M. Roche. In the spring I returned home to Harrow,

going up each week to the classes ; and when these were over. Auntie told me that she thought all she could usefully do was done, and that it was time that I should try my wings alone. So well, however, had she succeeded in her aims, that my emancipation from the schoolroom was but the starting-point of more
54 ANNIE BESANT.
eager study, though now the study turned Into the lines of thought towards which my personal tendencies most attracted me. German I continued to read with a master, and music, under the marvellously able teach- ing of Mr. John Farmer, musical director of Harrow School, took up much of my time. My dear mother had a passion for music, and Beethoven and Bach were her favourite composers. There was scarcely a sonata of Beethoven's that I did not learn, scarcely a fugue of Bach's that I did not master. Mendelssohn's " Lieder " gave a lighter recreation, and many a happy evening did we spend, my mother and I, over the stately strains of the blind Titan, and the sweet melodies of the German wordless orator. Musical ^' At Homes," too, were favourite amusements at Harrow, and at these my facile fingers made me a welcome guest.
Thus set free from the schoolroom at 16^5, an only daughter, I could do with my time as I would, save for the couple of hours a day given to music, for the satisfaction of my mother. From then till I became engaged, just before I was 19, my life flowed on smoothly, one current visible to all and dancing in the sunlight, the other running underground, but full and deep and strong. As regards my outer life, no girl had a brighter, happier life than mine ; studying all the mornings and most of the after- noons in my own way, and spending the latter part of the day in games and walks and rides — varied with parties at which I was one of the merriest of guests. I practised archery so zealously that I carried up triumphantly as prize for the best score the first
GIRLHOOD. 55
ring I ever possessed, while croquet found me a most eager devotee. My darling mother certainly "spoiled" me, so far as were concerned all the small roughnesses of life. She never allov/ed a trouble of any kind to touch me, and cared only that all worries should fall on her, all joys on me. I know now what I never dreamed then, that her life was one of serious anxiety. The heavy burden of my brother's school and college life pressed on her constantly, and her need of money was often serious. A lawyer whom she trusted abso- lutely cheated her systematically, using for his own purposes the remittances she made for payment of liabilities, thus keeping upon her a constant drain. Yet for me all that was wanted was ever there. Was it a ball to which we were going .? I need never think of what I would wear till the time for dressing arrived, and there laid out ready for me was all I wanted, every detail complete from top to toe. No hand but hers must dress my hair, which, loosed, fell in dense curly masses nearly to my knees ; no hand but hers must fasten dress and deck with flowers, and if I sometimes would coaxingly ask if I might not help by sewing in laces, or by doing some trifle in aid, she would kiss me and bid me run to my books or my play, telling me that her only pleasure in life was caring for her " treasure." Alas ! how lightly we take the self- denying labour that makes life so easy, ere yet we have known what life means when the protecting mother- wing is withdrawn. So guarded and shielded had been my childhood and youth from every touch of pain and anxiety that love could bear for me, that I
56 ANNIE BESANT.
never dreamed that life might be a heavy burden, save as I saw it in the poor I was sent to help ; all the joy of those happy years I took, not ungratefully I hope, but certainly with as glad unconsciousness of anything rare in it as I took the sunlight. Passionate love, indeed, I gave to my darling, but I never knew all I owed her till I passed out of her tender guardian- ship, till I left my mother's home. Is such training wise ? I am not sure. It makes the ordinary rough- nesses of life come with so stunning a shock, when one goes out into the world, that one is apt to question whether some earlier initiation into life's sterner mys- teries would not be wiser for the young. Yet it is a fair thing to have that joyous youth to look back upon, and at least it is a treasury of memory that no thief can steal in the struggles of later life. " Sunshine " they called me in those bright days of merry play and earnest study. But that study showed the bent of my thought and linked itself to the hidden life ; for the Fathers of the early Christian Church now became my chief companions, and I pored over the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistles of Polycarp, Bar- nabas, Ignatius, and Clement, the commentaries of Chrysostom, the confessions of Augustine. With these I studied the writings of Pusey, Liddon, and Keble, with many another smaller light, joying in the great conception of a Catholic Church, lasting through the centuries, built on the foundations of apostles and of martyrs, stretching from the days of Christ Himself down to our own — " One Lord, one Faith one Baptism," and I myself a child of
GIRLHOOD. 57
that Holy Church. The hidden life grew stronger, constantly fed by these streams of study ; weekly communion became the centre round which my de- votional life revolved, with its ecstatic meditation, its growing intensity of conscious contact with the Divine ; I fasted, according to the ordinances of the Church ; occasionally flagellated myself to see if I could bear physical pain, should I be fortunate enough ever to tread the pathway trodden by the saints ; and ever the Christ was the figure round which clustered all my hopes and longings, till I often felt that the very passion of my devotion would draw Him down from His throne in heaven, present visibly in form as I felt Him invisibly in spirit. To serve Him through His Church became more and more a definite ideal in my life, and my thoughts began to turn towards some kind of " religious life," in which I might prove my love by sacrifice and turn my passionate gratitude into active service.
