The widow reports Tommy ''quite satisfied''
but there is more than quite satisfied in
the deeply-beaming face. He does not
speak of Marie she is present as fresh
verdure to his Soul – a ⟨fresh⟩ gentle, human
element discernible already in his
ways & words, especially the way he
flaps his soul.
He is soundly the same to us
Of Monday April 18 th
Painter comes in response to command.
I am still in tumult of anxiety – concerning Henry.
Painter speaks of the 1st act of Sabbatai.
He has liked the beginning of Act I – the
scene with the Spirit.
I read to him 2 sonnets – averring
that one of them is addressed to Tommy.
He vows he will punish that Sonnet.
Afterwards he remarks in reference to a
fine simile – Tommy is like a camel.
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[K.B.]
It is now Wednesday – my dear one is growing
better.
''We welcome each rebuff
That turns the smoothness rough.'' &
even a corn that dances is hailed[?].
Yes, Henry is better & the tips of everything
exquisite: the garden wall-flowers, grape-
hyacinths, fritillaries, auriculas.
Pols.[?] Newman on May Day (Sunday)
May Day. & Milton-May[?] 1904
Morning
Never hasting[?] Paragon greeted the
May with such pride. The air
of the garden is sweet with gilly-
-flowers. There are fritillaries, red
& white daisies, pansies, forget-me-nots
& tulips on the beds.
There is Henry …
The wide, fragrant leaves lie in the sun,
& that is how I feel.
I have written little in this fortnight
Henry has been busy fighting the Devil
at his nerve-ends. I have been
helping. His illness is, I believe,
for the strengthening of our wills.
&, if we have grace to use if so, will
infinitely enrich us.
Last Friday Painter dined with us.
He came fagged, & angry; & gradually
recovered & grew young.
He was full of enthusiasm over
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[K.B.]
Congreve’s play. The Way of the World.
Mr. Wright full of force & blood-power.
[E.C.]
Illness & Convalescence
On Thursday April 14 th I went
to the Manor House207 & had
delight with Jan208 & Amy209 in their
sheets of double-daffodils
in the Knarled old garden –
now a town garden, stranded
among trams & rail-lines,
with all its gold flowers,
its fruit-buds, its bowls
of Persian-lilac-trees, dusk
with coming clusters – its
glowing new gravel, with
worth £15.
The return journey was hot,
as if lined with thunder, &[?]
Michael & I were sundered
at Kew-Bridge. She assisted
an old lady in a wedding
garment of gray satin, on to
the platform – Puff! The train
glided off & I saw a face like
a wind-tossed rose, under the
black hat with its plumes of
white & matching them the
reef of the dear white teeth.
However we were soon re-united –
but we did not like the severance;
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[E.C.]
it had suffering for us.
All day I had had numb feet –
I had passed a pumice-stone
over the soles the night before
to make them whiter (o foolish!)
& at night I was over-heated.
Next day the numbness grew –
it was like the Shroud in
Rossetti’s King’s Tragedy210 – from
ankles it rose to knees, then
to loins. In panic I sent on
Sat. for the Doctor, & breathed
again when I heard that the
anaesthesia would not affect
the heart (on Monday I had
been for a too long day in Town
& standing in Sloane Square
banished from the Tube by the
fatal air & unable to settle
a way home I had felt the
remoteness of collapse). The
dismal man said my case was
“very unusual” – nice comfort for
the stricken Michael.
I felt like a cold dead body from
the waist – the rest of me like a
disembodied Spirit held by the
leg to its corpse. The weather
was lovely spring-tide – sun sprang
out of the trees & behold there were
rays & sparkles that were living
leaves. The softness, that is
the circumstance of growth, ruled
the temper of the hours & time.
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[E.C.]
My beloved gathered round me
tulips blowing forth like roses.
Amy brought me the very red
rose of June.
I had an excited sense of
panic – Continually, like
a general on the field I had
to give responsible orders to
my unfeeling limbs.
Bed after three days seemed
to do no good – Only when
I first got up did the
gaunt queerness of my
state make me weep
at first. The fatigue of
that generalship! Should
I always be at the point
of battle? Should I never
let the will act unconsciously
I could make my unfeeling
feet dance – but the dance
was to me that of winter
thistle-down.
Cheer quickly came back – Were
not the windows rimmed with
white fritillarias in front of a
mist of grape-hyacinths? Did
not the river look bright as a
snake in his new skin?
Amy came & we had two or three
happy sisterly meetings. Fay211
came & brought snow-flakes.
Sir George Douglas212 & Tommy213 conversed
with Michael below & I heard their
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[E.C.]
histories. On Friday Feb April 21st
Fay spent six hours with us.
He came chafed – but handsome.
Every inch of moulding caressed
by the breezy rain, a start of life
in every end of hair.
We laughed & let him rage.
“I want to say very nice things”
he protested “& soon he was
good & entertained us on
Congreve’s Way of the World214 –
Unfortunately my memory could
bear no tax at all – The
delightful things he said are
in the bridge-less limbo.
And he was long discoursing
on Anatole France’s Mannequin
d’Osier215 – on its infinite civilization.
He finds the characters touched
with an infinite conception of
temperament. These qualities
make him read Anatole – not –
as a great writer, but as a finely
modern one. The moment when
M. Bergeret lifts his hat to Mme
Grimace is a mile-stone of
progress.
Fay is for prescribing Shakespeare’s
comedies to us in place of the
Bible. That is primitive in style –
the Comedies full of the lightness
& ease of Culture. His tongue seemed
to dance as he talked of Love’s Labour
Lost – even of The Two Gentlemen.
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[E.C.]
The painter, who came like a naughty
boy, left (having lost one late
train) restored to Panship –
auriculas & great white-
shouldered fritilleries in
his hand.
Amy Bell216 (Waterloo) came
next day – a pleasant
visit. Amy amplifies
detail, till the air is soft
with what would be hard
fact with a lesser woman.
And on Sunday Louie Ellis217
& Ysoude[?] came early, carrying
from town, for my sake, a
great Longiflorum Lily.
I set it against the fritillarias
& the river-grain. It makes
a tapistry Morris218 could
not have woven. Henry
Havelock Ellis sends word
that there is no peril in my
state – it is frequent with
brain-workers & will go.
Such encouragement!
This last week Amy has been
again; Shannon has been
expected & failed as usual.
My Love has been to town & heard
Leigh read the great scene in
Othello with vibrant passion
centred profoundly.
We read the Bed-chamber Scene in
Herod219, after reading the Othello
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[E.C.]
Scene – it actually remained
bonneted[?]by ⟨in⟩ the presence of its
great challenger! It is, as it
were, of different nationality, but
of the same humanity.
On Sunday, at breakfast, I said to
Michael “Our passion has a
tendency to walk the ground
with burning feet; it rarely
takes wings & flies”. This was
well said of our later work – but
with Herod there is more flight,
in this nervous Arab’s passion.
Dr Dot came on Friday – she too
thinks my ill is transitory – &
indeed it is much less of a
weight on my being – use &
improvement both assist me.
And the dismal doctor has at
last vouchsafed to say that the
cases of anaesthesia he has
personally known were due to
Influenza. So all our panic
might have been reduced to
this suggestion, wh: the “hollows”
in my head seem to justify.
Today – Sunday – is May-Day &
we are expecting Tommy & his
bridg bride Marie. The meeting
must be momentous – because
such people are involved in its
issue. Sturge Moore, Michael & Field &
the Artists! How glad we shall
be if she can become our friend.
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[E.C.]
She accepted our invitation with
“Yours respectfully”. Poor Marie!
She is not of our country –
therefore doubly a guest.
Such May Day!
The clusters on the wisteria
en-groupe. Full of buds &
bells is our little garden.
The kind Oxford Widow has
sent me wild-flowers for the
festival – the yellow wild tup
tulip of Oxfordshire, white
wild fritillarias, wild anemones
(one even flushed with the country)
wild hyacinths, white cottage-
primroses & vast wood-primroses.
I am quite unable before Herod
as yet, but I travel into Arabia
with Burton, & discover more
& more how the man described
by Josephus had the Beduin
Shaykh at the centre of his
character.
May Day – o the gladness! And
a little garden worthy of Flora.
Now to meet the Bride & the Guest!
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[K.B.]
Written on May Day 94
She dies; it is our prayer that she should die:
With what sweet music shall she fall on death,
For jarred is all the music of Love’s breath
And she much hear all noises that pass by
Without His muffling wings? She will hear the cry
Of laughter from the streets: what the street saith
Rises through open doors: she shuddereth
As one had stripped her to the open sky –
But who is this, with face that none may mark
Bows over her, & silent spreads the shades? –
Within her hand there is a flower that fades,
And a great grove behind the scepter shows
O Venerable, draw her to repose,
Keep her for ever with thee in the dark!
_
Marie is like a sod of green turf.
When Tommy peeks, he will find the
daisy, the grass, the wholesome worm.
The May Day is – as not before for years.
From the Terrace range on range of
low hills, as only on clearest days
everything soft & growing.
Alack! Heaven cannot just now
supply iron for the will: Heaven is
doling out all sorts of fostering[?] foods.
How foolish is the naming of the moments!
Brides & Priests, & Kings – the Blush,
the Vocation, the [????] of God. We
cannot see these things; & a rage
of disappointment seizes us, when
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[K.B.]
we come in after the event.
[E.C.]
Marie is dusk, responsive to the
country air as blue-berry.
She has ableness of character –
the true Protestant strain, &
ability – her English is
wonderful in attack –
& a bright-eyed independence
of phrasing makes one
laugh as at the motions
of a healthy living creature
in the meadows.
Now & then she has the
gesture – a trick of the brows
that reminds me of Michael’s
old friend of Paris days –
Miss Gérante – who, strange
to say, Marie describes as
almost a “great-grandmother”
to her! So it comes about we
learn from Tommy’s bride
how the good little soul,
the sister of Michael’s
supreme love, Alfred Gérante,
came quietly to her end
in the Deaconnesses Home,
with pasteurs to pray with her,
& by favour, her beloved objects
round her – all her mementos.
How strange is life – how strange!
Tommy read the Gazelles – but
badly, monotonously.
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[K.B.]
I send my May Sonnet to Painter. The next
day – Tuesday – he comes.
Yes, but the surveyor has left a long[?]
perfume; we are still agitated, & close
upon Painter’s heels presses John. I decide
they shall not meet. I am frayed with
weeping; feeling already only the walls
of me are left standing, – I must enjoy –
so the devoted Henry discusses leases
downstairs with John; & we in the sun
– roam, speak of Dryden’s Antony & Cleopatra
of Sabbatai – of Eleanora[?] Duse &c. & the
Sonnet.
He is disappointed in Sabbatai –
because he conceives Rénan’s
Jesus, repeated dramatically in the
central actions of his life.  He
holds with Rénan, there was absolute
disillusion when Jerusalem was
entered; he regards that Life as to itself
failure.
But we have not touched that divine
Figure. Rather we give the uncertainty,
the error, & forsakenness of one called,
but not chosen – one who for a moment
had confidence in himself from within
– & then went about seeking a sign.
In Christ, I, Michael, find a fulfilled
Ideal, in Sabbatai the wreck of a man
who is not a hypocrite – who is rejected
– who cannot lay hold –
Every endowed & doubting Soul is
a Sabbatai. Sabbatai has nothing[?]
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[K.B.]
in him of the fluency of faith.
Painter has always felt profoundly
the tragedy of Christ – he would have
liked our Sabbatai to have something
of his richness of allure, his tenderness.
This was not in our scope.
We speak of Rossetti. “You are like him –”
“No, Michael, Rossetti was one of the original
minds of his time. I am not that.
I am a spectator, doubled by the actor.
That means I am a critic.
I am the greatest spectator I have
ever known”. Of his painting he will not
speak, but much of its his life, in its
current of change & fate –
He likes the Palace, it is not hostile to
him. He likes its sense of solidity – that
storms do not shake it. And he likes the
mid-night landscape from those high
windows – Kensington Gardens he
does not like.
There are brief glances of Henry –
but when I find her with Amy[?] – long
after John’s departure – at last, after
Painter is gone - She is fallen petals.
#
Yesterday May 4 th, we kept my Mother’s
wedding-day (70 years ago) with finer
fritillaries than ever. Round the
honoured[?] portraits flowers grown
in the garden clustered.
To-day My Dearest has been with me
– gathering the long-peach tulips from
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[K.B.]
our garden-bed. She is always exquisite
in convalescence, & I am grieved to be
but dull cloud to her gaiety.
I have written to Mary – “the leaves
have come out gallantly. – but I hate
the gallant leaves.
I love to see my dearest gathering
flowers. I like to witness that action
best in all the world.”
Philosophy.
If it be space that makes long distances,
Beauty it is that brings our joys to pass,
Drawing together that that severed was:
As a cut branch of blossom from the bees
Cut off, is, in its cluster, full of these,
The drag, & all the murmur of their mass;
So I behold the features in a glass
Wherever Beauty is, & smile at ease,
Feasting at leisure on thee, though thou lack,
Feasting at leisure, counting all thy praise.
So is it with thy love, I have thee back,
All thy perfections subtle in my gaze,
If I but look on Love – so am I sure
Of thee, while Beauty & while Love endure.
May 6th. 1904.
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[E.C.]
The Week from Marie’s Sunday to
the Apparitio Sancti Michaelis.
__
Tuesday
We expect Amy – I look out at a
rap & see Fay’s pilgrim cloak.
He has arrived on the top
of the pert Surveyor who has
comes ⟨been⟩ to chronicle repairs,
leaving my breast full of
aspics.
He looks ill – like a white
flower tired & purpling in
its shadows: no question
but he has had influenza.
