of the summer, and grand- 
 father would announce that next week the hour of 
 evening prayer must be shifted to the afternoon. 
 I forget about that; but certainly the hurrying 
 dusk of September overtook us; and only a few 
 candles, a pair for the reading-desk, a pair for the 
 Major, were lit when they were required, and their 
 glimmering spots of light were all our illumination. 
 The day held long enough for our needs, however, 
 and we could lay aside our books in the twilight 
 when grandfather mounted to the pulpit. Our 
 particular corner of the chancel grew strange and 
 solemn ; it was a different place entirely from the 
 cheerful and sociable enclosure where one studied 
 the epitaphs in the morning. It was now fuU of 
 awe — but of awe that in no way dismayed or 
 oppressed, that rather sustained and encouraged a 
 young spirit in its wordless answer to something 
 larger than itself. 
 
 Our grandfather stood aloft in the pulpit, ghostly- 
 white with his big surplice, remote and unfamiliar 
 in the ebbing day. For us in the chancel the shine 
 of the candle at his side outlined his clear profile — 
 and his voice seemed to rise out of far-away dis- 
 tances, travelling through the falling night and 
 reaching us across dim spaces where sight was lost. 
 He was alone, up there in the candlelight ; and the 
 congregation, aU motionless in the grey silence 
 beneath him, left his solitude untouched. One 
 listened to his voice, knowing and following exactly 
 
 249 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 the curve of the well-known cadences; and yet it 
 was strange, it was a voice from another sphere, 
 and he himself, what with the glimmer and the 
 shadow and the stillness, was changed, transfigured, 
 exalted — one might never have seen him before. 
 His preaching was hke an appeal, an invocation 
 that soared into the kindly night ; and the thought 
 that he uttered was as free and serene and unearthly 
 as the night itself. God is a spirit — not a word that 
 was spoken f eU below that level of high imagination ; 
 the low earth of human littleness was left behind 
 and forgotten. There was nothing in it aU that a 
 child might be supposed to understand; and a 
 child accordingly, hstening in a dream, scarcely 
 heeding or apprehending a word, was brought 
 without a check into the presence of a mind that 
 could worship in spirit and in truth. 
 
 The sermon was long ; but one forgets the weight 
 of time in that twilit dream, floating upon space. 
 Our grandfather preached without book or paper, 
 and as his theme rose he too, I think, forgot the 
 hour and was lost in the fervour of his vision. It 
 was really as though he saw, as though he could 
 catch a glimpse of a heaven that opened — and he 
 broke out with an uncontrollable cry of admiration, 
 pointing to the sight that brought healing to the 
 world. Again and again it rang out ; the revelation 
 of hope was there, was suddenly before us for aU to 
 see — look, look and behold the promise fiilfilled. 
 He used no deliberate phrases ; the word that leaps 
 to the mouth is the only possible word, the only 
 expressive, when the vision vouchsafed is always 
 beyond expectation, rarer and loveher than thought 
 
 250 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 could foresee. Again and again he called upon us 
 to share the wonder ; and when he so called, it was 
 not that he exhorted or adjured a faithless flock, 
 crying out upon their blindness — there never was 
 the least note of prophetic pride or indignation in 
 his voice. Humbly marvelling before the throne, 
 joyful and thankful, he spoke of what he saw; and 
 though he spoke as one rapt to beatific heights, he 
 had always a mild gravity of tone, he was simple 
 and serious with the clarity of a fine understanding. 
 A child who dreamily watched and hstened to him, 
 drinking in the impression, knew only that an 
 evening hour in Earlham church was unlike any 
 other in Ufe. But the quality of the hour, the taste 
 of its beauty, was just as distinct to the child as to 
 any of that company; only the words to define it 
 were wanting — if indeed they are not wanting as 
 much as ever, even now. 
 
