I said many of these things to my friend, and he replied that he thought I was probably right, but that he could not change his opinion. He would not have had these letters published until all the survivors were dead. He did not think that the people who liked the book were actuated by good motives, but had merely a desire to penetrate behind the due and decent privacies of life; and he would have stopped the publication of such letters if he could, because even if people liked them, it was not good for them to read them. He said that he himself felt on reading the book as if he had been listening at keyholes, or peeping in at windows, and seeing the natural endearments of husband and wife, mother and children.

I said that what seemed to me to make a difference was whether the people thus espied were conscious of the espionage or not; and that it was no more improper to have such things revealed IN A BOOK, than to have them described in a novel or shown upon the stage. Moreover, it seemed to me, I said, as though to reveal such things in a book was the perfect compromise. I feel strongly that each home, each circle has a right to its own privacy; but I am not ashamed of my natural feelings and affections, and, by allowing them to appear in a book, I feel that I am just speaking of them simply to those who will understand. I desire communion with all sympathetic and like-minded persons; but one's actual circle of friends is limited by time and space and physical conditions. People talk of books as if every one in the world was compelled to read them. My own idea of a book is that it provides a medium by which one may commune confidentially with people whom one may never see, but whom one is glad to know to be alive. One can make friends through one's books with people with whom one agrees in spirit, but whose bodily presence, modes of life, reticences, habits, would erect a barrier to social intercourse. It is so much easier to love and understand people through their books than through their conversation. In books they put down their best, truest, most deliberate thoughts; in talk, they are at the mercy of a thousand accidents and sensations. There were people who objected to the publication of the Browning love-letters. To me they were the sacred and beautiful record of an intensely holy and passionate relation between two great souls; and I can afford to disregard and to contemn the people who thought the book strained, unconventional and shameless, for the sake of those whose faith in love and beauty was richly and generously nurtured by it.

It seems to me that the whole progress of life and thought, of love and charity, depends upon our coming to understand each other. The hostile seclusion which some desire is really a savage and almost animal inheritance; and the best part of civilisation has sprung from the generous self-revelation of kindly and honourable souls.

I am not even deterred, in a case of this kind, by wondering whether the person concerned would have liked or disliked the publication of these letters. I feel no sort of doubt that, as far as I am concerned, she would be only too willing that I should thus have read and loved them, and I cannot believe that the disapprobation of a few austere people, or the curiosity of a few vulgar people, would weigh in the balance for a moment against the joy of like-minded spirits.

The worst dissatisfaction of life is the difficulty one has in drawing near to others, the foolish hardness, often only superficial, which makes one hold back from and repudiate intimacies. If I had known and loved a great and worthy spirit, and had been the recipient of his confidences, I should hold it a solemn duty to tell the world what I knew. I should care nothing for the carping of the cold and unsympathetic, but I should base my decision on the approval of all loving and generous souls. This seems to me the highest service that art can render, and if it be said that no question of art comes in, in the publication of such records as these letters, I would reply that they are themselves works of the highest and most instinctive art, because the world, its relations and affections, its loss and grief, its pain and suffering, are here seen patiently mirrored and perfectly expressed by a most perceptive personality. The moment that emotions are depicted and represented, that moment they have felt the holy and transfiguring power of art; and then they pass out of the region of stuffy conventions and commonplace decorums into a finer and freer air. I do not deny that there is much vulgar inquisitiveness abroad, but that matters little; and, for myself, I am glad to think that the world is moving in the direction of a greater frankness. I do not mean that a man has not a right to live his life privately, in his own house and his own circle, if he wills. But if that life is lived simply, generously and bravely, I welcome any ripple or ray from it that breaks in light and fragrance upon the harsher and uglier world.



July 1, 1889.

I have just read an interesting sentence. I don't know where it comes from—I saw it in a book of extracts.

"I am more and more convinced that the cure for sentiment, as for all weakened forms of strong things, is not to refuse to feel it, but to feel more in it. This seems to me to make the whole difference between a true and a false asceticism. The false goes for getting rid of what it is afraid of; the true goes for using and making it serve, the one empties, the other fills; the one abstracts, the other concentrates."

There is a great deal of truth in this, and it is manfully put. Where it fails is, I think, in assuming an amount of will-power and resolution in human character, which I suspect is not there. The system the writer recommends is a system that a strong character instinctively practises, moving through sentiment to emotion, naturally, and by a sturdy growth. But to tell a man to feel more in a thing, is like telling a man to be intelligent, benevolent, wise. It is just what no one can do. The various grades of emotion are not things like examinations, in which one can successively graduate. They are expressions of temperament. The sentimental man is the man who can go thus far and no farther. How shall one acquire vigour and generosity? By behaving as if one was vigorous and generous, when one is neither? I do not think it can be done in that way. One can do something to check a tendency, very little to deepen it. What the writer calls false asceticism is the only brave and wholesome refuge of people, who know themselves well enough to know that they cannot trust themselves. Take the case of one's relations with other people. If a man drifts into sentimental relations with other people, attracted by charm of any kind, and knowing quite well that the relation is built on charm, and that he will not be able to follow it into truer regions, I think he had probably better try to keep himself in check, not embrace a sentimental relation with a mild hope that it may develop into a real devotion. The strong man may try experiments, even though he burns his fingers. The weak man had better not meddle with the instruments and fiery fluids at all.

I am myself just strong enough to dislike sentiment, to turn faint in the sickly, mawkish air. But I am not strong enough to charge it with vivid life. Moreover, the danger of a strong character taking up the anti-ascetic position is that he is apt to degenerate into a man like Goethe, who plucked the fragrant blooms on every side, and threw them relentlessly away when he had inhaled their sweetness. That is a cruel business, unless there is a very wise and tender heart behind.

Yet again, reconsidering the whole problem, I am not sure that the whole suggestion, taken as advice, is not at fault. I think it is making a melancholy, casuistical, ethical business out of what ought to be a natural process. I think it is vitiated by a principle which vitiates so much of the advice of moralists, the principle that one ought to aim at completeness and perfection. I don't believe that is the secret of life—indeed I think it is all the other way. One must of course do one's best to resist immoral, low, sensuous tendencies; but otherwise I believe that one ought to drink as much as one's glass can hold of pure and beautiful influences. If sentiment is the nearest that a man can come to emotion, I think he had better take it thankfully. It is this ethical prudence which is always weighing issues, and pulling up the plant to see how it grows, which is the weakening and the stunting thing. Of course any principle can be used sophistically; but I think that many people commit a kind of idolatry by worshipping their rules and principles rather than by trusting God. It develops a larger and freer life, if one is not too cautious, too precise. Of course one must follow what light one has, and all lights are lit from God; but if one watches the lanterns of moralists too anxiously, one may forget the stars.



July 8, 1889.

I lose myself sometimes in a dream of misery in thinking of the baseness and meanness and squalor that condition the lives of so many of the poor. Not that it is not possible under those conditions to live lives of simplicity and dignity and beauty. It is perfectly possible, but only, I think, for strong natures possessing a combination of qualities—virtue, industry, sense, prudence, and above all good physical health. There must still be thousands of lives which could be happy and simple and virtuous under more secure conditions, which are marred and degraded by the influences under which they are nurtured. Yet what can the more fortunate individual do in the matter? If all the rich men in England were to resign to-morrow all the wealth they possessed, reserving only a bare modicum of subsistence, the matter could not be amended. Even that wealth could not be wisely applied; and, if equally divided, it would hardly make any appreciable difference. What is worse, it would not alter the baneful influences in the least; it would give no increased security of material conditions, and it would not affect the point at issue, namely, the tone and quality of thought and feeling, where the only hope of real amelioration lies, and which is really the source and root of our social evils.

Moreover, the real difficulty is not to see what the classes on whom the problem presses most grimly NEED, but what they WANT. It is no use theorising about it, and providing elegant remedies which will not touch the evil. What one requires to know is what those natures, who lie buried in this weltering tide, and are dissatisfied and tormented by it, really desire. It is no use trying to provide a paradise on the farther bank of the river, till we have constructed bridges to cross the gulf. What one wants is that some one from the darkness of the other side should speak articulately and boldly what they claim, what they could use. It is not enough to have a wistful cry for help ringing in our ears; one wants a philosophical or statesmanlike demand—just the very thing which from the nature of the case we cannot get. It may be that education will make this possible; but at present education seems merely to be a ladder let down into the abyss, by which a few stronger natures can climb out of it, with horror and contempt in their hearts of what they have left behind. The question that stares one in the face is, is there honest work for all to do, if all were strong and virtuous? The answer at present seems to be in the negative; and the problem seems to be solved only by the fact that all are not capable of honest work, and that the weaklings give the strong their opportunity. What, again, one asks oneself, is the use of contriving more leisure for those who could not use it well? Then, too, under present conditions, the survival of the unfittest seems to be assured. Those breed most freely and recklessly of whom it may be said that, for the interests of civilisation, it is least desirable that they should perpetuate their kind. The problem too is so complicated, that it requires a gigantic faith in a reformer to suggest the sowing of seed of which he can never hope to see the fruit. The situation is one which tends to develop vehement and passionate prophets, dealing in vague and remote generalisations, when what one needs is practical prudence, and the effective power of foreseeing contingencies. One who like myself loves security, leisure, beauty and peace, and is actuated by a vague and benevolent wish that all should have the same opportunities as myself, feels himself a mere sentimentalist in the matter, without a single effective quality. I can see the problem, I can grieve over it, I can feel my faith in God totter under the weight of it, but that is all.