Another rap! I slip out to
receive Amy, past a heap
of Sabbataї Acts, a vol. of
Anatole France & a vol.
of Dryden’s plays. I open the
door – . . It is John, with
apple & cherry-flower from
the Manor, come to read
over the Lease. I draw him
down into the Gold Room, where
strawberries smile – swiftly
order up ⟨tea⟩ to the Sun Room
for Michael & Fay, & tea to be
served with the strawberries
for John & me, excusing ‘Auntie’
on the ground of literary talk
about a play. Alas, I miss all
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[E.C.]
refreshment in ideas while welcoming
John’s kindness & the touching
blossoms. Amy, looking charming
in green comes later to join
the Gold-Room Party. When John
is gone, Amy is sent for to
receive the mannered greeting
of Ricketts, noisily bantering &
filled with laughter.
I am tired– tired . . .
Since then my adventures have
been with flowers . . . Darwin
Tulips of wine & oyster-violets,
of peaches in awe at the satins
they stain – great boughs
from the orchard, pinions of
a Sun of the Morning . .
lifted strands, petal over petal,
flowers over buds[?] – a ‘ruffle’
for flight on the wind that
will carry them away.
On Thursday little Dodge came,
but danced about my nerves,
tired & needing discreet sympathy
Mary220 is ill at I Talti221 –
Bernhard222 ailing.
Perry Feilding[?] has married a
Flaxen-haired Architect –
Maysfield,223 the Poet, has received
a daughter.
Michael sups with Cockerell224 & two
young people – poor Michael!
The young person is not for us.
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[E.C.]
When we are very old the young
may sit at our knee
“as if we had a mystery
and wonder to unfold”
That is the only way in wh: we
can touch youth – its crudeness
subdued; its self-importance
must be made gracious by
that gift of the wise Graces –
attention.
After the kindly insult of the
company Cockerell adds the
injury of setting his trio of
guests to picture-books.
It is terrible to trust converse⟨entertainment⟩
to the Eye, the most weariable
of the Senses – flatness &
exhaustion of all society
result. Poor Michael!
But she returns to find me in
a rosy garlanded hat from
the good Véréna,225 & some
cheer is born.
The hours of May have been cold
– very cold in manner.
How slow have the days been!
I progress at first with the
movement of a glacier – now
with that of a wakened serpent
or tortoise.
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[E.C.]
Yesterday (Sat.) Michael, who is jarred
& prostrate in nerve, went to the
dentist only to hear nothing need
be done – So she went to the
new gallery & reveled in
Watts’226 Fugue227 – the living
counterpoint of its colour.
Meanwhile I am struggling
with sickness, the Schedule
of Repairs is sent by the Trustees,
the cheerless Doctor comes to
me out of our air good for
neither man nor beast, &
over the River boards are
set up offering sites with
a river-frontage – our worst
fear & anguish realised.
When Michael & I are together
again we suffer the most excessive
crise des nerfs.
All day my nerves have been as
tops & whip-card in a substantial
tangle.
I cannot conceive infamous houses
directly before our eyes.
I cannot conceive us without
Paragon –
And I have a deadly fear of
the country & the indigenous
cow.
While Fay’s hate of Kensington Gardens
is a warring against town.
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[E.C.]
Today we have been enabled to
put by our trouble – we have
been strengthened, stabilised,
settled under the Appearing
of St. Michael.
We have finished Twelfth Night
It teems with Michael’s
youth . . it is full of the
honey & cloves of youth.
Sweet, sweet fooling –
sweet, sweet love-making
& a key of music set from
the very first.
Our beautiful yellow Puss Ruff
has wandered. I love all
our animals to be in fold.
But today we have the gaiety
of some kind of hope in
us. Michael has even
wrought at Herod.
I have sent Act I to be typed
for the garlanding of lovelier work.
A Snatch
It is the Spring –
O Eros of the Garden & the trees!
There are leaves & unforbidden
By a void my birds are hidden –
Each bird a quick May-breeze:
and the birds sing.
_
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[E.C.]
Anatole France’s Contemporary Books:
A Kaleidoscope[?] of the fragments
of today, shaken into patterns,
not by the hand of a child
but of a much grown-up man.
The irony alone is in the
shaking – there is innocence
still in the result.
We have from him mockery
out of the very gentleness
of civilisation[?]. He is not
too serious for Now – whenever
there is seriousness in a man’s
work the past preaches or[?]
the future idealises.
Anatole France lies in the
atmosphere of our breath,
& sees the light of on our
Days, & focuses it on some
individuals, & watching how
it characterises them with
pervasive tenderness.
He is kind toward fellow-men
as our sun toward the suburbs,
the occupations of modern life.
And in his light we can see
a little light – for he is patient,
& humorously deprecating.
Anti Semitism
Putting aside the influence of science,
I believe that most of the
irreligion of today is due
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to suppressed Anti-Semitism.
Judaism is Oriental & Christianity
alone conquered the West by
its foreign elements – all
in it that could be affiliated[?]
to Greece & Rome & the North.
In the Catholic Church
we have an Occidental
Creation, full of the philosophy
of Greece, the practical
functioning of Rome, the
old Pagan latitude & beauty⟨loveliness⟩
– the Western solidarity with
Nature that man enjoys under
temperate suns.
There came Protestantism
to destroy, & to offer a Jewish
Book for an European
Church. Protestantism holds
to the Bible & nothing but
the Bible, & it has gone
very near to destroying
Christianity by an Orientalism
abhorrent to the genius
of Europe.
The Wisdom of the World-
Snake was in the Church
of Rome when it withheld
the Bible & disavowed its
Eastern origin.
Peoples, like individuals, have
a tendency as they age to
revert to their early ideas &
tendencies, & our developed
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[E.C.]
civilisation will not endure a
superimposed Asiatic dominance,
but breaks away to the real
& free sources of its inspiration.
Protestantism has done a
dangerous harm to Christianity
by re-attaching it to Judaism –
they must be severed – if
Christ is to be the Star, the
Morning Star, of the white
races.
May 15th Chestnut Sunday 228, &
“Mid-May’s Eldest Child”.
After a day of hot wind – a killing
loveliness[?] that made the⟨wrung⟩
the wide young leaves & brought
aches into one’s flesh, today
comes a spring-triumph.
We have been by the river glad
of the air & of the benignant Sun.
Every object is a fountain springing
up as an ecstasy of light,
streaming down as a benison[?]
of light. How the lilacs are lilac!
How the breeze chucks them under
each tuft. The old Bridge is a
centre of a [????] of boats & steamers.
On the bulk of the steamer
the surface-motions of the
river dance – they are soft, diffusive
as the movements of fire – they
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[E.C.]
grow out of their activity in the
same way.
The reflection we is a net of
living fire, made from the
silk of the Thames.
And our bowery little garden –
so cool to the head under
the roses & such a blaze
of tup tulips in the open!
We are hoping to start for Parrock
Farm on Tuesday – the boxes
are half-packed & Music’s
eyes are solicitous.
Vincent Hayahi – the Jap. Ambassador
will touch life with us in
June – having taken Bingham
House – one ivy-wall between
us & the ally! Well, the
Japs find our situation desirable
– & Old Furkes[?] is bankrupt.
The view may still be saved . . . .
if I could believe it rock-sure
it would.
The Great Event of this Year is the
arrival of Fay’s Prado –
An Astonishment! He writes –
there is dignity & subtleness in
the English; there is Craft, just
what Bernhard lacks. Fay
would not have written if Bernhard
had never written – so far a
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[E.C.]
debt – all the rest is a fortune.
How cautious Fay is! – a hedge
all round to keep ‘little Charlie’
safe from attack – a well-grown
hedge of noble modesty, not
a cowardly pallisade.
I suppose the photo gravures are
the best possible, but the pictures
are half-lost, & far more truly
revealed in the text. I
have read little yet.
As Browning said to us –
I discrown no-one to crown
Fay. He is a natural King.
Now of his last visit –
He breaks in at tea (Tues. May 10th)
creative gaiety about his head
like bees. He has been painting.
On the settee upstairs we have
Max Beerbohm’s Poets’ Corner.
Fay draws our chairs into a
crescent that we may all in
enjoy it. Then such laughter!
Divine laughter crackling like
a god’s. He does not (as
Michael says) laugh with us, but
to & of himself; as the thunder
thunders of the cloud. When he
passes it is to sob with joy
“O My God!” – or to ripple into
encomium “It is a beautiful book –
beautiful, beautiful” I think
Rossetti in his back garden evoked
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[E.C.]
the roundest agony of peals –
Swinburne in his old maid’s
bonnet of hair with his finicky
mischief under Watts-Dunt’s229
finger is a delight to kill
with. Stupendous in cruelty
& power is the Matthew Arnold –
Whitman inciting the obstinate
bird of freedom sets the
laughter to such volume
I only hear the tremulous
shriek “this braces!”
The soft abundance of
humour in the Omar & “Thou”
does not liberally strike
on Fay, & he is not well-
acquainted enough to realise
the chalky perfection
of George Moore face
as he meets the Fairy
Queen under Yeats’ encouraging
arm. The little toes & legs
of the good-boy-realist, his
nice shining manners – ~
perfection, perfection! Yeats is a
rather cruel caricature –
though the attitude & pose are
convince one’s deepest amuse-
-ment.
Max is a wonderful critic
by distortion – the novelty
strikes to the centre of a
characteristic & brims us with
delighted recognition of it.
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[E.C.]
Perhaps Fay enjoys Browning drinking
tea with the Browning society as
much as any – Especially the
portentous matron of the
lower-middle class who supports
the fabric of the Fad.
Deliciously suggested the flesh &
blood presence of a great man
in the midst of non-sense he
has evoked … the Kingly,
genial head having its
amusement above the body
that is not severed from
the class of its neighbours!
East Grinstead
The Crown Hotel230
May 21st.
We have had adventures.
On Tuesday, May 17th – we start for
Upper Parrock Farm – To begin with
the wine runs out of the lunch basket –
Bacchus231 unfavourable!
As we approach Forest Row 232 we en-
-counter lustrous country. The trees
shine – the lie of the fields & copses
seems to enhance the youth of
in their spring brightness. But
alas, our Cab climbs in the wrong
direction – away from enlightenment.
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Even here the great speedwells cry
out Speed well! The strawberry
flowers are as lambs for the
slaughter. Indeed all the
flowers are ready for the butcher –
so round, so clean fat!
We draw up by a ribbed house
– that suggests colonial life, &
wait on the grass, in our cab –
while the mixen gapes on
one side, & the yellow-ball
flowers gape on us from the
other. All is silence & great
horror. Then at last the door
opens & an ageless old woman
in black, with the manners of
an unf underfed Cat, creeps
up. Entering a door that looks
as if no mere human soul
ever passed it, & feeling the fingers
of a vicious guardian-rose
plucking at me, I am in a
little mouldy den of a hall – &
then in a large colonial-looking
room, an oak rafter the only
signature of antiquity, &
mould as of the family vault
for atmosphere!  A window
fixed as the manure-yard &
its central treasure – the Well.
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[E.C.]
As Fay would say – “My God!”
we left the violeted chick on
its dish, & out on to the
common grass! Our very souls
stuttered before the mutual
confession We must go. But the
cab was away in the remote
roads. We learn a telegram
can be sent – we re-call the
parted cab. Pussy behaves
very well … has she not been
stroked for five winters by old
Lady H …. who has recently
died at Hampton Court?233 So she
understands those who have recently
left the royal borough of Richmond.
But we have to pay little short
of ₤2 . . . & the future is a blank.

Here follows bits from Michael’s
letter to Fay.
“The old woman, our hostess, boasted
she had “suckled” the herd of
young creatures in the meadow.
She had the guardianship of a
Doctor’s son (species, I should say,
idiot) whom she had set in her
energy to build a greenhouse.
When Henry saw the patient’s childish
garden of polyanthus, rising out of the
grass, she turned the head of our
luggage back to civilisation.
Behold us at The Crown, E. Grinstead.
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[E.C.]
Our great excitement has been going
over a fine old Elizabethan house to
let in the street. It has the most
perfectly proportioned rooms I have
ever entered, panelled walls &
a chimney-piece : – Beside a little
dark-panelled library, for all
the world like the famous
Supper-Room at Holyrood
from the diamond panes one
reads the date 1599 – about
the date say of the “Sonnets”;
& other sonnets might be written
There . . . but the repetition of the
Rizzio234 tragedy makes profounder
appeal to Michael’s imagination.
Henry’s pale eyes burnt. I
checked her by reference to a
neighbouring slaughterhouse, &
refused to look at the folded eyelid
of a far, fair country beyond
the diamond panes.
Next Tuesday we start for a week
at Court House Farm, Rottingdean
(your old quarters) There I will allow
Henry to open the Prado. Here
I remember lines & verses of old
hymns. The rustic dead have,
I suppose, left them on the air . . .
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[E.C.]
I continue:
The chickenette is torn up, but not
Eaten – Then the hostess proposes we
should have a look round, & presents
us to a brede[?] of free Chase, on
which a stable⟨confused⟩ pattern of
sunny green rests from the bits
of underwood here & there. We
almost yield to the wine of air,
to that free Chase. Further, we
see Louis Napolean’s fish-pond –
without an imperialist desire to
reach it. Food, is rather a
negligible circumstance here,
it seems, just as a doctor is –
people always have their health
here. “But if you feel frightened⟨lonely⟩
I would not have you stay.”
The good woman drives off the
young cattle & assures us she
has suckled them all. There is
no family here of human kind.
But deep in bents[?] I see a
scrawled bed or two, & some
polyanthuses235 in turf – they
can’t be there by nature, & if the
ground is not the pure garden-
bed their tufts are almost super-
-natural. I shudder; & hear
that the plot belongs to a doctor’s
son, who had come here ill from
India – sunstruck in the wits I
opine. He becomes the denizon
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[E.C.]
of Parrock Farm, & the hostess a
priestess & the suckled animals
a temple-herd round the Idiot.
When I speak of my illness,
I am greeted with nerves!
