<|entry|><|mansfield|>
1 February 1916.
Dreams and Rhubarb

My sticks of rhubarb were wrapped up in a copy of the Star containing Lloyd George's last, more than eloquent speech. As I snipped up the rhubarb my eye fell, was fixed and fastened, on that sentence wherein he tells us that we have grasped our niblick and struck out for the open course. Pray Heaven there is some faithful soul ever present with a basket to catch these tender blossoms as they fall. Ah, God! it is a dreadful thought that these immortal words should go down into the dreamless dust uncherished. I loved to think, as I put the rhubarb into the saucepan, that years hence — P.G. many many years hence — when in the fullness of time, full of ripeness and wisdom, the Almighty sees fit to gather him into His bosom, some gentle stonecutter living his quiet life in the little village that had known great David as a child would take a piece of fair white marble and engrave upon it two niblicks crossed and underneath :
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
22 June 1917.
Mr. Lloyd George

In the hour of England's most imminent peril he grasped his Niblick and struck out for the Open Course.

But what does rather worry me, I thought, turning the gas down to a pinch as the rhubarb began to boil, is how these mighty words are to be translated so that our allies may taste the full flavour of them. Those crowds of patient Russians, waiting in the snow, perhaps, to have the speech read aloud to them — what dreadful weapon will it present to their imagination ? Unless The Daily News suggests to Mr. Ransome that he walk down the Nevsky Prospekt with a niblick instead of an umbrella for all the world to see. And the French — what espèce de Niblickisme will they make of it. Shall we read in the French papers next week of someone qui manque de niblick. Or that "Au milieu de ces événements si graves ce qu'il nous faut c'est du courage, de l'espoir et du niblick le plus ferme. . , ." I wondered, taking off the rhubarb.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
11 December 1917.
A Victorian Idyll Yesterday Matilda Mason

In the Parlour by herself Broke a Handsome China Basin

Placed upon the Mantelshelf.

You picture Matilda in a little check dress, puce shoulder ties, muslin pantalettes, black sandals, and a pound of rich glossy curls held in place by a velvet band. She tip-toes about the parlour, among the whatnots and antimacassars and embroidery frames and

Mamma's workbox with the ivory fittings, and Papa's music stand with the pearl studded flute lying across it. . . . How did she come to be in the parlour by herself? Rash, foolish child! Why was she not sitting upon a bead hassock in the nursery conning over one of those amiable little tunes for infants from one and a half to three years (Charles: Pray, dear papa! what is the Solar System? Papa: Wipe your nose, Charles, and I will tell you) or embroidering God is Love in red upon a nightdress case for her dear Mamma ?
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
4 December 1917.
She had parted her Papa's Piccadilly weepers, had been strained to his flashing bosom before he dashed off to that mysterious place, the City, where ladies feared to tread ; her Mamma, having seen the doctor's gig draw up at number twelve, had put on her second best pair of jet ear-rings, wrapped herself in her second best cashmere shawl and taken a flask of eau-de-Cologne. . . .
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
25 May 1662.
(Lord’s day). To trimming myself, which I have this week done every morning, with a pumice stone,----which I learnt of Mr. Marsh, when I was last at Portsmouth; and I find it very easy, speedy, and cleanly, and shall continue the practice of it. To church, and heard a good sermon of Mr. Woodcocke’s at our church; only in his latter prayer for a woman in childbed, he prayed that God would deliver her from the hereditary curse of child-bearing, which seemed a pretty strange expression. Dined at home, and Mr. Creed with me. This day I had the first dish of pease I have had this year. After discourse he and I abroad, and walked up and down, and looked into many churches, among others Mr. Baxter’s at Blackfryers. Then to the Wardrobe, where I found my Lord takes physic, so I did not see him, but with Captn. Ferrers in Mr. George Montagu’s coach to Charing Cross; and there at the Triumph tavern he showed me some Portugall ladys, which are come to town before the Queen. They are not handsome, and their farthingales a strange dress.

Many ladies and persons of quality come to see them. I find nothing in them that is pleasing; and I see they have learnt to kiss and look freely up and down already, and I do believe will soon forget the recluse practice of their own country. They complain much for lack of good water to drink. So to the Wardrobe back on foot and supped with my Lady, and so home, and after a walk upon the leads with my wife, to prayers and bed. The King’s guards and some City companies do walk up and down the town these five or six days; which makes me think, and they do say, there are some plots in laying. God keep us.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
14 October 1667.
Up, and by water to White Hall, and thence walked to St. James’s, and there to Mr. Wren’s; and he told me that my business was done about my warrant on the Maybolt Galliott; which I did see, and though it was not so full in the reciting of my services as the other was in that of Sir W. Pen’s, yet I was well pleased with it, and do intend to fetch it away anon. Thence with Sir Thomas Allen, in a little sorry coach which he hath set up of late, and Sir Jeremy Smith, to White Hall, and there I took water and went to Westminster Hall, and there hear that the House is this day again upon the business of giving the King the thanks of the House for his speech, and, among other things, for laying aside of my Lord Chancellor. Thence I to Mrs. Martin’s, where by appointment comes to me Mrs. Howlett, which I was afraid was to have told me something of my freedom with her daughter, but it was not so, but only to complain to me of her son-in-law, how he abuses and makes a slave of her, and his mother is one that encourages him in it, so that they are at this time upon very bad terms one with another, and desires that I would take a time to advise him and tell him what it becomes him to do, which office I am very glad of, for some ends of my own also con sa fille, and there drank and parted, I mightily satisfied with this business, and so home by water with Sir W. Warren, who happened to be at Westminster, and there I pretty strange to him, and little discourse, and there at the office Lord Bruncker, W. Pen, T. Hater and I did some business, and so home to dinner, and thence I out to visit Sir G. Carteret and ladies there; and from him do understand that the King himself (but this he told me as a great secret) is satisfied that this thanks which he expects from the House, for the laying aside of my Lord Chancellor, is a thing irregular; but, since it is come into the House, he do think it necessary to carry it on, and will have it, and hath made his mind known to be so, to some of the House. But Sir G. Carteret do say he knows nothing of what my Lord Bruncker told us to-day, that the King was angry with the Duke of York yesterday, and advised him not to hinder what he had a mind to have done, touching this business; which is news very bad, if true. Here I visited my Lady Carteret, who hath been sick some time, but now pretty well, but laid on her bed. Thence to my Lord Crew, to see him after my coming out of the country, and he seems satisfied with some steps they have made in my absence towards my Lord Sandwich’s relief for money: and so I have no more to do, nor will trouble myself more about it till they send for me. He tells me also that the King will have the thanks of the House go on: and commends my Lord Keeper’s speech for all but what he was forced to say, about the reason of the King’s sending away the House so soon the last time, when they were met, but this he was forced to do. Thence to Westminster Hall, and there walked with Mr. Scowen, who tells me that it is at last carried in the House that the thanks shall be given to the King--among other things, particularly for the removal of my Lord Chancellor; but he tells me it is a strange act, and that which he thinks would never have been, but that the King did insist upon it, that, since it come into the House, it might not be let fall. After walking there awhile I took coach and to the Duke of York’s House, and there went in for nothing into the pit, at the last act, to see Sir Martin Marrall, and met my wife, who was there, and my brother, and W. Hewer and Willett, and carried them home, still being pleased with the humour of the play, almost above all that ever I saw. Home, and there do find that John Bowles is not yet come thither. I suppose he is playing the good fellow in the town. So to the office a while, and then home to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
17 October 1667.
Up, and being sent for by my Lady Batten, I to her, and there she found fault with my not seeing her since her being a widow, which I excused as well as I could, though it is a fault, but it is my nature not to be forward in visits. But here she told me her condition, which is good enough, being sole executrix, to the disappointment of all her husband’s children, and prayed my friendship about the accounts of the prizes, which I promised her. And here do see what creatures widows are in weeping for their husbands, and then presently leaving off; but I cannot wonder at it, the cares of the world taking place of all other passions. Thence to the office, where all the morning busy, and at noon home to dinner, where Mr. John Andrews and his wife come and dined with me, and pretty merry we were, only I out of humour the greatest part of the dinner, by reason that my people had forgot to get wine ready, I having none in my house, which I cannot say now these almost three years, I think, without having two or three sorts, by which we were fain to stay a great while, while some could be fetched. When it come I begun to be merry, and merry we were, but it was an odd, strange thing to observe of Mr. Andrews what a fancy he hath to raw meat, that he eats it with no pleasure unless the blood run about his chops, which it did now by a leg of mutton that was not above half boiled; but, it seems, at home all his meat is dressed so, and beef and all, and eats it so at nights also. Here most of our discourse is of the business of the Parliament, who run on mighty furiously, having yesterday been almost all the morning complaining against some high proceedings of my Lord Chief Justice Keeling, that the gentlemen of the country did complain against him in the House, and run very high. It is the man that did fall out with my cozen Roger Pepys, once, at the Assizes there, and would have laid him by the heels; but, it seems, a very able lawyer. After dinner I to the office, where we all met with intent to proceed to the publique sale of several prize ships, but upon discourse my Lord Anglesey did discover (which troubled me that he that is a stranger almost should do more than we ourselves could) that the appraisements made by our officers were not above half of what he had been offered for one of them, and did make it good by bringing a gentleman to give us L700 for the Wildboare, which they valued but at L276, which made us all startle and stop the sale, and I did propose to acquaint the Duke of York with it, and accordingly we did agree on it, and I wrote a severe letter about it, and we are to attend him with it to-morrow about it. This afternoon my Lord Anglesey tells us that the House of Commons have this morning run into the inquiry in many things; as, the sale of Dunkirke, the dividing of the fleete the last year, the business of the prizes with my Lord Sandwich, and many other things; so that now they begin to fall close upon it, and God knows what will be the end of it, but a Committee they have chosen to inquire into the miscarriages of the war. Having done, and being a little tired, Sir W. Pen and I in his coach out to Mile End Green, and there drank a cup of Byde’s ale, and so talking about the proceedings of Parliament, and how little a thing the King is become to be forced to suffer it, though I declare my being satisfied that things should be enquired into, we back again home, and I to my office to my letters, and so home to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|vangogh|>
6 February 1882.
All academic figures are grouped together in the same manner, and we will readily acknowledge that _on ne peut mieux_. Quite impeccable--faultless! But you are already aware of what I mean: they teach one absolutely nothing new.