July 15, 1889.

One of the hardest things to face in the world is the grim fact that our power of self-improvement is limited. Of some qualities we do not even possess the germs. Some qualities we have in minute quantities, but hardly capable of development; some few qualities we possess in fuller measure, and they are capable of development; but even so, our total capacity of growth is limited, conditioned by our vital energy, and we have to face the fact that if we develop one set of qualities we must neglect another set.

I think of it in a whimsical and fantastic image, the best I can find. Imagine a box in which there are a number of objects like puff-balls, each with a certain life of its own, half-filling the box. Some of the puff-balls are small, hard, sterile; others are soft and expansive; some grow quickly in warmth and light, others fare better in cold and darkness. The process of growth begins: some of them increase in size and press themselves into every crevice, enclosing and enfolding the others; even so the growth of the whole mass is conditioned by the size of the box, and when the box is full, the power of increase is at an end.

The box, to interpret the fable, is our character with its possibilities. The conditions which develop the various qualities are the conditions of our lives, our health, our income, our education, the people who surround us; but even the qualities themselves have their limitations. Two people may grow up under almost precisely similar influences, and yet remain different to the end; two characters may be placed in difficult and bracing circumstances; the effect upon one character is to train the quality of self-reliance, on the other to produce a moral collapse. Some people do their growing early and then stop altogether, becoming impervious to new opinions and new influences. Some people go on growing to the end.

If one develops one side of one's nature, as the intellectual or artistic, one probably suffers on the emotional or moral side. The pain which the perceptive man feels in surveying this process is apt to be very acute. He may see that he lacks certain qualities altogether and yet be unable to develop them. He may find in himself some patent and even gross fault, and be unable to cure it. The only hope for any of us is that we do not know the expansive force of our qualities, nor the size of the box; and therefore it is reasonable to go on trying and desiring; and as long as one can do that, it is clear that there is still room for growth. The worst shadow of all is to find, as one goes on, a certain indifference creeping over one. One accepts a fault as a part of one's nature; one ceases to care about what appears unattainable.

It may be said that this is a fatalistic theory, and leads to a mild inactivity; but the question rather is whether it is true, whether it is attested by experience. One improves, not by overlooking facts, in however generous and enthusiastic a spirit, but by facing facts, and making the best use one can of them. One must resolutely try to submit oneself to favourable conditions, fertilising influences. And much more must one do that in the case of those for whom one is responsible. In the case of my own two children, for instance, my one desire is to surround them with the best influences I can. Even there one makes mistakes, no doubt, because one cannot test the expansive power of their qualities; but one can observe the conditions under which they seem to develop best, and apply them. To lavish love and tenderness on some children serves to concentrate their thoughts upon themselves, and makes them expect to find all difficulties smoothed away; on other more generous natures, it produces a glow of responsive gratitude and affection, a desire to fulfil the hopes formed of them by those who love them. The most difficult cases of all are the cases of temperaments without loyal affection, but with much natural charm. Those are the people who get what is called 'spoilt,' because it is so much easier to believe in the existence of qualities which are superficially displayed than in qualities which lie too deep for facile expression. One comes across cases of children of intense emotional natures, and very little power of expressing their feelings, or of showing their affection. Of course, too, example is far more potent than precept, and it is very difficult for parents to simulate a high-mindedness and an affectionateness that they do not themselves possess, even if they are sincerely anxious that their children should grow up high-minded and affectionate. One of the darkest shadows of my present condition is the fear that any revelation of my own weakness and emptiness may discourage and distort my children's characters; and the watchfulness which this requires increases the strain under which I suffer, because it is a hard fact that an example set for a noble and an unselfish motive is not nearly so potent as an example set naturally, sweetly, and generously, with no particular consciousness of motive behind it at all.



July 18, 1889.

I have just heard of the sudden death of an old friend. Francis Willett was a writer of some distinction, whose acquaintance I made in my first years in London. He was a tall, slim man, dark of complexion, who would have been called very handsome, if it had not been for a rather burdened air that he wore. As it was, people tended rather to pity him, and to speak of him as somewhat of a mystery. I never knew anything about the background of his life. He must have had some small means of his own, and he lived in rooms, in rather an out-of-the-way street near Regent's Park. One used to see him occasionally in London, walking rapidly, almost always alone, and very rarely I encountered him at parties, always wearing a slightly regretful air, as though he were wishing himself away. He wrote a good deal, reviewed books, and, I suppose, contrived to make enough to live on by his pen. He once spoke of himself as being in the happy position of being able to exist without writing, but forced to purchase all small luxuries by work. He published two or three books of short stories and sketches of travel, delicate pieces of work, which had no great sale, but gave him a recognised position among men of letters. I drifted into a kind of friendship with him; we were members of the same club, and he sometimes used to flutter shyly into my rooms like a great moth; but he never asked me to his quarters.

I discovered that he had done well at Oxford, and also that he had once, at all events, had considerable ambitions; but his health was not strong, he was extremely sensitive, and very fastidious about the quality of his work. I realised this on an occasion when he once entrusted me with a MS., and asked me if I would give him an opinion, as it was an experiment, and he did not feel sure of his ground; he added that there was no hurry about it. I put the MS. away in a despatch-box, and having at the time a press of work, I forgot about it. He never asked me for it, and I did not happen to open the box where it lay. Some months after I came upon it. I read it through, and thought it a fine and delicate piece of work. I wrote to him, apologising for my delay and speaking warmly of the piece, which was one of those rather uncomfortable stories, which is not quite long enough to make a book, and yet rather too long to put in a volume with other pieces. He wrote at once, thanking me for my opinion, and it was only by accident at a later date, when I happened to ask him what he was doing with the story, that he told me he had destroyed it. I expressed deep regret that he had done so; and he said with a smile that it was probably rather a foolish impulse that had decided him to make away with it. "The fact is," he said, "that you wrote very kindly about it, but you had had it in your hands so long, that I felt somehow that it could not have interested you—it really doesn't matter," he added, "I don't think it was at all successful." I apologised very humbly, and explained the circumstances. "Oh, please don't blame yourself in any way," he said, "I have not the least shadow of resentment in my mind about it. There is something wrong about my work; it doesn't interest people. I suppose it is that I can't let myself go." An interesting conversation followed, and he told me more than he ever told me before or since about himself. He confessed to being so critical of his own work, that his table-drawers were full of unfinished MSS. His usual experience was to begin a piece of work enthusiastically; to plan it all out, and to work at first with zest. "Then it begins to get all out of shape," he said, "there is no go about it; it all loses itself in subtleties and complexities of motive; one thing trips up another, and at last it all gets so tangled that I put it aside; if I could follow the track of one strong and definite emotion, it would be all right—but I am like the man in the story who changes the cow for the horse, and the horse for the pig, and the pig for the grindstone; and then the grindstone rolls into the river." He seemed to take it all very philosophically, and I ventured to say so. "Yes," he said, "I have learnt at last that that is how I am made; but I have been through a good many agonies of disgust and discouragement about it in old days—it is the same with everything I have touched. The bits of work that I have completed have all been done in a rush—if the mood lasts long enough, I am all right—and once or twice it has just lasted. I am like a swimmer," he went on, "who can only swim a certain distance; and if I judge the distance rightly, I can reach the point I desire to reach; but I generally judge the distance wrong; and half-way across I am seized with a sudden fright, and struggle back in terror."

