The Upton Letters | Page 9

have a wide
vogue, because so many people do not value a thought unless they can
feel a certain glow of satisfaction in having grasped it; and to have
disentangled a web of words, and to find the bright thing lying within,
gives them a pleasing feeling of conquest, and, moreover, stamps the
thought in their memory. But such readers have not the root of the
matter in them; the true attitude is the attitude of desiring to apprehend,
to progress, to feel. The readers who delight in obscurity, to whom
obscurity seems to enhance the value of the thing apprehended, are
mixing with the intellectual process a sort of acquisitive and
commercial instinct very dear to the British heart. These bewildering
and bewildered Browning societies who fling themselves upon Sordello,
are infected unconsciously with a virtuous craving for "taking higher
ground." Sordello contains many beautiful things, but by omitting the
necessary steps in argument, and by speaking of one thing allusively in
terms of another, and by a profound desultoriness of thought, the poet
produces a blurred and tangled impression. The beauties of Sordello
would not lose by being expressed coherently and connectedly.
This is the one thing that I try with all my might to impress on boys;
that the essence of all style is to say what you mean as forcibly as
possible; the bane of classical teaching is that the essence of successful
composition is held to be to "get in" words and phrases; it is not a bad
training, so long as it is realised to be only a training, in obtaining a
rich and flexible vocabulary, so that the writer has a choice of words
and the right word comes at call. But this is not made clear in education,
and the result on many minds is that they suppose that the essence of
good writing is to search diligently for sparkling words and sonorous

phrases, and then to patch them into a duller fabric.
But I stray from my point: all paths in a schoolmaster's mind lead out
upon the educational plain.
All that you tell me of your new surroundings is intensely interesting. I
am thankful that you feel the characteristic charm of the place, and that
the climate seems to suit you. You say nothing of your work; but I
suppose that you have had no time as yet. The mere absorbing of new
impressions is a fatiguing thing, and no good work can be done until a
scene has become familiar. I will discharge your commissions
punctually; don't hesitate to tell me what you want. I don't do it from a
sense of duty, but it is a positive pleasure for me to have anything to do
for you. I long for letters; as soon as possible send me photographs, and
not merely inanimate photographs of scenes and places, but be sure that
you make a part of them yourself. I want to see you standing, sitting,
reading in the new house; and give me an exact and detailed account of
your day, please; the food you eat, the clothes you wear; you know my
insatiable appetite for trifles.--Ever yours,
T. B.

UPTON, March 5, 1904.
MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have been thinking over your last letter: and
by the merest chance I stumbled yesterday on an old diary; it was in
1890--a time, do you remember, when our paths had drifted somewhat
apart; you had just married, and I find a rather bitter entry, which it
amuses me to tell you of now, to the effect that the marriage of a friend,
which ought to give one a new friend, often simply deprives one of an
old one--"nec carus aeque nec superstes integer," I add. Then I was, I
suppose, hopelessly absorbed in my profession; it was at the time when
I had just taken a boarding-house, and suffered much from the
dejection which arises from feeling unequal to the new claims.
It amuses me now to think that I could ever have thought of losing your

friendship; and it was only temporary; it was only that we were fully
occupied; you had to learn camaraderie with your wife, for want of
which one sees dryness creep into married lives, when the first divine
ardours of passion have died away, and when life has to be lived in the
common light of day. Well, all that soon adjusted itself; and then I, too,
found in your wife a true and congenial friend, so that I can honestly
say that your marriage has been one of the most fortunate events of my
life.
But that was not what I meant to write to you about; the point is this.
You say that personality is a stubborn thing. It is indeed. I find