AFLICCIÓN DE LA NIÑEZ
MUERTE DE LA HERMANA
Nosotros, los niños de la casa, estábamos en el lugar más venturoso del andamiaje social para recibir las mejores influencias. La plegaria de Agar: No me des pobreza ni riqueza, se cumplía para nosotros. Teníamos esa dicha: nuestra posición no era demasiado alta ni demasiado baja. Éramos lo bastante encumbrados para ver ejemplos de buenos modales, de propia estimación y de dignidad sencilla; lo bastante oscuros para que nos dejaran la apacible soledad. Ampliamente provistos de todos los nobles beneficios de la riqueza, de los bienes de la salud, de la cultura intelectual y de los goces elegantes, por otra parte no sabíamos nada de distinciones sociales. Sin estar deprimidos por la conciencia de sórdidas privaciones ni tentados o inducidos a la inquietud por la conciencia de privilegios ambiciosos, no teníamos motivos para ser soberbios o para avergonzarnos. Hasta ahora estoy agradecido de que, rodeados de lujo en todo lo demás, nos habituaran a una alimentación de una simplicidad espartana —en verdad, era ésta menos suntuosa que la de los sirvientes. Y si yo tuviera (siguiendo el ejemplo del emperador Marco Aurelio) que dar gracias a la Providencia por cada una de las venturas de mi situación anterior, elegiría estas cuatro por ser especialmente memorables: que vivía en una soledad agreste; que esa soledad estaba en Inglaterra; que mis sentimientos infantiles fueron modelados por suavísimas hermanas y no por hermanos horribles y pugilísticos; finalmente, que tanto yo como ellas, éramos miembros fervientes y devotos de una pura, sagrada y magnífica Iglesia.
Los primeros incidentes que han dejado, hasta hoy, huellas en mi memoria fueron dos, y ambos sucedieron antes que yo cumpliera dos años; el primero, un notable sueño de terrorífico grandor, con una niñera favorita, tiene especial interés para mí porque demuestra que mi tendencia a soñar era constitucional y no dependía del láudano; el segundo es el hecho de haber asociado a una honda sensación conmovedora la reaparición, muy temprana en primavera, del azafrán. Menciono esto como algo inexplicable; pues semejantes resurrecciones anuales de plantas y de flores nos conmueven sólo como una conmemoración, o como sugerencia de un más elevado cambio, y por lo tanto las vinculamos con la idea de la muerte; sin embargo yo no podía en esa época haber tenido ninguna experiencia de la muerte.
No obstante iba a adquirir muy pronto esa experiencia. Mis dos hermanas mayores —las mayores de las tres que en aquel tiempo vivían, y mayores, también, que yo— fueron llamadas por una muerte prematura. La primera en morir fue Juana, que era dos años mayor que yo. Tenía tres años y medio; yo tenía uno y medio, más o menos. Pero entonces la muerte era apenas inteligible para mí, y no puede decirse que yo padeciera una aflicción sino una triste perplejidad. Simultáneamente, ocurrió otra muerte en la casa —la muerte de una abuela paterna; pero como había venido expresamente para morir en compañía de su hija y como la enfermedad la había obligado a vivir en un aislamiento absoluto, nuestro círculo infantil la conocía muy poco y se sintió más afectado por otra muerte (que yo presencié) de un ave muy bella —un martín pescador que había sido herido en un accidente. Con la muerte de mi hermana Juana —que me dejó, como he dicho, menos apenado que perplejo— se vincula un episodio que me causó una impresión aterradora y que acentuó mi tendencia a abstraerme y a meditar más allá de lo verosímil para mis años. Si hay algo en este mundo que la naturaleza me impele a rechazar es, ante todo, la brutalidad y la violencia. Circuló un rumor en la familia, según el cual una sirvienta, que casualmente tuvo que dejar sus ocupaciones habituales para atender a mi hermana Juana por uno o dos días, en cierta ocasión la había tratado con dureza, si no con brutalidad, y como estos malos tratos ocurrieron dos o tres días antes de su muerte, y el motivo debió de ser algún capricho de la pobre niña doliente, una sensación de espanto y de indignación se extendió por toda la familia. Creo que esta historia no llegó nunca a oídos de mi madre, y posiblemente era exagerada; pero el efecto que tuvo sobre mí fue sobrecogedor.
No veía con frecuencia a la persona acusada de esta crueldad; pero al verla, yo bajaba los ojos; no podía mirarla a la cara; sin embargo, no era un sentimiento de cólera lo que me impedía mirarla. Se había apoderado de mí un trémulo horror: era ésa mi primer visión de un mundo de lucha y de perfidia. A pesar de haber nacido en una gran ciudad (la ciudad de Manchester, aun entonces una de las más grandes de la isla), había pasado mi infancia, salvo las primeras semanas de mi vida, en una reclusión rural. Con tres inocentes hermanas, compañeras de juegos, durmiendo siempre entre ellas, encerrado para siempre en un silencioso jardín, apartado de todo conocimiento de la pobreza, de la opresión, de la violencia, no había sospechado hasta ese momento la verdadera contextura del mundo en que yo y mis hermanas vivíamos. Desde entonces la naturaleza de mis pensamientos cambió mucho; pues algunos actos son tan representativos que un solo ejemplo de una clase basta para descubrirnos todo el teatro de posibilidades que hay en ese sentido. No sé que la mujer acusada de ese acto de violencia haya sentido vivamente su culpa; no sé que la haya sentido aun después que un terrible acontecimiento inmediato le confiriera un énfasis todavía más doloroso. Pero sé que para mí el incidente tuvo un efecto revolucionario y duradero sobre toda mi concepción de la vida.
Así partió de este mundo una de esas tres hermanas que fueron mis primeras compañeras de juego; y de ese modo se inició mi relación (si así puedo llamarla) con lo mortal. Sin embargo, lo único que sabía de la muerte era que Juana había desaparecido. Se había ido, pero tal vez volviera. ¡Oh intervalo feliz de celestial ignorancia! ¡Venturosa inmunidad infantil para el dolor que excede su fuerza! Estaba entristecido por la ausencia de Juana, pero mi corazón confiaba en su regreso. Volvían los veranos y los inviernos, las flores del azafrán y las rosas, ¿por qué no volvería Juana?
Con esa facilidad se cicatrizó la primera herida de mi corazón de niño. No así la segunda. Alrededor de tu amplia frente, amada y noble Isabel, cuando veo tu dulce rostro surgir de la oscuridad, imagino una tiara de luz o una deslumbrante aureola como símbolo de tu prematura elevación; oh tú, cuya cabeza, por su magnífico desarrollo, fue el asombro de la ciencia[1], tú también, después de un intervalo de felices años, fuiste arrebatada de nuestros juegos; y la noche que me deparó esa desdicha me persigue a lo largo de mi vida; y por eso tal vez ahora soy, para bien o para mal, muy distinto de lo que pude ser. Columna de fuego que marchabas ante mí para guiarme y para estimularme —columna de oscuridad, cuando tu semblante se volvió hacia Dios, revelando a mis temores nacientes la sombra secreta de la muerte— ¿qué gravitación misteriosa acercó mi corazón al tuyo? ¿Puede un niño de seis años atribuir un valor especial a la superioridad del intelecto? ¿Sereno y capaz como después de analizado aparecía el espíritu de mi hermana... ¿eran estos encantos para arrebatar el corazón de un niño? ¡Oh, no! Todo eso lo recuerdo ahora con interés, porque proporciona para los extraños una justificación del exceso de mi cariño. Pero entonces no existía para mí aquel espíritu; o sólo existía a través de sus efectos. Si hubieras sido idiota, oh mi hermana, no te habría amado menos, ya que tenías tu generoso corazón que rebosaba, como rebosa el mío, de ternura, vibrante, como estaba vibrante el mío, por la necesidad de amar y de ser amado. Esto era lo que te adornaba de poder y de belleza:
Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense.[2]
Esa lámpara del Paraíso fue encendida en mí por el reflejo de la viva luz que ardía en tu alma inmutablemente; y a nadie, salvo a ti, y jamás desde tu partida, tuve el poder o la tentación, el coraje o el deseo de confiar mi sentimiento. Pues yo era el más tímido de los niños; y a lo largo de mi vida un sentido natural de la propia dignidad me impidió expresar la más leve irradiación de sentimientos, si no me veía plenamente alentado a revelarlos.