By one of the strange coincidences that sometimes happen in this world, I took an unknown lady in to dinner a few days afterwards, and happened to mention Willett's name. "Do you know him?" she said. "Oh yes, of course you do!" she went on; "you are the Mr. S—— of whom he has spoken to me." I found that my neighbour was a distant relation of Willett's, and she told me a good deal about him. He was absolutely alone in the world; he had been left an orphan at an early age, and had spent his holidays with guardians and relations, with any one who would take pity on him. "He was a clever kind of boy," she said, "melancholy and diffident, always thinking that people disliked him. He used to give me the air of a person who was trying to find something, and who did not quite know where to look for it. He had a time of expansion at Oxford, where he made friends and did well; and then he came to London, and began to write. But the real tragedy of his life is this," she said. "He really fell in love, or as nearly as he could, with a very pretty and high-spirited girl, who took a great fancy to him, and pitied him from the bottom of her heart. For five years the thing went on. She would have married him at any time if he had asked her. But he did not. I suppose he could not face the idea of being married. He always seemed to be on the point of proposing to her, and then he would lose heart at the last minute. At last she got tired of waiting, and, I suppose, began to care for some one else; but she was very good to Francis, and never lost patience with him. At last she told him one day quietly that she was engaged, and hoped that they would always remain friends. I think, do you know, that it was almost more a relief to him than otherwise. I did my best to help him—marriage was the one thing he wanted; if he could only have been pushed into it, he would have made a perfect husband, because not only is he very much of a gentleman, but he could never bear to fail any one who depended on him; but he has got the unhappiest mind I know; the moment that he has formed a plan, and sees his way clear, he at once begins to think of all the reasons against it—not the selfish reasons, by any means; in this case he reflected, I am sure, how little he had to offer; he could not bring himself to feel that any one could really care for him; and then, too, he never really cared for anything quite enough himself. Or if he did, he found all sorts of refined reasons why he ought not to do so. If only he had been a little more selfish, it would have been all right. Indeed," said Mrs. T——, with a smile, "he is the only person of whom I could truthfully say that if he had only been a little more vulgar, he would have been a much happier person."

I saw a good deal of Willett after that, and he interested me increasingly. I verified Mrs. T——'s judgment about him, and found it true in every particular. I suppose there was some lack of vitality about him, because the more I knew of him the more I found to admire. He was an exquisitely delicate person, affectionate, responsive, with a fine sense of humour—indeed, the most disconcerting thing was that he saw to the full the humour of his own position. But none of the robust motives that spur men to action affected him. He was ambitious, but he would not make any sacrifices to gain the objects of his ambition. He could not use his powers on conventional lines. He was, I think, deeply desirous of confidence and affection, but he could never believe that he deserved either, or that it was possible for him to be interesting to others. He was laborious, pure-minded, transparently honest, and had a shrewd and penetrating judgment of other people; but he seemed to labour under a sense of shame at his deficiencies, and to feel that he had no claims or rights in the world. He existed on sufferance. The smallest shadow of disapproval caused him to abandon any design, not resentfully but eagerly, as though he was fully aware of his own incompetence.

I grew to feel a strong affection for him, and tried in many ways to help and encourage him. But he always discounted encouragement, and it is a clumsy business trying to help a man who does not demand or desire help.

He seemed to me to have schooled himself into a kind of tender patience; and this attitude, I am ashamed to say, used to irritate me considerably, because it seemed to me to be so much power wasted on accepting defeat, which might have ensured victory.

He was with me a few weeks ago. I was up in town, and he dined with me by appointment. He told me, with a gentle philosophy, a story which made my blood boil. He had been asked to write a book by a publisher, and the lines had been laid down for him. "It was such a comfort to me," he said, "because it supplied just the stimulus I could not myself originate. My book was really rather a good piece of work; but a week ago I sent it to the publisher, and he returned it, saying it was not the least what he wanted—he suggested my retaining about a third of it, and rewriting the rest. Of course I could do nothing of the kind." "What have you done with it?" I asked. "Oh, I have destroyed it." "But didn't you see him," I said, "or do something—or at all events insist on payment?" "Oh no," he said, "I could not do that—the man was probably right—he wanted a particular kind of book, and mine was not what he wanted. I did say that I wished he had explained to me more clearly what he wanted—but after all it doesn't very much matter. I can get along all right, if I am careful."

"Well," I said, "you are really a very aggravating person. If I could not have got my book published elsewhere, I would certainly have had a row—I would have taken out my money's worth in vituperation."

Willett smiled; "I dare say you would have had some fun," he said, "but that is not my line. I have told you before that I can't interest people—I don't think it is wholly my fault."

We sate late, talking; and for the only time in his life he spoke to me, with a depth of emotion of which I should hardly have suspected him, of the value he set upon my friendship, and his gratitude for my sympathy.

And now this morning I have heard of his sudden death. He was found dead in his room, bent over his papers. He must have been writing late at night, as his custom was; and it proved on examination that he must have long suffered from an unsuspected disease of the heart. Perhaps that may explain his failure, if it can be called a failure. There is something to me almost insupportably pathetic to think of his lonely and uncomforted life, his isolation, his sensitiveness. And yet I do not feel sure that it is pathetic, because his life somehow seems to me to have been one of the most beautiful I have ever known. He did nothing much for others, he achieved nothing for himself; but it is only our miserable habit of weighing every one's life, in a hard way, by a standard of performance and success, which makes one sigh over Francis Willett's life. It is very difficult at times to see what it is that life is exactly meant to do for us. Most of the men and women I know—I say this sadly but frankly—seem to me to leave the world worse, in essential respects, than they entered it. There is generally something ingenuous, responsive, eager, sweet, hopeful about a child—but though I admit that one does encounter beautiful natures that seem to flower very generously in the light of experience, yet most people grow dull, dreary, conventional, grasping, commonplace—they grow to think rather contemptuously of emotion and generosity—they think it weak to be amiable, unselfish, kind. They become fond of comfort and position and respect and money. They think such things the serious concerns of life, and sentiment a kind of relaxation. But with Willett it was the precise reverse. He claimed nothing for himself, he never profited at the expense of another; he was utterly humble, gentle, unpretentious, kind, sincere. An hour ago I should have called him "poor fellow," and wished that he had had a more robust kind of fibre; now that I know he is dead, I cannot find it in my heart to wish him any such qualities. His life appears to me utterly beautiful and fragrant. He never incurred any taint of grossness from prosperity or success; he never grew indifferent or hard; and in the light of his last passage, such a failure seems the one thing worth achieving, and to carry with it a hope all alive and rich with possibilities of blessing and glory. He would hardly have called himself a Christian, I think; he would have said that he could not have attained to anything like a vital faith or a hopeful certainty; but the only words and thoughts that haunt my mind about him, echoing sweetly and softly through the ages, are the words in which Christ described the tender spirits of those who were nearest to the Father's heart, and to whom it is given to see God.



July 28, 1889.

Health of body and mind return to me, slowly but surely. I have given up all attempt at writing; I rack my brain no longer for plots or situations. I keep, it is true, my note-book for subjects beside me, and occasionally jot down a point; but I feel entirely indifferent to the whole thing. Meanwhile the flood of letters about my book, invitations from editors, offers from publishers, continues to flow. I reply to these benignantly and courteously, but undertake nothing, promise nothing. I seem to have recovered my balance. I think no more about my bodily complaints, and my nerves no longer sting and thrill. The day is hardly long enough for all I have to do. It may be that when the novelty of the experiment in education wears off, I shall begin to hanker after authorship again. Alec will have to go to school in a year or two, I suppose; but it shall be a day-school at first, if I can find one. As to the question of a public school, I am much exercised. Of course there are nightmare terrors about tone and morals; but I am not really very anxious about the boy, because he is sensible and independent, and has no lack of moral courage. The vigorous barrack-life is good for a boy, the give-and-take, the splendid equality, the manly code, the absence of affectation. But the intellectual tone of schools is low, and the conventionality is great. I don't want Alec to be a conventional man, and yet I want him to accept current conventions instinctively about matters of indifference. I have a horror of the sporting public-school type, the good-humoured, robust fellow, who does his work and fills his spare time with games, and thinks intellectual things, and artistic interests, and emotion, and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people live a wholesome enough life; they make good soldiers, good officials, good men of business. But they are woefully complacent and self-satisfied. The schools develop a Spartan type, and I want Alec to be an Athenian. But the experiment will have to be made, because a man is at a disadvantage in ordinary life if he has not the public school bonhomie, courtesy, and common sense. I must try to keep the other side alive, and I don't despair of doing it.

Meantime we are a very contented household, in spite of the fact that now, if ever, is the time for me to make my mark as a writer, and I have to pass all the opportunities that offer. On the other hand, this is the point at which one sees, in the history of letters, so many writers go to pieces. They suddenly find, after their first great success, that they have arrived, by a tortuous and secret path, at being a sort of public man. They are dazzled by contact with the world. They go into society, they make speeches, they write twaddle, they drain their energy, already depleted by creation, in fifty different ways. Now I am strongly of Ruskin's opinion that the duty of the artist is to make himself fit for the best society, and then to abstain from it. Very fortunately I have no sort of taste for these things, beyond the simple human satisfaction in enjoying consideration. That is natural and inevitable. But I don't value it unduly, and I dislike its penalties more than I love its rewards.

