<|entry|><|vangogh|>
20 March 1882.
I feel decidedly better in the South than in the North. I work even during the hour of noon, in the glaring sunlight, without a scrap of shade; and, believe me, I feel as happy as a cricket. Heavens! why did I not get to know this country at 25 instead of at 35 years of age! In those days, however, I was mad on grays, or rather on the absence of colour. I always dreamt of a Millet, and had my friends in the artistic circle of Mauve and of Israels, etc.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
23 January 1883.
I have painted the “Sower.” Oh, how beautiful the illustrations in the old calendars were!--with the hail, the rain, the snow and fine weather always rendered in the perfectly primitive manner which Anquetin favoured for his “Harvest.”

I may as well tell you that I do not dislike country life--for I grew up in the midst of it. Sudden recollections of old times and a longing for that infinite of which the “Sower” and the “Sheaf of Corn” are evidence, still enchant me now, just as they did formerly. But when shall I paint the starry heavens?--that picture which is always in my mind? Ah, what the worthy Cyprian says in J. K. Huysmans’ “En Ménage,” is very true!--“The most beautiful pictures are those of which one dreams when one is smoking a pipe in bed but which one never paints.” And yet one must tackle such pictures, however incompetent one may feel in the presence of the inexpressible perfection and triumphant splendour of nature.

Here is another landscape for you!--A setting sun, a rising moon? In any case, a summer’s evening. A violet city, yellow stars, a green-blue sky, crops of all colours, old-gold, copper, green-gold, red-gold, yellow-gold, yellow-bronze, green and red. I painted it in the midst of a North wind.

I should like to say the following about black and white:--take my “Sower”! The picture is divided into two halves, the upper portion is yellow and the lower portion violet. Now you observe that the white trousers are both restful and cheering to the eye while the strong and glowing contrast of the yellow and the violet might at the same time irritate it.

One reason for working is that the pictures are worth money. You will say, in the first place, that this reason is prosaic, and secondly that it is untrue. But it really is true. One reason for not working is that, in the first place, canvas and colour cost a lot of money. Drawings are the only things that can be produced cheaply.

My chief reason for being so fond of this part of the country is that here I am not in such fear of the cold which retards my circulation, and thus prevents me from thinking and doing anything at all. You will realize this only when you are a soldier and chance to come to these parts. Your melancholy will take wing,--for it is very probable that it is only the outcome of your having too little blood. And all this is the result of the confoundedly bad wine and infamous beef of Paris. Things had gone so far with me that my blood had almost ceased to circulate, or practically so in the true sense of the word. But here, in about a month’s time, it began to flow again. And, my dear fellow, at that time I had a fit of melancholy like the one you have at present, and I would have suffered from it as much as you are suffering from yours, had I not greeted it joyfully as a sign of my recovery, which, by the by, was soon an established fact.

To paint and to love women are incompatible. This is really a confounded nuisance!

The symbol of St. Luke, the patron saint of painters, is as you know an ox. Thus one must be as patient as an ox if one would wish to cultivate the field of art. But how lucky oxen are to have nothing to do with this confounded business of painting!

But let me tell you this, that after your fit of melancholy you will feel fresher than you did before. Your health will grow stronger, and you will find the world about you so beautiful, that you will have but one wish--to paint. I believe that your poetry will also change in the same way. After many eccentricities you will succeed {D} in producing things full of Egyptian repose and grand simplicity.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
9 July 1883.
You will doubtless agree that neither you nor I can form a complete image of what Velasquez or Goya were as men and painters; for neither you nor I have seen Spain, their native land, and all the lovely pictures which have remained in the South. But this does not alter the fact that the little we do know is really very great indeed.

In order to understand the painters of the North, and above all Rembrandt, it is unquestionably of paramount importance to know and understand their country--and the somewhat petty and intimate history of their age, as well as the customs of their ancient fatherland. I must repeat that you and Baudelaire have not a sufficiently thorough knowledge of Rembrandt, and as for you, I still feel that I should like to induce you to make a long study of the greater and lesser Dutch Masters, before you form a definite opinion about them. For it is not a matter only of rare and costly jewels, one has to select precious stones from out a mass of precious stones, and many a false diamond will be found among genuine specimens. Thus, although I have studied the schools of my fatherland for over twenty years, a discussion concerning the painters of the North is usually conducted in such a false spirit, that I should in most cases hold my peace whenever the conversation chanced to turn upon them.

I can only urge you, therefore, in Heaven’s name, to examine them a little more thoroughly; your trouble will be repaid a thousandfold.

If, for instance, I declare that the Ostade of the Louvre, representing the family of the artist--the man himself, his wife and his ten children--like the “Congress of Münster,” by Terborch, is a picture which though infinitely worth being studied and deeply thought about [is sadly neglected];[24] and that precisely those pictures in the Louvre collection which I particularly value and regard as the most remarkable, are very often overlooked by artists--even by those who come on purpose to see the Dutch School--these mistakes do not surprise me. For I know that my choice is based upon specialised knowledge which the majority of French people cannot acquire. If, however, I disagree with you on these points, I am nevertheless convinced, that in time to come you will share my view of the matter.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
13 November 1883.
What always makes me so desperate in the Louvre, is to be compelled to look on while the asinine authorities allow their Rembrandts to be spoilt, and ruin so many beautiful pictures.

For the disagreeable jaundiced tone of some of the Rembrandts is the result of discolouration brought about by dampness or other causes (heating, dust, etc.), a thing I could easily prove to you.

And that is why it is just as difficult to ascertain Rembrandt’s colouring as it is to discover accurately what greys were used by Velasquez. For the want of a better expression one might overcome the difficulty by speaking of Rembrandt’s gold; but it is very vague.

When I came to France I learnt to understand Delacroix and Zola perhaps better than many a Frenchman. And my admiration for both of these men is now as unbounded as it is sincere. Armed with an almost complete mastery of Rembrandt, I discovered that Delacroix obtained his effects by means of his colour, and Rembrandt by means of his values; but they are worthy of each other.

Zola and Balzac, who are, among other things, the painters of a whole epoch, afford their admirers many rare artistic delights owing to the fact that they express the whole of the age which they describe.

Even though Delacroix paints only mankind and life, instead of a whole age, he belongs none the less to the class of universal geniuses. I particularly like the closing words of an article which, if I am not mistaken, was written by Théophile Silvestre, who ended a hymn of praise as follows: “Thus, almost with a smile on his lips, did Eugène Delacroix die. A noble painter, he bore the sun in his head and a tempest in his heart, and he could turn from warriors to saints, from saints to lovers, from lovers to tigers, and from tigers to flowers.”

Daumier is also a great genius, while Millet is likewise the painter of a whole generation and of its atmosphere. Maybe, these great geniuses are a little crazy, and it is possible that we may be a little crazy too, to have such faith in them and to feel such unbounded admiration for their art. If this be so, I prefer my folly to the cold wisdom of others.

Perhaps the most direct way is to study Rembrandt. But, first of all, let me tell you something about Franz Hals, who has never painted the Saviour, the Angel announcing Christ’s birth to the shepherds, the Crucifixion or the Resurrection, and who has never painted naked, voluptuous, or cruel{E} female figures.

He always painted portraits and nothing else--soldier pictures, officers’ banquets, portraits of magistrates assembled to discuss affairs of State, and portraits of matrons with pink or sallow complexions, wearing white caps and dressed in black wool or satin, discussing the budget of an orphanage or a hospital.

He also painted a drunken toper, an old fishwife as a lively witch, a beautiful Bohemian courtesan, unweaned babies in arms, and an elegant{F} cavalier--a _bon-vivant_, with a bristly moustache, top-boots, and spurs.

He painted himself and his wife as young lovers, sitting on a grassy bank in the garden, after the wedding night.

He painted tramps and laughing street-boys, musicians, and a fat cook.

We cannot do anything else; but all this is worthy of Dante’s “Paradise,” the masterpieces by Michelangelo and Raphael, and even the Greeks; it is as beautiful as Zola, but more healthy and more cheerful, though equally true to life. For the age of Hals was healthier and less wretched. What then is Rembrandt? Precisely the same, a portrait painter! One must first have this sound, clear and comprehensive idea of these two Dutch masters, who are worthy of each other, and then one can enter more deeply into this subject. If one can picture the whole of this glorious state, revealed in grand outline by both of these prolific portrait painters, plenty of room is left for the landscapes, interiors, pictures of animals and philosophical subjects. But I implore you to follow my reasoning closely; I am trying to make it as simple and as clear as possible.