Ocioso es detallar circunstanciadamente el curso de la enfermedad que se llevó a mi conductora y compañera. Ella (según mis actuales recuerdos) estaba tan cerca de los nueve años como yo de los seis. Y acaso esta superioridad de años y de juicio, unida a la tierna modestia con la cual desdeñaba imponerla, era una de las fascinaciones de su presencia. Fue un domingo a la noche, si uno puede fiarse en tales conjeturas, que la chispa de aquel fuego fatal despertó la serie de predisposiciones que hasta entonces habían dormitado en su cerebro. Le habían dado permiso para tomar té en la casa de un trabajador, padre de una sirvienta preferida. El sol se había puesto cuando regresó en compañía de esta sirvienta atravesando praderas llenas de emanaciones del ardiente día. A partir de entonces, enfermó. En tales circunstancias un niño de mi edad no se siente ansioso. Nada temía: consideraba a los médicos hombres privilegiados, cuyo natural destino era el de combatir el dolor y la enfermedad. Me afligía, en verdad, que mi hermana estuviera en cama; me afligía, aún más, oír sus lamentos. Pero todo esto no era para mí sino una penosa noche; pronto iba a nacer el alba. ¡Oh momento de delirio y de oscuridad, cuando la niñera me arrancó de esa ilusión y, fulminando sobre mi pecho el rayo de Dios, me aseguró que mi hermana iba a morir! Es justo decir de la última, de la última miseria, que no puede ser recordada. En la memoria, ella misma se desvanece en su propio caos. Un vacío anárquico y una confusión del espíritu cayeron sobre mí. Yo estaba sordo y ciego con el vértigo de la revelación. No deseo recordar las circunstancias de ese momento, cuando mi agonía culminaba, y la de ella, en otro sentido, se volvía más próxima. Baste decir que todo pasó pronto; y por fin llegó la mañana del día que vio su inocente rostro durmiendo el sueño que no tiene despertar, y que me vio a mí sufriendo un dolor que no tiene consuelo.
Al día siguiente de la muerte de mi hermana, cuando el delicado templo de su cerebro aún no había sido violado por el escrutinio de los hombres de ciencia, decidí verla una vez más. Por nada del mundo hubiera revelado mi propósito, ni hubiera tolerado que un testigo me acompañara. Nunca había oído hablar de los sentimientos llamados “sentimentales”, ni había soñado con semejante posibilidad. Pero la pena, aun en un niño, aborrece la luz y se aparta de los ojos humanos. La casa era lo bastante grande para tener dos escaleras; yo sabía que por una de ellas, a eso del mediodía, cuando todo estuviera en silencio (los sirvientes almorzaban a la una de la tarde) yo podría deslizarme hasta su cuarto. Imagino que fue una hora después del mediodía cuando llegué a la puerta de su dormitorio; estaba cerrada, pero con la llave puesta. Al entrar, entorné tan sigilosamente la puerta que a pesar de dar ésta sobre un vestíbulo que comunicaba a todos los pisos, ningún eco retumbó en las silenciosas paredes. Entonces, volviéndome, busqué el rostro de mi hermana. Pero habían movido el lecho y la cabecera estaba frente a mí. Sólo vieron mis ojos un ancho ventanal, abierto de par en par, por donde un sol de mediodía de verano derramaba torrentes de esplendor. El tiempo estaba seco, el cielo sin nubes, las azules profundidades parecían la perfecta expresión del infinito y no era posible que el ojo viera o que el corazón concibiese símbolos más patéticos de la vida y de la gloria de la vida.
Dejad que me detenga un instante al acercarme a un recuerdo tan conmovedor para mi espíritu. En Las confesiones de un tomador de opio traté de explicar la causa por la cual la muerte, si las demás circunstancias no varían, es más profundamente conmovedora en verano que en las otras estaciones —por lo menos, en la medida en que pueden modificarla los accidentes del paisaje y de la estación. La causa, como lo sugerí entonces, consiste en el antagonismo que hay entre la tropical redundancia de la vida en verano y las heladas esterilidades de la tumba. Al verano lo vemos, a la tumba la perseguimos con nuestros pensamientos; la gloria nos circunda, la oscuridad está en nosotros; y al encontrarse estos elementos, cada uno exalta el otro con más poderoso relieve. Pero, en mi caso, había una razón aún más sutil para que el verano tuviera ese intenso poder de vivificar los pensamientos o el espectáculo de la muerte. Y, al recordarlo, me impresiona el hecho de que la mayor parte de nuestros más hondos pensamientos o sentimientos nos llegan a través de intrincadas combinaciones de objetos concretos, nos llegan como involutos (si puedo acuñar esta palabra) en experiencias complejas que no pueden desenredarse, y no directamente, en su forma abstracta.
