Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge | Page 7

Albert Hall, from hearing the 'Meistersanger,' Wagner
himself conducting. I may safely say I think that I never experienced such absolute
artistic rapture before as at certain parts of this; for instance, in the overture, at one place
where the strings suddenly cease and there comes a peculiar chromatic waft of wind
instruments, like a ghostly voice rushing across. I have never felt anything like it; it swept
one right away, and gave one a sense of deep ineffable satisfaction. I shall always feel for
the future that there is an existent region, into which I have now actually penetrated, in
which that entire satisfaction is possible, a fact which I have always hitherto doubted. It is
like an initiation.
"But I can not bear the 'Tannhauser;' it seems to paint with a fatal fascination the beauty
of wickedness, the rightness, so to speak, of sensuality. I feel after it as if I had been
yielding to a luscious temptation; unnerved, not inspired."
In another letter he writes, "Music is the most hopeful of the arts; she does not hint only,
like other expressions of beauty--she takes you straight into a world of peace, a world
where law and beauty are the same, and where an ordered discord, that is discord
working by definite laws, is the origin of the keenest pleasure."
I remember, during the one London season which he subsequently went through, his
settling himself at a Richter concert next me with an air of delight upon his face. "Now,"
he said, "let us try and remember for an hour or two that we have souls."
CHAPTER III
I must here record one curious circumstance which I have never explained even to my
own satisfaction.
He had been at Cambridge about two years, when, in the common consent of all his
friends, his habits and behaviour seemed to undergo a complete and radical change.
I have never discovered what the incident was that occasioned this change; all I know is
that suddenly, for several weeks, his geniality of manner and speech, his hilarity, his
cheerfulness, entirely disappeared; a curious look of haunting sadness, not defined, but
vague, came over his face; and though he gradually returned to his old ways, yet I am
conscious myself, and others would support me in this, that he was never quite the same
again; he was no longer young.
The only two traces that I can discover in his journals, or letters, or elsewhere, of the facts
are these.
He always in later diaries vaguely alludes to a certain event which changed his view of
things in general; "ever since," "since that November," "for now nearly five years I have
felt." These and similar phrases constantly occur in his diary. I will speak in a moment of
what nature I should conjecture it to have been.
A packet of letters in his desk were marked "to be burnt unopened;" but at the same time

carefully docketed with dates: these dates were all immediately after that time, extending
over ten days.
The exact day was November 8, 1872. It is engraved in a small silver locket that hung on
his watch-chain, where he was accustomed to have important days in his life marked,
such as the day he adopted his boy, his mother's death. It is preceded by the Greek letters
[Greek: BP], which from a certain entry in his diary I conceive to be [Greek: baptisma
pyros], "the baptism of fire."
Lastly, in a diary for that year, kept with fair regularity up till November 8, there here
intervenes a long blank, the only entry being November 9: "Salvum me fac, Dne."
I took the trouble, incidentally, to hunt up the files of a Cambridge journal of that date, to
see if I could link it on to any event, and I found there recorded, in the course of that
week, what I at first imagined to be the explanation of the incidents, and own I was a
good deal surprised.
I found recorded some Revivalist Mission Services, which were then held in Cambridge
with great success. I at once concluded that he underwent some remarkable spiritual
experience, some religious fright, some so-called conversion, the effects of which only
gradually disappeared. The contagion of a Revivalist meeting is a very mysterious thing.
Like a man going to a mesmerist, an individual may go, announcing his firm intention not
to be influenced in the smallest degree by anything said or done. Nay more, he may think
himself, and have the reputation of being, a strong, unyielding character, and yet these are
the very men who are often most hopelessly mesmerized, the very men whom the
Revival most absolutely--for the occasion--enslaves. And thus, knowing that one could
form no prima facie judgments on the probabilities