Old Lady H . . . was never allowed
to be ‘grumpy’. The keeper of the nerve-farm,
the nerve-farmer . . . the lady
nerve-farmer herself . . is a study –
she has the thin lips & thin
eye-lids, the cheerful thinness
in the voice of a being of
single experience – Parrock Farm.
She is original as the cuckoo-
[????]⟨wild-arum⟩, among the hedge-flowers . . .
a temperament of curious
colour & a noticeable quaint
tongue.
The parted Cab – back again &
for us! We run on the grass
to it; we bid farewell with
hysterical assurances we shall
never forget the kindness of
the woman with our ₤2 in
her black pocket & her troublesome
guests going beyond the chance
of giving trouble. But we nearly
weep with sentiment! It is
the shock of that Cab, that
reprieve in a mounted square,
standing up by the mixen.
We are light as air . . . The boxes
groan over us, we are weak &
weary, the world is before us
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[E.C.]
unprepared for us – but we are light
as air & jauntily accost those[?]
speedwells for their irony in
calling up to us their interjection
of encouragement to Parrock.
Various inns are looked at
& rejected . . through the glancing
Maytide we drive to East Grinstead
& its Dorset . . Cycle-motor manners
there & no possible room!
Am dead with weariness – the
sensation of gyves round my
knees . . . sent[?] on to the Crown we
find goodness core-deep in the
land-lady & her daughter. Joy,
very exaggeration of joy, for a
harbour above a street where
man goes by & old houses still
shelter the modern shops, &
shallow gray steps lead us up to
pollard limes[?] – joy for all this!
But the cost of this trying day
is utter depression which lasts
after a night of assoupissment[?].
Whym is not well – he repeats
our mood in fur.
No-one knows where we are –
We drive to the Forest – a glory
of sun on the leaves where there
are some . . . but the forest is a
name & no wood-gods rule
or have forest-nights there.
On Thursday we seek out a lady – a
distant friend, as it were, of friends –
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[E.C.]
The road is suburban – everywhere
the retriever in wait for Chow, &
no-one at home . . .
But coming back we find Spanish
irises growing with fresh stems
& a sparkle of edges in ⟨a⟩ box of a
flower-shop. Michael brings me
twelve dewy bannerets[?] of
flowers – misery is at an
end. I begin to make our
room more harmonious.
I wonder what blossom will
reconcile me to the Other Life –
What Tree over the Grave or sweet
plant will make me at home
with myself:
Then we seek & find the only green
way out of E. Grinstead – the East
Court Estate – of course offered for
building sale. But, oh, the
verdure of this May! How we
have seen leaves – the plentitude
of their shapes! There is grass
to the feet, & rooks to the ear – Each
is the Carpet of peace to a sense.
And for the eye, there is greenness &
a square red house looking on
its distances unexcitedly.
Peace – perfect peace & abundant
month of the May!
Thursday
Another drive beyond suburbs into
a country[?], so indiginous there
is little wonder that Roman roads
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[E.C.]
are not to be found. What of the Latin
could tread this rusticity[?]? The air
is dull, a glorious dull thing – where
are there any associations save
the honourable local births,
marriages & deaths? A forest,
desecrated for iron-smelting,
has left no boscage in the
imagination, such as Keats says
of to Psyche. Where is there a
Genius in this large country there
is only View – a complex of ground
views, a[?] singleness of
platitude?
But we enjoy the lanes – the leafy
hedges, the herby-flowers. At
last we are on the ridge of
Ashdown Forest. O air of a
sea that has caught as its
amber & seaweed, the substance
of the gorse-scent, the rocking
of the pine-scent! In the
Warren – little strewage of
cones – Dionysus! Here we
could be happy.
We cut through a body of air – this
spine is a quick division of
airs that are one in their
Essence.
Below we look at Golf Links &
a small house for borders, kept
by a charming creature – like
a leafless stem in blossom! But
how impossible to be among new
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[E.C.]
villas & hicks[?], in small surroundings!
After tea we go over Cromwell House –
Such a room there! The proportion of
it a blessing – over a hundred
little panels expressing its walls –
a mantel-shelf 1599 – one high
window on the street, the its
other ‘soul-side’ turned to
the weald & forest – The
passages mossed with damp –
the poor garden cloked with
quicken, full of set strawberry
flowers – a cast-off firmament[?]
of little planets.
Here a ruckle[?] of Scotch rose-trees
in bud, there a giant white
Columbine, with first few
flowers, spirred spurred &
profound[?] in romance.
Upstairs the Cabinet Michael
calls[?] of Holyrood – a little reliquary
to hold a Queen . . .
But the damp, the desolation,
the shorn[?] garden – & the
slaughter-house! No, not here
is the finger of God pointing us –
Save for a half-hour of ravishment.
We leave it for the green of East Court, blown
over by a North Wind.
In the night Chow’s licking is joined
by the lick of rain over all!
Poor Chow – poor Michael!
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[K.B.]
The Crown Hotel East Grinstead
Whit Sunday. May 22nd.
We have flowers of flame. We are growing
well. Heaven, at Rottingdean, give us the
life of the Spirit
It is unloving of the old to wish to leave the
earth. What have I, said Tristan, but my
body & my country. To the earth, to our
body, we bid eternal adieu. We shall be
dearer loved of those who love us, if we
do not want to die. We shall be
less remorseful in heaven, if we
have loved human things to the end –
if we have been good, & indulgent to
human things, as to the excessively old
and childish. this ancient, honourable,
earth, how good to be an inhabitant thereof
for a season.
Therefore to have witnessed this season⟨spring⟩
of the gallant leaves is good, & many
a saint in heaven may be sighing back
to us.
The gorse 237-scent has brine in its blood.
If Apollo oiled his locks, like the curled
Antony238, he wd rub in a gorse pomade.
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[E.C.]
Whit Sunday
Very gray – but we achieve peace.
In the afternoon, going to East Court,
We see the sky dove-like brooding
over the expanse of country.
And we visit a nine-year-old
Garden round a red brick residence
that proves how Love is enough –
it is spaced by rose-arches
firm enough in leafy architecture
for Mantagna239 to put his
visions of stone in front of
them. At every corner the
loved herb, the cherished
flowering bush, the adored
plot of old-fashioned flowers:
colonies of columbines, iris both
high & low, flamy[?] avens,
rosemary – ah, so many
loves!
Whit Monday
Morning spent down Blackwell Hollow.
A heavenly May-day! In May,
there is a largeness of style
in the Earth one does not get
again till October – a diversity
& sweeping of the light – something
Pre-eminently vital & therefore
large in the aspect of the
land – a beauty of expansion,
before limit is reached, that
is full of In infinite sway.
The fields that end in harvest are
but pile of green grass – they teem
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[E.C.]
with buttercups, they skip with
daisies – the trees that will be
a slowly withering shade are
now ⟨but⟩ lights to lighten the
brows & pastures. The skies
have sweetness of temperance
as sense of [????] discipline
makes them noble. And
The forms of leaf & flower are
innumerous. Birds fly &
babble, till the air has rillets
of its own – singing bl brooks.
And there are all the nebulae
of sound from the voice of
insects.
Though we have been wretched at
East Grimstead – with Chow 240 ill &
the air a melancholy outside
us & drawn in, we feel kindness
after taking the two ladies of the
Mantagna-arched garden to see
Cromwell House. That parlour!
So full of quiet ages, when the home
was nearly as quiet as the grave!
Nothing of the streets in it – a hold
against them rather.
Then the brede of country between
the town & Each Court is so full
of greenery, full of mellowness
& blossoming under sundown
we feel contrition we have not
loved it more.
The oaks are just in their youth – hung
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[E.C.]
as with Baltic amber241 – beneath
them blue-bells hyacinthine 242,
the discord of a master!
To change the simile, this
sharp thick violet is the
right syrup to be served
with the goldenly-embrowned
substance of the foliage &
shows Earth a Chef who can
dare the utmost.
Michael will remember from
East Grimstead –
(1)243The daisies, the shut daisies,
over the graves, on each side
of the way where we passed
with Chow – there they rested
& seemed to wish to give us
rest as they had found it.
(2) The mead that was flowing
from the sycamore-flowers,
wet with rain, on Whit Sunday
morning.
(3) And a spray of hazel on which
the nuts were but stripling leaflets
with a queer little morsel of
promise among them.
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[E.C.]
Tuesday In dense wetness we leave
The Crown. Such nice people – the
rosy old Mother weeping fresh
tears over the cheeks her artistic
daughter (a pupil of Herkomer244)
is now experiencing); the younger
daughter, thin & blue-eyed as a
corn-blue-bottle, playing her
piano, making good cakes, &
bowing to her Mother’s orders –
quickly made by her effective
orders to the house. We shall
always keep in mind their
human kindness.
Sealed up in our 1st Class Carriage
we make a long, depressing journey.
Brighton at last! Always cheer
in its robust conditions – immense
sea, bright shops, houses too high
to be ignoble, inviting donkey-
shays & victorias.
The old downs, ugly, unchanged –
there the roofs of dear Rottingdean!
Court House farm – alas, spoiled
by cork floral boxes, formality
of beds – but quiet Mrs Johnson,
the fidelity of quietness in her
there is in the b beautiful lines
of South Downs, to receive us.
Our rooms – nearly the same, but
cut off at the folding-doors – &
beatitude!
Rottingdean is to us as a Beloved –
plain to others, a compliment of
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[E.C.]
qualities to us – what we need,
what we needs must love.
This power of places as of
persons is a mystery.
behold we adore Rottingdean
– we are happy.
Now we know the intensity
of the wretchedness we have
known. I wondered if I
were too broken in nerve
ever to feel natural joy
again. Though I cannot
stir from the house I lie
& picture Fay by the mantel
shelf like a Michael Scott
be-wizarding Michael – or
looking down the road I
see his demon-motion, as
if his cloak bore him over-
ground.
And when we came down to
dinner there is a witty,
wicked letter from him to
Michael. She had “begun
to remember the lilacs were
fading” on wh: she had sworn
he should have his copy
of The Prado245 back: on this
he remarks “I do not intend
discoursing on the moral aspect of
your seizure of the Prado as I had
intended the copy for you, Holmes
having received a duplicate copy for
review.” So the Prado is ours, even as
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[E.C.]
The Florentine Drawings –
I don’t know what makes us love
Rottingdean so much – it is like
true marriage. Others may
wonder at our joy but there it is.
The Downs set me in order as
God’s command gave genesis
to Chaos – it is fundamental
as that.
We found that on the Weald the
sheep-census equalled the
human – The are ⟨air⟩ was rural
& sheep-heady. Here the sheep
are but a cloud or two on one
element, Earth; while sea & air
sweep the curly creatures
limitlessly.
Michael writes to Janet –
“We are here among the rock-gardens
& rose-daisies of Rottingdean. We are
in this country of the Earth & Sky
& air – A nightingale would know
that she was naked in this country
& be ashamed. But bareness in
Maytime & the cowslip with a sugar-
dew of its own, & at the sweet old
florists where I used to get white violets
for the artists, storms of purple stock &
purple columbine! We have a
hostess[?] I call the Flemish Madonna, &
Henry calls her the Dove of the Ark.
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[E.C.]
Our news is most exciting.
My copy of The Prado is with us.
It is a glorious book – rich,
invigorating, modest, arrogant
& enjoying – full of exquisite,
suggestive phrases & sentences.
In a word I have the joy of
recognising the Painter as a
Writer. How many Kingdoms
he conquers! For the rest – doubtless
the Eagles will gather together
over the body of this book.
Another bliss has been to us
Max Beerbohm’s Poet’s Corner
– a series of divinest caricatures.
One evening, just before we left
Paragon, Painter, Henry & I gathered
our chairs close together to
laugh in chorus over Rosetti’s
Back Garden &c. But doubtless
you have been to the gallery? In
any case we possess the book,
& this & the Prado Janet shall
enjoy when we return for (a.b.w)[?] in
rather mid-June. Dear Henry is
re-gaining her famous Rottingdean
beauty – a face as clear & placid
as the seas. She is growing better,
& is not only herself, but more than
herself.
It is nearly two years since our last
visit to Rottingdean: the infant
just born (the fruiterer’s infant) then,
has now eye-lashes that over-shadow
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[E.C.]
his cheek like sycamines”.
Wednesday 25th of May.
We wander about, about –
after tea we ascend the White Way –
The ⟨several⟩ planes of dawn are each stretches
of vari-colours in their most
delicate bloom. We meet the
Shepherd – cheeks like washed
coral – dog, a young pure-bred
Sussex sheep-dog, with Kindliness
of eye, a pot au feu of goodness.
The sheep are all ba-ing
in their wattles.
Cowslips of the turf, never more
than two together, cowslips
on short stems, with a few large
flowers cherished by sea-wind . . .
we pick – the fresh little stems
break like glass.
There is sundown over the slopes;
& in the meadows the lit
dandelion-clocks are nature’s
Japanese lanterns for the fête –
the daisies are⟨become⟩ a presence, a
multitudinous white half way
up the grass, so that they seem
to float.
We each stand by Burne Jones’ grave
– that dear grave that taught me
Tristan’s mood in [????]
To think we were living with Cesare
& Alexander when we were here last!
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[E.C.]
And now our Bedouin Herod
is taking the great air with us!
Tristan – Julia Donna & Caracalla –
Cesare, Alexander, Lucrezia, &
Herod the Idumæan!
What company! – & add the
Artists.
 We climb up
to him, & he shirks off, leaving
a rill of breeze & a space
of light where he has been.
Friday 27 May
But he is back at night –
Oh! The heat! Whym nearly bursts
with his pants, our slumber is
a stifled & prolonged groan.
This morning the air⟨rain⟩ – a vision
of rain in the midst of blackness.
The rooks have been disturbed – it
is sacrilege; rooks are the genii of
security.
Michael writes to Painter –
“Cowslip-time on the Downs & the grass
at her closest mysteries. The rooks alone
are wheeling about angrily. They are
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[E.C.]
mourning their murdered young – shot
unaccountably & in glossy multitude.
