The Secret Life - Being the book of a heretic E-Book

Elizabeth Bisland

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Beautifully classic book

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

JUNE 21. L'ENFANT TERRIBLE.

JULY 7. AN OPTIMISTIC CYNIC.

JULY 20. A POET SHEEP-RANCHER.

SEPTEMBER 4. AN EATEN CAKE.

SEPTEMBER 12. CONCERNING ELBOWS ON THE TABLE.

NOVEMBER 1. JOHN-A'-DREAMS.

NOVEMBER 6. THE FOUNTAIN OF SALMACIS.

NOVEMBER 20. TWO SIEGFRIEDS.

6. JANUARY A DOOR AJAR.

7. JANUARY AT TIME OF DEATH.

10. JANUARY THE CURSE OF BABEL.

14. JANUARY FOURTH DIMENSION.

23. JANUARY ANT AND THE LARK.

29. JANUARY DÖPPELGANGER.

FEBRUARY 17. "A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY."

FEBRUARY 18. AN ARABIAN LOOKING-GLASS.

MARCH 4. THE CRY OF THE WOMEN.

4. MAY SEVILLE. THE BEAUTY OF CRUELTY.

7. MAY GRANADA. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S TREES.

15. MAY NAPLES. THE BOY WITH THE GOOSE.

30. MAY ROME. A GOD INDEED.

JUNE 1. A QUESTION OF SKULLS.

LONDON. JUNE 30. THE MODERN WOMAN AND MARRIAGE.

JULY 17. THE IDEAL HUSBAND.

JULY 23. A NEW LAW OF HEALTH.

JULY 24. "DEAD, DEAD, DEAD."

SEPTEMBER 6. VERBAL MAGIC.

OCTOBER 8. HAMLET.

DECEMBER 13. GHOSTS.

DECEMBER 20. AMATEUR SAINTS.

JANUARY 1, 1900. THE ZEITGEIST.

FEBRUARY 11. THE ABDICATION OF MAN.

JUNE 13. LIFE.

JULY 2. PORTABLE PROPERTY.

JULY 10. ARE AMERICAN PARENTS SELFISH?

JULY 30. A QUESTION OF HEREDITY.

OCTOBER 6. THE LITTLE DUMB BROTHER.

AUGUST 5. FEVER DREAMS.

7. September A MISUNDERSTOOD MORALIST.

10. September THE PLEASURES OF PESSIMISM.

18. September MORAL PAUPERISM.

30. September ON A CERTAIN LACK OF HUMOUR IN FRENCHMEN.

OCTOBER 15. THE VALUE OF A SOUL.

OCTOBER 16. BORES.

NOVEMBER 7. EMOTIONS AND OXYDIZATION.

NOVEMBER 10. ABELARD TO HELOISE.

NOVEMBER 30. YUMEI MUJITSU.

DECEMBER 1. THE REAL THING.

DECEMBER 15. "OH, ELOQUENT, JUST, AND MIGHTY DEATH."

DECEMBER 23. "PHILISTIA, BE THOU GLAD OF ME."

DECEMBER 24. "OH KING LIVE FOREVER!"

JANUARY 1. THE LITTLE ROOM.

JANUARY 2. AFTERMATH.

The Secret Life

BEING THE BOOK OF A HERETIC

BY

ELIZABETH BISLAND

1906

Edition 2017 by David De Angelis – all rights reserved

JUNE 21.L'ENFANT TERRIBLE.

"The very Devil's in the moon for mischief:There's not a day, the longest, not the twenty-first of June,Sees half the mischief in a quiet wayOn which three single hours of moonlight smile."

At my age, alas! one no longer gets into mischief, either by moonlight or at midsummer, and yet to-day all the tricksey spirits of the invisible world are supposed to be abroad—tangling the horses' manes, souring the milkmaid's cream, setting lovers by the ears. Some such frisky Puck stirs even peaceable middle-aged blood at this season to mild little secret sins, such as beginning a diary in which to set down one's private naughty views—the heresies one has grown too staid and cautious to give speech to any longer.