Not so the figures painted by a Millet, by a Lhermitte, by a Régamey, or a Daumier. All their figures are also well grouped, but in a very different way from that taught by the academy. My belief is that an academical figure, however accurate it may be, is at present quite superfluous--even though it be painted by Ingres himself (I would in any case except his “Source,” which was indeed something new, and will remain so)--if it lack that essential quality of modernity, that intimate feeling, that quality of having been created to meet a need.

In what circumstances, then, do figures cease from being superfluous, however faulty, and grossly so, they may be? When the man who digs is really digging, when the peasant is a peasant, and the peasant woman a peasant woman. Is that something new? Yes, even the figures of Ostade and Terborch have not the same effect as those in modern pictures.

I should like to say a good deal more about these things, but in any case I feel I must tell you how many of the studies that I have started I should like to improve, and how much higher than my own work I consider that of a few other artists. Now tell me, do you know of a single picture of a man digging or sowing seed in the old Dutch School? Did they ever attempt to paint a workman? Did Velasquez attempt it in his “Water Carrier” or in his types of the people? No!

The figures of the old masters do not “work.” At present I am very busy with the figure of a woman whom I saw pulling mangels out of the snow. Now, this is what Millet and Lhermitte did, and this is practically what the peasant painters of this century and Israels did. They thought it was more beautiful than anything else. But even in this century, among the host of painters who pay particular attention to the figure, _i.e._, for the sake of form and of the model, there are precious few who cannot conceive their figures otherwise than at work, and who feel the need of representing activity as an end in itself. The ancients did not feel this need, nor did the old Dutch masters, who concerned themselves extensively with conventional forms of activity.

Thus the picture or the drawing ought to be not only a study of a figure for the sake of the figure, and the incomparably harmonious form of the human body--but at the same time “a gathering of mangels in the snow”! Have I made myself clear? I hope so, for, as I once said to Seurat, a nude by Cabanel, a lady by Jacques, and a peasant woman, not by Bastien-Lepage himself, but by a Parisian painter who has learnt drawing at the academy, will always have her limbs and body expressed in the same way--often quite charmingly, and, as far as proportions and anatomy are concerned, quite correctly. When, however, Israels, Daumier or Lhermitte, for instance, draw a figure, one is much more conscious of the form of the body, although--and that is why I include Daumier in the number--the proportions will tend to be almost arbitrary. The anatomy and structure of the body will not always seem quite correct in the eyes of the academician. But it will have life, particularly if it come from the brush of Delacroix.

I have not expressed myself quite satisfactorily yet: tell Seurat that I should despair if my figures were correct; tell him that if you take a photograph of a man digging, in my opinion, he is sure to look as if he were not digging; tell him that I think Michelangelo’s figures magnificent, even though the legs are certainly too long and the hips and the pelvis bones a little too broad; tell him that in my opinion Millet and Lhermitte are the true painters of the day, because they do not paint things as they are, dryly analysing them and observing them objectively, but render them as they feel them; tell him it is my most fervent desire to know how one can achieve such deviations from reality, such inaccuracies and such transfigurations, that come about by chance. Well yes, if you like, they are lies; but they are more valuable than the real values.

Men who move in artistic and literary circles, like Raffaëlli in Paris, ultimately think very differently about such things from what I do, who live in the country. I mean that they are in need of a word which is expressive of their ideas. Raffaëlli proposes the word “character” as the feature of the figures of the future. I think I agree with the intention here, but I question the correctness of the word, just as I question the correctness of other words, and just as I question the accuracy and appropriateness of my own expressions. Instead of saying, there must be character in a man who is digging, I paraphrase the thing and say, the peasant must be a peasant, the digging man must dig, and in this way the picture acquires a quality which is essentially modern. But I am well aware that conclusions may be drawn from these words which I do not in the least intend.

You see, to render “the peasant form at work” is, I repeat, the peculiar feature, the very heart of modern art, and that is something which was done neither by the Renaissance painters, nor the old Dutch masters, nor by the Greeks.

At the start the figure of the peasant and of the workman constituted a “genre” picture; but at the present moment, with Millet, the immortal master in the van, this theme has become the very soul of modern art and will remain so.

People like Daumier ought to be esteemed very highly, for they are pioneers.... The more artists would paint peasants and workmen the happier I should be. And as for myself, I know nothing that I would do more gladly.

This is a long letter, and I do not know whether I have expressed my meaning clearly enough. Maybe I shall write just a few lines to Seurat. If I do so, I shall send them to you to read through, as I should like them to contain a clear statement of the importance I attach to figure painting.

...What impressed me most on looking back at the old Dutch pictures, was the fact that in the majority of cases they were painted rapidly, and that great masters like Hals, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, and many others, painted as much as possible _du premier coup_ and avoided overmuch retouching.

What I admired above all were hands by Rembrandt and Hals, hands full of life, though unfinished; for instance, some of the hands in the “Syndics of the Cloth Hall,” and in the “Jewish Bride.” And I felt much the same in regard to some heads, eyes, noses and mouths, which seemed to be laid on with one single stroke of the brush, and without any sign of retouching. Bracquemond has made such good engravings of them that one can appreciate the painter’s technique in the print.

But, Theo, how necessary it is, especially at the present day, to study the old Dutch pictures, and such of the French as those by Corot, Millet, etc. At a pinch one can well dispense with the others, for they often lead one further astray than one imagines. The thing is to keep at it, and to paint everything as far as possible at one go! What a real joy it is to see a Franz Hals! How different these pictures are from those in which everything seems to be painted in the same smooth way, like lacquer.

On the very same day on which I saw the old Dutch masters, Brouwer, Ostade, and above all Terborch, I just chanced to see a Meissonier--the one of the Fodor Museum.[20] Now Meissonier worked in exactly the same way as they did; his pictures are very deeply thought out and deliberated, but painted at one stroke, and probably with every touch quite right from the start.

I believe it is better to scrape an unsuccessful portion of one’s picture completely away and to begin again, than to keep on trying to improve it.

I saw a sketch by Rubens and another by Diaz almost at the same time. They were certainly not alike, but the creed of the artists who painted them was the same--the conviction that colour expresses form when it is in the right place with the right associations. Diaz in particular is a painter to the backbone, and is conscientious to the finger-tips.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
1 November 1882.
I must refer once more to certain modern pictures, which are becoming ever more and more plentiful. About fifteen years ago people began to speak about “luminosity” and “light.” Even if this was right in the first place--and one cannot deny that the system produced very masterful works--it is now beginning to degenerate ever more and more throughout the whole of the art-world into an excessive production of pictures which have the same lighting on all four sides, the same general atmosphere as I believe they call it, and the same local colour. Is that good??? I do not think so.

Does the Ruysdael of van der Hoop (the one with the Mill) give one the impression of open air? Is there any atmosphere in it--any distance? The earth and the air constitute a whole and belong to each other.

Van Goyen is the Dutch Corot. I stood for a long while before the monumental picture in the Dupper collection.

As for Franz Hals’s yellow, you can call it what you like, _citron amorti_ or _jaune chamois_, but what have you gained? In the picture it appears to be quite light, but just you hold something white against it.

The great doctrine bequeathed to us by the Dutch masters is, I think, as follows: Line and colour should be seen as one, a standpoint which Bracquemond also holds. But very few observe this principle, they draw with everything, save with good colour.

I have no desire to make many acquaintances among painters.

But to refer to technique once more. There is very much more sound and skilful stuff in Israel’s technique--above all in the very old picture “The Zandvoort Fisherman,” for instance, in which there is such splendid chiaroscuro, than in the technique of those who, owing to their steely cold colour, are uniformly smooth, flat, and sober throughout.

“The Zandvoort Fisherman” may safely be hung beside an old Delacroix, such as “La Barque de Dante,” as they are both members of the same family. I believe in these pictures, but grow ever more and more hostile to those which are uniformly light all over.

It irritates me to hear people say that I have no “technique.” It is just possible that there is no trace of it, because I hold myself aloof from all painters. I am, however, quite right in regarding many painters as weak precisely in their technique--more particularly those who talk most nonsense about it. This I have already written to you. But if ever I should happen to exhibit my work with either the one or the other in Holland, I know beforehand with whom I shall have to deal, and with what order of technicians. Meanwhile I much prefer to remain faithful to the old Dutchmen, the pictures of Israels and his school. This the more modern painters do not do; on the contrary, they are diametrically opposed to Israels.

That which they call “luminous” is, in many cases, nothing else than the detestable studio lighting of a cheerless town studio. They do not seem to see either the dawn or the setting sun; all they appear to know are the hours between 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.--quite pleasant hours forsooth, but often quite uninteresting ones too!

This winter I wish to investigate many things which have struck me in regard to the treatment in old pictures. I have seen a good deal that I lack. But above all that which is called _enlever_,[21] and which the old Dutch masters understood so perfectly.

