<|entry|>
13 February 1901.
So then, yes. As I have said, I find that I am quite, quite odd. My various acquaintances say that I am funny. They say, “Oh, it’s that May MacLane, Dolly’s younger sister. She’s funny.” But I call it oddity. I bear the hall-mark of oddity.

There was a time, a year or two since, when I was an exceedingly sensitive little fool--sensitive in that it used to strike very deep when my young acquaintances would call me funny and find in me a vent for their distinctly unfriendly ridicule. My years in the high school were not years of joy. Two years ago I had not yet risen above these things. I was a sensitive little fool.

But that sensitiveness, I rejoice to say, has gone from me. The opinion of these young people, or of these old people, is now a thing that is quite unable to affect me.

The more I see of conventionality, it seems, the more I am odd.

Though I am young and feminine--very feminine--yet I am not that quaint conceit, a girl: the sort of person that Laura E. Richards writes about, and Nora Perry, and Louisa M. Alcott,--girls with bright eyes, and with charming faces (they always have charming faces), standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet,--and all that sort of thing.

I missed all that.

I have read some girl-books, a few years ago--“Hildegarde Grahame,” and “What Katy Did,” and all,--but I read them from afar. I looked at those creatures from behind a high board fence. I felt as if I had more tastes in common with the Jews wandering through the wilderness, or with a band of fighting Amazons. I am not a girl. I am a woman, of a kind. I began to be a woman at twelve, or more properly, a genius.

And then, usually, if one is not a girl one is a heroine--of the kind you read about. But I am not a heroine, either. A heroine is beautiful--eyes like the sea shoot opaque glances from under drooping lids--walks with undulating movements, her bright smile haunts one still, falls methodically in love with a man--always with a man, eats things (they are always called “viands”) with a delicate appetite, and on special occasions her voice is full of tears. I do none of these things. I am not beautiful. I do not walk with undulating movements--indeed, I have never seen any one walk so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears.

No, I am not a heroine.

There never seem to be any plain heroines, except Jane Eyre, and she was very unsatisfactory. She should have entered into marriage with her beloved Rochester in the first place. I should have, let there be a dozen mad wives upstairs. But I suppose the author thought she must give her heroine some desirable thing--high moral principles, since she was not beautiful. Some people say that beauty is a curse. It may be true, but I’m sure I should not have at all minded being cursed a little. And I know several persons who might well say the same. But, anyway, I wish some one would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her.

So far from being a girl or a heroine, I am a thief--as I have before suggested.

I mind me of how, not long since, I stole three dollars. A woman whom I know rather well, and lives near, called me into her house as I was passing and asked me to do an errand for her. She was having an ornate gown made, and she needed some more appliqué with which to festoon it. The appliqué cost nine dollars a yard. My trusting neighbor gave me a bit of the braid for a sample and two twenty-dollar bills. I was to get four yards. I did so, and came back and gave her the braid and a single dollar. The other three dollars I kept myself. I wanted three dollars very much, to put with a few that I already had in my purse. My trusting neighbor is of the kind that throws money about carelessly. I knew she would not pay any attention to a little detail like that,--she was deeply interested in her new frock; or perhaps she would think I had got thirty-nine dollars’ worth of appliqué. At any rate, she did not need the money, and I wanted three dollars, and so I stole it.

I am a thief.

It has been suggested to me that I am a kleptomaniac. But I am sure my mind is perfectly sane. I have no such excuse. I am a plain, downright thief.

This is only one of my many peculations. I steal money, or anything that I want, whenever I can, nearly always. It amuses me--and one must be amused.

I have only two stipulations: that the person to whom it belongs does not need it pressingly, and that there is not the smallest chance of being found out. (And of course I could not think of stealing from my one friend.)

It would be extremely inconvenient to be known as a thief, merely.

When the world knows you are a thief it blinds itself completely to your other attributes. It calls you a thief, and there’s an end. I am a genius as well as a thief--but the world would quite overlook that fact. “A thief’s a thief,” says the world. That is very true. But the mere fact of being a thief should not exclude the consideration of one’s other traits. When the world knows you are a Methodist minister, for instance, it will admit that you may also be a violinist, or a chemist, or a poet, and will credit you therefor. And so if it condemns you for being a thief, it should at the same time admire you for being a genius. If it does not admire you for being a genius, then it has no right to condemn you for being a thief.

--And why the world should condemn any one for being a thief--when there is not within its confines any one who is not a thief in some way--is a bit of irony upon which I have wasted much futile logic.--

I am not trying to justify myself for stealing. I do not consider it a thing that needs to be justified, any more than walking or eating or going to bed. But, as I say, if the world knew that I am a thief without being first made aware with emphasis that I am some other things also, then the world would be a shade cooler for me than it already is--which would be very cool indeed.

And so in writing my Portrayal I have dwelt upon other things at some length before touching on my thieving propensities.

None of my acquaintances would suspect that I am a thief. I look so respectable, so refined, so “nice,” so inoffensive, so sweet, even!

But, for that matter, I am a great many things that I do not appear to be.

The woman from whom I stole the three dollars, if she reads this, will recognize it. This will be inconvenient. I fervently hope she may not read it. It is true she is not of the kind that reads.

But, after all, it’s of no consequence. This Portrayal is Mary MacLane: her wooden heart, her young woman’s-body, her mind, her soul.

The world may run and read.

I will tell you what I did with the three dollars. In Dublin Gulch, which is a rough quarter of Butte inhabited by poor Irish people, there lives an old world-soured, wrinkled-faced woman. She lives alone in a small, untidy house. She swears frightfully like a parrot, and her reputation is bad--so bad, indeed, that even the old woman’s compatriots in Dublin Gulch do not visit her lest they damage their own. It is true that the profane old woman’s morals are not good--have never been good--judged by the world’s standards. She bears various marks of cold, rough handling on her mind and body. Her life has all but run its course. She is worn out.

Once in a while I go to visit this old woman--my reputation must be sadly damaged by now.

I sit with her for an hour or two and listen to her. She is extremely glad to have me there. Except me she has no one to talk to but the milkman, the groceryman, and the butcher. So always she is glad to see me. There is a certain bond of sympathy between her and me. We are fond of each other. When she sees me picking my way towards her house, her hard, sour face softens wonderfully and a light of distinct friendliness comes into her green eyes.

Don’t you know, there are few people enough in the world whose hard, sour faces will soften at sight of you and a distinctly friendly light come into their green eyes. For myself, I find such people few indeed.

So the profane old woman and I are fond of each other. No question of morals, or of immorals, comes between us. We are equals.

I talk to her a little--but mostly she talks. She tells me of the time when she lived in County Galway, when she was young--and of her several husbands, and of some who were not husbands, and of her children scattered over the earth. And she shows me old tin-types of these people. She has told me the varied tale of her life a great many times. I like to hear her tell it. It is like nothing else I have heard. The story in its unblushing simplicity, the sour-faced old woman sitting telling it, and the tin-types,--contain a thing that is absurdly, grotesquely, tearlessly sad.

Once when I went to her house I brought with me six immense, heavy, fragrant chrysanthemums.

They had been bought with the three dollars I had stolen.

It pleased me to buy them for the profane old woman. They pleased her also--not because she cares much for flowers, but because I brought them to her. I knew they would please her, but that was not the reason I gave her them.

I did it purely and simply to please myself.

I knew the profane old woman would not be at all concerned as to whether they had been bought with stolen money or not, and my only regret was that I had not had an opportunity to steal a larger sum so that I might have bought more chrysanthemums without inconveniencing my purse.

But as it was they filled her dirty little dwelling with perfume and color.

Long ago, when I was six, I was a thief--only I was not then, as now, a graceful, light-fingered thief--I had not the philosophy of stealing.

When I would steal a copper cent out of my mother’s pocketbook I would feel a dreadful, suffocating sinking in my bad heart, and for days and nights afterwards--long after I had eaten the chocolate mouse--the copper cent would haunt me and haunt me, and oh, how I wished it back in that pocketbook with the clasp shut tight and the bureau drawer locked!

And so, is it not finer to be nineteen and a thief, with the philosophy of stealing--than to be six and haunted day and night by a copper cent?

For now always my only regret is, when I have stolen five dollars, that I did not steal ten while I was about it.

It is a long time ago since I was six.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
1 February 1920.
My room is horrible. Very noisy: a constant clatter and a feeling as though it were doorless. French people don't care a hang how much noise they make. I hate them for it. Stayed in bed; felt very ill, but don't mind because of the reason. The food was really appalling: nothing to eat. At night old Casetta feelings, like madness. Voices and words and half-visions.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
2 February 1920.
Connie and Jinnie came and brought a notice of my book. I brought in more flowers. Saw the lovely palm. Love will win if only I can stick to it. It will win after all and through all
<|/entry|><|entry|>
3 February 1920.
Went for a little walk in the garden and saw all the pale violets. The beauty of palm trees. I fell in love with a tree. Japonica is a lovely flower, but people never grow enough of it.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
5 February 1920.
Went for a drive. All the way gay. The house and the girl. Couldn't work: slept again. Dreadful pain in joints. Fearfully noisy house! Saw an orange-tree, an exquisite shape against the sky: when the fruit is ripe the leaves are pale yellow.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
2 January 1914.
A horrible morning and afternoon. Je me sens incapable de tout, and at the same time I am just not writing very well. I must finish my story tomorrow. I ought to work at it all day, — yes, all day and into the night if necessary. A vile day. J'ai envie de prier au bon Dieu comme le vieux père Tolstoi. Oh, Lord, make me a better creature to-morrow. Le cœur me monte aux lèvres d'un goût de sang. Je me déteste aujourd'hui. Dined at L.'s and talked the Island.1 It is quite real except that some part of me is blind to it. Six months ago I'd have jumped.