And then, too, I reflect that it is, after all, life that we are here to taste, and life that so many of us pass by. Work is a part of life, perhaps the essence of life; but to be absorbed in work is to be like a man who is absorbed in collecting specimens, and never has time to sort them. I knew of a man who determined, early in life, to write the history of political institutions. He had a great library, and he devoted himself to study. He put in his books, as he read them, slips of paper to indicate passages and chapters that he would have to consult, and as he finished with a book, he put it in a certain place on a certain shelf. He made no other notes or references—he was a man with a colossal memory, and he knew exactly what his markers meant. In the middle of this life of acquisition, while he bored like a worm in a cheese, he died. His library was sold. The markers meant nothing to any one else; and the book-buyers merely took the markers out and threw them away, and that was the end of the history of political institutions.

I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to try and arrive at some solution, to draw some sort of conclusions—to reflect, to theorise; we may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only hope of doing so, the only hope that humanity will do so, is for some at least to try. And thus I think that I have perhaps been saved from a great delusion. I was spending my time in spinning romances, in elaborating plots, in manoeuvring life as I would; and it is not like that! Life is not run on physical lines, nor on emotional, nor social, nor even moral lines. It is not managed in the least as we should manage it; it is a resultant of innumerable forces, or perhaps the same force running in intricate currents. Of course the strange thing is that we men should find ourselves thrust into it, with strong intuitions, vehement preconceptions, as to how it ought to be directed; our happiness seems to depend upon our being, or learning to be, in harmony with it, but it baffles us, it resists us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to the end; sometimes it crushes us; and yet we believe that it means good; and even if we do not so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure; and one thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson of life by practising indifference or stoical fortitude, or by abandoning ourselves to despair; only by believing that our sufferings are fruitful, our mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sorrows gracious, can we hope to triumph. We go on, many of us, relying on useless defences, beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions, overlooking, as far as we can, stern realities; stopping our ears, turning away our gaze, shrinking and crying out like children at the prospect of experiences to which we are led by loving presences, that smile as they draw us to the wholesome and bracing incidents that we so weakly dread. We pray for courage, but we know in our souls that courage can only be won by enduring what we fear; and thus preoccupied by hopes and plans and fears, we miss the wholesome sweet and simple stuff of life, its quiet relationships, its tranquil occupations, its beautiful and tender surprises.

And then perhaps, at long intervals, we have a deep and splendid flash of insight, when we can thank God that things have not been as we should have willed and ordered them. We should have lingered, perhaps, in the low rich meadows, the sheltered woodlands of our desire; we should never have set our feet to the hill. In terror and reluctance we have wandered upwards among the steep mountain tracks, by high green slopes, by grim crag-buttresses, through fields of desolate stones. Yet we are aware of a finer, purer air, of wide prospects of hill and plain; we feel that we have gained in strength and vigour, that our perceptions are keener, our very enjoyment nobler; and at last, it may be, we have sight, from some Pisgah-top of hope, of fairer lands yet to which we are surely bound. And then, too, though we have fared on in loneliness and isolation, we see moving forms of friends and comrades converging on our track. It is no dream; it is but a parable of what has happened to many a soul, what is daily happening. What does the sad, stained, weary, fitful past concern us at such a moment as this? It concerns us nothing, save that only through its pains and shadows was it possible for us to climb where we have climbed.

To-day it seems that I have been blessed with such a vision. The mist will close in again, doubtless, wild with wind, chill with rain, sad with the cry of hoarse streams. But I have seen! I shall be weary and regretful and despairing many times; but I shall never wholly doubt again.



August 8, 1889.

Alec is ill to-day. He was restless, flushed, feverish, yesterday evening, and I thought he must have caught cold; we put him to bed, and this morning we sent for the doctor. He says there is no need for anxiety, but he does not know as yet what is the matter; his temperature is high, and we must just keep him quietly in bed, and wait. I tell myself that it is foolish to be anxious, but I cannot keep a certain dread out of my mind; there is a weight upon my heart, which seems unduly heavy. Perhaps it is only that it seems unusual, for he has never had an illness of any kind. He is not to be disturbed, and Maggie is not allowed to see him. Maud sate with him this morning, and he slept most of the time. I looked in once or twice, but people coming and going tend to make him restless. Maud herself is a marvel to me. She must be even more anxious than I am, but she is serene, smiling, strong, with a cheerfulness that has no effort about it. She laughed tenderly at my fears, and sent me out for a walk with Maggie. I fear I was a gloomy companion. In the evening I went to sit with Alec a little. He was wakeful, large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of stories from Homer, of which he is very fond, in one hand, the other clasping his black kitten, which slept peacefully on the counterpane. He wanted to talk, but to keep him quiet I told him a long trivial story, full of unexciting incidents. He lay musing, his head on his hand; then he seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside him, watching and wondering at the nearness and the dearness of the child to me, almost amazed at the revelation which this shadow of fear gives me of the place which he fills in my heart and life. He tossed about for some time, and when I asked him if he wanted anything, he only put his hand in mine; a gesture not quite like him, as he is a boy who is averse to personal caresses or signs of emotion. So I drew my chair up to the bed, and sate there with the little hot hand in my own. Maud came up presently; but as he now seemed sound asleep, we left him in the care of the old nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only knew what was the matter! I argue with myself how much unnecessary misery I give myself by anticipating evil; but I cannot help it; and the weight on my mind grew heavier; half the night I lay awake, till at last, from sheer weariness, I fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled from me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning hideous fear leapt on me out of the dark, like a beast leaping upon its prey.



August 11, 1889.

I cannot and dare not write of these days. The child is very ill; it is some obscure inflammation of the brain-tissue. I had an insupportable fear that it might have resulted in some way from being over-pressed in the matter of work, over-stimulated. I asked the doctor. If he lied to me, and I do not think he did, he lied like a man, or an angel. "Not in the least," he said, "it is a constitutional thing; in fact, I may say that the rational and healthy life the child has lived will help more than anything to pull him through."

But I can't write of the days. I sleep, half-conscious of my misery. I suppose I eat, walk, read. But waking is like the waking of a prisoner who awakes up to be put on the rack, who hears doors open and feet approach, and sickens with dread as he lies. God's hand is heavy upon me day and night. Surely nothing, in the world or out of it, can obliterate the memory of this suffering; perhaps, if Alec is given back to us, I shall smile at this time of suffering. But, if not—



August 12, 1889.

He is losing ground, he is hardly ever conscious now; he sleeps a good deal, but often he talks quietly to himself of all that we have done and said; he often supposes himself to be with me, and, thank God, he never says a word to show that he has ever feared or misunderstood me. I could not bear that. Yesterday when I was with him, he opened his eyes on me; I could see that he knew me, and that he was frightened. I could not speak, but Maud, who was with me, just took his hand and with her own tranquil smile, said, "It is all right, Alec; there is nothing to be frightened about; we are here, and you will soon be well again." The child closed his eyes and lay smiling to himself. I could not have done that.



August 13, 1889.

He died this morning, just at the dawn. I knew last night that all hope was over. I was with him half the night, and prayed, knowing my prayers were in vain. That I could save him no suffering, could not keep him, could not draw him back. Maud took my place at midnight; I slept, and in the grey dawn, I woke to find her standing with a candle by my bed; I knew in a moment, by a glance, that the end was near. No word passed between us; I found Maggie by the bed; and we three together waited for the end. I had never seen any one die. He was quite unconscious, breathing slowly, looking just like himself, as though flushed with slumber. At last he stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle himself for the last sleep. I do not know when he died, but I became aware that life had passed, and that the little spirit that we loved had fled, God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand in mine; and in my dumb and frozen grief, almost without a thought of anything but a deep and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of love and death alike, I became aware that both she and Maud had me in their thoughts, that my sorrow was even more to them than their own—while I was cut off from them; from life and hope alike, in a place of darkness and in the deep.



August 19, 1889.

I saw Alec no more; I would remember him as he was in life, not the stiffened waxen mask of my beloved. The days passed in a dull stupor of grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly greyness. And I who thought that I had sounded the depths of pain! I could not realise it, could not believe that all would not somehow be as before. Maud and Maggie speak of him to each other and to me . . . it is inconceivable. With a dull heartache I have collected and put away all the child's things—his books, his toys, his little possessions. I followed the little coffin to the grave. The uncontrollable throb of emotion came over me at the words, "I am the resurrection and the life." It was a grey, gusty day; a silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found myself watching idly how the clergyman's hood was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into the deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying there, all in a dumb dream. The holy words fell vacuously on my ears. "Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain"—that was all I felt. I seem to believe nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe I shall ever see or draw near to the child again, and yet the thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me; her love does not seem to suffer eclipse; she does everything, she smiles, she speaks; she feels, she says, the presence of the child near her and about her; that means nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have gone out utterly like a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as the little body we loved will be mingled with the dust.