They mourn on the wing – so I will
not stay to be sorry.
Such a nice letter was laid on my
dinner-table on Tuesday. It fell in
deliciously among the cowslips &
soft brines of my mood.
Henry & I are now reading the Prado
through.
Don’t write “output” – that is what
Bernhard would do!! I cannot
give you the right word . . . Sometimes
you can say work or production
(or creation) “Output” is vile, worse
than “You have deceived me” in
Sabbataї.
You have fine sentences hidden away
like violets under their leaves. If
one is impatient one misses them.
More & more, with delight, I recognise
in you the appreciator. Instead of
cheap abuse, or apology, you make
us feel the virtue, or, at least, the
gift or attractiveness of the
poorest little Artist.
Would you like to hear the old florist from
whom I used to get white violets
for you has storms of purple stocks &
of purple columbines? We have
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[E.C.]
memories at Rottingdean – memories
of Caracalla, of Tristan, of Caesar
Borgia, of ___
but it is lunch-time!
Michael.”
Trinity Sunday.
Last night Michael stormed across
my sullen sky – ⟨for us⟩ so miserable,
so unnecessary! – Only nerves . . .
& the vast mystery of that which
was & is & is to come lying
lying before us in the relation
of its Love!
Our feast retrieves its Vigil.
The sky beams after thunder-
rains – in the grass for mowing
the blaze of the buttercups
is such one can hardly look.
And the grasses themselves are
motes & web of planetary
brilliance.
I re-read the Gold Tristan – an
achievement in secousses de
passion . . . but wanting its true
end. All the scenes, except
the death-scene, have reached that
point where an element utters
itself – that point in emotion
when, like the cloud that must
thunder, the cloud that must rain,
the season that must be spring,
the season that must drop every
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[E.C.]
spoil, need becomes actuality.
In the death scene this moment
– the capture of wh: is the method
of the play – remains neglected.
In fact it is avoided & a
sense of levity triumphs.
The radiant morning glooms . . .
Before tea, while at wander[?] in
front of the house, we see a thunder
cloud over the north, from which
the air takes hollowness.
A malignant pallor begins to
turn Eastward . . . At our return
the doors, the windows are all
open as they are before a coming of
death.
Afterward on the Downs we see the
storm stream smoulderingly out
to sea, while we are in a light of
keen relief, almost a shimmer.
Before the lines of down I
pace, leaving Michael & Chow on
a summit-mound, & concentrate
my passion on Tristan’s End.
Gradually the vision of a new
last scene forms, different from
the fine situation in the
Flame Tristan, where he grips
the wall, supported by his old
father-in-law & his old servant.
It was is difficult to sweep clear
of that so arresting group.
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[K.B.]
May 31st. I write to Fay – from whom I
have a charming letter – speaking of
his horoscope &c, & complaining we must
not treat the Prado seriously –
“Get up, dear Serpent, from your smallness
Don’t play at being a small serpent, like
your great hero in Paradise Lost. Be
cloudy blue, & sorcerous, & elusive at
pleasure, so only you are not dwarfish
For – listen, – I have a secret thing to tell
you – destroy this letter – for Shannon must
never read it – since I have been at
Rottingdean – I have found written on
my heart – not Calais – but Diane. Diane
de Poitiers – & the French Renaissance (for
which I have been thirsting) the
Heavens are with this theme. I
hear of a vital book – speaking to me
already from Bain – with portraits –
But already – She is the Fair Rosamund
of Age . . . If the stars tell you anything of her,
your horoscope will be of supreme interest
I am in that most blessed state
of rest before creation – of which
the Lord (in Genesis) knows nothing.
It is like the rising of the dew, & as secret
. . . . .
But, until “the prophetic Soul, the Uncle” does
his worst, write to me, Painter, of the
plays – The Electra[?], & The Phèdre.
I am mad to miss them. We stay here
till June 7th or 14th Henry is growing so beautiful
I cannot[?] withdraw her from this air.
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[K.B.]
It sets a halo around her. I am growing nothing
except fierce eye-brows to frighten the
sergeant --
Be well, Painter, & enjoy the June. I
have white-balls from Paragon. In mid June
you shall have some of my gathering.
Michael.”
June 1st 1904
On our breakfast table. – crimson[?]
Saintfoin[?], milk-white campion.
And Bain sends the book.
It is the third book that arrives at
Rottingdean – ① Tristan & Iseult
② Autumn des Borgias – ③ Diane de Poytiers.
I found Diane graved on my
heart. My grief is with Henri, bowed
by this inexorable goddess.
“Je vous aie[?] appartenu parceque je vous
aimais; je ne soufrirais [?] pas qu’un
arret du Parlement me declare votre
concubine”
La Seule Princesse.
[E.C.]
June 2 nd Wed.
I write the Prologue to Diane
– or rather finish it. It was
begun on the first day of June
in the evening. What a joy I have
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[K.B.]
To Tommy.
We are here in great happiness
We have learnt the May for the first
time. We are more at home here than
at Paragon. Tristan, the Borgia – Julia
Domna have all profited from the
sound drawing of the place.
Here we broke open the seals of the Tristan
Book, the Borgia book; & yesterday a
wondrous book on a new & secret
subject arrived. All the country is
laid out in sheepfolds & acts – the
mystery is open – it is in the air, & in the
circling of the wind.
[E.C.]
__________________________________________
in this god-child of Diana –
this woman in whom all
the elements of freshness &
clarity meet & are operative.
Like Art itself she is cold,
& yet not virginal. Art to
which all things lie apparent
can never be virginal, & yet
has the ice & cold of a chastity
that is elemental. Dianne
is very like La Beauté of
Baudelaire.
In to the Prologue all my
bee-work of the last weeks, all
I have drawn from Maytime
has settled into poetry.
Michael begins the Scene between
Dianne the Widow & Henri the
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[E.C.]
Spanish-eyed Dauphin of fifteen.
Oh, these buzzing tranquil
mornings of creation – Each
brain & right hand at their
proper joy!
Thursday
A gray windiness – We walk
far into the downs beyond the
White Way. We are with the
matron Earth, the nurser of crops –
where she dangles the little
green oats, & has the wheat
asleep on her knees – no
flowers yet obvious, except the
campion, like drops of milk.
How such a walk, while invigorating,
fosters one! Earth has given
her breast to one’s spirit as
well as to the wheat. All
The Bread of Life there in its
infancy, with the Power that
has produced it, & one’s very
being in ⟨natural⟩ harmony with as it
breathes with them.
I write Dianne with Palissy – Michael
finds dear Francis the First in the
room with her.
Friday
Michelet cares – the protestant
bigot, who cannot help negating
the Renaissance – the Humanism
that would not take up the attitude
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[E.C.]
Of mind that ⟨wh:⟩ has starved man –
till he is the ugly, motoring
individualist of today.
Michelet has details, viciously
presented, that are illuminating –
but truly if one had not
Dianne first in his pages
Fay’s remark that there is
neither play nor tragedy in
her life would be justified.
The day veers & I am ill –
Saturday
It is delicious to walk wake to
our sycamine-tree throwing its
leaves in shade on its bark,
& sending out a hive-throng
of twitters.
The Wind is a bright North-East –
After walking in the mowing[?]-
field I write Dianne & Goujon[?]
by the Cascade – Michael still
works on her Titianesque
Francis
She has a letter from Fay, full of
chat, as ordered, of Gilbert
Murrey’s Hyppolytus. “I sat next
to little Arthur, who seemed quite
intelligent. We had tea together & got on
quite well. He agrees that good tragedy is
in reality good melodrama. He hates
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[E.C.]
any mock music added to verse, which is
speech refined by intensity of mood & emotion.”
That judgement of tragedy is true in one
aspect – that the appeal to the
eye watching for movement on the
stage must be melodramatic to
arrest it boldly. And both Fay &
little Arthur would be swayed
by the peculiar mode of
today – viz. the artistic. The
world tries to see like the painter
now-a-days, not to feel & express
like the poet. Great Tragedy
will have its bold moments of
melodrama – may even have a
melodramatic construction (Hamlet)
but however good the melodrama
may be, the tragedy is not good
unless the creative mood
behind it is essential &
dominating & ominous.
We have had a letter too from Sturge
Moore, about publishers – the
all too necessary Evil we have to
face. It is helpful – but, ma foi,
how it exasperates by a slip
in taste! He tells us publishers
regard us as the French tried to regard
the Dreyfus case as a “chose jugée”.
No doubt you will come up again as the
Dreyfus case has” This from a
younger poet to one of Les Vieux –
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[E.C.]
It is cruelly strange, now the
noble shelter of the Vale Press
is lost, to have to meet publishing
as if we were young things of
eighteen – we who have lived
& suffered such experiences to
give man a few more emotions.
But Tommy’s sting warms my
inertia – The Gold Tristan shall
be published.
Sunday.
Glittering North East. Admiration
is possible, not a mood.
We have seen a great thing
– a land-sea flowing round
its ship . . . the wind in
live current of waters over
a field of grass, sweeping
it, lilac & silver & ripples[?] toward
the furled old windmill.
Below the land-sea – some
stakes of a wire-railing & a
quiet strand of buttercups
– a golden rim to the
billows of grass & the black
sails of the Mill.
One has a sense of such high
vitality when movement is of
a surface rather than a mass –
when the blood-horse shivers
along his flank, when the aspen
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[E.C.]
trembles in its outer leaves, when a
thought passes through the aspect
of a forehead – or again when reflections
move over things. I have never
felt more the talismanic power
of life than I have have⟨d⟩246 in this
flowing meadow-hillside, as an
ocean above me.
I have two tall glasses full of grass-
-flower & ⟨green⟩ barley, bound round
at the brim with ranunculuses
of a Venetian opulence of colours
– & in a glass vase by them wide
lemon ranunculuses with black
eyes. They were gathered by our
old, old man, who will suggest to
one the weed-heap, who laughs at
his own ⟨old⟩ jests as a babe laughs at
the new world – a very feeble,
amused creature, with the
weed-heap not the flower-bed
before him.
Now I will try to put down what I
saw last week as the thunder storm
drifted.
I saw a hall with three windows
facing, the middle one reached by steps.
All the windows wide open & the
door under the by the fire place on the left,
& the door on the right wide open as
the windows. Through the windows
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[E.C.]
a brooding thunder-cloud that
growls low.
Tristan is seated against pillows
in a chair by the empty hearth.
Behind his form, like a strange
glory, his great golden harp
stands – across his knees the
gold cover of the harp. He is
asleep and alone.
Suddenly Iseult of the White Hands
runs in – but stops arrested, by
the open doors & windows.
“It will be today” she shrieks.
Her mind strained by the effort
to “stand alone”, to keep the
secret she has overheard – breaks
into madness before the omens
of the open window, the growling
cloud. Light my Lightning, like
the brilliance of a bird’s motion
in the sun, shoots on her eyes –
she shrieks & cries out. Her
old father comes in, angry at
her break-down, insistent that
she shall go away. Firmly he
drags her out.
Tristan wakes – alone in the storm
– the wind blows now, the doors
close with a thud, the windows
beat. He is alone in Hell – alone
with his doom, that everything he
does is sin, that he is in the velocity
of a great anguish forever – in the Confusion
He feels Death is coming – intrepidly
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[E.C.]
he rises. He will die on his feet, erect –
He is a knight – he loves, & death
is not a thing he can fear.
The op closed door is opened – there
are cries deep below “The ship[?], the
ship”. Iseult of the White Hand
rushes in, like a bird is storm,
& is hurled by her passion against
the sill – He stands dying . . .
What is the omen of his death –
is it cruel or merciful? The
cry rends them him “What colour
is the sail?”
With frenzy at its height, Iseult
of Arundel tells her lie, &
he falls, like column, straight
on the ground dead . . . .
I saw no-more.
Tuesday June 7th
A sea-day. The North-Easter crashes
down on the place, so we take
refuge under the cliff & I visit
His Majesty the Sea for the first
time. I do not like his glitter,
his indifference – There is no
living ⟨flow⟩tide; & the shore is like a
lion on his side after a good
dinner – & all about people burrow
in the pebbles, sit about by boats
or on machines, read their news-
papers, or tie up their children’s clothes.
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[E.C.]
All this smugness on one side
of the infinite limit, all the
vast indifference on the
other! – No wonder I keep
away from this grim contrast
with a spiritual fervor on me!
Late I go in to the closed church
& am alone with Burne’s Jones’
windows.
That Jacob’s Dream is just the
Symbol of Rottingdean – as in
a cypher its spell is rendered
to the initiated. It is a place
where one lays one’s head on
refl restful turf, where one is
at peace, while a firm
ladder rises from the downs,
& angels rustle up & down.
There is no effort for the mind –
it sleeps & is full of wings
& presences.
I like that St. Michael, with the
dear aestheticism of the eighties
about him – his eyes wide
like Tristan’s – his blood-red
shield & plume & banner – in
the folds of the banner the
Dove spread in blessing.
And I like Michael’s business.
Like fight with against the jewelled
malevolence – the little Dragon.
Michael has been just before me, & loves
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[E.C.]
the little Coming of Gabriel [?]– it gives
the trouble of the annunciation
(“she was troubled”) – the Angel not
yet being through the door.
As we return home together it
is written on Michael’s heart
that we should try to get the
promise of a grave here on
St. Michael’s ground.
Death is so different if all its details
are conquered beforehand.
We should like to enrich this
little church in some way, & to
lie near it & the great Dream for
those who are dead that flashes
from its wall – Lux perpetua.
Michael has written to the
clergyman to come & see us.
Wednesday June 8th
The Wind – but of gray plumage.
Amy may come for two days –
she has left us wondering . . .
We have been passing by the mowing-
-grass – the aristocratic clover holds
itself veiled from the multitude, but
in high-set colonies the buds of
ox-eyed daisy grow white, as
proudly. For the rest, flowers of
no race – beloved hawksweeds
& the like – shoot up in a few
hours.
