THE HOUSE OF QUIET
The House of Quiet
THE
HOUSE OF QUIET
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
By
Arthur Christopher Benson
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1907
Copyrighted by
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
1907
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
I have been reading this morning a verypathetic and characteristic document. It isa paper that has lurked for years in an old collectionof archives, a preface, sketched by agreat writer, who is famous wherever the Englishlanguage is spoken or read, for the secondedition of a noble book. The book, on its firstappearance, was savagely and cruelly attacked;and the writer of it, hurt and wounded by amass of hateful and malevolent criticisms, piledtogether by an envious and narrow mind, tried,with a miserable attempt at jaunty levity, towrite an answer to the vicious assailant. Thisanswer is deeply pathetic, because, behind thedesperate parade of cheerful insouciance, oneseems to hear the life-blood falling, drop bydrop; the life-blood of a dauntless and purespirit, whose words had been so deftly twistedand satanically misrepresented as to seem theutterances of a sensual and cynical mind.
In deference to wise and faithful advice, thepreface was withheld and suppressed; and oneis thankful for that; and the episode is further[vi]a tender lesson for all who have faithfully triedto express the deepest thoughts of their heart,frankly and sincerely, never to make the leastattempt to answer, or apologise, or explain.If one’s book, or poem, or picture survives,that is the best of all answers. If it does notsurvive, well, one has had one’s say, thoughtone’s thought, done one’s best to enlighten, tocontribute, to console; and, like millions ofother human utterances, the sound is lost uponthe wind, the thought, like a rainbow radiance,has shone and vanished upon the cloud.
The book which is here presented has had itsshare both of good and evil report; and it fellso far short of even its own simple purpose,that I should be the last to hold that it hadbeen blamed unduly. I have no sort of intentionof answering my critics; but I would wishto make plain what the book itself perhapsfails to make plain, namely, what my purposein writing it was. The book grew rather thanwas made. It was, from the first, meant as amessage to the weak rather than as a challengeto the strong. There is a theory of life,wielded like a cudgel by the hands of the merryand high-hearted, that the whole duty of manis to dash into the throng, to eat and drink, to[vii]love and