I cannot say that I endure agony; it is rather as if I had received a blow so fierce that it drove sensation away; I seem to see the bruise, watch the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. The suffering will come, I doubt not; but meanwhile I am only mutely grateful that I do not feel more, suffer more. It does not even seem to me to have drawn me nearer to Maud, to Maggie; my power of loving seems extinguished, like my power of suffering. I do not know why I write in this book, why I record my blank apathy. It is a habit, it passes the time; the only thing that gives me any comfort is the thought that I shall die, too, and close my eyes at last upon this terrible world, made so sweet and beautiful, and then slashed and scored across with such cruel stripes, where we pay so grievous a penalty for feeling and loving. Tennyson found consolation "when he sorrowed most." But I say deliberately that I would rather not have loved my child, than lose him thus.



August 28, 1889.

We are to go away. Maggie droops like a faded flower, and for the first time I realise, in trying to comfort and distract her, that I have not lost everything. We are much together, and seeing her thus pine and fade stirs a dread, in the heart that had been so cold, that I may lose her too. At last we are drawn together. She came to say good-night to me last night, and a gush of love passed through me, like the wind stirring the strings of a harp to music. "My precious darling, my comfort," I said; the words put, it seemed, on my lips, by some deeper power. She clung to me, crying softly. Yet, is it strange to say it, that simple utterance seems almost to have revived her, to have given her pride and courage? But Maud is still almost a mystery to me. Who can tell how she suffers—I cannot—it seems to have quickened and enriched her love and tenderness; she seems to have a secret that I cannot come near to sharing; she does not repine, rebel, resist; she lives in some region of unapproachable patience and love. She goes daily to the grave, but I cannot visit it or think of it. The sight of the church-tower on my walks gives me a throb of dismay. But now we are going away. We have been lent a little house in a quiet seaside place; I suppose I am ill—at least, I am aware of a deep and unutterable fatigue at times, when I can rouse myself to nothing, but sit unoccupied, musing, glad to be alone, and only dreading the slightest interruption, the smallest duty. I know by some subtle sense that I am seldom absent from Maud's thoughts; but, with her incredible courage and patience, she betrays nothing by word or glance. She is absolutely patient, entirely self-forgetful; she quietly relieves me of anything I have to do; she alters arrangements a dozen times a day, with a ready smile; and yet it almost seems to me as if I had lost her too.



August 30, 1889.

Our route lay through Cambridge; we had to change there and wait; so we drove down to the town to look at my old college. There it lay, the charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking lazily out of its deep-set barred windows in the bright sun, just the same, it seemed, as ever, though perhaps a touch more mellow and more settled; every corner and staircase haunted with old ghosts for me. I could put a name to every set of rooms, flash an incident to every door and window. In my heavy, apathetic mood the memory of my life there seemed like a memory of some one else, moving in golden light, talking and laughing in firelit rooms, lingering in moonlit nights by the bridge, wondering what life was going to bring. It seemed like turning the pages of some old illuminated book with bright pictures, where the very sunlight is the purest and stiffest gold. The men I knew, the friends I lived with, admired, loved—where are they? scattered to all parts of the earth, parted utterly from me, some of them dead, alas! and silent. It came over me with a thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had pictured Alec here, living the same free and beautiful life, tasting the same innocent pleasures, with the bright, sweet world opening upon him. In that calm, sunny afternoon, life seemed a strange phantasmal business, and I myself a revenant from some thin, unsubstantial world. A door opened, and an old Don, well known to me in those days, hardly altered, it seemed, came out and trotted across the court, looking suspiciously to left and right as he used to do. Had he been doing the same thing ever since, reading the same books, talking the same innocent gossip? I had not the heart to greet him, and he passed me by unrecognising. We peeped into the hall through the screen. I could see where I used to sit, the same dark pictures looking down. We went to the chapel, with its noble classical woodwork, the great carved panels, the angels' heads, the huge, stately reredos. Some one, thank God, was playing softly on the organ, and we sate to listen. The sweet music flowed over my sad heart in a healing tide. Yes, it was not meaningless, after all, this strange life, with the good years shining in their rainbow halo, even though the path led into darkness and formless shadow. I seemed to look back on it all, as the traveller on the hill looks out from the skirts of the cloud upon the sunny valley beneath him. It all worked together, said the delicate rising strain, outlining itself above the soft thunder of the pedals, into something high and grave and beautiful; it all ended in the peace of God. I sate there, with wife and child, a pilgrim faring onwards, tasting of love and life and sorrow, weary of the way, but still—yes, I could say that—still hopeful. In that moment even my bitter loss had something beautiful about it. It was THERE, the bright episode of my dear Alec's life, the memory of the beloved years together. Maggie, seeing something in my face that she was glad to see, put her hand in mine, and the tears rose to my eyes, while I smiled at Maud; the burden fell off my shoulder for a moment, and something seemed as it were to touch me and point onwards. The music with a dying fall came to a soft close; the rich light fell on desk and canopy; the old tombs glimmered in the dusty air. We went out in silence; and then there came back to me, in the old dark court, with its ivied corners, its trim grass plots, the sense that I was still a part of it all, that the old life was not dead, but stored up like a garnered treasure in the rich and guarded past. Not by detachment or aloofness from happiness and warmth and life are our victories won. That had been the dark temptation, the shadow of my loss, to believe that in so sad and strange an existence the only hope was to stand apart from it all, not to care too much, not to love too closely. That was false, utterly false; a bare and grim philosophy, a timid sauntering. Rather it was better to clasp all things close, to love passionately, to desire infinitely, to yield oneself gladly and joyfully to every deep and true emotion; not greedily and luxuriously, flinging aside the crumpled husk that had given up its sweetness; but tenderly and gently, holding out one's arms to everything pure and noble, trusting that behind all there did indeed beat a great and fatherly heart, that loved one better than one dreamed.

That was a strange experience, that sunlit afternoon, a mingling of deepest pain and softest hope, a touch of fire from the very altar of faith, linking the beautiful past with the dark present, and showing me that the future held a promise of perfect graciousness and radiant strength. Did other lives hold the same rich secrets? I felt that they did; for that day, at least, all mankind, young and old alike, seemed indeed my brothers and sisters. In the young men that went lightly in and out, finding life so full of zest, thinking each other so interesting and wonderful; in the tired face of the old Professor, limping along the street; in the prosperous, comfortable contentment of robust men, full of little affairs and schemes—I saw in all of them the same hope, the same unity of purpose, the same significance; and we three in the midst, united by love and loss alike, we were at the centre, as it were, of a great drama of life and love, in which even death could only shift the scene and enrich the intensity of the secret hope.



September 5, 1889.

The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away from Cambridge could not last; I did not hope that it could. We have had a dark and sad time, yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we have realised how closely we are drawn together, how much we depend on each other. Maud's brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly; and this has done more than anything to bring us nearer, because I have felt the stronger, realising how much she leant upon me. She has been filled with self-reproach, I know not for what shadowy causes. She blames herself for a thousand things, for not having been more to Alec, for having followed her own interests and activities, for not having understood him better. It is all unreal, morbid, overstrained, of course, but none the less terribly there. I have tried to persuade her that it is but weariness and grief trying to attach itself to definite causes, but she cannot be comforted. Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive, read, and talk together—mostly of him, for I can do that now; we can even smile together over little memories, though it is perilous walking, and a step brings us to the verge of tears. But, thank God, there is not a single painful memory, not a thing we would have had otherwise in the whole of that little beautiful life; and I wonder now wretchedly, whether its very beauty and brightness ought not to have prepared me more to lose him; it was too good to be true, too perfectly pure and brave. Yet I never even dreamed that he would leave us; I should have treasured the bright days better if I had. There are times of sharpest sorrow, days when I wake and have forgotten; when I think of him as with us, and then the horror of my loss comes curdling and weltering back upon me; when I thrill from head to foot with hopeless agony, rebelling, desiring, hating the death that parts us.

Maggie seems to feel it differently. A child accepts a changed condition with perhaps a sharper pang, but with a swift accustoming to what irreparably IS. She weeps at the thought of him sometimes, but without the bitter resistance, the futile despair which makes me agonise. That she can be interested, distracted, amused, is a great help to me; but nothing seems to minister to my dear Maud, except the impassioned revival, for it is so, of our earliest first love. It has come back to bless us, that deep and intimate absorption that had moved into a gentler comradeship. The old mysterious yearning to mingle life and dreams, and almost identities, has returned in fullest force; the years have rolled away, and in the loss of her calm strength and patience, we are as lovers again. The touch of her hand, the glance of her eye, thrill through me as of old. It is a devout service, an eager anticipation of her lightest wish that possesses me. I am no longer tended; I tend and serve. There is something soft, appealing, wistful about her that seems to give her back an almost childlike dependence, till my grief almost goes from me in joy that I can sustain and aid her.



September 7, 1889.