Looking back to-day over my life, I see that its keynote — through all the blunders, and the blind mistakes, and clumsy follies — has been this longing for sacrifice to something felt as greater than the self. It has been so strong and so persistent that I recognise it now as a tendency brought over from a previous life and dominating the present one ; and this is shown by the fact that to follow it is not the act of a deliberate and conscious will, forcing self into submission and giving up with pain something the heart desires, but the following it is a joyous springing forward along
58 ANNIE BESANT.
the easiest path, the " sacrifice " being the supremely attractive thing, not to make which would.be to deny the deepest longings of the soul, and to feel oneself polluted and dishonoured. And it is here that the mis- judgment comes in of many generous hearts who have spoken sometimes lately so strongly in my praise. For the efForts to serve have not been painful acts of self- denial, but the yielding to an overmastering desire. We do not praise the mother who, impelled by her protecting love, feeds her crying infant and stills its wailings at her breast ; rather should we blame her if she turned aside from its weeping to play with some toy. And so with all those whose ears are opened to the wailings of the great orphan Humanity ; they are less to be praised for helping than they would be to be blamed if they stood aside. I now know that it is those wailings that have stirred my heart through life, and that I brought with me the ears open to hear them from previous lives of service paid to men. It was those lives that drew for the child the alluring pictures of martyrdom, breathed into the girl the passion of devotion, sent the woman out to face scoff and odium, and drove her finally into the Theosophy that rationalises sacrifice, while opening up possibilities of service beside which all other hopes grow pale.
The Easter of 1866 was a memorable date in my life. I was introduced to the clergyman I married, and I met and conquered my first religious doubt. A little mission church had been opened the pre- ceding Christmas in a very poor district of Clapham.
GIRLHOOD. 59
My grandfather's house was near at hand, in Albert Square, and a favourite aunt and myself devoted our- selves a good deal to this little church, as enthusiastic girls and women will. At Easter we decorated it with spring flowers, with dewy primroses and fragrant violets, and with the yellow bells of the wild daffodil, to the huge delight of the poor who crowded in, and of the little London children who had, many of them, never seen a flower. Here I met the Rev. Frank Besant, a young Cambridge man, who had just taken orders, and was serving the little mission church as deacon ; strange that at the same time I should meet the man I was to marry, and the doubts which were to break the marriage tie. For in the Holy Week preceding that Easter Eve, I had been — as English and Roman Catholics are wont to do — trying to throw the mind back to the time when the commemorated events occurred, and to follow, step by step, the last days of the Son of Man, living, as it were, through those last hours, so that I might be ready to kneel before the cross on Good Friday, to stand beside the sepulchre on Easter Day. In order to facilitate the realisation of those last sacred days of God incarnate on earth, working out man's salvation, I resolved to write a brief history of that week, compiled from the Four Gospels, meaning them to try and realise each day the occurrences that had happened on the corresponding date in a.d. 23i ^i^d so to follow those *' blessed feet " step by step, till they were
"... nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross."
6o
ANNIE BESANT.
With the fearlessness which springs from ignorance I sat down to my task. My method was as follows : —
MATTHEW.
Palm Sunday.
Rode into Je- rusalem. Puri- fied the Temple. Returned to Bethany.