Let every corner of your brain be permeated with that master, Franz Hals, who painted the portraits of an entire, important, living, and immortal state. Also let every corner of your brain be permeated with that other by no means minor great master of the Dutch state, Rembrandt van Ryn, a man of mighty gifts, and just as naturalistic and healthy as Hals. And now from this source--Rembrandt, we see arise as direct and genuine pupils: Jan van der Meer of Delft, Fabritius, Nicholas Maës, Pieter de Hooch, Bol; as also such artists as Potter, Ruysdael, and Ostade, who are under his influence. I have mentioned Fabritius to you, only two of whose pictures we possess. But in all this I have not referred to a whole host of good painters, and above all not to the false diamonds. And it is precisely with these spurious stones that the French man in the street is best acquainted. Have I made myself clear? I have tried to reveal the great and simple fact: the painting of mankind, or, preferably, of a whole state, by means of portraits. Much later we shall have to deal with magic art, with the pictures of Saviours and of nude women--these things are extremely interesting, but they are not everything.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
4 September 1661.
In the morning to the Privy Seal to do some things of the last month, my Lord Privy Seal having been some time out of town. Then my wife came to me to Whitehall, and we went and walked a good while in St. James’s Park to see the brave alterations, and so to Wilkinson’s, the Cook’s, to dinner, where we sent for Mrs. Sarah and there dined and had oysters, the first I have eat this year, and were pretty good. After dinner by agreement to visit Mrs. Symonds, but she is abroad, which I wonder at, and so missing her my wife again to my mother’s (calling at Mrs. Pierce’s, who we found brought to bed of a girl last night) and there staid and drank, and she resolves to be going to-morrow without fail. Many friends come in to take their leave of her, but a great deal of stir I had again tonight about getting her to go to see my Lady Sandwich before she goes, which she says she will do tomorrow. So I home.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
12 September 1661.
Though it was an office day, yet I was forced to go to the Privy Seal, at which I was all the morning, and from thence to my Lady’s to dinner at the Wardrobe; and in my way upon the Thames, I saw the King’s new pleasure-boat that is come now for the King to take pleasure in above bridge; and also two Gundaloes

that are lately brought, which are very rich and fine. After dinner I went into my Lady’s chamber where I found her up now out of her childbed, which I was glad to see, and after an hour’s talk with her I took leave and to Tom Trice again, and sat talking and drinking with him about our business a great while. I do find I am likely to be forced to pay interest for the L200. By and by in comes my uncle Thomas, and as he was always a close cunning fellow, so he carries himself to me, and says nothing of what his endeavours are, though to my trouble I know that he is about recovering of Gravely, but neither I nor he began any discourse of the business. From thence to Dr. Williams (at the little blind alehouse in Shoe Lane, at the Gridiron, a place I am ashamed to be seen to go into), and there with some bland counsel of his we discuss our matters, but I find men of so different minds that by my troth I know not what to trust to. It being late I took leave, and by link home and called at Sir W. Batten’s, and there hear that Sir W. Pen do take our jest of the tankard very ill, which Pam sorry for.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
20 January 1920.
Washed my hair. L.M. out all day. Here alone — a perfect day. I wandered in the garden. . . . There was a ship, white and solid on the water. Overcoat disappeared. The fire in my room and the double light. All was exquisitely beautiful. "Good-bye." It now believes we are going and it is safe.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
21 January 1920.
A day like a dream. V.'s hair, stick, jacket, teeth, tie — all to be remembered. "To use a
vulgarism, I'm fed up." The journey — the flowers — these women here. Jinnie's black satin neckcloth and pearl pin. This exquisite cleanliness turns me into a cat.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
22 January 1920.
Saw the doctor: a fool. The Casetta left to itself: the little winds blowing, the shutters shut, the cotton plant turning yellow. Spent a tiring morning. My heart hurts me. The meals downstairs are a fearful strain. But the people naive.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
23 January 1920.
Saw two of the doctors — an ass, and an ass. Spent the day at my window. It was very lovely and fair. But I was trying to work all day and could not get down to it. In the night had appalling nightmare.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
26 April 1914.
Sunday. Ten minutes past four. I am sure that this Sunday is the worst of all my life. I've touched bottom. Even my heart doesn't beat any longer. I only keep alive by a kind of buzz of blood in my veins. Now the dark is coming back again; only at the windows there is a white glare. My watch ticks loudly and strongly on the bed table, as though it were rich with a minute life, while I faint — I die.

It is evening again. The sea runs very high. It frets, sweeps up and over, hugs, leaps upon the rocks. In the sharp metallic light the rocks have a reddish tinge. Above them a broad band of green mixed with a rich sooty black; above it the cone of a violet mountain; above the mountain a light blue sky shining like the inside of a wet sea-shell. Every moment the light changes. Even as I write, it is no longer hard. Some small white clouds top the mountain like tossed-up smoke. And now a purple colour, very menacing and awful, is pulling over the sky. The trees tumble about in the unsteady light. A dog barks. The gardener, talking to himself, shuffles across the new raked paths, picks up his weed basket and goes off. Two lovers are walking together by the side of the sea. They are muffled
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
12 February 1667.
Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning, with several things (among others) discoursed relating to our two new assistant controllers, but especially Sir W. Pen, who is mighty troublesome in it. At noon home to dinner, and then to the office again, and there did much business, and by and by comes Mr. Moore, who in discourse did almost convince me that it is necessary for my Lord Sandwich to come home end take his command at sea this year, for that a peace is like to be. Many considerations he did give me hereupon, which were very good both in reference to the publick and his private condition. By and by with Lord Bruncker by coach to his house, there to hear some Italian musique: and here we met Tom Killigrew, Sir Robert Murray, and the Italian Signor Baptista, who hath composed a play in Italian for the Opera, which T. Killigrew do intend to have up; and here he did sing one of the acts. He himself is the poet as well as the musician; which is very much, and did sing the whole from the words without any musique prickt, and played all along upon a harpsicon most admirably, and the composition most excellent. The words I did not understand, and so know not how they are fitted, but believe very well, and all in the recitativo very fine. But I perceive there is a proper accent in every country’s discourse, and that do reach in their setting of notes to words, which, therefore, cannot be natural to any body else but them; so that I am not so much smitten with it as, it may be, I should be, if I were acquainted with their accent. But the whole composition is certainly most excellent; and the poetry, T. Killigrew and Sir R. Murray, who understood the words, did say was excellent. I confess I was mightily pleased with the musique. He pretends not to voice, though it be good, but not excellent. This done, T. Killigrew and I to talk: and he tells me how the audience at his house is not above half so much as it used to be before the late fire. That Knipp is like to make the best actor that ever come upon the stage, she understanding so well: that they are going to give her L30 a-year more. That the stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above 3 lbs. of tallow: now, all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best then, nothing but rushes upon the ground, and every thing else mean; and now, all otherwise: then, the Queen seldom and the King never would come; now, not the King only for state, but all civil people do think they may come as well as any. He tells me that he hath gone several times, eight or ten times, he tells me, hence to Rome to hear good musique; so much he loves it, though he never did sing or play a note. That he hath ever endeavoured in the late King’s time, and in this, to introduce good musique, but he never could do it, there never having been any musique here better than ballads. Nay, says, “Hermitt poore” and “Chevy Chese”

was all the musique we had; and yet no ordinary fiddlers get so much money as ours do here, which speaks our rudenesse still. That he hath gathered our Italians from several Courts in Christendome, to come to make a concert for the King, which he do give L200 a-year a-piece to: but badly paid, and do come in the room of keeping four ridiculous gundilows,

he having got, the King to put them away, and lay out money this way; and indeed I do commend him for it, for I think it is a very noble undertaking. He do intend to have some times of the year these operas to be performed at the two present theatres, since he is defeated in what he intended in Moorefields on purpose for it; and he tells me plainly that the City audience was as good as the Court, but now they are most gone. Baptista tells me that Giacomo Charissimi is still alive at Rome, who was master to Vinnecotio, who is one of the Italians that the King hath here, and the chief composer of them. My great wonder is, how this man do to keep in memory so perfectly the musique of the whole act, both for the voice and the instrument too. I confess I do admire it: but in recitativo the sense much helps him, for there is but one proper way of discoursing and giving the accents. Having done our discourse, we all took coaches, my Lord’s and T. Killigrew’s, and to Mrs. Knipp’s chamber, where this Italian is to teach her to sing her part. And so we all thither, and there she did sing an Italian song or two very fine, while he played the bass upon a harpsicon there; and exceedingly taken I am with her singing, and believe that she will do miracles at that and acting. Her little girl is mighty pretty and witty. After being there an hour, and I mightily pleased with this evening’s work, we all parted, and I took coach and home, where late at my office, and then home to enter my last three days’ Journall; and so to supper and to bed, troubled at nothing, but that these pleasures do hinder me in my business, and the more by reason of our being to dine abroad to-morrow, and then Saturday next is appointed to meet again at my Lord Bruncker’s lodgings, and there to have the whole quire of Italians; but then I do consider that this is all the pleasure I live for in the world, and the greatest I can ever expect in the best of my life, and one thing more, that by hearing this man to-night, and I think Captain Cooke to-morrow, and the quire of Italians on Saturday, I shall be truly able to distinguish which of them pleases me truly best, which I do much desire to know and have good reason and fresh occasion of judging.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
[Prompt: What does this day deserve to have remembered of it?]
27 February 1667.
Up by candle-light, about six o’clock, it being bitter cold weather again, after all our warm weather, and by water down to Woolwich rope-yard, I being this day at a leisure, the King and Duke of York being gone down to Sheerenesse this morning to lay out the design for a fortification there to the river Medway; and so we do not attend the Duke of York as we should otherwise have done, and there to the Dock Yard to enquire of the state of things, and went into Mr. Pett’s; and there, beyond expectation, he did present me with a Japan cane, with a silver head, and his wife sent me by him a ring, with a Woolwich stone;

now much in request; which I accepted, the values not being great, and knowing that I had done them courtesies, which he did own in very high terms; and then, at my asking, did give me an old draught of an ancient-built ship, given him by his father, of the Beare, in Queen Elizabeth’s time. This did much please me, it being a thing I much desired to have, to shew the difference in the build of ships now and heretofore. Being much taken with this kindness, I away to Blackwall and Deptford, to satisfy myself there about the King’s business, and then walked to Redriffe, and so home about noon; there find Mr. Hunt, newly come out of the country, who tells me the country is much impoverished by the greatness of taxes: the farmers do break every day almost, and L1000 a-year become not worth L500. He dined with us, and we had good discourse of the general ill state of things, and, by the way, he told me some ridiculous pieces of thrift of Sir G. Downing’s, who is his countryman, in inviting some poor people, at Christmas last, to charm the country people’s mouths; but did give them nothing but beef, porridge, pudding, and pork, and nothing said all dinner, but only his mother would say, “It’s good broth, son.” He would answer, “Yes, it is good broth.” Then, says his lady, Confirm all, and say, “Yes, very good broth.” By and by she would begin and say, “Good pork:”--“Yes,” says the mother, “good pork.” Then he cries, “Yes, very good pork.” And so they said of all things; to which nobody made any answer, they going there not out of love or esteem of them, but to eat his victuals, knowing him to be a niggardly fellow; and with this he is jeered now all over the country. This day just before dinner comes Captain Story, of Cambridge, to me to the office, about a bill for prest money,