The chief thing I feel lately about myself is that I am getting old. I don't feel like a girl any more, or even like a young woman. I feel really quite past my prime. At times the fear of death is dreadful. I feel ever so much older than J. and that he recognises it, I am sure. He never used to, but now he often talks like a young man to an older woman. Well, perhaps, it's a good thing.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
3 January 1914.
A cold, ugly day. It was dark soon after two. Spent it trying to write and running from my

A plan, how far serious I cannot say after these years, of making a settlement in some remote island. It was probably of the same order of seriousness as Coleridge's pantisocratic colony on the Susquehannah.

room into the kitchen. I could not get really warm. The day felt endless. Read in the evening, and later read with J. a good deal of poetry. If I lived alone I would be very dependent on poetry. Talked over the Island idea with J. For me I know it has come too late.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
4 January 1914.
Woke early and saw a snowy branch across the window. It is cold, snow has fallen, and now it is thawing. The hedges and the trees are covered with beads of water. Very dark, too, with a wind somewhere. I long to be alone for a bit.

I make a vow to finish a book this month. I'll write all day and at night too, and get it finished. I swear.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
5 January 1914.
Saw the sun rise. A lovely apricot sky with flames in it and then a solemn pink. Heavens, how beautiful ! I heard a knocking, and went downstairs. It was Benny cutting away the ivy. Over the path lay the fallen nests — wisps of hay and feathers. He looked like an ivy bush himself. I made early tea and carried it up to J. who lay half awake with crinkled eyes. I feel so full of love to-day after having seen the sun rise.

Evening. Have written a good deal.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
5 January 1660.
I went to my office, where the money was again expected from the Excise office, but none brought, but was promised to be sent this afternoon. I dined with Mr. Sheply, at my Lord’s lodgings, upon his turkey-pie. And so to my office again; where the Excise money was brought, and some of it told to soldiers till it was dark. Then I went home, and after writing a letter to my Lord and told him the news that the Parliament hath this night voted that the members that were discharged from sitting in the years 1648 and 49, were duly discharged; and that there should be writs issued presently for the calling of others in their places, and that Monk and Fairfax were commanded up to town, and that the Prince’s lodgings were to be provided for Monk at Whitehall. Then my wife and I, it being a great frost, went to Mrs. Jem’s, in expectation to eat a sack-posset, but Mr. Edward----not coming it was put off; and so I left my wife playing at cards with her, and went myself with my lanthorn to Mr. Fage, to consult concerning my nose, who told me it was nothing but cold, and after that we did discourse concerning public business; and he told me it is true the City had not time enough to do much, but they are resolved to shake off the soldiers; and that unless there be a free Parliament chosen, he did believe there are half the Common Council will not levy any money by order of this Parliament. From thence I went to my father’s, where I found Mrs. Ramsey and her grandchild, a pretty girl, and staid a while and talked with them and my mother, and then took my leave, only heard of an invitation to go to dinner to-morrow to my cosen Thomas Pepys.----I went back to Mrs. Jem, and took my wife and Mrs. Sheply, and went home.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
14 January 1660.
Nothing to do at our office. Thence into the Hall, and just as I was going to dinner from Westminster Hall with Mr. Moore (with whom I had been in the lobby to hear news, and had spoke with Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper about my Lord’s lodgings) to his house, I met with Captain Holland, who told me that he hath brought his wife to my house, so I posted home and got a dish of meat for them. They staid with me all the afternoon, and went hence in the evening. Then I went with my wife, and left her at market, and went myself to the Coffee-house, and heard exceeding good argument against Mr. Harrington’s assertion, that overbalance of propriety was the foundation of government. Home, and wrote to Hinchinbroke, and sent that and my other letter that missed of going on Thursday last. So to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
2 August 1915.
The strange door shuts upon the stranger, and then I slip down in the sheets. Waiting for the shadows to come out of the corners and spin their slow, slow web over the Ugliest Wallpaper of All.

Pulmonary Tuberculosis
The man in the room next to mine has the same complaint as I. When I wake in the night I hear him turning. And then he coughs. And I cough. And after a silence I cough. And he coughs again. This goes on for a long time. Until I feel we are like two roosters calling to each other at false dawn. From far-away hidden farms.

Jour Maigre

On Wednesday mornings Mrs. Honey comes into my room as usual and pulls up the blinds and opens the big French windows. Letting in the dancing light
and the swish of the sea and the creak of the boats lying at anchor out in the Roads, and the sound of the lawn mower and the smell of cut grass and syringa and the cheeky whistle of that same blackbird.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
22 October 1662.
Up, and carrying my wife and her brother to Covent Garden, near their father’s new lodging, by coach, I to my Lord Sandwich’s, who receives me now more and more kindly, now he sees that I am respected in the world; and is my most noble patron. Here I staid and talked about many things, with my Lord and Mr. Povy, being there about Tangier business, for which the Commission is a taking out. Hence (after talking with Mr. Cooke, whom I met here about Mrs. Butler’s portion, he do persist to say that it will be worth L600 certain, when he knows as well as I do now that it is but L400, and so I told him, but he is a fool, and has made fools of us). So I by water to my brother’s, and thence to Mr. Smith’s, where I was, last night, and there by appointment met Mrs. Butler, with whom I plainly discoursed and she with me. I find she will give but L400, and no more, and is not willing to do that without a joynture, which she expects and I will not grant for that portion, and upon the whole I find that Cooke has made great brags on both sides, and so has abused us both, but know not how to help it, for I perceive she had much greater expectations of Tom’s house and being than she finds. But however we did break off the business wholly, but with great love and kindness between her and me, and would have been glad we had known one another’s minds sooner, without being misguided by this fellow to both our shames and trouble. For I find her a very discreet, sober woman, and her daughter, I understand and believe, is a good lady; and if portions did agree, though she finds fault with Tom’s house, and his bad imperfection in his speech, I believe we should well agree in other matters. After taking a kind farewell, I to Tom’s, and there did give him a full account of this sad news, with which I find he is much troubled, but do appear to me to be willing to be guided herein, and apprehends that it is not for his good to do otherwise, and so I do persuade to follow his business again, and I hope he will, but for Cooke’s part and Dr. Pepys, I shall know them for two fools another time. Hence, it raining hard, by coach home, being first trimmed here by Benier, who being acquainted with all the players, do tell me that Betterton is not married to Ianthe, as they say; but also that he is a very sober, serious man, and studious and humble, following of his studies, and is rich already with what he gets and saves, and then to my office till late, doing great deal of business, and settling my mind in pretty good order as to my business, though at present they are very many. So home and to bed. This night was buried, as I hear by the bells at Barking Church, my poor Morena,

whose sickness being desperate, did kill her poor father; and he being dead for sorrow, she could not recover, nor desire to live, but from that time do languish more and more, and so is now dead and buried.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
20 August 1661.
At the office in the morning and all the afternoon at home to put my papers in order. This day we come to some agreement with Sir R. Ford for his house to be added to the office to enlarge our quarters.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: What is on your mind today?]
18 April 1920.
Now and again Fred talked in his sleep. But even then you could say he was quiet. . . . She would wake up and hear him say suddenly: "it wants a couple of screws," or "try the other blade," but never more than that.

The Change

For a long time she said she did not want to change anything in him, and she meant it. Yet she hated things in him and wished they were otherwise. Then she said she did not want to change anything in him and she meant it. And the dark things that she had hated she now regarded with indifference. Then she said she did not want to change anything in him. But now she loved him so that even the dark things she loved, too. She wished them there; she was not indifferent. Still they were dark and strange but she loved them. And it was for this they had been waiting. They changed. They shed their darkness — the curse was lifted and they shone forth as Royal Princes once more, as creatures of light.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
6 December 1920.
The Rivers of China She sat on the end of the box ottoman buttoning her boots. Her short fine springy hair stood out round her head. She wore a little linen camisole and a pair of short frilled knickers.

"Curse these buttons," she said, tugging at them. And then suddenly she sat up and dug the handle of the button hook into the box ottoman.

"Oh dear," she said, "I do wish I hadn't married. I wish I'd been an explorer." And then she said dreamily, "The Rivers of China, for instance."

"But what do you know about the rivers of China, darling," I said. For Mother knew no geography whatever; she knew less than a child of ten.

"Nothing," she agreed. "But I can feel the kind of hat I should wear." She was silent a moment. Then she said, "If Father hadn't died I should have travelled and then ten to one I shouldn't have married." And she looked at me dreamily — looked through me, rather.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
14 April 1920.
Snow-Mountains. Have you noticed how very smug those mountains look that are covered with snow all the year round. They seem to expect me to be so full of admiring awe. It never seems to enter their silly tops to wonder whether it isn't rather dull to be so for ever and ever above suspicion.

Cultivated Minds. Such a cultivated mind doesn't really attract me. I admire it, I appreciate all "les soins et les peines" that have gone to produce it — but it leaves me cold. After all, the adventure is over. There is now nothing to do but to trim and to lop and to keep back — all faintly depressing labours. No, no, the mind I love must still have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two (real snakes), a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of — and paths threaded with those little flowers planted by the mind. It must also have real hiding places, not artificial ones.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
29 November 1668.
(Lord’s day). Lay long in bed with pleasure with my wife, with whom I have now a great deal of content, and my mind is in other things also mightily more at ease, and I do mind my business better than ever and am more at peace, and trust in God I shall ever be so, though I cannot yet get my mind off from thinking now and then of Deb., but I do ever since my promise a while since to my wife pray to God by myself in my chamber every night, and will endeavour to get my wife to do the like with me ere long, but am in much fear of what she lately frighted me with about her being a Catholique; and I dare not, therefore, move her to go to church, for fear she should deny me; but this morning, of her own accord, she spoke of going to church the next Sunday, which pleases me mightily. This morning my coachman’s clothes come home; and I like the livery mightily, and so I all the morning at my chamber, and dined with my wife, and got her to read to me in the afternoon, till Sir W. Warren, by appointment, comes to me, who spent two hours, or three, with me, about his accounts of Gottenburgh, which are so confounded, that I doubt they will hardly ever pass without my doing something, which he desires of me, and which, partly from fear, and partly from unwillingness to wrong the King, and partly from its being of no profit to me, I am backward to give way to, though the poor man do indeed deserve to be rid of this trouble, that he hath lain so long under, from the negligence of this Board. We afterwards fell to other talk, and he tells me, as soon as he saw my coach yesterday, he wished that the owner might not contract envy by it; but I told him it was now manifestly for my profit to keep a coach, and that, after employments like mine for eight years, it were hard if I could not be justly thought to be able to do that.

