“I was awoken by the sound of voices. But you wish me to tell you of my dreams before I continue my story? That is easily performed. I did not dream. I have never dreamed since I came to life in this room. When I heard the voices, outside the barn, I instantly arose. I can still recall the words. ‘There is a hare in the field, Father. See him scudding past the horses there.’ These are the first words I remember comprehending-comprehending not as sounds merely but as stirrings and tokens of the mind. I knew these words somewhere within me. I recognised them, and at once a whole host of analogies and associations flooded through me. The world before me was quite changed. The labourer and his daughter, as I discovered them to be, were monarchs and angels in my eyes: they had led me into a kingdom of light, where the words opened the very portals of reality. I stayed in that resting place for most of the day, listening to their quiet conversations. They did not enter it-they never did enter it-and by degrees I came to consider it as my habitation. You wish to ask me how I live? My wants are simpler than yours. I can survive upon a harsher diet than men who subsist in luxury; I found that I could eat the leaves upon the trees, and drink from the waters of the brook, without the least discomfort. But there was better food. The labourer and his daughter had a store of turnips in a small shed behind their cottage and, in the deep night, I would take them and feast on them as if they were the most dainty fare in the world. I heard soon enough how puzzled they were by the disappearance of their crop, but they blamed it on the rats or on the foxes. I have told you of the power of their words, opening up the world to me little by little. I found that, on listening to them, new words came unbidden to my lips-forming chains and associations that became sentences. The power of language must be deeply innate so that, after my awakening, all the details of its fabric and structure rose up somewhere within me.
“I can bear the intensity of heat and the extremity of cold without the least discomfort or danger, but nevertheless I felt the want of clothing. I had wrapped myself in your black cloak when I lay down to sleep, yet I knew that to make my way among strangers I must be more fully and decently clad. One evening, therefore, I ventured onto the marshes of the estuary in search of a village or small town where such items might be found. By good fortune, and by keeping to the shoreline, I came upon the town of Gravesend. The streets were quite silent and deserted, at that hour of the night, and down one narrow thoroughfare I saw the sign of a tailor and gentleman’s outfitter. I forced the door with no difficulty and there, in the darkness, I equipped myself with all the garments I would need including the fine linen stock with which you see me now endowed. I am a gentleman, am I not?
“I went back to my barn, and lay me down to sleep. I had come to anticipate and enjoy the early rising of the labourer and his daughter; her childish prattle was my music, and I listened eagerly to the slightest and most inconsequential discourse between them. I felt emboldened by my new garments, too, and when I saw them working in the distant fields I entered their little cottage and surveyed the setting of their lives. It was humble enough, with a plain table and chairs, and two easy-chairs beside a stone fireplace; but it was neat and clean, with an indescribable air of comfort. I envisaged what it might mean to share their life with them; but that was as yet out of my power. Then I noticed the shelf of books. Out of curiosity I took one of them down from the shelf, and left the cottage.
“I had come upon a treasure in Robinson Crusoe. I saw words at first through a veil; they were all familiar to me, but they seemed to be written in an unknown language. Yet, as with sound and speech, I felt a world forming itself around me; the power of the words seemed to rise up within my own being, so that I recognised myself in the same moment as I recognised phrases and sentences. I spoke the words out loud, and one seemed to follow another in the utmost harmony; each one seemed complementary to the next, and all joined in the great music of meaning. In my previous state I believe that I must have been an ardent reader, because I took so eagerly to the perusal of the pages before me. I became so enthralled by the adventures of the castaway on the desert island that I did not note the declension of the sun or the emergence of the moon. I read as if for life. And life it was for me-to enter the state of another existence, to look with newly awakened eyes on an unfamiliar landscape, was a form of bliss. I chanted the words of the book again, and I noticed that there had grown a melody in my voice. I was being nurtured by words. I have told you that the mind is a creative power, and I believed in my innocence that I could now learn the instinctive expression of human passion. If I were a natural man, then I must be naturally benevolent.
“From the remarks that the labourer and his daughter passed to one another when they were engaged in their work, I learned that the girl’s mother had died from the ague, a common sickness in this region, and that she was buried in a little churchyard two miles away across the flats, as they called the fields. They worked hard for their bare subsistence, but I learned how to help them. In the deep of the night I would uproot turnips and other bulbs for them, leaving them in the shed from which I had once taken their food. With my great strength, too, I was able to provide them with firewood and dry logs that I left beyond their little garden. They were astonished by these gifts, but I heard the father extol the ‘good spirits’ and ‘sprites’ of the neighbourhood as the possible cause of the bounty.
“The girl of course could receive no proper schooling, but her father tried to instruct her in the basic materials of knowledge. In the evening he must have taught her to read and to write, because in the morning she would recite to him in her clear voice the passages she had learned. Through her agency, indeed, I first became aware of the power of poetry to assuage the troubled spirit and to lift the mind towards thoughts of eternity:
“I confess that I remember no more. Her father used to instruct her, too, in the history of their country-of all the great events that had passed over this estuarial land without disturbing its quietness. I learned then of battles long ago, of the ruins of ancient civilisations, of the Romans and the Saxons and the Normans who sailed along the great river. I shared the girl’s wonder, too, at the stories of Creation, of Adam and Eve, of the angel with the flaming sword. It was her father’s intention to read to her the chapters in the Bible so that she might be fully acquainted with what he described to her as the holiest book in the world. I admit that I held it in the same reverence, after listening to the first sentences he recited to her, and I looked forward eagerly to the next day’s lesson.
“I would have been content, I think, to have spent my time thus; I wandered at night among the flat lands of the estuary, singing to the wind and holding communion with the earth. I lay upon the ground and whispered the words, and perceptions, I had learned. I was as free as the sun, and as lonely as the sun. Where rose the tide and the billowing waters of the river, there was my home; where dwelled the owls and the foxes, there were my friends and roamers of the night. There is a pleasure in the pathless and solitary fields; there is a rapture in the lonely shore. I sat quite still and observed the heavens revolving above my head, and wondered if they were the origin of my being. Or had I come from the creeping waters of the river? Or from the mild earth that nurtured all the plants and flowers of the world? When at first light a wood pigeon came before me, I took part in its existence and pecked upon the ground; when a gull flew above my head I shared its soaring form; when I watched an otter upon the bank, I could feel the sleekness of its limbs. In all creatures now I felt the force of one life, a life I shared, of which the principles were energy and joy.