Far Above Rubies
Book Description
FAR ABOVE RUBIES
BY GEORGE MACDONALD
Hector Macintosh was a young man about five-and-twenty, who, with the
proclivities of the Celt, inherited also some of the consequent
disabilities, as well as some that were accidental. Among the rest was
a strong tendency to regard only the ideal, and turn away from any
authority derived from an inferior source. His chief delight ...
MoreFAR ABOVE RUBIES
BY GEORGE MACDONALD
Hector Macintosh was a young man about five-and-twenty, who, with the
proclivities of the Celt, inherited also some of the consequent
disabilities, as well as some that were accidental. Among the rest was
a strong tendency to regard only the ideal, and turn away from any
authority derived from an inferior source. His chief delight lay in the
attempt to embody, in what seemed to him the natural form of verse, the
thoughts in him constantly moving at least in the direction of the
ideal, even when he was most conscious of his inability to attain to the
utterance of them. But it was only in the retirement of his own chamber
that he attempted their embodiment; of all things, he shrank from any
communion whatever concerning these cherished matters. Nor, indeed, had
he any friends who could tempt him to share with them what seemed to him
his best; so that, in truth, he was intimate with none. His mind would
dwell much upon love and friendship in the imaginary abstract, but of
neither had he had the smallest immediate experience. He had cherished
only the ideals of the purest and highest sort of either passion, and
seemed to find satisfaction enough in the endeavor to embody such in
his verse, without even imagining himself in communication with any
visionary public. The era had not yet dawned when every scribbler is
consumed with the vain ambition of being recognized, not, indeed, as
what he is, but as what he pictures himself in his secret sessions of
thought. That disease could hardly attack him while yet his very
imaginations recoiled from the thought of the inimical presence of a
stranger consciousness. Whether this was modesty, or had its hidden base
in conceit, I am, with the few insights I have had into his mind, unable
to determine.
That he had leisure for the indulgence of his bent was the result of his
peculiar position. He lived in the house of his father, and was in his
father's employment, so that he was able both to accommodate himself to
his father's requirements and at the same time fully indulge his own
especial taste. The elder Macintosh was a banker in one of the larger
county towns of Scotland--at least, such is the profession and position
there accorded by popular consent to one who is, in fact, only a
bank-agent, for it is a post involving a good deal of influence and a
yet greater responsibility. Of this responsibility, however, he had
allowed his son to feel nothing, merely using him as a clerk, and
leaving him, as soon as the stated hour for his office-work expired,
free in mind as well as body, until the new day should make a fresh
claim upon his time and attention. His mother seldom saw him except at
meals, and, indeed, although he always behaved dutifully to her, there
was literally no intercommunion of thought or feeling between them--a
fact which probably had a good deal to do with the undeveloped condition
in which Hector found, or rather, did not find himself. Occasionally his
mother wanted him to accompany her for a call, but he avoided yielding
as much as possible, and generally with success; for this was one of the
claims of social convention against which he steadily rebelled--the more
determinedly that in none of his mother's friends could he take the
smallest interest; for she was essentially a commonplace because
ambitious woman, without a spark of aspiration, and her friends were of
the same sort, without regard for anything but what was--or, at least,
they supposed to be--the fashion. Indeed, it was hard to understand how
Hector came ever to be born of such a woman, although in truth she was
of as pure Celtic origin as her husband--only blood is not spirit, and
that is often clearly manifest. His father, on the other hand, was not
without some signs of an imagination--quite undeveloped, indeed, and,
I believe, suppressed by the requirements of his business relations.
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