He gone, my wife and I to supper; and so she to read, and made an end of the Life of Archbishop Laud, which is worth reading, as informing a man plainly in the posture of the Church, and how the things of it were managed with the same self-interest and design that every other thing is, and have succeeded accordingly. So to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
27 February 1660.
Up by four o’clock, and after I was ready, took my leave of my father, whom I left in bed, and the same of my brother John, to whom I gave 10s. Mr. Blayton and I took horse and straight to Saffron Walden, where at the White Hart, we set up our horses, and took the master of the house to shew us Audley End House, who took us on foot through the park, and so to the house, where the housekeeper shewed us all the house, in which the stateliness of the ceilings, chimney-pieces, and form of the whole was exceedingly worth seeing. He took us into the cellar, where we drank most admirable drink, a health to the King. Here I played on my flageolette, there being an excellent echo. He shewed us excellent pictures; two especially, those of the four Evangelists and Henry VIII. After that I gave the man 2s. for his trouble, and went back again. In our going, my landlord carried us through a very old hospital or almshouse, where forty poor people was maintained; a very old foundation; and over the chimney in the mantelpiece was an inscription in brass: “Orate pre anima Thomae Bird,” &c.; and the poor box also was on the same chimney-piece, with an iron door and locks to it, into which I put 6d. They brought me a draft of their drink in a brown bowl, tipt with silver, which I drank off, and at the bottom was a picture of the Virgin and the child in her arms, done in silver. So we went to our Inn, and after eating of something, and kissed the daughter of the house, she being very pretty, we took leave, and so that night, the road pretty good, but the weather rainy to Eping, where we sat and played a game at cards, and after supper, and some merry talk with a plain bold maid of the house, we went to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
22 September 1661.
(Lord’s day). Before church time walking with my father in the garden contriving. So to church, where we had common prayer, and a dull sermon by one Mr. Case, who yet I heard sing very well. So to dinner, and busy with my father about his accounts all the afternoon, and people came to speak with us about business. Mr. Barnwell at night came and supped with us. So after setting matters even with my father and I, to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
27 September 1663.
(Lord’s day). Lay chatting with my wife a good while, then up and got me ready and to church, without my man William, whom I have not seen to-day, nor care, but would be glad to have him put himself far enough out of my favour that he may not wonder to have me put him away. So home to dinner, being a little troubled to see Pembleton out again, but I do not discern in my wife the least memory of him. Dined, and so to my office a little, and then to church again, where a drowsy sermon, and so home to spend the evening with my poor wife, consulting about her closett, clothes, and other things. At night to supper, though with little comfort, I finding myself both head and breast in great pain, and what troubles me most my right ear is almost deaf. It is a cold, which God Almighty in justice did give me while I sat lewdly sporting with Mrs. Lane the other day with the broken window in my neck. I went to bed with a posset, being very melancholy in consideration of the loss of my hearing.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
29 September 1663.
Took two pills more in the morning and they worked all day, and I kept the house. About noon dined, and then to carry several heavy things with my wife up and down stairs, in order to our going to lie above, and Will to come down to the Wardrobe, and that put me into a violent sweat, so I had a fire made, and then, being dry again, she and I to put up some paper pictures in the red chamber, where we go to lie very pretty, and the map of Paris. Then in the evening, towards night, it fell to thunder, lighten, and rain so violently that my house was all afloat, and I in all the rain up to the gutters, and there dabbled in the rain and wet half an hour, enough to have killed a man. That done downstairs to dry myself again, and by and by come Mr. Sympson to set up my wife’s chimney-piece in her closett, which pleases me, and so that being done, I to supper and to bed, shifting myself from top to toe, and doubtful of my doing myself hurt.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
3 March 1666.
All the morning at the office, at noon to the Old James, being sent for, and there dined with Sir William Rider, Cutler, and others, to make an end with two Scots Maisters about the freight of two ships of my Lord Rutherford’s. After a small dinner and a little discourse I away to the Crowne behind the Exchange to Sir W. Pen, Captain Cocke and Fen, about getting a bill of Cocke’s paid to Pen, in part for the East India goods he sold us. Here Sir W. Pen did give me the reason in my eare of his importunity for money, for that he is now to marry his daughter. God send her better fortune than her father deserves I should wish him for a false rogue. Thence by coach to Hales’s, and there saw my wife sit; and I do like her picture mightily, and very like it will be, and a brave piece of work. But he do complain that her nose hath cost him as much work as another’s face, and he hath done it finely indeed. Thence home and late at the office, and then to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
5 March 1666.
I was at it till past two o’clock on Monday morning, and then read my vowes, and to bed with great joy and content that I have brought my things to so good a settlement, and now having my mind fixed to follow my business again and sensible of Sir W. Coventry’s jealousies, I doubt, concerning me, partly my siding with Sir G. Carteret, and partly that indeed I have been silent in my business of the office a great while, and given but little account of myself and least of all to him, having not made him one visitt since he came to towne from Oxford, I am resolved to fall hard to it again, and fetch up the time and interest I have lost or am in a fair way of doing it. Up about eight o’clock, being called up by several people, among others by Mr. Moone, with whom I went to Lumbard Streete to Colvill, and so back again and in my chamber he and I did end all our businesses together of accounts for money upon bills of Exchange, and am pleased to find myself reputed a man of business and method, as he do give me out to be. To the ‘Change at noon and so home to dinner. Newes for certain of the King of Denmarke’s declaring for the Dutch, and resolution to assist them. To the office, and there all the afternoon. In the evening come Mr. James and brother Houblons to agree upon share parties for their ships, and did acquaint me that they had paid my messenger, whom I sent this afternoon for it, L200 for my friendship in the business, which pleases me mightily. They being gone I forth late to Sir H. Viner’s to take a receipt of them for the L200 lodged for me there with them, and so back home, and after supper to bed.
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7 March 1666.
Up betimes, and to St. James’s, thinking Mr. Coventry had lain there; but he do not, but at White Hall; so thither I went and had as good a time as heart could wish, and after an houre in his chamber about publique business he and I walked up, and the Duke being gone abroad we walked an houre in the Matted Gallery: he of himself begun to discourse of the unhappy differences between him and my Lord of Sandwich, and from the beginning to the end did run through all passages wherein my Lord hath, at any time, gathered any dissatisfaction, and cleared himself to me most honourably; and in truth, I do believe he do as he says. I did afterwards purge myself of all partiality in the business of Sir G. Carteret, (whose story Sir W. Coventry did also run over,) that I do mind the King’s interest, notwithstanding my relation to him; all which he declares he firmly believes, and assures me he hath the same kindnesse and opinion of me as ever. And when I said I was jealous of myself, that having now come to such an income as I am, by his favour, I should not be found to do as much service as might deserve it; he did assure me, he thinks it not too much for me, but thinks I deserve it as much as any man in England. All this discourse did cheer my heart, and sets me right again, after a good deal of melancholy, out of fears of his disinclination to me, upon the differences with my Lord Sandwich and Sir G. Carteret; but I am satisfied throughly, and so went away quite another man, and by the grace of God will never lose it again by my folly in not visiting and writing to him, as I used heretofore to do. Thence by coach to the Temple, and it being a holyday, a fast-day, there ‘light, and took water, being invited, and down to Greenwich, to Captain Cocke’s, where dined, he and Lord Bruncker, and Matt. Wren, Boltele, and Major Cooper, who is also a very pretty companion; but they all drink hard, and, after dinner, to gaming at cards. So I provoked my Lord to be gone, and he and I to Mr. Cottle’s and met Mrs. Williams (without whom he cannot stir out of doors) and there took coach and away home. They carry me to London and set me down at the Temple, where my mind changed and I home, and to writing and heare my boy play on the lute, and a turne with my wife pleasantly in the garden by moonshine, my heart being in great peace, and so home to supper and to bed. The King and Duke are to go to-morrow to Audly End, in order to the seeing and buying of it of my Lord Suffolke.
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14 March 1666.
Up, and met by 6 o’clock in my chamber Mr. Povy (from White Hall) about evening reckonings between him and me, on our Tangier business, and at it hard till toward eight o’clock, and he then carried me in his chariot to White Hall, where by and by my fellow officers met me, and we had a meeting before the Duke. Thence with my Lord Bruncker towards London, and in our way called in Covent Garden, and took in Sir John (formerly Dr.) Baber; who hath this humour that he will not enter into discourse while any stranger is in company, till he be told who he is that seems a stranger to him. This he did declare openly to me, and asked my Lord who I was, giving this reason, that he has been inconvenienced by being too free in discourse till he knew who all the company were. Thence to Guildhall (in our way taking in Dr. Wilkins), and there my Lord and I had full and large discourse with Sir Thomas Player, the Chamberlain of the City (a man I have much heard of for his credit and punctuality in the City, and on that score I had a desire to be made known to him), about the credit of our tallys, which are lodged there for security to such as should lend money thereon to the use of the Navy. And I had great satisfaction therein: and the truth is, I find all our matters of credit to be in an ill condition. Thence, I being in a little haste walked before and to the ‘Change a little and then home, and presently to Trinity house to dinner, where Captain Cox made his Elder Brother’s dinner. But it seemed to me a very poor sorry dinner. I having many things in my head rose, when my belly was full, though the dinner not half done, and home and there to do some business, and by and by out of doors and met Mr. Povy coming to me by appointment, but it being a little too late, I took a little pride in the streete not to go back with him, but prayed him to come another time, and I away to Kate Joyce’s, thinking to have spoke to her husband about Pall’s business, but a stranger, the Welsh Dr. Powell, being there I forebore and went away and so to Hales’s, to see my wife’s picture, which I like mighty well, and there had the pleasure to see how suddenly he draws the Heavens, laying a darke ground and then lightening it when and where he will. Thence to walk all alone in the fields behind Grayes Inne, making an end of reading over my dear “Faber fortunae,” of my Lord Bacon’s, and thence, it growing dark, took two or three wanton turns about the idle places and lanes about Drury Lane, but to no satisfaction, but a great fear of the plague among them, and so anon I walked by invitation to Mrs. Pierces, where I find much good company, that is to say, Mrs. Pierce, my wife, Mrs. Worshipp and her daughter, and Harris the player, and Knipp, and Mercer, and Mrs. Barbary Sheldon, who is come this day to spend a weeke with my wife; and here with musique we danced, and sung and supped, and then to sing and dance till past one in the morning; and much mirthe with Sir Anthony Apsley and one Colonell Sidney, who lodge in the house; and above all, they are mightily taken with Mrs. Knipp. Hence weary and sleepy we broke up, and I and my company homeward by coach and to bed.
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<|entry|>
18 November 1885.
In the midst of an artistic life there arises again and again the yearning for _real_ life, which remains an unrealizable ideal. And often enough the desire to devote one’s self completely to art, with ever fresher strength, entirely disappears. One feels exactly like an old cab horse, and one knows that one must always return to the same old shafts when all the while one would so love to live in the fields, in the sun, near the river, in the country, with other horses, also free, and have the right to procreate one’s kind. And I should not be at all surprised if this were whence the heart trouble comes. One offers no resistance, neither does one resign one’s self; the fact is, one is ill; the thing will not go away of its own accord, and yet there is no remedy for it. I really do not know who called the state “a case of death and immortality.”
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<|entry|>
13 February 1922.
Felt ill all day. Feeling of violent confusion in my body and head. I feel more ill now than ever, so it seems.