No one nowadays will have anything to do with _enlever_ in a few strokes of the brush. But how conclusively its results prove the correctness of it! How thoroughly and with what mastery many French painters and Israels understood this! I thought a good deal about Delacroix in the Museum. Why? Because, while contemplating Hals, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, and others, I constantly thought of the saying, that when Delacroix paints, it is exactly like a lion devouring a piece of flesh. How true that is! And, Theo, when I think of what one might call “the technique crew” how tedious they all are! Rest assured, however, that if ever I have any dealings with the gentlemen, I shall behave more or less like a simpleton, but _à la Vireloque_--with a _coup de dent_ to follow.

For is it not exasperating to see the same dodges everywhere (or what we call dodges)--everywhere the same tedious gray-white light, in the place of light and chiaroscuro, colour, local colour instead of shades of colour....

Colour as colour means something; this should not be ignored, but rather turned to account. That which has a beautiful effect, a really beautiful effect, is also right. When Veronese painted the portraits of his _beau monde_ in the “Marriage at Cana,” he used all the wealth of his palette in deep violets and gorgeous golden tones for the purpose, while he also introduced a faint azure blue and a pearly white which do not spring into the foreground. He throws it back, and it looks well in the neighbourhood of the sky and of the marble palaces, which strangely complete the figures; it changes quite of its own accord. The background is so beautiful that it seems to have come into being quite naturally and spontaneously out of the colour scheme.

Am I wrong? Is it not painted differently from the way an artist would have painted it who had conceived the figures and the palace as a simultaneous whole?

All the architecture and the sky are conventional and subordinate to the figures, they are simply calculated to throw the latter into relief.

This is really painting, and it yields a more beautiful effect than a mere transcript of things does. The point is to think about a thing, to consider its surroundings, and to let it grow out of the latter.

I do not wish to argue studying from Nature or the struggling with reality, out of existence; for years I myself worked in this way with almost fruitless and, in any case, wretched results. I should not like to have avoided this error however.

In any case I am quite convinced that it would have been foolery on my part to have continued to pursue these methods--although I am not by any means so sure that all my trouble has been in vain.

Doctors say, “_On commence par tuer, on finit par guérir_.” One begins by plaguing one’s self to no purpose in order to be true to nature, and one concludes by working quietly from one’s palette alone, and then nature is the result. But these two methods cannot be pursued together. Diligent study, even if it seem to be fruitless, leads to familiarity with nature and to a thorough knowledge of things.

The greatest and most powerful imagination has also been able to produce things from reality, before which people have stood in dumb amazement.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
18 September 1882.
...I will simply paint my bedroom. This time the colour shall do everything. By means of its simplicity it shall lend things a grand style, and shall suggest absolute peace and slumber to the spectator. In short, the mere sight of the picture should be restful to the spirit, or better still, to the imagination. The walls are pale violet, the floor is covered with red tiles, the wood of the bed and of the chairs is a warm yellow, the sheets and the pillow are a light yellow-green, the quilt is scarlet, the window green, the washstand is orange, the wash-basin is blue, and the doors are mauve. That is all--there is nothing more in the room, and the windows are closed. The very squareness of the furniture should intensify the impression of rest. As there is no white in the picture, the frame should be white. This work will compensate me for the compulsory rest to which I have been condemned. I shall work at it again all day long to-morrow; but you see how simple the composition is. Shadows and cast shadows are suppressed, and the colour is rendered in dull and distinct tones like crape of many colours.

I have already taken many walks along the docks and dikes. The contrast is very strange, especially when one has just left the sand, the hearth, and the peace of a country farm behind one, and when one has lived for some time in quiet surroundings. It is an abyss of confusion.

Once the war-cry of the Goncourts was, “Japonaiserie for ever.” Now the docks are a splendid piece of Japonaiserie, both odd, peculiar, and terrific. At least they may be looked at in this way.

All the figures are constantly moving. They are seen in the very strangest environment--everything is monstrous, and the whole is full of the most varied and most interesting contrasts.

Through the window of a very stylish English restaurant one obtains a glimpse of the dirty mud of the harbour and of a ship of the horrid cargo type, from which foreign seamen are unloading hides and bullocks’ horns. And close by, in front of the window, there stands a very dark, refined, and shy-looking girl. The room with the figure, all tone and light, the silvery sheen over the mud and the bullocks’ horns--all these things produce the most striking contrasts.

Flemish seamen with extravagantly healthy faces, broad shoulders, powerfully and strongly built, and Antwerpian to the backbone, stand there eating mussels and drinking beer, and there is plenty of shouting and movement. On the other side, a short little form, dressed in black, with her hands on her hips, steals silently alongside of the gray wall.

Her little face, encircled in a halo of jet-black hair, is a note of tawny or orange yellow?--I don’t know which. She has just looked up and cast a bashful glance with a pair of coal-black eyes. She is a Chinese girl, mysterious and as quiet as a mouse, small and beetle-like[22] in character, a contrast to the great Flemish consumers of mussels.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
12 July 1882.
Thank Heaven! my digestion has so far recovered that I have been able to live on ships-biscuit, milk and eggs for three weeks. The beneficent heat is restoring my strength to me. It was wise of me to go South just now, when my bad state of health needed a cure. I am now as healthy as other people--a thing I have but seldom been able to say of myself--not since I was at Nuenen. It is very gratifying (among “other people,” I mean, the miners on strike, old Tanguy, old Millet, and the peasants).

The healthy man should be able to live on a piece of bread and keep at work all day. He should also be able to bear a pipe of tobacco and a good drink; for without these things nothing can be done. And withal he ought to have some feeling for the stars and the infinite heavens. Then it is a joy to live!
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
March 1916.
Jinnie Moore was awfully good at elocution. Was she better than I? I could make the girls cry when I read Dickens in the sewing class, and she couldn't. But then she never tried to. She didn't care for Dickens; she liked something about horses and tramps and shipwrecks and prairie fires — they were her style, her reckless, red-haired, dashing style.

English Food

Sunday. Villa Pauline, Bandol (Var). Mr. F.G. — Never did cucumber lie more heavy on a female's bosom than your curdling effusion which I have read twice and won't again if horses drag me. But I keep wondering, and can't for the life of me think, whatever there was in mine to so importantly disturb you. (Henry James is dead. Did you know?) I did not, swayed by a resistless passion, say that I loved you. Nevertheless I am prepared to say it again looking at this pound of onions that hangs in a string net from a saucepan-nail. But why should you write to me as though I'd got into the family way and driven round to you in a hansom cab to ask you to make a respectable woman of me? Yes, you're bad-tempered, suspicious, and surly. And if you think I flung my bonnet over you as a possible mill, my lad, you're mistook.

In fact, now I come to ponder on your last letter I don't believe you want to write to me at all and I'm hanged if I'll shoot arrows in the air. But perhaps that is temper on my part; it is certainly pure stomach. I'm so hungry, simply empty, and seeing in my mind's eye just now a sirloin of beef, well browned with plenty of gravy and horseradish sauce and baked potatoes, I nearly sobbed. There's nothing here to eat except omelettes and oranges and onions. It's a cold, sunny, windy day — the kind of day when you want a tremendous feed for lunch and an armchair in front of the fire to boa-constrict in afterwards. I feel sentimental about England now — English food, decent
<|/entry|><|entry|>
13 October 1916.
Journal 1916

English waste! How much better than these thrifty French, whose flower gardens are nothing but potential salad bowls. There's not a leaf in France that you can't 'faire une infusion avec,' not a blade that isn't 'bon pour la cuisine.' By God, I'd like to buy a pound of the best butter, put it on the window sill and watch it melt to spite 'em. They are a stingy uncomfortable crew for all their lively scrapings. . . . For instance, their houses — what appalling furniture — and never one comfortable chair. If you want to talk the only possible thing to do is to go to bed. It's a case of either standing on your feet or lying in comfort under a puffed-up eiderdown. I quite understand the reason for what is called French moral laxity. You're simply forced into bed — no matter with whom. There's no other place for you. Supposing a young man comes to see about the electric light and will go on talking and pointing to the ceiling — or a friend drops in to tea and asks you if you believe in Absolute Evil. How can you give your mind to these things when you're sitting on four knobs and a square inch of cane? How much better to lie snug and give yourself up to it.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
21 May 1915.
[Looe, Cornwall. ... I positively feel, in my hideous modern way, that I can't get into touch with my mind. I am standing gasping in one of those disgusting telephone boxes and I can't 'get through.'

"Sorry. There's no reply," tinkles out the little voice.

"Will you ring them again — Exchange? A good long ring. There must be somebody there."

"I can't get any answer."

Then I suppose there is nobody in the building — nobody at all. Not even an old fool of a watchman. No, it's dark and empty and quiet . . . above all — empty.