for men sent out of the country and the countries about him to the fleete the last year; but, Lord! to see the natures of men; how this man, hearing of my name, did ask me of my country, and told me of my cozen Roger, that he was not so wise a man as his father; for that he do not agree in Parliament with his fellow burgesses and knights of the shire, whereas I know very well the reason; for he is not so high a flyer as Mr. Chichley and others, but loves the King better than any of them, and to better purpose. But yet, he says that he is a very honest gentleman, and thence runs into a hundred stories of his own services to the King, and how he at this day brings in the taxes before anybody here thinks they are collected: discourse very absurd to entertain a stranger with. He being gone, and I glad of it, I home then to dinner. After dinner with my wife by coach abroad, andset Mr. Hunt down at the Temple and her at her brother’s, and I to White Hall to meet W. Coventry, but found him not, but met Mr. Cooling, who tells me of my Lord Duke of Buckingham’s being sent for last night, by a Serjeant at Armes, to the Tower, for treasonable practices, and that the King is infinitely angry with him, and declared him no longer one of his Council. I know not the reason of it, or occasion. To Westminster Hall, and there paid what I owed for books, and so by coach, took up my wife to the Exchange, and there bought things for Mrs. Pierces little daughter, my Valentine, and so to their house, where we find Knipp, who also challengeth me for her Valentine. She looks well, sang well, and very merry we were for half an hour. Tells me Harris is well again, having been very ill, and so we home, and I to the office; then, at night, to Sir W. Pen’s, and sat with my Lady, and the young couple (Sir William out of town) talking merrily; but they make a very sorry couple, methinks, though rich. So late home and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
11 August 1663.
Up and to my office, whither, by and by, my brother Tom came, and I did soundly rattle him for his neglecting to see and please the Joyces as he has of late done. I confess I do fear that he do not understand his business, nor will do any good in his trade, though he tells me that he do please every body and that he gets money, but I shall not believe it till I see a state of his accounts, which I have ordered him to bring me before he sees me any more. We met and sat at the office all the morning, and at noon I to the ‘Change, where I met Dr. Pierce, who tells me that the King comes to towne this day, from Tunbridge, to stay a day or two, and then fetch the Queen from thence, who he says is grown a very debonnaire lady, and now hugs him, and meets him gallopping upon the road, and all the actions of a fond and pleasant lady that can be, that he believes has a chat now and then of Mrs. Stewart, but that there is no great danger of her, she being only an innocent, young, raw girl; but my Lady Castlemaine, who rules the King in matters of state, and do what she list with him, he believes is now falling quite out of favour. After the Queen is come back she goes to the Bath; and so to Oxford, where great entertainments are making for her. This day I am told that my Lord Bristoll hath warrants issued out against him, to have carried him to the Tower; but he is fled away, or hid himself. So much the Chancellor hath got the better of him. Upon the ‘Change my brother, and Will bring me word that Madam Turner would come and dine with me to-day, so I hasted home and found her and Mrs. Morrice there (The. Joyce being gone into the country), which is the reason of the mother rambling. I got a dinner for them, and after dinner my uncle Thomas and aunt Bell came and saw me, and I made them almost foxed with wine till they were very kind (but I did not carry them up to my ladies). So they went away, and so my two ladies and I in Mrs. Turner’s coach to Mr. Povy’s, who being not within, we went in and there shewed Mrs. Turner his perspective and volary,

and the fine things that he is building of now, which is a most neat thing. Thence to the Temple and by water to Westminster; and there Morrice and I went to Sir R. Ling’s to have fetched a niece of his, but she was not within, and so we went to boat again and then down to the bridge, and there tried to find a sister of Mrs. Morrice’s, but she was not within neither, and so we went through bridge, and I carried them on board the King’s pleasure-boat, all the way reading in a book of Receipts of making fine meats and sweetmeats, among others to make my own sweet water, which made us good sport. So I landed them at Greenwich, and there to a garden, and gave them fruit and wine, and so to boat again, and finally, in the cool of the evening, to Lyon Kee,

the tide against us, and so landed and walked to the Bridge, and there took a coach by chance passing by, and so I saw them home, and there eat some cold venison with them, and drunk and bade them good night, having been mighty merry with them, and I think it is not amiss to preserve, though it cost me a little, such a friend as Mrs. Turner. So home and to bed, my head running upon what to do to-morrow to fit things against my wife’s coming, as to buy a bedstead, because my brother John is here, and I have now no more beds than are used.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
13 August 1663.
Lay long in bed with my wife talking of family matters, and so up and to the office, where we sat all the’ morning, and then home to dinner, and after dinner my wife and I to talk again about getting of a couple of good mayds and to part with Ashwell, which troubles me for her father’s sake, though I shall be glad to have the charge taken away of keeping a woman. Thence a little to the office, and so abroad with my wife by water to White Hall, and there at my Lord’s lodgings met my Lady Jemimah, with whom we staid a good while. Thence to Mrs. Hunt’s, where I left my wife, and I to walk a little in St. James’s Park, while Mrs. Harper might come home, with whom we came to speak about her kinswoman Jane Gentleman to come and live with us as a chamber mayde, and there met with Mr. Hoole my old acquaintance of Magdalen, and walked with him an hour in the Parke, discoursing chiefly of Sir Samuel Morland, whose lady is gone into France. It seems he buys ground and a farm in the country, and lays out money upon building, and God knows what! so that most of the money he sold his pension of L500 per annum for, to Sir Arthur Slingsby, is believed is gone. It seems he hath very great promises from the King, and Hoole hath seen some of the King’s letters, under his own hand, to Morland, promising him great things (and among others, the order of the Garter, as Sir Samuel says); but his lady thought it below her to ask any thing at the King’s first coming, believing the King would do it of himself, when as Hoole do really think if he had asked to be Secretary of State at the King’s first coming, he might have had it. And the other day at her going into France, she did speak largely to the King herself, how her husband hath failed of what his Majesty had promised, and she was sure intended him; and the King did promise still, as he is a King and a gentleman, to be as good as his word in a little time, to a tittle: but I never believe it. Here in the Park I met with Mr. Coventry, where he sent for a letter he had newly writ to me, wherein he had enclosed one from Commissioner Pett complaining of his being defeated in his attempt to suspend two pursers, wherein the manner of his doing it, and complaint of our seeing him (contrary to our promises the other day), deserted, did make us laugh mightily, and was good sport to think how awkwardly he goes about a thing that he has no courage of his own nor mind to do. Mr. Coventry answered it very handsomely, but I perceive Pett has left off his corresponding with me any more. Thence to fetch my wife from Mrs. Hunt’s, where now he was come in, and we eat and drunk, and so away (their child being at home, a very lively, but not pretty at all), by water to Mrs. Turner’s, and there made a short visit, and so home by coach, and after supper to prayers and to bed, and before going to bed Ashwell began to make her complaint, and by her I do perceive that she has received most base usage from my wife, which my wife sillily denies, but it is impossible the wench could invent words and matter so particularly, against which my wife has nothing to say but flatly to deny, which I am sorry to see, and blows to have past, and high words even at Hinchinbrooke House among my Lady’s people, of which I am mightily ashamed. I said nothing to either of them, but let them talk till she was gone and left us abed, and then I told my wife my mind with great sobriety of grief, and so to sleep.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
14 August 1663.
Awake, and to chide my wife again, and I find that my wife has got too great head to be brought down soon, nor is it possible with any convenience to keep Ashwell longer, my wife is so set and convinced, as she was in Sarah, to make her appear a Lyer in every small thing that we shall have no peace while she stays. So I up and to my office doing several businesses in my study, and so home to dinner. The time having outslipt me and my stomach, it being past, two a-clock, and yet before we could sit down to dinner Mrs. Harper and her cousin Jane came, and we treated and discoursed long about her coming to my wife for a chamber mayd, and I think she will do well. So they went away expecting notice when she shall come, and so we sat down to dinner at four a-clock almost, and then I walked forth to my brother’s, where I found my father very discontented, and has no mind to come to my house, and would have begun some of the differences between my wife and him, but I desired to hear none of them, and am sorry at my folly in forcing it and theirs in not telling me of it at the beginning, and therefore am resolved to make the best of a bad market, and to bring my wife to herself again as soon and as well as I can. So we parted very kindly, and he will dine with me to-morrow or next day. Thence walked home, doing several errands by the way, and at home took my wife to visit Sir W. Pen, who is still lame, and after an hour with him went home and supped, and with great content to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
21 July 1667.
(Lord’s day). Up betimes, and all the morning, and then to dinner with my wife alone, and then all the afternoon in like manner, in my chamber, making up my Tangier accounts and drawing a letter, which I have done at last to my full content, to present to the Lords Commissioners for Tangier tomorrow; and about seven at night, when finished my letter and weary, I and my wife and Mercer up by water to Barne Elmes, where we walked by moonshine, and called at Lambeth, and drank and had cold meat in the boat, and did eat, and sang, and down home, by almost twelve at night, very fine and pleasant, only could not sing ordinary songs with the freedom that otherwise I would. Here Mercer tells me that the pretty maid of the Ship tavern I spoke of yesterday is married there, which I am glad of. So having spent this night, with much serious pleasure to consider that I am in a condition to fling away an angell

