The sail went on twinkling and began to exert an almost moral influence over me. It drew out all the good in me. I longed to follow it on white wings—an angel I suppose—to quit this husk of a body “as raiment put away,” and pursue Truth and Beauty across the sea to the horizon, and beyond the horizon up the sky itself to its last tenuous confines, no doubt with a still small voice summoning me and the rest of the elect to an Agapemone, with Dr. Spurgeon at the door distributing tracts.
I can scoff like this now. But at the time my exaltation was very real. My soul strained in the leash. I was full of a desire for unattainable spiritual beauty. I wanted something. But I don’t know what I want.
My Sense of Touch
My sense of touch has always been morbidly acute. I like to feel a cigarette locked in the extreme corner of my mouth. When I remove it from my mouth then I hold it probably up in the fork between two fingers. If I am waiting for a meal I finger the cool knives and forks. If I am in the country I plunge my hands with outspread fingers into a mass of large-topped grasses, then close my fingers, crush and decapitate the lot.
Camping Out at S⸺ Sands
A brilliant summer day. Up early, breakfasted, and, clad in sweater and trousers, walked up the sands to the boathouse with bare feet.
Everything was wonderful! I strode along over the level sands infatuated with the sheer ability to put one leg in front of the other and walk. I loved to feel the muscles of my thighs working, and to swing my arms in rhythm with the stride. The stiff breeze had blown the sky clear, and was rushing through my long hair, and bellowing into each ear. I strode as Alexander must have done!
Then I stretched my whole length out along a flat plank on the sands, which was as dry as a bone and warm. There was not a soul on the sands. Everything was bare, clean, windswept. My plank had been washed clean and white. The sands—3 miles of it—were hard and purified, level. My eye raced along in every direction—there was nothing—not a bird or a man—to stop it. In that immense windswept space nothing was present save me and the wind and the sea—a flattering moment for the egotist.
At the foot of the cliffs on the return journey met an old man gathering sticks. As he ambled along dropping sticks into a long sack he called out casually, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” in the tone of voice in which one would say, “I think we shall have some rain before night.” “Aye, aye,” came the answer without hesitation from a boy lying on his back in the sands a few yards distant, “and that He died to save me.”
Life is full of surprises like this. The only other sounds I have heard today were the Herring Gull’s cackle. Your own gardener will one day look over his rake and give you the correct chemical formula for carbonic acid gas. I met a postman once reading Shelley as he walked his rounds.
I am writing this by the lamp in the cabin among the sand hills waiting for H⸺ to arrive from town with provisions. I wear a pair of bags, a dirty sweater, and go without hat or shoes and stockings. There is a “Deadwood Dick” atmosphere here. I’m a sort of bronco-breaker or rancher off duty writing home. In a minute I haven’t the slightest doubt, H⸺ will gallop into the compound, tether his colt and come in “raising Cain” for a belly-full of red meat. … If I am going to live after all (touch wood) I shall go abroad and be in the open.
I eat greedily, am getting very sunburnt, am growing hairy (that means strength!), and utter portentous oaths. If I stayed here much longer I should grow a tail and climb trees.
After a supper of fried eggs and fried bread done to a nicety, turned in at ten, and both of us lay warm and comfortable in bed, smoking cigarettes and listening to Hoffmann’s Barcarolle on the gramophone. We put the lamp out, and it pleased us to watch the glow of each other’s cigarettes in the dark. … Neither of us spoke. … Went to sleep at midnight. Awoke at sunrise to hear an Owl still hooting, a Lark singing, and several Jackdaws clattering on our tin roof with their claws as they walked.
In London Again
Returned to London very depressed. Am not so well as I was three weeks ago. The sight of one eye is affected, and I am haunted by the possibility of blindness. Then I have a numb feeling on one side of my face, and my right arm is less mobile.
Left darling Mother in a very weak state in bed, with neuritis and a weak heart. She cried when I said “Goodbye,” and asked me to go to Church as often as I could, and to read a portion of Scripture every day. I promised. Then she added, “For Dad’s sake;” just as if I would not do it for her. Poor dear, she suffers a deal of pain. She does not know how ill I am. I have not told her.
Back at work. A terrible day. Thoughts of suicide—a pistol.
I get through each day with the utmost difficulty. I have to wrestle with every minute. Each hour is a conquest. The three quarters of an hour at lunch comes as a Godsend.