En nuestra vasta colección de libros había una Biblia ilustrada con muchas láminas. Y en las largas y oscuras tardes, cuando mis tres hermanas y yo nos sentábamos junto a la chimenea, alrededor del guardafuego, en nuestro cuarto de niños, ningún libro era más solicitado por nosotros. Nos dominaba y nos arrullaba misteriosamente, como una música. La niñera más joven, a quien todos amábamos, trataba a veces de explicarnos, de acuerdo a sus modestas luces, las partea que no entendíamos. Todos nosotros éramos constitucionalmente pensativos; la penumbra propicia y los súbitos resplandores del cuarto a la luz del fuego se avenían a nuestro estado de ánimo de las tardes; se avenían también a las divinas revelaciones de potencia y de misteriosa belleza, que nos aterraban. Ante todo, la historia de un hombre justo —un hombre que, sin embargo, no era un hombre, verdadero sobre todas las cosas y, a un tiempo, sobre todas las cosas tenebroso, un hombre que había sufrido la pasión de la muerte en Palestina— dormía sobre nuestros espíritus como el alba sobre las aguas. La niñera sabía explicarnos las principales diferencias de los climas orientales; y todas estas diferencias (como suele suceder) se expresan, más o menos, en variadas relaciones con los accidentes y las potencias del verano. Las diáfanas claridades del sol de Siria discurrían un verano sempiterno; los discípulos arrancando las espigas del trigo —eso debía ser el verano; pero, ante todo, el solo nombre del domingo de Palmas (una fiesta de la iglesia Anglicana) me conturbaba como una antífona.¡Domingo! ¿Qué era eso? Era el día de paz que enmascaraba una paz más profunda que la que puede comprender el corazón del hombre. ¡Palmas!¿Qué eran? Ésa era una palabra equívoca; las palmas, en el sentido de trofeos, expresan las pompas de la vida; las palmas, como producto de la naturaleza, expresan las pompas del verano. Pero aun esta explicación no basta; no era únicamente por el sosiego y por el verano, por la honda resonancia de la ascendiente gloria y del descanso más allá de todo descanso, que yo había sido perseguido. También era porque Jerusalén estaba cerca de esas profundas imágenes en el tiempo y el espacio. El gran acontecimiento de Jerusalén era inminente cuando llegaba el domingo de Palmas[3]; y la escena de ese domingo estaba, en el espacio, muy cerca de Jerusalén. ¿Qué era entonces Jerusalén? ¿Imaginaba yo que era omphalos (ombligo) o centro físico de la tierra? ¿Por qué había de afectarme eso? ¿Era lo que se había supuesto una vez de Jerusalén y otra de una ciudad griega; y al conocerse la forma del planeta, ambas suposiciones habían resultado ridículas. Sí, pero si no de la tierra, era el centro de los mortales, pues el morador de la tierra, Jerusalén, se había convertido ahora en omphalos y centro absoluto. ¿Cómo? Ahí, al contrario, como lo entendíamos los niños, era donde la mortalidad había sido hollada. Es cierto; pero, por la misma razón, era ahí donde la mortalidad había abierto su cráter más sombrío. Era ahí, en verdad, que los humanos se habían levantado en alas de la tumba; pero, por esa razón, era ahí que lo divino había sido devorado por el abismo; la estrella menor no podría ascender antes que la mayor se sometiera a un eclipse. El verano, por lo tanto, se vinculaba con la muerte no sólo por antagonismo, sino también como un fenómeno en intrincadas relaciones con la muerte a través de acontecimientos y paisajes bíblicos.
Fuera ya de esta digresión, hecha con el propósito de demostrar cómo se enlazaban mis sentimientos e imágenes de la muerte con los del verano, y con Palestina y con Jerusalén, dejadme volver al aposento de mi hermana. Del esplendor del sol, me di vuelta a contemplar el cadáver. Allí yacía la suave figura infantil; ahí el rostro del ángel; se dijo en la casa, como es costumbre, que las facciones no habían cambiado. ¿Era cierto? La frente, en verdad, la serena y noble frente, podía ser la misma; pero los helados párpados, la oscuridad que parecía surgir de ellos, los labios marmóreos, las manos rígidas, juntas las palmas, como repitiendo las súplicas de una angustia final —¿podía todo eso confundirse con la vida? De haber sido así ¿cómo no me abalancé con lágrimas e interminables besos a esos labios celestiales? Pero no fue así. Me detuve un momento: una reverencia, no un terror, se apoderó de mí; y, mientras estaba inmóvil, un viento solemne —el más triste que jamás se oyó— comenzó a soplar. Era un viento que hubiera podido recorrer los campos de los mortales por miles de siglos. Muchas veces desde entonces, en los días de verano, cuando el sol es más ardiente, he observado que el mismo viento se levanta y reproduce el mismo hueco, solemne, memnoniano[4] pero santo énfasis: en este mundo, el grande y audible y único símbolo de la eternidad. Tres veces en mi vida tuve ocasión de oír el mismo sonido en las mismas circunstancias —de pie entre una ventana abierta y un cuerpo muerto, en un día de verano.
Tengo razones para creer que un intervalo muy largo pasó durante esta divagación o ausencia de mi normal sentido. Al volver en mí oí pasos (o así me pareció) en la escalera. Me alarmé, pues si alguien me hubiera descubierto, me hubieran impedido toda visita ulterior. Apresuradamente besé los labios, que ya no volvería a besar, y huí del cuarto con pasos cautelosos, como un culpable. Así pereció esa visión, la más bella de las que me ha revelado la tierra; así fue mutilado un adiós que debió haber durado para siempre; maculada así por el temor fue una despedida sagrada para el amor y la pena, para el perfecto amor y la pena que no tiene remedio.
¡Oh, Ahasuero! ¡Eterno judío![5], fábula o no fábula, cuando emprendiste tu interminable peregrinación de dolor —tú, cuando por primera vez huiste por las puertas de Jerusalén, con el vano anhelo de dejar atrás la maldición que te perseguía— no podrías haber leído con más claridad en las palabras de Cristo tu sentencia de sufrimiento sin fin que yo al dejar para siempre el aposento de mi hermana. El gusano estaba en mi corazón; y, puedo decirlo, el gusano que no puede morir. El hombre es sin duda uno por un nexo sutil, por algún sistema de eslabones que no percibimos, y que se extiende desde el niño que acaba de nacer hasta el anciano reblandecido: pero en lo que se refiere a muchos afectos y pasiones contingentes a su naturaleza en sus diversas épocas, no es uno, sino un ser intermitente que termina y empieza de nuevo; una unidad del hombre, en este sentido, es co-extensiva con la época particular a la cual pertenece la pasión.
Algunas pasiones, como el amor sexual, son, en su origen, por una parte celestiales y por otra parte animales y terrenas. Estas últimas no pueden sobrevivir a su momento. Pero un amor totalmente puro, como el que existe entre los niños, tiene el privilegio de poder visitar fugazmente el silencio y la penumbra de los últimos años; y es posible que esta experiencia final en el dormitorio de mi hermana, o alguna otra en la que interviene su inocencia, surgirá de nuevo para mí, iluminando las nubes de la muerte.
Al día siguiente un grupo de médicos vino a examinar el cerebro y a estudiar la naturaleza de la afección; pues algunos de los síntomas indicaban anomalías desconcertantes. Una hora después que se retiraron, me deslicé de nuevo hasta el cuarto; pero la puerta estaba cerrada con llave, la llave no estaba —y quedé para siempre afuera.
Luego se cumplió el funeral. Yo, en mi condición ceremonial de deudo, fui llevado. Me pusieron en un coche con algunos caballeros que no conocía. Eran bondadosos y atentos conmigo, pero, naturalmente, hablaban de cosas extrañas al momento, y su conversación me atormentaba. En la iglesia me dijeron que me llevara un pañuelo blanco a los ojos. ¡Hueca hipocresía! ¿Qué necesidad tiene de máscaras y de mímicas el que lleva dentro de sí un corazón que muere al oír cada palabra que se pronuncia? Durante esa parte de la ceremonia, que se ejecuta en la iglesia, hice un gran esfuerzo para no distraerme; pero continuamente volvía a caer en mi oscuridad solitaria, y sólo conseguí escuchar algunos fugitivos acentos del sublime capítulo de San Pablo, que siempre se lee, en los entierros, en Inglaterra.
Finalmente llegó ese magnífico oficio litúrgico que la iglesia anglicana ejecuta junto a la tumba; pues la iglesia no abandona a sus muertos mientras continúan sobre la tierra, esperando el último “dulce y solemne adiós” junto a la tumba. Ahí está expuesto una vez más, y por última vez, el féretro. Todos los ojos registran los testimonios del nombre, del sexo, de la edad y del día de la partida de este mundo —testimonios tenebrosos que caen en la oscuridad como mensajes dirigidos a los gusanos. Casi al final viene el ritual simbólico, que desgarra y destroza el corazón, con repiques de campanas y salvas de la certera artillería del dolor.