J. went out and bought a tea-pot and so on; arranged a game of chess and we started playing. But the pains in my back and so on make my prison almost unendurable. I manage to get up, to dress, to make a show of getting to the restaurant and back without being discovered. But that is literally all. The rest is rather like being a beetle shut in a book, so shackled that one can do nothing but lie down. And even to lie down becomes a kind of agony. The worst of it is I have again lost hope. I don't, I can't believe this will change. I have got off the ship again and am swept here and there by the sea.

Discouragement
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<|entry|>
12 March 1917.
A working diaphragm
I am not Respectable nor Refined nor in Good Taste.

I take a delicate M.-Mac-Lane pleasure in those facts.

I doubt if they are anyway peculiar to me, but they feel like a someway delicious clandestine circumstance: something to enjoy all to myself.

It is difficult to imagine any woman really Respectable on her inner side, the side that is turned toward herself alone. And it’s certain no woman is Refined: it feels not possible. (There are yet inland places where the word is used in its smug sense and believed in.) And no woman but a dead woman in her coffin is in complete Good Taste. Every live woman has for instance a working diaphragm: and in a diaphragm there is, in the final analysis, simply no taste at all.

(As for men--except poets--I mean poets: and perhaps scientists--they are so ungenuine: a race of discreet cautious puppets: wooden dolls who move as their strings are pulled: with nothing so real about them inside as even outside--what use to dwell upon them?)

Nearly all women are perplexingly interesting as human beings. And I am quite the most interesting human being I know: and with it the most appealing, the most sincere--in my own false fashion, and the most bespeaking.

It is much due to knowing and feeling me to be not Respectable nor Refined nor in Good Taste: particularly to being not in Good Taste.

One autumn evening in Boston I went to dine with a man in his apartment in Beacon Street. He is a mining engineer whom I have known since we were both children. He had bidden me to dinner in his off-hand engineering way, but when I arrived at his diggings he was not there. He did not come. Instead there was a dinner waiting, a Japanese boy to serve it, and a strange man who had happened in. The strange man had iron-gray hair, a brow like Apollo, a jowl like Bill Sikes and much conversation. He said that he was newly from China, South Africa and Egypt and that in his life he had been married seven times with book and bell. Together we ate the dinner, talking pleasantly in the light of colored Chinese lamp-shades. There were little birds to eat and Chinese wine to drink--sam shu distilled virilely from rice: always a little of it is too much. After the dinner we were standing by a teakwood sideboard and the strange man was holding me tightly in his arms against a large smooth evening panel of shirt-front, and he was kissing my mouth with a great deal of ardor. I did not like it. I thought of all the women he had married and wondered if they had liked it. And I mused in my placid brain, ‘As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives.’ It was the only thought in my mind as I waited boredly for him to have done. (It’s no good struggling.) And that incident I know was not Respectable.

And one summer day I was riding horseback up a steep gorge in these Montana hills. It was hot dusty riding. I came to a mountain stream with a beautiful little white-and-blue cascade tumbling over a high rock upon smooth pebbles below. I got down from my horse, took off my dusty khaki suit and all my clothes and stood under the fall of the little tumbling cascade, whitely naked, without so much as a figleaf’s covering. It was delectable and pagan, what with my quaint thoughts as I stood crouched beneath the sparkling splash. And I know there was nothing Refined in it.

And one evening between nine and ten, a week ago. I was walking across the broad desert valley east of this Butte. It is late November and the night was stormy. A strong high gale swept the Flat. Presently it rained. I was on my way back with a mile or two to go. It rained harder. Heavy sheets of black water whipped and whirled down on me and wrapped me in their wet wings. I love all weather when it is mild and more when it is rough except when it bears down too hard: then I feel indifferent to it. As I moved along the dark road not hurrying and not loitering I was saying inside me, ‘Why am I going to any shelter out of this heavy wet rain? Why am I not a houseless beggar-woman with nothing gentler in all my life than this November storm? It is not because I deserve gentler things--’ And with a sudden heavy shudder I whispered, ‘I wish I were a beggar-woman! I wish I had no roof to cover me in this cold night-blackness. It would be honest: I should be stripped to my deserts. And I wish it were so--this drenching rain, this strangling wind--nothing but this--shelter, money, comfort, self-satisfaction, however seemingly earned, are dishonest--thieved. I ought to be--ragged beggar--bleared eyes--dirty petticoats--a foul ratty hole to creep into--hunger--bodily misery--all the portion of outcasts-- As God may hear me--I’d eagerly tremblingly change lives this moment with a beggar-woman. I would--I would--!’ It is a piece of clear inside truth about myself. And I know it proves me to be in poor Taste.

It is a matter of attitude. Each of those incidents might happen to any woman--except perhaps the last. I have known but one girl who agreed with me in such a feeling. And not quite that feeling. She had married a lot of money with a horrible old gentleman and had wearied of both. But the other two episodes could readily belong to any woman of esprit who might be on the outside both Respectable and Refined: even a woman lawyer.

But my attitude in the incident of the strange iron-gray man, though in a bored way I could have viciously knifed him, was not a Respectable attitude. I was bored and fanciful when doubtless I ought to have been breathlessly angry. But my breathless anger is too rare and beautiful an emotion to waste on ridiculous strange iron-gray men.

In the incident of the sparkling cascade my attitude was shameless: something of the sort. It is never reprehensible for a woman to take a cold shower-bath in solitude and health. But my spirit rose and rejoiced at my bodily nakedness and then grew nymph-like and figleafless on its own account. My sex exploited itself in mental visions, like of Leda and the Swan or of myself as a slim villainous Scotch Aphrodite conceived by a bold surprising Titian. And doubtless I ought to have felt timorous in the vast sunlit mountainside, or like a sexless child (or merely ‘hygienic’ like William Muldoon and Bernarr McFadden). But the quick charm of the situation and the heavenly anguish of the icy water, and my lovely Body, and my odd moralless musings were too intriguing to expend themselves banalely.

The wet night road and the beggar-woman wish: it is drearily real to me. Though I wear two plain dainty dresses, in a house--in me, beating, beating, pounding down is a cold wild heavy rain: and under my feet a long lonely muddy road. If they belong to me--well. I love Me the more for feeling them.

And I feel them because I am not yet dead and in my coffin, but alive and with a working diaphragm: which diaphragms are in not Good Taste.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
23 March 1917.
Lot’s wife
To-day in the afternoon I briskly manicured my fingernails, sitting by my gold-and-blue window, and I mused upon Lot’s Wife.

So many persons and incidents and events and adventures and episodes there are to muse upon, in this mixed world, dating from when it began till now. There’s something to charm any mood. Let me leave the doors of my mind open and anything at all may float in like an errant butterfly on a summer’s day.

It is an entertaining world, by and large: a limitless vaudeville.

Lot’s Wife is to me a fantasy from the antique, a bit of archaic frivol to beguile me.

When first I heard of her, from an acrid aunt of caustic humor who told me the tale tersely in explanation of a biblical print, I was seven years old. From that day to this my meditative thoughts have from time to time flitted backward to dwell interestedly upon Lot’s Wife. Later when I went to an Episcopal Sunday-school I was pleased to find this adjuration in according-to-St.-Luke: ‘Remember Lot’s Wife.’ There seemed no special meaning attached to it. It seemed like Remember Lot’s Wife in any way you like--as it might be with a card on her birthday, a useless gift at Christmas, in your prayers, or in retributive patriotism like Remember the Alamo, Remember the Maine.

But I remember her because I like her.

There’s no name given for Lot’s Wife in the brief biblical narrative, so I long ago named her Bella as expressive of the temperament and character that have grown around her image in my thoughts. Poor Bella, I ruminated as I tinted and polished my nails. Her life in Sodom was not entirely satisfying to her. Sodom was a town completely given over to pleasure of the physical and outward sorts. The dwellers lived in and for their physical senses alone. And Bella had it in her to care for the foods of the spirit. Not that she longed for them--she was not so conscious of herself--but she had it in her to care for them had they been given her. Still, Sodom and its ways were the best she knew and she had known them all her life. The roots of her temperament had shot down into the Sodomesque substrata. She fondly loved the place.

