And All Because Of The Illusion
That We Shall See Them As They Were - That Time Has Stood Still
Waiting
For our return, and by and by, to our surprise and
grief, we discover that it is not so; that
The dear friends of
other days, long unvisited but unforgotten, have become
strangers. This human loss is felt even more in the case of a
return to some small centre, a village or hamlet where we knew
every one, and our intimacy with the people has produced the
sense of being one in blood with them. It is greatest of all
when we return to a childhood's or boyhood's home. Many
writers have occupied themselves with this mournful theme, and
I imagine that a person of the proper Amiel-like tender and
melancholy moralizing type of mind, by using his own and his
friends' experiences, could write a charmingly sad and pretty
book on the subject.
The really happy returns of this kind must be exceedingly
rare. I am almost surprised to think that I am able to recall
as many as two, but they hardly count, as in both instances
the departure or exile from home happens at so early a time of
life that no recollections of the people survived - nothing, in
fact, but a vague mental picture of the place. One was of a
business man I knew in London, who lost his early home in a
village in the Midlands, as a boy of eight or nine years of
age, through the sale of the place by his father, who had
become impoverished. The boy was trained to business in
London, and when a middle-aged man, wishing to retire and
spend the rest of his life in the country, he revisited his
native village for the first time, and dicovered to his joy
that he could buy back the old home. He was, when I last saw
him, very happy in its possession.
The other case I will relate more fully, as it is a very
curious one, and came to my knowledge in a singular way.
At a small station near Eastleigh a man wearing a highly
pleased expression on his face entered the smoking-carriage in
which I was travelling to London. Putting his bag on the
rack, he pulled out his pipe and threw himself back in his
seat with a satisfied air; then, looking at me and catching my
eye, he at once started talking. I had my newspaper, but
seeing him in that overflowing mood I responded readily
enough, for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy and
who and what he was. Not a tradesman nor a bagman, and not a
farmer, though he looked like an open-air man; nor could I
form a guess from his speech and manner as to his native
place. A robust man of thirty-eight or forty, with blue eyes
and a Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman, and yet he
struck me as most un-English in his lively, almost eager
manner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in
his speech. From time to time his face lighted up, when,
looking to the window, his eyes rested on some pretty scene - a
glimpse of stately old elm trees in a field where cattle were
grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk stream, the
paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of some
tree-hidden village. When he discovered that these hills and
streams and rustic villages had as great a charm for me as for
himself, that I knew and loved the two or three places he
named in a questioning way, he opened his heart and the secret
of his present happiness.
He was a native of the district, born at a farmhouse of which
his father in succession to his grandfather had been the
tenant. It was a small farm of only eighty-five acres, and as
his father could make no more than a bare livelihood out of
it, he eventually gave it up when my informant was but three
years old, and selling all he had, emigrated to Australia.
Nine years later he died, leaving a numerous family poorly
provided for; the home was broken up and boys and girls had to
go out and face the world. They had somehow all got on very
well, and his brothers and sisters were happy enough out
there, Australians in mind, thoroughly persuaded that theirs
was the better land, the best country in the world, and with
no desire to visit England. He had never felt like that;
somehow his father's feeling about the old country had taken
such a hold of him that he never outlived it - never felt at
home in Australia, however successful he was in his affairs.
The home feeling had been very strong in his father; his
greatest delight was to sit of an evening with his children
round him and tell them of the farm and the old farm-house
where he was born and had lived so many years, and where some
of them too had been born. He was never tired of talking of
it, of taking them by the hand, as it were, and leading them
from place to place, to the stream, the village, the old stone
church, the meadows and fields and hedges, the deep shady
lanes, and, above all, to the dear old ivied house with its
gables and tall chimneys. So many times had his father
described it that the old place was printed like a map on his
mind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even
after the image of his boyhood's home in Australia had become
faded and pale. With that mental picture to guide him he
believed that he could go to that angle by the porch where the
flycatchers bred every year and find their nest; where in the
hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the elders
grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and
watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse,
every room and passage in the old house.
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