in such a refreshment to myself and family, we home and to bed, leaving Mercer, by the way, at her own door.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
30 July 1667.
Up and to the office, where we sat busy all the morning. At noon home to dinner, where Daniel and his wife with us, come to see whether I could get him any employment. But I am so far from it, that I have the trouble upon my mind how to dispose of Mr. Gibson and one or two more I am concerned for in the Victualling business, which are to be now discharged. After dinner by coach to White Hall, calling on two or three tradesmen and paying their bills, and so to White Hall, to the Treasury-chamber, where I did speak with the Lords, and did my business about getting them to assent to 10 per cent. interest on the 11 months tax, but find them mightily put to it for money. Here I do hear that there are three Lords more to be added to them; my Lord Bridgewater, my Lord Anglesey, and my Lord Chamberlaine. Having done my business, I to Creed’s chamber, and thence out with Creed to White Hall with him; in our way, meeting with Mr. Cooling, my Lord Chamberlain’s secretary, on horseback, who stopped to speak with us, and he proved very drunk, and did talk, and would have talked all night with us, I not being able to break loose from him, he holding me so by the hand. But, Lord! to see his present humour, how he swears at every word, and talks of the King and my Lady Castlemayne in the plainest words in the world. And from him I gather that the story I learned yesterday is true--that the King hath declared that he did not get the child of which she is conceived at this time, he having not as he says lain with her this half year. But she told him, “God damn me, but you shall own it!” It seems, he is jealous of Jermin, and she loves him so, that the thoughts of his marrying of my Lady Falmouth puts her into fits of the mother; and he, it seems, hath lain with her from time to time, continually, for a good while; and once, as this Cooling says, the King had like to have taken him a-bed with her, but that he was fain to creep under the bed into her closet.... But it is a pretty thing he told us how the King, once speaking of the Duke of York’s being mastered by his wife, said to some of the company by, that he would go no more abroad with this Tom Otter (meaning the Duke of York) and his wife. Tom Killigrew, being by, answered, “Sir,” says he, “pray which is the best for a man, to be a Tom Otter to his wife or to his mistress?” meaning the King’s being so to my Lady Castlemayne. Thus he went on; and speaking then of my Lord Sandwich, whom he professed to love exceedingly, says Creed, “I know not what, but he is a man, methinks, that I could love for himself, without other regards.”... He talked very lewdly; and then took notice of my kindness to him on shipboard seven years ago, when the King was coming over, and how much he was obliged to me; but says, pray look upon this acknowledgement of a kindness in me to be a miracle; for, says he, “it is against the law at Court for a man that borrows money of me, even to buy his place with, to own it the next Sunday;” and then told us his horse was a bribe, and his boots a bribe; and told us he was made up of bribes, as an Oxford scholar is set out with other men’s goods when he goes out of town, and that he makes every sort of tradesman to bribe him; and invited me home to his house, to taste of his bribe wine. I never heard so much vanity from a man in my life; so, being now weary of him, we parted, and I took coach, and carried Creed to the Temple. There set him down, and to my office, where busy late till my eyes begun to ake, and then home to supper: a pullet, with good sauce, to my liking, and then to play on the flageolet with my wife, which she now does very prettily, and so to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
[Prompt: Who occupied your thoughts today?]
May 1922.
Just a line to say — J. and I both have so much work to do this summer that we have decided when we leave here (end of this month) to go to the Hotel d'Angleterre, Randogne. Does that make you open your eyes? But in the summer, June and July, that place was so lovely and I know it. It would only take a day to settle and a look at the mountains, before we could work. All other arrangements are too difficult — Germany and so on. We have not, literally, the time to discover a new place and take our bearings. Then we shall be near Elizabeth, too. The winter we are going to spend in Bandol at the Beau Rivage. I am going to get a maid now at once. I can't do without one. I simply have not the time to attend to everything and I can't bear, as you know, 'untidiness.' . . . Don't speak of our plans, by chance, will you?

There is a really superb professional pianist here. He plays nearly all day and writes his own music. Au revoir. K.M.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
26 February 1661.
(Shrove Tuesday). I left my wife in bed, being indisposed... I to Mrs. Turner’s, who I found busy with The. and Joyce making of things ready for fritters, so to Mr. Crew’s and there delivered Cotgrave’s Dictionary’ to my Lady Jemimah, and then with Mr. Moore to my coz Tom Pepys, but he being out of town I spoke with his lady, though not of the business I went about, which was to borrow L1000 for my Lord. Back to Mrs. Turner’s, where several friends, all strangers to me but Mr. Armiger, dined. Very merry and the best fritters that ever I eat in my life. After that looked out at window; saw the flinging at cocks.

Then Mrs. The. and I, and a gentleman that dined there and his daughter, a perfect handsome young and very tall lady that lately came out of the country, and Mr. Thatcher the Virginall Maister to Bishopsgate Street, and there saw the new Harpsicon made for Mrs. The. We offered L12, they demanded L14. The Master not being at home, we could make no bargain, so parted for to-night. So all by coach to my house, where I found my Valentine with my wife, and here they drank, and then went away. Then I sat and talked with my Valentine and my wife a good while, and then saw her home, and went to Sir W. Batten to the Dolphin, where Mr. Newborne, &c., were, and there after a quart or two of wine, we home, and I to bed....
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
29 December 1664.
Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning. Then whereas I should have gone and dined with Sir W. Pen (and the rest of the officers at his house), I pretended to dine with my Lady Sandwich and so home, where I dined well, and began to wipe and clean my books in my chamber in order to the settling of my papers and things there thoroughly, and then to the office, where all the afternoon sitting, and in the evening home to supper, and then to my work again.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
22 January 1665.
(Lord’s day). Up, leaving my wife in bed, being sick of her months, and to church. Thence home, and in my wife’s chamber dined very merry, discoursing, among other things, of a design I have come in my head this morning at church of making a match between Mrs. Betty Pickering and Mr. Hill, my friend the merchant, that loves musique and comes to me a’Sundays, a most ingenious and sweet-natured and highly accomplished person. I know not how their fortunes may agree, but their disposition and merits are much of a sort, and persons, though different, yet equally, I think, acceptable. After dinner walked to Westminster, and after being at the Abbey and heard a good anthem well sung there, I as I had appointed to the Trumpett, there expecting when Jane Welsh should come, but anon comes a maid of the house to tell me that her mistress and master would not let her go forth, not knowing of my being here, but to keep her from her sweetheart. So being defeated, away by coach home, and there spent the evening prettily in discourse with my wife and Mercer, and so to supper, prayers, and to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
28 January 1665.
Up and to my office, where all the morning, and then home to dinner, and after dinner abroad, walked to Paul’s Churchyard, but my books not bound, which vexed me. So home to my office again, where very late about business, and so home to supper and to bed, my cold continuing in a great degree upon me still. This day I received a good sum of money due to me upon one score or another from Sir G. Carteret, among others to clear all my matters about Colours,----wherein a month or two since I was so embarrassed and I thank God I find myself to have got clear, by that commodity, L50 and something more; and earned it with dear pains and care and issuing of my owne money, and saved the King near L100 in it.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
3 February 1665.
Up, and walked with my boy (whom, because of my wife’s making him idle, I dare not leave at home) walked first to Salsbury court, there to excuse my not being at home at dinner to Mrs. Turner, who I perceive is vexed, because I do not serve her in something against the great feasting for her husband’s Reading----in helping her to some good penn’eths, but I care not. She was dressing herself by the fire in her chamber, and there took occasion to show me her leg, which indeed is the finest I ever saw, and she not a little proud of it. Thence to my Lord Bellasses; thence to Mr. Povy’s, and so up and down at that end of the town about several businesses, it being a brave frosty day and good walking. So back again on foot to the ‘Change, in my way taking my books from binding from my bookseller’s. My bill for the rebinding of some old books to make them suit with my study, cost me, besides other new books in the same bill, L3; but it will be very handsome. At the ‘Change did several businesses, and here I hear that newes is come from Deale, that the same day my Lord Sandwich sailed thence with the fleete, that evening some Dutch men of warr were seen on the back side of the Goodwin, and, by all conjecture, must be seen by my Lord’s fleete; which, if so, they must engage. Thence, being invited, to my uncle Wight’s, where the Wights all dined; and, among the others, pretty Mrs. Margaret, who indeed is a very pretty lady; and though by my vowe it costs me 12d. a kiss after the first, yet I did adventure upon a couple. So home, and among other letters found one from Jane, that is newly gone, telling me how her mistresse won’t pay her her Quarter’s wages, and withal tells me how her mistress will have the boy sit 3 or 4 hours together in the dark telling of stories, but speaks of nothing but only her indiscretion in undervaluing herself to do it, but I will remedy that, but am vexed she should get some body to write so much because of making it publique. Then took coach and to visit my Lady Sandwich, where she discoursed largely to me her opinion of a match, if it could be thought fit by my Lord, for my Lady Jemimah, with Sir G. Carteret’s eldest son; but I doubt he hath yet no settled estate in land. But I will inform myself, and give her my opinion. Then Mrs. Pickering (after private discourse ended, we going into the other room) did, at my Lady’s command, tell me the manner of a masquerade

before the King and Court the other day. Where six women (my Lady Castlemayne and Duchesse of Monmouth being two of them) and six men (the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Arran and Monsieur Blanfort, being three of them) in vizards, but most rich and antique dresses, did dance admirably and most gloriously. God give us cause to continue the mirthe! So home, and after awhile at my office to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
8 June 1667.
Up, and to the office, where all the news this morning is, that the Dutch are come with a fleete of eighty sail to Harwich, and that guns were heard plain by Sir W. Rider’s people at Bednallgreene, all yesterday even. So to the office, we all sat all the morning, and then home to dinner, where our dinner a ham of French bacon, boiled with pigeons, an excellent dish. Here dined with us only W. Hewer and his mother. After dinner to the office again, where busy till night, and then home and to read a little and then to bed. The news is confirmed that the Dutch are off of Harwich, but had done nothing last night. The King hath sent down my Lord of Oxford to raise the countries there; and all the Westerne barges are taken up to make a bridge over the River, about the Hope, for horse to cross the River, if there be occasion.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
25 July 1668.
Up, and at the Office all the morning; and at noon, after dinner, to Cooper’s, it being a very rainy day, and there saw my wife’s picture go on, which will be very fine indeed. And so home again to my letters, and then to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|vangogh|>
1 June 1887.
I hope to be able to make real progress this year; for I sorely need to do so.