Another trouble has fallen upon us. I have had a very grievous letter from my cousin, who succeeded by arrangement, on my father's death, to the business. He has been unfortunate in his affairs; he has thrown money away in speculation. The greater part of my income came from the business. I suppose the arrangement was a bad one, but the practice was so sound and secure in my father's life that it never occurred to me to doubt its stability. The chief part of my income, some nine hundred a year, came to me from this source. Apart from that, I have some three or four hundreds from invested money of my own, and Maud has upwards of two hundred a year. I am going off to-morrow to L—— to meet my cousin, and go into the matter. I don't at present understand how things are. His letter is full of protestations and self-recrimination. We can live, I suppose, if the worst comes to the worst, but in a very different way. Perhaps we may even have to sell our pleasant house. The strange thing is that I don't feel this all more acutely, but I seem to have lost the power of suffering for any other reason than because Alec is dead.



September 12, 1889.

I have come back to-night from some weary nightmare days with my poor cousin. The thing is as bad as it can be. The business will be acquired by Messrs. F——, the next most leading solicitors. With the price they will give, and with the sacrifice of my cousin's savings, and the assets of the firm, the money can just be paid. We shall have some six hundred a year to live upon; my cousin is to enter the office of the F—— firm as an ordinary clerk. The origin of the disaster is a melancholy one; it was not that he himself might profit, but to increase the income of some clients who had lost money and desired a higher rate of interest for funds left in the hands of the firm. If my cousin had resisted the demand, there would have been some unpleasantness, because the money lost had been invested on his advice; he could not face this, and proceeded to speculate with other money, of which he was trustee, to fill the gap. Good-nature, imprudence, credulousness, a faulty grasp of the conditions, and not any deliberate dishonesty, have been the cause of his ruin. It is a fearful blow to him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in being unmarried; I have urged him to try and get employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the situation in the place where he is known, with a fantastic idea, which is at the same time noble and chivalrous, of doing penance. Of course he has no prospects whatever; but I am sure of this, that he grieves over my lost inheritance far more than he grieves over his own ruin. His great misery is that some years ago he refused an offer from Messrs. F—— to amalgamate the two firms.

I feared at first that I might have to sacrifice the rest of my money as well—money slowly accumulated out of my own labours. And the relief of finding that this will not be necessary is immense. We must sell our house at once, and find a smaller one. At present I am not afraid of the changed circumstances; indeed, if I could only recover my power of writing, we need not leave our home. The temptation is to get a book written somehow, because I could make money by any stuff just now. On the other hand, it will almost be to me a relief to part from the home so haunted with the memory of Alec—though that will be a dreadful pain to Maud and Maggie. As far as living more simply goes, that does not trouble me in the least. I have always been slightly uncomfortable about the ease and luxury in which we lived. I only wish we had lived more simply all along, so that I could have put by a little more. I have told Maud exactly how matters stand, and she acquiesces, though I can see that, just at this time, the thought of handing over to strangers the house where we have lived all our married life, the rooms where Alec and the baby died, is a deep grief to her. To me that is almost a relief. I have dreaded going back there. To-night I told Maggie, and she broke out into long weeping. But even so there is something about the idea of being poor, strange to say, which touches a sense of romance in the child. She does not realise the poky restrictions of the new life.

And still stranger to me is the way in which this solid, tangible trouble seems to have restored my energy and calm. I found myself clear-headed, able to grasp the business questions which arose, gifted with a hard lucidity of mind that I did not know I possessed. It is a relief to get one's teeth into something, to have hard, definite occupation to distract one; indeed, it hardly seems to me in the light of a misfortune at present, so much as a blessed tangible problem to be grappled with and solved. What I should have felt if all had been lost, and if I had had to resign my liberty, and take up some practical occupation, I hardly know. I do not think I should even have dreaded that in my present frame of mind.



September 15, 1889.

I have been thinking all day long of my last walk with Alec, the day before he was taken ill. Maud had gone out with Maggie; and the little sturdy figure came to my room to ask if I was going out. I was finishing a book that I was reading for the evening's work; I had been out in the morning, and I had not intended to go out again, as it was cold and drizzling. I very nearly said that I could not go, and I had a shadow of vexation at being interrupted. But I looked up at him, as he stood by the door, and there was a tiny shadow of loneliness upon his face; and I thank God now that I put my book down at once, and consented cheerfully. He brightened up at this; he fetched my cap and stick, and we went off together. I am glad to think that I had him to myself that day. He was in a more confidential mood than usual. Perhaps—who knows?—there was some shadow of death upon him, some instinct to clasp hands closer before the end. He asked me to tell him some stories of my schooldays, and what I used to do as a boy—but he was full of alertness and life, breaking into my narratives to point out a nest that we had seen in the spring, and that now hung, wind-dried and ruinous, among the boughs. Coming back, he flagged a little, and did what he seldom did, put his arm in my own; how tenderly the touch of the little hand, the restless fingers on my arm thrilled me—the hand that lies cold and folded and shrivelled in the dark ground! He was proud that evening of having had me all to himself, and said to Maggie that we had talked secrets, "such as MEN talk when there are no women to ask questions." But thinking that this had wounded Maggie a little, he went and put his arm round her, and I heard him say something about its being all nonsense, and that we had wished for her all the time. . . .

Ah, how can I endure it, the silence, the absence, the lost smile, the child of my own whom I loved from head to foot, body soul and spirit all alike! I keep coming across signs of his presence everywhere, his books, his garden tools in the summerhouse, the little presents he gave me, on my study chimney-piece, his cap and coat hanging in the cupboard—it is these little trifling things, signs of life and joyful days, that sting the heart and pierce the brain with sorrow. If I could but have one sight of him, one word with him, one smile, to show that he is, that he remembers, that he waits for us, I could endure it; but I look into the dark and no answer comes; I send my wild entreaties pulsating through the worlds of space, crying, "Are you there, my child?" That his life is there, hidden with God, I do not doubt; but is it he himself, or has he fallen back, like the drop of water in the fountain, into the great tide of life? That is no comfort to me; it is he that I want, that union of body and mind, of life and love, that was called my child and is mine no more.



September 20, 1889.

Such a loss as mine passes over the soul like a plough cleaving a pasture line by line. The true stuff of the spirit is revealed and laid out in all its bareness. That customary outline, that surface growth of herb and blade, is all pared away. I have been accustomed to think myself a religious man—I have never been without the sense of God over and about me. But when an experience like this comes, it shows me what my religion is worth. I do not turn to God in love and hope; I do not know Him, I do not understand Him. I feel that He must have forgotten me, or that He is indifferent to me, or that He is incapable of love, and works blindly and sternly. My reason in vain says that the great and beautiful gift itself of the child's life and the child's love came from Him. I do not question His power or His right to take my child from me. But I endure only because I must, not willingly or loyally or lovingly. It is not that I feel the injustice of His taking the boy away; it is a far deeper sense of injustice than that. The injustice lies in the fact that He made the child so utterly dear and desired; that He set him so firmly in my heart; this on the one hand; and on the other, that He does not, if He must rend the little life away and leave the bleeding gap, send at the same time some love, some strength, some patience to make the pain bearable. I cannot believe that the love I bore my boy was anything but a sweet and holy influence. It gave me the one thing of which I am in hourly need—something outside of myself and my own interests, to love better than I loved even myself. It seems indeed a pure and simple loss, unless the lesson God would have us learn is the stoical lesson of detachment, indifference, cold self-sufficiency. It is like taking the crutches away from a lame man, knocking the props away from a tottering building. An optimistic moralist would say that I loved Alec too selfishly, and even that the love of the child turned away my heart from the jealous Heart of God, who demands a perfect surrender, a perfect love. But how can one love that which one does not know or understand, a Power that walks in darkness and that gives us on the one hand sweet, beautiful, and desirable things, and on the other strikes them from us when we need them most? It is not as if I did not desire to trust and love God utterly. I should think even this sorrow a light price to pay, if it gave me a pure and deep trust in the mercy and goodness of God. But instead of that it fills me with dismay, blank suspicion, fretful resistance. I do not feel that there is anything which God could send me or reveal to me, which would enable me to acquit Him of hardness or injustice. I will not, though He slay me, say that I trust Him and love Him when I do not. He may crush me with repeated blows of His hand, but He has given me the divine power of judging, of testing, of balancing; and I must use it even in His despite. He does not require, I think, a dull and broken submissiveness, the submissiveness of the creature that is ready to admit anything, if only he can be spared another blow. What He requires, so my spirit tells me, is an eager co-operation, a brave approval, a generous belief in His goodness and His justice; and this I cannot give, and it is He that has made me unable to give it. The wound may heal, the dull pain may die away, I may forget, the child may become a golden memory—but I cannot again believe that this is the surrender God desires. What I think He must desire, is that I should love the child, miss him as bitterly as ever, feel my day darkened by his loss, and yet turn to Him gratefully and bravely in perfect love and trust. It may be that I may be drawn closer to those whom I love, but the loss must still remain irreparable, because I might have learned to love my dear ones better through Alec's presence, and not through his absence. It is His will, I do not doubt it; but I cannot see the goodness or the justice of the act, and I will not pretend to myself that I acquiesce.



