Arthur Christopher Benson - The Thread of Gold

A. C. B.

CIRENCESTER, 8 th April 1907.

I am glad to have the opportunity of saying a few words in my own name about this book, because the original introduction seems to have misled some of my readers; and as I have had many kind, encouraging, and sacred messages about the book from very unexpected quarters, I should like to add a few further words of explanation.

One of the difficulties under which literary art seems to me to labour is that it feels bound to run in certain channels, to adopt stereotyped and conventional media of expression. What can be more conventional than the average play, or the average novel? People in real life do not behave or talk – at least, this is my experience – in the smallest degree as they behave or talk in novels or plays; life as a rule has no plot, and very few dramatic situations. In real life the adventures are scanty, and for most of us existence moves on in a commonplace and inconsequent way. Misunderstandings are not cleared up, complexities are not unravelled. I think it is time that more unconventional forms of expression should be discovered and used; and at least, we can try experiments; the experiment that I have here tried, is to present a sort of liber studiorum , a portfolio of sketches and impressions. The only coherence they possess is that, at the time when they were written, I was much preoccupied with the wonder as to whether an optimistic view of life was justified. The world is a very mysterious place, and at first sight it presents a sad scene of confusion. The wrong people often seem to be punished; blessings, such as those heaped upon the head of the patriarch Job, do not seem to be accumulated upon the righteous. In fact, the old epigram that prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity the blessing of the New, seems frequently justified. But, after all, the only soul-history that one knows well enough to say whether or not the experience of life is adapted to the qualities of the particular soul, is one's own history; and, speaking for myself, I can but say, looking back upon my life, that it does seem to have been regulated hitherto by a very tender and intimate kind of guidance, though I did not always see how delicate the adaptation of it was at the time. The idea of this book, that there is a certain golden thread of hope and love interwoven with all our lives, running consistently through the coarsest and darkest fabric, was what I set out to illustrate rather than to prove. Everything that bore upon this fact, while the book was being written, I tried to express as simply and as lucidly as I could. The people who have thought the book formless or lacking in structure, are perfectly right. It is not, and it did not set out to be, a finished picture, with a due subordination of groups and backgrounds. To me personally, though a finished picture is a beautiful and an admirable thing, the loose, unconsidered sketches and studies of an artist have a special charm. Of an artist, I say; have I then a claim to be considered an artist? I cannot answer that question, but I will go further and say that the sketches of the humblest amateur have an interest for me, which their finished pictures often lack. One sees a revelation of personality, one sees what sort of things strike an individual mind as beautiful, one sees the method with which it deals with artistic difficulties. The most interesting things of the kind I have ever seen are the portfolios of sketches by Leonardo da Vinci in the Royal library at Windsor; outlines of heads, features, flowers, backgrounds, strange engines of war, wings of birds – the débris , almost, of the studio – are there piled up in confusion. And in a lesser degree the same is true of all such collections, though perhaps this shows that one is more interested in personality than in artistic performance.

A good many people, too, have a gift for presenting a simple impression of a beautiful thing, who have not the patience or the power of combination necessary for working out a finished design; and surely it is foolish to let the convention of art overrule a man's capacities? To allow that, to acquiesce in silence, to say that because one cannot express a thing in a certain way, one will not express it at all, seems to me to be making an instinct into a moral sanction. One must express whatever one desires to express, as clearly and as beautifully as possible, and one must take one's chance as to whether it is a work of art. To hold one's tongue, if anything appears to be worth saying, because one does not know the exact code of the professionals, is as foolish as if a man born in a certain class of society were to say that he would never go to any social gathering except those of his precise social equals, because he was afraid of making mistakes of etiquette. Etiquette is not a matter of principle; it was not one of the things of which Moses saw the pattern in the Mount! The only rule is not to be pretentious or assuming, not to claim that one's efforts are necessarily worthy of admiration and attention.

There is a better reason too. Orthodoxy in art is merely compliance with the instinctive methods of great artists, and no one ever succeeded in art who did not make a method of his own. Originality is like a fountain-head of fresh water; orthodoxy is too often only the unimpeachable fluid of the water company. The best hope for the art and literature of a nation is that men should try to represent and express things that they have thought beautiful in an individual way. They do not always succeed, it is true; sometimes they fail for lack of force, sometimes for lack of a sympathetic audience. I have found, in the case of this book, a good deal of sincere sympathy; and where it fails, it fails through lack of force to express thoughts that I have felt with a profound intensity. I have had critics who have frankly disliked the book, and I do not in the least quarrel with them for expressing their opinion; but one does not write solely for the critics; and on the other hand, I can humbly and gratefully say that I have received many messages, of pleasure in, and even gratitude for, the book which leave me in no sort of doubt that it was worth writing; though I wish with all my heart that it had been worthier of its motive, and had been better able to communicate the delight of my visions and dreams.

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON.

MAGDALENE COLLEGE,

CAMBRIDGE, 24 th November 1906.

I have for a great part of my life desired, perhaps more than I have desired anything else, to make a beautiful book; and I have tried, perhaps too hard and too often, to do this, without ever quite succeeding; by that I mean that my little books, when finished, were not worthy to be compared with the hope that I had had of them. I think now that I tried to do too many things in my books, to amuse, to interest, to please persons who might read them; and I fear, too, that in the back of my mind there lay a thought, like a snake in its hole – the desire to show others how fine I could be. I tried honestly not to let this thought rule me; whenever it put its head out, I drove it back; but of course I ought to have waited till it came out, and then killed it, if I had only known how to do that; but I suppose I had a secret tenderness for the little creature as being indeed a part of myself.

But now I have hit upon a plan which I hope may succeed. I do not intend to try to be interesting and amusing, or even fine. I mean to put into my book only the things that appear to me deep and strange and beautiful; and I can happily say that things seem to me to be more and more beautiful every day. As when a man goes on a journey, and sees, in far-off lands, things that please him, things curious and rare, and buys them, not for himself or for his own delight, but for the delight of one that sits at home, whom he loves and thinks of, and wishes every day that he could see; – well, I will try to be like that. I will keep the thought of those whom I love best in my mind – and God has been very good in sending me many, both old and young, whom I love – and I will try to put down in the best words that I can find the things that delight me, not for my sake but for theirs. For one of the strangest things of all about beauty is, that it is often more clearly perceived when expressed by another, than when we see it for ourselves. The only difficulty that I see ahead is that many of the things that I love best and that give me the best joy, are things that cannot be told, cannot be translated into words: deep and gracious mysteries, rays of light, delicate sounds.