I have a new orchard which is just as good as the pink peach trees. It is an orchard of apricot trees, most delicately pink in colour. At present I am working at some plum-trees with yellow-white blossom and a maze of black branches.

I am using an enormous amount of canvas and paint; but I trust that the money will not be wasted.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
9 September 1667.
Up; and to the office, where all the morning, and at noon comes Creed to dine with me. After dinner, he and I and my wife to the Bear-Garden, to see a prize fought there. But, coming too soon, I left them there and went on to White Hall, and there did some business with the Lords of the Treasury; and here do hear, by Tom Killigrew and Mr. Progers, that for certain news is come of Harman’s having spoiled nineteen of twenty-two French ships, somewhere about the Barbadoes, I think they said; but wherever it is, it is a good service, and very welcome. Here I fell in talk with Tom Killigrew about musick, and he tells me that he will bring me to the best musick in England (of which, indeed, he is master), and that is two Italians and Mrs. Yates, who, he says, is come to sing the Italian manner as well as ever he heard any: says that Knepp won’t take pains enough, but that she understands her part so well upon the stage, that no man or woman in the House do the like. Thence I by water to the Bear-Garden, where now the yard was full of people, and those most of them seamen, striving by force to get in, that I was afeard to be seen among them, but got into the ale-house, and so by a back-way was put into the bull-house, where I stood a good while all alone among the bulls, and was afeard I was among the bears, too; but by and by the door opened, and I got into the common pit; and there, with my cloak about my face, I stood and saw the prize fought, till one of them, a shoemaker, was so cut in both his wrists that he could not fight any longer, and then they broke off: his enemy was a butcher. The sport very good, and various humours to be seen among the rabble that is there. Thence carried Creed to White Hall, and there my wife and I took coach and home, and both of us to Sir W. Batten’s, to invite them to dinner on Wednesday next, having a whole buck come from Hampton Court, by the warrant which Sir Stephen Fox did give me. And so home to supper and to bed, after a little playing on the flageolet with my wife, who do outdo therein whatever I expected of her.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
13 September 1667.
Called up by people come to deliver in ten chaldron of coals, brought in one of our prizes from Newcastle. The rest we intend to sell, we having above ten chaldron between us. They sell at about 28s. or 29s. per chaldron; but Sir W. Batten hath sworn that he was a cuckold that sells under 30s., and that makes us lay up all but what we have for our own spending, which is very pleasant; for I believe we shall be glad to sell them for less. To the office, and there despatched business till ten o’clock, and then with Sir W. Batten and my wife and Mrs. Turner by hackney-coach to Walthamstow, to Mr. Shipman’s to dinner, where Sir W. Pen and my Lady and Mrs. Lowther (the latter of which hath got a sore nose, given her, I believe, from her husband, which made me I could not look upon her with any pleasure), and here a very good and plentifull wholesome dinner, and, above all thing, such plenty of milk meats, she keeping a great dairy, and so good as I never met with. The afternoon proved very foul weather, the morning fair. We staid talking till evening, and then home, and there to my flageolet with my wife, and so to bed without any supper, my belly being full and dinner not digested. It vexed me to hear how Sir W. Pen, who come alone from London, being to send his coachman for his wife and daughter, and bidding his coachman in much anger to go for them (he being vexed, like a rogue, to do anything to please his wife), his coachman Tom was heard to say a pox, or God rot her, can she walk hither? These words do so mad me that I could find in my heart to give him or my Lady notice of them.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
18 September 1667.
Up betimes and to Captain Cocke, in his coach which he sent for me, and he not being ready I walked in the Exchange, which is now made pretty, by having windows and doors before all their shops, to keep out the cold. By and by to him, and he being ready, he and I out in his coach to my Lord Chancellor’s; there to Mr. Wren’s chamber, who did tell us the whole of Sir W. Pen’s having the order for this ship of ours, and we went with him to St. James’s, and there I did see the copy of it, which is built upon a suggestion of his having given the King a ship of his, “The Prosperous,” wherein is such a cheat as I have the best advantage in the world over him, and will make him do reason, or lay him on his back. This I was very glad of, and having done as far as I could in it we returned, and I home, and there at the office all the morning, and at noon with my Lord Bruncker to the Treasurer’s office to look over the clerks who are there making up the books, but in such a manner as it is a shame to see. Then home to dinner, and after dinner, my mind mighty full of this business of Sir W. Pen’s, to the office, and there busy all the afternoon. This evening Sir W. Batten and W. Pen and I met at W. Batten’s house, and there I took an opportunity to break the business, at which W. Pen is much disturbed, and would excuse it the most he can, but do it so basely, that though he do offer to let go his pretence to her, and resign up his order for her, and come in only to ask his share of her (which do very well please me, and give me present satisfaction), yet I shall remember him for a knave while I live. But thus my mind is quieted for the present more than I thought I should be, and am glad that I shall have no need of bidding him open defiance, which I would otherwise have done, and made a perpetual war between us. So to the office, and there busy pretty late, and so home and to supper with my wife, and so to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
10 October 1667.
Waked in the morning with great pain of the collique, by cold taken yesterday, I believe, with going up and down in my shirt, but with rubbing my belly, keeping of it warm, I did at last come to some ease, and rose, and up to walk up and down the garden with my father, to talk of all our concernments: about a husband for my sister, whereof there is at present no appearance; but we must endeavour to find her one now, for she grows old and ugly: then for my brother; and resolve he shall stay here this winter, and then I will either send him to Cambridge for a year, till I get him some church promotion, or send him to sea as a chaplain, where he may study, and earn his living. Then walked round about our Greene, to see whether, in case I cannot buy out my uncle Thomas and his son’s right in this house, that I can buy another place as good thereabouts to build on, and I do not see that I can. But this, with new building, may be made an excellent pretty thing, and I resolve to look after it as soon as I can, and Goody Gorum dies. By this time it was almost noon, and then my father and I and wife and Willet abroad, by coach round the towne of Brampton, to observe any other place as good as ours, and find none; and so back with great pleasure; and thence went all of us, my sister and brother, and W. Hewer, to dinner to Hinchingbroke, where we had a good plain country dinner, but most kindly used; and here dined the Minister of Brampton and his wife, who is reported a very good, but poor man. Here I spent alone with my Lady, after dinner, the most of the afternoon, and anon the two twins were sent for from schoole, at Mr. Taylor’s, to come to see me, and I took them into the garden, and there, in one of the summer-houses, did examine them, and do find them so well advanced in their learning, that I was amazed at it: they repeating a whole ode without book out of Horace, and did give me a very good account of any thing almost, and did make me very readily very good Latin, and did give me good account of their Greek grammar, beyond all possible expectation; and so grave and manly as I never saw, I confess, nor could have believed; so that they will be fit to go to Cambridge in two years at most. They are both little, but very like one another, and well-looked children. Then in to my Lady again, and staid till it was almost night again, and then took leave for a great while again, but with extraordinary kindness from my Lady, who looks upon me like one of her own family and interest. So thence, my wife and people by the highway, and I walked over the park with Mr. Shepley, and through the grove, which is mighty pretty, as is imaginable, and so over their drawbridge to Nun’s Bridge, and so to my father’s, and there sat and drank, and talked a little, and then parted. And he being gone, and what company there was, my father and I, with a dark lantern; it being now night, into the garden with my wife, and there went about our great work to dig up my gold. But, Lord! what a tosse I was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was; that I begun heartily to sweat, and be angry, that they should not agree better upon the place, and at last to fear that it was gone but by and by poking with a spit, we found it, and then begun with a spudd to lift up the ground. But, good God! to see how sillily they did it, not half a foot under ground, and in the sight of the world from a hundred places, if any body by accident were near hand, and within sight of a neighbour’s window, and their hearing also, being close by: only my father says that he saw them all gone to church before he begun the work, when he laid the money, but that do not excuse it to me. But I was out of my wits almost, and the more from that, upon my lifting up the earth with the spudd, I did discern that I had scattered the pieces of gold round about the ground among the grass and loose earth; and taking up the iron head-pieces wherein they were put, I perceive the earth was got among the gold, and wet, so that the bags were all rotten, and all the notes, that I could not tell what in the world to say to it, not knowing how to judge what was wanting, or what had been lost by Gibson in his coming down: which, all put together, did make me mad; and at last was forced to take up the head-pieces, dirt and all, and as many of the scattered pieces as I could with the dirt discern by the candlelight, and carry them up into my brother’s chamber, and there locke them up till I had eat a little supper: and then, all people going to bed, W. Hewer and I did all alone, with several pails of water and basins, at last wash the dirt off of the pieces, and parted the pieces and the dirt, and then begun to tell ; and by a note which I had of the value of the whole in my pocket, do find that there was short above a hundred pieces, which did make me mad; and considering that the neighbour’s house was so near that we could not suppose we could speak one to another in the garden at the place where the gold lay--especially my father being deaf--but they must know what we had been doing on, I feared that they might in the night come and gather some pieces and prevent us the next morning; so W. Hewer and I out again about midnight, for it was now grown so late, and there by candlelight did make shift to gather forty-five pieces more. And so in, and to cleanse them: and by this time it was past two in the morning; and so to bed, with my mind pretty quiet to think that I have recovered so many. And then to bed, and I lay in the trundle-bed, the girl being gone to bed to my wife, and there lay in some disquiet all night, telling of the clock till it was daylight.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
5 March 1914.
Their hands move over the thin moist grass. He picks it up, and, unconsciously, as of old, polishes it on his handkerchief.