Looe

Note: A queer thing is that I keep seeing it — this empty building — as my father's office. I smell it as that. I see the cage of the clumsy wooden goods lift and the tarred ropes hanging.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
4 April 1665.
All the morning at the office busy, at noon to the ‘Change, and then went up to the ‘Change to buy a pair of cotton stockings, which I did at the husband’s shop of the most pretty woman there, who did also invite me to buy some linnen of her, and I was glad of the occasion, and bespoke some bands of her, intending to make her my seamstress, she being one of the prettiest and most modest looked women that ever I did see. Dined at home and to the office, where very late till I was ready to fall down asleep, and did several times nod in the middle of my letters.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
26 May 1669.
To White Hall, where all the morning. Dined with Mr. Chevins, with Alderman Backewell, and Spragg. The Court full of the news from Captain Hubbert, of “The Milford,” touching his being affronted in the Streights, shot at, and having eight men killed him by a French man-of-war, calling him “English dog,” and commanding him to strike, which he refused, and, as knowing himself much too weak for him, made away from him. The Queen, as being supposed with child, fell ill, so as to call for Madam Nun, Mr. Chevins’s sister, and one of her women, from dinner from us; this being the last day of their doubtfulness touching her being with child; and they were therein well confirmed by her Majesty’s being well again before night. One Sir Edmund Bury Godfry, a woodmonger and justice of Peace in Westminster, having two days since arrested Sir Alexander Frazier for about L30 in firing, the bailiffs were apprehended, committed to the porter’s lodge, and there, by the King’s command, the last night severely whipped; from which the justice himself very hardly escaped, to such an unusual degree was the King moved therein. But he lies now in the lodge, justifying his act, as grounded upon the opinion of several of the judges, and, among others, my Lord Chief-Justice; which makes the King very angry with the Chief-Justice, as they say; and the justice do lie and justify his act, and says he will suffer in the cause for the people, and do refuse to receive almost any nutriment. The effects of it may be bad to the Court. Expected a meeting of Tangier this afternoon, but failed. So home, met by my wife at Unthanke’s.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
[Prompt: What is the weather inside you?]
9 January 1664.
Up (my underlip being mightily swelled, I know not how but by overrubbing it, it itching) and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and at noon I home to dinner, and by discourse with my wife thought upon inviting my Lord Sandwich to a dinner shortly. It will cost me at least ten or twelve pounds; but, however, some arguments of prudence I have, which however I shall think again upon before I proceed to that expence. After dinner by coach I carried my wife and Jane to Westminster, leaving her at Mr. Hunt’s, and I to Westminster Hall, and there visited Mrs. Lane, and by appointment went out and met her at the Trumpet, Mrs. Hare’s, but the room being damp we went to the Bell tavern, and there I had her company, but could not do as I used to do (yet nothing but what was honest)..... So I to talk about her having Hawley, she told me flatly no, she could not love him. I took occasion to enquire of Howlett’s daughter, with whom I have a mind to meet a little to see what mettle the young wench is made of, being very pretty, but she tells me she is already betrothed to Mrs. Michell’s son, and she in discourse tells me more, that Mrs. Michell herself had a daughter before marriage, which is now near thirty years old, a thing I could not have believed. Thence leading her to the Hall, I took coach and called my wife and her mayd, and so to the New Exchange, where we bought several things of our pretty Mrs. Dorothy Stacy, a pretty woman, and has the modestest look that ever I saw in my life and manner of speech. Thence called at Tom’s and saw him pretty well again, but has not been currant. So homeward, and called at Ludgate, at Ashwell’s uncle’s, but she was not within, to have spoke to her to have come to dress my wife at the time my Lord dines here. So straight home, calling for Walsingham’s Manuals at my bookseller’s to read but not to buy, recommended for a pretty book by Sir W. Warren, whose warrant however I do not much take till I do read it. So home to supper and to bed, my wife not being very well since she came home, being troubled with a fainting fit, which she never yet had before since she was my wife.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
15 February 1919.
time I was very fond of, and he used to pick it up and shout, I'll teach it to say its prayers, and beat it before my eyes — until — well, such was the man he was.

Then one night he came the worse for drink and fouled the bed. I couldn't stand it. I began to cry. He gave me a hit on the ear and I fell down, striking my head on the fender. When I came to, he was gone. I ran out into the street just as I was — I ran as fast as I could, not knowing where I was going — just dazed — my nerves were gone. And a lady found me and took me to her home and I was there three weeks. And after that I never went back. I never even told my people. I found work, and not till months after I went to see my sister. Good gracious! she says, we all thought you was murdered! And I never see him since. . . .
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
18 April 1667.
Up, and to read more in the “Origines,” and then to the office, where the news is strong that not only the Dutch cannot set out a fleete this year, but that the French will not, and that he hath given the answer to the Dutch Embassador, saying that he is for the King of England’s, having an honourable peace, which, if true, is the best news we have had a good while. At the office all the morning, and there pleased with the little pretty Deptford woman I have wished for long, and she hath occasion given her to come again to me. After office I to the ‘Change a little, and then home and to dinner, and then by coach with my wife to the Duke of York’s house, and there saw “The Wits,” a play I formerly loved, and is now corrected and enlarged: but, though I like the acting, yet I like not much in the play now. The Duke of York and W. Coventry gone to Portsmouth, makes me thus to go to plays. So home, and to the office a little and then home, where I find Goodgroome, and he and I did sing several things over, and tried two or three grace parts in Playford’s new book, my wife pleasing me in singing her part of the things she knew, which is a comfort to my very heart. So he being gone we to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
17 May 1888.
Believe me, I exaggerate neither in regard to G. nor to his portrait. He must eat, take walks with me, see our house as it is, and give a helping hand,{GG} and, in a word, thoroughly divert himself. He has lived cheaply, it is true, but it has made him so ill that he can no longer distinguish a bright from a sombre tone. In any case it is exceedingly distressing, and it is high time for him to come here, where he will soon get well again. Meanwhile, forgive me if I exceed my allowance; I shall work all the more for it. Since Thursday I have been so hard up that from then until Monday I had only two real meals. At other times I had only bread and coffee, which I had to have on credit and I paid for it to-day. If you can, therefore, send me something quickly.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
18 June 1888.
This time things have gone pretty hard with me; I got to the end of my money on Thursday, and it seemed an age to wait until noon on Monday. During these four days I have lived principally upon 23{HH} cups of coffee, and the bread I ate with them is not yet paid for. That is not your fault but mine--if one speak of fault at all in the matter. For I was frantically anxious to see my pictures in their frames and had paid a little more than I could afford, more particularly as the month’s rent and attendance had to be settled as well. As far as I am concerned, old chap, it would not matter, but I feel how you too must suffer under the stress which work imposes upon us; and my only consolation is to think that you would approve of my using every possible effort, so long as the fine weather lasts. I cannot say it has been fine for the last few days, as a ruthless north wind has been blowing and has driven all the faded leaves furiously before it. But between this and winter, the finest days and the most beautiful effects of light will come, and then I shall have to devote all my energies to my work. I am so much in the mood for painting that I simply could not stop suddenly.

Do you know how much I have left for the week, and after four days of fasting? Exactly six francs. I had something to eat at midday; but this evening all I shall have will be a crust of bread. And all my money is spent on the house and on the pictures. For I have not even got three francs left in order to....{II}
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
6 September 1663.
(Lord’s day). My pill I took last night worked very well, and I lay long in bed and sweat to get away the itching all about my body from head to foot, which is beginning again as it did the last winter, and I find after I am up that it is abated. I staid at home all day and my wife also, whom, God forgive me, I staid along with me for fear of her seeing of Pembleton. But she and I entertained one another all day long with great pleasure, contriving about my wife’s closet and the bedchamber, whither we intend to go up she and I to-day. We dined alone and supped also at night, my brother John with us, and so to prayers and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|maclane|>
21 January 1917.
A right shape and size
Sometimes I fancy me married--a responsible wife, a housekeeping matron: with my window-sills full of potted plants.

I have a woman quality which seems uxoresque: I am someway a Right Shape and Size to be somebody’s wife. My bodily and astral dimensions have outlines apparently suitable for something in the married-woman way.

The wild piquance of being myself--who but for extreme saneness would be mad--rises up and smashes that concept.

But being a Right Shape and Size I involuntarily imagine it.

Fleetingly I imagine a flat in the West Seventies in New York, or a bungalow on the Jersey side, or a middle-sized house in a middle-sized town in Middle-West Illinois--whichever might happen--with me set marriedly down in the midst of it like a suitable maggot in a suitable nut. Suitableness, diametrically opposed to Romance, is its keynote.

I fancy me walking about my married house mornings after breakfast in a neat linen dress and high-heeled satin slippers: snipping dead leaves off my window-sill plants, dusting bits of porcelain, giving my maid some tame household directions. My Body looks slender and supple and newly-married and in-the-drawing in the linen house-dress. The geometric gods regard me with immense satisfaction as being an exact proved theorem. I go to the telephone to order some Little Neck clams and some vermouth cocktails for dinner, and a roast and some Brussels sprouts and the assemblings of a salad: and in it I am ingrainedly domestic, dreadfully useful, a strong pillar of the vast good nice world.

Afternoons I go out to a modiste’s to fit a gown, or to a mild bridge-party along with other suitable women, or to a matinée with a suitable neighbor.

Everything is perfectly right in my insides and in my thoughts: my thoughts run in little troughs in which there is no leakage or deviation, thoughts of a dreadful niceness, thoughts which ever presuppose potted plants on my window-sills.

Evenings I go out with my husband, or sit around with my husband, or take leave of him for a few hours at the hall door.

My husband would be the sort of man that is called a Good Scout. And he would have married me not for my wistfulness or wickedness or weirdness but for that I am a proper Shape and Size, with a smooth proper covering of flesh, to make a suitable sizable wife. And he would be a heavy grappling anchor to hold me fast in an ocean of domesticness.

Men of the genus Good Scout are all fiercely alike. All women, no matter what their genus, are exceptions to the rule. But men--rich men, poor men, beggar-men, thieves: so only they are Good Scouts--are of marvelous sameness. It comes from the want of minute lifelong pinpricking care of petticoats and potted plants--a detailed intensely personal sort of pain which touches dull solid tones of individuality with vivid various spots of color.

Men are made in ‘job lots’ like their own cravats. Their cravats will differ in texture and color and quality and price. But each one is innately necktie. Use it as a garter or a tourniquet or a strangler’s noose: it still is a man’s deadly necktie. Its use may be ruined but its necktique is deathless. Except poets--and perhaps scientists--men are themselves like that. They cannot get away from the Adam. Nor can women get away from the Eve. But Eve was not a type but a somewhat pleasant human ensemble. While Adam was a type and a sufficiently nasty one: a rotter and a welcher: doubtless the Good Scout type of his day.

