Gleanings.
There is a little song written by the odd and witty genius of Ben Vaughn called: "Too Sensitive for this World". It came to mind when I was reading a biography of Christina Rossetti once.
There ARE people in this world who don't seem 'of' it. They never succeed, everything they try is a bit of a failure, they love and have passions for things that are not in the least marketable. Successful people pass them by and wonder why they just can’t get it together. They seem to drift and find themselves getting distracted from “real life” for more fascinating realities. They have names attached to them like: dreamer, out to sea, eccentric, odd, moony.
The American ideal scoffs at such people. They don't reflect in the least way the 'dream' of success and 'getting on in the world'. They are labeled lazy, parasitical failures who are burdens to everyone around them and are always looking for an easy way out of everything. Granted, there ARE such people on whom these labels might fit and ring true. They are scoundrels. Counterfeits.
But that is not who I am talking about here. My name for this specific person is a Star Child. They are of no use in practical ways, but they are people we unexplainably want near us. We want to sit and talk about what they have been thinking. They tell us completely useless facts about the weather, poetry, plants, animals, something they read in an obscure book of philosophy that they just can't stop thinking about. They love beauty and walking around old buildings and churches and drinking in antiquity. Their favorite place is the library and wasting hours there happily following rabbit holes without any notion of the time. They may pop in at our house and we always make time for them, no matter what we are up to at the time. They always bring joy and the odd perspective we just might need at that precise moment.
But they can't seem to hold down an upwardly mobile career. They are wanderers in this world. One might say they are too sensitive for this world. The American model does not have much patience for star children. It would warn that no sensible father would want his daughter to marry a star child. And perhaps not. They are not, alas, great monetary providers.
However, I might argue that we need star children to keep us aware of the best in us, that there are realities that have no monetary value at all and yet we would be destitute without them. Star children remind us of the invisible things flitting about us everywhere. Beauty, gentleness, a shining eye filled with delight at sunlight on water. They are most needed when we are sad. Because they show us what we most desire in our better moments. The good things. The lovely thoughts, the playing of music, the pausing to ponder with them on the kindness of God. Of the sweetness they exude when holding a child and talking with them earnestly about their childish questions.
We love these star children. They may not have a great job, they may dress rather oddly and haphazardly. They may make us wonder and shake our heads sometimes about their wasted potential, until we suddenly see in a flash of realization: The potential is vast! For they live in skies we have never traveled to. Money means nothing to them. They would spend it on books, on flowers, on things that do not last and yet have a momentary existence that astounds and makes life suddenly magical and livable and doable and gives success a drab and tedious hue.
We are lucky indeed if we know a star child.
Christina Rossetti knew one such. His name was Charles Bagot Cayley. And she fell in love with him. And he with her. He was lovely, affable, sweet faced, kind, courteous and filled with much curiosity about the world. He came from Russia where his English parents had settled for a time. So, he had an odd, foreign feel to him among the purist English gentlemen. His passions were all seemingly useless. He loved old tomes, he spent much time in the British Museum looking up strange and wonderful facts in the dusty volumes there. He translated Dante's Divine Comedy into English. He was a scholar of Greek. He even translated the Gospels in the language of the Iroquois - so fascinated was he at their language. But none of this paid the bills.
Nonetheless, he was loved by all who met him. They wanted to take care of him, because they wanted to be reminded of the beautiful things they had no time for as busy men of the world. It was HIS way of taking care of THEM. Christina found him charming. This star child lit up her somewhat black and white, austere Anglican world and leant it gentle coloring, and sweetness, and a sense of wonder.
She could not marry him. He had no money. And he was an agnostic. But she could not help but love him and he her. There was a beautiful love between them that was able to exist even without marriage. He would visit her every night and they would talk in the parlor about everything under the sun. She waited all day for these moments with him. She was his best friend. And the love between them was so pure and good and filled with light that many of the Pre-Raphaelite artists who knew him talked about it long after when they grew older. How the love between these two was of the stars and not of earth. It was lit from within the world they shared - just these two. It was simple, pure, and warm. I was enchanted by the concept of such a reality in love.
And what this kind, humble man in his shabby frock coat did was to unlock Christina's muse and send it soaring. Some of her best love poems come from this time in her life. They are filled with charm, warmth, wit and color and a romance that is beyond human. All those talks in a dark little parlor unlocked her wealth.
It left me with questions. What would we do without the star children? The monetary failures. The ones who cannot seem to manage a check book but can quote poetry to you and show you how beautiful the Greek language is. How their experiments with plants have yielded a bigger rose perhaps, though they forgot to pay the light bill. They require patience of a practical kind. They cannot live lives like we do. They need to be taken care of. But they are here to make sure we live life properly. That we see the magic, the grace, the goodness of things just as they are and for no other reason.
Christina loved such a one. And tenderly. And he gave her so much more than anyone was to give to him. He gave her wings to soar to Parnassus just by sitting next to her by the parlor fire and musing on the flames there.
Blessed be the star children. Those who exist for no other reason than to point the way to our better selves.
I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull
I feel like I know 2 of these Star Children, one just graduated high school and loves languages and one is a 41 yr old us has accomplished nothing but to make me happy. Now that you have made these people known to others, I will ask all to pray for them.