September 25, 1889.

Yesterday was a warm, delicious, soft day, full of a gentle languor, the air balmy and sweet, the sunshine like the purest gold; we sate out all the morning under the cliff, in the warm dry sand. To the right and left of us lay the blue bay, the waves breaking with short, crisp sparkles on the shore. We saw headland after headland sinking into the haze; a few fishing-boats moved slowly about, and far down on the horizon we watched the smoke of a great ocean-steamer. We talked, Maud and I, for the first time, I think, without reserve, without bitterness, almost without grief, of Alec. What sustains her is the certainty that he is as he was, somewhere, far off, as brave and loving as ever, waiting for us, but waiting with a perfect understanding and knowledge of why we are separated. She dreams of him thus, looking down upon her, and seeming, in her dream, to wonder what there can be to grieve about. I suppose that a mother has a sense of oneness with a child that a father cannot have. It is a deep and marvellous faith, an intuition that transcends all reason, a radiant certainty. I cannot attain to it. But in the warmth and light of her belief, I grew to feel that at least there was some explanation of it all. Not by chance is the dear gift sent us, not by chance do we learn to love it, not by chance is it rent from us. Lying thus, talking softly, in so gracious a world, a world that satisfied every craving of the senses, I came to realise that the Father must wish us well, and that if the shadow fell upon our path, it was not to make us cold and bitter-hearted. Infinite Love! it came near to me in that hour, and clasped me to a sorrowful, tender, beating Heart. I read Maud, at her request, "Evelyn Hope," and the strong and patient love, that dwells so serenely and softly upon the incidents of death, yet without the least touch of morbidity and gloom, treating death itself as a quiet slumber of the soul, taught me for a moment how to be brave.

"You will wake and remember, and understand,"—my voice broke and tears came, unbidden tears which I did not even desire to conceal—and in that moment the spirit of my wife came near to me, and soul looked into the eyes of soul, with a perfect and bewildering joy, the very joy of God.



October 10, 1889.

We have had the kindest, dearest letters from our neighbours about our last misfortune. But no one seems to anticipate that we shall be obliged to leave the place. They naturally suppose that I shall be able to make as large an income as I want by writing. And so I suppose I could. I talked the whole matter over with Maud, and said I would abide by her decision. I confessed that I had an extreme repugnance to the thought of turning out books for money, books which I knew to be inferior; but I also said that if she could not bear to leave the place, I had little doubt that I could, for the present at all events, make enough money to render it possible for us to continue to live there. I said frankly that it would be a relief to me to leave a house so sadly haunted by memory, and that I should myself prefer to live elsewhere, framing our household on very simple lines—and to let the power of writing come back if it would, not to try and force it. It would be a dreadful prospect to me to live thus, overshadowed by recollection, working dismally for money; but I suppose it would be possible, even bracing. Maud did not hesitate: she spoke quite frankly; on the one hand the very associations, which I dread most, were evidently to her a source of sad delight; and the thought of strangers living in rooms so hallowed by grief was like a profanation. Then there was the fact of all her relations with our friends and neighbours; but she said quite simply that my feeling outweighed it all, and that she would far rather begin life afresh somewhere else, than put me in the position I described. We determined to try and find a small house in the neighbourhood of her own old home in Gloucestershire; and this thought, I am sure, gave her real happiness. We determined at once what we would do; we would let our house for a term of years, take what furniture we needed, and dispose of the rest; we arranged to go off to Gloucestershire, as soon as possible, to look for a house. We both realise that we must learn to retrench at once. We shall have less than half our former income, counting in what we hope to get from the old house. I am not at all afraid of that. I always vaguely disliked living as comfortably as we did—but it will not be agreeable to have to calculate all our expenses—that may perhaps mend itself, if I can but begin my writing again.

All this helps me—I am ashamed to say how much—though sometimes the thought of all the necessary arrangements weighs on me like a leaden weight, on days when I fall back into a sad, idle, hopeless repining. Sometimes it seems as if the old happy life was all broken up and gone for ever; and, so strange a thing is memory and imagination, that even the months overshadowed by the loss of my faculty of work seem to me now impossibly fragrant and beautiful, my sufferings unreal and unsubstantial. Real trouble, real grief, have at least the bracing force of actuality, and sweep aside with a strong hand all artificial self-made miseries and glooms.



December 15, 1889.

I have kept no record of these weeks. They have been full of business, sadness, and yet of hope. We went back home for a time; we made our farewells, and it moved me strangely to see that our departure was viewed almost with consternation. It is Maud's loss that will be felt. I have lived very selfishly and dully myself, but even so I was half-glad to find that even I should be missed. At such a time everything is forgotten and forgiven, and such grudging, peaceful neighbourliness as even I have shown seems appreciated and valued. It was a heartrending business reviving our sorrow, and it plunged me for a time into my old dry bitterness of spirit. But I hardened my heart as best I could, and felt more deeply than ever, how far beyond my powers of endurance it would have been to have taken up the old life, and Alec not there. Again and again it was like a knife plunged into my heart with an almost physical pain. Not so with Maud and Maggie—it was to them a treasure of precious memories, and they could dare to indulge their grief. I can't write of it, I can't think of it. Wherever I turned, I saw him in a hundred guises—as a tiny child, as a small, sturdy boy, as the son we lost.

We have let the house to some very kind and reasonable people, who have made things very easy to us; and to me at least it was a sort of heavy joy to take the last meal in the old home, to drive away, to see the landscape fade from sight. I shall never willingly return. It would seem to me like a wilful rolling among the thorns of life, a gathering-in of spears into one's breast. I seemed like a naked creature that had lost its skin, that shrank and bled at every touch.



February 10, 1890.

I have been house-hunting, and I do not pretend to dislike it. The sight of unknown houses, high garden walls, windows looking into blind courts, staircases leading to lofts, dark cupboards, old lumber, has a very stimulating effect on my imagination. Perhaps, too, I sometimes think, these old places are full of haunting spiritual presences, clinging, half tearfully, half joyfully to the familiar scenes, half sad, perhaps, that they did not make a finer thing of the little confined life; half glad to be free—as a man, strong and well, might look with a sense of security into a room where he had borne an operation. But I have never believed much in haunted rooms. The Father's many mansions can be hardly worth deserting for the little, dark houses of our tiny life.

I disliked some of the houses intensely—so ugly and pretentious, so inconvenient and dull; but even so it is pleasant in fancy to plan the life one would live there, the rooms one would use. One house touched me inexpressibly. It was a house I knew from the outside in a little town where I used to go and spend a few weeks every year with an old aunt of mine. The name of the little town—I saw it in an agent's list—had a sort of enchantment for me, a golden haze of memory. I was allowed a freedom there I was allowed nowhere else, I was petted and made much of, and I used to spend most of my time in sauntering about, just looking, watching, scrutinising things, with the hard and uncritical observation of childhood. When I got to the place, I was surprised to find that I knew well the look of the house I went to see, though I had not ever entered it. Two neat, contented, slightly absurd old maiden ladies had lived there, who used to walk out together, dressed exactly alike in some faded fashion. The laurels and yews still grew thickly in the shrubbery, and shaded the windows of the ugly little parlours. An old, quiet, respectable maid showed me round; she had been in service there for twenty years, and she was tearfully lamenting over the break-up of the home. The old ladies had lived there for sixty years. One of them had died ten years before, the other had lingered on to extreme old age. The house was like a museum, a specimen of a house of the thirties, in which nothing had ever been touched or changed. The strange wall-papers and chintzes, the crewel-work chairs, the mirrors, the light maple furniture, the case of moth-eaten humming-birds, the dull engravings of historical pictures, the old books—the drawing-room table was covered with annuals and keepsakes, Moore's poems, Mrs. Barbauld's works—all had a pathetic ugliness, redeemed by a certain consistency of quality. And then the poky, comfortable arrangements, the bath-chair in the coach-house, the four-post bedsteads, the hand-rail on the stairs, the sandbags for the doors, all spoke of a timid, invalid life, a dim backwater in the tide of things. There had been children there at some time, for there were broken toys, collections of dried plants, curious stones, in an attic. The little drama of the house shaped itself for me, as I walked through the frowsy, faded rooms, with a touching insistence. This bedroom had never been used since Miss Eleanor died—and I could fancy the poor, little, timid, precise life flitting away among the well-known surroundings. This had been Miss Jackson's favourite room—it was so quiet—she had died there, sitting in her chair, a few weeks before. The leisurely, harmless routine of the quiet household rose before me. I could imagine Miss Jackson writing her letters, reading her book, eating her small meals, making the same humble and grateful remarks, entertaining her old friends. Year after year it had gone on, just the same, the clock ticking loud in the hall, the sun creeping round the old rooms, the birds singing in the garden, the faint footsteps in the road. It had begun, that gentle routine, long before I had been born into the world; and it was strange to me to think that, as I passed through the most stirring experiences of my life, nothing ever stirred or moved or altered here. Miss Jackson had felt Miss Eleanor's death very much; she had hardly ever left the house since, and they had had no company. Yes, what a woefully bewildering thing death swooping down into that quiet household, with all its tranquil security, must have been! One wondered what Miss Eleanor had felt, when she knew she had to die, to pass out into the unknown dark out of a world so tender, so familiar, so peaceful; and what had poor Miss Jackson made of it, when she was left alone? She must have found it all very puzzling, very dreary. And yet, in the dim past, perhaps one or both of them, had had dreams of a fuller life, had fancied that something more than tenderness had looked out of the eyes of a man; well, it had come to nothing, whatever it might have been; and the two old ladies had settled down, perhaps with some natural repining, to their unexciting, contented life, the day filled with little duties and pleasures, the nights with innocent sleep. It had not been a selfish life—they had been good to the poor, the maid told me; and in old days they had often had their nephews and nieces to stay with them. But those children had grown up and gone out into the world, and no longer cared to return to the dull little house with its precise ways, and the fidgety love that had once embraced them.