A Good Scout is the sort of man who if a woman trusts him with one one-hundredth of her heart will take the whole heart and twist and batter it: and read the paper and smoke his pipe and pay the bills: serenely unaware.

Which is beside the point in this. For in this image all my marriedness is a thing of outer Shape and Size and Suitableness. The odd but natural sequence is that I make an excellent wife. Excellent is the word. I keep a neat house with no dust left in the corners and no dead leaves on the potted plants. My husband is well looked after as to breakfasts and dinners and bodily comfort, and I am rigidly square with him and chastely true to him.

If, some dinnertime, as I sit opposite him in a soft pretty chiffon gown, my secret thoughts overflow their troughs and I passionately forget the potted plants and the window-sills and want horribly to rise up and bloodily murder my husband for being such a Good Scout: that would be a genuinely powerless matter, a cobweb trifle, compared with my actual potent Shape and Size which are so suitable for a wife.

I make truly and simply an excellent wife.

--by God and my Soul-and-bones! it would be honester, finer, sweeter--more comfortable to be the dirty beggar-woman in the wet slippery streets--

But it’s facilely fancied because I am of Right Dimensions to be some Good Scout’s wife.

A curious subtly pitfalled world: in it my Shape and Size, and my Weight which is also Right, could betray me into being an excellent wife: and by that a lying chattel, an inexpressibly damaged woman.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|maclane|>
21 March 1917.
Ice-water, corrosive acid and human breath
I have love for two towns. One is this Butte that I tiredly love inside me. And the other is New York that I smoothly love with all my surfaces.

It is some years--a little lump of years--since I have seen New York: and it is two thousand miles away. So I see and feel its hard sweet lurid magnetism now ten times sharper than when I lived in it. But I felt it sudden and sharp at every turn then. A surface emotion which hits one’s flesh and spreads wide over one’s area is more exciting than a spirit emotion which pierces inward at one tiny point: an ice shower-bath on the white skin is more anguishing than an ice-water drink down the red throat. The spirit emotion lives longer and works more damage and buries itself at last in proud shaded soul-reserves. The surface emotion stays always on the surface and lives actively in the front of one’s senses and musings.

The feel of New York is a mixture of ice-water, a corrosive acid and human breath sweeping someway warmish against one’s flesh.

It is immensely ungentle, New York: immensely human: immensely intriguing to all one’s selves. It is too big to have prejudices and traditions of locality: so it leaves its dwellers free, by ones and multitudes, to be human beings.

In South Bend and Toledo and Beloit and St. Paul and all the tight-built inland towns they murder you with narrowness and harshness and rancorous ill-will: they are scowlingly annoyed with you for making them murder you.

In New York they murder you with a large soft wave of indifferent insolence--no annoyance, no friction. New York eats you as it eats its dinner, rather liking you.

And my love for New York is made of liking: a plaisance of liking.

made of liking: a plaisance of liking.

I like New York with a charmed restfulness for varied things in it: subways, and Fourth Avenue, and the River, and Fifth Avenue on a sunny October afternoon, and the statue of Nathan Hale, and old cockroachy downtown buildings, and the soft rich whelming creamy boiling-chocolate fragrance from the Huyler factory in Irving Place. And mostly I like it for the people in it--People--Persons--People: they are human beings.

In the inland towns people are half-afraid of thoughts, half-afraid of spoken words, half-afraid of each other, half-afraid of the fact of being human.

In New York they are not afraid of any humanness. Even when they are in themselves craven-cowardly, cowardly enough to turn their own stomachs, they still turn their humanness unfearfully face-outward like upturned faces of a pack of cards.

An Italian organ-grinder grinding out his loud fierce music in a long deep New York side-street is a human organ-grinder: he bestows his rasped melody widely on everybody in ear-shot, not individually--since all around him is a spreading world of strangers--but jointly. So it feels-like.

A beggar-woman at a subway-entrance with a whine and a dirty face and the deadly black cape and chicken-coopish beggar-odor is a human beggar-woman. She throws out an inner savor of herself like a soiled aura on all collectively who pass her. Each-and-all of New York by tolerating and owning her partakes of her mean human essence.

A stout-hearted worn-bodied Jew factory girl working at a hard greasy little machine day after day gives all New York her bit of young virtue which is hardy and heroic and unaware: the whole Island of looseness and vice has an equal gift of impregnable surprising sordid purity thriving on sixes and sevens of poor dollars-a-week.

All of it is because New York is one Large Condition made of human breaths and the worn scrapings of tired Youth rather than one large town made of individuals and stone houses.

And in that is an odd enchantment for me who am born and grown in the places of Half-fear with an old isolated whole fear always on me.

In New York I am a partaker of that smooth manna of humanness as I am of the air and the sunshine and the little black specks of coal-soot: partly from choice, partly willy-nilly, partly in the sweeping unanalyzable pell-mell-ness of massed human nature.

And it is in New York I have those strangest things of all: human friendships. Not many friendships and not of spent familiarities: for I don’t like actual human beings too much around me. But yet friendships made of the edges of thoughts and vivid pathos and pregnant odds and ends of nervous human flesh and fire.

It is in New York I go to the apartment of a Friend at the end of an afternoon. In the apartment are some persons having tea, men and women. The Friend greets me at the door. She wears maybe a dress of thin dark and light silk, shaped in the quaint outlandish fashion of the hour. And she has shrewd kindly eyes like a Rembrandt portrait, and a worn New-York-ish Latin-ish brain and heart both of which are made of steel, sparkle and the very plain red meat of living. She says, ‘Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane,’ and clasps my hand, and we exchange a glance of no real understanding at all but suggesting warmed challenge of personality, and an oblique sweet call of depth to depth, and of friendship which by mere force of preference and of our separate quality and calibre is true rather than false. So close and no closer may friendship be. And friendship, with-all, is closer than any love. It is the closest human beings ever come to meeting.

In a New York doorway I, made in broad loneliness of self, get suddenly companion-warmed at the little pleasant twisted fire of someone else.

It might be so in some other town, even Beloit, but it feels only like New York to me.

I go in the room where the others are and they say, ‘Hello-Mary-Mac-Lane,’ and I drink some tea and listen and talk in fragments of half-meanings. And I get warmed and half-warmed and cooled and slightly scorched in the easeful unevenly-heated humanness of the women and men sitting around.

In the inland towns they throw their thoughts and ideas at you at tea-time, inland thoughts and ideas, which hit you and then drop off like little pebbles and nuts and hard green apples.

In New York they throw those things in the form of long ribbons, heated from being worn next their skin, which fly out and wrap around your skin: pleasantly or foolishly or fancifully.

The point of it is that nobody is afraid of that.

It is nothing fulfilling, nothing satisfying. It is merely human. It is half-lyric.

It reassures me as a person: it makes me feel human in all my surfaces.

Which are harder to humanize, in everybody, than any deepest deeps.

And it is therefore with all my surfaces, smoothly and restfully, I love New York.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
30 September 1922.
"Do you know what individuality is?"

"No."

"Consciousness of will. To be conscious that you have a will and can act."

Yes, it is. It's a glorious saying.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
3 October 1922.
Arrived Paris. Took rooms in Select Hotel, Place de la Sorbonne, for ten francs a day per person. What feeling? Very little. The room is like the room where one could work — or so it feels. I have been a perfect torment to L.M. who is pale with dark eyes. I suspect my reactions so much that I hardly dare say what I think of the room and so on. Do I know? Not really. Not more than she.

I have thought of J. to-day. We are no longer together. Am I in the right way, though? No, not yet. Only looking on — telling others. I am not in body and soul. I feel a bit of a sham. . . . And so I am. One of the K.M.'s is so sorry. But of course she is. She has to die. Don't feed her.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
October 1922.
Important. When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves. What Shestov calls 'a touch of easy familiarity and derision' has its value.

Paris

What will happen to Anatole France and his charming smile? Doesn't it disguise a lack of feeling, like M.'s weariness?

Life should be like a steady, visible light.

What remains of all those years together? It is difficult to say. If they were so important, how could they have come to nothing. Who gave up and why?

Haven't I been saying, all along, that the fault lies in trying to cure the body and paying no heed whatever to the sick psyche? G. claims to do just what I have always dreamed might be done.

The sound of a street pipe, hundreds and hundreds of years old.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
26 April 1915.
If I had my way I should stay in the Redcliffe Road until after the war. It suits me. Whatever faults it has it is not at all bourgeois. There is ' something a bit queer ' about all the people who live in it ; they are all more or less ' touched.' They walk about without their hats on and fetch and carry their food and even their coal. There are nearly four bells to every door — the curtains are all 'odd' and shabby. The charwomen, blown old flies, buzz down each other's basements. ... "No. 56 'ad a party last night. You never seen anything like the state of 'is room this morning." ... " 'Igh time 'e did get married, I say. 'Is fiancée spends the night with 'im already. 'E says she 'as 'is bed and 'e sleeps on the table. You don't tell me a great stick of a fellow like 'im sleeps on 'is table!"

Question: But do you like this sort of talk? This kind of thing? What about the Poets and — flowers and trees ?