 Our grandmother, meanwhile, was beside us in 
 our dim corner of the chancel; she sat in her 
 rightful place, close against the ancient oak screen — 
 she slipped back to it as soon as the hymn had been 
 sung and our grandfather crossed over to the pulpit ; 
 and she sat there now, happy and quiet in the 
 exaltation of her thought, with a look and touch 
 of tenderness for the children at her side. She too 
 listened absorbed, and her eyes were lifted in a gaze 
 that travelled away, above and beyond — away to 
 the past of many memories, forward to the new 
 morning and the reward of hope. The words of 
 the preacher dropped into her mind ; she took them, 
 she made them her own, with a gentle movement of 
 her head or the breathing of a sigh ; the stir of her 
 
 251 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 emotion was in the soft touch of her hand, as it 
 rested upon the child's hand in her lap. Half 
 smiling, half weeping out of a full heart, she raised 
 her face to the light that shone for her in the gather- 
 ing darkness; she welcomed it with aU the eager 
 faith of her being. The barriers that are about us 
 in the world, separating soul from soul, seemed to 
 be as nothing; and even the chasm that encircles 
 our small humanity, that isolates it in the midst 
 of the illimitable unknown, had vanished for an 
 hour — freely, freely our imprisoned thought could 
 escape to the truth beyond the stars. It seemed so, 
 there in the little shadowy church, while the few 
 scattered candles burnt brighter and whiter in the 
 gloom and the voice of the preacher sank gradually 
 to a hushed undertone, almost a whisper. The last 
 words were very quietly and intently breathed; 
 they hung and fell in the silence as lightly as a 
 falling leaf — another and another, more softly stiU, 
 and yet another, and it was the end. Stirring at 
 length and looking about us, we found that only the 
 very last of the twilight was left in the windows, 
 the night of autumn had aU but closed us in. 
 
 There was still another hymn to be sung before 
 we dispersed ; but our books were quite useless now, 
 and we waited while grandfather found the place 
 by the light of his candle and read out to us the 
 words of the first verse. He read them through, and 
 then the harmonium broke forth and we sang the 
 verse, aU the congregation joining their voices with 
 fervent will. We paused, and grandfather read the 
 second verse; we took it up again, holding the 
 words in mind as well as we could — and so on to 
 
 252 
 
OUTSIDE AND BEYOND 
 
 the end. But indeed the words were most familiar, 
 and in the evening and the gloom one sings more 
 confidently than in the morning light ; so that the 
 successive verses of our hymn rolled out very 
 heartily and everybody contributed his part. The 
 children sang their loudest, Eliza lifted up her 
 pillar of song in the gallery, a rich rumble of manly 
 thunder arose from the village in the nave. We all 
 felt a need of singing; in one way or another, 
 clearly or obscurely, we had seen and known our 
 portion in a high experience, an enhancement of 
 power within, a disclosure of far distances ; and a 
 full tide of emotion was released, warm and buoyant, 
 in the measured swing of the melody. But none of 
 us sang as our grandmother sang — for the music 
 she uttered, lightly throwing up her head, was alive 
 with every thiill of her heart, it caught the very 
 sparkle and shimmer of her loving, longing, adoring 
 spirit. The words of the hymn were new upon her 
 hps, so deep and sweet was the meaning with which 
 she filled them ; they seemed to be stirred, dignified, 
 enlarged with all the sorrows and joys of a saintly 
 Hfe, that now was turning home towards the evening 
 of its day. There was a passion of tenderness in her 
 singing, there was thanksgiving and triumph; it 
 was the voice of Christiana, stepping gladly down 
 the last slope of the hill to the crossing of the river, 
 " Thy touch hath still its ancient power — no word 
 from Thee can fruitless fall." Grandfather gave 
 out the last Unes of the hymn, closed his book, stood 
 silent in the candlehght, while we threw ourselves 
 once more into the music and swept to the chmax. 
 Our rhythm was broad and unhurried, our volume 
 
 253 
 
EARLH AM 
 
 of sound moved steadily from beat to beat of the 
 tune, mounting and descending. The few moments 
 are enough for a long look, a glance that pierces the 
 dimness and travels to and fro across the tiny church 
 and seeks and finds — finds aU that I have tried to 
 speak of, all the images of memory that people the 
 vision of our Earlham. It is a last look, and it 
 fastens closely upon every hght and shadow of the 
 scene, scanning the rows of faces, passing between 
 them to the more distant ghosts of the past, re- 
 covering the whole treasure of association that 
 Earlham in its old age had amassed for its children. 
 It was all there for the eyes that could see — all there 
 in a moment of falling night, in the white shine of a 
 few candle-flames, in a chorus of voices that hung 
 upon the notes of a tune. Slowly, with gathering 
 fervour, the voices lifted and rang out in the last 
 words; and grandfather stood silent and tall, his 
 head bowed, waiting for the close. " Hear, in this 
 solemn evening hour — and in Thy mercy heal us 
 aU." 
 
 254 
 
LONDON : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD. 
 CHISWICK PRESS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.