"Do you remember the enormous number of pears there used to be on that old tree?"

"Down by the violet bed."

"And how after there'd been a Southerly Buster we used to go out with clothes baskets to pick them up?"

October 1915

New Zealand Memories

"And how while we stooped they went on falling, bouncing on our backs and heads?"

"And how far they used to be scattered, ever so far, under the violet leaves, down the steps, right down to the lily-lawn? We used to find them trodden in the grass. And how soon the ants got to them. I can see now that little round hole with a sort of fringe of brown pepper round it."
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
5 April 1914.
" Do you know that I've never seen pears like them since? "

" They were so bright, canary yellow — and small. And the peel was so thin and the pips jet — jet black. First you pulled out the little stem and sucked it. It was faintly sour, and then you ate them always from the top — core and all."

" The pips were delicious."

" Do you remember sitting on the pink garden seat?"

" I shall never forget that pink garden seat. It is the only garden seat for me. Where is it now? Do you think we shall be allowed to sit on it in Heaven? "

" It always wobbled a bit and there were usually the marks of a snail on it."

" Sitting on that seat, swinging our legs and eating the pears — "

" But isn't it extraordinary how deep our happiness was — how positive — deep, shining, warm. I remember the way we used to look at each other and smile — do you? — sharing a secret . . . What was it? "
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
20 August 1914.
" I think it was the family feeling — we were almost like one child. I always see us walking about together, looking at things together with the same eyes, discussing. ... I felt that again — just now — when we looked for the pear in the grass. I remembered ruffling the violet leaves with you — Oh, that garden ! Do you remember that some of the pears we found used to have little teeth marks in them?"

" Yes."

"Who bit them?"

" It was always a mystery."

He puts his arm round her. They pace up and down. And the round moon shines over the pear tree, and the ivy walls of the garden glitter like metal. The air smells chill . . . heavy . . . very cold.

" We shall go back there one day — when it's all over."
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
24 December 1914.
" We'll go back together."

" And find everything — "

"Everything!"

She leans against his shoulder. The moonlight deepens. Now they are facing the back of the house. A square of light shows in the window.

" Give me your hand. You know I shall always be a stranger here."

" Yes, darling, I know."

" Walk up and down once more and then we'll go in."

" It's so curious — my absolute confidence that I'll come back. I feel it's as certain as this pear."

Death

" I feel that too."

" I couldn't not come back. You know that feeling. It's awfully mysterious."

The shadows on the grass are long and strange; a puff of strange wind whispers in the ivy and the old moon touches them with silver.

She shivers.

" You're cold."

"Dreadfully cold."
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
17 September 1921.
The Question January. Does one ever know? One never knows. She realised how foolish it would be to ask the question: "What are you thinking of?" And yet if she did not ask the question she would never be certain that he was not thinking of... Even if she asked, how could she be certain he did not make up the answer.

Your letters sounded insincere to me; I did not believe them. People don't write such things; they only think they do, or they read them in books. But real life is on quite another plane. If I were not ill, I still would have withdrawn from the world because of my hatred of insincerity. It makes me dreadfully uncomfortable and unhappy. I could have answered your letter just in your vein and 'accepted' it, you knowing how I accepted it and I knowing that you knew — but it wouldn't have lasted. It would have been another cul de sac relationship. What good would that have been to either of us?
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
16 December 1662.
Up and to the office, and thither came Mr. Coventry and Sir G. Carteret, and among other business was Strutt’s the purser, against Captn. Browne, Sir W. Batten’s brother-in-law, but, Lord! though I believe the Captain has played the knave, though I seem to have a good opinion of him and to mean him well, what a most troublesome fellow that Strutt is, such as I never did meet with his fellow in my life. His talking and ours to make him hold his peace set my head off akeing all the afternoon with great pain. So to dinner, thinking to have had Mr. Coventry, but he could not go with me; and so I took Captn. Murford. Of whom I do hear what the world says of me; that all do conclude Mr. Coventry, and Pett, and me, to be of a knot; and that we do now carry all things before us; and much more in particular of me, and my studiousnesse, &c., to my great content. After dinner came Mrs. Browne, the Captain’s wife, to see me and my wife, and I showed her a good countenance, and indeed her husband has been civil to us, but though I speak them fair, yet I doubt I shall not be able to do her husband much favour in this business of Strutt’s, whom without doubt he has abused. So to the office, and hence, having done some business, by coach to White Hall to Secretary Bennet’s, and agreed with Mr. Lee to set upon our new adventure at the Tower to-morrow. Hence to Col. Lovelace in Cannon Row about seeing how Sir R. Ford did report all the officers of the navy to be rated for the Loyal Sufferers, but finding him at the Rhenish wine-house I could not have any answer, but must take another time. Thence to my Lord’s, and having sat talking with Mr. Moore bewailing the vanity and disorders of the age, I went by coach to my brother’s, where I met Sarah, my late mayde, who had a desire to speak with me, and I with her to know what it was, who told me out of good will to me, for she loves me dearly, that I would beware of my wife’s brother, for he is begging or borrowing of her and often, and told me of her Scallop whisk, and her borrowing of 50s. for Will, which she believes was for him and her father. I do observe so much goodness and seriousness in the mayde, that I am again and again sorry that I have parted with her, though it was full against my will then, and if she had anything in the world I would commend her for a wife for my brother Tom. After much discourse and her professions of love to me and all my relations, I bade her good night and did kiss her, and indeed she seemed very well-favoured to me to-night, as she is always. So by coach home and to my office, did some business, and so home to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|vangogh|>
4 February 1882.
At last I have seen the Mediterranean Sea and have spent a week in Saintes-Maries. I went there in the diligence, via la Camargue, through vineyards and meadows, and across plains, like those in Holland. In Saintes-Maries I saw some little girls who reminded me of Cimabue and Giotto--very much so, in fact; they were thin, rather sad, and mystic. On the beach, which is quite flat and sandy, I saw a number of green, red and blue boats, which were so delightful both in form and colour, that they made me think of flowers. One man alone can navigate a boat of this sort, but they do not go far out. They only venture into deep water when the wind is low and they return as soon as it rises.

I should also very much like to see Africa. But I will not make any definite plans for the future. Everything will depend upon circumstances. What I wanted to experience was the effect of a deep blue sky. Fromentin and Gérôme see no colour in the South, and a number of others are like them. But good Heavens!--if you take a little dry sand up in your hand and hold it close to your eyes, of course it is colourless, just as water and air would be. There is no blue without yellow and orange, and when you paint blue, paint yellow and orange as well--am I not right?
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
23 May 1920.
" Then you don't think my case is hopeless ? "

" The disease is of long standing, but certainly not

hopeless." This one, however, leaned back and said: " You really want to know ? "

" Yes, of course. Oh, you can be quite frank with me."

"Then, I do!"

The carriage came and drove her away, her head buried in her collar.

But the champagne was no good at all. I had to drink it because it was there ; but there was something positively malicious in the way the little bubbles hurled themselves to the brim, danced, broke. They seemed to be jeering at me.

Suffering

I should like this to be accepted as my confession.

There is no limit to human suffering. When one thinks : " Now I have touched the bottom of the sea — now I can go no deeper," one goes deeper. And so it is for ever. I thought last year in Italy, Any shadow more would be death. But this year has been so much more terrible that I think with affection of the Casetta ! Suffering is boundless, it is eternity. One pang is eternal torment. Physical suffering is — child's play. To have one's breast crushed by a great stone — one could laugh !
<|/entry|><|entry|>
27 October 1920.
I do not want to die without leaving a record of my belief that suffering can be overcome. For I do believe it. What must one do? There is no question of what is called 'passing beyond it.' This is false.

The Confession

One must submit. Do not resist. Take it. Be overwhelmed. Accept it fully. Make it part of life.

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do. I must pass from personal love to greater love. I must give to the whole of life what I gave to one. The present agony will pass

— if it doesn't kill. It won't last. Now I am like a man who has had his heart torn out — but — bear it

— bear it! As in the physical world, so in the spiritual world, pain does not last for ever. It is only so terribly acute now. It is as though a ghastly accident had happened. If I can cease reliving all the shock and horror of it, cease going over it, I will get stronger.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
21 November 1920.
Here, for a strange reason, rises the figure of Doctor Sorapure. He was a good man. He helped me not only to bear pain, but he suggested that perhaps bodily ill-health is necessary, is a repairing process, and he was always telling me to consider how man plays but a part in the history of the world. My simple kindly doctor was pure of heart as Tchehov was pure of heart. But for these ills one is one's own doctor. If suffering is not a repairing process, I will make it so. I will learn the lesson it teaches. These are not idle words. These are not the consolations of the sick.

Life is a mystery. The fearful pain will fade. I must turn to work. I must put my agony into something, change it. Sorrow shall be changed into joy.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
22 December 1920.
It is to lose oneself more utterly, to love more deeply, to feel oneself part of life, — not separate.

Oh Life! accept me — make me worthy — teach me.

I write that. I look up. The leaves move in the garden, the sky is pale, and I catch myself weeping. It is hard — it is hard to make a good death. . . .

To live — to live — that is all. And to leave life on this earth as Tchehov left it and Tolstoi.

After a dreadful operation I remember that when I thought of the pain of being stretched out, I used to cry. Every time I felt it again, and it was unbearable.

That is what one must control. Queer! The two people left are Tchehov — dead — and unheeding, indifferent Doctor Sorapure. They are the two good men I have known.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|maclane|>
3 April 1901.
This evening in the slow-deepening dusk I sat by my window and spent an hour in passionate conversation with the Devil. I fancied I sat, with my hands folded and my feet crossed, on an ugly but comfortable red velvet sofa in some nondescript room.

And the fascinating man-devil was seated near in a frail willow chair.

He had willingly come to pass the time of day with me. He was in a good-humored mood, and I amused and interested him. And for myself, I was extremely glad to see the Devil sitting there and felt vividly as always. But I sat quietly enough.