All, I think, have some Secret Garden where they unbind the girdle of conventions and breathe to a sympathetic listener the opinions they would repudiate indignantly upon the housetops; but I know of no such kindred soul—indeed my private views are so heretical that I should tremble to whisper them even into the dull cold ear of night, lest I should cause it to turn pink, and thereafter hymns would not purge it. Hence no resource remains to ease my bosom of its perilous stuff but the unprotesting innocence of the blank pages of a diary.

There is a story concerning the king of some ungeographical country, to whom came two adventurers of cynical tendencies, professing to be able—given a certain allowance of jewels and precious metals—to weave a garment of exceeding richness and of such subtle texture that no monarch on earth might hope to match it. Setting up a loom and providing themselves with ample materials from the Royal treasury, they went through the motions of stringing a warp and thereupon industriously threw empty shuttles back and forth.

When the king, accompanied by his court, was summoned to observe the progress of the famous web, the puzzled ruler could see nothing but an empty loom, but before the eager explanations of the enthusiastic weavers, who pointed out here a glowing dye, there a splendid pattern, and having regard to the noncommittal countenances of the courtiers, the king nodded sagely and waited developments.

"Best of all, Sire," cried the cheerful rogues, "so magical is this robe we weave, that only those can see it whose tongue has never uttered a lie, whose hands have never taken a bribe."

Rises thereupon instant chorus of praise of the beautiful fabric from a unanimous court. Next day a solemn procession through the streets of the capital to display to the world the magic robe. Amazed multitude staring at the king in pompous dishabille, but hearing the courtiers' admiring cries, no man willing to admit his own blindness—when up speaks Tiresome Child: "Mother, why does the king ride abroad in his shirt?"

General outburst of mortified veracity, and futile search for the discreetly vanished adventurers.

So ends the story. But nothing of the sort really took place. Instead, l'enfant terrible was slapped and put to bed, to meditate upon his ill-timed outspokenness, and next day, and all the days thereafter, sees what his companions see. I know, because I myself am that Tiresome Child, and because my uncomfortable eyes refuse to see the imaginary robe in which so many kings of this world are dressed I have spent a large part of my life in disgrace. At last and tearfully I have learned to hold my tongue, but when the tricksome spirits of Midsummer Eve are abroad, I get out pen and paper and, where no pious ear can be violated, secretly vent my elderly naughtinesses. My respectable acquaintances will be all the safer in consequence that I have an inviolable confidant of the real thoughts that lie behind my but slightly wrinkled brow and unrevealing eyes. Thackeray once said, "If women's eyes could only be dragged, what queer things one might learn."... Ah, the Secret Life!—who among us can guess at the thoughts that are concealed behind the clear brows and frankseeming eyes of even those nearest us?

We live our lives draped and masked in our own bodies; forcing those bodies to speak the words, perform the actions expected from them, while we dwell alone within, thinking and wishing what we never, or rarely, express. It is this that drives us to diaries—the need to somewhere, somehow, speak the truth in a world of conformable lies. It is of no use to slip aside our masks or raise our draperies for an instant, in the hope that our fellows will recognize a hand or an eye like their own, and that thereupon even one of our companions will invite us to come out from under our robe and walk about with him friendlily, without disguise. Instead our companion makes signs of distress and resentment through the veil of his concealment, and we hastily readjust the mask and domino and resist further temptation to find a heart akin.

"It takes," says Thoreau, "two to tell the truth—one to speak and another to hear."

Called upon once to help a grief-stricken mother to lay away the belongings of a boy summoned suddenly out of life, we unearthed among his abandoned treasures a curious collection of odds and ends concerning which we could imagine no value that should have moved him to keep them by him. A shell, a bit of ribbon, a rusty nail; scraps of paper with a scribbled line or two; cuttings, whose printed words referred to nothing which seemed to bear in any way upon what we might guess of as touching his life.