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[E.C.]
Michael writes –
Dear Painter,
I have nothing to record, but a long, wakeful
night. I was left clear-brained by
the tossing wind. Through the long
hours the nightingale & the cock
sang to me. The occasional re-
-minder of Time &[?] cheerfulness
& not betraying rose up so[?]
wholesomely against the long,
liquid vibration of that other
throat. The nightingale’s song
comes up from a chalice of
rich liquor; it proceeds from
wine. There is no lament in it &
the Greek story is all wrong.
I have privately preserved at the
old florist’s a bed of ranunculus
for you – the pale lemon flowers
we love won’t come out. Some
shall come out in sheer terror at
Michael’s will – to manifest
to you that Rottingdean remembers
your feet of flame.

Painter, I like to hear of your plays.
Soon you will be write some.
But first I want you to paint me
“a Flight into Egypt”. There was one
at East Grimstead that consoled me.
The Mother with the Babe all to herself –
& that Babe a predestined God – the
way by wh: she travels, unknown, yet
provided for – St. Joseph, careful,
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[E.C.]
anxious & allotted . . .

Forgive me for being dull – it is that
night with the nightingales!
Michael.
Amy comes in the wandering cab
after lunch, before the letter announcing
her. The first windy walk up
the White Way leaves her silent
from any expression of fealty to
Rottingdean.
Thursday
While Michael & Amy are sea-gazing
Mrs Johnson comes in to tell me
Rudyard is returning & will build
a house on his own site, next
but one to Lady Burne Jones’.
So Rottingdean will have its
potentate as well as its Genius
Loci. I am excited at this
triumph for the little place.
And we hear that the old house
above the Church – The Challoners[?]
will soon be to let. It has a
heavily-pannelled room & a
chimney-stack through one of the
bedrooms, & a scullery where old
farmers dank⟨drank⟩ as the dramatists at
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[E.C.]
“the Mermaid”.
We have a destined feeling of
home at Rottingdean.
. . . I wander by myself in the
grass – ⟨coming?⟩ rain as from a vase
makes the breeze cool.
I return to the Death-scene of
Tristan & almost finish the
new version.
Michael brings me violet fleurs-
de-luce & white roses.
The clergyman comes to see
Michael – a pleasant interview.
Unless one of us dies here he
cannot undertake our burial –
but if we were to die ⟨here⟩ the grave
cd be made large enoght ⟨enough⟩ for
both. Not even to parishioners can
he promise any special site . . .
so we must hurry here for our
end or live here.
Now the rain is come, as it always
does, giving the shy sense of
a stranger to the atmosphere
– that becomes subdued &
delicately mannered.
Friday
Amy has a sog of heat to bear –
I am very bad inside & house-bound.
A silly letter from Tommy, suggestive[?]
that through a woman he could
get an opportunity of reading a play
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[E.C.]
of airs to a Junior Partner – he
also a budding poet. If he is
interested he will ensure the play
having a good hearing with
his senior –
Michael replies –
“Merciful heavens, how can we
thank you for this opportunity of
being read by a “budding poet”!
Out of the mouths of these babes
& sucklings wd you perfect our
praise? Not for one instant
would I abide being sniffed
at by these doubtful tomorrows,
not one of them capable of
considering the matter in
hand.
Browning told us to wait 50 years,
& apparently we must wait.
I asked you to help me, & you
have diligently tried – but on
impossible methods – as if you
should propose the pawn broker
to me if I were in sore straits
for money.
Like the Duke in My Last Duchess
I choose never to stoop.
But I choose to publish
Tristan, & I will.
Sincerely yours
Michael
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[E.C.]
Saturday
Amy leaves us, after an affectionate,
little visit – very sweet.
We go out for a long walk
up the Lewis high road into the
folds of the Downs – the walk
Amy loved yesterday.
There is rain about, & rain over
downs is stealthiness over solitude.
One is haunted.
Then the rain steals out of
apprehension, & a wonderful
singing of birds at a height from
the ground, as it seems, of the
tall grasses, takes its place.
The great downs are tawny or
dove – they lie so soft & wide.
Here one learns that solitude
has wings – they are stretched
out here, where she sleeps –
we can measure their
pinion-breadth, we can stroke
their irised plumage with
our vision.

This country ⟨of downs⟩ is perfect for us
while we are incarnating
Dianne. She was ample & plastic
as they. If[?] a base or evil thing
had to be done, she brought[?] it, by
the great art of her amplitude & sculpture
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[E.C.]
into a noble relation that purified
it, as the Downs transmute a
turnip-field. There was air on
the bosom of all her deeds – light
over them & a lovely gravity.
Sunday, June 12 th
My new version of the Death-scene of
Tristan is read to Michael. She
realises at once it is under
command of necessity up to the moment
when Tristan’s hand falls through
the hollow of his harp . . after
that . . . . well, anticlimax
reigns. In a few moments she
ends the scene – self-same with
its beginning. The whole is an
entirely new end to poor
Tristan’s agony. Laus Dei!
The loveliness of today is heart-rending
because we have to leave Rottingdean.
Oh, why is the sunshine so sweet
a flood – & the air, why is it of
God’s nostrils – Why is the note
of today In the Beginning – &
we must go?
We sit at sun-slope hour behind a
rick – the summer lies on the
grass of grain, on the winy[?] clover-
studs. Michael gathers holy clover
– & we talk of Dianne in the
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[E.C.]
severe[?] gentleness of the hour.
Monday June 13th
Our last day, & as if to help us
a hot & cold South-Easter blows
on our nerves. A cold sweat
of mist comes up from the
sea – I put together the
scenes of Dianne with Palissy
& Goujon[?], but the day is
not of Art. We grows nasty
with weather.
After the fret of packing &
paying, we go to the Dianne
Downs, round High Barn.
How great is this Earth, that has
to ripen & shed itself of its crops,
to receive the furrow & the
seed before we are likely to look
on it again in October – yet
there is calm without the least
accent of hurry – trust &
pervasiveness at their highest.
I think my life in these terms
&[?] try to fix it to their influence.
Then I think of Dianne, so
tranquil when her King is dead –
like the moon, full to completion
of the dead sun’s light – a
world in herself. I see her as
I shall part from her – in the
moonlight that is as her orbed
remembrance of the glory of
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[E.C.]
her love – she fills the world
with her vital mourning,
with her plastic light
of consolation. She is the
moon left in Love’s Universe.
We see a ring-dove by itself – in
a small cage.
We see a great dog running &
a rabbit – they are more like
two elements than two
creatures in the play of their
passion & rapidity.
We see tufts of sainfoin
here & there, a tartness of
carmine in their just-opened
pea-blossoms.
We hear the folded sheep as
they ba ang⟨ba-a: it is⟩ like the clanging
of iron bells &[?] & the chittering
of silver bells as ewes are
answered by lambs.
We walk on the dim cut
grass by the side of an elf-forest
of wheat-stems & leaves – the
dim & the sturdy sharp over
against each other.
We come home to a delicious
dinner – the chop & tomatoes
& the gooseberry-tart are sweet &
sturdy in effect as the wheat-field
– we long to have more
containing[?] admiration – so good
they are!
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[E.C.]
Fay is in Paris, gone after Les Primatives
[????], the new disease –
We must not be surprised to see
him next Sunday, not to sup.
Well – I must go to my bed now –
I have been bothered by moths . . .
Ah, if I could only stay on at
Rottingdean & go on with Dianne!
This little place is the Lourdes of
Imagination – it loses all its
ailments, walks & sings.
June 14th
We part from Rottingdean on a
a day of sultry westerliness.
Dear Mrs Johnson continues humanly
the effect of the Downs themselves
on us till we leave Brighton Station.
Then we unfold her egg-
sandwiches, & their nourishing
gentleness continues her influence.
We are delayed by Ascot[?] trains.
The air is morose with heat &
damp.
Rush, the soldier, has proved dastardly
in faithlessness & forsaken the
dogs.
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[E.C.]
Never has Paragon been such a
white economy of loveliness
among its manifold leaves & its
stretched curtains of roses.
The green & white striped curtains ⟨hangings⟩
are clean & the matting like a
Jap. Welcome to the New Year.
The Maids have had a portrait
of Music whom they guard under
ivy wall, most successfully
taken by Herbert – all so
grateful & lovely, yet I am
sad. The air weighs on
nerves I must confess
turned parlous[?]. How hateful
are the follies that play about
over the abyss, when nerves
are chaotic.
I put irises of brown banners
in Murano glass – This
does not comfort me.
We sleep in blankets of
combed wool, on feathers
piled like the living breast
. . . in vain! I wake to
Lease – No Rush – Summer
haunt – Publisher & c..
June 15th
But after a few hours collapse
the new force asserts itself.
Michael seeks town – I work
out our accounts . . . there is great
improvement this June.
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[E.C.]
I take Whym on the Towing-path,
meet the Rivett-Carnacs, look
at their old garden roses next
door, bring Lady Rivett into
our garden with its new
ramblers – its curtains of
glowing hybrid-teas, & after
she has left me, I cut
roses, bringing in an
aromatic heap that challenges
vision & nostrils alike.
I am really happy today, as I
always am when not bothering
about leaving Paragon.
The joys of faith seem to be
vouchsafed when one does
not seek to betray one’s heart
that loves Paragon.
Lady Rivett says whenever
Sir James is limp[?] he swears
he will let the house – As soon
as ever he is better no power
will make him reject it.
‘Oh, you’ll stay, you will see!”
Michael comes back from the
Peacock Room – charmed by
this little cosmos of the Eighties
– the peacock on one side repeated
in the mirror opposite, as sole
effect on that wall such
an exquisite bit of economy in joy!
She must write of the Peacock.
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[E.C.]
And[?] then she went on[?] to the Siennese
Exhibition, &[?] has made me
laugh with the fantastical
self-revolted attitude
the madamas. Their baby
has been suckled on suet-
dumpling. Michael was
tired & her mind simply
vicious toward the poor
Siennese.
[K.B.]
Paragon June 18th.
My Beloved is as brave as a Japp. Controlling
nerves, she has been with me in town
& again at Tommy’s to tea. Eye-bright happiness
is with Marie. From Marie’s Mother I
learn how Eliza Gérante[?] died.
She died in sleep. That is to die unawares.

[E.C.]
Thursday, June 6 th
To town to see Whistler’s Peacock
Room; magnificent tour de
genie! Ah! How good it was to
be alive in the late 70 Seventies
& the Eighties – such enthusiasm,
such adventure & romance
in Art – The Japanese Victory –
The Aesthetic Triumphus[?] – all
the Artists fantastic & gallant,
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[E.C.]
yet always artists! And I
was young.
Dear Peacock Room! Typical
of our Inspirer, the Peacock,
the bird of the great Queen
of Heaven. He set our scheme
of colour, he watched us
from his bronzes as we
accomplished our Dream
in our little Rooms – his
blue was our firmament,
his green our Earth, &
we knew of no nb
nimbus so victorious as
his – the glory of the saints
& the Rose of Paradise were
melted into one gilded
flush of rays for this Paraclite
of AEstheticism.
And here Whistler has set him
up for the Ages – superhuman
as a Buddha. On the shutters
we have him swelled into
godhood – his tail became[?]
a second heaven, his eyes
at last one eye – that of the
World, or of God.
He is the fountain reaching
Heaven from its earthly source.
He is Vision having reached
Wath Wordsworth’s “bliss of
Solitude. Then on the great
Wall panel we have his
drama, set religiously before
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[E.C.]
us in gold. Here as Oberon &
Titania he braves his mate,
his double, & she braves him!
Mutual jewels flash at each
other from their eyes as
they shriek –
“Well⟨Ill⟩ met by moonlight, proud Titania.”
What, jealous Oberon!
Tarry, rash wanton: and I not thy lord?
Then I must be thy lady!"
So the great drama of passion goes on
among liquid stars licked-up
stars, flashed phospor, eclipses of
crescents, frecklings, streaks, bars
& golden mail, such as
convulsed Lamia.
And every where over the common
-place, uninspired Room the
divine peacock exhibits an
epos of his power – dazzling
thin form with iris-colour,
filling corners of dizziness
with the glance of half an
eye, the roguish divinity! – yet
never forgetting the pomp of
his Essence, the amplitude – not
for the second of a moment.
Hail Whistler, Court-Painter to the
divine Bird of Heaven! What Jap.
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[E.C.]
sence of the value of spaciousness –
⟨& of⟩ that suggestion of the
illimitable in Nature by a
detail of Art – a symbol!
Every decorative stroke is
organic. I have seen nothing
in Jap. Art more vital than
the angry trains of the
mates – not lashing the
eye into sympathy by line
only, but by organism – &
decorative life in the mass.
All Hail, holy Peacock – Bird of
Rossettian Creation – Bird
of the Japanese Victory in
the Nineteenth Century!
And this Peacock Temple &
its ichons[?] is going to leave
us for the New World that
never knew our native
ecstasy!
Ave . . atque vale!
We have an afternoon hour with
the Sienese School at the
Burlington Fine Art.
The Early Sienese in the Subject-pictures
have a passionate emotion that
has is expressed with sensitiveness
too austere in the best Masters to
be hysterical – yet a thing of
beauty & of the nerves.
The attitudes have an emotional
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[E.C.]
value in some of Duccio’s works &
Lorenzetti’s that a great
actor might be inspired with.
The Renson[?] Dussios & the Crawford
Crucifixion are dangerously charged
with realisation of the heart.
But how noble – how feelingly
rich the contour of his Christ’s
head!
The Simone Martini from Liverpool
“Christ returning from the Doctors to
his Parents” is a delicious picture –
both in heart and Humor.
Poor St. Joseph! he finds it a
business to bring together the
sullen fair-haired God-boy
& that Mother looking up
queenly from her book of Hours.