Se coloca el féretro en su morada; ha desaparecido para todos los ojos, salvo para aquellos que miran en el abismo de la tumba. El sacristán aguarda con su palada de tierra y de piedras. La voz del sacerdote vuelve a oírse una vez más —tierra a la tierra— e inmediatamente el ruido temido se eleva de la tapa del féretro —ceniza a la ceniza— y de nuevo el ruido mortal se oye —polvo al polvo— y el último repique de campanas anuncia que la tumba, el féretro, el rostro están sellados para siempre.
¡Dolor, te han clasificado entre las pasiones deprimentes! Y en verdad humillas hasta el polvo, pero elevas hasta las nubes. Te estremeces como la fiebre, pero también calmas como el hielo. Hieres el corazón, pero curas sus enfermedades. En mí la más importante era una morbosa sensibilidad a la vergüenza. Diez años después, debido a esta enfermedad, me reprochaba que, si me requerían para salvar a un compañero moribundo, y que para salvarlo tuviera que enfrentarme con una vasta reunión de caras burlonas y despreciativas, podría, tal vez, evadir bajamente mi deber. Es cierto que nunca me vi en semejante situación; y esto era un mero argumento casuístico para imputarme una cobardía escandalosa. Pero sentir una duda era sentir una condenación; y el crimen que hubiera podido suceder, era a mis ojos el crimen que ya había sucedido. Pero todo lo cambió la memoria de mi hermana, y en una hora yo recibí un nuevo corazón. Una vez en Westmoreland vi un caso semejante. Vi una oveja abjurar, mudar su propia naturaleza, en un rapto de amor —sí, mudarla completamente como las serpientes mudan de piel. Su cordero había caído en una zanja profunda, de la cuál sólo un hombre podría rescatarlo. A un hombre se dirigió balando clamorosamente, hasta que ese hombre la siguió para salvar a su bien amado cordero. No fue menor el cambio en mí. Ahora cincuenta mil caras despreciativas no hubieran perturbado ninguno de mis ademanes de ternura a la memoria de mi hermana. Diez legiones no me hubieran impedido buscarla, si hubiera esperanza de verla. ¡Burlas!, no tenían ningún poder sobre mí. ¡Risas!, no las valoraba. Y si me hacían bromas insultantes por mis “lagrimas de niña”, esta palabra “niña” no me hería, sino como el eco verbal del eterno pensamiento de mi corazón —una niña era la más dulce cosa que yo había conocido en mi corta vida, una niña era la que había coronado la tierra de belleza y había abierto para mi sed fuentes de puro y celestial amor, del cual, en este mundo, ya no habría de beber.
Dios habla también a los niños en los sueños y en los oráculos que acechan en la oscuridad. Y sobre todo, en la soledad que encuentra voz para el corazón meditabundo en los oficios y revelaciones de una iglesia nacional, Dios mantiene con los niños una “comunión inalterada”. La soledad, siendo silenciosa como la luz, es, como la luz, el socorro más poderoso, pues la soledad es esencial al hombre. Todos los hombres vienen a este mundo solos; todos se van de él solos. Hasta el niño más pequeño tiene la temerosa, secreta conciencia de que, si fuera llamado a ponerse en presencia de Dios, no habría niñera bondadosa para conducirlo de la mano, ni madre que lo llevara en sus brazos, ni hermana que compartiera su azoramiento. Rey y sacerdote, guerrero y doncella, filósofo y niño, todos tendrán que cruzar esas vastas galerías solos. Por lo tanto la soledad, que en este mundo espanta o fascina el corazón del niño, no es más que el eco de una soledad más profunda, a través de la cual ya ha pasado, y de otra soledad, aun más profunda, a través de la cual habrá de pasar: reflejo de una soledad —prefiguración de otra.
¡Oh carga de dolor que se adhiere al hombre en cada etapa de su existencia! En su nacimiento —que ha sido—, en su vida —que es—, en su muerte —que será—, poderosa y esencial soledad que fuiste, que eres, y que serás; te extiendes, como el espíritu de Dios, moviéndote sobre la superficie de las profundidades, sobre cada corazón que duerme en los aposentos de los niños del mundo cristiano. Como el vasto laboratorio del aire, que aparentando no ser nada, menos que la sombra de una sombra, oculta en sí mismo los principios de todas las cosas, la soledad para el niño que medita es el espejo de Agripa del Universo invisible. Profunda es la soledad de los que prodigando amor, no tienen quien los ame. Profunda es la soledad de aquellos que, bajo secretas penas, no tienen quién los compadezca. Profunda es la soledad de aquellos que, luchando con la oscuridad o la duda, no tiene quien los aconseje. Pero más profunda que la más profunda de estas soledades es la que gravita sobre la infancia en la pasión del dolor —trayendo ante ella, a intervalos, la final soledad que la vigila y la espera en las puertas de la muerte. ¡Oh, poderosa y esencial soledad, que fuiste, que eres, y que serás! Tu reino se perfecciona en la tumba; pero aun a los que velan fuera de la tumba, como yo, un niño de seis años, tiendes un cetro de fascinación.
NOTAS
[1]El asombro de la ciencia. Los médicos que la atendían eran el doctor Percival, conocido médico y literato, que tuvo correspondencia con D'Alembert y Condorcet, y el señor Charles White, uno de los más distinguidos cirujanos del norte de Inglaterra. Este último afirmó que el desarrollo de su cabeza era uno de los más espléndidos que él había visto; afirmación que después de años repetía con entusiasmo. Puede deducirse que White tenía conocimientos en la materia, pues, en una época en que estas investigaciones estaban en sus comienzos, había publicado una obra sobre craneología, en la cual se incluían medidas de cabezas elegidas entre todas las variedades humanas. Mientras tanto, como me apena que pueda sospecharse que hay en esta apreciación cierta vanidad, admitiré que mi hermana murió de hidrocefalia; con frecuencia se supone que el desarrollo precoz del intelecto en semejantes casos tiene carácter morboso —estimulado, en una palabra, por la mera afección. Sin embargo, sugeriré la posibilidad de que la relación entre la enfermedad y las manifestaciones intelectuales haya sido precisamente la inversa. No siempre determinaría la enfermedad un desarrollo espontáneo del intelecto; puede que éste, sobrepasando la capacidad de la estructura física, hubiese causado la enfermedad. — (N. del A.)
[2] Amor, el sagrado sentido, el mejor don de Dios, era en ti el más intenso.
[3]Palm Sunday. Si tradujéramos “domingo de ramos" las inmediatas referencias a las palmas no tendrían justificación en el contexto.