"I thought I knew every fibre of his heart," cried the mother in sudden tears, "and yet of all these strange things he seems to have treasured so carefully I cannot divine the meaning of a single one!" A whole world of ambitions, interests, and sentiments foreign to her he had carried away into eternal silence.

If I shall have persistence sufficient to continue this Heretic Diary, I am afraid it will find itself stuffed with an equally absurd number of my secret loves and hates, of the intolerable opinions for which I have been slapped and put to bed, of all the sentimental rubbish I carry about with me in a fardel under my mask and domino— the poor inconsequential treasures of my secret life.

JULY 7.AN OPTIMISTIC CYNIC.

Amiel's Journal:—I have been reading it with the half impatient interest which such books always arouse—in me at least. It is a more agreeable book, however, than Marie Bashkirtseff's disingenuous posings, or Rousseau's vulgar, insulting confidences. One is impatient with the bore who talks about himself when one is impatient to bore him about one's own self, and yet, somehow, one is fascinated by the hope of getting behind the mask of personality.

I learned to read French that I might possess the contents of the "Confessions." George Eliot called it the most interesting book she knew, which fired my ambition to read it. With the aid of a dictionary, the four great volumes were got through somehow, and when the task was accomplished, though I loathed Rousseau, I had enough French to serve roughly for both reading and speech.

What ambition and courage one had in those days! I studied French while I did the churning. Remembering the strength and persistency of that time I wonder that I have come to middle age and done nothing. Athletic trainers say that there is in every one only a fixed capacity for development. One may reach that limit readily, and once reached no toil or patience will ever carry the power of the muscles beyond it by the smallest part of a fraction. Mentally, the same probably holds good. My capacity was, no doubt, always small. So far as it went the cramping, unpropitious circumstances of youth had no power to chill it, but prosperity, leisure, opportunity, could not add one jot to its possibilities....

In all these journals what I find interesting is not so much what the writer says as what he reveals unintentionally.

The impression Amiel leaves upon the reader is that he was at least a gentleman—that he had a gentle soul; clean and modest, continent and grave. His melancholy seems neither so profound nor so touching as Mrs. Humphrey Ward and his other critics would have one believe. At least it is neither tragic nor torturing. He gives the impression of saying "I have no bread—but," he adds cheerfully, after a moment's reflection, "the Lord will provide."

He is not rebellious. In moments of the most real gravity, when he is face to face with death, he clings to the egotistic superstition that perhaps—most probably—there is somewhere some wise kind Power deeply interested in his doings, his emotions, his future. He is profoundly convinced that it is important how he feels, how he bears himself. He has no sense at all of the blind nullity of things. He asserts this nullity to be unthinkable. All this is surprising when one remembers the insistence of his commentators upon the intense modernity of his mind. Is this modern? I cannot see wherein it differs from the spirit of the past. Such natures were not uncommon in other centuries—as was the nature of Erasmus for example....

The man had no passion. He did not marry because, he says, he demanded perfection; could not find or give it, and therefore resigned himself cheerfully to celibacy. Passion, of course, would have blinded his eyes to imperfections; having none, his eyes were always clear.... It is perhaps in this passionlessness that he is most modern. Most of us no longer demand perfection. Knowing it to be unattainable, modern common sense cheerfully agrees to abandon desire for it. This is visible in our literature, in art, in love. No one reads or buys long poems any more, therefore the poets never contemplate a new Paradise Lost. No one paints heroic pictures, for they are not salable. The grandiose has no market and therefore grows obsolete. The law of supply and demand rules there as elsewhere. Passion and the perfection it longs and strives for is démodé.

JULY 20.A POET SHEEP-RANCHER.

F—— is dead, and with the announcement by cable this morning comes a belated letter from M——, full of hope and encouragement. A sudden rally had made her believe in a possibility of recovery—no doubt it was that last flare which comes often just as the oil fails and the light is about to go out.