We have looked in on just had
a glimpse of Holman Hunt’s new
version of the Light of the World –
it us a jumble of Vision &
Illustration. The face & set
of the form are intensely beheld –
all the rest is an appeal
to sentiment. Even the figure
& face make appeal – How
different all this from a
Sienese panel (attributed by
Langton Douglas to Bernard da
Siena – whoever that may be)
of a Christ in seamless red
robe – with lines sweeping as
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[E.C.]
Mountain-lines[?] who tramps
the Universe with his Cross,
immutable in sacrifice, calm
under his
paramount destiny –
followed by the prayers of a
little monk no more asking
them than the sun fulfilling
his course or any other
journeying element.
He steps on, the Cruciferous
– the God – the timeless.
The Liverpool Preaching of S. Bernardino
– whoever painted it – is a little
gem of life & life’s jewelry.
The blown trumpets by the
high altar give a glorious
sense of Voice to the old
man’s sermon.
Two portraits of Women – the
Maid[?] bust by Matteo di Giovanni
& a full face attributed to
Benvenuto di Giovanni – are finely
dressed & deserve study for
detail as well as for their
very direct drawing.
Then at the end I came on
delightful Beccafumi in his
Clelia. Strange how Siena
caught colour & movement
as on a breeze at the end
of its art-life in Beccafumi
– as mightier Venice did
in mightier Tiepolo!
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[E.C.]
Friday, June 17 th
We pay Tommy a visit. We are
forced by train to be early – We
find Tommy in proof, so
we wait in the pleasant
green drawing-room while he
gets into print. There is a
lily growing in the corner. I
feel as if a ghost from Paragon
hung[?] there.
Marie comes in – a topaz.
Yes, she is a topaz! “Her ⟨bright⟩ eyes
Reign influence & cheat the skies”
She has shone herself into
–marriage.
She has on the dazzling pendant
of Fay – a loveliest Psyche &
Cerberus, well-necked, among
scattered garish light of
sapphires, carbuncles, sky-blue
enamel, emeralds, a rose-
topaz.
Old Mrs Appia tells comfortable
things of Miss Gérante’s end.
She, of course, expected Michael
to wear a bonnet & protestant
elderly strings . . .  Lutherism has too much
of the art art-nature to endure
such disillusion. Tommy’s
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[E.C.]
oyster-white Room has the glory
of The Samaritan on its
walls. Ah! The sky is more
broken & more lovely, but
the wholeness of mood in
the compassionate head
& the sky as at first painted
is gone for ever.
Sunday - June 19th
Fay comes – not fresh, but stale
from the Primatives. The
love of one’s life becomes a
momentary torture in face
of the Paris motors &c.
Both the Fellows are out of
sorts & snappish.

As she says after the found
the two beings she loves best
in the world sad & [????]⟨ [????]⟩ [????],
like very old people. Her work
is before her & her wreath ⟨on her⟩
she does it⟨her work⟩ – the visit is made!
The Wreath does it, & admiration,
are of the elements in life, is
graciously present.
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[E.C.]
We speak of retiring to Rottingdean
by & bye – not yet. “It must be
never” rules Fay, & explains thus
the irony of his old remark
on residence at Rottingdean
“How intelligent!”
Fay brings as gift his Bibliography247
of the Vale Press – a work
as haughty & cock-sure as
Swinburne’s preface to his
Works.
Something turns conversation
to the feeling of smallness one
has in a crowd, & Fay, with
that gravity wh: is an emotional
value in itself, speaks of the
depressing tragedy of a crowd. It
is not that he pities, or has
any active charity toward it –
No, it is a sense as general as
that of going through a grave-
yard & reading the epitaphs.
A Motion of terror comes over
the one at the thought of the
place taken up by these, the trouble
to feed & clothe them, to keep
them alive for such a little
time & to so little purpose.
And it is terrible to belong to
such a race, with its brevity &
fuss, & the inconsequence of its
lives. The voice we listened to
took on a gray timbre, like a
curfew – a sense of style on the
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[E.C.]
air.
When we come upstairs, Michael,
fearing restless behaviour from
Chow shuts him out by one
door . . . the little flame of
a creature comes in by
the other. Fay springs up &
opens the door again most
severely; but Chow stands
& looks, & Painter looks at
him. I shall always see
the bland duel – Painter
yielding to the sovereign
quiet of marvel in Chow’s
gaze. Routed he suggests
“The Balcony, Chow!”
And the passage of arms
between the peers is a thing
of the past & of memory.
Michael is found out to be so
innocent she confesses
ingeniously to these crimes –
(a)248 She sacrificed her Fellow to
a mother-in-law (Mrs A.)
(b) She asked a Bride if she saw
much of these Artists – a Bride
who shd never think of anyone
but her husband.
(c) She sent out an innocent
Boy – Herbert – with two corrupted
Dogs (Rush, having habituated
them to the Bar at “the Pigeons”)
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[E.C.]
“success”, Fay remarks, “is always
innocent” – à propos of Gladys
Deacon’s wicked French Songs.
Ah me! Painter posted 14 letters
on his way here! What is
becoming of our hermit?
And all next week he is
deep in engagements.
He has been deeply interested in
Herbert Spencer’s Autobiography
– it has explained to him so
many things in the English
middle-class mind that he
has never understood – the
genesis of so many of the minds
that issue even into distinction
from the middle-class.
June 24th Midsummer Day.
The weather is the very atmosphere
of this[?] day seven years ago – we
are in the gold, in the pregnant
silentess[?] – even solitude – of deep
heat – among the roses & the
haunted air of veritable
Midsummer. What a figure of
Romance the dear Father’s was!
With all his living passions warm
under the tent of his silver hair
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[E.C.]
he went on into the Unknown,
lonely as the desert Saint,
magical as a Fairy Thrall
– on this day of strange
contrasts to the imagination.
Amy has sent from the Manor
Garden a box of Martagon
lilies – creatures of lustrous
mourning purple, denizens
of the Swiss Knolls, con-
-necting England & Zermatt,
at a time when we feel that
The Matterhorn is the
mountain of a dream
country, where Tragedies[?] have
their immortal being.
What privilege to think of
one’s dead in a mountain
country – so far from the
death-bed, the medicine-bottle –
in the amplitude of air, in
sight of everlasting snow,
waiting to become wholly
of Nature, under cover & under
the blossom-dropping charities
of a forest.
There was ⟨were⟩ in Father the personality
& the Epic characteristics that
would have made him ⟨in the early world⟩ a
Hero or genius to be worshipped
with the untouched victim
due to the dead. Fascination
would have hung round his
dark ritual – his grave would
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[E.C.]
have prophecied. He was strong in
kinship with the Fates, & he was
faithful as those are who
centre an[?] influence.
He has not left a memory, but
a spell.
The men we know all believe
that a woman’s one need is
to love a man – that is enough,
for it is her ideal.
They think . . .
But woman’s own ideal is to
be loved – she wants herself
infinitely surpassed, her
power of loving left behind
by that in man. This is why
she is religious & Christian –
this is why the man who loves
is her adoration, & her dream.
Father had this talisman –
he loved. Sorrow & bitterness
& jealousy made desolation
round his love – but the women
he loved never forgot his love.
It is a prodigy – like a well
of sweet water in the midst
of the Sahara. Is the living
oasis ever forgotten – is it not
pondered on & dreamt of by
the wanderers over thirsty land?
He had ⟨in his degree & as a lover⟩ the Great Secret by wh: the
Son of God bewitches a universe.
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[E.C.]
Michael & I have been on the Towing-
-path & seen a steam-launch full
of holiday-makers loose from
the key & quay & away!
It is so hot, the heat throws
itself down under clouds
to drouse.
The flowers have an
apprehensive sense of their
frailty – one sees their
dread in the midst of
their beauty.
I mun I must now return to
Tuesday, June 21st – when we
visited Van Wisselingh’s little
gallery & found Fay there a
Master.
His Victim is suggested by the
woodcut in The Parables –
but there the noble figure is
shut in by the violence, the
ribaldry of the crowd – Now
the figure in the Act of Sacrifice,
is set before blue mountain-
hollows, & an ideal escape
into the limitless is provided
by Nature. The toss of the
Bacchant-crowd is rendered
in a large style, the colour is
glorious – of the October
Vineyard in its browns & smouldering
reds. I hear the figure on the barrel
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[E.C.]
is held to be unaccounted for, & in
pictorial treatment that rejects
facial expression, the leering
Demos[?] on his Tub (of The
Parables) is not recognisable
in the bowed down head
of this other.  This sin-laden
habitude in Kin the Ring-
leader’s figure with the
careless blank child beside
it, seems to me a piece
of fine stability in the Conception
of the picture.
But the Victim is Sacrifice
– he is an incarnated
Act, felt perhaps more profoundly
because he does not hang
as is usually on the Cross, but
is giving himself to death more
actively, with the air &
mountains beyond his pain.
The picture abides on the heart, where
it has vision.
There is a little Centaur-Picture.
The young body of the Beloved reaches
up, among the careful hoofs, to
the Centaur’s mouth in a kiss
that springs from the ground
to the height of its own life – a
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[E.C.]
fountain’s attainment.
Again in this little thing as in
all Fay’s work the construction
of the picture is emotional
– & therefore we have a
noble organic Art, an
inbeing[?] that shapes every
detail, that dominates colour.
Cold little thing! – how his
work moves me!
There is the Shannon of The
Bathers, I have seen twice – also
two little groups of women
against gray, with in lovely
attitudes, kept simple by
their intimacy. A lemon
as the omphalus[?] of one
design is an enchanting
motive of colour.
His picture from the Apple-
Orchard lithograph is
debonnair – the colour festive
in a midsummer way, but
the mystery, the heart of
the mystery – is gone.
Shannon’s pictures are self-
reliant; Fay’s are polarized
from a source of Emotion –
Shannon’s never take you
beyond their own beauty – Fay’s
strike you as with the
breadth of a universe.
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[E.C.]
In the same gallery there is a
miracle – a Daumier sketch
of Sancho Panza solid on his
ass, that stands motionless
as a little cloud of the night,
& Don Quixote, flying through
the rocky valley in a very
moon-shine of rapid motion
– all full of suggestion
& infinite in its rhapsody.
A Monticelli landscape – a rare
delight – has a breast of Earth
moulded with love, & a
tree that stands forth as
in the land of the Eternal
Ideas – a tree & a dream.
At Toplady’s I buy an Egyptian
amber necklace for my Love – fair in colour
⟨as the evening-primrose.⟩249
On Wed. June 21 – we meet a
cousin at Louie Ellis’. –a thorn-
bush. The pretty lunch in Louie’s
red dining-room has the blight
over it only kinship knows how
to spread . . . Still more doleful
Hertford House – Individualism
in a collection is a failure –
there is the monotony of one
mind, of one effort in this
house of Sèvres[?], among these
crowded pictures. Even the
Frenchmen cannot make joy
dance in one – only the profound
& melancholy Velasquez – “The
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[E.C.]
Lady with a Fan” can arrest
one vitally. There are nerves
of vision, & beyond them a personality
at the back of those orbed
eyes, so ugly, yet jewels.
I learn how to finish the
amber necklace, given by
the Sultan to a lady – & just
bought at Harvey & Gore.
The Sultan has had the bad
taste to have⟨hang about it⟩ coarse gold
tassels finished by amber
nine-pins. Here, I learn
of the bow & one bead
hard hanging below it.
Tuesd Sunday June 26th
Tommy & Marie came to supper.
The pendant the [????]
pendant glows, ⟨its rose jewels⟩ like the
almond & peach-blossoms
on southern azure.
Tuesday, June 28th
Dr Will Sturge comes down –
He demonstrates my trouble
is functional not organic, but,
spite of his wise presence he
makes the mistake of telling
too many tales of sudden accidents
to motor & sensory nerves –
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[E.C.]
he speaks of ⟨“a⟩ warning”, & the twilight
time ⟨of life⟩ I am entering, after
full-work time. He leaves us
well-assured & thoroughly unstrung.
So may wisdom err.
Thursday, June 30 th
We dine at the Palace – The air
of the evening is as the touch
of amber – safe, immortal
softness. And the welcome
at the Palace! – Roses, stocks
muted in purple as if sea-pearl
were over their dye, mignonette –
a Feast, carefully bounteous –
asparagus that has been
fetched from Bond Street
in the sun. Shannon looks
fine in his summer lightness
of dress – the touch of austerity
is broken by it, & his form
touches Greek grace again.
Painter –
[K.B.]
July 13th The Forest
It is Emory Down[?] forest – the heart
& centre – the oak leaves making
a very crown, all round our head.
With all on broken nerve-ends we
strolled into the forest –
“And valley lawns beneath the waving trees.”
What glades, what golden beeches!
We plunge. Ivy-leaved verenicu[?]⟨campanula⟩ meets
us at the entrance – then the
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[K.B.]
lucky vervain.
In the evening, we seek again
the forest. “Henry”, I have found⟨spied⟩ a spiritual
-lawn”, I cry – & Henry drops down into
sylvan[?] gold. We are very happy:
Henry fills me with most strong delight
by smiling – Diane is in these shades.
Saturday
To-day every thing is changed; cruel
south thunder-gales have swept
through the land.
[E.C.]
July 20th Wed.
Yes, the Forest here is Over-forest –
(Über-wald) a super-sylvan
magnificence. The sun is in
a creek of forest – all the
great oaks & beeches besiege us.
Last night the lightning flushed
& tingled the tree-top horizon
& mountain-sides of thunder
fell on us in avalanche.
But we had the great bedroom
illegally taken from us on
Tuesday & we swept – oh, like
Adam on the first moss.
We waked with the wish to
live on our bed. I was stark
& dumb with over-bearing
fatigue when I got here.
The first morning we went along
a rooty path, & at every step
I grew more miserable. At
last I broke down & wept as I
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[E.C.]
rarely do. The same afternoon our
Land-lady said we were near
to Bank. Michael looked at me.
