“I see you know what my trouble is,” I said shyly. And we chatted a little about the War, about disease, and I told him of the recent memoir on the histology of the disease ⸻ in the Trans. Roy. Soc., Edin. which interested him. Then he went away again—very amiable, very polite—an obvious non possumus. …
On Monday at 4 went up to ⸻ to tea as previously arranged, but found the house shut up so returned to my rooms in a rage.
After tea, having read the newspapers inside out, sat by the open window looking out on to the Marine Parade. It was dusk, a fine rain was falling, and the parade and seafront were deserted save for an occasional figure hurrying past with mackintosh and umbrella. Suddenly as I sat looking out on this doleful scene, a dirge from nowhere in particular sounded on my ears which I soon recognised as “Robin Adair,” sung very lento and very maestoso by a woman, with a flute obligato played by some second person. The tide was right up, and the little waves murmured listlessly at long intervals: never before I think have I been plunged into such an abyss of acute misery.
Next day the wire came. But it was too late. The day after that, I was worse, a single ray of sunshine being the rediscovery of the secondhand-clothes family from Whitechapel taking the air together on the front. This dreary party was traipsing along, the parents in their furs giving an occasional glance at the sea uncomfortably, as if they only noticed it was wet, and the children still in black and still wearing their scuted boots, obviously a little uncomfortable in a place so clean and windswept. I think they all came to the seaside out of decorum and for the satisfaction of feeling that they could afford it like other folk, and that old-clothes was as profitable a business as another.
On Thursday, returned home as I was afraid of being taken ill and having to go into the public hospital. Arrived home and went to bed and here we are till Jan. 1st on 3 months’ sick leave. However, the swingeing urtication in my hands and feet has now almost entirely abated and today I went out with E⸺ and the perambulator, which I pushed.
A Baby-Girl
Walked down the bottom of the road and hung over some wooden railings. A little village baby-girl aged not more than 3 was hovering about near me while I gazed abstractedly across the Park at the trees. Presently, she crawled through the railings into the field and picked up a few dead leaves—a baby picking up dead leaves! Then she threw them down, and kicked them. Then moved on again—rustling about intermittently like a winter Thrush in the shrubbery. At last, she had stumbled around to where I was leaning over the railings. She stood immediately in front of me and silently looked up with a steady reproachful gaze: “Ain’t you ’shamed, you lazybones?” till I could bear her inquisitorial gaze no longer, and so went and hung over some more railings further on.
Service
He asked for a Tennyson. She immediately went upstairs in the dark, lit a match and got it for him.
He asked for a Shakespeare. And without a moment’s hesitation, she went upstairs again, lit another match and got that for him.
And I believe if he had said “Rats,” she would have shot out silently into the dark and tried to catch one for him. Only a woman is capable of such service.
Hardy’s Poetry
“You did not come, And marching time drew on and wore me numb— Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure loving-kindness’ sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You did not come.”
I thoroughly enjoy Hardy’s poetry for its masterfulness, for his sheer muscular compulsion over the words and sentences. In his rough-hewn lines he yokes the recalcitrant words together and drives them along mercilessly with something that looks like simple brute strength. Witness the triumphant last line in the above where the words are absolute bondslaves to his exact meaning, his indomitable will. All this pleases me the more for I know to my cost what stubborn, sullen, Hephaestian beasts words and clauses can sometimes be. It is nice to see them punished. Hardy’s poetry is Michelangelo rather than Greek, Browning not Tennyson.
What a day! After a night of fog signals, I awoke this morning to find it still foggy and the ground covered with a grey rime. All day the fog has remained: I look out now through the yellowish atmosphere across a field which is frosted over, the grass and brambles stiff and glassy. My back is aching and the cold is so intense that unless I crouch over the fire hands and feet become immediately stone-cold. All day I have crouched over the fire, reading newspapers, listening to fog signals and the screaming of the baby. … I have been in a torpor, like a Bat in a cavern—really dead yet automatically hanging on to life by my hind legs.
“To stand upon one’s guard against Death exasperates her malice and protracts our sufferings.”
—W. S. Landor.
The Parson called, over the christening of the baby. I told him I was an agnostic. “There are several interesting lines of thought down here,” he said wearily, passing his hand over his eyes. I know several men more enthusiastic over Fleas and Worms than this phlegmatic priest, over Jesus Christ.
The reason why I do not spend my days in despair and my nights in hopeless weeping simply is that I am in love with my own ruin. I therefore deserve no sympathy, and probably shan’t get it: my own profound self-compassion