The fascinating man-devil has fascinating steel-gray eyes, and they looked at me with every variety of glance--from quizzical to tender.

It were easy--oh, how easy--to follow those eyes to the earth’s ends.

The Devil leaned back in the frail willow chair and looked at me.

“And now that I am here, Mary MacLane,” he said, “what would you?”

“I want you to marry me,” I replied at once. “And I want it more than ever anything was wanted since the world began.”

“So? I am flattered,” said the Devil, and smiled gently, enchantingly.

At that smile I was ravished and transported, and a spasm of some rare emotion thrilled all the little nerves in me from my heels to my forehead. And yet the smile was not for me but rather somewhat at my expense.

“But,” he went on, “you must know it is not my custom to marry women.”

“I am sure it is not,” I agreed, “and I do not ask to be peculiarly favored. Anything that you may give me, however little, will constitute marriage for me.”

“And would marriage itself be so small a thing?” asked the Devil.

“Marriage,” I said, “would be a great, oh, a wonderful thing, and the most beautiful of all. I want what is good according to my lights, and because I am a genius my lights are many and far-reaching.”

“What do your lights tell you?” the man-devil inquired.

“They tell me this: that nothing in the world matters unless love is with it, and if love is with it and it seems to the virtuous a barren and infamous thing, still--because of the love--it partakes of the very highest.”

“And have you the courage of your convictions?” he said.

“If you offered me,” I replied, “that which to the blindly virtuous seems the worst possible thing, it would yet be for me the red, red line on the sky, my heart’s desire, my life, my rest. You are the Devil. I have fallen in love with you.”

“I believe you have,” said the Devil. “And how does it feel to be in love?”

Sitting composedly on the ugly red velvet sofa, with my hands folded and my feet crossed, I attempted to define that wonderful feeling.

“It feels,” I said, “as if sparks of fire and ice crystals ran riot in my veins with my blood; as if a thousand pin-points pierced my flesh, and every other point a point of pleasure, and every other point a point of pain; as if my heart were laid to rest in a bed of velvet and cotton-wool but kept awake by sweet violin arias; as if milk and honey and the blossoms of the cherry flowed into my stomach and then vanished utterly; as if strange, beautiful worlds lay spread out before my eyes, alternately in dazzling light and complete darkness with chaotic rapidity; as if orris-root were sprinkled in the folds of my brain; as if sprigs of dripping-wet sweet-fern were stuck inside my hot linen collar; as if--well, you know,” I ended suddenly.

“Very good,” said the Devil. “You are in love. And you say you are in love with me.”

“Oh, with you!” I exclaimed with suppressed violence. The effort to suppress this violence cost me pounds of nerve-power. But I kept my hands still quietly folded and my feet crossed, and it was a triumph of self-control. “I want you to marry me,” I added despairingly.

“And you think,” he inquired, “that apart from the opinion of the wise world, it would be a suitable marriage?”

“A suitable marriage!” I exclaimed. “I hate a suitable marriage! No, it would not be suitable. It would be Bohemian, outlandish, adorable!”

The Devil smiled.

This time the smile was for me. And, oh, the long, old, overpowering enchantment of the smile of steel-gray eyes!--the steel-gray eyes of the Devil!

It is one of those things that one remembers.

“You are a beautifully frank, little feminine creature,” he said. “Frankness is in these days a lost art.”

“Yes, I am beautifully frank,” I replied. “Out of countless millions of the Devil’s anointed I am one to acknowledge myself.”

“But withal you are not true,” said the man-devil.

“I am a liar,” I answered.

“You are a liar, surely,” he said, “but you stay with your lies. To stay with anything is Truth.”

“It is so,” I replied. “Nevertheless I am false as woman can be.”

“But you know what you want.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, “I know what I want. I want you to marry me.”

“And why?”

“Because I love you.”

“That seems an excellent reason, certainly,” said the Devil.

“I want to be happy for once in my life,” I said. “I have never been happy. And if I could be happy once for one gold day, I should be satisfied, and I should have that to remember in the long years.”

“And you are a strangely pathetic little animal,” said the Devil.

“I am pathetic,” I said. I clasped my hands very tightly. “I know that I am pathetic: and for this reason I am the most terribly pathetic of all in the world.”

“Poor little Mary MacLane!” said the Devil. He leaned toward me. He looked at me with those strange, wonderfully tender, divine steel-gray eyes. “Poor little Mary MacLane!” he said again in a voice that was like the Gray Dawn. And the eyes--the glance of the steel-gray eyes entered into me and thrilled me through and through. It frightened and soothed me. It racked and comforted me. It ravished me with inconceivable gentleness so that I bent my head down and sobbed as I breathed.

“Don’t you know, you little thing,” said the man-devil, softly-compassionate, “your life will be very hard for you always--harder when you are happy than when you go in Nothingness?”

“I know--I know. Nevertheless I want to be happy,” I sobbed. I felt a rush of an old thick, heavy anguish. “It is day after day. It is week after week. It is month after month. It is year after year. It is only time going and going. There is no joy. There is no lightness of heart. It is only the passing of days. I am young and all alone. Always I have been alone: when I was five and lay in the damp grass and tortured myself to keep back tears; and through the long, cold, lonely years till now--and now all the torture does not keep back the tears. There is no one--nothing--to help me bear it. It is more than pathetic when one is nineteen in all young, new feeling and sees Nothing anywhere--except long, dark, lonely years behind her and before her. No one that loves me and long, long years.”

I stopped. The gray eyes were fixed on me. Oh, they were the steel-gray eyes!--and they had a look in them. The long, bitter pageant of my Nothingness mingled with this look and the coming together of these was like the joining of two halves.

I do not know which brings me the deeper pain--the loneliness and weariness of my sand and barrenness, or the look in the steel-gray eyes. But as always I would gladly leave all and follow the eyes to the world’s end. They are like the sun’s setting. And they are like the pale, beautiful stars. And they are like the shadows of earth and sky that come together in the dark.

“Why,” asked the Devil, “are you in love with me?”

“You know so much--so much,” I answered. “I think it must be that. The wisdom of the spheres is in your brain. And so, then, you must understand me. Because no one understands all these smouldering feelings my greatest agony is. You must need know the very finest of them. And your eyes! Oh, it’s no matter why I’m in love with you. It’s enough that I am. And if you married me I would make you happier than you are.”

“I am not happy at all,” said the man-devil. “I am merely contented.”

“Contentment,” I said, “in place of Happiness, is a horrid feeling. Not one of your countless advocates loves you. They all serve you faithfully and well, but with it all they hate you. Always people hate their tyrant. You are my tyrant, but I love you absorbingly, madly. Happiness for me would be to live with you and see you made happy by the overwhelming flood of my love.”

“It interests me,” he said. “You are a most interesting feminine philosopher--and your philosophy is after my own heart, in its lack of virtue. It is to be hoped you are not ‘intellectual,’ which is an unpardonable trait.”

“Indeed, I am not,” I replied. “Intellectual people are detestable. They have pale faces and bad stomachs and bad livers, and if they are women their corsets are sure to be too tight, and probably black, and if they are men they are soft, which is worse. And they never by any chance know what it means to walk all day in the rain, or to roll around on the ground in the dirt. And, above all, they never fall in love with the Devil.”

“They are tiresome,” the Devil agreed. “If I were to marry you how long would you be happy?”

“For three days.”

“You are wise,” he said. “You are wonderfully wise in some things, though you are still very young.”

“I am wise,” I answered. “Being of womankind and nineteen years, I am more than ready to give up absolutely everything that is good in the world’s sight, though they are contemptible things enough in my own, for love. All for love. Therefore I am wise. Also I am a fool.”

“Why are you a fool?”

“Because I am a genius.”

“Your logic is good logic,” said the Devil.

“My logic--oh, I don’t care anything about logic,” I said with sudden complete weariness. I felt buried and wrapped round and round in weariness. Everything lost its color. Everything turned cold.

“At this moment,” said the Devil, “you feel as if you cared for nothing at all. But if I chose I could bring about a transfiguration. I could kiss your soul into Paradise.”

I answered, “Yes,” without emotion.

“An hour,” said the Devil, “is not very long. But we know it is long enough to suffer in, and go mad in, and live in, and be happy in. And the world contains a great many hours. Now I am leaving you. It is likely that I may never come again, and it is likely that I may come again.”

It all vanished. I still sat by my window in the gloom. “It is dreary,” I said.

But yes. The world contains a great many hours.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|maclane|>
4 April 1901.
I have asked for bread, sometimes, and I have been given a stone.

Oh, it is a bitter thing--oh, it is piteous, piteous!

I find that I am not far apart from human beings. I can still be crushed, wounded, stunned, by the attitude of human beings.

To-day I looked for human-kindness, and I was given coldness. I repelled human beings.

I asked for bread and I was given a stone.

Oh, it is bitter--bitter.

Oh, is there a thing in the wide world more bitter?

God, where are you! I am crushed, wounded, stunned--and, oh--I am alone!
<|/entry|><|entry|><|maclane|>
10 April 1901.
I have a sense of humor that partakes of the divine in life--for there are things even in this chaotic irony that are divine. My genius is not divine. My patheticness is not divine. My philosophy is not divine, nor my originality, nor my audacity of thought. These are peculiarly of the earth. But my sense of humor--

It is humor that is far too deep to admit of laughter. It is humor that makes my heart melt with a high, unequaled sense of pleasure and ripple down through my body like old yellow wine.

A rare tone in a person’s voice, a densely wrathful expression in a pair of slate-colored eyes, a fine, fine shade of comparison and contrast between a word in a conversation and an angleworm pattern in a calico dressing-jacket--these are things that make me conscious of divine emotion.

