|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 58
A lecturing tour to America was already planned, and October 7, 1883
is the last date from Cobham, "New York" succeeding it without any;
for Mr Arnold had the reprehensible and, in official persons, rare
habit of very constantly omitting dates, though not places. The St
Nicholas Club, "a delightful, poky, dark, exclusive little old club of
the Dutch families," is the only place in which he finds peace. For,
as one expected, the interviewers made life terrible. These American
letters are interesting reading enough, but naturally tend to be
little more than a replica of similar letters from other Englishmen
who have done the same thing. As has been quite frankly admitted here,
Mr Arnold never made any effort, and seldom seems to have been
independently prompted, to write what are called "amusing" letters: he
merely tells a plain tale of journeys, lectures, meals, persons,
scenery, manners and customs, etc. Chicago seems to have vindicated
its character for "character" by hospitably forcing him to eat dinner
and supper "on end," and by describing him in its newspapers as "an
elderly bird pecking at grapes on a trellis." The whole tour,
including a visit to Canada, lasted nearly five months, and
brought--not the profit which some people expected, but--a good sum,
with wrinkles as to more if the experiment were repeated. And when he
came back to England, the lectures were collected and printed.
In February 1885 we have, addressed to his eldest daughter, then
married and living in America, a definition of "real civilisation" as
the state "when the world does not begin till 8 P.M. and goes on from
that till 1 A.M., not later." This is, though doubtless jestful,
really a _point de rep�re_ for the manners of the later
nineteenth century as concerns a busy man who likes society. In the
eighteenth, and earlier in the nineteenth, men as busy as Mr Arnold
practically abstained from "the world" except quite rarely, while "the
world" was not busy. The dachshunds come in for frequent mention.
On a Sunday in May of this year comes the warning of "a horrid pain
across my chest," which, however, "Andrew Clark thinks [wrongly,
alas!] to be not heart" but indigestion. The _Discourses in
America_, for which their author had a great predilection, came out
later. In August the pain is mentioned again; and the subsequent
remark, "I was a little tired, but the cool champagne at dinner
brought me round," is another ominous hint that it was _not_
indigestion. Two of the most valuable of all the letters come in
October, one saying, "I think Oxford is still, on the whole, the place
in the world to which I am most attached" ["And so say all of us"];
the other, after some notice of the Corpus plate, telling how "I got
out to Hinksey and up the hill to within sight of the Cumnor firs. I
cannot describe the effect which this landscape always has upon me:
the hillside with its valleys, and Oxford in the great Thames valley
below." And this walk is again referred to later. He was pleased by a
requisition that he should stand yet again for the Poetry
Professorship, though of course he did not accede to it. And at the
beginning of winter he had a foreign mission (his last) to Berlin, to
get some information for the Government as to German school fees. He
was much lionised, and seems to have enjoyed himself very much during
his stay, the Crown Princess being specially gracious to him.
Nor was he long in England on his return, though long enough to bring
another mention of the chest pain, and an excellent definition of
education--would there were no worse!--"Reading five pages of the
Greek Anthology every day, and looking out all the words I do not
know." In February 1886 he was back again investigating the Swiss and
Bavarian school systems; and that amiable animal-worship of his
receives a fresh evidence in the mention and mourning of the death of
"dear Lola" (not Mont�s, but another; in short, a pony), with a sigh
for "a _m�che_ of her hair." The journey was finished by way of
France towards the end of March. At Hamburg Mr Arnold was "really [and
very creditably] glad to have had the opportunity of calling a man
Your Magnificence," that being, it seems, the proper official style in
addressing the burgomaster. And May took him back to America, to see
his married daughter and divers old friends. He remained there till
the beginning of September, improving, as he thought, in health, but
meeting towards the close an awkward bathing accident, which involved
no risk of drowning, but gave him a shock that was followed by a week
or two of troublesome attacks of pain across the chest. There is very
much in the letters of the time about the political crisis of 1886.
His retirement from official work came in November, and the letters
are fuller than ever of delight in the Cobham landscape.
But the warnings grew more frequent, and we know that long before this
he had had no delusions about their nature. Indeed, it is doubtful
whether he had ever had any, considering the fact of the malady, which
had, as he says in a singularly manly and dignified _commentatio
mortis_ dated January 29, 1887, struck down his father and
grandfather in middle life long before they came to his present age.
He "refuses every invitation to lecture or make addresses." The
letters of 1887, too, are very few, and contain little of interest,
except an indication of a visit to Fox How; while much the same may be
said of those, also few, from the early months of 1888. The last of
all contains a reference to _Robert Elsmere_. Five days later, on
April 15, a sudden exertion, it seems, brought on the fatal attack,
and he died. He had outlived his grand climacteric of sixty-three
(which he had thought would be "the end as well as the climax") by two
years and three months.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|