Sodom was a prototype for Babylon or Pompeii, worshiping the hotness of the sun in moralless plaisance, with fêtes and drinkings of wine from gold and silver cups, and bathings in warm scented marble-lined pools, and anointings with oils of olive and palm, and dwellings among flowers of thin bright petals and birds of vivid plumage and fountains of crystal and rainbow, and caterings to the sparkle and froth of human emotions, and browsings amid loves and lights o’ love. Can Bella be wondered at for growing fond of it all, having known nothing substantialer? And can she rightly be blamed for hating the thought of leaving it for dry sage-brush wilds in the mountains? She did hate and dread that thought with all her soul from the moment it was made known to her that Sodom for its sins was booked for destruction. She had perhaps a fortnight in which to dread it, and a fortnight if given over to dread is long enough to damage stronger spirits than hers.

Bella was slender and svelte, with long straight soft beautiful silken pale red hair and white-lidded eyes of grayish green. She was thirty-eight--a young thirty-eight. There’s an old thirty-eight which applies to greedy school-teachers, gangrenous woman government-clerks, fading hard-hearted stenographers, over-righteous woman doctors; to all whose virtue is ever indecently on guard. But there’s a glory-tinted sun-kissed young thirty-eight which applies to sensitive high-strung generously-emotional women like Bella Lot. She had smooth hands with supple tapering fingers, an irregular expressive-lipped mouth like a pimpernel-bloom, firm slim feet and the quivering suggestive white knees of a wood-nymph. From any angle-of-view can she be blamed for hating to take that equipment away from the city-de-luxe which was its so proper setting and hiding it in the sage-brush?

Furthermore Bella had a lover in Sodom. It is beyond a sane effort of the imagination that she could have loved that unpleasing old man Lot. The best and worst that can be said of him is that he was a fit addition to the company of the old Patriarchs who were for the most part an exceeding craven crew. The martyrs, the sages and especially the prophets had their splendors. But the lean old patriarchs--The sporting blood of all of them--in the sense of merest simplest courage--from Adam down, would hardly aggregate one drop. There are any number of reasons--as many as Bella had charms--to account for Lot’s having married her. But what she could have seen in him to make her wish or even willing to be married to him is a deep mystery to me. It may have been his family. I believe Bella lacked family: she was just a person. And was he not nephew to Abraham? But even being niece-in-law to Abraham himself seems insufficient compensation for being Lot’s Wife.

The Lots had two young daughters, one fifteen and one seventeen, it might be. I do not know their names--call them Ethel and Agnes. But they were of a recalcitrant temper and absorbed in their own racy pastimes among the younger youth of Sodom and they had no need of their mother. Besides, they ‘took after’ their father. So Bella was fain to turn outward in search of nurturing matter whereon to feed her humanness. Had it been expected of her to play fair with the patriarch she would have played fair. But it was not expected of her by anyone in Sodom--far from it, and least of all by the patriarch. She was eight-and-thirty, and Lot--he was doubtless eight or nine hundred years old, after the surprising long-lived fashion of the period.

So Bella found a lover ready and awaiting her. She would have found a lover in the circumstances even without caring to. But she quite cared to, I think. Everything points that way, and when one remembers that good old man her husband one can not censure her but only pity her. Be it as it may she had one--one as real as anything could be in that town of sparkling froth.

Of the lover’s identity--little is known, as the historians say. My fancy as I filed my fingernails failed me on the point. Suffice it to state that ever and anon as time passed in Sodom the gray-green eyes of Bella were gazed into with fondness, affection, adoration and desire: the white eyelids of Bella had showers of light kisses bestowed on them, soft-falling as rose-petals shaken loose in summer winds: the tapering white hands of Bella were caressed and caressing with the oddly intense tenderness of physical love: the pale red hair of Bella was ruffled and fluffed and disarrayed by the fingers of love: the red-pimpernel mouth of Bella was touched, bruised, clung to by the lips of love: the svelte whiteness and nymph-knees of Bella glowed as she broached love’s arms:--and all went much merrier than marriage bells. In short, Bella paid herself with usury for the deadliness of being Lot’s Wife.

And there we have the crux of Bella’s dread of leaving Sodom and its tempered sweetness for the arid sage-brush hills and the respectively cold and hectic companionship of the good old patriarch and the recalcitrant daughters.

It can not be claimed for Bella that any white poetic fires gleamed across her soul, that any limning beauty shone palely from within her. The air of Sodom was not conducive to suchlike matters and Bella was no finer than her breeding and generation. But she was gentle and wistful and kind of heart. She was lovely to look at and ingenuously lovable in her clinging affection and disarming naturalness. She was all one could want to imagine in the word charming.

Came the night set for destruction and the Lot family fled according to schedule. They fled away in the early damps of an autumn evening through the outer city gates and along a rough road faintly lit by a dying moon. They had three separate reasons for fleeing. Lot fled because he was a patriarch and was given to doing craven Old-Testamentish things of that sort: Bella fled because she was Lot’s Wife and obliged to act out the rôle: and Ethel and Agnes fled because they had true patriarchal blood in their veins and had therefore no marked inclination to remain in Sodom to be annihilated--‘safety first’ was one of their watchwords. They fled in the van. Lot came after them, being less swift of foot. Bella lagged behind. She didn’t want to go. Every way she looked at it she didn’t want to go. She hated that flight for a thousand reasons.

The ghastly moon shed a terror on her with its dim rays. The ground was hard and rutted with frosty mud and bruised her slender feet through her white buckskin sandals.

She wore a loose ninon gown of white silk and linen with a gold girdle around her narrow loins and a gold clasp at the left shoulder. Binding her long hair, so palely red in the moon, was a white-and-gold fillet. In one hand she carried a gold-and-enamel link bracelet, a gift but that afternoon from the lover. Suddenly she stopped and cried to herself, ‘I’m too lovely for this fate--I’m too lovely and beloved--the cruelty of God--: I’ll not go on!’ She thought of the gleams and colorings of Sodom. She quickly reckoned the cost and decided to pay it. She was a rare good sport, and a quaint. She looked back at the doomed city blazing in brimstone--‘But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.’--

As I put away my chamois-skin buffer and glass paste-jar through my mind floated the pensive burden of a by-gone French song--

‘Oh, the poor, oh, the poor, oh, the poor--dear--girl’--

She must have made a beautiful statue, all in glistening salt.

I wish I had a glistening little salty replica of it to set on my desk: a so unusual, a so dainty conceit, Lot’s Wife!
<|/entry|><|entry|>
19 January 1917.
My echoing footsteps
While I live so still in this life-space, while I muse and meditate and analyze everything I touch, while I walk, while I work, while I change from one plain frock to the other: in quiet hours roiled tumbling storms of vicarious unhopeful Passion whirl, whirl in me: Passion of Soul, Passion of Mind, Passion of living, Passion of this mixed world: in terror, in wild unease, in reasonless mournful joy.

I never knew real Passion, Passion-meanings, till I reached thirty. It is now I’m at life’s storm-center, youth’s climax, the high-pulsed orgasmic moment of being alive.

At twenty the woman’s chrysalis soul and aching pulses awaken in crude chaste Spring-cold beauty. At forty her fires either have subsided to dim-glowing coals or leaped to too-positive, too-searing, too-obvious flames--her bones and the filigrees of her spirit may be alike dry, brittle-ish. But at thirty her Spring has but changed to midsummer. Poesy still waits upon her Passions.

My Spring has changed, bloomed, burst to midsummer.

Soft electrical heat-currents of being swing and sweep around me. They touch me and enter my veins. But the liquid essences of youth still quell and compass them. I am at youth’s climax--a half-sullen, half-smouldering youth which still is youth.

My rose of life is fragrant and aglow. Its sweet pink petals are uncurled and conscious in the wavering light.

Winds flutter and stir and rumple and twist those petals--

To-day is a To-morrow of countless unrests. Large and little Passions beat at me all the blue-and-copper day. I walked my floor with irregular lagging steps. I felt menacing, dangerous to myself, dynamic as nitro-glycerine: and smoothly drearily sane as a bar of white soap. I stood at my window and looked long at the circling range of mountains which skirt this Butte. Nothing else I have looked at, of sea or plain or hill, affected me like that chain of barren peaks. They are arid splendor and pale purple witchery and grief and lasting sadness and deathlike beauty and woe and wonder. Their color quietly stormed my eyes and blurred them with tears.

It was a mood in which any color or gleam or thought or strain of music or note of sad world-laughter or any un-sane loveliness of poetry could enchant or flay or transport me to my frayed last nerve.

There is terror in facing death on battlefields, on sinking ships, in black ice-floes, in blazing buildings. But to me no death, for I fear no death, could be so dreadfully pregnant with in-turning woe and frenzy and all intolerable feeling as facing starkly my futile life.

My life is a vast stone bastile of many little Rooms in which I am a prisoner. I am locked there in solitude on bread and water and let to roam in it at will. And each Room is tenanted by invisible garbled furies and dubious ecstasies. I run with echoing footsteps from Room to Room to escape them: but each Room is more unhabitable than the last. There are scores of little Rooms, each with its ghosts, each different.

In one Room silent voices in the air accuse my tired Spirit of wanton vacillations and barren lack of purpose and utter waste, waste, waste of itself. And they threaten death and destruction. I know that accusation and I hate it: I hate it the more for that it’s wholly just. To escape it I run from that Room along a dim passage into another one. In it unseen fingers clutch my Heart. In their touch also is an accusation: of selfishness and waste and want of something to beat for: and in their touch is the savor of wild wishes and human longings and passionate prayers for something warm and simple and real to rest against: and in their pressing clutching turbulent touch is a tormenting half-promise, chance-promise, no-promise: and the hovering inevitable threat of death and destruction. That too I know and hate and half-love: and I can’t bear it. So I run out of that Room along a passage and into another. I hear my footsteps echoing as I run.

