



Produced by Don Lainson and Charles Aldarondo





AT LARGE

By Arthur Christopher Benson


Haec ego mecum


1908


Contents

     I.     THE SCENE
     II.    CONTENTMENT
     III.   FRIENDSHIP
     IV.    HUMOUR
     V.     TRAVEL
     VI.    SPECIALISM
     VII.   OUR LACK OF GREAT MEN
     VIII.  SHYNESS
     IX.    EQUALITY
     X.     THE DRAMATIC SENSE
     XI.    KELMSCOTT AND WILLIAM MORRIS
     XII.   A SPEECH DAY
     XIII.  LITERARY FINISH
     XIV.   A MIDSUMMER DAY'S DREAM
     XV.    SYMBOLS
     XVI.   OPTIMISM
     XVII.  JOY
     XVIII. THE LOVE OF GOD
     EPILOGUE





I. THE SCENE


Yes, of course it is an experiment! But it is made in corpore vili.
It is not irreparable, and there is no reason, more's the pity, why I
should not please myself. I will ask--it is a rhetorical question which
needs no answer--what is a hapless bachelor to do, who is professionally
occupied and tied down in a certain place for just half the year? What
is he to do with the other half? I cannot live on in my college rooms,
and I am not compelled to do so for economy. I have near relations and
many friends, at whose houses I should be made welcome. But I cannot be
like the wandering dove, who found no repose. I have a great love of my
independence and my liberty. I love my own fireside, my own chair, my
own books, my own way. It is little short of torture to have to conform
to the rules of other households, to fall in with other people's
arrangements, to throw my pen down when the gong sounds, to make myself
agreeable to fortuitous visitors, to be led whither I would not. I do
this, a very little, because I do not desire to lose touch with my kind;
but then my work is of a sort which brings me into close touch day after
day with all sorts of people, till I crave for recollection and repose;
the prospect of a round of visits is one that fairly unmans me. No doubt
it implies a certain want of vitality, but one does not increase one's
vitality by making overdrafts upon it; and then too I am a slave to my
pen, and the practice of authorship is inconsistent with paying visits.
Of course the obvious remedy is marriage; but one cannot marry from
prudence, or from a sense of duty, or even to increase the birth-rate,
which I am concerned to see is diminishing. I am, moreover, to be
perfectly frank, a transcendentalist on the subject of marriage. I know
that a happy marriage is the finest and noblest thing in the world, and
I would resign all the conveniences I possess with the utmost readiness
for it. But a great passion cannot be the result of reflection, or of
desire, or even of hope. One cannot argue oneself into it; one must be
carried away. "You have never let yourself go," says a wise and gentle
aunt, when I bemoan my unhappy fate. To which I reply that I have never
done anything else. I have lain down in streamlets