Answer : As I can't have the perfect other thing, I do like this. I feel, somehow, free in it. It has no abiding place, and neither have I. And — and — Oh well, I do feel so cynical.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
6 March 1663.
Up betimes, and about eight o’clock by coach with four horses, with Sir J. Minnes and Sir W. Batten, to Woolwich, a pleasant day. There at the yard we consulted and ordered several matters, and thence to the rope yard and did the like, and so into Mr. Falconer’s, where we had some fish, which we brought with us, dressed; and there dined with us his new wife, which had been his mayde, but seems to be a genteel woman, well enough bred and discreet. Thence after dinner back to Deptford, where we did as before, and so home, good discourse in our way, Sir J. Minnes being good company, though a simple man enough as to the business of his office, but we did discourse at large again about Sir W. Pen’s patent to be his assistant, and I perceive he is resolved never to let it pass. To my office, and thence to Sir W. Batten’s, where Major Holmes was lately come from the Streights, but do tell me strange stories of the faults of Cooper his master, put in by me, which I do not believe, but am sorry to hear and must take some course to have him removed, though I believe that the Captain is proud, and the fellow is not supple enough to him. So to my office again to set down my Journall, and so home and to bed. This evening my boy Waynman’s brother was with me, and I did tell him again that I must part with the boy, for I will not keep him. He desires my keeping him a little longer till he can provide for him, which I am willing for a while to do. This day it seems the House of Commons have been very high against the Papists, being incensed by the stir which they make for their having an Indulgence; which, without doubt, is a great folly in them to be so hot upon at this time, when they see how averse already the House have showed themselves from it. This evening Mr. Povy was with me at my office, and tells me that my Lord Sandwich is this day so ill that he is much afeard of him, which puts me to great pain, not more for my own sake than for his poor family’s.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
3 December 1666.
Up, and, among a great many people that come to speak with me, one was my Lord Peterborough’s gentleman, who comes to me to dun me to get some money advanced for my Lord; and I demanding what newes, he tells me that at Court they begin to fear the business of Scotland more and more; and that the Duke of York intends to go to the North to raise an army, and that the King would have some of the Nobility and others to go and assist; but they were so served the last year, among others his Lord, in raising forces at their own charge, for fear of the French invading us, that they will not be got out now, without money advanced to them by the King, and this is like to be the King’s case for certain, if ever he comes to have need of any army. He and others gone, I by water to Westminster, and there to the Exchequer, and put my tallys in a way of doing for the last quarter. But my not following it the last week has occasioned the clerks some trouble, which I am sorry for, and they are mad at. Thence at noon home, and there find Kate Joyce, who dined with me: Her husband and she are weary of their new life of being an Innkeeper, and will leave it, and would fain get some office; but I know none the foole is fit for, but would be glad to help them, if I could, though they have enough to live on, God be thanked! though their loss hath been to the value of L3000 W. Joyce now has all the trade, she says, the trade being come to that end of the towne. She dined with me, my wife being ill of her months in bed. I left her with my wife, and away myself to Westminster Hall by appointment and there found out Burroughs, and I took her by coach as far as the Lord Treasurer’s and called at the cake house by Hales’s, and there in the coach eat and drank and then carried her home.... So having set her down in the palace I to the Swan, and there did the first time ‘baiser’ the little sister of Sarah that is come into her place, and so away by coach home, where to my vyall and supper and then to bed, being weary of the following of my pleasure and sorry for my omitting (though with a true salvo to my vowes) the stating my last month’s accounts in time, as I should, but resolve to settle, and clear all my business before me this month, that I may begin afresh the next yeare, and enjoy some little pleasure freely at Christmasse. So to bed, and with more cheerfulness than I have done a good while, to hear that for certain the Scott rebells are all routed; they having been so bold as to come within three miles of Edinburgh, and there given two or three repulses to the King’s forces, but at last were mastered. Three or four hundred killed or taken, among which their leader, one Wallis, and seven ministers, they having all taken the Covenant a few days before, and sworn to live and die in it, as they did; and so all is likely to be there quiet again. There is also the very good newes come of four New-England ships come home safe to Falmouth with masts for the King; which is a blessing mighty unexpected, and without which, if for nothing else, we must have failed the next year. But God be praised for thus much good fortune, and send us the continuance of his favour in other things! So to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|vangogh|>
6 September 1883.
I have just finished the portrait of a little girl of twelve. Her eyes are brown, her hair and eyebrows are black, she has an olive skin, and stands before a white background containing a strong tinge of emerald green, in a blood-red jacket with violet stripes, a blue skirt with large orange-coloured spots, and an oleander flower between her dainty little fingers. This study has exhausted me to such an extent that my head does not feel like writing.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
[Prompt: What are you afraid of right now?]
15 January 1920.
Sat in my room watching the day change to evening. The fire like a golden stag. Thinking of the fast always ; dreaming it over. The cotton plant has turned yellow. To-night the sea is down. P.O. strike. No, no letters.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
14 June 1914.
In the autumn of 1921 she completed The Garden Party, and Other Stories, which was published in the spring of 1922, while she was in Paris, whither she had gone for a special treatment in February. The appearance of The Garden Party finally established her as the most remarkable short-story writer of her generation in England.

But now in 1922 writing had become for her an almost impossible struggle, not only against disease, but against an inward conviction that some work of inward purification had to be accomplished before she could go forward, before she would be worthy to express the complete truth which in her imagination she apprehended. The Canary, the last complete story she wrote, was completed in July 1922. Shortly after this she abandoned writing for the time and went into retirement at Fontainebleau, where she died suddenly and unexpectedly on the night of January 9, 1923.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
16 October 1922.
Therefore if the Grand Lama of Thibet promised to help you — how can you hesitate? Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

True, Tchehov didn't. Yes, but Tchehov died. And let us be honest. How much do we know of Tchehov from his letters? Was that all? Of course not. Don't you suppose he had a whole longing life of which there

is hardly a word? Then read the final letters. He has given up hope. If you de-sentimentalize those final letters they are terrible. There is no more Tchehov. Illness has swallowed him.

But perhaps to people who are not ill, all this is nonsense. They have never travelled this road. How can they see where I am? All the more reason to go boldly forward alone. Life is not simple. In spite of all we say about the mystery of Life, when we get down to it we want to treat it as though it were a child's tale. . . .
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
5 September 1922.
Now, Katherine, what do you mean by health? And what do you want it for?

Answer: By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. I want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it's no good — there's only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
14 June 1922.
Then I want to work. At what? I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals,

All is Well

books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing. (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.)

But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

I wrote this for myself. I shall now risk sending it to J. He may do with it what he likes. He must see how much I love him.

And when I say I 'I fear' — don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other. . . .
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
17 October 1922.
And this all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it's no longer so. I feel happy — deep down. All is well.

A Note on the Type in Which This Book Is Set

The type in which this book has been set {on the Linotype) is based on the design of William Caslon (16921766). It is a modem adaptation rather than an exact copy of the original. Caslon' s letters are noted for their extreme legibility.

SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND

BY THE PLIMPTON PRESS, NORWOOD, MASS.