--as a child when I ran in the early night through a dark leaf-lined tunnel-like driveway the sound of my own flying footsteps on the hardened gravel was the only thing that frightened me. I quite believed there were bears in the brushwood on either side, but fear of them never struck to the core of my child-being like the unknown thing in my echoing steps. And it is fear I feel now from the ghost-sound of my ghost-footsteps running, running away from the little Rooms. It is realer to me now than were my child footsteps to my child-self long ago: it is more definite than my hand which writes this: it is hideous--

Out of a dim passage I run into another little Room. In it some gray filmy threads, like strands of loose cobwebs caught on ceilings, float about. They sweep gently against my cheeks and hands and neck, and cling and twine and lightly hold with the half-felt feeling peculiar to bits of cobwebs on the skin. And it torments my woman-flesh with calefacient thrills fierce and goading and sweet. There also is the accusation, now against my Body; for tissues and strength wasted: for useless fires meant to warm human seeds to life, meant to make me fruitful, meant to make me bear dear race-burdens: accusation for the cosmic waste of hot objectless desire, for the subtle guilt of a Lesbian tendency, for an unleashed over-positive sex-fancy. With it too is the lowering promise of death and destruction. It also is just. But out of my borne-along helplessness in it comes no culpable emotion because of cobweb thrills and their arraignment but only a wearing wearying despair. I rush out of that Room in shrugging impatience, with only scorn for a threat of death, for a threat of destruction--but with a wild fear of my own flying steps. I hurry and hurry on from door to door: but it’s no good. In some other Room my brain is anathematized from frowning walls as an impish demoniac power which I use with no good intent and therefore with bad intent: and again I shrink and run away. In another Room are all the lies I have ever told: I have told legions--my own peculiar lies, gentler on me than truths: they dart around me in the Room like black heavy-winged moths, clouds of them fluttering at my forehead. They drive me out shivering. In another Room four times when I was a not-good-sport confront me in a row like pictures and sting me and make me hide my eyes: I’d rather be a leper, a beast, a maniac than a not-good-sport (for my own precious reasons)--and I rush away again. In some other Room--

--the same galling torment in all the Rooms. Wherever I run with the echo-echo of steps there are Accusing voices and half-formed Prayer and uncertain Yearning and violent yet dumb and inexpectant Protest and the unfailing Threat of death and destruction: not earth-death but universe-death: death and death and death everywhere coming on and on: myself knowing the just note in it all and from it grown numb with some cold and restless terror. Also I know no door I run through with my panic-feet will ever set me free of the bastile except a death door: the earthly death of this tired life--

But it’s from this maelstrom that the flashing burning sparkling mad magic of being alive leaps out brilliant and barbarous--and throbbing and splendid and sweet. A merely human hunger comes back on me. Then I want all I ever wanted with a hundredfold more voltage of wanting than I have ever yet known.

I am all unhopeful, all unpeaceful, all a desperate Languor and a tragic Futileness: I am an unspeakably untoward thing.

And already I have been seared and scarred trivially from standing foolishly near some foolish human melting-pots.

No matter for any of it. I want to plunge headlong into life--not imitation life which is all I’ve yet known, but honest worldly life at its biggest and humanest and cruelest and damnedest: to be blistered and scorched by it if it be so ordered--so that only it’s realness--from the outside of my skin to the deeps of my spirit.

It is not happiness I want--nothing like it: its like never existed since this world began.

I want to feel one big hot red bloody Kiss-of-Life placed square and strong on my mouth and shot straight into me to the back wall of my Heart.

* * * * *

I write this book for my own reading.

It is my postulate to myself.

As I read it it makes me clench my teeth savagely: and coldly tranquilly close my eyelids: it makes me love and loathe Me, Soul and bones.

Clench and close as I will the winds flutter and stir and crumple and twist my petals as they will:--as I sit here tiredly, tiredly sane.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
28 January 1917.
A comfortably vicious person
The blue-and-copper of yesterday is dead and buried this To-morrow in a maroon twilight.

I this moment saw darkly from my window the somber hills in their heavy spell of pale-purple and grief and splendor and sadness and beauty and wonder and woe.

But their color brings no tears to my wicked gray eyes.

The passion-edged mood is burnt out.

Gone, gone, gone.

I listlessly change into the other black dress for listless dinnertime and all my thought is that my abdomen is beautifully flat and that I must purchase a new petticoat.

I rub a little rouge on my pale mouth and I idlingly recall a clever and filthy story I once heard.

I laugh languidly at it and feel myself a comfortably vicious person.

I pronounce a damn on the familiar ache in my beloved left foot and turn away from myself.

I stick out the tip of my forked-feeling tongue at the bastard clock on the stairs. I note the hour on it with a fainness in my spirit-gizzard to dedicate Me from that time forth to a big blue god of Nastiness: Nastiness so restful, humorous, appetizing, reckless, sure-of-itself.

--these hellish To-morrows creeping in their petty pace: they bring in weak-kneed niceness, and they bring in doubts, and they bring in meditation and imagery and all-around humanness, till I’m a mere heavy-heeled dubious complicated jade.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
1 April 1914.
Spent another frightful day. Nothing helps or could help me except a person who could guess. Went for a walk and had some vague comfort given by some children and the noise of the water like rising waves.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
4 March 1668.
Up betimes and with Sir W. Pen in his coach to White Hall, there to wait upon the Duke of York and the Commissioners of the Treasury, W. Coventry and Sir John Duncombe, who do declare that they cannot find the money we demand, and we that less than what we demand will not set out the fleet intended, and so broke up, with no other conclusion than that they would let us have what they could get and we would improve that as well as we could. So God bless us, and prepare us against the consequences of these matters. Thence, it being a cold wet day, I home with Sir J. Minnes in his coach, and called by the way at my bookseller’s and took home with me Kercher’s Musurgia--very well bound, but I had no comfort to look upon them, but as soon as I come home fell to my work at the office, shutting the doors, that we, I and my clerks, might not be interrupted, and so, only with room for a little dinner, we very busy all the day till night that the officers met for me to give them the heads of what I intended to say, which I did with great discontent to see them all rely on me that have no reason at all to trouble myself about it, nor have any thanks from them for my labour, but contrarily Brouncker looked mighty dogged, as thinking that I did not intend to do it so as to save him. This troubled me so much as, together with the shortness of the time and muchness of the business, did let me be at it till but about ten at night, and then quite weary, and dull, and vexed, I could go no further, but resolved to leave the rest to to-morrow morning, and so in full discontent and weariness did give over and went home, with supper vexed and sickish to bed, and there slept about three hours, but then waked, and never in so much trouble in all my life of mind, thinking of the task I have upon me, and upon what dissatisfactory grounds, and what the issue of it may be to me.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
1 August 1886.
As to the Exhibition of the “Indépendents,” I leave you an absolutely free hand. What do you say to exhibiting the two great landscapes of the Butte Montmartre? I am more or less indifferent about it; I am relying more upon this year’s work.

Here it is freezing hard and the ground is continually under snow. I have painted a study of the snow-covered ground with the town in the background. I have also made two small studies of a branch of an almond tree, which, despite the wintry weather, is already blossoming.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
19 April 1884.
The decoration of my house is absorbing me entirely, and I hope and believe that it will be very tasteful even if it be very different from everything you do.

That reminds me that on one occasion some time ago you spoke to me of certain pictures which were to represent flowers, trees, and fields, respectively. Now I have the “Poet’s Garden” (two canvases), the “Starry Night,” the “Vineyard,” the “Furrows,” the “View from my House,” which might also be called “The Street.” As you see, without any intention on my part, a certain natural sequence seems to connect them together.

I should be very curious to see sketches of Pont-Aven; but you must send me a more finished study. You are, however, sure to do everything in the best possible way; for I am so fond of your talent that in time I shall make quite a little collection of your works. I have always been very much moved by the thought that Japanese artists often bartered their pictures among themselves. That does indeed show that they loved one another and were united, that a kind of harmony prevailed among them, and that they lived in brotherly concord instead of in intrigues. The more we resemble them in these things the more we shall prosper. It also appears that a few of these Japanese artists earned very little money and lived like simple workmen. I have the reproduction of a Japanese drawing (Bing’s publication) representing a single blade of grass. What a paragon of conscientiousness it is! I shall show it to you when I get the chance.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
22 March 1884.
What surprised me in your letter were your words: “Ah, as for painting Gauguin’s portrait--that is impossible!” Why impossible? That’s all nonsense. But I will not press you further. And has not Gauguin, for his part, ever thought of painting your portrait? You are a funny pair of portrait painters, I must say! You live all day long shoulder to shoulder and cannot even agree so far as to act as each other’s models. The end of it will be that you will part without having painted each other’s portraits. All right, I will not urge you any more. But I hope that one day I shall be able to paint both your portrait and Gauguin’s. I shall do it as soon as we all come together, which is sure to happen some day.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
11 April 1884.
Whereas the finest plans and calculations so often come to naught, if only one work on the off chance and take advantage of the happy accidents the day brings with it, one can accomplish a host of good and astonishing things. Make a point of going to Africa for a while--you will be enraptured with the South, and it will make you a great artist. Even Gauguin is greatly indebted to the South for his talent.{T}

For many months now I have been contemplating the strong sun of the South, and the result of this experiment is that, in my opinion, and chiefly from the standpoint of colour, Delacroix and Monticelli, who are now wrongly reckoned among the pure romanticists and the artists with fantastic imaginations, are entirely justified. Think of it, the South which Fromentin and Gérome have depicted so dryly, is even in these parts a land the intimate charm of which can be rendered only with the colours of the colourist.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
23 June 1664.
Up, and to the office, and there we sat all the morning. So to the ‘Change, and then home to dinner and to my office, where till 10 at night very busy, and so home to supper and to bed. My cozen, Thomas Pepys, was with me yesterday and I took occasion to speak to him about the bond I stand bound for my Lord Sandwich to him in L1000. I did very plainly, obliging him to secrecy, tell him how the matter stands, yet with all duty to my Lord my resolution to be bound for whatever he desires me for him, yet that I would be glad he had any other security. I perceive by Mr. Moore today that he hath been with my Lord, and my Lord how he takes it I know not, but he is looking after other security and I am mighty glad of it. W. Howe was with me this afternoon, to desire some things to be got ready for my Lord against his going down to his ship, which will be soon; for it seems the King and both the Queenes intend to visit him. The Lord knows how my Lord will get out of this charge; for Mr. Moore tells me to-day that he is L10,000 in debt and this will, with many other things that daily will grow upon him (while he minds his pleasure as he do), set him further backward. But it was pretty this afternoon to hear W. Howe mince the matter, and say that he do believe that my Lord is in debt L2000 or L3000, and then corrected himself and said, No, not so, but I am afraid he is in debt L1000. I pray God gets me well rid of his Lordship as to his debt, and I care not.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
25 June 1664.
We staid late, and he lay with me all night and rose very merry talking, and excellent company he is, that is the truth of it, and a most cunning man. He being gone I to the office, where we sat all the morning. At noon to dinner, and then to my office busy, and by and by home with Mr. Deane to a lesson upon raising a Bend of Timbers,

and he being gone I to the office, and there came Captain Taylor, and he and I home, and I have done all very well with him as to the business of the last trouble, so that come what will come my name will be clear of any false dealing with him. So to my office again late, and then to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
25 March 1914.
"A calm, irresistible well-being — almost mystic in character, and yet doubtless connected with physical conditions."