Now we had grown confused in
our minds & had asked in two
letters if Leigh were near – they
replied they did not know
its situation – so we concluded
all was well. But at the
mention of Bank, we realised
our error. By cross-questioning
we discovered that the rooty
path was the woodland way
to Bank. It is indeed strange.
I thought I was going crazy on
that rooty path.
Of course we never go that side
of the woods, & we refer to the
place as “Where the wild Thyme
blows”. I had remarked to
Michael “I like all the woods on
the other side, but I can’t abide
these woods”.
I am not a bit nervous or unhappy
in any other part of the Forest.
On Monday afternoon we drove
round by Stoney Cross to look ⟨in vain⟩ for
rooms. Actually this Kettle-
of-Fish-Year won’t let us have peace
in the Forest & we have to turn
out of our comfortable rooms
on Friday, July 29 th.
Stoney Cross is just the same as 20
years ago – except that the sun is
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[E.C.]
new & exists for the Millionaire &
not for the Poet.
This is one of the Spots on Earth
to show to an Angel.
It was moving to stand after
20 years of work together by
the Rufus stone, with plighted
hands as then. So clear
that living past – as yesterday.
Rather weary to think of that
early fame & the 20 years &
now, except for a very few
of the minds of England, we
live unknown. Sic Transit . . .
yet I felt firmer in real
possession than in those early
days. And we vowed[?]Dianne –
our last forest drama to the
Power that is in forests . . . . .
At this moment roses come from
you & Amy – such wild roses to
break on us in their fresh crimson
& gold, till we are out of countenance
with their reality & think of them
as dream-flowers, as Rosae Mundi.
Such fervancy[?] of buds! Boldre
or Cadenham have no such
tints, no such sweet jets of
summer pulsing among their leaves.
No, no! –
But they have whole nations of
ivy-leaved campanulas, silent bells
lifted under ferns, while the cattle
make fay-music above with their
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[E.C.]
foliage-hidden bells.
And I have never written about
that last night at Paragon –
Bernhard such a sweet little
thing, wholly himself, & living
over with us the days when he
was “so miserable & so happy”
& he was giving us his crude,
young doctrine in its insolence
& glory – the years of the red
cherry of La Grande Chaumière[?].
And now the house is gone &
the cherry-tree: but we the
companions in the spirit remain.
He said the days at Kingshott
last year were some of the happiest
& most precious of his life.
He met us with a kiss on our hands
as they clasped his; & he was
caressing & he admired from the
first “You are beautifully dressed,
Field” he said touching the black
taffeta with black & opal ruches,
that brought Shannon’s instant
acclaim of joy. Michael, in
shimmering-gray Eighteenth ⟨century⟩ gown,
was praised, as she reclined on
the little sofa “How Mme de
Recamier[?]!” At dinner he spoke
of Versailles e–n artiste – deliciously
bringing out its power . . that it would
teach nature a way – give it
a supernatural aim, set before it
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[E.C.]
the ideal of arcade, arbour, grotto,
fountain. He was staying with
Miss Marbury – the great entre-[?]
-preneuse[?], to whom Oscar give
us a letter.  [ I wonder, if after all,
she could do anything for us ]250
She lives at Versailles, & all
the secrets of the ideal proposed
to Nature, all the more hidden
persuasions to its wildness to
become art were open to
Bernhard.
He talked of poets & painters &
how most of them are
“pockets” of gold – only the very
greatest – veins. Hence their
early work is a moment – they
only iterate after. Swinburne
was ever the poet of Poems &
Ballads, singing of death out
of the very superabundance of
life. So with the Painters of
the salon in 1902-4 . .They were
pockets – they are just where they
were then. But Shakespeare &
Milton in their old experience are
prophetic & not the sum of their
youth.
Then for long we talk of red-cherry
time, & Bernhard confesses how im-
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[E.C.]
portant we were to him – how we cared
for us, but apart from that we
“helped his functioning” – far
more important than anything
else!! His Spanish Countess
now is where we were then –
but he is not exhilarated by
her – he is far away as we
are & therefore we are for more
vivifying. He is not yet able
to work, but he is sure it will
come all right, he feels such
volume of thought-capacity
behind him . . . But all the
while the little thing is thin as
a bird, & seems to go to the air
for his sustenence, having f
left off wine & coffee & most
meats.
Early in the Evening he referred to
having just seen “the one & only
artist” – I stretched mind over
the world; wondered if it were
Rodin, & then Michael solved the
phrase – “Oh, you mean Ricketts”
& we laughed at the rival’s
irony. But just at first the
eyes (that used to be ‘blue
various[?] weather’) looked very
gray, with a thunder-knot in them,
till our greeting & mood told
him he was ascendant.
I am still weary in head, & I find it
impossible to set down the charm
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[E.C.]
of The Doctrine – the mellowness &
soft contrition[?] before the larger
years for the glorious brilliancy
of youth & its inadequacy – the
intimate bond of so many
years between our spirits, the
throwing of himself on the
mercy of our interpretation
& seasoned love, the paths
of his frail appearance &
high laborious dreams.
Religion is more & more to him –
inevitably the Jew. He spoke
of himself as “placqué centre
à l’Éternité.”
We had converse & touched
across infinitude.____
This Valley of trees over wh: the
moon rides at twilight!
We have been here at our
New Forest Inn, Emery Down,
just a week yesterday.
The wide breaks we find
too open for the gods, who only
come close to us in obscurity –
from pressed under-growth, or
profound shadow. Here the
shadows have space to dance
on, & the veiled Divinities
retire to the Forest Enclosures.
Only on the first day did I feel
the steps of Dianne close.
And we are too deep inured[?] in
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[E.C.]
trees for the air of Poetry to reach us.
We must wait till we are in our
new rooms next Friday with their
breezes from over Stoney Cross plain.
Francis is with us – at a word
we lured[?] this tasselled gentle
to our side – he is infinitely right
to live with. No tax on one – less
than that of an animal; even
in mood, humourous in the
reception of the day’s happenings:
hot rapturous & disturbing over
scenery, always with the apt
word & the amenities of
humanism to give art to life.
He is a great acquisition.
This morning he is seeking at
Bank for psychic revelations
concerning Culter – the object
of my spirit-shaking Premonitions.
He suggests that Culter was a
true nom-de-guerre – a Knife.
We drove along Stony Cross plain yesterday
in gray-coated weather, of perfect
tone with the plain, & with the
masses of beech & fir. The air was
as a strong enchantment; & our
aim was Sloden – the old British
Bury⟨ing⟩ ground, with yews above, we
reached from Broomy[?] four years ago.
As before I was spelled by the
valley over wh: Sloden lies down.
The Dead are in it – they mould it
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[E.C.]
appearance by their resting-places
& by their resting from the old
years till now. The yews cling
with their obduracy to the
slope, till the wood is tight
on the ground as a corded
tent. It is dedicated to the
Earth Service – it is awful, it
is close to the soil, low down
on it & sepulchrous! The yew-
-stems flap their skin on their
ancestral thews – like
everlasting snakes casting
their skins to the centuries; &
in the valley itself the curves
have the infinite bountifulness
of the burial-mound – womb-like,
fostering to the imagination.
And there is a width about
the air as if for big souls
to pass about & drink its
ever-renewed freshness.
There is The feeling ⟨is⟩ in it that
Wordsworth has seized in
Ossian’s Grave. The actual features
of the spot come[?] to one as a
Dream comes through sleep –
reaches the brain where it is
remote, where it has seen things
from the beginning of the world.
Whym Chow strained after rabbits –
when we were with him last, every
step was a pl pain at my heart.
How good to move with slowness
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[E.C.]
only & no pain! We must haunt
Sloden & the Dead again.
Being at the heart of the Forest here, we
realise it is a casket of balms
& myrrhs & odorous gums –
it is just a casket of spices, & the
heart of the forest is embalmed.
As we came to it in the evening
its fragrance is solid before us.
Francis is back from Bank. He claims to have
laid the Spectre. No such name as
Culter is or has been known. And the
honour of this user of the Knife is
made free with – his name turned
into the mere producer of knifes –
Cutler (even this re-arrangement
of his written name brings no real
being to the local memories) & at
last the suggestion comes that his
name is that of some lady-lodger.
How are the mighty fallen!
We never thought is might be
the cat-like female assailant, &
I swear, by Hecate, it was not.
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[E.C.]
The Second Sunday
The top story of Paragon is finished.
We have heard that Bernhard has
been called to Paris on business.
So not⟨no⟩ Forest meeting! There is
such a small element of
Time in my relation with him
I scarcely feel this check. We
reached the perfect moment
ten days ago & within the
radious radius of its perfection
all time is included. Had he
come fretted to the Forest – had
he come conjoined, not his
single self, all my future
might have become temporal,
that is now infinite.
He returns Tommy’s Poems
unrepentant – he still feels as if
they were rather promising, but
hopelessly unmusical exercises.
The utmost they extract from him
is a certain consent, but with
no warmth.
The last criticism is merited to a
degree – Tommy’s hateful mind chills
the creativeness of his emotion.
But his work is not promising –
it is performance – it is
a little satyr of Pan, not a little
Apollo or Hermes – still the
whole God, born, not in the womb.
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[E.C.]
We are cheered by a delightfully
confidential letter from Fay –
Mary’s single visit – the Pelleas &
Melissande of Sarah & Mrs Pat –
these are lightly evoked.
Also by post comes a little
snap-shot of Bernhard – like a
bee just outside the frame of
his Domenico Veneziano (or
Baldovinetti) Madama. He
looks so small, & tiny bee-
thunders are about his brow
& lips – the rich storminess of
a summer buzzer.
We are getting happy in our Forest.
And the Down & brakes behind
Woodside where we go next
Friday are filled with greater
influence – some god has
local habituation there, altho’
we do not know him yet.
The oaks now are rejuvenating –
A colour of sun-burnt health
pulses all over them – a wine
of life is in their shoots.
The quoit-players haunt our grass-
-valley. One hears the quoits ring
as if of glass, while the dew
rises – & the few⟨rare⟩, broad acclaims
of success. One thinks of Discobolus
& of Hyacinthus, & poetry rests, even as
the moon, over the⟨our⟩ grass-valley.
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[E.C.]
We have plucked in the bog asphodel-
Spikes – Rufus’ hair.
I read to Francis
“O ancient Love” & c
But it seems to frighten people – they
get under cover & hide from it.
I suppose it is too widely
universal, for most of the
narrow lovers of Earth. They
love “mortal, if thou are beloved”
They⟨Their⟩ flesh touches its own warmth
in that.
I must return to Paragon – rather
to that visit to the Palace I left
unchronicled. It was delicious.
After dinner we were introduced
to 3 new Italian Pictures – one,
Early Tuscan, really noble &
hieractic in effect – a calm Dream
to live with.
 The
pendants & jewels return on their
maker’s eyes with fascination.
Shannon takes us to the Shepherd’s
Bush station as guide to the
reeling Cabman, & Fay of course
follows on foot as demi-gods out-
pace mortals. We all wait the
train under a night-sky of so
velvet a texture it suggests fragrance
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[E.C.]
– one seems to smell the softness of
the clouds.
Then on the Tuesday before we started
for the Forest – July 12th – The Artists
dined with us. Mary had got
up a Bach afternoon, & Fay &
Michael met there, & from
thence journeyed to Paragon
together. Unfortunately the
difficult great music had wrought
Fay to nervous fatigue & headache.
He looked white, as if dying
in mind, at his arrival, though
he was so excited he poured out
a stream of talk on Bach.
A prelude he heard was like
the outpouring of a bag of
jewels – dusk, with here &
there one flash to measure
the wealth of the cold gem-
cascade. Bach composes on the
brain itself, his music is organic
only on that instrument – as
some music is only organic on
the heart, or the nerve-centres.
He is the most taxing of all
musicians – his high demand is
almost of super-human quality.
When we dine the heat & the
festive dishes, meeting Bach in
the poor Painter’s body, produce
a deadness of nausea – we
quite fear the worst. But he revives.
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[E.C.]
Still the evening is spoiled by that
exacting Bach, though Shannon
is ruddily[?] merry & charming, almost
as in his youth. The talk after
dinner is obliterated from my
mind by anxiety & by the deadly
heat.
Such a terrible kettle-of-fish
week before we attained the
forest – contracts, the lease,
the packing, the arrangements
for 6 weeks’ absence, money
arrangements, two dinners
for our two rarest friends . . .
We were more than half dead
in the July hotness.
We read Hudson on the new
Forest Animals – on the voles,
the handsome hornets, the
lady-glow-worms who glow till
they frightened the male, & then
glow till they are lost in the
dimness of the wife. He tells
of the dead snake-skin that
for years casts its scales &
[????] becomes bright with spring.
What similes!
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[E.C.]
Tuesday, July 26th
We drove in beaver-grayness through
Boldrewood & over Stony Cross Plain.
The small crab-apples I remember
so well on the road between Stony
Cross & Mark Ash at the point where
the driver mentioned the name
Bank & a horror fell on me – are
still there, small & cloaked with
pale red – tho’ I have not seen
them for 20 years.
As we drive over the rough-coated
plain a vast cloud of purple begins
to grow – a low-down purple that
has weeping as its promise. This
sense of tears on a great landscape-
verge is most moving. Michael
is absorbed in the greatness of
the influence & drives on, on – round
by Stoney Cross itself – a mist is
on us; & over the new Inn, that
desecrates the spot where⟨our⟩William
Rufus was born, a sheet of fire.
 Our one thought is of hot
water & hot brandy & a fire.
Wednesday And all day the after-
rain of thunder drips und into the
soaked trees. Michael & Francis have
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[E.C.]
a walk to Akers Down - of⟨to⟩ the exquisite
view in wh: Stoney Cross is reborn.
Meanwhile I place Henri & Dianne
in our New Forest, & all the fresh
sylvan discoveries we have made
throng[?] round their love at Anet.
