Henry Brocken Read online

  I

  _Oh, what land is the Land of Dream?_

  --WILLIAM BLAKE.

  I lived, then, in the great world once, in an old, roomy house besidea little wood of larches, with an aunt of the name of Sophia. Myfather and mother died a few days before my fourth birthday, so that Ican conjure up only fleeting glimpses of their faces by which toremember what love was then lost to me. Both were youthful at death,but my Aunt Sophia was ever elderly. She was keen, and just, seldomless than kind; but a child was to her something of a little animal,and it was nothing more. In consequence, well fed, warmly clad, and infreedom, I grew up almost in solitude between my angels, hearkeningwith how simple a curiosity to that everlasting warfare of persuasionand compulsion, terror and delight.

  Which of them it was that guided me, before even I could read, to thelittle room dark with holly trees that had been of old my uncle'slibrary, I know not. Perhaps at the instant it chanced there hadfallen a breathless truce between them, and I being solitary, my owninstinct took me. But having once found that pictured haven, I hadfound somewhat of content.

  I think half my youthful days passed in that low, book-walled chamber.The candles I burned through those long years of evening would deckAlps' hugest fir; the dust I disturbed would very easily fill againthe measure that some day shall contain my own; and the small studiousthumbmarks that paced, as if my footprints, leaf by leaf of that longjourney, might be the history of life's experience in little,--fromclearer, to clear, to faint--how very faint at last!

  I do not remember ever to have been discovered in this retreat. I was(by nature) prompt at meals, and wary to be in bed at my hour, howevertransitory its occupation might be. Indeed, I very well recollectdawn painting the page my eyes dwelt on, surprising me with itsmystery and stealth in a house as silent as the grave.

  Thus entertained then by insubstantial society I grew up, and began tobe old, before I had yet learned age is disastrous. And it was there,in that cold, bright chamber, one snowy twilight, first suddenly awokein me an imperative desire for distant lands.

  Even while little else than a child I had begun to cast my mind totravel. I doubt if ever Columbus suffered such vexation from an itchto be gone.

  But whither?

  Now, it seemed clear to me after long brooding and musing that howeverbeautiful were these regions of which I never wearied to read, andhowever wild and faithful and strange and lovely the people of thebooks, somewhere the former must remain yet, somewhere, in immortalityserene, dwell they whom so many had spent life in dreaming of, andwriting about.

  In fact, take it for all in all, what could these authors have beenat, if they laboured from dawn to midnight, from laborious midnight todawn, merely to tell of what never was, and never by any chance couldbe? It was heaven-clear to me, solitary and a dreamer; let me but gainthe key, I would soon unlock that Eden garden-door. Somewhere yet, Iwas sure, Imogen's mountains lift their chill summits into heaven;over haunted sea-sands Ariel flits; at his webbed casement next thestars Faust covets youth, till the last trump shall ring him out ofdream.

  It was on a blue March morning, with all the trees of my aunt's woodsin a pale-green tumult of wind, that, quite unwittingly, I set out ona journey that has not yet come to an end.

  There was a hint in the air at my waking, I fancied, not quite of mereearth, the perfume of the banners of Flora, of the mould where inmelting snow the crocus blows. I looked from my window, and thewestern clouds drew gravely and loftily in the illimitable air towardsthe whistling house. Strange trumpets pealed in the wind. Even mypoor, aged Aunt Sophia had changed with the universal change; hergreat, solitary face reminded me of some long-forgotten April.

  And a little before eleven I saddled my uncle's old mare Rosinante(poor female jade to bear a name so glorious!), and rode out (as forhow many fruitless seasons I had ridden out!), down the stony,nettle-narrowed path that led for a secret mile or more, beneathlindens, towards the hills.