The whole thing seemed a mysterious mixture of purposelessness and contentment. Rumours of wars, social convulsions, patriotic hopes, great ideas, had swept on their course outside, and had never stirred the drowsy current of life behind the garden walls. The sisters had lived, sweetly, perhaps, and softly, like trees in some sequestered woodland, hardly recognising their own gentle lapse of strength and activity.

And now the whole thing was over for good. Curious and indifferent people came, tramped about the house, pronounced it old-fashioned and inconvenient. I could not do that myself; the place was brimful of the pathetic evidences of what had been. Soon, no doubt, the old house would wear a different guise—it would be renovated and restored, the furniture would drift away to second-hand shops, the litter would be thrown out upon the rubbish-heap. New lives, new relationships would spring up; children would be born, boys would play, lovers would embrace, sufferers would lie musing, men and women would die in those refurbished rooms. Everything would drift onwards, and the lives to whom each corner, each stair, each piece of furniture had meant so much, would become a memory first, and then fade into nothingness. Where and what were the two old ladies now? Were they gone out utterly, like an extinguished flame? were they in some new home of tranquil peace? Were they adjusting themselves with a sense of timid impotence—those slender, tired spirits—to new and bewildering conditions?

The old, dull house called to me that day with a hundred faint voices and tremulous echoes. I could make nothing of it; for though it swept the strings of my heart with a ghostly music, it seemed to have no certain message for me, but the message of oblivion and silence.

I was sorry, as I went away, to leave the poor maidservant to her lonely and desolate memories. She had to leave her comfortable kitchen and her easy routine, for new duties and new faces, and I could see that she anticipated the change with sad dismay.

It seemed to me in that hour as though the cruelty and the tenderness of the world were very mysteriously blended—there was no lack of tenderness in the old house with its innumerable small associations, its sheltered calm. And then suddenly the stroke must fall, and fall upon lives whose very security and gentleness seemed to have been so ill a preparation for sterner and darker things. It would have been more loving, one thought, either to have made the whole fabric more austere, more precarious from the first; or else to have bestowed a deep courage and a fertile hope, a firmer endurance, rather than to have confronted lives so frail and delicate with the terrors of the vast unknown.



April 8, 1890.

Our new house is charming, beautiful, homelike. It is an old stone building, formerly a farm; it has a quaint garden and orchard, and the wooded hill runs up steeply behind, with a stream in front. It is on the outskirts of a village, and we are within three miles of Maud's old home, so that she knows all the country round. We have got two of our old servants, and a solid comfortable gardener, a native of the place. The house within is quaint and comfortable. We have a spare bedroom; I have no study, but shall use the little panelled dining-room. We have had much to do in settling in, and I have done a great deal of hard physical work myself, in the way of moving furniture and hanging pictures, inducing much wholesome fatigue. Maggie, who broke down dreadfully on leaving the old home, with the wonderful spring that children have, is full of excitement and even delight in the new house. I rather dread the time when all our occupations shall be over, and when we shall settle down to the routine of life. I begin to wonder how I shall occupy myself. I mean to do a good many odd jobs—we have no trap, and there will be a good deal of fetching and carrying to be done. We shall resume our lessons, Maggie and I; there will be reading, gardening, walking. One ought to be able to live philosophically enough. What would I not give to be able to write now! but the instinct seems wholly and utterly dead and gone. I cannot even conceive that I ever used, solemnly and gravely, to write about imaginary people, their jests and epigrams, their sorrows and cares. Life and Art! I used to suppose that it was all a softly moulded, rhythmic, sonorous affair, strophe and antistrophe; but the griefs and sorrows of art are so much nearer each other, like major and minor keys, than the griefs and sorrows of life. In art, the musician smiles and sighs alternately, but his sighing is a balanced, an ordered mood; the inner heart is content, as the pool is content, whether it mirrors the sunlight or the lonely star; but in life, joy is to grief what music is to aching silence, dumbness, inarticulate pain—though perhaps in that silence one hears a deeper, stranger sound, the buzz of the whirring atom, the soft thunder of worlds plunging through the void, joyless, gigantic, oblivious forces.

Is it good thus to have the veils of life rent asunder? If life, the world's life, activity, work, be the end of existence, then it is not good. It breaks the spring of energy, so that one goes heavily and sorely. But what if that be not the end? What then?



May 16, 1890.

At present the new countryside is a great resource. I walk far among the wolds; I find exquisite villages, where every stone-built house seems to have style and quality; I come down upon green water-meadows, with clear streams flowing by banks set with thorn-bushes and alders. The churches, the manor-houses, of grey rubble smeared with plaster, with stone roof-tiles, are a feast for eye and heart. Long days in the open air bring me a dull equable health of body, a pleasant weariness, a good-humoured indifference. My mind becomes grass-grown, full of weeds, ruinous; but I welcome it as at least a respite from suffering. It is strange to think of myself at what ought, I suppose, to be the busiest and fullest time of my life, living here like a tree in lonely fields. What would be the normal life? A little house in a London street, I suppose, with a lot of white paint and bookshelves. Luncheons, dinners, plays, music, clubs, week-end visits to lively houses, a rush abroad, a few country visits in the winter. Very harmless and pleasant if one enjoyed it, but to me inconceivable and insupportable. Perhaps I should be happier and brisker, perhaps the time would go quicker. Ought one to make up one's mind that this would be the normal life, and that therefore one had better learn to accommodate oneself to it? Does one pay penalties for not submitting oneself to the ordinary laws of human intercourse? Doubtless one does. But then, made as I am, I should have to pay penalties which would seem to be even heavier for the submission. It is there that the puzzle lies; that a man should be created with the strong instinct that I feel for liberty and independence and solitude and the quiet of the country, and then that he should discover that the life he so desires should be the one that develops all the worst side of him—morbidity, fastidiousness, gloom, discontent. This is the shadow of civilisation; that it makes people intellectual, alert, craving for stimulus, and yet sucks their nerves dry of the strength that makes such things enjoyable.

And still, as I go in and out, the death of Alec seems the one absolutely unintelligible and inexplicable thing, a gloom penetrated by no star. It was the one thing that might have made me unselfish, tender-hearted, the anxious care of some other than myself. "Perhaps," says an old friend writing to me with a clumsy attempt at comfort, "perhaps he was taken mercifully away from some evil to come." A good many people say that, and feel it quite honestly. But what an insupportable idea of the ways of Providence, that God had planned a prospect for the child so dreadful that even his swift removal should be tolerable by comparison! What a helpless, hopeless confession of failure! No; either the whole short life, closed by the premature death, must have been designed, planned, executed deliberately; or else God is at the mercy of blank cross-currents, opposing forces, tendencies even stronger than Himself; and then the very idea of God crumbles away, and God becomes the blank and inscrutable force working behind a gentle, good-humoured will, which would be kind and gracious if it could, but is trammelled and bound by something stronger; that was the Greek view, of course—God above man, and Fate above God. The worst of it is that it has a horrible vraisemblance, and seems to lie even nearer to the facts of life than our own tender-hearted and sentimental theories and schemes of religion.

But whether it be God or fate, the burden has to be borne. And my one endeavour must be to bear it myself, consciously and courageously, and to shift it so far as I can from the gentler and tenderer shoulders of those whose life is so strangely linked with mine.



May 25, 1890.

One sees a house, like the house we now live in, from a road as one passes, from the windows of a train. It seems to be set at the end of the world, with the earth's sunset distance behind it—it seems a fortress of quiet, a place of infinite peace; and then one lives in it, and behold, it is a centre of a little active life, with all sorts of cross-currents darting to and fro, over it, past it.