[4]Memnoniano. Para los lectores que participan gravemente de un relato de dolor infantil, pero que no han tenido tiempo suficiente para dedicarse al estudio, me detengo a dar esta explicación: La cabeza de Memnón en el Museo Británico, esa cabeza sublime que lleva en sus labios una sonrisa extensa como el tiempo y el espacio, una sonrisa Eoniana de agraciado amor y misterio Pánico, la más difusa y patéticamente divina que haya creado la mano del hombre, según antiguas tradiciones, emitía a la salida del sol, o poco después, cuando los rayos solares habían calentado el aire lo bastante como para rarificarlo en las cavidades del busto, unas entonaciones solemnes y funerarias; la explicación, muy sencilla en términos generales, es la siguiente: unas corrientes sonoras de aire se producen al presionar cámaras de aire frío y pesado sobre otras masas de aire calientes y por consiguiente rarificadas que ceden rápidamente a la presión del aire más pesado. Al establecerse corrientes en esa forma, por medio de un sistema de tubos, se podía obtener y mantener una sucesión de notas. Cerca del Mar Rojo hay una cordillera de montañas de arena que por un sistema de canales unidos por anastomosis emiten voces que varían de acuerdo a la posición del sol, etcétera. Yo conocí a un niño que observando atentamente y reflexionando sobre un fenómeno que veía diariamente —i.e. que los tubos por los cuales pasa una corriente de agua producen diversas notas de acuerdo al volumen y cantidad de la corriente— ideó un instrumento que proporcionaba una precaria gama musical hidráulica; y, en verdad, en este sencillo fenómeno se basa el uso y la eficacia del estetoscopio. Pues así como un fino hilo de agua que gotea a través de un tubo de plomo produce un sonido agudo y quejumbroso comparado con el total volumen de sonido que corresponde al total volumen de agua, en paridad de principios nadie dudará que la corriente de sangre que fluye a través de los conductos del cuerpo humano emitirá para el oído avisado, provisto de un estetoscopio, una compleja gama o compás musical que indicaría los estragos de la enfermedad, o la plena gloria de la salud, tan fielmente como las cavidades de este antiguo busto de Memnón comunicaban el magnífico acontecimiento de la salida del sol al regocijado mundo de la luz y de la vida —o a la triste pasión del día que muere, el dulce réquiem de su partida. — (N. del A.)
[5] Eterno Judío: der Ewige Jude es la expresión alemana corriente para “el judío errante”, expresión aun más sublime que la nuestra. — (N, del A.)
THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD
About the close of my sixth year, suddenly the first chapter of my life came to a violent termination; that chapter which, even within the gates of recovered paradise, might merit a remembrance. “Life is finished!” was the secret misgiving of my heart; for the heart of infancy is as apprehensive as that of maturest wisdom in relation to any capital wound inflicted on the happiness. “Life is finished! Finished it is!” was the hidden meaning that, half unconsciously to myself, lurked within my sighs; and, as bells heard from a distance on a summer evening seem charged at times with an articulate form of words, some monitory message, that rolls round unceasingly, even so for me some noiseless and subterraneous voice seemed to chant continually a secret word, made audible only to my own heart—that “now is the blossoming of life withered forever.” Not that such words formed themselves vocally within my ear, or issued audibly from my lips; but such a whisper stole silently to my heart. Yet in what sense could that be true? For an infant not more than six years old, was it possible that the promises of life had been really blighted, or its golden pleasures exhausted? Had I seen Rome? Had I read Milton? Had I heard Mozart? No. St. Peter’s, the “Paradise Lost,” the divine melodies of “Don Giovanni,” all alike were as yet unrevealed to me, and not more through the accidents of my position than through the necessity of my yet imperfect sensibilities. Raptures there might be in arrear; but raptures are modes of troubled pleasure. The peace, the rest, the central security which belong to love that is past all understanding,—these could return no more. Such a love, so unfathomable,—such a peace, so unvexed by storms, or the fear of storms,—had brooded over those four latter years of my infancy, which brought me into special relations to my elder sister; she being at this period three years older than myself. The circumstances which attended the sudden dissolution of this most tender connection I will here rehearse. And, that I may do so more intelligibly, I will first describe that serene and sequestered position which we occupied in life. [1]
Any expression of personal vanity, intruding upon impassioned records, is fatal to their effect—as being incompatible with that absorption of spirit and that self-oblivion in which only deep passion originates or can find a genial home. It would, therefore, to myself be exceedingly painful that even a shadow, or so much as a seeming expression of that tendency, should creep into these reminiscences. And yet, on the other hand, it is so impossible, without laying an injurious restraint upon the natural movement of such a narrative, to prevent oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or aristocratic elegance as surrounded my childhood, that on all accounts I think it better to tell him, from the first, with the simplicity of truth, in what order of society my family moved at the time from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Otherwise it might happen that, merely by reporting faithfully the facts of this early experience, I could hardly prevent the reader from receiving an impression as of some higher rank than did really belong to my family. And this impression might seem to have been designedly insinuated by myself.
My father was a merchant; not in the sense of Scotland, where it means a retail dealer, one, for instance, who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, a sense rigorously exclusive; that is, he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no other; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other—which last limitation of the idea is important, because it brings him within the benefit of Cicero’s condescending distinction[2] as one who ought to be despised certainly, but not too intensely to be despised even by a Roman senator. He—this imperfectly despicable man—died at an early age, and very soon after the incidents recorded in this chapter, leaving to his family, then consisting of a wife and six children, an unburdened estate producing exactly sixteen hundred pounds a year. Naturally, therefore, at the date of my narrative,—whilst he was still living,—he had an income very much larger, from the addition of current commercial profits. Now, to any man who is acquainted with commercial life as it exists in England, it will readily occur that in an opulent English family of that class—opulent, though not emphatically rich in a mercantile estimate—the domestic economy is pretty sure to move upon a scale of liberality altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders in foreign nations. The establishment of servants, for instance, in such houses, measured even numerically against those establishments in other nations, would somewhat surprise the foreign appraiser, simply as interpreting the relative station in society occupied by the English merchant. But this same establishment, when measured by the quality and amount of the provision made for its comfort and even elegant accommodation, would fill him with twofold astonishment, as interpreting equally the social valuation of the English merchant, and also the social valuation of the English servant; for, in the truest sense, England is the paradise of household servants. Liberal housekeeping, in fact, as extending itself to the meanest servants, and the disdain of petty parsimonies, are peculiar to England. And in this respect the families of English merchants, as a class, far outrun the scale of expenditure prevalent, not only amongst the corresponding bodies of continental nations, but even amongst the poorer sections of our own nobility—though confessedly the most splendid in Europe; a fact which, since the period of my infancy, I have had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly, affecting the domestic economy of English merchants, there arises a disturbance upon the usual scale for measuring the relations of rank. The equation, so to speak, between rank and the ordinary expressions of rank, which usually runs parallel to the graduations of expenditure, is here interrupted and confounded, so that one rank would be collected from the name of the occupation, and another rank, much higher, from the splendor of the domestic ménage. I warn the reader, therefore, (or, rather, my explanation has already warned him,) that he is not to infer, from any casual indications of luxury or elegance, a corresponding elevation of rank.
We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, upon the very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of Agur—“Give me neither poverty nor riches”—was realized for us. That blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we were to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with extra means of health, of intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand, we knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the consciousness of privations too sordid, not tempted into restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for pride. Grateful also to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things else, we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of diet—that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the model of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration—that I lived in a rustic solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church.
The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings in my memory so as to be remembered at this day, were two, and both before I could have completed my second year; namely, 1st, a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favorite nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason—that it demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum;[3] and, idly, the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with the reappearance, very early in the spring, of some crocuses. This I mention as inexplicable: for such annual resurrections of plants and flowers affect us only as memorials, or suggestions of some higher change, and therefore in connection with the idea of death; yet of death I could, at that time, have had no experience whatever.