Thursday
We have a glorious drive – mid-glory
of the Forest, before Francis leaves us:
The Manor, Castle Malwood,
Stoney-Cross (where we find with a
jolly M rs Whitehorn a set of cottage
-rooms engaged for August &
garnished with a snarly dog – alas!)
Rufus Stones (for Francis) Bramley
Woods & Broomy Enclosure – a
world of driven cloud, of sun-covered
wilderness, & trees in their own
expanses of light – the firs blue,
the hollies argent-dark, the
beeches tawny, the oaks rubied
with a new spring of leaflets.
Such air – such laughter!
The “peeps” at Castle Malwood have
the gracious civility of Italian
-Garden Art.
All morning we have been arranging
“The Tragedy of Pardon” – Tristan – to
send to Milsted (of Duckworth & Co.)
at Tommy’s suggestion.
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[K.B.]
July 29thWoodside, Emery Down.
The Professor leaves a weeping forest
unwilling to pack trimly for a 5 minutes’
transit, we let the live sponges
leap about in the baruche.
I have never felt so like sobbing
over my boxes – full of the “broken
meat” of our bottles & clothes.
It is a day of awful jostle & damp,
& towards evening, I fall ill.
Through an an⟨a⟩tmosphere still bleeding
vapours I drag myself to the past; –
then, perforce I must turn to the
sun, & its cheery sign – the glade, the
firm, fragrant high-road, the sandy
bank, the hem uncertain line of
railing, on wh: the mag-pie perched, to
the forest. Black swine[?] from Bank
grunt across the stream. All this
fair lot was ours yesterday – I still
see the glint of the Professor’s dress
-shirt, as we paced the glade, – the
sand-bank, the birds, the little noises
among the leaves, – all were ours.
Henry likes the modern rooms with
the round cherry-tree in front –
I cannot – for me the deep
humanity of an inn!
At Duckworth’s they are reading
“O ancient Love of Chaos bred”
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[E.C.]
July 30th
A great letter from Painter –
– Oh, enchanting!
In response to a letter from Michael,
in which she said the real meaning
of Christ’s saying “Depart from me,
ye that work iniquity!” was
“Depart all ye that are out of
touch with me” – Painter comes
into magnetic touch with the
Poet.
“I have news. I have turned
sculptor. I have modelled a
man & a horse & now quite
understand the rather youthful
attitude of the Deity on the 7th
day when he saw that it was
good. Clay is a divine substance,
responsive, attentive, definite yet
liable to improvement also. I think
man must have been modelled
in some less admirable & ductile
stuff. In a few days my two
masterpieces will be cast in bronze
& be ready for sonets sonnets & epigrams.
One of the statuettes represents an
actor with a mask; the second a
Centaur with a sleeping baby-faun.
Tomorrow I shall make a weeping
Terminal, & tomorrow more Centaurs
and an Atys, & a dawn of Venus,
with her feet on the chest of a Triton,
& a drinking Sphinx, & a Poet bearing
his Chimera & a lot of “Goshey[?]” things.
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[E.C.]
The carpets in the pink drawing-room
look like a battlefield of dusty
foot-prints (the feet of the sculptor
are not beautiful) I have been
working like a negro, unable, in
fact, to stop away.
I hope you are well.
Yours, the Painter.
This letter blows from the Islands of
Youth – a fresh Art! What is a
fresh love to that?
When we came to our fr new
quarters here yesterday in the
torrent of rain I fell at the
door-step & wrenched wrenched my
garnet necklace – the rain continued
black; Michael became ill &
I numbed with anxiety & forlornness.
But we woke to the dairy-fragrance
of the air at dawn & to the
great leaves & Kaleidoscopic spaces
of pointed light, & to the the birds
& motionlessness of a great cherry-
tree. We had a saved feeling –
And this morning we ate cake at the
dear Inn, & traversed the lovely Boldre-
-wood high-road again, our chief
path with the Prof. – then rain –
then this afternoon a drive over
the Plain in thunder-showers, enjoying
the crisp dripping crispness of
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[E.C.]
the fern. We almost slept in the
softness, with wet faces. After
that we met a storm-veiled
sun toward the West of Akers Down.
– It is the hour when autumn oaks re-bud,
Their farthest branches red, as if a priest
Had struck them into sacrificial blood
To scatter all the forest. –
Michael has been dreaming of
sea-mice.
And Painter is a Sculptor, &
divinely happy.
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[K.B.]
I write to Painter
This is of the god! It is subtle,
irresistible; it does not answer to the words: [?]
that you are a Sculptor – it is indeed news –
tidings rather, & of the kind that makes
a ruffle among the angels.
Henry & I go over the “to-morrow” list.
Henry broods over the drinking Sphinx,
but all my love – & all the foxity of my life[?]
is[?] for “a weeping Terminal” In that – but
I speak not: speech is not for that wh. can
be wrought.
Could you, Painter, I wonder, be some
year happy in the forest for a day or
two? Could you be patient to learn
the tongue of the moss, & all the accents
of the trees? Henry knows not. I wonder.
I would far rather you were at the
Palace with your clay. Painter, you have
been called by one who is not your enemy,
“an abstract eel”, & this too is for me your
charm. Abstractness with attention
is far better than “joy with economy.”
I cannot turn to the Forest now that
you have set me on the track
of art, – & yet there is a cherry-tree
the poets wake to at dawn – kaleidoscopic
in its light through pointed leaves, –
where the birds & they remember the
cherry-harvest – & twitter in their old
age of song; and there is the strange
reddening & re-budding of the summer
oaks, & shakings, & droppings, & sounds.
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[K.B.]
Henry is happy writing scenes in “Diane: Queen
of Earth” – our title for the new play. Ah,
Painter, Goujon[?] was her Sculptor –
who now? Just Diane sitting by the
stream of the River of Time – watching
the rise & fall of it – no stag, & no
crescent-moon – the symbolism in
the figure!
You have behaved ill over
Diane, not “fizzing” when I fizz, as
Bernhard wd complain.
Farewell, with good fortune, as
the Greeks say.
Michael.
[E.C.]
All the heavens are wide this third
Forest Sunday – the cherry-tree
is tongued & eloquent & little
clouds are harboured in a bay
of air, like a happy gala-fleet.
The moss of the forest glows
surprisingly; it has fattened
with the rain – its whorls[?] &
fronds[?]251 are tender, almost sleek.
The dead beech-leaves as we
pass over them give us the
experience of spiced & mummied
rain – over them, & the
sky & the lawns the sun
is sprinkled in droplets of
a golden shower.
We have an early greenwood walk.
Then I begin the last scene in
“Dian, Queen of Earth”, while Michael
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[E.C.]
writes to Fay & to Francis.
Then we walk in open noon, the
wind over the sun, like a banner
across a festival. And after
lunch, still we walk, so warm &
fresh are the hours. Our only
trouble is a fear of the fierce
dog next door – a poor animal
tied up to become a fiend.
After tea we start for Renaissance
– the beautiful terrace at the
back of Akers Down.
The sun is hidden, & all the ⟨beech⟩ woods
expend as dark clouds do – an
awful deepening passes through
them – They are stranger than
the Sun, as they sit in their grace
while he passes.
Michael plunges in sylvan madness
on – on & bears the ardour over
her cheeks still. She says this
day is the last of summer – it has
attained, & autumn might begin
tomorrow. She is very much much
with the sky when we turn home
[K.B.]
August 1st – at last – & Bank Holiday
I drew in from the garden the 1st morning
-glory. The red algi shoot up in the woods
a sweet walk at sundown through
the shining of the sweet gale past the dark
water of alderdrop – on lo[?] the beechen ⟨& hollied⟩
spaces of “Amiens’ song” [E.C.] – & an
evening with Michael’s Wilverley Poems
& As You Like It.
Notebook 18, Page Image 240; Vol. XVIII, Add MS 46793, fol. 119v; Pearl Chaozon Bauer (Holly Laird); Add_ms_46793_240.jpg
[E.C.]
August 2 nd Tuesday
We walk ⟨wake⟩ in awful depression –
the purlieus of dying. The Forest
seems to choke one in the night
while one sleeps. We comfort
ourselves with the thought Amy
will soon be back at the Manor
& a refuge will appear.
Then out into a lordly autumn
day – to the dear Inn & the
Highway from wh: one looks
into Hyacinthian, Discobolan
glade. What sweep of light &
branches, & dragon-fly.
The webs lie on the heath like
fleeces of Fay-land, the beeches
have a brown shade, that
makes them look firmer to
the eyes.
“La Charmoire[?]” of the Algi is
very rich – the vermeil
texture of their substance
is worthy food for the
fervent-tempered squirrels.
This afternoon we have driven
in the by-ways at the heart of
the Forest, as never before.
Not a high-road, except for a
while our delicious Boldrewood
Road. We tumbled over the
beech-roots of Kit’s Hill, looked
down on the beech & holly antiquity of
Buckhill, paused at the Roman
Notebook 18, Page Image 241; Vol. XVIII, Add MS 46793, fol. 120r; Pearl Chaozon Bauer (Holly Laird); Add_ms_46793_241.jpg
[E.C.]
Arch & descended. Such a picture –
that such should never be painted,
because it is a picture, & man
should never strive to do what
nature has achieved. The water
is green, a delight, in the hollow
under the bridge – the roots are
twisted perfectly, the shale-bank
is perfect round about the
runlets of the water.
And we hear from our Driver
that the Romans built it to
avoid the toll-gate on the
other road – so his grandfather
told him ⟨many times.⟩ They made a straight
way to Cufnels . . . “so at least
he told me” – adds the man, feeling
the atmosphere dubious.
It is exquisite! The woaded[?]
Britons making their road-
charges; & the imperial Road-
makers cutting straight
a’head to avoid paying.
I bore it – but the laughter within
grew an immortal joy.
Afterward we came to Holiday Hill,
driving along three miles of
Greenwood like that of Wilverley.
Oh, the little oaks, crisped as
with a tool, green & sunny – the
wide green turf-way, & everywhere
like an [????] lapse of waves,
the brake-fern, flaked with radiance!
I could have gone on for an
Notebook 18, Page Image 242; Vol. XVIII, Add MS 46793, fol. 120v; Pearl Chaozon Bauer (Holly Laird); Add_ms_46793_242.jpg
[E.C.]
Enchanted lifetime. Gods & Poetry
live in these green enclosures –
only societies of men & the
forms of drama haunt the
great unenclosed woods of
beech & holly – Jaques & the
Court of the Elder Duke
Dianne de Poytiers or William
Rufus.
That greenest green road, over
wh: our horse sprang on! –
That greenery in curl over
it, & that rise of a subtle
sea of fern round every
trunk!
Tea at Boldrewood Lodge, now
demure under Lascelles’ despotism.
Silence about us & tea discreetly
brought out into the carriage.
Before this Mark Ash with its
memories of 20 years ago, & of
2 years ago with the Professor.
What small divine sorrel
under the ancient Beech-ghosts!
And I saw the fine Thorn[?],
named after Michael, flourishing
in a dim manner.
To night we have been up our
James Hill in twilight. From
a ledge we look down on the whole
Boldrewood – the effect is of naked
Forest caught unawares – its
body seen – all those trees of⟨without⟩ any
Notebook 18, Page Image 243; Vol. XVIII, Add MS 46793, fol. 121r; Pearl Chaozon Bauer (Holly Laird); Add_ms_46793_243.jpg
[E.C.]
knowledge of their revelation[?].
A night-bird weighed its own
wing down, & in the distance
the owls gave their cry, as
if it came from that flesh
& bone of forest, incarnate
below us.
Wednesday – Another lordly day –
“herrlich wie am ersten Tag”
We sit on the Boldrewood High-
Road & look down on our happy
glen through the levels of gold
beech-leaves.
In this harvest-heat we sit in our
parlour, with the fire-slashed hawthorn
of the shades, suggesting coolness
from the mantleshelf, & pale &
crimson mallows in the vases
– rich & cool as old church-
windows ⟨under⟩ the hottest sun.
At sundown we wander away
to “Amiens’ Song” – from thence
through the solitude at the heart
of an old wood of beeches & hollies.
Those beeches! Under them the
Duke of As You Like It feasted, on
them was Orlando’s sculpture.
There is no question of their growing –
only that they had⟨have⟩ grown. The
Past is their OverLord – ‘Antan’ –
all that was before now. Yet our
each sunset brightens their
Notebook 18, Page Image 244; Vol. XVIII, Add MS 46793, fol. 121v; Pearl Chaozon Bauer (Holly Laird); Add_ms_46793_244.jpg
[E.C.]
small leaves to a delicacy
of display, like an old Man’s
smile at a Child going to
bed.
They are very lovely & almost
terrible in age & experience –
Think of the millions of
birds that have touched their
leaves with a breeze – the myriads
of insects that have afflicted
or sung to their Centuries!
Birds & insects of the 18th century –
of Elizabeth’s days – of the
time perhaps when chivalry
was abroad & knights pricked
at each other.
And the little Dædalus-
paths through the hollies –
we had to leave scraps
of paper wherever we
turned, as faggot-gatherers
advised us not to stray
so deep. At last we sighted
the High-Road, & turned back
at the sound of military
music from the Army of
Volunteers, now at camp
about the forest. Strange the
sound of the drum accompanied
by the call of peace from the
Dove at the Core of our Labyrinth.
We were happy – freely happy to
ourselves – Michael & Field.
A line appears directly above as well as below “Feast of S. Michael”.
One of Bradley’s many nicknames for Cooper.
Little Amy is Edith Cooper’s sister.
Diana de Poictiers was a French noblewoman and a prominent courtier at the courts of King Francis I and his son, King Henry II of France.
Whym Chow was a dog Bradley and Cooper had acquired. His death led to their conversion to Roman Catholicism.
Francis Thompson was an English poet and ascetic.
Ernest Radford was an English poet, critic and socialist.