Writes Dorothy:

William (P.G.) is very well,

And gravely blithe — you know his way —

Talking with woodruff and harebell

And idling all the summer day

As he can well afford to do.

(P.G. for that again.) For who

Is more Divinely Entitled to?

He rises and breakfasts sharp at seven,

Then pastes some fern-fronds in his book,

Until his milk comes at eleven

With two fresh scones baked by the cook.

And then he paces in the sun

Until we dine at half past one.

"God and the cook are very good,"

Laughs William, relishing his food.

(Sometimes the tears rush to my eyes:

How kind he is, and oh, how wise!)
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
15 March 1914.
After, he sits and reads to me

Until at four we take our tea.

My dear, you hardly would believe That William could so sigh and grieve Over a simple, childish tale How ' Mary trod upon the Snail,' Or ' Little Ernie lost his Pail.' And then perhaps a good half-mile He walks to get an appetite For supper, which we take at night In the substantial country style. By nine he's in bed and fast asleep, Not snoring, dear, but very deep, Oh, very deep asleep indeed. . . .

And so on ad lib. What a Pa man !

I am going to read Goethe. Except for a few poems, I know nothing of his well. I shall read " Poetry and Truth " immediately.

"When all is done human life is at its greatest and but a little froward child to be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet until it falls asleep, and then the care is over" (Temple).
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
9 January 1914.
That's the sort of strain — not for what it says and means, but for the 'lilt' of it — that sets me writing.

The Child in my Arms

"Will you touch me with the child in my arms?" is no mere pleasantry. Change the 'will' into 'can' and it's tief, sehr tief! I was thinking just now . . . that I hardly dare give rein to my thoughts of J. and my longing for J. And I thought: if I had a child, I

The Child in my Arms

would play with it now and lose myself in it and kiss it and make it laugh. And I'd use a child as my guard against my deepest feeling.

When I felt: 'No, I'll think no more of this; it's intolerable and unbearable,' I'd dance the baby.

That's true, I think, of all, all women. And it accounts for the curious look of security that you see in young mothers: they are safe from any ultimate state of feeling because of the child in their arms. And it accounts also for the women who call men 'children'. Such women fill themselves with their men — gorge themselves really into a state of absolute heartlessness. Watch the sly, satisfied smile of women who say, "Men are nothing but babies!"
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
8 July 1919.
Second Violin

the candle and sat up and in the mirror I saw a dark, brooding, strangely lengthened face.

" The feeling roused by the cause is more important than the cause itself. . . ." That is the kind of thing I like to say to myself as I get into the train. And then, as one settles into the corner — " For example " — or " Take — for instance . . ." It's a good game for one.

She fastens on a white veil and hardly knows herself. Is it becoming or is it not becoming? Ah, who is there to say. There is a lace butterfly on her left cheek and a spray of flowers on her right. Two dark bold eyes stare through the mesh — Surely not hers. Her lips tremble; faint, she sinks on her bed. And now she doesn't want to go. Must she? She is being driven out of the flat by those bold eyes. Out you go. Ah, how cruel! (Second Violin.)
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
21 September 1919.
But her hand is large and cold with big knuckles and short square nails. It is not a little velvet hand that sighs, that yields — faints dead away and has to be revived again only to faint once more. {S.V.)

What do I want? she thought. What do I really want more than anything else in the world? If I had a wishing ring or Ali Baba's lamp — no, it wasn't Ali Baba — it was — Oh, what did it matter ! Just supposing someone came. ..." I am here to grant your dearest wish." And she saw, vaguely, a fluffy little creature with a silver paper star on a wand — a school

fairy. . . . What should I say? It was cold in the kitchen, cold and dim. The tap dripped slowly, as tho' the water were half frozen. . . . (S.F.)
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
11 November 1919.
Miss Todd and Miss Hopper were second violins. Miss Bray was a viola.

Midday strikes on various bells — some velvety soft, some languid, some regretful, and one impatient

— a youthful bell ringing high and quick above the rest. He thought joyfully: That's the bell for me! . . .

Cinderella Oh, my sisters — my beautiful Peacock-proud sisters

— have pity on me as I sit with my little broom beside the cold ashes while you dance at the Prince's party. But why — is the Fairy Godmother, the coach, the plumes and glass slippers just — faery — and all the rest of the story deeply, deeply true? Fate I suppose

— Fate. It had to be. These things happen so. La réponse: Poor old girl — of course she is awfully sorry for her, but she does become a bore — doesn't she? There's no getting away from it.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
28 February 1919.
When they got into bed together her feet rushed to greet his like little puppies that had been separated all day from their brothers. And first they chased one another and played and nudged gently. But then, they settled down, curled up, twined together under the clothes (like puppies on a warm hearth rug) and went to sleep.

Two Climates

Dark Bogey is a little inclined to jump into the milk jug to rescue the fly.

Fairylike, the fire rose in two branched flames like the golden antlers of some enchanted stag.

So he sat there, burning the letters, and each time he cast a fresh packet on the flame, his shadow, immense, huge, leapt out of the wall opposite him. It looked, sitting so stiff and straight, like some horrible old god, toasting his knees at the flames of the sacrifice.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
20 May 1664.
Up and to my office, whither by and by comes Mr. Cholmely, and staying till the rest of the company come he told me how Mr. Edward Montagu is turned out of the Court, not return again. His fault, I perceive, was his pride, and most of all his affecting to seem great with the Queene and it seems indeed had more of her eare than any body else, and would be with her talking alone two or three hours together; insomuch that the Lords about the King, when he would be jesting with them about their wives, would tell the King that he must have a care of his wife too, for she hath now the gallant: and they say the King himself did once ask Montagu how his mistress (meaning the Queene) did. He grew so proud, and despised every body, besides suffering nobody, he or she, to get or do any thing about the Queene, that they all laboured to do him a good turn. They also say that he did give some affront to the Duke of Monmouth, which the King himself did speak to him of. But strange it is that this man should, from the greatest negligence in the world, come to be the miracle of attendance, so as to take all offices from everybody, either men or women, about the Queene. Insomuch that he was observed as a miracle, but that which is the worst, that which in a wise manner performed turn to his greatest advantage, was by being so observed employed to his greatest wrong, the world concluding that there must be something more than ordinary to cause him to do this. So he is gone, nobody pitying but laughing at him; and he pretends only that he is gone to his father, that is sick in the country. By and by comes Povy, Creed, and Vernatty, and so to their accounts, wherein more trouble and vexation with Povy. That being done, I sent them going and myself fell to business till dinner. So home to dinner very pleasant. In the afternoon to my office, where busy again, and by and by came a letter from my father so full of trouble for discontents there between my mother and servants, and such troubles to my father from hence from Cave that hath my brother’s bastard that I know not what in the world to do, but with great trouble, it growing night, spent some time walking, and putting care as much as I could out of my head, with my wife in the garden, and so home to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
26 May 1664.
Up to the office, where we sat, and I had some high words with Sir W. Batten about canvas, wherein I opposed him and all his experience, about seams in the middle, and the profit of having many breadths and narrow, which I opposed to good purpose, to the rejecting of the whole business. At noon home to dinner, and thence took my wife by coach, and she to my Lady Sandwich to see her. I to Tom Trice, to discourse about my father’s giving over his administration to my brother, and thence to Sir R. Bernard, and there received L19 in money, and took up my father’s bond of L21, that is L40, in part of Piggot’s L209 due to us, which L40 he pays for 7 roods of meadow in Portholme. Thence to my wife, and carried her to the Old Bayly, and there we were led to the Quest House, by the church, where all the kindred were by themselves at the buriall of my uncle Fenner; but, Lord! what a pitiful rout of people there was of them, but very good service and great company the whole was. And so anon to church, and a good sermon, and so home, having for ease put my L19 into W. Joyce’s hand, where I left it. So to supper and to bed, being in a little pain from some cold got last night lying without anything upon my feet.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
13 May 1665.
Up, and all day in some little gruntings of pain, as I used to have from winde, arising I think from my fasting so long, and want of exercise, and I think going so hot in clothes, the weather being hot, and the same clothes I wore all winter. To the ‘Change after office, and received my watch from the watchmaker, and a very fine it is, given me by Briggs, the Scrivener. Home to dinner, and then I abroad to the Atturney Generall, about advice upon the Act for Land Carriage, which he desired not to give me before I had received the King’s and Council’s order therein; going home bespoke the King’s works, will cost me 50s., I believe. So home and late at my office. But, Lord! to see how much of my old folly and childishnesse hangs upon me still that I cannot forbear carrying my watch in my hand in the coach all this afternoon, and seeing what o’clock it is one hundred times; and am apt to think with myself, how could I be so long without one; though I remember since, I had one, and found it a trouble, and resolved to carry one no more about me while I lived. So home to supper and to bed, being troubled at a letter from Mr. Gholmly from Tangier, wherein he do advise me how people are at worke to overthrow our Victualling business, by which I shall lose L300 per annum, I am much obliged to him for this, secret kindnesse, and concerned to repay it him in his own concernments and look after this.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
23 January 1922.
The queer thing is I only remember how much I have forgotten when I hear that piano. The garden of the Casino, the blue pansies. But oh, how am I going to write this story?