This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters— eldest of three then living, and also elder than myself—were summoned to an early death. The first who died was Jane, about two years older than myself. She was three and a half, I one and a half, more or less by some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. There was another death in the house about the same time, namely, of a maternal grandmother; but, as she had come to us for the express purpose of dying in her daughter’s society, and from illness had lived perfectly secluded, our nursery circle knew her but little, and were certainly more affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a beautiful bird, viz., a kingfisher, which had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane’s death (though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my years. If there was one thing in this world from which, more than from any other, nature had forced me to revolt, it was brutality and violence. Now, a whisper arose in the family that a female servant, who by accident was drawn off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a day or two, had on one occasion treated her harshly, if not brutally; and as this ill treatment happened within three or four days of her death, so that the occasion of it must have been some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her sufferings, naturally there was a sense of awe and indignation diffused through the family. I believe the story never reached my mother, and possibly it was exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the person charged with this cruelty; but, when I did, my eyes sought the ground; nor could I have borne to look her in the face; not, however, in any spirit that could be called anger. The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering horror, as upon a first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil and strife. Though born in a large town, (the town of Manchester, even then amongst the largest of the island,) I had passed the whole of my childhood, except for the few earliest weeks, in a rural seclusion. With three innocent little sisters for playmates, sleeping always amongst them, and shut up forever in a silent garden from all knowledge of poverty, or oppression, or outrage, I had not suspected until this moment the true complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters were living. Henceforward the character of my thoughts changed greatly; for so representative are some acts, that one single case of the class is sufficient to throw open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in that direction. I never heard that the woman accused of this cruelty took it at all to heart, even after the event which so immediately succeeded had reflected upon it a more painful emphasis. But for myself, that incident had a lasting revolutionary power in coloring my estimate of life.
So passed away from earth one of those three sisters that made up my nursery playmates; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with mortality. Yet, in fact, I knew little more of mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but perhaps she would come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance! Gracious immunity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was sad for Jane’s absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer and winter came again—crocuses and roses; why not little Jane?
Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola[4] in token of thy premature intellectual grandeur,—thou whose head, for its superb developments, was the astonishment of science, [5]—thou next, but after an interval of happy years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery; and the night, which for me gathered upon that event, ran after my steps far into life; and perhaps at this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire that didst go before me to guide and to quicken,—pillar of darkness, when thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst too truly reveal to my dawning fears the secret shadow of death,—by what mysterious gravitation was it that my heart had been drawn to thine? Could a child, six years old, place any special value upon intellectual forwardness? Serene and capacious as my sister’s mind appeared to me upon after review, was that a charm for stealing away the heart of an infant? O, no! I think of it now with interest, because it lends, in a stranger’s ear, some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or, if not lost, was perceived only through its effects. Hadst thou been an idiot, my sister, not the less I must have loved thee, having that capacious heart—overflowing, even as mine overflowed, with tenderness; stung, even as mine was stung, by the necessity of loving and being loved. This it was which crowned thee with beauty and power.
“Love, the holy sense,
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense.”
That lamp of paradise was, for myself, kindled by reflection from the living light which burned so steadfastly in thee; and never but to thee, never again since thy departure, had I power or temptation, courage or desire, to utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was the shyest of children; and, at all stages of life, a natural sense of personal dignity held me back from exposing the least ray of feelings which I was not encouraged wholly to reveal.
It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course of that sickness which carried off my leader and companion. She (according to my recollection at this moment) was just as near to nine years as I to six. And perhaps this natural precedency in authority of years and judgment, united to the tender humility with which she declined to assert it, had been amongst the fascinations of her presence. It was upon a Sunday evening, if such conjectures can be trusted, that the spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a brain complaint which had hitherto slumbered within her. She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of a laboring man, the father of a favorite female servant. The sun had set when she returned, in the company of this servant, through meadows reeking with exhalations after a fervent day. From that time she sickened. In such circumstances, a child, as young as myself, feels no anxieties. Looking upon medical men as people privileged, and naturally commissioned, to make war upon pain and sickness, I never had a misgiving about the result. I grieved, indeed, that my sister should lie in bed; I grieved still more to hear her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than as a night of trouble, on which the dawn would soon arise. O moment of darkness and delirium, when the elder nurse awakened me from that delusion, and launched God’s thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister MUST die! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it “cannot be remembered.” [6] Itself, as a rememberable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos. Blank anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I was, as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recall the circumstances of that time, when my agony was at its height, and hers, in another sense, was approaching. Enough it is to say that all was soon over; and, the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon her innocent face, sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation.
On the day after my sister’s death, whilst the sweet temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scrutiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once more. Not for the world would I have made this known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard of feelings that take the name of “sentimental,” nor dreamed of such a possibility. But grief, even in a child, hates the light, and shrinks from human eyes. The house was large enough to have two staircases; and by one of these I knew that about midday, when all would be quiet, (for the servants dined at one o’clock,) I could steal up into her chamber. I imagine that it was about an hour after high noon when I reached the chamber door: it was locked, but the key was not taken away. Entering, I closed the door so softly, that, although it opened upon a hall which ascended through all the stories, no echo ran along the silent walls. Then, turning round, I sought my sister’s face. But the bed had been moved, and the back was now turned towards myself. Nothing met my eyes but one large window, wide open, through which the sun of midsummer, at midday, was showering down torrents of splendor. The weather was dry, the sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible for eye to behold, or for heart to conceive, any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory of life.
Let me pause in approaching a remembrance so affecting for my own mind, to mention, that, in the “Opium Confessions,” I endeavored to explain the reason why death, other conditions remaining the same, is more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the year—so far, at least, as it is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season. The reason, as I there suggested, lies in the antagonism between the tropical redundancy of life in summer and the frozen sterilities of the grave. The summer we see, the grave we haunt with our thoughts; the glory is around us, the darkness is within us; and, the two coming into collision, each exalts the other into stronger relief. But, in my case, there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this intense power of vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of death. And, recollecting it, I am struck with the truth, that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of concrete objects, pass to us as involutes (if I may coin that word) in compound experiences incapable of being disentangled, than ever reach us directly, and in their own abstract shapes. It had happened, that amongst our vast nursery collection of books was the Bible, illustrated with many pictures. And in long dark evenings, as my three sisters, with myself, sat by the firelight round the guard [7] of our nursery, no book was so much in request among us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music. Our younger nurse, whom we all loved, would sometimes, according to her simple powers, endeavor to explain what we found obscure. We, the children, were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness: the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by firelight suited our evening state of feelings; and they suited, also, the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, the story of a just man,—man, and yet not man, real above all things, and yet shadowy above all things,—who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine, slept upon our minds like early dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and all these differences (as it happens) express themselves, more or less, in varying relations to the great accidents and powers of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria— those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the disciples plucking the ears of corn—that must be summer; but, above all, the very name of Palm Sunday (a festival in the English church) troubled me like an anthem. “Sunday!” what was that? That was the day of peace which masked another peace deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. “Palms!” what were they? That was an equivocal word; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed the pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature, expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does not suffice; it was not merely by the peace and by the summer, by the deep sound of rest below all rest and of ascending glory, that I had been haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to those deep images both in time and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at hand when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that Sunday was near in place to Jerusalem. What then was Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the omphalos (navel) or physical centre of the earth? Why should that affect me? Such a pretension had once been made for Jerusalem, and once for a Grecian city; and both pretensions had become ridiculous, as the figure of the planet became known. Yes; but if not of the earth, yet of mortality; for earth’s tenant, Jerusalem, had now become the omphalos and absolute centre. Yet how? There, on the contrary, it was, as we infants understood, that mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but, for that very reason, there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest crater. There it was, indeed, that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but, for that reason, there also it was that the divine had been swallowed up by the abyss; the lesser star could not rise before the greater should submit to eclipse. Summer, therefore, had connected itself with death, not merely as a mode of antagonism, but also as a phenomenon brought into intricate relations with death by scriptual scenery and events.