UTOPIAN LAID PAPER

FURNISHED BY H. LINDENMEYR & SONS,

NEW YORK
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
12 January 1669.
Up, and to the Office, where, by occasion of a message from the Treasurers that their Board found fault with Commissioner Middleton, I went up from our Board to the Lords of the Treasury to meet our Treasurers, and did, and there did dispute the business, it being about the matter of paying a little money to Chatham Yard, wherein I find the Treasurers mighty supple, and I believe we shall bring them to reason, though they begun mighty upon us, as if we had no power of directing them, but they, us. Thence back presently home, to dinner, where I discern my wife to have been in pain about where I have been, but said nothing to me, but I believe did send W. Hewer to seek me, but I take no notice of it, but am vexed. So to dinner with my people, and then to the Office, where all the afternoon, and did much business, and at it late, and so home to supper, and to bed. This day, meeting Mr. Pierce at White Hall, he tells me that his boy hath a great mind to see me, and is going to school again; and Dr. Clerke, being by, do tell me that he is a fine boy; but I durst not answer anything, because I durst not invite him to my house, for fear of my wife; and therefore, to my great trouble, was forced to neglect that discourse. But here Mr. Pierce, I asking him whither he was going, told me as a great secret that he was going to his master’s mistress, Mrs. Churchill, with some physic; meaning for the pox I suppose, or else that she is got with child. This evening I observed my wife mighty dull, and I myself was not mighty fond, because of some hard words she did give me at noon, out of a jealousy at my being abroad this morning, which, God knows, it was upon the business of the Office unexpectedly: but I to bed, not thinking but she would come after me. But waking by and by out of a slumber, which I usually fall into presently after my coming into the bed, I found she did not prepare to come to bed, but got fresh candles, and more wood for her fire, it being mighty cold, too. At this being troubled, I after a while prayed her to come to bed, all my people being gone to bed; so, after an hour or two, she silent, and I now and then praying her to come to bed, she fell out into a fury, that I was a rogue, and false to her. But yet I did perceive that she was to seek what to say, only she invented, I believe, a business that I was seen in a hackney coach with the glasses up with Deb., but could not tell the time, nor was sure I was he. I did, as I might truly, deny it, and was mightily troubled, but all would not serve. At last, about one o’clock, she come to my side of the bed, and drew my curtaine open, and with the tongs red hot at the ends, made as if she did design to pinch me with them, at which, in dismay, I rose up, and with a few words she laid them down; and did by little and, little, very sillily, let all the discourse fall; and about two, but with much seeming difficulty, come to bed, and there lay well all night, and long in bed talking together, with much pleasure, it being, I know, nothing but her doubt of my going out yesterday, without telling her of my going, which did vex her, poor wretch! last night, and I cannot blame her jealousy, though it do vex me to the heart.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
15 January 1669.
Up, and by coach to Sir W. Coventry, where with him a good while in his chamber, talking of one thing or another; among others, he told me of the great factions at Court at this day, even to the sober engaging of great persons, and differences, and making the King cheap and ridiculous. It is about my Lady Harvy’s being offended at Doll Common’s acting of Sempronia, to imitate her; for which she got my Lord Chamberlain, her kinsman, to imprison Doll: when my Lady Castlemayne made the King to release her, and to order her to act it again, worse than ever, the other day, where the King himself was: and since it was acted again, and my Lady Harvy provided people to hiss her and fling oranges at her: but, it seems the heat is come to a great height, and real troubles at Court about it. Thence he and I out of doors, but he to Sir J. Duncomb, and I to White Hall through the Park, where I met the King and the Duke of York, and so walked with them, and so to White Hall, where the Duke of York met the office and did a little business; and I did give him thanks for his favour to me yesterday, at the Committee of Tangier, in my absence, Mr. Povy having given me advice of it, of the discourse there of doing something as to the putting the payment of the garrison into some undertaker’s hand, Alderman Backewell, which the Duke of York would not suffer to go on, without my presence at the debate. And he answered me just thus: that he ought to have a care of him that do the King’s business in the manner that I do, and words of more force than that. Then down with Lord Brouncker to Sir R. Murray, into the King’s little elaboratory, under his closet, a pretty place; and there saw a great many chymical glasses and things, but understood none of them. So I home and to dinner, and then out again and stop with my wife at my cozen Turner’s where I staid and sat a while, and carried The. and my wife to the Duke of York’s house, to “Macbeth,” and myself to White Hall, to the Lords of the Treasury, about Tangier business; and there was by at much merry discourse between them and my Lord Anglesey, who made sport of our new Treasurers, and called them his deputys, and much of that kind. And having done my own business, I away back, and carried my cozen Turner and sister Dyke to a friend’s house, where they were to sup, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and I to the Duke of York’s house and saw the last two acts, and so carried The. thither, and so home with my wife, who read to me late, and so to supper and to bed. This day The. Turner shewed me at the play my Lady Portman, who has grown out of my knowledge.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
19 January 1669.
Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon eat a mouthful, and so with my wife to Madam Turner’s, and find her gone, but The. staid for us; and so to the King’s house, to see “Horace;” this the third day of its acting--a silly tragedy; but Lacy hath made a farce of several dances--between each act, one: but his words are but silly, and invention not extraordinary, as to the dances; only some Dutchmen come out of the mouth and tail of a Hamburgh sow. Thence, not much pleased with the play, set them at home in the Strand; and my wife and I home, and there to do a little business at the Office, and so home to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
21 January 1669.
Up, and walked to the Temple, it being frosty, and there took coach, my boy Tom with me, and so to White Hall to a Committee of Tangier, where they met, and by and by and till twelve at noon upon business, among others mine, where my desire about being eased of appointing and standing accountable for a Treasurer there was well accepted, and they will think of some other way. This I was glad of, finding reason to doubt that I might in this (since my Lord Sandwich made me understand what he had said to the Duke of York herein) fear to offend either the Duke of York by denying it, for he seemed on Sunday night last, when I first made known my desire to him herein to be a little amused at it, though I knew not then the reason, or else offend my Lord Sandwich by accepting it, or denying it in a manner that might not forward his desire for Sir Charles Harbord, but I thank God I did it to my great content without any offence, I think, to either. Thence in my own coach home, where I find Madam Turner, Dyke, and The., and had a good dinner for them, and merry; and so carried them to the Duke of York’s house, all but Dyke, who went away on other business; and there saw “The Tempest;” but it is but ill done by Gosnell, in lieu of Moll Davis. Thence set them at home, and my wife and I to the ‘Change, and so home, where my wife mighty dogged, and I vexed to see it, being mightily troubled, of late, at her being out of humour, for fear of her discovering any new matter of offence against me, though I am conscious of none; but do hate to be unquiet at home. So, late up, silent, and not supping, but hearing her utter some words of discontent to me with silence, and so to bed, weeping to myself for grief, which she discerning, come to bed, and mighty kind, and so with great joy on both sides to sleep.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
22 March 1665.
Up, and to Mr. Povy’s about our business, and thence I to see Sir Ph. Warwicke, but could not meet with him. So to Mr. Coventry, whose profession of love and esteem for me to myself was so large and free that I never could expect or wish for more, nor could have it from any man in England, that I should value it more. Thence to Mr. Povy’s, and with Creed to the ‘Change and to my house, but, it being washing day, dined not at home, but took him (I being invited) to Mr. Hubland’s, the merchant, where Sir William Petty, and abundance of most ingenious men, owners and freighters of “The Experiment,” now going with her two bodies to sea. Most excellent discourse. Among others, Sir William Petty did tell me that in good earnest he hath in his will left such parts of his estate to him that could invent such and such things. As among others, that could discover truly the way of milk coming into the breasts of a woman; and he that could invent proper characters to express to another the mixture of relishes and tastes. And says, that to him that invents gold, he gives nothing for the philosopher’s stone; for (says he) they that find out that, will be able to pay themselves. But, says he, by this means it is better than to give to a lecture; for here my executors, that must part with this, will be sure to be well convinced of the invention before they do part with their money. After dinner Mr. Hill took me with Mrs. Hubland, who is a fine gentlewoman, into another room, and there made her sing, which she do very well, to my great content. Then to Gresham College, and there did see a kitling killed almost quite, but that we could not quite kill her, with such a way; the ayre out of a receiver, wherein she was put, and then the ayre being let in upon her revives her immediately;

nay, and this ayre is to be made by putting together a liquor and some body that ferments, the steam of that do do the work. Thence home, and thence to White Hall, where the house full of the Duke’s going to-morrow, and thence to St. James’s, wherein these things fell out: (1) I saw the Duke, kissed his hand, and had his most kind expressions of his value and opinion of me, which comforted me above all things in the world, (2) the like from Mr. Coventry most heartily and affectionately. (3) Saw, among other fine ladies, Mrs. Middleton,

a very great beauty I never knew or heard of before; (4) I saw Waller the poet, whom I never saw before. So, very late, by coach home with W. Pen, who was there. To supper and to bed, with my heart at rest, and my head very busy thinking of my several matters now on foot, the new comfort of my old navy business, and the new one of my employment on Tangier.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
27 March 1665.
Up betimes to Mr. Povy’s, and there did sign and seal my agreement with him about my place of being Treasurer for Tangier, it being the greatest part of it drawnout of a draught of his own drawing up, only I have added something here and there in favour of myself. Thence to the Duke of Albemarle, the first time that we officers of the Navy have waited upon him since the Duke of Yorke’s going, who hath deputed him to be Admirall in his absence. And I find him a quiet heavy man, that will help business when he can, and hinder nothing, and am very well pleased with our attendance on him. I did afterwards alone give him thanks for his favour to me about my Tangier business, which he received kindly, and did speak much of his esteem of me. Thence, and did the same to Sir H. Bennet, who did the like to me very fully, and did give me all his letters lately come from hence for me to read, which I returned in the afternoon to him. Thence to Mrs. Martin, who, though her husband is gone away, as he writes, like a fool into France, yet is as simple and wanton as ever she was, with much I made myself merry and away. So to my Lord Peterborough’s; where Povy, Creed, Williamson, Auditor Beale, and myself, and mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povy did abuse one another about their accounts, each thinking the other a foole, and I thinking they were not either of them, in that point, much in the wrong, though in everything, and even in this manner of reproaching one another, very witty and pleasant. Among other things, we had here the genteelest dinner and the neatest house that I have seen many a day, and the latter beyond anything I ever saw in a nobleman’s house. Thence visited my Lord Barkeley, and did sit discoursing with him in his chamber a good while, and mighty friendly to me about the same business of Tangier. From that to other discourse of the times and the want of money, and he said that the Parliament must be called again soon, and more money raised, not by tax, for he said he believed the people could not pay it, but he would have either a general excise upon everything, or else that every city incorporate should pay a toll into the King’s revenue, as he says it is in all the cities in the world; for here a citizen hath no more laid on them than their neighbours in the country, whereas, as a city, it ought to pay considerably to the King for their charter; but I fear this will breed ill blood. Thence to Povy, and after a little talk home to my office late. Then to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: What small thing mattered today?]
9 June 1661.
(Lord’s day). This day my wife put on her black silk gown, which is now laced all over with black gimp lace, as the fashion is, in which she is very pretty. She and I walked to my Lady’s at the Wardrobe, and there dined and was exceeding much made of. After dinner I left my wife there, and I walked to Whitehall, and then went to Mr. Pierce’s and sat with his wife a good while (who continues very pretty) till he came, and then he and I, and Mr. Symons (dancing master), that goes to sea with my Lord, to the Swan tavern, and there drank, and so again to White Hall, and there met with Dean Fuller, and walked a great while with him; among other things discoursed of the liberty the Bishop (by name the of Galloway) takes to admit into orders any body that will; among others, Roundtree, a simple mechanique that was a person formerly in the fleet. He told me he would complain of it. By and by we went and got a sculler, and landing him at Worcester House, I and W. Howe, who came to us at Whitehall, went to the Wardrobe, where I met with Mr. Townsend, who is very willing he says to communicate anything for my Lord’s advantage to me as to his business. I went up to Jane Shore’s towre, and there W. Howe and I sang, and so took my wife and walked home, and so to bed. After I came home a messenger came from my Lord to bid me come to him tomorrow morning.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
26 October 1667.
Up, and we met all this morning at Sir W. Pen’s roome, the office being fowle with the altering of our garden door. There very busy, and at noon home, where Mrs. Pierce and her daughter’s husband and Mr. Corbet dined with me. I had a good dinner for them, and mighty merry. Pierce and I very glad at the fate of the officers of Ordnance, that they are like to have so much blame on them. Here Mrs. Pierce tells me that the two Marshalls at the King’s house are Stephen Marshall’s, the great Presbyterian’s daughters: and that Nelly and Beck Marshall, falling out the other day, the latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst’s whore. Nell answered then, “I was but one man’s whore, though I was brought up in a bawdy-house to fill strong waters to the guests; and you are a whore to three or four, though a Presbyter’s praying daughter!” which was very pretty. Mrs. Pierce is still very pretty, but paints red on her face, which makes me hate her, that I thank God I take no pleasure in her at all more. After much mirth and good company at dinner, I to the office and left them, and Pendleton also, who come in to see my wife and talk of dancing, and there I at the office all the afternoon very busy, and did much business, with my great content to see it go off of hand, and so home, my eyes spent, to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
3 July 1920.
"But how could you say that about the Blessed Virgin!" said she. "It must have hurt Our Lady so terribly."

