The Letter-Bell

Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of human life, when, if we examine its smallest details, they present a world by themselves. The most trifling objects, retraced with the eye of memory, assume the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of insects seen through a magnifying glass. There is no end of the brilliancy or the variety. The habitual feeling of the love of life may be compared to ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite,’¹ which, if analyzed, breaks into a thousand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the value of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the account, and the multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflection will be found in it! As I write this,² the Letter-Bell passes: it has a lively, pleasant sound with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate clamour, but rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me from the dream of time, it flings me back upon my first entrance into life, the period of my first coming up to town,³ when all around was strange, uncertain, adverse – a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of shifting objects – and when this sound alone, startling me with the recollection of a letter I had to send to the friends I had lately left,⁴ brought me as it were to myself, made me feel that I had links still connecting with the universe, and gave me hope and patience to persevere. At that loud-tinkling, interrupted sound (now and then), the long line of blue hills⁵ near the place where I was brought up waves in the horizon, a golden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-oaks rustle their red leaves in the evening-breeze, and the road from Wem to Shrewsbury,⁶ by which I first set out on my journey through life, stares me in the face as plain, but from time and change not less visionary and mysterious, than the pictures in the Pilgrim’s Progress. 1 should notice, that at this time the light of the French Revolution⁷ circled my head like a glory, though dabbled with drops of crimson gore: I walked confident and cheerful by its side – And by the vision splendidWas on my way attended.⁸ It rose then in the east: it has again risen in the west.⁹ Two suns in one day, two 204triumphs of liberty in one age, is a miracle which I hope the Laureate will hail in appropriate verse. Or may not Mr Wordsworth give a different turn to the fine passage, beginning – What, though the radiance which was once so bright,Be now for ever vanished from my sight;Though nothing can bring back the hourOf glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower?¹⁰ For is it not brought back, ‘like morn risen on mid-night;’¹¹ and may he not yet greet the yellow light shining on the evening bank with eyes of youth, of genius, and freedom, as of yore?¹² No, never! But what would not these persons give for the unbroken integrity of their early opinions – for one unshackled, uncontaminated strain – one Io pœan to Liberty – one burst of indignation against tyrants and sycophants, who subject other countries to slavery by force, and prepare their own for it by servile sophistry, as we see the huge serpent lick over its trembling, helpless victim with its slime and poison, before it devours it! On every stanza so penned would be written the word Recreant! Every taunt, every reproach, every note of exultation at restored light and freedom, would recal to them how their hearts failed them in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.¹³ And what shall we say to him¹⁴ – the sleep-walker, the dreamer, the sophist, the word-hunter, the craver after sympathy, but still vulnerable to truth, accessible to opinion, because not sordid or mechanical? The Bourbons being no longer tied about his neck, he may perhaps recover his original liberty of speculating; so that we may apply to him the lines about his own Ancient Mariner – And from his neck so freeThe Albatross fell off, and sunkLike lead into the sea.¹⁵ This is the reason I can write an article on the Letter-Bell, and other such subjects; I have never given the lie to my own soul. If I have felt any impression once, I feel it more strongly a second time; and I have no wish to revile and discard my best thoughts. There is at least a thorough keeping in what I write – not a line that betrays a principle or disguises a feeling. If my wealth is small, it all goes to enrich the same heap; and trifles in this way accumulate to a tolerable sum. – Or if the Letter-Bell does not lead me a dance into the country, it fixes me in the thick of my town recollections, I know not how long ago. It was a kind of alarm to break off from my work when there happened to be company to dinner or when I was going to the play. That was going to the play, indeed, when I went twice a year, and had not been more than half a dozen times in my life. Even the idea that any one else in the house¹⁶ was going, was a sort of reflected enjoyment, and conjured up a lively anticipation of the scene. I remember a Miss D—,¹⁷ a maiden lady from Wales (who 205in her youth was to have been married to an earl), tantalized me greatly in this way, by talking all day of going to see Mrs Siddons’ ‘airs and graces’¹⁸ at night in some favourite part; and when the Letter-Bell announced that the time was approaching, and its last receding sound lingered on the ear, or was lost in silence, how anxious and uneasy I became, lest she and her companion should not be in time to get good places – lest the curtain should draw up before they arrived – and lest I should lose one line or look in the intelligent report which I should hear the next morning! The punctuating of time at that early period – every thing that gives it an articulate voice – seems of the utmost consequence; for we do not know what scenes in the ideal world may run out of them: a world of interest may hang upon every instant, and we can hardly sustain the weight of future years which are contained in embryo in the most minute and inconsiderable passing events. How often have I put off writing a letter till it was too late! How often had to run after the postman with it – now missing, now recovering, the sound of his bell – breathless, angry with myself – then hearing the welcome sound come full round a comer – and seeing the scarlet costume which set all my fears and self-reproaches at rest! I do not recollect having ever repented giving a letter to the postman, or wishing to retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his bag. What I have once set my hand to, I take the consequences of, and have been always pretty much of the same humour in this respect. I am not like the person who, having sent off a letter to his mistress, who resided a hundred and twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on second thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post-chaise and four to follow and intercept it the next morning. At other times, I have sat and watched the decaying embers in a little back painting-room (just as the wintry day declined), and brooded over the half-finished copy of a Rembrandt, or a landscape by Vangoyen,¹⁹ placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire; while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thoughts to the world without, and reminded me that I had a task to perform in it. As to that landscape, methinks I see it now – The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.²⁰ There was a windmill too, with a poor low clay-built cottage beside it:– how delighted I was when I had made the tremulous, undulating reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvas become a lucid mirror of the commonest features of nature! Certainly, painting gives one a strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the dandy-school of morals or sentiment) – While with an eye made quiet by the powerOf harmony and the deep power of joy,We see into the life of things.²¹206Perhaps there is no part of a painter’s life (if we must tell ‘the secrets of the prison-house’)²² in which he has more enjoyment of himself and his art, than that in which after his work is over, and with furtive sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. Afterwards, when he gets a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more ostensible sources of satisfaction – greater splendour, wealth, or fame; but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest drudgery to others – too humble to despise aught that had to do with the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his projects of ambition or pleasure were founded. ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’²³ When the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, it may have become a stalking-horse to other worldly schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight of his inmost thoughts – His shame in crowds, his solitary pride!²⁴ I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the fraternal board, where youth and hope Made good digestion wait on appetiteAnd health on both²⁵ or oftener I put if off till after dinner, that I might loiter longer and with more luxurious indolence over it, and connect it with the thoughts of my next day’s labours.