Escape And Other Essays (Paperback)

ESCAPE AND OTHER ESSAYS BY ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON I love people that leave some trace of their journey behind them, and I have strength enough to advise you to do so while you can. THOMAS GRAY. NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1915 Copyright, 1915, by THE CEurtniY Co. Pu lMhed, October, J. 9JS TABLE OF CONTENTS OIIAPTJMR PAGK I ESCAPE 3 II LITERATURE AND LIFE 25 III THE NEW POETS 47 IV WALT WHITMAN 63 V OITARM, 91 VI SUNSET 115 VII TTT33 HOUSE OP PENGERS1OK 129 VIII VILLAGES 139 IX DREAMS 153 X THE VISITANT 175 XI THAT OTHER ONE . 187 XII SCHOOLDAYS 201 XITI AUTHORSHIP ... 229 XTV HERB MOLY ANT HEARTSEASE 253 XV BEHOLD, THIS DREAMER COMETH .... 279 NOTE I desire to record my obligations to the Editor of the Century Magazine, and to the Editor of the Comhttl Magazine, for their permission to include in this volume certain essays which appeared first in their pages. A. C. B. INTRODUCTION I WALKED to-day down by the riverside. The Cam is a stream much slighted by the lover of wild and romantic scenery and its chief merit, in the eyes of our boys, is that it approaches more nearly to a canal in its straightness and the delib eration of its slow lapse than many more famous floods and is therefore more adapted for the ma noeuvcrs of eight-oared boats But it is a beauti ful place, I am sure and my ghost will certainly walk there, if our loves remain, as Browning says, both for the sake of old memories and f rjbhe love of its own sweet peaccablencss. I passed out of the town, out of the straggling suburbs, away from tall, puffing chimneys, and under the clanking railway bridge and then at once the scene opens, wide pasture-lands on either side, and rows of old willows, the gnarled trunks holding uptheir clus tered rods. There on the other side of the stream rises the charming village of Fen Ditton, perched vii Introduction on a low ridge near the water, with church and vicarage and irregular street, and the little red gabled Hall looking over its barns and stacks. More and more willows, and then, lying back, an old grange, called Poplar Hall, among high-stand ing trees and then a little weir, where the falling water makes a pleasant sound, and a black-timbered lock, with another old house near by, a secluded re treat for the bishops of Ely in medieval times. The bishop came thither by boat, no doubt, and abode there for a few quiet weeks, when the sun lay hot over the plain and a little further down is a tiny village called Horningsea, with a battlcmented church among orchards and thatched houses, with its own disused wharf a place which gives me the sense of a bygone age as much as any hamlet I know. Then presently the interminable fen stretches for miles and miles in every direction you can see, from the high green flood-banks of the river, the endless lines of watercourses and far off clumps of trees leagues away, and perhaps the great tower of Ely, blue on the horizon, with the vast spacious sky over-arching all. If thai is not a beautiful place in its width, its greenness, its unbroken silence, I do not know what beauty is viii Introduction Nothing that historians call an event has ever happened there. It is a place that has just drifted out of the old lagoon life of the past, the life of reed-beds and low-lying islands, of marsh-fowl and fishes, into a hardly less peaceful life of cornfield and pasture. No one goes there except on country business, no armies ever marshaledor fought there. The sun goes down in flame on the far horizon the wild duck fly over and settle in the pools, the flowers rise to life year by year on the edges of slow water-courses the calm mystery of it can be seen and remembered but it can hardly be told in words. Now side by side with that I will set another picture of a different kind. A week or two ago I was traveling up North. The stations we passed through were many of them full of troops, the trains were crammed with sol diers, and very healthy and happy they looked...