My mind has been full of amazement all day. It is so difficult to realize that a strong, aggressive personality is finally and definitely extinguished. I have been thinking of their odd, romantic story. He must have had great seductive power—not easily realizable now—to have come into her life and have persuaded her to abandon everything to follow him. I have heard her tell the story often. The tall young sheep-rancher from New Zealand, with his burning eyes and his pockets full of sonnets, appearing one morning, and she suddenly abandons her brilliant position, her jointure, her two orphan boys, and goes away, despite the furious outcries of her family and friends, with a man seven years her junior; goes into the wilderness with him, New Zealand of more than a quarter of a century ago being decidedly wilderness, yet she calls those the happiest years of her life—spent in a shanty fifty miles from the nearest neighbour! She likes to recall the wild scrambles among the mountains; the wrestles to save the sheep from the spring floods; the vigils; the dances to which they rode on mountain ponies, sixty or seventy miles; the makeshifts; the caring for flocks and shepherds in the stress of heat and cold, of sickness and sorrow; and the snow-bound nights beside the fire, when the sonnets came to the fore again. After all it was youth, and love, and adventure; why shouldn't she have been happy? And she was justified in her faith. When I came to know them the detrimental young sheep-rancher moved in a world of gilded aides-de-camp, with sentries and mounted escorts attending his steps, surrounded by tropical pomp and spacious luxury, and now, alas! he is but one more unit in the yearly tribute of flesh and blood demanded by England's Equatorial Empire.

A handsome, brilliant, charming creature. The generation is the poorer for the loss of his graceful, cynical wit.

He belonged to the generation who formed their ideals of manners upon Pelham and Vivian Grey. It was Byronism translated into prose. M—— says he bore his sufferings—enormous sufferings—with the light and humorous courage with which it was the ideal of the fine gentleman of his period to face all unpleasant situations.

SEPTEMBER 4.AN EATEN CAKE.

The S——s came in last night after dinner. They cling to the old fashion, common in England before the advent of afternoon tea, of having the tray brought in about ten o'clock, so I tried it to-night because of them, and found it not a bad idea.

Simple, agreeable folk they are, of what is called in Scotland the middle classes. That is to say, they follow some commercial calling: I am not sure of its exact nature. They are very well educated in just the way which differentiates the British middle-class education from the other sort—they speak several modern languages fluently, and know little of the classics. All their learning is sound, unornamental, utilitarian. Some reference was made to a kinsman in a foreign town which I had visited. I could not recall any association with the name until the elder brother said quite simply and without any self-consciousness:

"He is Jones of Jones & Co. (a large haberdasher in P——)—you may have been in his shop."

It was nicely done. I doubt if an American could have achieved it in quite the same way. If he had made the confidence it would have been made with bravado, or he would have explained that the shop was an "emporium."

The girl has such a good restful British calm about her—I felt it after she was gone. It arises, I think, from lack of any special interest in the impression she makes upon others. All the rest of us—we Americans—were desirous of being agreeable, amusing—of making a good effect. We were consciously sympathetic, consciously vivacious, consciously civil. She was just herself; we might take or leave her as she was. It never occurred to her to attempt to be different for our sakes. The result of it is very reposeful. One is always conscious of a sense of strain in American society for this reason. It is because of that desire to impress, to please, that American voices in conversation grow sharp and hurried, that American faces grow keen and lined. We have a tradition that English women are dull and bovine, but no doubt they make the better mothers because of it. They hoard their energies to give to their sons. They bring their children into the world with deep reserves of strength. I have often observed the great superiority of English men over Americans in the capacity for long, sustained, unflinching labour. I am sure they owe that to the immense fund of unexhausted power given them by their mothers, who are profound wells of calm vitality. It is the old story of being unable to eat one's cake and have it too. American women eat their cake in the form of a higher exhilaration in existence, but when the drain of creation comes they have nothing save nervous energy to give. The rest of the cake has already been devoured. There are no reserves for the child to call upon.

I believe that Englishmen—without reasoning upon the matter—feel this instinctively. They vastly prefer their own women as mates. I have rarely known an Englishman to marry an American woman who had not the extrinsic attractionof wealth. They do not hesitate to marry penniless countrywomen of their own.