One day last summer an Italian peddler-woman stopped at the back door and rested herself. I stood in the doorway, and the peddler-woman and I talked. She had a dirty white handkerchief tied over her head--as all Italian peddler-women do--and she had a telescope valise filled with garters, and hairpins, and soap, and combs, and pencils, and china buttons on blue cards, and bean-shooters, and tacks, and dream-books, and mouth-organs, and green glass beads, and jews-harps. There is something fascinating about a peddler-woman’s telescope valise. This peddler-woman wore a black satine wrapper and an ancient cape. She said that she would like to stop and rest a while, and I told her she might. I had always wanted to talk to a peddler-woman, and my mother never would allow one in the house.

“Is it nice to be a peddler?” I asked her.

“It ain’t bad,” replied the peddler-woman.

“Do you make a great deal of money?” I next inquired.

“Sometime I do, and sometime I don’t,” said the woman. She spoke with an accent that, while it sounded Italian, still showed unmistakably that she had lived in Butte.

“Well, do you make just enough to live on, or have you saved some money?” I asked.

“I got four hundred dollar in the bank,” she replied. “I been peddlin’ eight year.”

“Eight years of tramping around in all kinds of weather,” I said. “Your philosophy must be peripatetic, too. Haven’t you ever had rheumatism in your knees?”

“I got rheumatism in every joint in my body,” said the woman. “I have to lay off, sometime.”

“Have you a husband?” I wished to know.

“I had a man--oh, yes,” said the peddler-woman.

“And where is he?”

“Back home--in Italy.”

“Why doesn’t he come out here and work for you?” I asked.

“Yes, w’y don’t he?” said the woman. “Dat-a man, he’s dem lucky w’en he can get enough to eat--he is.”

“Why don’t you send him some money to pay his way out, since you’ve saved so much?” I inquired.

“Holy God!” said the peddler-woman. “I work hard for dat-a money. I save ev’ry cent. I ain’t go’n now to t’row it away--I ain’t. Dat-a man, he’s all right w’ere he is--he is.”

“What did you marry him for?” I asked.

The peddler-woman looked at me with that look which seems to convey the information that curiosity once killed a cat.

“What for?” I persisted--“for love?”

“I marry him w’en I was young girl. And he was young, too.”

“Yes--but what did you do it for? Was he awfully nice, and did he say awfully sweet things to you?”

“He was dem sweet--oh, yes,” said the peddler-woman. She grinned. “And I was young.”

“And you liked it when you were young and he was sweet, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I guess so. I was young,” she answered.

The fact that one is young seems to imply--in the Italian peddler mind--a lacking in some essential points.

“And don’t you like your man now?” I asked.

“Dat-a man, he’s all right, in Italy--he is,” replied the woman.

“Well,” I observed, “if I had a man who had been dem sweet once, when I had been young, but who was not sweet any more, I think I should leave him in Italy, too.”

“You’ll git a man some day soon,” said the peddler-woman.

I was interested to know that.

“They all do--oh, yes,” she said. “But you likely to be better off peddlin’, I tell you.”

“Yes, I think it would be amusing to be a peddler for a while,” I said. “But I should want the man, too, as long as he was dem sweet.”

The peddler-woman picked up the telescope valise.

“Yes,” she remarked, “a man, he’s sweet two days, t’ree days, then--holy God! he never work, he git-a drunk, he make-a rough-house, he raise hell.”

The peddler-woman nodded at me and limped out of the yard. The telescope valise was heavy. When she walked every muscle in her body seemed to be pressed into the service. She had a heavy, solid look. She seemed as though she might weigh three hundred pounds, though she was not large. The afternoon sun shone down brightly on her dirty white handkerchief, on her brown comely face, on her brown brass-ringed hands, on her black satine wrapper, on her ancient cape.

As I watched her out of sight I thought to myself: “Two days, t’ree days, then--holy God! he never work, he git-a drunk, he make-a rough-house, he raise hell.”

I was conscious of an intense humor that was so far beyond laughter that it was too deep even for tears. But I felt tears vaguely as I watched the peddler-woman limping up the road.

It was not pathos. It was humor--humor. My emotion was one of vivid pleasure--pleasure at the sight of the woman, and at the telescope valise, and at her conversation supplemented by my own.

This emotion is divine, and I can not grasp it.

As I looked after the Italian peddler-woman it came to me with sudden force that the earth is only the earth, but that it is touched here and there brilliantly with divine fingers.

Long and often as I’ve sat in intense silent passion and gazed at the red, red sunset sky, I have never then felt this sense of the divine.

It comes only through humor.

It comes only with things like an Italian peddler-woman in a black satine wrapper and an ancient cape.

My soul--how heavily it goes.

Life is a journeying up a spring-time hill. And at the top we wonder why we are there. Have mercy on me, I implore in a dull idea that the journey is so long--so long, and a human being is less than an atom.

The solid, heavy figure of an Italian peddler-woman with a telescope valise, limping away in the afternoon sunshine, is more convincing of the Things that Are than would be the sound of the wailing of legions of lost souls, could it be heard.

For the world must be amused.

And the world’s wind listeth as it bloweth.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|maclane|>
11 April 1901.
I write a great many letters to the dear anemone lady. I send some of them to her and others I keep to read myself. I like to read letters that I have written--particularly that I have written to her.

This is a letter that I wrote two days ago to my one friend:

“To you:--

“And don’t you know, my dearest, my friendship with you contains other things? It contains infatuation, and worship, and bewitchment, and idolatry, and a tiny altar in my soul-chamber whereon is burning sweet incense in a little dish of blue and gold.

“Yes, all of these.

“My life is made up of many outpourings. All the outpourings have one point of coming-together. You are the point of coming-together. There is no other.

“You are the anemone lady.

“You are the one whom I may love.

“To think that the world contains one beautiful human being for me to love!

“It is wonderful.

“My life is longing for the sight of you. My senses are aching for lack of an anemone to diffuse itself among them.

“A year ago, when you were in the high school, often I used to go over there when you would be going home, so that my life could be made momentarily replete by the sight of you. You didn’t know I was there--only a few times when I spoke to you.

“And now it is that I remember you.

“Oh, my dearest--you are the only one in the world!

“We are two women. You do not love me, but I love you.

“You have been wonderfully, beautifully kind to me.

“You are the only one who has ever been kind to me.

“There is something delirious in this--something of the nameless quantity.

“It is old grief and woe to live nineteen years and to remember no person ever to have been kind. But what is it--do you think?--at the end of nineteen years, to come at last upon one who is wonderfully, beautifully kind!

“Those persons who have had some one always to be kind to them can never remotely imagine how this feels.

“Sometimes in these spring days when I walk miles down into the country to the little wet gulch of the sweet-flags, I wonder why it is that this thing does not make me happy. ‘She is wonderfully, beautifully kind,’ I say to myself--‘and she is the anemone lady. She is wondrously kind, and though she’s gone, nothing can ever change that.’

“But I am not happy.

“Oh, my one friend--what is the matter with me? What is this feeling? Why am I not happy?

“But how can you know?

“You are beautiful.

“I am a small, vile creature.

“Always I awake to this fact when I think of the anemone lady.

“I am not good.

“But you are kind to me--you are kind to me--you are kind to me.

“You have written me two letters.

“The anemone lady came down from her high places and wrote me two letters.

“It is said that God is somewhere. It may be so.

“But God has never come down from his high places to write me two letters.

“Dear--do you see?--you are the only one in the world.

“Mary MacLane.”
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
15 December 1914.
Suddenly there came driving towards them a chariot

A Dream

like the one in her Latin book, drawn by six stumpy horses and driven by a charioteer in a skull cap. They came at a furious gallop, but the charioteer was calm; a quiet evil smile dyed his lips.

"Oh, K.T.! Oh, K.T.! I'm frightened," sobbed her sister.

"It's quite all right. It's perfectly all right," scolded K.T.

But as she watched the chariot a strange thing took place. Though the horses maintained their tearing gallop, they were not coming towards her and her sister, but were galloping backwards, while the charioteer smiled as though with deep satisfaction. K.T. put her little black muff over her sister's face. "They're gone. They're quite gone." But now the deafening clatter came from behind them like the sound of an army of horsemen in clashing armour. Louder and louder and nearer and nearer came the noise. "Oh, K.T.! Oh, K.T.!" moaned her sister and K.T. shut her lips, only pressing her sister's arm. The noise was upon them — in a moment — now.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
[Prompt: How are you feeling, honestly?]
11 January 1915.
swans.

Grown-upness

Four o'clock. Is it light now at four o'clock? I jump out of bed and run over to the window. It is half-light, neither black nor blue. The wing of the coast is violet;

So Very Quiet

in the lilac sky there are dark banners and little black boats manned by black shadows put out on the purple water.

Oh ! how often I have watched this hour when I was a girl ! But then — I stayed at the window until I grew cold — until I was icy — thrilled by something — I did not know what. Now I fly back into bed, pulling up the clothes, tucking them into my neck. And suddenly my feet find the hot water bottle. Heavens ! it is still beautifully warm. That really is thrilling.

Dame Seule

She is little and grey, with a black velvet band round her hair, false teeth, and skinny little hands coming out of frills like the frills on cutlets.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
14 August 1915.
As I passed her room one morning I saw her 'worked' brush-and-comb bag and her Common Prayerbook.

Also, when she goes to the 'Ladies'' for some obscure reason she wears a little shawl. . . .

At the dining table, smiling brightly : — " This is the first time I have ever travelled alone, or stayed by myself in a Strange Hotel. But my husband does not mind. As it is so Very Quiet. Of course, if it were a

Gay Place" And she draws in her chin, and the

bead chain rises and falls on her vanished bosom.

Remembrance Always, when I see foxgloves, I think of the L.'s. Again I pass in front of their cottage and in the

window, between the daffodil curtains with the green spots — there are the great, sumptuous blooms.
<|/entry|>