Out of this digression, for the purpose of showing how inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled with those of summer, as connected with Palestine and Jerusalem, let me come back to the bed chamber of my sister. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned around to the corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure; there the angel face; and, as people usually fancy, it was said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not? The forehead, indeed,—the serene and noble forehead,—that might be the same; but the frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid palm to palm, as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish,—could these be mistaken for life? Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it was not. I stood checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and, whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow—the saddest that ear ever heard. It was a wind that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, upon summer days, when the sun is about the hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, [8] but saintly swell: it is in this world the one great audible symbol of eternity. And three times in my life have I happened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances —namely, when standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day.
Instantly, when my ear caught this vast Aeolian intonation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister’s face, instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on forever and ever. Frost gathering frost, some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them; shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept—for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing, as before, close to my sister’s bed.
I have reason to believe that a very long interval had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned to myself, there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed; for, if any body had detected me, means would have been taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, therefore, I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, and slunk, like a guilty thing, with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me; thus mutilated was the parting which should have lasted forever; tainted thus with fear was that farewell sacred to love and grief, to perfect love and to grief that could not be healed.
O Abasuerus, everlasting Jew! [9] fable or not a fable, thou, when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe,—thou, when first flying through the gates of Jerusalem, and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee,—couldst not more certainly in the words of Christ have read thy doom of endless sorrow, than I when passing forever from my sister’s room. The worm was at my heart; and, I may say, the worm that could not die. Man is doubtless one by some subtle nexus, some system of links, that we cannot perceive, extending from the new-born infant to the superannuated dotard; but, as regards many affections and passions incident to his nature at different stages, he is not one, but an intermitting creature, ending and beginning anew: the unity of man, in this respect, is coextensive only with the particular stage to which the passion belongs. Some passions, as that of sexual love, are celestial by one half of their origin, animal and earthly by the other half. These will not survive their own appropriate stage. But love, which is altogether holy, like that between two children, is privileged to revisit by glimpses the silence and the darkness of declining years; and, possibly, this final experience in my sister’s bed room, or some other in which her innocence was concerned, may rise again for me to illuminate the clouds of death.
On the day following this which I have recorded came a body of medical men to examine the brain and the particular nature of the complaint, for in some of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. An hour after the strangers had withdrawn, I crept again to the room; but the door was now locked, the key had been taken away, and I was shut out forever.
Then came the funeral. I, in the ceremonial character of mourner, was carried thither. I was put into a carriage with some gentlemen whom I did not know. They were kind and attentive to me; but naturally they talked of things disconnected with the occasion, and their conversation was a torment. At the church, I was told to hold a white handkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy! What need had he of masks or mockeries, whose heart died within him at every word that was uttered? During that part of the service which passed within the church, I made an effort to attend; but I sank back continually into my own solitary darkness, and I heard little consciously, except some fugitive strains from the sublime chapter of St. Paul, which in England is always read at burials. [10]
Lastly came that magnificent liturgical service which the English church performs at the side of the grave; for this church does not forsake her dead so long as they continue in the upper air, but waits for her last “sweet and solemn [11] farewell” at the side of the grave. There is exposed once again, and for the last time, the coffin. All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of age, and the day of departure from earth—records how shadowy! and dropped into darkness as if messages addressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the heart with volleying discharges, peal after peal, from the final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into its home; it has disappeared from all eyes but those that look down into the abyss of the grave. The sacristan stands ready, with his shovel of earth and stones. The priest’s voice is heard once more,—earth to earth,— and immediately the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the coffin; ashes to ashes—and again the killing sound is heard; dust to dust— and the farewell volley announces that the grave, the coffin, the face are sealed up forever and ever.
Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the very foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame. And, ten years afterwards, I used to throw my self-reproaches with regard to that infirmity into this shape, viz., that if I were summoned to seek aid for a perishing fellow-creature, and that I could obtain that aid only by facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces, I might, perhaps, shrink basely from the duty. It is true that no such case had ever actually occurred; so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But, to feel a doubt, was to feel condemnation; and the crime that might have been was, in my eyes, the crime that had been. Now, however, all was changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister’s memory, in one hour I received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own nature, in a service of love—yes, slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she advanced, bleating clamorously, until he followed her and rescued her beloved. Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand sneering faces would not have troubled me now in any office of tenderness to my sister’s memory. Ten legions would not have repelled me from seeking her, if there had been a chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost upon me. Laughter! I valued it not. And when I was taunted insultingly with “my girlish tears,” that word “girlish” had no sting for me, except as a verbal echo to the one eternal thought of my heart—that a girl was the sweetest thing which I, in my short life, had known; that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with beauty, and had opened to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love, from which, in this world, I was to drink no more.
Now began to unfold themselves the consolations of solitude, those consolations which only I was destined to taste; now, therefore, began to open upon me those fascinations of solitude, which, when acting as a coagency with unresisted grief, end in the paradoxical result of making out of grief itself a luxury; such a luxury as finally becomes a snare, overhanging life itself, and the energies of life, with growing menaces. All deep feelings of a chronic class agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and are fed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling! and all three—love, grief, religion—are haunters of solitary places. Love, grief, and the mystery of devotion,—what were these without solitude? All day long, when it was not impossible for me to do so, I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house or in the neighboring fields. The awful stillness oftentimes of summer noons, when no winds were abroad, the appealing silence of gray or misty afternoons,—these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods, into the desert air, I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in them. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. Obstinately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny, sweeping them forever with my eyes, and searching them for one angelic face that might, perhaps, have permission to reveal itself for a moment.
At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious grief, that grasped at what it could not obtain, the faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight elements, and grouping them after the yearnings of the heart, grew upon me in morbid excess. And I recall at the present moment one instance of that sort, which may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty.
On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church: it was a church on the ancient model of England, having aisles, galleries, [12] organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of “all sick persons and young children,” and that he would “show his pity upon all prisoners and captives,” I wept in secret; and raising my streaming eyes to the upper windows of the galleries, saw, on days when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light; emblazonries of heavenly illumination (from the sun) mingling with the earthly emblazonries (from art and its gorgeous coloring) of what is grandest in man. There were the apostles that had trampled upon earth, and the glories of earth, out of celestial love to man. There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through flames, through torments, and through armies of fierce, insulting faces. There were the saints who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from some accompaniment in the bass, I saw through the wide central field of the window, where the glass was uncolored, white, fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky: were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud, immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and shaped itself into visions of beds with white lawny curtains; and in the beds lay sick children, dying children, that were tossing in anguish, and weeping clamorously for death. God, for some mysterious reason, could not suddenly release them from their pain; but he suffered the beds, as it seemed, to rise slowly through the clouds; slowly the beds ascended into the chambers of the air; slowly, also, his arms descended from the heavens, that he and his young children, whom in Palestine, once and forever, he had blessed, though they must pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of separation, might yet meet the sooner. These visions were self-sustained. These visions needed not that any sound should speak to me, or music mould my feelings. The hint from the litany, the fragment from the clouds,—those and the storied windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. And oftentimes in anthems, when the mighty instrument threw its vast columns of sound, fierce yet melodious, over the voices of the choir,—high in arches, when it seemed to rise, surmounting and overriding the strife of the vocal parts, and gathering by strong coercion the total storm into unity,—sometimes I seemed to rise and walk triumphantly upon those clouds which, but a moment before, I had looked up to as mementoes of prostrate sorrow; yes, sometimes under the transfigurations of music, felt of grief itself as of a fiery chariot for mounting victoriously above the causes of grief.