§5

Roosters and Hens

And I saw the B.V. throwing away her copy of Je ne parle pas francais and saying: "Really, this K.M. is all that her friends say of her to me."

Roosters and Hens
By night and at early morning I love to listen to my darling roosters crowing to one another from lonely yards. Each one has a different note: I have never heard two roosters crow alike. But the hens who seem from their cackle to be laying eggs all day long sound as like one another as ... as ... In fact there's no possible distinguishing between them. L.M. says they are not all laying eggs. Some of them are frightened, surprised, excited, or just — playful. But this seems to me to make the affair even more . . . humiliating.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
4 April 1920.
Easter eggs in the folded napkins. A Happy Easter. We drink to absent friends, but carelessly, not knowing whether to bow or no.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
9 April 1920.
Cold and windy. Out of the window the writhing palms — the dust — the woman with a black veil. I feel I must live alone, alone, alone — with artists only to touch the door. Every artist cuts off his ear and nails it on the outside of the door for the others to shout into.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
27 December 1920.
When I stuck the small drawing to the side of the mirror frame I realised that the seal — the mark — the cachet rouge — had been set on the room. It had then become the room of those two, and not her room any more. It is not that the room was dead before, but how it has gained in life ! Whence has come the tiny bouquet of tangerine fruits, the paste-pot on the writing-table, the fowl's feather stuck in Ribni's hair, the horn spectacles on the Chinese embroidery. The 'order' in which I live is not changed, but enriched ; in some strange way it is enlarged.

This is en effet just the effect of his mind upon mine. Mysterious fitness of our relationship ! And all those things which he does impose on my mind please me so deeply that they seem to be natural to me. It is all part of this feeling that he and I, different beyond the dream of difference, are yet an organic whole. We are,
as I said yesterday, the two sides of the medal, separate, distinct and yet making one. I do not feel that I need another to fulfil my being, and yet having him, I possess something that without him I would lack. In fact we are — apart from everything else — each other's critic in that he 'sees' me, I see myself reflected as more than I appear and yet not more than I am, and so I believe it is with him. So, to be together is apart from all else an act of faith in ourselves.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|maclane|>
[Prompt: Write about your day.]
12 March 1917.
God compensates me
It’s a Sunday midnight and I’ve just eaten a Cold Boiled Potato.

I shall never be able to write one-tenth of my fondness for a Cold Boiled Potato.

A Cold Boiled Potato is always an unpremeditated episode which is its chief charm.

It’s nice to happen on a book of poetry on a window-sill. It’s nice to surprise a square of chocolate in a glove box. It’s nice to come upon a little yellow apple in ambush. It’s nice to get an unexpected letter from Jane Gillmore. It’s nice to unearth a reserve fund of silk stockings under a sofa pillow. And especially it’s nice to find a Cold Boiled Potato on a pantry shelf at midnight.

I like caviare at luncheon. And I like venison at dinner, dark and bloody and rich. And I like champagne bubbling passionately in a hollow-stemmed glass on New Year’s day. And I like terrapin turtle. And I like French-Canadian game-pie. And artichokes and grapes and baby onions. And none of them has the odd gnome-ish charm of a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight.

I can imagine no circumstance in which a Cold Boiled Potato would not take precedent with me at midnight. If I had a broken arm: if I had a husband lying dead in the next room: if I were facing abrupt worldly disaster: if there were a burglar in the house: if I’d had a dayful of depression: if God and opportunity were knocking and clamoring at my door: I should disregard each and all some minutes at midnight if I had also a Cold Boiled Potato.

I love to read Keats’s Nightingale in my hushed life. I love to remember Caruso at the Metropolitan singing Celeste Aïda. I love to watch the bewitching blonde Blanche Sweet in a moving picture. I love to feel the summer moonlight on my eyelids. And it’s disarmingly contented I am with a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight.

Content is my rarest emotion and I get it at midnight out of a Cold Boiled Potato.

Some things in life thrill me. Some drive me garbledly mad. Some uplift me. Some debauch me. Some strengthen and enlighten me. Some hurt, hurt, hurt. But I’m not thrilled nor maddened nor uplifted nor debauched nor strengthened nor enlightened nor hurt, but only fed-up and fattened in spirit by a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight.

I stand in the pantry door leaning against the jamb, with a tiny glass salt-shaker in one hand and the sweet dark pink Cold Boiled Potato in the other. And I sprinkle it with salt and I nibble, nibble, nibble. And I say aloud, ‘Gee, it’s good!’

I liked Cold Boiled Potato at four-and-twenty. I liked it at seventeen. I liked it at twelve. At three I climbed on cake-boxes in search of one. And now in the deep bloom of being myself I am made roundly replete at midnight with a Cold Boiled Potato.

A Cold Boiled Potato--it tastes of chestnuts at midnight, the first frost-kissed chestnuts in the woods: and it tastes of rain-water and of salt and of roses: it tastes of young willow-bark and of earth and of grass-stems: it tastes of the sun and the wind and of some nameless relishingness born of the summer hillside that grew it: it tastes at midnight so like a Cold Boiled Potato.

A precious peach-colored orchid, an antique spider-web-like lace handkerchief, a delicate purple butterfly, an emerald bracelet: I’d strive for each of those in an eagerly casual way. But it’s like an ogre at midnight I pounce on a Cold Boiled Potato.

A Cold Boiled Potato reminds me of the Dickens books in which so much food is eaten cold and tastes so savory--even the ‘wilderness of cold potatoes’ portioned to the Marchioness by Sally Brass. And it reminds me of the Rip Van Winkle play--‘give this fellow a cold potato and let him go.’ And it reminds me of Hamlet--funeral baked meats might include it. And it reminds me of Robin Hood’s merry men, and Huckleberry Finn, and the Canterbury Pilgrims, and the Prodigal Son, and all the picturesque wayfarers. It reminds me of the poor as a colorful race wrapped around with hungry romance. It reminds me that life is full of life--rich and fruitful and evolutionary and cosmic: few things feel so cosmic as a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight. It makes me want as I nibble to plant a field of potatoes on a southern-exposed hill and hoe them and dig them all by myself: and give all but one to the poor and Boil that to eat Cold at midnight.

I have to be very hungry to crave a Cold Boiled Potato, but being hungry no possible morsel of food can so interest me at midnight. The same potato hot is domestic and tasteless. The same potato at ten in the evening lukewarm within and sodden with memories of dinner, is a repellent item. At midnight it is all unexpected magnetism. At midnight my whole being is profoundly courteous, wooingly cordial toward a Cold Boiled Potato.

If I had only what I deserved my portion might well be a Cold Boiled Potato. Intrinsically it is rated low and I know me to be a sort of jezebel. But I’d wonder each midnight if whoever metes out the deserts in this surprising universe knew with what gust I rise at it--would I get it.

Nor am I satisfied like the meek and lowly with my midnight supper of Cold Boiled Potato: damn the meek and lowly. It’s a satanic delight I take in it. It’s a sly private orgie I make of it: a pirate’s banquet, a thieves’ picnic, a pagan rite, a heathen revelry, a conceit all and unhallowedly my own. My thoughts as I nibble are set mostly on my villainies. No food I eat brings me so broad a license of feeling--a sense of freedom--as a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight.

On a Cold Boiled Potato at midnight I am lightly valorous: call me a trickster and I’ll call you a rotter: call me a liar and I’ll call you a traitor: call me a coward and I’ll call you another: not pugnaciously but gayly and serenely.

I am then in my most bespeaking mood. Anyone who met me standing nibbling in a pantry doorway at midnight would be charmed. I would talk with a dainty ribaldry and offer to share the feast.

For shadow-things piled too near God compensates me in unexpected midnights with a Cold Boiled Potato: along with it a pantry doorway to stand in and a little glass salt-shaker to hold in my other hand.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|vangogh|>
16 December 1884.
In my sketch of “The Garden,” there may be something like _Des tapis velus--de fleurs et verdure tissus_. I wished to reply to all your quotations with the pen, even if I dispensed with words. My head does not feel very much like discussing to-day; I am head over ears in work. I have just done two large pen-drawings, for instance, a bird’s-eye view of an endless plain seen from the top of a hill: vineyards, and fields of stubble reaching to infinity, and extending like the surface of the sea to the horizon, which is bounded by the hills of _La Crau_. It does not look Japanese, and yet, truth to tell, I have never painted anything so essentially Japanese. A tiny figure of a labourer and a small train running through the cornfields, constitute the only signs of life in the picture. Think of it! on one of my first days at this place, a painter friend of mine said to me: “It would be absurdly tedious to paint that!” I did not attempt to answer, but thought the spot so beautiful that I could not even summon the strength to upbraid the idiot. I returned to the locality again and again, and made two drawings of it--this flat stretch of country which contains nothing save infinity, eternity. And then, while I was drawing, a man walked up to me--not a painter this time, but a soldier. “Does it surprise you,” I asked him, “that I should think this as beautiful as the sea?” “No, it does not surprise me in the least that you should think this as beautiful as the sea,” came the reply (the fellow knew the sea, by-the-bye); “for I think it even more beautiful than the ocean, because it is inhabited.”

Which of the two men understood the most about art, the painter or the soldier? According to my way of thinking, the soldier did; am I not right?
<|/entry|>