A Writer's Notebook (19 page)

The passing years are like a mist sweeping up from the sea of time so that my memories acquire new aspects; their harshness seems less harsh and the brutal facts less brutal. But then, by chance, as a sudden wind on the coast will dispel the mist that has rolled up from the sullen waters, a word, a gesture, a tune will destroy the fancy that the treachery of time has occasioned so that I see again with a fresh, with a more piercing distinctness, the events of my youth in all their cruel reality. And I find myself unaffected by the sight. I am like the unconcerned spectator of a play, like an old actor watching a part which he had himself created, wondering, perhaps, at the old-fashioned shoddiness of it. I look at my past self with astonishment and with a certain contemptuous amusement.

The happy rain of April.

The patient night.

In the heat a heavy silence sank upon the country.

The rich death-colours of autumn were like an infinitely sad melody, like a sad song of unavailing regret; but in those passionate tints, in the red and the gold of the apples, in the varied hue of the fallen leaves, there was still something which forbade one to forget that in the death and decay of nature there is always the beginning of other life.

The ardent, starlit night.

The changing, rosy light of dawn.

The wind, sinister and ghostly, rustled like a sightless animal through the topmost, leafless branches.

To the lover waiting for his love no sound is sadder than the tardy striking of the hours.

The lamp flickered like the last wandering glance of a man at the point of death.

A dawn would follow the long and weary night, but no light would come to his wretched heart; his soul must wander for ever in darkness, for ever in darkness, for ever.

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

The morning crept out of a dark cloud like an unbidden guest uncertain of his welcome.

C. G. and I looked at the sunset and he remarked that he considered sunsets rather vulgar. I, who was impressed with what I saw, felt humiliated. He told me contemptuously that I was very English. I had thought the fact rather praiseworthy. He informed me that his spirit was French; I thought it a pity in that case that he spoke it with such a British accent.

C. G. He has all the graces and all the virtues (figuratively
speaking only, since his morals are none too good) and he prides himself on his sense of humour. To his mind the best argument you can bring in favour of a cause is that it is unpopular. He takes a singular pride in running down his country and this he takes to be an example of his breadth of mind. Ten days in Paris with Cook's coupons have sufficed to convince him of the superiority of the French. He talks of ideal love, of Hope with a rippling laugh, and buys a harlot off the Strand for ten shillings. He explains his failures by bemoaning the age. What is there to be said for an age and country which refuses to take him at his own estimate? He wishes he had been born in ancient Greece, but he's the son of a country doctor and there and then he would have been a slave. He despises me because I take a cold bath. He is plucked in all his exams; but he turns every humiliation into a new reason for self-esteem. He writes poetry which lacks only originality to be quite passable. He has no physical courage, and when bathing is terrified at the idea of being out of his depth. But he is proud of being a coward; he says anyone can be brave, it merely shows lack of imagination.