MY CONFIDENCES PRELIMINARY Rowfant: August 10, 1883. I HAVE often wished that I had kept a journal, as, if I had done so, I think it would have been interesting to the children, and perhaps to those who may come after them, for to them only it would have been addressed; but it is too late: I am fast growing old. Now, on this fine afternoon, far away from the distractions of the town, my thoughts my only company, when the woods are wearing the silence which August brings with it-now, as I look back, that gigantic and ever-growing monster, The Past (distance, middle distance, and even foreground), is an indistinct blur. In the dim vistas of memory, as a city that is dissolving into space, my life seems like a dream, lagging, yet fleeting; so vague that it might almost have been lived or dreamt by somebody else a vision from which it is hopeless to rescue aught worth preserving. Sometimes I B half wish-only half-that I could live it over again, and moralise the experience. Vesper admonuit, and in the face of what I have just said I will try to gather up a few of these far-away echoes of my vanishing Atlantis -the old times, the trials, the compensations. There is an excitement in hunting a recollection, even though it may elude us. There is nothing more agreeable than talking about oneself of all luxuries, it is the most enticing and the cheapest. May those that come after me not resent that I so indulged myself! There is another satisfaction. The little pleasures, now looked back upon, seem so passing sweet-and the minor miseries have become altogether amusing. I never had a good memory. It was always weak, and often treacherous; it is now weaker and more perfidious than ever. I believe it was at Greenwich Hospital, and in 1821, that the person whom I have known for so many years as myself first came into being. I do not know this as a positive fact, but I accept it as the wisest people accept a good many things-on authority. And let me say that I showed my sense thus early in life, and my appreciation of Horace's dictum, in the selection of my parents-for my father was a singularly upright and able man, and had considerable mental energy; my mother, of EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS 3 whom more hereafter, had a remarkable attractive ness. I have a distinct idea that as a little fellow I was made much of. For some time I was the youngest of the family, as Algernon was more than five years my junior. There were the usual tussles over Noah's Arks and for possession of the rockinghorse. I believe I was a cry-baby and mamma's darling. There is a humbling tradition that when Edward or Ellen teased me I ran to my mother. Whom have I to run to now? One of my earliest recollections is a large mezzotint engraving which hung in the nursery, Puck on a Toadstool, after Joshua Reynolds. This print was said to be the image of me; it is thought like my daughter Maud, who is aged three years and a half. I was pretty, and said what prejudiced people considered funny, freakish things, with little, eager glances; so much so that when I was not more than six years old my father, whose family geese were not swans, was struck by it, and took me in the yellow-bodied 'charrot,' hung high in air, to De Ville, the craniologist and lampmaker in the Strand. The sage discovered that my 'bump of gaiety and wit' was markedly developed. However this may have been, I do not think any record is preserved of my bons mots. But I was a pretty boy with an inquiring mind. I suppose it is not conceited to talk thus, especially as all is so changed. Past sixty, I am now a grizzled and discreet old fogey; moreover, At my back I alwaies hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near, And yet, perhaps because my mind may have aged more slowly than my body, I do not always exhibit that sobriety which is naturally looked for in elderly people. Perhaps this levity may be accounted for by a certain rigidity in some of my surroundings (a salutary environment); but, after all, it is not much more than a meek protest. When I was approaching fifty I had a more than usually acute attack of dyspepsia. On my partial recovery my aspect was more hungry than before; I had always been pale, but now the pallor was marked. But my appearance up to the present time has not been repulsive, and for this I thank God.2 1 Last year Alfred Tennyson, speaking of my personal appearance, said that I looked like a famished and avaricious Jew.' Now I demur to this. I confess that I have tried to cultivate that fine old gentlemanly vice, but entirely without success. I have never got beyond a timid and pitiful parsimony. It is only fair to add that he also said that, in his portrait by Millais, as rendered by Barlow's print, he himself was something between 'a prig and a scarecrow.' Now that is perfectly true. 2 Ealth, after personal appearance, is the greatest blessing as is,' as the barmaid said. |