God speaks to children, also, in dreams and by the oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above all things, when made vocal to the meditative heart by the truths and services of a national church, God holds with children “communion undisturbed.” Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. Even a little child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that, if he should be summoned to travel into God’s presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls or fascinates a child’s heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude, through which already he has passed, and of another solitude, deeper still, through which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude—prefiguration of another.
O burden of solitude, that cleavest to man through every stage of his being! in his birth, which has been—in his life, which is—in his death, which shall be-mighty and essential solitude! that wast, and art, and art to be; thou broodest, like the Spirit of God moving upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself the principles of all things, solitude for the meditating child is the Agrippa’s mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude of millions who, with hearts welling forth love, have none to love them. Deep is the solitude of those who, under secret griefs, have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those who, fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is that which broods over childhood under the passion of sorrow—bringing before it, at intervals, the final solitude which watches for it, and is waiting for it within the gates of death. O mighty and essential solitude, that wast, and art, and art to be, thy kingdom is made perfect in the grave; but even over those that keep watch outside the grave, like myself, an infant of six years old, thou stretchest out a sceptre of fascination.
NOTES
1 As occasions arise in these Sketches, when, merely for the purposes of intelligibility, it becomes requisite to call into notice such personal distinctions in my family as otherwise might be unimportant, I here record the entire list of my brothers and sisters, according to their order of succession; and Miltonically I include myself; having surely as much logical right to count myself in the series of my own brothers as Milton could have to pronounce Adam the goodliest of his own sons. First and last, we counted as eight children, viz., four brothers and four sisters, though never counting more than six living at once, viz., 1. William, older than myself by more than five years; 2. Elizabeth; 3. Jane, who died in her fourth year; 4. Mary; 5. myself, certainly not the goodliest man of men since born my brothers; 6. Richard, known to us all by the household name of Pink, who in his after years tilted up and down what might then be called his Britannic majesty’s oceans (viz., the Atlantic and Pacific) in the quality of midshipman, until Waterloo in one day put an extinguisher on that whole generation of midshipmen, by extinguishing all further call for their services; 7. a second Jane; 8. Henry, a posthumous child, who belonged to Brazennose College, Oxford, and died about his twenty-sixth year.
2 Cicero, in a well-known passage of his “Ethics”, speaks of trade as irredeemably base, if petty, but as not so absolutely felonious if wholesale.
3 It is true that in those days paregoric elixir was occasionally given to children in colds; and in this medicine there is a small proportion of laudanum. But no medicine was ever administered to any member of our nursery except under medical sanction; and this, assuredly, would not have been obtained to the exhibition of laudanum in a case such as mine. For I was then not more that twenty-one months old: at which age the action of opium is capricious, and therefore perilous.
4 “Aureola.”—The aureola is the name given in the “Legends of the Christian Saints” to that golden diadem or circlet of supernatural light (that glory, as it is commonly called in English) which, amongst the great masters of painting in Italy, surrounded the heads of Christ and of distinguished saints.
5 “The astonishment of science.”—Her medical attendants were Dr. Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspondent of Condorcet, D’Alembert, &c., and Mr. Charles White, the most distinguished surgeon at that time in the north of England. It was he who pronounced her head to be the finest in its development of any that he had ever seen—an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with the subject may be presumed from this, that, at so early a stage of such inquiries, he had published a work on human craniology, supported by measurement of heads selected from all varieties of the human species. Meantime, as it would grieve me that any trait of what might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will admit that my sister died of hydrocephalus; and it has been often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect in cases of that class is altogether morbid— forced on, in fact, by the mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a possibility, the very opposite order of relation between the disease and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect; but, inversely, this growth of the intellect coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the capacities of the physical structure, may have caused the disease.
6 “I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony which cannot be remembered.”
Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge’s Remorse.
7 “The guard.”—I know not whether the word is a local one in this sense. What I mean is a sort of fender, four or five feet high, which locks up the fire from too near an approach on the part of children.
8 “Memnonian.”—For the sake of many readers, whose hearts may go along earnestly with a record of infant sorrow, but whose course of life has not allowed them much leisure for study, I pause to explain—that the head of Memnon, in the British Museum, that sublime head which wears upon its lips a smile coextensive with all time and all space, an Aeonian smile of gracious love and Pan-like mystery, the most diffusive and pathetically divine that the hand of man has created, is represented, on the authority of ancient traditions, to have uttered at sunrise, or soon after as the sun’s rays had accumulated heat enough to rarefy the air within certain cavities in the bust, a solemn and dirge-like series of intonations; the simple explanation being, in its general outline, this— that sonorous currents of air were produced by causing chambers of cold and heavy air to press upon other collections of air, warmed, and therefore rarefied, and therefore yielding readily to the pressure of heavier air. Currents being thus established by artificial arrangements of tubes, a certain succession of notes could be concerted and sustained. Near the Red Sea lies a chain of sand hills, which, by a natural system of grooves inosculating with each other, become vocal under changing circumstances in the position of the sun, &c. I knew a boy who, upon observing steadily, and reflecting upon a phenomenon that met him in his daily experience, viz., that tubes, through which a stream of water was passing, gave out a very different sound according to the varying slenderness or fulness of the current, devised an instrument that yielded a rude hydraulic gamut of sounds; and, indeed, upon this simple phenomenon is founded the use and power of the stethoscope. For exactly as a thin thread of water, trickling through a leaden tube, yields a stridulous and plaintive sound compared with the full volume of sound corresponding to the full volume of water, on parity of principles, nobody will doubt that the current of blood pouring through the tubes of the human frame will utter to the learned ear, when armed with the stethoscope, an elaborate gamut or compass of music recording the ravages of disease, or the glorious plenitudes of health, as faithfully as the cavities within this ancient Memnonian bust reported this mighty event of sunrise to the rejoicing world of light and life; or, again, under the sad passion of the dying day, uttered the sweet requiem that belonged to its departure.
9 “Everlasting Jew.”—Der ewige Jude—which is the common German expression for “The Wandering Jew,” and sublimer even than our own.
10 First Epistle to Corinthians, chap. xv., beginning at ver. 20
11 This beautiful expression, I am pretty certain, must belong to Mrs. Trollope; I read it, probably, in a tale of hers connected with the backwoods of America, where the absence of such a farewell must unspeakably aggravate the gloom at any rate belonging to a household separation of that eternal character occurring amongst the shadows of those mighty forests.
12 “Galleries.”—These, though condemned on some grounds by the restorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless, this one advantage—that, when the height of a church is that dimension which most of all expresses its sacred character, galleries expound and interpret that height.
