Our Family Affairs, 1867-1896Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
General
Our Family Affairs, 1867-1896
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Benson family
My father was thus able to realize one of the dearest dreams of his
life, namely, to see with his mortal eyes the Carthage which he knew so
intimately in connection with his lifelong study of Cyprian. His book on
Cyprian which had occupied his leisure for some thirty years was now
approaching completion, and long had he yearned to behold the ruined
site where Cyprian had worked as bishop, to wander with his own feet
over the shores and hills, which, all these years, had been so familiar
to him; and that visit to Carthage had for him the sacredness of some
pilgrimage for which his heart hungered. His own enthusiasm was so keen
that I feel sure that he had no idea that his Mecca could be less to us
than to him, and I have the vision of him kneeling on the site of some
early Christian church, with his face all aglow with the long-deferred
consummation. Just as his appreciation of a picture was mainly due to
the nature of its subject, just as his pleasure in music was derived
from the words which were sung to it, so now, as his diary records, he
saw enchanting loveliness in that bare and featureless hill where
Carthage once stood, for Cyprian’s sake, and wondered at the want of
perception which caused other travellers to find nothing admirable in
that bleak place. For once the classical associations of Carthage, the
Punic Wars, the subsequent Roman occupation had no lure for him.
Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, was the full moon among the lesser lights
of the firmament.
At Tunis I left the rest of them, going on my own special pilgrimage,
and via Malta and Brindisi I came to the city already known to me by map
and picture, and hallowed by some kind of predestined love. And just as
my father was enchanted with that ugly little hill of Carthage because
Cyprian had dwelt there, how was I not transported when above mean
streets and miry ways I saw the sparkle of that marble crown of temples
on the Acropolis? For indeed, from the time that Beesly had read us his
_Trojan Queen’s Revenge_, some idea, some day-dream of Athens had been
distilled, drop by drop, into my blood. Whatever was lovely, whatever
must be estimated and esteemed I always laid alongside some Greek
standard. Not alone were things directly Greek, like the chorus of the
_Œdipus in Colonos_, the chorus in Swinburne’s _Atalanta_, the teachings
of Middleton, the holy dead in the Street of Tombs tested by the
Hellenic touchstone, but whatever moved my heart, the vision of Mary
Anderson in the _Winter’s Tale_, the joy of athletics, the austere
crests of mountains, the forest of Savernake, the Passion-music of Bach,
had been instinctively subjected to the same criterion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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