Monday.
Cursed the fig- tree. Taught in the Temple, and spake many par- ables. No breaks shown, but the fig-tree (xxi. 19) did not wither till Tuesday (see Mark).
Tuesday.
All chaps, xxi. 20, xxii. - XXV., spoken on Tues- day, for xxvi. 2 gives Passover as "after two days."
Wednesday. Blank.
MARK.
Palm Sunday.
Rode into Je- rusalem. Re- turned to Beth- any.
Monday.
Cursed the fig- tree. Purified the Temple. Went out of city.
Tuesday.
Saw fig-tree withered up. Then discourses.
LUKE.
Palm Sunday.
Rode into Je- rusalem. Puri- fied the Temple. Note : " Taught daily in the Temple."
Monday. Like Matthew.
Tuesday.
Disc our ses. No date shown.
Wednesday.
(Possibly remain [ed in Bethany;
Wednesday.
the alabaster box
JOHN.
Palm Sunday.
Rode into Je- rusalem. Spoke in the Temple.
Monday
Tuesday.
Wednesday.
of ointment.)
GIRLHOOD.
6i
MATTHEW.
Thursday.
Preparation of Passover. Eat- ing of Passover, and institution of the Holy Eu- charist. Gethse- mane. Betrayal by Judas. Led captive to Caia- phas. Denied by St. Peter.
Friday. Led to Pilate.
MARK.
Thursday. Same as Matt.
Friday. As Matthew,
Judas hangsjbut hour of cru- himself. Tried, cifixion given, 9 Condemned to a.m. death. Scourged and mocked. Led to cruci- fixion. Dark- ness from 12 to 3. Died at 3.
LUKE.
Thursday. Same as Matt.
Friday.
Led to Pilate. Sent to Herod. Sent back to Pilate. Rest as in Matthew; but one malefactor repents.
JOHN.
Thursday.
Discourses with disciples, but before the Passover. Washes the dis- c i p 1 e s' f e e t. Nothing said of Holy Eucharist, nor of agony in Gethsemane. Malchus' ear. Led captive to Annas first. Then to Caia- phas. Denied by St. Peter.
Friday. Taken to Pilate. Jews would not en- ter, that they might eat the Passover. Scourged by Pi- late before con- demnation, and mocked. Shown by Pilate to Jews at 12.
I became uneasy as I proceeded with my task, for discrepancies leaped at me from my four columns ; the uneasiness grew as the contradictions increased, until I saw with a shock of horror that my "harmony" was a discord, and a doubt of the veracity of the story sprang up like a serpent hissing in my face. It was
62 ANNIE BESANT.
struck down in a moment, for to me to doubt was sin, and to have doubted on the very eve of the Passion was an added crime. Quickly I assured myself that these apparent contradictions were necessary as tests of faith, and I forced myself to repeat Tertullian's famous " Credo quia impossibile," till, from a wooden recital, it became a triumphant affirmation. I reminded myself that St. Peter had said of the Pauline Epistles that in them were "some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest . . . unto their own destruction." I shudderingly recognised that I must be very unlearned and unstable to find discord among the Holy Evangelists, and imposed on myself an extra fast as penance for my ignorance and lack of firmness in the faith. For my mental position was one to which doubt was one of the worst of sins. I knew that there were people like Colenso, who questioned the infallibility of the Bible, but I remembered how the Apostle John had fled from the Baths when Cerinthus entered them, lest the roof should fall on the heretic, and crush any one in his neighbour- hood, and I looked on all heretics with holy horror. Pusey had indoctrinated me with his stern hatred of all heresy, and I was content to rest with him on that faith, " which must be old because it is eternal, and must be unchangeable because it is true." I would not even read the works of my mothers favourite Stanley, because he was " unsound," and because Pusey had condemned his " variegated use of words which destroys all definiteness of meaning " — a clever and pointed description, be it said in
wf.
GIRLHOOD. 63
^passing, of the Dean's exquisite phrases, capable of so many readings. It can then be imagined with what a stab of pain this first doubt struck me, and with what haste I smothered it up, buried it, and smoothed the turf over its grave. Bui it had been there^ and it left its mark.