"The late afternoon was beautiful in Port Willin. There was a moment when the whole small town seemed to quiver in those last bright rays. Gold shone the harbour, the windows of the big hospital on Clifton Hill flashed fiery. Only the pigeons flying so high above Post Office Square and the plumes of smoke rising from the evening fires were silver."
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
26 January 1917.
Instinct--a ‘first law’
I long to do a Murder.

Despite my futile way-of-life and my rotting destroying half-acquiescence in it I have a furious positive Murder in me.

One near me in my daily life injures me and goes on injuring me in a way which is scourging and malicious and intensely petty. There is in it helpless humiliation for me--me self-loving, proud and determinedly unsuppliant--and it makes maddening Murder rise in me.

I don’t know why I do not do the Murder. I have nothing to lose by paying the law-penalty: nothing but my life, and my life is stripped bare--and was always barren by God’s decree--of all that makes a life sacred or lovely or precious. For long years and years, since child-days, I have been lost.

I don’t know why I do not do the Murder: except that I think of it and brood over it and turn it round and round smoulderingly in my Mind. From no choice. I have tried to push the feeling away as a common thing beneath me. It is beneath me, for I am not little but someway big. But my Mind will take its toll of all that confronts me.

The humiliation and the helplessness to combat being humiliated in me who keep a casual proudness toward people is like a secret hot sword thrust, and kept freshly thrust, in my flesh. It makes me wild to do the Murder. But it makes me brood over it till the red act is lost in red brooding.

There come also thinkings.

Murder, any Murder, is in its essence cowardly, a slinking meanness. And I am not cowardly and I am not mean. I am above malice and retaliation--all such impoverished impoverishing emotions. A shrug of my shoulders and they are satisfied. The impulse to hit back after a bitter wound is not of vengeance. It is instinct--a ‘first law.’ But Murder is self-accusingly cowardly and sneakingly human. I can’t get away from that. To take away a person’s life is like setting fire to his house--an officiously stooping act. It’s for me to live my life in aloof self-sufficience. No human malice should reach me in it. Then it’s not for me to reach out of it and stain my good fingers with unpleasant sticky blood. I am always in a prison of radiance and gloom.

But the mere habit of being a human being is breakingly insistent--no matter how many or how few frocks one owns. Neither of my two dresses is a protection against humiliation. A thin black serge dress gives me to myself a melancholy cold inert air: but beneath the smooth-fitting breast of it comes too often a throbbing frightful to feel, frightful to know, made of fierce petty anger and abasing hurt. I hide it and me in my room and twist my hands together and walk my floor, and a hurricane of helpless bitter trifling woe shakes and wrenches me. Then Murder enters me.

What humiliates me is an obvious common thing that to any human one would mean hurt and more hurt. Though I am determinedly brave I am sensitive.

I do not write itself because this is the book of me and not of people.

It is a slight, a poor and vivid cruelness. There is the tie of blood in it which in all ways--from a deep heritage--I respect: and it rubs an added stinging poison in the wound.

It is an injury I do not deserve. What I deserve I accept. What I do not deserve pressed on me to humiliate me makes Murder in me. Regardless of the other one--

--it would be simpler and finer for me to do that Murder than to keep it in me. So many times in a week the trembling smothering longing to do that Murder beats, beats in my thin breast. To be so owned by a thing so small:--it is grief and despair and fury and wild nervous intolerableness. It strains my flesh--it wrenches my pulse--it blinds my eyes--it fills my throat--

--it would be a simpler and finer thing to do any Murder than to feel, even once, the strangling damnedness rising, rising at my throat--
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|maclane|>
11 March 1901.
Sometimes when I go out on the barrenness my mind wanders afar.

To-day it went to Greece.

Oh, it was very beautiful in Greece!

There was a wide, long sky that was vividly, wonderfully blue. And there was a limitless sea that was gray and green. And it went far to the south. The sky and the sea spread out into the vast world--two beautiful elements, and they fell in love with each other. And the farther away they were the nearer they moved together until at last they met and clasped each other in the far distance. There were tall, dark-green trees of kinds that are seen only in Greece. They murmured and whispered in the stillness. The wind came off from the sea and went over them and around them. They quivered and trembled in shy, ecstatic joy--for the wind was their best-beloved. There were banks of moss of a deep emerald color, and golden flowers that drooped their heavy sensual heads over to the damp black earth. And they also loved each other, and were with each other, and were glad. Clouds hung low over the sea and were dark-gray and heavy with rain. But the sun shone from behind them at intervals with beams of bronze-and-copper. Three white rocks rose up out of the sea, and the bronze-and-copper beams fell upon them, and straightway they were of gold.

Oh, how beautiful were those three gold rocks that came up out of the sea!

Aphrodite once came up out of this same sea. She came gleaming, with golden hair and beautiful eyes. Her skin glowed with tints of carmine and wild rose. Her white feet touched the smooth, yellow sand on the shore. The white feet of Aphrodite on the yellow sand made a picture of marvelous beauty. She was flushed in the joy of new life.

But the bronze-and-copper sunshine on the three white rocks was more beautiful than Aphrodite.

I stood on the shore and looked at the rocks. My heart contracted with the pain that beautiful things bring.

The bronze-and-copper in the wide gray and green sea!

“This is the gateway of Heaven,” I said to myself. “Behind those three gold rocks there is music and the high notes of happy voices.” My soul grew faint. “And there is no sand and barrenness there, and no Nothingness, and no bitterness, and no hot, blinding tears. And there are no little heart-weary children, and no lonely young women--oh, there is no loneliness at all!” My soul grew more and more faint with thinking of it. “And there is no heart there but that is pure and joyous and in Peace--in long, still, eternal Peace. And every life comes there to its own; and every earth-cry is answered, and every earth-pain is ended; and the dark spirit of Sorrow that hangs always over the earth is gone--gone,--beyond the gateway of Heaven. And more than all, Love is there and walks among the dwellers. Love is a shining figure with radiant hands, and it touches them all with its hands so that never-dying love enters into their hearts. And the love of each for another is like the love of each for self. And here at last is Truth. There is searching and searching over the earth after Truth--and who has found it? But here is it beyond the gateway of Heaven. Those who enter in know that it is Truth at last.”

And so Peace and Love and Truth are there behind the three gold rocks.

And then my soul could no longer endure the thought of it.

Suddenly the sun passed behind a heavy, dark-gray cloud, and the bronze-and-copper faded from the three rocks and left them white--very white in the wide water.

The yellow flowers laid their heads drowsily down on the emerald moss. The wind from off the sea played very gently among the motionless branches of the tall trees. The blue, blue sky and the wide, gray-green sea clasped each other more closely and mingled with each other and became one vague, shadowy element--and from it all I brought my eyes back thousands of leagues to my sand and barrenness.

The sand and barrenness is itself an element, and I have known it a long, long time.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
2 January 1920.
J. left for London. The house very empty and quiet. I was ill all day — exhausted. In the afternoon fell asleep over my work and missed the post. My heart won't lie down. No post. During the night the cat picture became terrifying.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
3 January 1920.
A load of wood. Sent review. Cold day. Miss S. called — deadly dull. Her yawn and recovery. Storm of wind and rain. I had nightmare about J. He and I separated. Miss S. talked about tulips, but she makes all sound so fussy : the threads of her soul all ravelled.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
4 January 1920.
Cold, wet, windy, terrible weather. Fought it all day. Horribly depressed. D. came to tea; but it was no good. Worked. Two wires from J. According to promise. I cannot write. The jonquils are out, weak and pale. Black clouds pull over.

Immediately the sun goes in I am overcome — again the black fit takes me. I hate the sea. There is naught to do but work. But how can I work when this awful weakness makes even the pen like a walking-stick?
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
28 October 1914.
In the meantime Prelude was hardly more than a succes d'estime, if indeed it was that. Not until it appeared as the first story in "Bliss" was its unique and profoundly original quality truly appreciated.

But in December 1917, just after she had finished revising the MS. of Prelude for the printer, Katherine Mansfield had a serious attack of pleurisy. The gloom and depression and sunlessness of a London now completely under the shadow of the war had a profound effect on one whose childhood had been spent in a gentler air. She pined for the sun; she was confident

= xi =

Introduction

that she had only to revisit her beloved Bandol in the south of France to be well again. Accordingly she left England at the beginning of January 1918. But travelling conditions in France in the last year of the war were such that the hardships she suffered on the journey (which she had to undertake alone) made her illness worse, and to her dismay, Bandol itself was utterly changed; it also had been wasted by the war. No sooner had she reached the place, ill and alone, than she passionately desired to return to England. Tragic ill-fortune dogged her in her efforts to return. The authorities delayed for weeks before granting their permission; and on the very day she arrived in Paris, weak and by this time very seriously ill, the long-range bombardment of Paris began, and all civilian traffic between England and France was suspended. The hardships of her journey in France turned her pleurisy into consumption.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
4 February 1669.
Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon home with my people to dinner, and then after dinner comes Mr. Spong to see me, and brings me my Parallelogram, in better order than before, and two or three draughts of the port of Brest, to my great content, and I did call Mr. Gibson to take notice of it, who is very much pleased therewith; and it seems this Parallelogram is not, as Mr. Sheres would, the other day, have persuaded me, the same as a Protractor, which do so much the more make me value it, but of itself it is a most usefull instrument. Thence out with my wife and him, and carried him to an instrument-maker’s shop in Chancery Lane, that was once a ‘Prentice of Greatorex’s, but the master was not within, and there he shewed me a Parallelogram in brass, which I like so well that I will buy, and therefore bid it be made clean and fit for me. And so to my cozen Turner’s, and there just spoke with The., the mother not being at home; and so to the New Exchange, and thence home to my letters; and so home to supper and to bed. This morning I made a slip from the Office to White Hall, expecting Povy’s business at a Committee of Tangier, at which I would be, but it did not meet, and so I presently back.
<|/entry|>